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've got to take them out - and you've got to take them out harshly, and you've got to take them out fast.
'You have no choice. These people, you know, we're now in the age of chopping off heads, nobody would have believed this was possible. I would hit them very hard, very fast.’
He said Abdeslam was ‘really coddled and taken care of by people that like in the neighbourhood, and many people knew he was there, and yet he was the number one wanted fugitive in the world’.
Mr Trump added: ‘Everybody from that area knew he was there and nobody turned him in. There's something going on, and there's something wrong - you know it Piers, and so do I.’
Mr Trump's promise to ban Muslims from entering the US triggered a campaign to block him from coming to the UK.
The petition was signed by more than half a million people in Britain and led to a three-hour debate by MPs in the House of Commons.
Responding to his comments this morning, Neil Basu, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, told the BBC: 'Trump is wrong. There is a generational problem here.
'We need more reporting from the Muslim community and all communities. If we demonise one section of society that’s the worst thing we can do.
'We do see a spike in hate crimes [after attacks] but we do deal with it very forcibly and we work closely with communities to try and prevent it.’
Mr Trump told Mr Morgan - who said he considered the billionaire ‘a good friend’ he had known for a decade - that he did not believe many Britons were scared of the idea of him in the White House.
He said: ‘I don't think too many are. Honestly, I'm a very normal person. I happen to be intelligent, very intelligent, I guess, based on certain results that I get in doing things.’
Mr Trump's statements are ‘just not true’, said Miqdaad Versi, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain.
He told Good Morning Britain: ‘What we have to recognise is when some of these statements are made that fuel this idea of bigotry and really fuel the thing that terrorists themselves want - that Muslims are apart from the West and cannot be seen as equal citizens - these things are not good for our society.’
On a roll: Mr Trump is the front-runner in the race to be the Republican candidate in November's presidential election despite making a series of hugely controversial statements during his campaign
Mr Versi said he cannot speak for the rest of Europe but said in London it is ‘not the case’ that Muslims are not reporting people they suspect to be extremists, adding that there is a ‘much more integrated society’ in the UK.
He said: ‘In the UK British Muslims have been very outspoken on this issue.’
Mr Versi said research had shown that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Britain would report suspicious activity.
I'd have such backup like you've never seen before in terms of air power, airstrikes etc, and you've got to take them out - and you've got to take them out harshly, and you've got to take them out fast Donald Trump, on ISIS
He warned it was concerning that people are confusing criminality and religion.
He said: ‘We have to understand how much of this is due to them being Muslim communities or just a community of criminality which people are working within? And we have to try and not conflate the two together.’
Mr Versi warned that bigotry against Muslims is growing, describing it as ‘a serious concern’. ‘That's dangerous for the cohesiveness of our society.’
Mr Basu said police had received ‘increasing volumes of calls’ to the dedicated anti-terror hotline since it was set up, which he described as a ‘measure of success’.
He told Good Morning Britain: ‘We know we are getting more referrals into our Prevent programmes which are aimed to dissuade people from radicalisation. So I think it's working but this is a generation of work.’
Asked whether an attack in the UK is inevitable he said he would not ‘patronise the public by saying that we are going to be capable of stopping every attack’ but highlighted that police had prevented seven attacks in a period of 12 months.
Yesterday, Mr Trump commented on the bombings hours after they happened, saying: 'This is going to happen in the United States.'
He then said in an interview on Fox News that the US needs to'shut the borders' - a statement he repeated later in the morning while appearing on NBC’s The Today Show.
In that appearance he also told presenter Matt Lauer that he is a firm believer in using torture to get information from people behind attacks like the one in Brussels, stating: 'Waterboarding is fine.'
Mr Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton also called into The Today Show - and criticised Mr Trump's comments about waterboarding, saying: 'We don't need to resort to torture.'
Mr Trump also called into Fox Business Network's Mornings with Maria Bartiromo saying that the US must have surveillance of Muslims in this country, particularly at mosques.
The series of bombings in the Belgian capital - which occurred in the city's airport and at a Metro station close to the headquarters of the European Union - have claimed the lives of at least 34 individuals. ISIS has since claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement.
Mr Trump previously called Brussels a 'hellhole' in January when asked about the city during a Fox Business interview.Hey Kryx, I've since looked at your macros, but they're still lacking two things for my group. 1. Display stat mod before use. (Less important, but nice quality of life feature) 2. Displays name of character who uses it, in chat, on the roll. (Particularly important for our group) These two reasons are the same reason I didn't just use an option list of the individual check and save macros. As per the character initiative macro, I realized I did not answer what it does different from yours: 1. Adds in the initiative mod as a percentile, making the tracker auto-sort equal rolls based on initiative mod. 2. Displays name of character who uses it, in chat, on the roll. (Again, important for my group, due to multiple characters) Additionally, the GM initiative macro does the same thing for initiative mod, but allows you to manually enter it, so you don't have to have an npc sheet entered to auto add a token to the tracker. This one does not display name though. Also, as a side note, you may want to consider moving those query macros in the documentation to be with the other skill and save macros, I can't be the only one who missed them.No statistic about higher education commands more attention—and anxiety—among members of the public than the rising price of admission. Since 1980, inflation- adjusted tuition at public universities has tripled; at private universities it has more than doubled. Compared to all other goods and services in the American economy, including medical care, only “cigarettes and other tobacco products” have seen prices rise faster than the cost of going to college. And for all that, parents who sign away ever-larger tuition checks can be forgiven for doubting whether universities are spending those additional funds in ways that make their kids’ educations better—to say nothing of three times better.
Between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American higher educational institutions, stated in constant dollars, tripled, to more than $325 billion per year. Over the same period, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant, at approximately fifteen or sixteen students per instructor. One thing that has changed, dramatically, is the administrator-per-student ratio. In 1975, colleges employed one administrator for every eighty-four students and one professional staffer—admissions officers, information technology specialists, and the like—for every fifty students. By 2005, the administrator-to-student ratio had dropped to one administrator for every sixty-eight students while the ratio of professional staffers had dropped to one for every twenty-one students.
Apparently, as colleges and universities have had more money to spend, they have not chosen to spend it on expanding their instructional resources—that is, on paying faculty. They have chosen, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources. A comprehensive study published by the Delta Cost Project in 2010 reported that between 1998 and 2008, America’s private colleges increased spending on instruction by 22 percent while increasing spending on administration and staff support by 36 percent. Parents who wonder why college tuition is so high and why it increases so much each year may be less than pleased to learn that their sons and daughters will have an opportunity to interact with more administrators and staffers— but not more professors. Well, you can’t have everything.
Of course, universities have always employed administrators. When I was a graduate student in the 1960s and a young professor in the 1970s, however, top administrators were generally drawn from the faculty, and even midlevel managerial tasks were directed by faculty members. These moonlighting academics typically occupied administrative slots on a part-time or temporary basis and planned in due course to return to full-time teaching and research. Whatever their individual faults and gifts, faculty administrators seldom had to be reminded that the purpose of a university was the promotion of education and research, and their own short-term managerial endeavors tended not to distract them from their long-term academic commitments.
Alas, today’s full-time professional administrators tend to view management as an end in and of itself. Most have no faculty experience, and even those who have spent time in a classroom or laboratory often hope to make administration their life’s work and have no plan to return to teaching. For many of these career managers, promoting teaching and research is less important than expanding their own administrative domains. Under their supervision, the means have become the end.
Every year, hosts of administrators and staffers are added to college and university payrolls, even as schools claim to be battling budget crises that are forcing them to reduce the size of their full-time faculties. As a result, universities are now filled with armies of functionaries—vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate provosts, vice provosts, assistant provosts, deans, deanlets, and deanlings, all of whom command staffers and assistants—who, more and more, direct the operations of every school. If there is any hope of getting higher education costs in line, and improving its quality—and I think there is, though the hour is late—it begins with taking a pair of shears to the overgrown administrative bureaucracy.
Forty years ago, America’s colleges employed more professors than administrators. The efforts of 446,830 professors were supported by 268,952 administrators and staffers. Over the past four decades, though, the number of full-time professors or “full-time equivalents”—that is, slots filled by two or more part-time faculty members whose combined hours equal those of a full-timer—increased slightly more than 50 percent. That percentage is comparable to the growth in student enrollments during the same time period. But the number of administrators and administrative staffers employed by those schools increased by an astonishing 85 percent and 240 percent, respectively.
Today, administrators and staffers safely outnumber full-time faculty members on campus. In 2005, colleges and universities employed more than 675,000 fulltime faculty members or full-time equivalents. In the same year, America’s colleges and universities employed more than 190,000 individuals classified by the federal government as “executive, administrative and managerial employees.” Another 566,405 college and university employees were classified as “other professional.” This category includes IT specialists, counselors, auditors, accountants, admissions officers, development officers, alumni relations officials, human resources staffers, editors and writers for school publications, attorneys, and a slew of others. These “other professionals” are not administrators, but they work for the administration and serve as its arms, legs, eyes, ears, and mouthpieces.
Before they employed an army of professional staffers, administrators were forced to rely on the cooperation of the faculty to carry out tasks ranging from admissions to planning. An administration that lost the confidence of the faculty might find itself unable to function. Today, ranks of staffers form a bulwark of administrative power in the contemporary university. These administrative staffers do not work for or, in many cases, even share information with the faculty. They help make the administration, in the language of political science, “relatively autonomous,” marginalizing the faculty.
While some administrative posts continue to be held by senior professors on a part-time basis, their ranks are gradually dwindling as their jobs are taken over by fulltime managers. College administrations frequently tout the fiscal advantages of using part-time, “adjunct” faculty to teach courses. They fail, however, to apply the same logic to their own ranks. Over the past thirty years, the percentage of faculty members who are hired on a part-time basis has increased so dramatically that today almost half of the nation’s professors work only part-time. And yet the percentage of administrators who are part-time employees has fallen during the same time period.
Administrators are not only well staffed, they are also well paid. Vice presidents at the University of Maryland, for example, earn well over $200,000, and deans earn nearly as much. Both groups saw their salaries increase as much as 50 percent between 1998 and 2003, a period of financial retrenchment and sharp tuition increases at the university. The University of Maryland at College Park—which employs six vice presidents, six associate vice presidents, five assistant vice presidents, six assistants to the president, and six assistants to the vice presidents—has long been noted for its bloated and extortionate bureaucracy, but it actually does not seem to be much of an exception. Administrative salaries are on the rise everywhere in the nation. By 2007, the median salary paid to the president of a doctoral degree-granting institution was $325,000. Eighty-one presidents earned more than $500,000, and twelve earned over $1 million. Presidents, at least, might perform important services for their schools. Somewhat more difficult to explain is the fact that by 2010 even some of the ubiquitous and largely interchangeable deanlets and deanlings earned six-figure salaries.
If you have any remaining doubt about where colleges and universities have been spending their increasing tuition and other revenues, consider this: between 1947 and 1995 (the last year for which the relevant data was published), administrative costs increased from barely 9 percent to nearly 15 percent of college and university budgets. More recent data, though not strictly comparable, follows a similar pattern. During this same time period, stated in constant dollars, overall university spending increased 148 percent. Instructional spending increased only 128 percent, 20 points less than the overall rate of spending increase. Administrative spending, though, increased by a whopping 235 percent.
Three main explanations are often adduced for the sharp growth in the number of university administrators over the past thirty years. One is that there have been new sorts of demands for administrative services that require more managers per student or faculty member than was true in the past. Universities today have an elaborate IT infrastructure, enhanced student services, a more extensive fund-raising and lobbying apparatus, and so on, than was common thirty years ago. Of course, it might also be said that during this same time period, whole new fields of teaching and research opened in such areas as computer science, genetics, chemical biology, and physics. Other new research and teaching fields opened because of ongoing changes in the world economy and international order. And yet, faculty growth between 1975 and 2005 simply kept pace with growth in enrollments and substantially lagged behind administrative and staff growth. When push came to shove, colleges chose to invest in management rather than in teaching and research.
A second common explanation given for the expansion of administration in recent years is the growing need to respond to mandates and record-keeping demands from federal and state governments as well as numerous licensure and accreditation bodies. It is certainly true that large numbers of administrators spend a good deal of time preparing reports and collecting data for these and other agencies. But as burdensome as this paperwork blizzard might be, it is not clear that it explains the growth in administrative personnel that we have observed. Often, affirmative action reporting is cited as the most time consuming of the various governmental mandates. As the economist Barbara Bergmann has pointed out, however, across the nation only a handful of administrators and staffers are employed in this endeavor.
More generally, we would expect that if administrative growth were mainly a response to external mandates, growth should be greater at state schools, which are more exposed to government obligations, than at private institutions, which are freer to manage their own affairs in their own way. Yet, when we examine the data, precisely the opposite seems to be the case. Between 1975 and 2005, the number of administrators and managers employed by public institutions increased by 66 percent. During the same time period, the number of administrators employed by private colleges and universities grew by 135 percent (see Table 4). These numbers seem inconsistent with the idea that external mandates have been the forces driving administrative growth at America’s institutions of higher education.
A third explanation has to do with the conduct of the faculty. Many faculty members, it is often said, regard administrative activities as obnoxious chores and are content to allow these to be undertaken by others. While there is some truth to this, it is certainly not the whole story. Often enough, I have observed that professors who are willing to perform administrative tasks lose interest when they find that the committees, councils, and assemblies through which the faculty nominally acts have lost much if not all their power to administrators.
If growth-driven demand, governmental mandates, and faculty preferences are not sufficient explanations for administrative expansion, an alternative explanation might be found in the nature of university bureaucracies themselves. In particular, administrative growth may be seen primarily as a result of efforts by administrators to aggrandize their own roles in academic life. Students of bureaucracy have frequently observed that administrators have a strong incentive to maximize the power and prestige of whatever office they hold by working to increase its staff and budget. To justify such increases, they often seek to capture functions currently performed by others or invent new functions for themselves that might or might not further the organization’s main mission.
Such behavior is common on today’s campuses. At one school, an inventive group of administrators created the “Committee on Traditions,” whose mission seemed to be the identification and restoration of forgotten university traditions or, failing that, the creation of new traditions. Another group of deans constituted themselves as the “War Zones Task Force.” This group recruited staffers, held many meetings, and prepared a number of reports whose upshot seemed to be that students should be discouraged from traveling to war zones, unless, of course, their home was in a war zone. But perhaps the expansion of university bureaucracies is best illustrated by an ad placed by a Colorado school, which sought a “Coordinator of College Liaisons.” Depending on how you read it, this is either a ridiculous example of bureaucratic layering or an intrusion into an area of student life that hardly requires administrative assistance.
The number of administrators and staffers on university campuses has increased so rapidly in recent years that often there is not enough work to keep all of them busy. To fill their time, administrators engage in a number of make-work activities. This includes endless rounds of meetings, mostly with other administrators, often consisting of reports from and plans for other meetings. For example, at a recent “president’s staff meeting” at an Ohio community college, eleven of the eighteen agenda items discussed by administrators involved plans for future meetings or discussions of other recently held meetings. At a gathering of the “Process Management Steering Committee” of a Midwestern community college, virtually the entire meeting was devoted to planning subsequent meetings by process management teams, including the “search committee training team,” the “faculty advising and mentoring team,” and the “culture team,” which was said to be meeting with “renewed energy.” The culture team was apparently also close to making a recommendation on the composition of a “Culture Committee.” Since culture is a notoriously abstruse issue, this committee may need to meet for years, if not decades, to unravel its complexities.
When they face particularly challenging problems, academic administrators sometimes find that ordinary meetings in campus offices do not allow them the freedom from distraction they require. To allow them to focus fully and without interruption, administrators sometimes find it necessary to schedule off-campus administrative retreats where they can work without fear that the day-to-day concerns of the campus will disturb their deliberations. Sometimes these retreats include athletic and role-playing activities that are supposed to help improve the staff’s spirit of camaraderie and ability to function as a team. For example, at a 2007 professional development retreat, Michigan Tech staffers broke into teams and spent several hours building furniture from pieces of cardboard and duct tape. Many staff retreats also include presentations by professional speakers who appear to specialize in psychobabble. Topics at recent retreats included “Do You Want to Succeed?” “Reflective Resensitizing,” and “Waking Up the Inner World.” In all likelihood, the administrators and staffers privileged to attend these important talks spent the next several weeks reporting on them at meetings with colleagues who had been deprived of the opportunity to learn firsthand how to make certain that their inner worlds remained on alert.
Administrative budgets frequently include travel funds, on the theory that conference participation will hone administrators’ skills and provide them with new information and ideas that will ultimately serve their school’s interests. We can be absolutely certain that this would be the only reason administrators would even consider dragging themselves to Maui during the winter for a series of workshops sponsored by the North American Association of Summer Sessions. Given the expense and hardship usually occasioned by travel to Hawaii, it is entirely appropriate for colleges to foot this sort of bill.
Another ubiquitous make-work exercise is the formation of a “strategic plan.” Until recent years, colleges engaged in little formal planning. Today, however, virtually every college and university in the nation has an elaborate strategic plan. This is typically a lengthy document— some are 100 pages long or more—that purports to articulate the school’s mission, its leadership’s vision of the future, and the various steps that are needed to achieve the school’s goals. The typical plan takes six months to two years to write and requires countless hours of work from senior administrators and their staffs.
A plan that was really designed to guide an organization’s efforts to achieve future objectives, as it might be promulgated by a corporation or a military agency, would typically present concrete objectives, a timetable for their realization, an outline of the tactics that will be employed, a precise assignment of staff responsibilities, and a budget. Some university plans approach this model. Most, however, are simply expanded “vision statements” that are often forgotten soon after they are promulgated. My university has presented two systemwide strategic plans and one arts and sciences strategic plan in the last fifteen years. No one can remember much about any of these plans, but another one is currently in the works. The plan is not a blueprint for the future. It is, instead, a management tool for the present. The ubiquity of planning at America’s colleges and universities is another reflection and reinforcement of the ongoing growth of administrative power.
There is, to be sure, one realm in which administrators as a class have proven extraordinarily adept. This is the general domain of fund-raising. Even during the depths of the recession in 2009, schools were able to raise money. On the one hand, the donors who give selflessly to their schools deserve to be commended for their beneficence. At the same time, it should still be noted that, as is so often the case in the not-for-profit world, university administrators appropriate much of this money to support—what else?—more administration.
The stress on fund-raising has enabled more than a few university presidents to acquire luxurious offices, lavish residences, and an assortment of perks in addition to princely salaries. Some enjoy the services of a chauffeur when they commute to work and a household staff when they entertain or even relax at home. These and many other perquisites are usually defended by administrators as needed to carry out their social duties and, particularly, to impress their schools’ wealthy benefactors. Yet no study has ever proved that presidents who arrive at fundraising events in chauffeur-driven limousines are more likely to succeed in their capital campaign goals or in any other endeavor than their counterparts who drive their own cars or come by taxi or, for that matter, by subway. I have personally known university presidents who were outstanding fund-raisers but, nevertheless, lived frugally and always traveled as cheaply as possible. Among college officials, though, the spendthrifts seem to outnumber the penny pinchers.
College presidents are usually the guiltiest parties, since they are in the best position to authorize expenditures, and many are more than happy to use school funds to burnish their own images. One recent case in point is that of Benjamin Ladner, the former president of American University in Washington, D.C. Soon after arriving on the campus in 1994, Ladner and his wife, who dubbed herself AU’s “first lady,” declared that the president’s official residence was inadequate and had the university build an expensive new house, which included a waterfall and pond behind the patio, a few blocks from the campus. They outfitted the house with expensive furnishings, china, and stemware. At university expense, the Ladners employed a chauffeur, a cook, a social secretary, and numerous other personal staff members. They hosted gala events to which they invited prominent Washington figures. They traveled abroad frequently, generally charging their first-class tickets to the university.
Matters came to a head in March 2005, when an anonymous whistleblower wrote to the board of trustees accusing the Ladners of “severe expense account violations.” An extensive audit subsequently revealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable spending, some personal but most associated with President Ladner’s frenetic image-polishing efforts. Over the previous several years, the Ladners had charged the university for $6,000 in club dues, $54,000 in drivers’ costs, $220,000 in chefs’ services, $44,000 for alcohol, and $100,000 in services from their social secretary.
After months of bruising battles within the AU board, Ladner’s contract was terminated—though he and the first lady received a generous severance package. While Ladner mingled with the rich and famous at the school’s expense, faculty members had to settle for miserly annual salary increases and students saw their tuitions rise markedly every year.
The expansion of college and university administration has not been coupled with the development of adequate mechanisms of oversight and supervision, particularly for senior managers. University boards, which technically oversee the administrations, are generally not well prepared for the task. One recent study found that 40 percent of university trustees said they were not prepared for the job and 42 percent indicated that they spent less than five hours a month on board business. Many trustees serve because of loyalty to their school and say they have “faith” in its administration. They do not go out of their way to look for problems, and administrators are generally able to satisfy trustees with the rosy pictures of college life presented at weekend board meetings.
Moreover, university boards do not have the same legal responsibilities borne by corporate boards. Most federal regulations establishing management standards for private-sector firms, such as the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, do not apply to nonprofit entities, and state regulation of university administration is spotty. At the same time, while schools have developed many internal rules and standards applying to the conduct of faculty members and students, few if any have established standards governing administrative conduct or established oversight mechanisms. For the most part, senior administrators police themselves.
The result of this lack of supervision is that a number of college and university administrators have, in recent years, succumbed to the temptation to engage in corrupt practices. In 2008, for example, the director of Tufts University’s Office of Student Activities, Josephine Nealley, was indicted on three counts of larceny for embezzling more than $300,000 in student activities funds. She allegedly transferred the money to her personal bank accounts and used it for purchases and trips. While acting on an anonymous tip regarding Nealley’s activities, university auditors uncovered a second, apparently unrelated case of embezzlement. Raymond Rodriguez, a budget officer, allegedly stole more than $600,000 from the university, which he spent on trips and luxury goods. Rodriguez was indicted on two counts of larceny for his alleged thefts. Both Nealley and Rodriguez entered guilty pleas and were sentenced to prison terms.
In a similar vein, the president of the University of Tennessee was forced to resign when an audit revealed that he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in university funds on personal trips, entertainment, and purchases. The president’s travel at university expense allegedly included trips to Birmingham, Alabama, where he was said to have a “personal involvement” with the president of another school.
Often, frauds go unnoticed for years because the perpetrators are the accountants and financial officers responsible for fiscal oversight. When fraudulent conduct is discovered, university officials often prefer to allow the perpetrators to resign or retire quietly rather than risk a public brouhaha that might upset donors and lead to questions about the quality of the school’s leadership. Many professors can point to cases at their own school when crooked administrators were allowed to leave quietly, sometimes even without being compelled to make restitution for their offenses.
When fraud is exposed and restitution demanded, the sums can be considerable. In January 2008, Roy Johnson, chancellor of Alabama’s community college system, pled guilty to bribery and was required to forfeit the $18 million he admitted receiving in direct and indirect benefits from companies doing business with the colleges he oversaw. As the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case observed, “Taxpayers must wonder how many more Alabama students could have been educated had money not been wasted on fraud.”
The priorities of the hyper-administrative university emerge most clearly during times of economic crisis, when managers are forced to make choices among spending options. Thanks to the sharp economic downturn that followed America’s 2008 financial crisis, almost every institution, even Harvard, America’s wealthiest school, has been compelled to make substantial cuts in its expenditures. What cuts did university administrations choose to make during these hard times?
A tiny number of schools took the opportunity to confront years of administrative and staff bloat and moved to cut costs by shedding unneeded administrators and their brigades of staffers. The most notable example is the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, which in February 2009 addressed a $100 million budget deficit by eliminating fifteen “leadership positions,” along with 450 staff jobs, among other cuts. The dean also emphasized that faculty would not be affected by the planned budget cuts. Chicago’s message was clear: administrators and staffers were less important than teaching, research, and—since this involved a medical school—patient care; if the budget had to be cut, it would be done by thinning the school’s administrative ranks, not by reducing its core efforts.
Unfortunately, few if any other colleges and universities copied the Chicago model. Facing budgetary problems, many schools eliminated academic programs and announced across-the-board salary and hiring freezes, which meant that vacant staff and faculty positions, including the positions of many adjunct professors, would remain unfilled until the severity of the crisis eased.
Perverse administrative priorities were even more in evidence at a number of schools that actually raised administrative salaries or opted to spend more money on administrative services while cutting expenditures on teaching and research in the face of budget deficits. For example, in January 2009, facing $19 million in budget cuts and a hiring freeze, Florida Atlantic University awarded raises of 10 percent or more to top administrators, including the school’s president. In a similar vein, in February 2009, the president of the University of Vermont defended the bonuses paid to the school’s twenty-one top administrators against the backdrop of layoffs, job freezes, and program cuts at the university. The university president, Daniel Fogel, asserted that administrative bonuses were based on the principles of “extra pay for extra duties” and “pay for performance.” The president rejected a faculty member’s assertion that paying bonuses to administrators when the school faced an enormous budget deficit seemed similar to the sort of greed recently manifested by the corporate executives who paid themselves bonuses with government bailout money. Fogel said he shared the outrage of those upset at corporate greed, but maintained there was a “world of difference” between the UVM administrative bonuses and bonuses paid to corporate executives. He did not specify what that world might be.
In the meantime the president of Washington State University, Elson Floyd, accepted a $125,000 pay raise, bringing his 2009 salary to $725,000 per year, soon after announcing that financial circumstances required the school to freeze hiring. At another university that had just announced a large budget deficit and mandated salary and hiring freezes, the outgoing president was feted by the board of trustees at a gala 350-person dinner, to which trustees, senior administrators, alumni, donors, and other notables—but no students or faculty—were invited. The dinner, which might as well have been held on the promenade deck of the Titanic, featured musical performances, videos, and a lounge area with hundreds of Chinese newspapers and a tea set to recognize the president’s many trips to China. (No wonder university spending was frozen.) Later, this same university placed restrictions on the use of copy paper by graduate students. Maybe the Chinese newspapers should have been recycled.
On any given campus, the only institution with the actual power to halt the onward march of the all-administrative university is the board of trustees or regents— which, as we’ve seen, tend to be unprepared or disinclined to make waves. But they need to do so if their institutions are to be saved from sinking into the expanding swamp of administrative mediocrity.
To begin with, trustees interested in trimming administrative fat should compare their own school’s ratio of managers and staffers per hundred students to the national mean, which is currently an already inflated nine for private schools and eight for public colleges. If the national mean is nine administrators per hundred students at private colleges, why does Vanderbilt need sixty-four? Why does Rochester need forty and Johns Hopkins thirty-one? Management-minded administrators claim to believe in benchmarking, so they should not object to being benchmarked in this way.
The right kind of media coverage would embolden boards to ask the right questions. In particular, the various publications that rate and rank colleges—U.S. News is the most influential—should take account of administrative bloat in their ratings. After all, a high administrator-to-student ratio means that the school is diverting funds from academic programs to support an overgrown bureaucracy. I am certain that if Vanderbilt or Duke or Hopkins or Rochester or Emory or any of the other most administratively top-heavy schools lost a few notches in the U.S. News rankings because of their particularly egregious administrative bloat, their boards would be forced to act.
But given the general fattening of administrative ranks in recent years, even schools with average administrator-to-student ratios could stand to see major cuts in their administrative staffs and budgets. This could help not only to fill budget holes but, more importantly, to begin a healthy shift in the balance of bureaucratic power within universities. A 10 percent cut in the staff and management ranks would save millions of dollars but would have no effect whatsoever on the operations of most campuses. The deanlets would never be missed; their absence from campus would go unnoticed. A 20 percent or larger cut would begin to be noticed and would have the beneficial effect of substantially reducing administrative power and the ongoing diversion of scarce funds into unproductive channels.
With fewer deanlets to command, senior administrators would be compelled to turn once again to the faculty for administrative support. Such a change would result in better programs and less unchecked power for presidents and provosts. Faculty who work part-time or for part of their careers as administrators tend to ask questions, use judgment, and interfere with arbitrary presidential and provostial decision making. Senior full-time administrators might resent the interference, but the university would benefit from the result. Moreover, with fewer administrators to pay and send to conferences and retreats, more resources might be available for educational programs and student support, the actual items for which parents, donors, and funding agencies think they are paying.Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., who lost to Roy Moore in a primary runoff election in September, said it is “highly unlikely” he will pursue a write-in campaign during the December special election, even as pressure grows on Moore to drop out.
Strange, who has been floated as a write-in candidate amid sexual misconduct allegations against Moore, said “right now a write-in candidacy is highly unlikely,” according to multiple media reports.
Just now: Sen @lutherstrange says “right now a write-in candidacy is highly unlikely.” #ALSen — Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) November 13, 2017
Luther Strange says a write-in candidacy “highly unlikely.” Doesn’t sound interested in running against Roy Moore — John Bresnahan (@BresPolitico) November 13, 2017
GOP lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have called for Moore to step down after a report was published that alleged Moore romantically pursued teenaged girls while he was in his 30s. Others, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have suggested Strange as an alternative option.
“These are serious and disturbing accusations, and while the decision is now in the hands of the people of Alabama, I believe Luther Strange is an excellent alternative,” Hatch tweeted Monday.
I stand with the Majority Leader on this. These are serious and disturbing accusations, and while the decision is now in the hands of the people of Alabama, I believe Luther Strange is an excellent alternative. https://t.co/L7IallXhBc — Orrin Hatch (@OrrinHatch) November 13, 2017
Four women told the Washington Post on the record last week about their alleged interactions with Moore in a piece published Thursday. Three of the women said the former judge took them on dates and brought them back to his home, despite the fact he was nearly twice their age and they were between the ages of 14 and 18. A fourth woman, Leigh Corfman, said Moore initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14 years old at Moore’s home. She said she did not have intercourse with Moore and requested to be taken home.
A fifth woman, Beverly Young Nelson, came forward Monday and said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16. She said Moore offered to drive her home from work one night, but instead parked in a parking lot behind a restaurant. She alleges he groped her and grabbed her neck to “force my head onto his crotch."
Moore, who won Alabama’s GOP primary in September, has denied the accusations.Thought for the day.
Following on from yesterdays post I have created a new video containing 25 new Law of Attraction Affirmations using the power of conscious thought. Even our unconscious thoughts and beliefs have a powerful effect and can often attract negativity and pain because that has become our default setting. Using the power of Conscious thought we can permanently and intentionally change that setting |
”, he explained.
In the circumstances it was necessary, the Judge said, for the court to make this decision rather than the parents. The resulting legal order would, however, specify that blood products would only be used “if there is no clinically appropriate alternative.”
Read the full judgement here.
Image by Howard Lake via Flickr under a Creative Commons licenceGawker founder’s next act: Something with internet forums
After taking about a month off in the wake of his settlement with the plaintiffs represented by Peter Thiel’s lawyer, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton will begin a new project: Building internet forums.
In an interview with journalist Aaron Lammer on the new podcast “Stoner,” Denton called the design of internet forums his “obsession” and said that bridging the gap between public and private conversations is a particular area of focus:
…Creating a way for us to have a private conversation — like, an off-the-record conversation — and then we mutually agree to share certain sections of it with other people who might want to join in the conversation. And eventually, these fragments — these exchanges — added to by people who receive them would be effectively public. So it would have started with a relaxed conversation, but it might end up potentially with an audience of millions.
Building online communities has long been a passion for Denton (Lammer teased him during the interview, asking whether he’d still be creating forums in an assisted-living facility). As CEO of Gawker Media, Denton sunk lots of time and money (a former employee estimated at least $10 million) developing Kinja, an open blogging platform that the company aspired to license to other media companies.
That aspiration was dashed in 2015 after Denton announced in a staff memo that he would no longer continue to develop Kinja “given the competition that exists from technology companies devoted entirely to that challenge.”
During his interview with Lammer, Denton cited the recent disenchantment with social media companies as one reason people might be hungering for more authentic forums for communication. He theorized that it could give users some neutral territory on the internet.
“You could talk about anything privately and some of these exchanges would leak out into the public, and we’d be able to see: You know, maybe these divides aren’t quite as vast as we’ve been making out, and there is a way to bridge them,” Denton said.
Denton says he’s starting with popular culture — things like cult TV shows, episode guides and video games. Although the concept of a collaborative forum is tricky to get right, success in this arena “feels like a miracle,” he said.
I’ve seen it work. It doesn’t work that often. But when the conditions are right and a group of people who care about, say, ‘Grand Theft Auto’ or ‘Black Mirror,’ when they come together, you get all of the good information accumulating magically and it feels like a miracle.
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PrintNovember 16, 1996. A cosmopolitan Chelsea side take to the field at Ewood Park, about to play out an unremarkable 1-1 draw with Blackburn.
Hardly the sexiest game of the sexy football era under player-manager Ruud Gullit, but the 'new Chelsea' was well under way. Summer captures Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo and Frank Lebouef had put the west London side at the forefront of the Premier League's new foreign invasion.
Their newest continental recruit, a £4.3million signing from Parma the previous week, took to the field for the first time in a bright-yellow No 25 shirt, at least two sizes too big.
Gianfranco Zola holds off Blackburn's Gary Croft on his Chelsea debut on November 16, 1996
Zola, shooting on his debut, would become one of the Premier League's greatest-ever imports
Only touches of class were evident in that cagey first game, but in the coming weeks a legend was born.
What Gianfranco Zola went on to achieve at Chelsea and has seldom been repeated by an import to these shores. One of the most technically-gifted players to grace the Premier League, his personality radiated around Stamford Bridge. Being a Chelsea player adored nationwide isn't an easy feat.
Two decades on, with Chelsea a vastly different prospect than the club Zola joined, his name is still sung just as loudly as any hero from the Roman Abramovich era.
Quite apart from his talent immediately bringing Chelsea up a level, his dedication set him apart. Youngsters watched in awe as he stayed behind after training perfecting the sumptuous free-kicks that became a trademark at Stamford Bridge.
Zola turned past West Ham's Julian Dicks not once but twice for his second Chelsea goal
The stunning skill on display flummoxed Dicks and gave Chelsea fans a glimpse of the future
Zola wheels away after putting Chelsea on the way to a 3-1 win over their London rivals
The dedication extended to non-football matters. So determined was he to learn English properly he immediately started reading John Le Carre's novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Having picked up an understanding of the language, he was dismayed to find the ending confused him. He needn't have worried – Dennis Wise had cut out the final chapter.
Captain's pranks notwithstanding, his first few months in England were typified with a simply gorgeous knack of making previously-imperious defenders look incredibly stupid.
West Ham's Julian Dicks was turned not once but twice in a goal still immortalised in song. Denis Irwin, Gary Pallister and Peter Schmeichel were danced around as if not there, prompting rare congratulations of an opposition player by Alex Ferguson. Wimbledon's Dean Blackwell was sent halfway down Upper Street with a beautiful piece of improvisation in a Highbury FA Cup semi-final.
Flags boasting 'Zola Power' were waved frantically at Wembley for Chelsea's first major trophy win in 26 years against Middlesbrough. During a nervous game, Zola showcased the two major ingredients of what made him into a true icon of English football.
Chelsea fans wave 'Zola Power' flags at Wembley on the way to winning the FA Cup in 1997
The Italian maestro lifts the FA Cup - Chelsea's first major trophy for 26 years
He set up Eddie Newton's goal to kill the game with a perfectly-timed backheel, before showing his generosity and warmth in insisting he come off two minutes from time for compatriot Vialli, desperate to play under the twin towers.
His Football Writers' Player of the Year award for that debut season was testament to his impact having only arrived a third of the way through the campaign.
A year later he helped Chelsea to another trophy – the European Cup Winners' Cup. A more frustrating season, hampered by injury, ended with his greatest moment in a blue shirt.
Zola shoots with his second touch to score against Stuttgart and win the Cup Winners' Cup
Zola holds aloft the trophy with compatriot Vialli, the second time Chelsea had won the cup
His second touch of the ball in the Stockholm final, after running on to a perfectly-weighted Wise pass, was a smash into the roof of the net to provide a 1-0 win over Stuttgart and the club's second victory in the competition – the late 1990s side emulating Peter Osgood, Charlie Cooke and Co in 1971.
If Zola had left that summer, his place in Chelsea folklore would have still been assured. Still to come, though, was spearheading an ultimately-doomed title challenge that saw Chelsea – now managed by Vialli – finish four points behind winners Manchester United, followed by the club's first-ever Champions League campaign and another FA Cup win.
While not always an automatic choice in his later years – he was about to turn 37 when he finally left the club – his presence endured.
Latter-day heroes John Terry and Frank Lampard can endlessly recount Zola's influence on their early careers at Stamford Bridge.
Zola (right) trains with John Terry, who pays tribute to the Italian's influence on his career
ZOLA AT CHELSEA Signed November 1996, £4.3million from Parma Appearances 312 Goals 80 Honours FA Cup 1997 League Cup 1998 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 1998 UEFA Super Cup 1998 FA Cup 2000 Charity Shield 2000
'When he came his professionalism stood out. He was such a big name in world football but he really took to the younger players,' Terry said last week.
'I was only 16, doing my YTS, but he had so much time for everyone. He always wanted to help us younger players and give us advice.
'He set high standards at the club, he didn't accept people not working hard or not trying, and obviously when you have players like Gianfranco around it naturally lifts the quality and intensity of the sessions.
'Even after training he'd grab a bag of balls, call you over as a young defender and run at you, twisting, turning and leaving you in tangles. It was all a learning curve, though, because he would step in and tell you where to position your body to make it more difficult for the striker. He was always offering advice.'
That's not to say there wasn't magic on the pitch right until the end. Perhaps his most famously artistic goal was a backheel against Norwich in the FA Cup in 2002, while his final season at Chelsea was one of the best Indian summers ever seen in the Premier League.
Zola netted a career-high 14 league goals in 2002-03, his final strike being a typically deft lob over Everton keeper Richard Wright on the edge of the penalty area.
His last appearance fittingly came in one of the most important games in the club's history. His role in a 2-1 win over Liverpool was restricted to a cameo at the end of the game, yet he still found time to delight the crowd a final time by dribbling around four opposition players near the corner flag.
One of Zola's most famous goals came in the FA Cup against Norwich, an incredible backheel
Zola instinctively flicked a short corner into the near post while in mid-air
Zola celebrates with Chelsea team-mates and a fan after the incredible backheel
The win meant that the then-penniless Chelsea, and not Liverpool, finished fourth and qualified for the next season's Champions League. Originally, it was thought this might just keep the quickly-advancing debtors at bay.
Little did anyone know a certain Russian was about to swoop in. Abramovich's eye was caught by Stamford Bridge's fashionable west London location, but most of all the club's ready-made Champions League status.
But while the most significant development in the club's history was taking place, the man soon to be voted their greatest-ever player left for his native Sardinia.
Abramovich was desperate to keep Zola at the club to the point of offering to buy his boyhood club and destination Cagliari, as well. But, true to his word until the end, the 5 foot 6 man with the unfeasibly large smile reluctantly said he couldn't go back on his promise to return home.
Even 13 years later, after winning every trophy on offer and countless players that would trouble anyone's 'greatest' list, Zola has never been replaced. The unique blend of passion and professionalism, peerless, instinctive technique and wonderful warmth and spirit doesn't come along often.
Zola bids a fond farewell to the Stamford Bridge crowd at a specially-arranged tribute game
Chelsea were now on the world stage. His work was done.
He did, however, return to the Bridge the following summer for a tribute game specially arranged by Abramovich. His on-pitch farewell to the crowd was typically an exercise in humility:Reporters, politicos and even celebrities were beside themselves Thursday over reports Republican lawmakers had cases of beer wheeled into the Capitol building to celebrate the successful passage of their health care bill.
The problem is: There's absolutely no proof to this claim and there was no reason to believe it. It's actual fake news.
It all started with one reporter, Vice's Alexandra Jaffe, who tweeted at 1:50 pm Thursday from the Capitol building, "Cases upon cases of beer just rolled into the Capitol on a cart covered in a sheet. Spotted Bud Light peeking out from the sheet."
She then followed that tweet, which came shortly before the House voted to pass the Republican health care bill, with a clarifier, writing eight minutes later, "In fairness I don't know where his was going. Just hopped on an elevator."
Jaffe then followed up with a very specific and very important picture of the booze, writing, "Here are the beers. Asked if they were going to a GOP conference meeting & he said 'no, different meeting,' no further details."
Here are the beers. Asked if they were going to a GOP conference meeting & he said "no, different meeting," no further details pic.twitter.com/ugS8oW4kGj — Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) May 4, 2017
To be clear, the person wheeling the beer specifically said it was not intended for the GOP conference on the American Health Care Act, the GOP's response to the Democratic Party's Affordable Care Act. Also, to be clear, Jaffe never actually said the beer was to be used for celebratory purposes following the House's vote on the health care legislation.
Yet, that's precisely what many in media, politics and entertainment automatically assumed after seeing her first tweet, which, by the way, has been shared more than 3,300 times on social media by Friday afternoon.
"This is disgusting: @HouseGOP is getting ready to *celebrate* taking healthcare away from 24 million Americans. This is absolutely shameful," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.
CNN contributor Sally Kohn remarked, "To celebrate the millions of Americans who will be hurt by their new legislation?!?!?!?"
"Because taking health insurance from 24M people is a matter worth celebrating?" asked Steve Rattner, the investor who formerly headed President Obama's bailout of large automakers.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THESE FRAT BOYS ARE GONNA F—KING PARTY AFTER STRIPPING 24 MILLION OF INSURANCE?!?! WILL THERE BE KEGS FOR PAUL?!?!" asked the Center for American Progress's always calm and reasonable Igor Volsky.
"Republicans celebrated a bill with beer kegs that 18% of Americans support and most believe strips 24 million citizens of health care," said MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
Yahoo contributor Dan Devine said, "To celebrate stripping medical coverage from 24 million people. Man."
The blog Jezebel published a story headlined, "GOP Health Care Bill Passes House as Republicans Drink Beer, Democrats Sing."
"Republicans celebrated taking away Americans' health insurance with cases of beer," read a headline published by Mic.
Raw Story pushed an article under the title, "Republicans plan massive beer bash as they take healthcare away from women, the disabled and poor.
None of this is true, none of these stories had an ounce of reporting, and it was explicitly disputed by the person wheeling the beer into the Capitol building.
It's bad enough that the GOP slapped together a poorly thought out alternative to the Affordable Care Act, despite having had seven years to prepare for this. It's bad enough they passed the amended version without an updated score from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. It's bad enough the bill was crafted and passed with even less transparency than the Democratic version.
Let's not detract, however, from the real and unacceptable circumstances under which the GOP bill passed with some ginned up nonsense about a supposed booze-addled victory lap.NAPLES, Italy — Last year, some 5,000 sailors failed the Navy’s physical fitness assessment, the majority because they couldn’t “tape-in,” or meet body weight standards calculated by measuring around a sailor’s neck and waist.
The Navy now wants to lower that number who fail by changing its test, part of a broader retooling of its fitness program that includes making gyms available for longer hours, performing fitness “spot checks” between testing cycles and emphasizing diet and nutrition.
While sailors across the service are likely to feel the effects of each change, it is the fitness test — and in particular its body weight component — that has many of them talking.
Some argue that relaxing the standards will lead to less fit sailors. Others say the body weight calculation, known as the body composition assessment, doesn’t reflect the wide range of modern body types.
“A thin sailor doesn’t necessarily constitute a healthy sailor, and a sailor that’s borderline or slightly out of [body composition] standards isn’t necessarily unhealthy,” Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Michael Stevens told a group of sailors Monday in Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan.
At the center of the debate is a rule that those who fail the body composition portion are automatically flunked for the full fitness assessment — before they even can take the exercise portion. A single failure can have consequences for a sailor’s career; three such failures in a four-year period result in separation from the Navy.
“We’re looking to, I think, inject a little more reality into the BCA,” said Cmdr. Chris Servello, spokesman for Navy Personnel Command.
The fitness test is required twice a year, and only those who exceed the Navy’s maximum weight allowances by height are required to tape-in.
Some sailors say the exercise portion, which is known as the physical readiness test and consists of curl-ups, pushups and a timed 1.5-mile run or similar cardio activity, should be the deciding factor of who passes the overall physical fitness assessment, or PFA. They say failing to meet body composition standards doesn’t necessarily mean a sailor is out of shape.
Others say those doing the measuring often get it wrong, by taping too tightly or in the wrong place.
Vice Adm. Bill Moran, the Chief of Naval Personnel, whose office is leading the changes, has suggested in interviews that while the tape measure isn’t likely to be changed, he believes the body composition standards may need to be relaxed.
The current rates are 22 percent body fat for men under the age of 40 and 23 percent for those 40 and over. Women under the age of 40 are limited to 33 percent body fat; those at 40 and above can have 34 percent.
Moran’s spokesman, Servello, wouldn’t talk specific changes, but he said raising the body fat allowances would push more sailors into the physical fitness assessment, where standards could gradually be raised. Even with changes to the composition assessment, failing it would still mean flunking the physical fitness test, Servello said.
“One, we think less folks will actually fail, two we’ll have a better idea of where people stand in terms of fitness and three, we could increase those standards.”
But not everyone is on board.
A list of proposals put together last year by command fitness leaders — sailors who administer the fitness test — called for even tighter standards, including spot body composition assessment checks throughout the year.
“I think people make a lot of excuses,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Jiles, a command fitness leader at the Naples base. “I think it could be more rigorous, but I would never make that decision for anyone else.”
Yet Moran appears to have the support of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who in a May speech at the U.S. Naval Academy called for a move away from minimum fitness requirements and toward a more holistic look at health and wellness.
“Our pass/fail system that only, and often inaccurately, assesses one aspect of overall fitness will end,” he told midshipmen. “We will instead focus on evaluating health, not shape.”
Among the changes he’s focused on are ensuring base gyms are available to sailors with non-traditional working hours, and that on-base day care is available for long enough to allow sailors with children to work out before or after work. Mabus has also pushed for fitness spot checks throughout the year and greater recognition for sailors who earn the top scores on the fitness assessment, whether through a special patch or privileges.
The Navy recently began testing expanded gym and day care hours at its base in Bremerton, Wash., while several other U.S. bases are testing expanded gym hours alone. During his Monday visit to Yokosuka, Stevens said the service was also considering a pilot program that would use electronic monitors to track sailor sleep and activity.
The Navy is expected to roll-out its recommendations later this summer, with changes to take effect in January.
--Stars and Stripes reporter Erik Slavin contributed to this report.This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.
Has a shirt sponsor ever improved a football kit? If we're talking aesthetics, I think the answer must be no. Some sponsors fit better than others, while the odd one gives us a laugh, but the shirt will always look better untouched. No one would suggest that Barcelona's iconic strip looks better now they have Qatar Airways across the front. Chelsea's wonderful Le Coq Sportif effort was not improved by Gulf Air sponsorship in the 1983-84 season, nor did the fans mourn when it vanished the following year.
What we can say for certain is that kit sponsors are a firmly established part of the football landscape. From the astronomical deal between Manchester United and Chevrolet to a local garage emblazoning their logo on a non-league club's kit, we expect to see something there. When a club side turn out with no sponsor, they appear oddly naked. West Ham in the 1997-98 season, West Brom from 2008 through 2010, Leeds United this term – it just looks wrong.
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the deal that kicked it all off. In January 1976, Kettering Town of the Southern League Premier Division walked out for their game against Bath City with 'Kettering Tyres' emblazoned across their shirts. Little did they know what would follow over the next four decades.
READ MORE: What The Evolution of Kit Sponsors Tells Us About The Premier League
To those jaded by 21st century excess, January 1976 might seem like an idyllic time in British sporting history, all frozen pitches and disregard for healthy and safety. Back then the Liverpool side managed by Bob Paisley and possessing Keegan, Toshack and Kennedy were on their way to a ninth English title, though on the weekend Kettering launched their new sponsor the Reds were knocked out of the FA Cup by Dave Mackay's Derby County.
Elsewhere in the sporting world Muhammad Ali was preparing to defend his heavyweight title against Belgium's Jean-Pierre Coopman; Wales were still celebrating a 21-9 win over England at Twickenham, a result that set them up to win that year's Five Nations; and in Formula One Niki Lauda won the season-opening Brazilian Grand Prix for Ferrari, kicking off a year of high drama for the championship.
By 1976 Formula One's sponsorship deals were already huge business – Lauda won that race with a collage of corporate logos on his car – but it remained untrod ground in English football. Shirt sponsors had appeared in Germany, France and a handful of other countries, however, leading to growing calls for them to be allowed in the Football League.
"You've got to remember that this was in the seventies – attendances were down, the game was losing its appeal, and inflation was very high, so clubs were desperate for any kind of income," explains Dave Moor, who runs the excellent historicalkits.co.uk.
So, while 1976 might seem idyllic, it's worth remembering that the sport was not as financially robust as it is today. As such it's understandable that clubs would seek to bolster their finances through shirt sponsorship. The only real surprise was that non-league Kettering Town were the originators.
The deal was spearheaded by Derek Dougan, the club's manager and chief executive. 'The Doog' had enjoyed an eight-year career at the top of English football, most notably at Wolves, and played at the World Cup for Northern Ireland. After leaving the professional game in 1975 he joined the non-league side. Within a month of his arrival, a 'four-figure' deal had been agreed with local firm Kettering Tyres.
Derek Dougan in action for Wolves, his shirt very much a sponsor-free zone | PA Images
And so the clash with Bath City – a game that would otherwise be entirely lost to history – thus enjoys a uniquely important status. The groundbreaking deal was not to last, however, with the always-forward-thinking boys at the Football Association swiftly stepping in.
"The FA did not like it one little bit," says Moor, "and they told the club in no uncertain terms to remove this sponsorship. So Dougan came up with the idea of just removing the last four letters from tyres and claimed he now had the club's name – 'Kettering T' – on the front of the shirt."
Unsurprisingly, the FA weren't impressed by Dougan's ingenuity.
"They threatened the club with a £1,000 fine. So clearly whatever the [sponsorship] deal was worth, it was less than £1,000!" Moor observes.
Dougan and Kettering were not finished, however. Together with Derby County and Bolton Wanderers they put forward a proposal to the FA asking them to change the rules. That was accepted a year later in June 1977. But in an unfortunate twist, Kettering Tyres were no longer interested; the club's hard work did not bear fruit.
In fact, none of the three wore a sponsor that season. Derby landed a deal with Saab ahead of the 1978-79 campaign, but after a pre-season photoshoot the logos vanished. It was actually Scottish side Hibernian who became the first top-level British club to wear sponsored shirts in 1978. Then, for the 1979-80 campaign, Liverpool landed the first ever English club deal, with Japanese electronics firm Hitachi adorning their strip.
READ MORE: The Weird And Wonderful Origins Of Scottish Football Club Names
The floodgates had opened, but it remained a complex and controversial area for clubs to navigate.
"The BBC had a strict policy of no advertising, and they wouldn't show teams wearing sponsorship," says Moor. "So, for several years, teams had to have shirts without sponsorship if the television cameras were turning up.
"Eventually, when they did accept shirt sponsorship, they specified a maximum size, which was always smaller than the ones worn on regular match days. So you had teams turning out with small versions of their sponsor's logo. It was all very silly, and seems very trivial now."
In fact, for those raised after the advent of the Premier League, it seems like a different world. As Moor points out, fans now refer to their favourite kits using shirt sponsors – Spurs supporters will get misty-eyed over the Holsten Pils shirts, Swansea City fans recall the Gulf kits – so perhaps they do have their uses.
They're clearly here to stay, but fans who weren't even born when Kettering broke the mould will nevertheless mourn the days of pure, uncluttered football shirts. Just check out this beautiful Crystal Palace effort and weep over the loss of a simpler time.
@jimmy_weeks
Follow Historical Kits on TwitterOn the 50th day of the Gaza operation, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to an Egyptian cease-fire proposal. However, rocket sirens continued to sound in Israel's south after 7 P.M., when the cease-fire was said to go into effect.
Earlier, a mortar shell fired from Gaza killed one Israeli in a town on the Gaza border. Six others were wounded, one of whom died of his wounds. The two fatalities raised the Israeli death toll since the operation began to 70. More than 180 rockets and mortar shells were launched from Gaza on Tuesday. The Israeli army, meanwhile, struck 60 targets, killing at least six Palestinian across the Strip. The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 2,100.
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For Monday's live updates, click here
Latest updates Tuesday:
12:50 P.M. The name of the second man who was earlier killed by a mortar shell in kibbutz Nirim is Shachar Melamed, 43. Melamed, was married to Anat, had three children. His family describes him as a dedicated father and family man. (Shirly Seidler)
12:17 P.M. One of the two victims in the mortar attack earlier on kibbutz Nirim, in the Eshkol Regional Council, is Ze'ev Etzion, 55. Etzion was a father of five.
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Etzion served as the security officer of the kibbutz. For more than 30 years he volunteered in the Magen David Adom emergency service, and served as the kibbutz's ambulance driver. "Everything he did, he always did with a big smile on his face," members of the kibbutz say. (Shirly Seidler)
11:22 P.M. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcoms the ceasefire and warned Israel and Palestinian militants that any violations of it would be "utterly irresponsible."
"The Secretary-General welcomes today's announcement of an open-ended ceasefire for Gaza, brokered under Egyptian auspices," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "A brighter future for Gaza and for Israel depends on a sustainable ceasefire."
He added that Ban believes peace efforts must get at the root causes of the conflict to avoid future violence: "Gaza must be brought back under one legitimate Palestinian Government adhering to the PLO commitments; the blockade of Gaza must end; Israel's legitimate security concerns must be addressed."
10:54 P.M. Israeli man critically wounded by a mortar shell in Eshkol Regional Council succumbs to his wounds, raising the death toll from the incident to two. (Shirly Seidler)
10:45 P.M. Meretz Chairwoman Zahava Gal-On criticized the cease-fire agreement and said its terms prove the war in Gaza ended in Netanyahu's strategic failure. "He went to war without goals and ended it with a huge achievement for Hamas at the expense of the residents of the south," Gal-On said.
Gal-On added that "those some understandings could have been reached months ago with moderates from the Palestinian Authority, not under Hamas fire and without an unnecessary war, for which we're paying a heavy price in human lives, in both physical and mental casualties, and soon in an intolerable economic price. The prime minister has made every possible political mistake over recent months, and he must pay the price and go home." (Barak Ravid)
10:30 P.M. Hamas senior official Mahmoud A-Zahar said in a "victory" rally in Gaza City a short while ago: "We will build a seaport and an airport. We don't need anyone's approval for that." A-Zahar also addressed the Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, and promised they will be released, "by any means necessary." (Jack Khoury)
10:07 P.M. Hamas' senior member Musa Abu Marzouk says that one of the clauses which delayed the reaching of a cease-fire was an Israeli commitment to halt its policy of targeted killings of Palestinian top brass, of both the military and political echelons. According to him, the deal also guarantees Hamas clerks will be paid their salaries by the Palestinian unity government, which will also be responsible for the reconstruction of the Strip. (Jack Khoury)
9:30 P.M. Council heads in southern Israel slam the cease-fire deal, calling it "surrender to terrorism" and accusing the Israeli leadership of forsaking the residents of the Gaza envelope communities. "Any concession to Hamas is a surrender to terrorism," said Itamar Shimoni, mayor of Ashkelon. "The residents of south wanted to see this campaign resolved, but that will probably not happen." Meanwhile, 60 percent of residents of towns near the Gaza border fence have yet to return to their homes. (Shirly Seidler)
9:21 P.M. The Euro 2016 qualifier match between the Israeli and the Belgian soccer teams has been pushed back until March 31, 2015 from its original date in early September, due to the fighting between Israel and Gaza, the Belgian Federation announces, according to AFP. (Haaretz)
9:10 P.M. According to the IDF, during 50 days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian factions 4,562 rockets and mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip, 3,641 of which exploded in Israeli territory, 224 of which fell in built-up areas. Iron Dome intercepted 735 rockets. The IDF attacked 5,262 targets in the Gaza Strip. (Gili Cohen)
8:57 P.M. The United States cautiously welcomes the latest Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire and urges both sides to comply with the terms of the agreement, the State Department said on Tuesday.
"We call on all parties to fully and completely comply with its terms, and hope very much that the ceasefire will prove to be durable and sustainable," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters at a daily briefing.
"We view this as an opportunity, not a certainty," Psaki said. "There is a long road ahead and we're aware of that, and we're going into this eyes wide open," she added. (Reuters)
8:55 P.M. The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram reports that the cease-fire deal between Israel and the Palestinians includes opening all crossing to Gaza and permitting fishing at a distance of between 11 and 22 kilometers from the Strip's shore. (Haaretz)
8:49 P.M. Latest IDF statistics: 182 rockets and mortar shells launched, 148 hit Israeli territory (5 of which hit built-up areas), Iron Dome intercepted 27. The rest fell in the Gaza Strip. Israel struck 60 Gaza targets. (Gili Cohen)
8:13 P.M. Celebratory gunfire erupts in Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon as a long-term truce between Israel and Palestinian militants goes into effect.
Hundreds of Palestinian refugees took to the streets of the Ain el-hilweh and Mieh Mieh camps, witnesses said. Celebratory gunfire and fireworks echoed throughout both camps.
Demonstrators carrying Palestinian flags roamed the streets and chanted "God is great, the Palestinian resistance has won." (DPA)
8:00 P.M. A Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip says Palestinian militants have secure a victory against Israel after a ceasefire is announced to end more than 50 days of fighting.
"Our armed resistance achieved what the Arab armies had failed to achieve," says Sami Abu Zuhri.
He added that "this besieged weak people defeated the strongest.... army in the Middle East and destroyed the enemy's power of deterrence and the legend of the army that can never be defeated." (DPA)
So far, 161 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel today. Of which, 23 rockets were intercepted, and 132 exploded in Israeli territory. (Shirly Seidler)
7:59 P.M. A senior defense official commented on the Gaza cease-fire, and said Israel has insisted on the Egyptian mediation for the negotiations. "Over the last days Hamas has been under heavy internal pressure to reach cease-fire, due to the price the Gaza Strip and the organization itself paid."
The official said he is not impressed by the victory celebrations in the Strip, saying that "Israel has dealt Hamas a critical blow." (Gili Cohen)
7:32 P.M. Eshkol council head Haim Yellin said in response to the reported cease-fire that he will not instruct residents of the Gaza envelope community to return until calm is definitely restored. "In this situation we don't start the school year, there are unending barrages. It's not a lone mortar shell or rocket, but barrages of 15 rockets at once, sometimes without a rocket siren, so that anyone outside can't take shelter. It's no way to live," he said. (Shirly Seidler)
7:12 P.M. Despite Palestinian President Abbas' announcement that the cease-fire will begin at 7 P.M., rocket alarms were sounded in the Gaza envelope communities. (Haaretz)
7:05 P.M. Over the last half hour 15 rockets and mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel, the IDF said. Two rockets exploded in open areas in Be'er Sheva, three were intercepted by Iron Dome over Ashkelon. (Gili Cohen, Shirly Seidler)
7:04 P.M. Ministers Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman, Yitzhak Aharonovich and Gilad Erdan announce their opposition to the cease-fire deal with Hamas. (Barak Ravid)
(Reuters: Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum (C) is carried by Palestinians as they celebrate what they said was a victory over Israel following a ceasefire in Gaza City.)
6:59 P.M. Rocket sirens sound across Gaza border communities, Ashkelon and surrounding areas (Haaretz)
6:53 P.M. Five wounded in strike on house of senior Islamic Jihad operative Nafez Azzam in east Rafah, Gaza. (Jack Khoury)
6:50 P.M. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announces in a televised statement that the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip will go into effect at 7 P.M., the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.
In his statement, Abbas said the UN will start transferring aid to the Strip immediately, and that he expects nations worldwide will pitch in as well. Abbas also said the Palestinian leadership has decided to change its policy over the diplomatic process with Israel, and that he intends to present a detailed plan aiming to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 lines.
"We'll not enter vague negotiations again," Abbas said.
At the same time, Hamas' spokespersons held a press conference in Gaza, and said Hamas has attained victory and crashed Israeli deterrence. "The Palestinian victory is the result of the firm stance of the people and the courage of the resistance," Sami Abu Zuhri said. Hamas has not detailed the conditions of the cease-fire agreement. (Jack Khoury)
6:49 P.M. Rockets sound in south Israel. (Haaretz)
6:42 P.M. Rocket sirens sound in Be'er Sheva, and in Gaza border towns. (Haaretz)
6:38 P.M. Israel has accepted the Egyptian proposal for an unlimited cease-fire, a senior Israeli official says, adding that cabinet ministers have been notified. According to a legal opinion, there was no need for a cabinet vote, the official said.
The senior official said the cease-fire proposal does not |
4.
[3^] Duarte, Jose (2014) Comment on “Scientists’ Views about Attribution of Global Warming”, Arizona State University, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2014, 48 (23), pp 14057–14058, DOI: 10.1021/es504574v
CORRECTION: The reference was originally incorrectly cited as the older (2014) paper (now numbered 2), though it was linked to the newer paper. This is now fixed.
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please wait... Rating: 8.7/10 (121 votes cast)December 2, 2013 4 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
My affection for entrepreneurs is matched only by my obsession for comedy and French things. Over the past decade I’ve been related to them, elevated them, dated them…and at times, even hated them.
A former colleague of mine and I spent years launching tech startups in the U.S. market. Along the way, we encountered hundreds of entrepreneurs, guided them through tough decisions, and often talked them off cliffs -- acting more as psychologists than communications professionals.
This experience taught me a few things about what it takes to be an entrepreneur and the diversity of personalities that claim the title. In a fun game of what I call “psychological entrepreneur-typology,” I bring you a somewhat pseudo-scientific categorization of this special breed of human:
1. Superpreneur
The Superpreneur needs little introduction, mostly because you know and feel them when you see them. Their entrepreneurial pursuits span space, time, countries and nations. They typically bite off more than they can chew in one, let alone four, lifetimes. Think Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.
Want to become a superpreneur? Good luck. They’re as chaotic as they are awe-inspiring: Their road to success is a labyrinth of disconnected strokes of good fortune and unpredictable market timing infused with unparalleled genius.
Related: Richard Branson on Leadership Lessons From the Unflappable Steve Jobs
2. Localpreneur
This particular type of entrepreneur shares qualities with the Superpreneur, minus the mammoth global focus. Their ambitions may be smaller, but their efforts can also be life changing.
One close to home example of this type of entrepreneur is the Driver brothers, Adam and Graham, who applied their business chops to open Driver’s Market in Sausalito, Calif., -- along with a handful of their friends who have roots in the town.
The addition of Driver’s to my local community has had a profound impact that I feel and appreciate on a daily basis. They have quite literally changed the lives of thousands of locals, rooted in their goal of connecting people with each other and the foods that they eat.
3. Wingpreneur
Ahhh, the Wingpreneur. One of my personal favorites. The Wingpreneur can be likened to Batman’s Robin. Without her, the entrepreneur would not be nearly as powerful -- or likeable for that matter -- as the “wing” has a specific talent for assuming leadership when appropriate but happily taking the passenger’s seat so the entrepreneur can shine.
These folks are often found in “COO” or “co-founder” positions and are best suited to partnerships where they are not assuming all the risk. Typically, they are also adept at providing order to the chaos.
Related: Are You a Risk-Taker or Just Reckless?
4. Productpreneur
As a General Partner for Mohr-Davidow Ventures in Silicon Valley, Bryan Stolle encounters thousands of entrepreneurs a year as he seeks out startups to add to the company’s growing portfolio. More and more, on his various ‘trep finding journeys, he encounters an emerging type of entrepreneur who places product at the center of his vision:
“Typically, these folks are engineers who have technical expertise, but very limited experience in leadership, management or what it takes to build a significant company. While they are innovators in terms of envisioning a new product idea, they are best served finding a partner who can build a company around the product.”
5. Fauxpreneur
As startups explode in number, and having one is this generation’s version of having a band in the 90’s, another emerging type of entrepreneur is what I tenderly refer to as the Fauxpreneur. If you don’t speak Frenglish, or haven’t heard of “faux fur” this will sum it up:
“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.”
– Paul Graham.
Know any of these entrepreneurial types? Have anything to add? Let us know with a comment.
Related: Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?The Toronto Star announced on Monday that, “after much research,” it’s shutting down Star Touch, the expensive ( $23 million invested! ) tablet-only app it launched in 2015. The app’s shutdown is accompanied by layoffs of 29 full-time employees and one part-time employee.
“The overall numbers of readers and advertising volumes are significantly lower than what the company had forecast and than what are required to make it a commercial success,” John Boynton, president and CEO of TorStar and publisher of the Star, wrote in a memo to employees. (The previous publisher, John Cruickshank, stepped down last year after it became clear Star Touch was underperforming.)
A Star spokesman told The Globe and Mail that “the tablet’s monthly audience peaked at 80,000 unique readers, a small percentage of the Star’s monthly online readership, which hovers around 550,000 in the Greater Toronto Area alone.” It had originally aimed to be at 180,000 daily users by the end of 2016; it was at only 26,000 by March of last year.
The Toronto Star will be shutting down Star Touch at the end of July: pic.twitter.com/MS8Z3YWYgd — CANADALAND (@CANADALAND) June 26, 2017
Star Touch shuts down July 31 and will be replaced by a new universal app that, well, sounds as if it does what any news app should do now and it’s crazy the Touch app didn’t do these things: “operates both on smartphones and tablets…offers more of the features that you, our readers, have told us you want: breaking news, constant updates, more content, easy searches and navigation and the ability to share items much more easily on social media.”
“We need to simplify our business and having three downloadable apps, namely a tablet app, a mobile app and PDF, confuses consumers and is resource intensive, complex and costly. Having just two apps will simplify this,” Boynton wrote in his memo, printed in full at Canadaland along with a memo from the Star’s editor-in-chief, Michael Cooke. (The two apps will be the universal one and this print replica.)
Star Touch was supported by advertising and entirely free to readers. It was modeled on Montreal’s French-language La Presse+, which is digital-only via tablet app (and website) and has a print edition on Saturdays (though that too is expected to go away later this year).
La Presse “remains, by accounts as recently as last week, a success,” editor-in-chief Cooke noted in his memo. “Throughout the diligent work before, at and after launch, Star executives and managers, and really all of us, knew there was significant risk that the Montreal experience might not translate to the [Greater Toronto Area] — arguably the toughest, most saturated media market in North America.”
Ken Doctor wrote about Star Touch’s “one time a day” model for Nieman Lab in 2015:
Star Touch, like La Presse+, won’t be a breaking news product. Readers get one edition a day, seven days a week. The breaking news function, The Star believes, remains with free smartphone and desktop web; Star Touch will link to The Star’s site for live files. Why? Research showing readers want editions — the old Economist bookends theory — and, in any event, the complexity of tablet presentation would require even more labor for a continuously produced product.
While the Star gradually built other updating features into the Touch app — a “live news” panel for real-time updates; breaking news notifications — it clearly wasn’t enough to convince readers that a tablet app updated once a day was the best way to get their news.
very brief early blip in #startouch history — making you download the app to read an online story pic.twitter.com/MqtXhLPQ34 — Twelve Thirty Six (@1236) June 26, 2017
Canada’s Postmedia also made a bet on tablet editions which it shut down in 2015. It announced last week that it is launching new mobile apps for the National Post and the Financial Post, as well as a new digital replica of the National Post.
They rejected him because he could not name graphic designer behind the 1977 I love NY campaign. Nuts but true. — Kimberley Noble (@KimberleyNoble) June 27, 2017
as @mathewi pointed out that fall, phone app took up far too much space. Revisited this last year with 3rd-year media students; same issue. — Kimberley Noble (@KimberleyNoble) June 27, 2017
3rd reason was Star & La Presse publishers insisting no difference between TO & Montreal news app markets. Dangerously flawed assumption. — Kimberley Noble (@KimberleyNoble) June 27, 2017'We would have aborted her': Couple sues health center for 'wrongful birth' of daughter born with Down syndrome after 'botched test failed to pick it up'
A prenatal test showed couple's daughter would be 'normal and healthy'
Shocked when blood tests after the birth confirmed the baby had Down's
Botched test 'had taken sample from the mother rather than the foetus'
Now Ariel and Deborah Levy are suing Legacy Health for $3 million
Say they love their daughter - but have received death threats over the case
A couple is suing a health center for 'wrongful birth' after a prenatal test intended to pick up whether a foetus has Down syndrome failed - and their daughter was born with the condition.
Ariel and Deborah Levy, from Portland, Oregon, who have two other children, said in a lawsuit they would have aborted their daughter Kalanit - who is now four - if they had known.
They are suing Legacy Health in North Portland, which they claim conducted a botched test, for $3 million - the amount they believe they will have to pay over Kalanit's lifetime for her care.
Happy: Kalanit Levy, pictured with her brothers, was born with Down Syndrome after a botched prenatal test failed to spot the condition
Following a nine-day trial in Portland, jurors are now deli berating over a case that could have far-reaching - and questionable - implications for children born with with conditions such as Down's.
There are fewer than 10 'wrongful birth' cases in the U.S. every year as prenatal tests are 99.7 per cent accurate - and few parents want to face a legal challenge if they do fail, the Oregonian reported.
Yet experts believe there could be a boom in the lawsuits as women in their late 30s and 40s are increasingly having babies and relying on genetic screenings to signal problems, the paper added.
Civil engineer Ariel and dental hygienist Deborah, who say they love Kalanit and intend to give her the same opportunities they have given their sons, were stunned when hospital staff told them she appeared to have Down's.
Deborah Levy, 39, told doctors she had taken a test - a chorionic villus sampling, or CVS for short - before the birth and that the results had showed their child would be normal.
'We were told we had nothing to worry about,' Ariel Levy told jurors.
Parents: Ariel, left, and Deborah Levy, right, claim they have received death threats for their comments
Sued: The Levys sued Legacy Health for $3 million as they believe staff botched their prenatal test
But days after Kalanit was born, her mother was taking her to the doctor 'to show her off' and he delivered the blow - a blood test confirmed the baby had Down's. 'It was devastating,' Mrs Levy said.
The couple's attorney David K. Miller claimed in the case that Dr. Thomas Jenkins removed tissue in the womb from Mrs Levy, rather than from the baby, when he carried out the procedure at the clinic.
The suit points the blame at the doctor and lab workers who did not realise they were testing maternal tissue, the Oregonian reported.
CHORIONIC VILLUS SAMPLING
Tests carried out before a baby is born to determine whether they have any genetic disorders is called chorionic villus sampling, or CVS for short. It usually takes place between the 10th and 12th week of a pregnancy,. The test is not given to every expectant mother, but some factors give rise to it.
It is carried out if a woman has abnormal screen results in the first trimester of her pregnancy, or if there is a family history of genetic disorders or chromosome abnormalities. Women over the age of 35 are also encouraged to have the test, as there is an increased risk of Down syndrome. It involves taking tissue from the foetus while in the womb and screening this sample for abnormalities.
It also suggests that two later ultrasounds carried out by Legacy showed traits of the syndrome, yet staff failed to recognise these, and assured Mrs Levy her baby would be born normal and healthy.
Yet the attorneys for the defense claim Jenkins and the staff followed correct procedures. He suggested the problem was that the girl has mosaic Down syndrome.
Whereas most people with the condition have cells containing an extra 21st chromosome, a significant number of Kalanit's cells did not, Jenkins said. Nearly 31 per cent were normal.
Yet Miller countered that obviously 100 per cent of the cells taken in the CVS test were normal - as they had wrongly been taken from the mother.
He added that tests carried out after Kalanit was born show there is less than one or two per cent normal cells.
Reports have previously quoted the lawsuit as demanding as much as $14 million to cover the cost of the young girl's care.
The couple has already whipped up a frenzy of hate and abuse for their comments over aborting their beloved daughter. Miller said they have received death threats, the Oregonian reported.
The couple met in preschool, attended the same high school and college and married in 2000. Civil engineer Ariel and dental hygienist Deborah, both 39, are orthodox Jewish, according to Facebook.
Their sons are in third grade and kindergarten. The boys, shown hugging their younger sister tightly in photographs, are bright - one has placed in the 99th percentile on standardised tests.
Legal team: Robert Keating (L) said Kalanit has mosaic Down's, so fewer cells contain the chromosome associated with the syndrome. David Miller (R) said the clinic took tissue from the mother, not the fetus
Decisions: Judge Karin Immergut is presided over the case
The third pregnancy, when Mrs Levy was 34, was a'surprise', according to the Oregon paper.
Due to her age, the couple was vigilant about testing, undergoing the CVS at 13 weeks. It is believed one in 250 women at that age give birth to a child with Down syndrome.
Studies suggest that more than 89 per cent of women choose to abort a fetus with Down syndrome.
After their daughter was born with the syndrome, the Levys expressed their fears over her future, including medical and social issues, and whether she would get the required educational support.
Experts have told them she will probably not be able to live on her own or support herself, the Oregonian reported. It is estimated she will live until her mid-50s.
She is able to speak in two-word sentences which only her parents and a few others understand, according to the Oregonian.Listen
Todays’s guest on the podcast is emergency doctor and cannabis prescriber, Ian Mitchell.
As an emergency doctor, he has worked a lot with Ketamine and I have him on the show to clear up some misunderstandings about ketamine and explore its clinical significance from its use as an anesthetic to its potential for treating depression.
Of course, Ketamine is more than a clinical drug and is widely used in “recreational” contexts and so our discussion tackles some much-needed Harm Reduction talk as there are some significant dangers to be mindful of when it come to this drug.
Somewhat spontaneously, this interview starts with a discussion about opiate dependence, overdose and policy change that may save a lot of lives.
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Antidepressant mechanism of ketamine: perspective from preclinical studies {Research Paper}
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***Featured image courtesy of Eva Blue via Creative CommonsSeveral hundred right-wing extremists in Jerusalem started demonstrating, some of them attacking Arab passers-by, as the families of the three murdered teenagers were burying their sons in Modi'in.
Five Palestinians were attacked, and two of them needed medical treatment. The extremists were engaged in violent confrontations with police in the capital's center for several hours.
The police arrested 50 people suspected of involvement in the incidents. Public transportation in the center of town was disrupted for hours, and hundreds of youths ran through the downtown city streets yelling racist slogans and calling for revenge against Arabs.
The incidents began with a demonstration that right-wing extremists, headed by former MK Michael Ben Ari and Itamar Ben Gvir, organized under the Chords Bridge by the city's western entrance. Demonstrators shouted slogans like "we want revenge" and "enough of the murderous government."
About 400 demonstrators attended and managed to block the road under the bridge for an extended period. The police evacuated them from the spot, and they proceeded along Jaffa Road with the declared goal of reaching the Old City in order to attack Arabs.
Police officers blocked their path to Zahal Square, located between City Hall and Jaffa Gate. The demonstrators dispersed into smaller groups that began running into the center of town looking for Arabs. The groups, some made up of pro-settler "hilltop youth," many ultra-Orthodox Jews and right-wing activists, shouted slogans such as "death to Arabs," "a Jew is a brother, an Arab is a bastard," "we want war," "Mohammed is dead," and "Kahane was right."
While running, some of them were asking dark-skinned people "what's the time?" in Hebrew in order to check for an Arab accent in the reply.
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Others rushed into businesses or shouted at tourists and other spectators to stop watching the World Cup and join them. In two instances, they burst into McDonald's because they heard that Arabs were employed at the restaurant, from where they were forced out by policemen and employees. In one of the incidents, police arrested a masked rioter tried to attack an Arab worker.
In a more serious case, a group of a hundred demonstrators identified three Palestinian workers in a downtown parking lot. The three were having their evening meal to end their daily Ramadan fast, when the mob attacked them. One of the Palestinians chased away some of the attackers with a club and then one of the mob members used pepper spray on the Palestinians. Others started to throw stones at them.
One of the workers suffered a head injury and was evacuated for medical treatment.
"I was in the middle of a Ramadan meal. Someone passed by and noticed I am an Arab," said Mohammed Sayyad of A-Tor. "He called out to everyone else, saying 'Here's an Arab, here's an Arab.' They started throwing stones and spraying gas, and cursing, 'Tomorrow we're going to kill you.'"
Undercover police who were there quickly intervened, moved the attackers back and arrested three of them.
According to Sayyad, the police also threatened to arrest him. "Can I beat up 500 people? What can I do, besides throwing stones back?" he said. "It's the third time they have attacked me, but it was never as big as this." Two years ago, it was Sayyad who called the police after Jewish youths in 2012 lynched Jamal Julani, 17, who was seriously wounded.
It took the police hours to restore scheduled service to the light rail because of the demonstrators. When the trains stopped at individual stations, the rioters got on board and looked for Arab passengers. Light rail security guards stood next to Palestinian passengers to protect them from the mob.MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian opposition punk band Pussy Riot have released a new video in which they set fire to a portrait of President Vladimir Putin in a stunt likely to anger the Kremlin.
Three of the band’s members - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich - were last month given two-year jail sentences each after storming the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral and staging a “punk prayer”, calling on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin.
Their jail sentences - for the crime of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred - drew sharp international criticism with opposition groups saying the case was part of a Kremlin crackdown on dissent.
In August, the all-female collective said that two other band members who had taken part in the same cathedral protest had fled the country - the whereabouts of the roughly dozen other members who did not take part in the stunt is unknown.
In the new video, which was released on the Internet and featured three anonymous band members who were performing on behalf of their jailed friends, women donning balaclavas - the band’s trademark - are shown abseiling down the facade of an abandoned or under construction building.
A giant white banner depicting a guitar-wielding woman in a red miniskirt with the caption “Pussy Riot” is unfurled on the building’s facade and, beneath it, smaller cardboard portraits of Putin and of Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, are shown hanging.
“We’ve been fighting for the right to sing, to think, to criticize. To be musicians and artists, ready to do everything to change our country, no matter the risks. We go on with our musical fight in Russia and our country is dominated by an evil man,” female voices, speaking in English, exclaim in turns.
The women are then shown setting off fluorescent flares thanking Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and other musicians for speaking out in their cause.
The camera then pans to a shot of the portrait of Putin in flames.
“Start a pussy riot and never stop. The fight for freedom is an endless battle that is bigger than life!” one of the women can be heard shouting.
WALESA APPEAL
Tolokonnikova’s husband, Pyotr Verzilov, who has often acted as the group’s spokesman, told Reuters that the clip was shot in recent days in response to an MTV request ahead of MTV’s Video Music Awards in Los Angeles which took place on Thursday.
The video was posted on MTV’s website www.mtv.com.
Its release came as Lech Walesa, Poland’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said he had sent a letter to Putin urging him to release the three band members sentenced last month.
“I’m not familiar with Russian law but I’m calling on President Putin to liberate the girls if the law allows that,” Walesa, who served as a president of post-Communist Poland, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Prior to the sentencing, Putin said that the trio should not be judged too harshly.
In his latest comments on the matter earlier this week, he declined to comment on the ruling, but suggested abuses committed against the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet era made Pussy Riot’s protest particularly offensive.
On Friday, a Moscow court rejected a lawsuit from a woman who said she had been deeply offended by a video of the band’s stunt in the cathedral and had sought 30,000 roubles in moral damages from Pussy Riot.
The judge cited lack of evidence proving the claim.
The Russian government has rejected foreign criticism of the case as politically motivated. Meanwhile, opinion polls show that few Russians sympathize with the jailed women.
Lawyers for the jailed women lodged an appeal on August 27.Aam Aadmi Party’s leader of opposition in Punjab Sukhpal Khaira has been burning stubble in the name of support to farmers. (IE image)
As Delhi faces the wrath of air pollution with dipping levels of air quality and the toxic smog engulfing the national capital, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has sought an important meeting with Punjab CM Amarinder Singh after stubble burning in the neighbouring state is considered the major reason behind the deteriorating value of air quality. But, Kejriwal’s own party leader in Punjab seems to be unfollowing him.
But, Aam Aadmi Party’s leader of opposition in Punjab Sukhpal Khaira has been burning stubble in the name of support to farmers as per The Indian Express. Khaira opposed the Punjab government’s decision to book farmers burning crops as he went on to burn paddy stubble at a farmers’ protest in Samrala in Ludhiana on October 15. Khaira posted pictures of the protest where he was seen burning stubble along with AAP leaders carrying flags with Kejriwal’s photograph as per IE.
However, Khaira said the protest was against the Congress government which is harassing the farmers on the stubble burning issues. Khaira said that rather than filing FIRs against farmers burning crop, the state government should provide equipment and machinery on rent to dispose the stubble. “The Punjab government has failed to carry out the instructions of NGT and farmers are suffering huge losses and committing suicide. Insofar as Delhi government is concerned, their stand is also right”, Khaira was quoted saying by IE. “If the farmers were to plough the paddy stubble into the fields, it would cost them Rs 4,000-5,000 per acre and the state government says it cannot compensate them”, added Khaira.
Either implement NGT orders or pay Rs 5,000 per acre subsidy to farmers n stop cases,or we’ll burn paddy stubble-khaira @AAPPunjab2017 pic.twitter.com/ymJDWzmnEr — Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) October 15, 2017
Meanwhile, Arvind Kejriwal yesterday sought a meeting with his counterparts in Punjab and Haryana to discuss ways to tackle the alarming air pollution levels in Delhi. In identical letters to Amarinder Singh and Manohar Lal Khattar, Kejriwal said the governments in the neighbouring states had failed to provide farmers with viable alternatives to stubble burning, a process that leads to air pollution in Delhi.The Easiest Lemon Tahini Falafel Wrap, topped with a delicious Lemon Tahini Sauce is a quick & vegan meal.
We make plenty of our meals vegetarian because we simply do not like meat that much. I guess you could say we are a bit fed up with meat.
Going strictly vegetarian or vegan overnight can be a bit traumatic. Believe me, I tried it. It is a good idea to get organized and informed about your choices before you take the step. But you can also try it in smaller steps. Like partaking in #meatlessmonday or have a few vegetarian meals per week. When you do try it, you’ll see a whole new world open up. And it’s a beautiful, colorful and tasty world of healthy food.
Vegetarian food can be fantastic, but it can also be boring and unhealthy. There is vegetarian junk food. Plenty of snacks and crisps are actually vegetarian. So if you are trying it for health, make sure to incorporate plenty of vegetables in your diet.
But in the end, you may find out, strict vegetarianism may not be for you. And that’s ok, too. You’ll still learn about new foods and healthy food choices and if you incorporate that in your everyday diet, you’ll be just fine. Your diet should be whatever makes you feel your best.
Falafel is one of the meals I have never had before I went vegan a few years back. I posted the recipe for falafel patties a while back and one way to eat it is in this gorgeous Lemon Tahini Falafel Wrap. Isn’t it just pretty?
What’s even better, to make these wraps you can actually make your falafel patties ahead and store them in the fridge. Then, when you are ready, just assemble together and enjoy. This Lemon Tahini Falafel Wrap makes also an excellent to-go lunch to enjoy later on in the day.
Easiest Lemon Tahini Falafel Wrap Yield: 2 Prep Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 30 minutes The Easiest Lemon Tahini Falafel Wrap, topped with a delicious Lemon Tahini Sauce is a quick & vegan meal. Print Ingredients 6 falafel patties
2 tortillas
a handful of chopped salad
a handful of thinly sliced cabbage
1/2 cup sliced cucumbers
1/2 cup sliced bell pepper
1 small white onion
1/4 cup tahini
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup water
1/2 lemon, juice
salt, pepper to taste
red paprika to taste Instructions Make falafel patties according to this recipe. You can make falafel ahead and store it in the fridge for a few days to use when ready. Prepare your lemon tahini sauce: in a bowl (or food processor) place tahini, minced garlic, juice of 1/2 lemon, salt and pepper to taste and a bit of water. Mix well, and add more water as needed, depending how thick you want your sauce. Preheat tortillas according to package instruction. Assemble your wrap. Spread lemon tahini sauce on a tortilla, add chopped salad, sliced cabbage, cucumber slices, bell pepper and sliced white onion. Top with falafel patties and close the wrap. Serve immediately or pack up for your lunch break. Nutrition Information:
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 433.51 Total Fat: 26.08g Saturated Fat: 3.62g Sodium: 627.44mg Carbohydrates: 41.08g Fiber: 6.09g Sugar: 3.8g Protein: 14.36g
More Falafel Recipes:
Make your own Falafel Patties
NOTE: This is an updated post from 2016. We reshot and substituted the photography, changed the recipe slightly and did some SEO to the article.
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An egress-only Internet gateway is a horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC component that allows outbound communication over IPv6 from instances in your VPC to the Internet, and prevents the Internet from initiating an IPv6 connection with your instances.
Note An egress-only Internet gateway is for use with IPv6 traffic only. To enable outbound-only Internet communication over IPv4, use a NAT gateway instead. For more information, see NAT Gateways.
Egress-Only Internet Gateway Basics
An instance in your public subnet can connect to the Internet through the Internet gateway if it has a public IPv4 address or an IPv6 address. Similarly, resources on the Internet can initiate a connection to your instance using its public IPv4 address or its IPv6 address; for example, when you connect to your instance using your local computer.
IPv6 addresses are globally unique, and are therefore public by default. If you want your instance to be able to access the Internet, but you want to prevent resources on the Internet from initiating communication with your instance, you can use an egress-only Internet gateway. To do this, create an egress-only Internet gateway in your VPC, and then add a route to your route table that points all IPv6 traffic ( ::/0 ) or a specific range of IPv6 address to the egress-only Internet gateway. IPv6 traffic in the subnet that's associated with the route table is routed to the egress-only Internet gateway.
An egress-only Internet gateway is stateful: it forwards traffic from the instances in the subnet to the Internet or other AWS services, and then sends the response back to the instances.
An egress-only Internet gateway has the following characteristics:
You cannot associate a security group with an egress-only Internet gateway. You can use security groups for your instances in the private subnet to control the traffic to and from those instances.
You can use a network ACL to control the traffic to and from the subnet for which the egress-only Internet gateway routes traffic.
In the following diagram, a VPC has an IPv6 CIDR block, and a subnet in the VPC has an IPv6 CIDR block. A custom route table is associated with Subnet 1 and points all Internet-bound IPv6 traffic ( ::/0 ) to an egress-only Internet gateway in the VPC.
Working with Egress-Only Internet Gateways
The following sections describe how to create an egress-only Internet gateway for your private subnet, and configure routing for the subnet.
Creating an Egress-Only Internet Gateway
You can create an egress-only Internet gateway for your VPC using the Amazon VPC console.
To create an egress-only Internet Gateway
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/. In the navigation pane, choose Egress Only Internet Gateways. Choose Create Egress Only Internet Gateway. Select the VPC in which to create the egress-only Internet gateway. Choose Create.
Viewing Your Egress-Only Internet Gateway
You can view information about your egress-only Internet gateway in the Amazon VPC console.
To view information about an egress-only Internet gateway
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/. In the navigation pane, choose Egress Only Internet Gateways. Select the egress-only Internet gateway to view its information in the details pane.
Creating a Custom Route Table
To send traffic destined outside the VPC to the egress-only Internet gateway, you must create a custom route table, add a route that sends traffic to the gateway, and then associate it with your subnet.
To create a custom route table and add a route to the egress-only Internet gateway
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/. In the navigation pane, choose Route Tables, Create Route Table. In the Create Route Table dialog box, optionally name your route table, then select your VPC, and then choose Yes, Create. Select the custom route table that you just created. The details pane displays tabs for working with its routes, associations, and route propagation. On the Routes tab, choose Edit, specify ::/0 in the Destination box, select the egress-only Internet gateway ID in the Target list, and then choose Save. On the Subnet Associations tab, choose Edit and select the Associate check box for the subnet. Choose Save.
Alternatively, you can add a route to an existing route table that's associated with your subnet. Select your existing route table, and follow steps 5 and 6 above to add a route for the egress-only Internet gateway.
For more information about route tables, see Route Tables.
Deleting an Egress-Only Internet Gateway
If you no longer need an egress-only Internet gateway, you can delete it. Any route in a route table that points to the deleted egress-only Internet gateway remains in a blackhole status until you manually delete or update the route.
To delete an egress-only Internet gateway
Open the Amazon VPC console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/vpc/. In the navigation pane, choose Egress Only Internet Gateways and select the egress-only Internet gateway. Choose Delete. Choose Delete Egress Only Internet Gateway in the confirmation dialog box.
API and CLI Overview
You can perform the tasks described on this page using the command line or an API. For more information about the command line interfaces and a list of available API actions, see Accessing Amazon VPC.
Create an egress-only Internet gateway create-egress-only-internet-gateway (AWS CLI)
New-EC2EgressOnlyInternetGateway (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)
Describe an egress-only Internet gateway describe-egress-only-internet-gateways (AWS CLI)
Get-EC2EgressOnlyInternetGatewayList (AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell)One year ago, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) reviewed the National Security Agency’s bulk telephony metadata program and concluded the program was both illegal and imprudent as a policy matter. Under this program conducted pursuant to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the NSA on a daily basis indiscriminately collects Americans’ calling records from telephone companies, including each call’s date and time, duration, and participating telephone numbers. This “metadata” does not include the contents of telephone conversations. The program is intended to enable the government to identify communications among known and unknown terrorism suspects. PCLOB recommended that the program be discontinued and that the government instead seek telephone call records directly from phone companies on a case-by-case basis where there is evidence of potential terrorist activity.
As a policy matter, President Obama agreed. While he has the authority to terminate the 215 program on his own, he asked Congress to pass legislation that would allow the government to request call records from telephone companies pursuant to individual court orders where there is a reasonable suspicion that the phone number being queried is associated with certain terrorist organizations. This legislation, the USA FREEDOM Act, stalled in the Senate last fall. But on February 3, the Administration renewed its call for passage, saying: “[t]his legislation not only satisfies the President’s requirements, but also responds to the recommendations from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board... to end the bulk collection of telephony metadata records under Section 215 of USA PATRIOT Act.”
Last month, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences released a report in which it determined that |
when they reached the end of the known world? I’ll tell you: “Here be dragons.”
Get ready. Because here they come.© Jim Rogash/Getty Images "I will certainly make judgments on myself for the overall performance and the team's performance, and that's on me," says Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington. By Ricky Doyle
Ben Cherington isn’t ready to start the fire sale just yet. In fact, the Boston Red Sox general manager doesn’t seem all that interested in having one this season.
While Cherington is cognizant of the Red Sox’s less-than-ideal situation, the optimistic GM said Thursday morning on WEEI’s “Dennis & Callahan” that it’s still entirely possible Boston could add pieces to the big league roster this season rather than subtract pieces in an effort to build for the future.
“I think the more general statement is that we’re going to work to get to a good team, get to the team that we believe we are actually closer to than many believe, as quickly as we can,” Cherington said. “So I foresee a scenario where we would even be interested in acquiring major league players, adding to the major league team.
“Depending on what our record is, it may be that those types of talks would be more geared toward players that we control, not just this year, but beyond this year. But I think that’ll continue to be where our focus is.”
The Red Sox fell to 10 games under.500 (32-42) with Thursday’s 8-6 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. They’re in last place in the American League East and face a daunting uphill climb. Every other team in the division owns a record above.500 and Boston’s situation seems to worsen each day.
That said, no one in the Red Sox’s clubhouse is throwing in the towel. And while some outside critics might suggest the Red Sox should trade major leaguers with value, like Clay Buchholz, before it’s too late, Cherington is holding out hope that Boston will jump into the playoff race with a good run before the July 31 Major League Baseball non-waiver trade deadline.
“I really think our focus is going to be to continue to improve the team, build the team that we want, as quickly as we can,” Cherington said. “With respect to the record, of course that’s going to have to guide us a little bit on certain types of transactions. But the big picture, the bigger considerations we’re going to be focused on trying to improve the team and be as good as we can as quickly as we can, and so Clay obviously can be a big part of that.”
The Red Sox found themselves in a similar situation last season in that it was unclear until mid- to late-July whether Boston would buy, sell or stand pat at the trade deadline. They ultimately decided to deal away pieces, including Jon Lester, John Lackey and Andrew Miller.
This season is slightly different in the sense that Boston doesn’t have quite as many tradeable major league assets. But if Cherington’s wish is granted, it won’t matter, because the Red Sox will be the ones making a splash.
Either way, the clock is ticking. And the Red Sox will need to soon choose a path.Yesterday morning with very little advance notice, the Chancellor, George Osborne, tabled the Sovereign Grant Bill in the UK Parliament (all papers on Treasury website). The bill provides for a new method of financing the Monarchy and replaces the existing somewhat complicated funding (which comprises 3 separate budgets – travel from Dept of Transport, Royal Palaces in England from DCMS and Civil List from the Treasury – background note here) with a single Sovereign Grant. This was first trailed in the Chancellor’s Autumn Spending Review in October 2010 when it was announced that this would be “linked to the revenue of the Crown Estate” (para 2.143). The new Bill achieves this by setting out a formula for calculating the new Grant in Section 6 which will be based upon 15% of the net revenue surplus of the Crown Estate.
Whilst the bill provides greater clarity, simplicity and flexibility to the funding of the Monarchy (as well as proposing some modernisation of arrangements for the Duchy of Cornwall, for renewing the arrangement at the beginning each reign etc.), it does rather muddy the waters in relation to the Crown Estate. This has implications for the debate over devolution of the administration and revenues of the Crown Estate in Scotland.
First of all, it should be made clear that the revenues of the Crown Estate in Scotland and in England are public revenues. They derive from the time when the Monarch had significant real political power and funded HM armed forces HM ambassadors etc. Now that all such functions are funded by general taxation, the Crown revenues contribute to the general financing of the costs of Government either through the UK Treasury (to whom the Crown Estate revenues are paid) or directly to the Scottish Consolidated Fund for Crown revenues that are collected directly in Scotland by the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer. (This otherwise useful UK Commons Library Note is incorrect when it states in Section 3 and Table 10 that Crown revenues from Ultimus Haeres in Scotland are paid to the UK Treasury).
There remains a need, however, to finance the Monarchy for the constitutional functions it performs and it is appropriate that this should be provided by the public purse. What is troubling, confusing and downright meddlesome about the whole affair is the link that has now been established between the Crown Estate and the Monarch. George Osborne stated in his speech yesterday that,
“We need a funding mechanism that prevents the Sovereign from coming to Parliament each year for resources and provides funding broadly in line with growth in the economy.
There is such a mechanism at hand, through the historic connection with the Crown Estate.
From 2013-14, I am proposing that the Royal Household receive 15% of the profits made by the Crown Estate two years prior.”
Importantly, however, this is merely a formulaic link. The Crown Estate revenues will still be paid directly the the Treasury and there will be no hypothecation to the Royal Household (as indeed is made clear in Her Majesty’s gracious message to the House of Commons). The formula might just as easily be tied to the profits of the Stilton Cheese industry. The link is illusory, misleading and designed to re-establish a relationship that is purely historic. It is worth noting that this plan was not dreamt up by the Treasury on its own and has the fingerprints of a certain senior Royal all over it. It also provides a clever way of frustrating the ambitions of the Scottish Government to devolve the administration and revenues of the Crown Estate.
The Scottish Government paper, published last week, makes a worthy appeal for this to happen but provides little detail on the financial, political and constitutional case or on how the argument is intended to be made in Westminster. It fails to point out, for example, that devolving the administration and revenues of the Crown Estate in Scotland will actually save the UK Treasury money and it has very little to say about anything other than offshore renewables. (What about ports and harbours and what about the tenant farmer right to buy on Crown Estate agricultural estates for example?)
The other important element of Osborne’s speech is the 8th last sentence,
“We will shortly be setting out proposals, unconnected to this legislation, to make sure coastal communities can benefit from the development of the Crown Estate marine activities.”
One of the key arguments the Scottish Government has made is that with devolution, communities can benefit from the Crown Estate revenues from renewables. Indeed it published a consultation paper on this topic in November 2010. Now, along comes the Chancellor and announces just such a fund (which has got nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill), links the Crown Estate to the Royal Family and the job of the Scottish Government has just got that little bit harder – and all of this will be debated and announced in two weeks time at 2nd Reading in Westminster when the Scottish Parliament is in recess.
Scotland is different. The Scottish Crown revenues were not signed over in 1760. The Crown’s ownership of the seabed in fact has no statutory basis. Scotland already collects a significant amount of the Crown revenues for the Scottish Consolidated Fund through QLTR. The support that DCMS provides for palaces is for English palaces. The Scottish Parliament has the powers to legislate on the property rights of the Crown in Scotland. In other words, we need to remove the CEC from any role in Scotland because its role is not only archaic but because the Sovereign Grant Bill, by making a spurious link to the Crown Estate, risks complicating matters still further for the reform of the Crown Estate in Scotland.
Michty!Ever wonder how John McCain can run exactly the type of campaign he decried for years?
Jeff Goldblum's character in The Big Chill knew how:
Michael: "I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex."
Sam: "Nothing's more important than sex."
Michael: "Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?"
[from The Big Chill]
It's how very smart public officials can do such stupid things, like patronize prostitutes while in office. It's how government and corporate leaders can constantly act in ways that they know are illegal or unethical. It's how John McCain can justify, to himself, the type of campaign he is running.
Rationalization, rationalization, rationalization.
No doubt, there are psychological factors in some cases. And the usual suspects -- greed, arrogance, ambition, hubris -- always make an appearance.
But when highly successful people act in ways contrary to what they know is right, they have always bought into a rationalization that lets them sleep at night (at least until the whole thing blows up in their face).
Consider John McCain's response to the questions he got on The View about his "lipstick on a pig" ad. He claimed that 1) the ads were not lies; 2) that Barack Obama "chooses his words carefully" so he must have been aiming them at Sarah Palin; and 3) you should see what he (Obama) is saying about me (McCain).
Thus John McCain talked himself (and/or was talked) into approving a deliberately misleading ad that eight years ago he probably would have found repugnant. You can imagine a conversation something like this:
McCain Campaign Operative (Steve Schmidt?): "The ad does not technically make any false statements of fact."
McCain: "That's not what Obama meant when he used the 'lipstick' saying. He wasn't talking about Palin."
MCO: "How do you know what was in his head? And he's a lawyer. He chooses his words carefully. He could have chosen a different analogy. You think it was an accident that he picked this one?"
McCain: "Well, maybe you've got a point there. You're sure the ad doesn't say anything untrue?"
MCO: "Parse the words - no false statements. And anyway, look what he's saying about you - it's far worse. They're saying you're a Bush clone, over and over again. Nobody's his own man more than you."
McCain: "Damn right. I've hated Bush ever since 2000 in South Carolina. They know that. That's a real lie. Okay, let's go with the 'Lipstick' ad. No doubt he was trying to call Sarah a pig. What a sexist."
These rationalizations are usually internal, silent conversations between the individual and his/her conscience. Perhaps John Edwards justified his recent affair by convincing himself that Bill Clinton had plenty of affairs which didn't keep him from being elected president; so why shouldn't he, John, be allowed to have just one? How many CEOs have rationalized their outsized pay packages and golden parachutes by pointing out to themselves that their millions are far less than the hedge fund billions taken home by less talented execs -- so what if millions of Americans are losing their homes or their jobs?
In one sense, does it make a difference why government and corporate leaders abuse their positions? At the end of the day, if they act improperly maybe it doesn't really matter why.
But it may help to explain seemingly inexplicable behavior, and maybe to curtail it in the future. When we see Rudy Giuliani announce the end of his marriage on television, or Jim McGreevey resign because he's leading a double life, we scratch our head and wonder how they convinced themselves they could get away with such behavior.
The answer is that at some point along the line, they all rationalized their behavior away. Either by justifying it -- "not so bad, or less bad than what so-and-so did"; or by convincing themselves they won't be caught -- "if it wasn't for the blue dress, he'd have been fine;" or by concocting a reason why, even if caught they will be able to escape serious consequences -- a new crisis du jour will distract the media's attention.
Some do escape. Some don't. John McCain, by steamrolling the media's questioning of his misleading ads, is clearly hoping the public will not be able to see through the fog and clutter, and that the ad's allegations will vaguely, insidiously stick with many voters.
A rationalization is simply a way to fool yourself. As Jeff Goldblum's Big Chill character said, we all do it every day.Update March 8, 2017 – This weekend EBI hosted 3 combat jiu jitsu bouts. Andy Foster of the California State Athletic Commission confirmed this event required State regulation and that regulatory oversight was delegated to CAMO.
As reported on the Underground, the Eddie Bravo Invitational, a leading no-gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament based in California, is looking to add limited striking to its events.
In an interview with BJPENN.com Radio Bravo noted
“Imagine EBI just the way it is, 16-man jiu-jitsu tournament, same stage, everything looking the same, same 10-minute rounds with the overtimes, except when the competitors are on the ground, open palm strikes, old Pancrase style to open up the submissions, to increase the submissions even more….No punches, no MMA gloves … no elbows, no kicks … we’re going to have that in 2017”
While this limited striking philosophy can add excitement to events and lead to more openings and more submission finishes, it is a rule change that likely brings a BJJ tournament from a self regulated event to one that is captured under the umbrella of State regulation.
The California State Athletic Commission has jurisdiction over “all professional and amateur boxing, professional and amateur kickboxing, all forms and combinations of forms of full contact martial arts contests, including mixed martial arts, and matches or exhibitions conducted, held or given within (California)”
A submission based tournament would not fall under this definition. However, as soon as striking is added, even open handed palm striking, the event likely meets the definition of “full contact martial arts contests” which are defined as follows:
the use of physical force in a martial arts contest that may result or is intended to result in physical harm to the opponent, including any contact that does not meet the definition of light contact or noncontact.
Light contact is defined as follows:
the use of controlled martial arts techniques whereby no contact to the face is permitted and no contact is permitted which may result or is intended to result in physical harm to the opponent.
Given that open handed slaps to the face are being called for (and if you don’t know these can cause “harm to an opponent” just watch some old school Bas Rutten Pancrase bouts) the definition of ‘light contact’ is not met and this rule change will likely bring EBI events under CSAC regulation. This opinion is bolstered by the position the CSAC has taken on pankration events with limited striking.
I have reached out to the current Executive Director of the CSAC for comment and will update this article if/when he replies.
AdvertisementsCyberwar does not take place in vacuum. When a geopolitical showdown is underway, nation states have every incentive to advance their interests using digital means.
One of the latest examples? Russia hacking Ukrainian systems.
A report out of Arlington, Va.-based cyber security firm Lookingglass reveals a cyber campaign, allegedly Russian, waged against Ukrainian targets, such as the government, law enforcement, and military. The purpose of the state-sponsored espionage has apparently been to gather intelligence on its adversary, bolstering Russian war efforts.
The researchers dubbed the campaign “Operation Armageddon” after the nom de guerre of an author (according to file metadata) of the Microsoft Word documents used in the attacks. (Misspelled “Armagedon” in the “last saved by” field.) The attackers sent the documents to victims as attachments in targeted spear phishing emails.
“For the most part the technologies were not advanced,” says Jason Lewis, chief collection and intelligence office at Lookingglass. “It’s not super sophisticated, but it’s certainly persistent.”
The campaign has been active since the middle of 2013, according to the report. And it may have been catalyzed by trade talks between Ukraine and the European Union, which Russia condemned.
Lookingglass researchers worked with neither Ukraine nor Russia in its investigation, sourcing its materials rather from proprietary methods and through sites like VirusTotal, a public database where people can upload and scan files for known viruses. The firm’s researchers obtained 11 “lure” documents, files that serve to trick their recipients into clicking a malicious link or opening a malicious email attachment, that way.
Often, the researchers found, the hackers stole documents relevant to the outside conflict from victims’ machines, and then used those files to compromise future targets.
The crux of the report ties Russia’s kinetic tactics to its digital intrusions. When the researchers compared the timestamps on modified documents and malware to roughly 300 news events pertaining to Russo-Ukrainian relations, they noticed a correlation. When troops were preparing to move, cyber activity flared.
Once Ukraine’s interim President announced the start of an “anti-terrorist operation” against pro-Russian separatists in mid-April 2014, the conflict’s cyber activities significantly increased. From this point onwards, waves of cyber attacks from the Russians directly correlated with the timing of military events and were geared towards gathering intelligence to empower themselves on the physical battlefield – a digital method of espionage in its truest of forms.
A damning, though inconclusive, timeline of the attacks can be found in the report. (See page 5, available here.)
The Lookingglass researchers, convinced that Russia is the culprit, agree with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, descendant of the KGB) is to blame. (SBU, too, has called out FSB as being responsible for recent phishing attacks.) “We’re highly confident that the claims the SBU made are accurate,” Lewis says. “We didn’t find any evidence to the contrary to dispute those claims.”
He admits, however: “A lot of it is circumstantial evidence—but this is a pattern that continues to occur throughout the campaign.” Lewis believes the timing of attacks and motivations are more than just a coincidence.
That nation states are using cyber attacks to achieve geopolitical ends should come as no surprise.
Last year, CrowdStrike associated Chinese cyber espionage campaigns with China’s movement into disputed territory in the South Pacific as well as with an ISIS-led takeover of an Iraqi oil refinery. The security firm FireEye (FEYE) found state actors using attack methods similar to those outlined above to target rebel forces during conflict in Syria. The security firm Cylance recently implicated Iran as having probed critical U.S. energy infrastructure, just prior to nuclear negotiations. And then, of course, there are the claims about Sony Pictures Entertainment and North Korea.
Espionage and cyber attacks can give countries that engage in the practice an upper hand in international affairs. “Nation states need to be able to asses how seriously people will take their threats and what they’ll do as result of a threat,” says Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at the security firm CrowdStrike, presenting a rationale for digital incursions. “It puts them in a better position to make a credible threat if they know what the response is going to be.”
(Although Meyers had not had time to assess the quality of the Lookingglass report’s attribution claims, he offered: “Russians are definitely known for making spelling errors for English words in their code.” He added, “spear phishing is certainly a favorite of nation state hackers.”)
Now that the report is public, Lewis hopes to exchange information with Ukrainian authorities next, he says. Though his team had earlier reached out to the Ukrainian computer emergency response team, known as CERT-UA, he says Lookingglass found it difficult to collaborate.
“Part of the problem is that the Russians are not interested in cooperating with anybody,” he says. “And in Ukraine finding a contact that’s trustworthy seems to be a challenge.”
“There are rumors of infiltration by Russian agents,” he clarifies, “so it’s hard to know if who you’re dealing with is actually Ukrainian.”
Indeed, recent reports suggest that Russian spies have penetrated deep inside Ukraine’s intelligence apparatus.
When Fortune spoke with Lewis on Tuesday afternoon, he had no updates as yet on the operation, which remains ongoing (although he did mention that his team has discovered more “lure” documents since releasing the report). He expects the attackers will change their tactics soon.
“There may be parts we haven’t uncovered yet,” Lewis says. “We hope by releasing indicators, other people can have a look.”Tamper-proofing truth with blockchain
DNN Media Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 20, 2017
Bringing trust and transparency back to news
Image via blockchaintechnologies.com
Given the current political and digital climates where popularity is the governing deciding factor when it comes to narratives and headlines, it’s fair to say that news today is under siege. For websites that deal in propagating baseless stories, integrity stems from web analytics, not factual, balanced reporting, as reported by The New York Times just after the 2016 presidential election. The integrity of truthful, fact-driven news has been lost in the wake of click-bait headlines and digital ad revenues.
In 1983, 90 percent of the US news industry was owned and controlled by 50 different companies. Today, that same 90 percent of our news, whether we read, watch or listen to it, is sourced and dominated by just six media giants. With such consolidation, narratives have become almost predictable while publications demonstrate recognizable political slants, catering to defined and enthusiastic target audiences. This diminishes how well the public is informed because it shelters alternative viewpoints, which itself breeds mob mentality fueled by like-mindedness.
Blockchain technology has the ability to change this, in fact, blockchain has the ability to democratize traditional news media like it has never been before. The reasons for this are threefold.
First, blockchain technology is secure, containing data in time-stamped blocks that chain together, continuously added and archived, making it near impossible for hackers to manipulate existing data or information within the distributed ledger.
Second, blockchain technology decentralizes authority to publish. In other words, there is no singular source that controls the message and tone of published works as with a traditional publication. DNN is not beholden to special interests, political affiliations, or susceptible to the corporatization of journalism as with many mainstream media outlets.
Third, DNN is built on an open community of like minded people who seek the unfiltered truth.
News published to DNN is curated and moderated by the community, which makes for a system predicated on a simple quality: political news created for the people, by the people, without any underlying slant or hidden agenda. This is the democratization of political news publication at its most genuine.
“The concept of citizen journalism on the blockchain is empowering primarily because it feels more authentic, Samit Singh, co-founder of DNN, said. “To me, ‘news by the people, for the people’ denotes a trustworthiness since each person owns the means of creating the content on the platform and thus, nobody is tied down to any bigger corporate entity or interests.”
In a digital age where opinion is often passed off as fact, where facts don’t carry the same weight they once did, and where reality has become sometimes indistinguishable from fabrication, trust is everything.
While blockchain is most commonly associated with its potential for revolutionizing aspects of the banking and financial services sectors such as financial transactions and asset transfers, the emerging technology’s core value rests on trust. Blockchain technology and its related features achieve a state of trustlessness, that is securing a system where users don’t need to know one another or be associated with a third-party intermediary to verify or confirm a transaction. It is implicit and autonomous, and creates something Deloitte refers to as the “trust economy.” Blockchain is the gatekeeper.
Simply put, blockchain is a distributed ledger that provides a way for information to be recorded and shared by a community. — Deloitte
Recently publicized by Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the Trump Administration, “alternative facts” are dangerously becoming more and more the norm. Given the toxicity created by partisanship, unlike anything seen in recent elections or presidencies, as well as the ease of publication and dissemination in the Internet age, fake news has become rampant.
As the political divide has grown, so has the momentum powering fake news, and the public’s acceptance of it. We believe this is largely because trust and transparency are no longer a necessary part of reporting.
News reporting has become part of the political machine.
Based out of New York, where for most of its lifetime news was centered on purity of fact, the co-founders behind DNN felt compelled to bring integrity back to news:
“DNN strives to set a baseline for trust and transparency in news publishing — two of our driving values,” said Singh.
“I’ve been fascinated by how news and info is distributed across networks for a pretty long time,” Singh added. “Before this, Dondrey and I were developing different types of social apps on mobile and just experimenting with different ways on how people share things. DNN, on paper, isn’t too different, in the sense that it’s social and involves some unique ways in how the news is created and disseminated on the platform.”
The core purpose of DNN is to provide truly factual news that is curated, and most importantly, moderated by the community. Each piece of news that is published on DNN will have been vetted by a randomly selected group of approved reviewers to ensure that no published work carries strong bias or political agenda, and it is blockchain that allows each user to act independently.
“The underlying tech is certainly something that drew my attention,” said Dondrey Taylor, co-founder of DNN. “I’ve always been a fan of networks in general, especially neural networks. The idea that you could create an incentive-driven, self-operated, and self-maintained network was something I had never seen before in the traditional web or mobile world. Aside from the technology that allows DNN to have an anti-establishment sentiment to it, building a system that empowers people to take part in something that could disrupt an industry or at least trigger a change in the way people think within that industry, greatly intrigued me.”
As an agile distributor of news, DNN has the ability to act as a nimble vessel for nonpartisan information, an advantage not held by the bulky, powerful, and self-interested media organizations.
Find out more about DNN here, and look for the demo to launch in May.With wildfires raging outside of Austin, Gov. Rick Perry is leaving the campaign trail to return to his home state, the governor's office confirmed this morning.
“The wildfire situation in Texas is severe and all necessary state resources are being made available to protect lives and property,” Perry said in a statement. “I urge Texans to take extreme caution as we continue to see the devastating effects of sweeping wildfires impacting both rural and urban areas of the state."
Perry was slated to be part of a GOP presidential forum this afternoon in Columbia, S.C. — his first nationally televised event with fellow contenders Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain.
Perry offered to appear remotely from Texas, but organizers said it wasn't possible with such short notice.
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"The time frame and the technical problems unfortunately didn't appear to be working out," said Andresen Blom, executive director of the American Principles Project, which is co-sponsoring the televised forum. Blom said the group would invite Perry to return to South Carolina to appear before a panel that includes influential South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a leading figure in the Tea Party movement.
Now he's homeward bound instead, putting even more pressure on Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate in Simi Valley, California. "He's planning to go to the debate," Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said.
The Texas Forest Service has responded to 63 new fires this weekend, that have burned roughly 33,000 acres in Bastrop, Travis, Henderon, Limestone, Caldwell and Colorado counties. Hundreds of Central Texas homes have been destroyed since Sunday afternoon. Perry's office said the state has deployed 15 single-engine air tankers, 12 helicopters and 13 aerial supervision aircraft assets to help with the fire-fighting.
Perry will head home from Myrtle Beach, S.C., where he was speaking at an event hosted by U.S. Rep. Tim Scott. A spokeswoman in the governor's office said there were not plans yet for the governor to tour the wildfire sites — he doesn't want to be in the way of firefighting efforts — but that he was closely monitoring the situation.
Today's candidate forum is a practice round of sorts. The candidates won't be able to spar with each other on the issues, but they'll get a sense of the lines of questioning — and follow-ups — they might face in a series of scheduled debates, the first of which is Wednesday.
Texas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here.Back in 2005, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. Earlier that year, the Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX, and Kraft was wearing the ring he earned from that victory.
Apparently, Putin really liked that ring, because after Kraft let him try it on, he dipped out, but not before saying something ominous:
“I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’ ” Kraft told the crowd at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala at the Waldorf-Astoria. “I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”
At the time, Kraft said something about choosing to give the ring to Putin, but that's only because a White House official strongly urged him to not try and get it back, in an attempt to improve the relationship between the two countries.
So, that Super Bowl XXXIX ring is somewhere in Russia, and Kraft only has his other two Super Bowl rings to console him. Did anyone look deeper into Putin saying "I can kill someone with this ring," though?
[NY Post]
Photo: Rob Carr/GettyThe July 4, 2019, ceremony marking the final dissolution of the United States of America was quite amicable compared to the anger and bitterness of the preceding five years. The 2014 election results created a map clearly defining “Red America” and “Blue America,” and it sparked a debate, unlike any in the last 150 years, over whether the United States should remain united. For many in the leftist coastal states – their progressivism constrained by the overwhelming Congressional advantage of the conservative interior states – the answer was, “No.”
As liberal thought leader Michael Tomasky wrote of the South, “Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment…. Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.”
Soon, it became an article of faith within the liberal elite that it was not only their party that did not need the rest of America. Blue America itself, they argued, did not need Red America, economically, intellectually or morally. It was not long until newly-elected Governor De Blasio of New York demanded a national convention to discuss a parting of the ways. The President, her health poor and her heart firmly with the Blue America, half-heartedly tried to stop the movement, but more and more high profile Democrat politicians joined the chorus. The President yielded and called for a “national conversation on the way forward as separate nations.” Red America, furious at her continuation of Barack Obama’s rule by decree and interference in its affairs, agreed to attend.
Two years later, President De Blasio, elected leader of the Democratic States of North America, and President Abbott of the Republic of America, stood together on the platform on the border at St. Louis to sign the Dissolution Pact. The countries split the national debt and apportioned federal assets, while agreeing to temporarily share the currency. They divided the military (along with all nuclear capabilities), but signed a mutual defense agreement. There would be free travel between and through the new nations. “We will remain good neighbors,” President De Blasio remarked, “Even if we are no longer brothers, sisters, or differently-gendered siblings.” President Abbott politely maintained a poker face.
Of course, back home in the Blue America’s capital, New York City, President De Blasio was less charitable. “We are no longer held back by the reactionary, racist policies of the past,” he thundered. “Together, we will build a new dawn of progress that places people before profits and promotes peace instead of perpetual war!” Blue America – New England and the mid-Atlantic seaboard, back through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the West Coast and Hawaii, immediately set to drafting a new constitution. It featured 216 new affirmative rights, including “the right to a living wage,” “the right to abortion upon demand at government expense,” and “the right to define one’s own life experience in terms of race and gender.” Embarrassingly, the rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion did not make the leaked initial draft; they were hastily added, but there was no right to keep and bear arms. In fact, the first law the new People’s Assembly passed was to confiscate all privately-owned weapons. The second was to legalize all illegal aliens, and the third to triple welfare payments.
Red America reaffirmed the United States Constitution. Then the Congress began a review of all existing laws, statutes and regulations, repealing thousands of them. It also limited social spending dramatically, making known the expectation that able-bodied adults would support themselves and their families. The resulting non-military federal government in Red America was about one quarter the size of Blue America’s.
The world was unsure how to deal with the new reality. The international elite and its lapdog media quickly took to portraying Red America with the same kind of venom as Blue American liberals. President De Blasio was taped at a private confab at the United Nations – which remained in New York – telling the foreigners that Blue America, “feels a greater kinship to our progressive friends in Europe than those redneck, racist, Jesus freaks next door.”
Red America stopped paying its UN dues and sent John Bolton to be its ambassador. After Israel, Red America became the most investigated and censured of any UN member state.
Blue America had little use for the military it inherited. Though the Pact had stipulated that both new nations would maintain a certain level of combat readiness, in Blue America the services were first in line to be cut. Forced to meet America’s defense needs alone, Red America slashed non-military spending and instituted two years of mandatory military service for every citizen as the only way to meet the need for manpower.
Many left Red America, some to avoid the draft and a larger number to collect the enhanced welfare benefits Blue America was giving away. Yet, many more came in from Blue America. By casting off useless regulations and cutting taxes (Blue America’s “Fair Share Act” increased the top income tax rate to 74.5% on earnings over $250,000), Red America unleashed a whirlwind of economic activity. Red America, already prosperous, grew even richer.
Fracking was outlawed in Blue America; Red America became the world’s number one petroleum exporter. Blue America laws banning nuclear and coal power led to the “Kentucky Line” of coal plants running parallel the state’s northern border with Blue Ohio, selling Blue America the power it refused to generate itself. The ban on GMO crops and many pesticides cratered Blue American food production, a void Red American farmers were happy to fill. All the while, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta and other cities grew their own tech and entertainment industries built on refugees from Silicon Valley and Hollywood looking for an environment where success was not penalized. Red America began to supply itself with what Blue America used to provide.
Blue America’s deficit exploded even as Red America balanced its budget, per the one new amendment it had added to the Constitution. But Red America’s budget was strained when the nation had to send its military to support Israel after the Jewish state came under massive attack for destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Blue America not only refused to assist, but refused to let Red forces use its bases or ports. The rumors that Red American pilots in B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters flew many of the original anti-nuke missions over Iran alongside the Israeli Air Force were never confirmed.
With its economy slowing to a standstill, and riots erupting in Chicago and Philadelphia, the liberal ruling elite found itself a convenient scapegoat for Blue America’s woes – its neighbor. “Red plants pollute our skies, Red corporations exploit the land, and Red bankers steal our wealth!” Vice President Warren charged. “We need to fight back against the Red wreckers!”
The middle class and job creators were abandoning Blue America for opportunities in Red America, and they were taking their money with them. Hundreds of billions of dollars flowed out of Blue America into its neighbor. Frustrated by Red America’s refusal to provide banking information on these “tax cheats” – or to allow Red tax officials to collect unpaid taxes deposited in Red banks – Blue America breached the Dissolution Pact by outlawing the free transit of people and currency into Red America.
Red America was hardly blind – it saw the trends long before Blue America would admit to itself that it was headed toward disaster. Red America expected the migration and had already ensured that Blue newcomers would not be allowed to vote into effect the same liberal policies they had abandoned by requiring all aspiring citizens to serve their military obligation before being allowed a ballot. Few did, and the “Heinlein Act” succeeded by ensuring that every voting Red American citizen had “skin in the game.”
When Blue America broke the Pact by securing the internal borders and barring its citizens’ exit, Red America acted – quietly. Within 24 hours, its forces were manning the border too, turning back every truck and train carrying food or fuel into Blue America. At the same time, |
Iran sending fighters to Syria?
Indirectly, yes. The foreign influx to Syria started on the Sunni side. Rebels, frustrated that Western countries wouldn't send them weapons, turned to jihadists for help, including al Qaida sympathizers from across the region — especially Iraq (see below). This spring, Hezbollah jumped into the conflict on the side of the regime, apparently on the direct orders of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "This battle is ours," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in May. There are now up to 4,000 skilled Hezbollah fighters, trained by Iran, battling rebel groups in Syria. The Sunni rebels have a new backer of their own: The Saudis are funding a militant leader in Syria with the aim of uniting the disparate Islamist militias under the banner of the Salafists, Sunni hard-liners.
What does that mean for the region?
Big trouble. In a broad sense, Saudi Arabia and Iran are competing for influence over the entire Middle East and are willing to fuel civil wars in pursuit of their goals. Many Sunni-ruled nations have large, restive Shiite populations, particularly Bahrain, Yemen, and Kuwait. Sunni rulers fear that these populations could become radicalized by the Syrian conflict and stage uprisings of their own. King Abdullah of Jordan, a Sunni, has warned of the danger of a "Shiite crescent" spreading across the Middle East. "The fires in Syria will blaze for some time to come," said Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to several countries in the region. "Like a major forest fire, the most we can do is hope to contain it."
Iraq on the brink
Two years after the U.S. pulled out of Iraq, the country is engulfed in violence and spiraling downward toward a full-on Shiite-Sunni civil war. The Shiite majority, which suffered brutal repression during the reign of Saddam Hussein, gained power after the U.S. invasion and occupation. But elections did not produce political stability or end the power struggle between Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. Prime Minister Nouri al-Malikihas sought to shore up his power by cracking down on the opposition and jailing Sunni leaders, deepening the Sunnis' sense of oppression. This year, Sunni resistance groups — some affiliated with al Qaida — have conducted a wave of bombings that have killed and injured hundreds of people virtually every week. More than 6,000 Iraqis have been killed in the last year, including 1,000 in September alone. The same Sunni jihadi factions are operating in both Syria and Iraq, moving back and forth across the border, and have formally merged into an organization they call the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group recently put out a video showing its fighters helping Syrian rebels capture an air base. "The spark has begun in Iraq, and the fire will grow, God willing," the narrator says.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 raised eyebrows and concerns this week when he publicly pressured the Department of Justice to investigate his former 2016 presidential rival 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 in what critics think looks like an effort to deflect attention from special counsel Robert Mueller's deepening probe into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Trump began calling for Clinton to be investigated and jailed for her use of a private email server as secretary of State in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign. But critics warn that he is abusing his power as president if he continues to do so.
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Trump's already critical rhetoric toward his own attorney general and Justice Department has increased since he took office. He has referred to the Justice Department as a "laughing stock" and a "joke." Much of his criticism seems to stem from his belief the department is not focusing its investigations.
Chants of "Lock her up" were welcomed by Trump and his surrogates during the campaign, and became a regular occurrence at his raucous rallies.
Here's a look back at some of the moments Trump supported calls for an investigation of Clinton.
Dec. 22, 2015
Then-Republican primary candidate Trump tweeted a picture of what appears to be one of his own supporters wearing a "Hillary for Prison" shirt.
Women defy media narrative, love Trump at packed Michigan rally.
VIDEO: https://t.co/yreUny7shA pic.twitter.com/dE9odwIRQi — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2015
June 2, 2016
As Trump was closing in on the GOP nomination, he intensified his attacks on Clinton, who also appeared poised to take the Democratic nomination.
Trump called for Clinton to be jailed during a campaign rally in San Jose, Calif., calling her "guilty as hell."
“Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. She has to go to jail. I said that,” he said.
Aug. 22, 2016
Trump called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Clinton foundation donors received special treatment while Clinton was secretary of State.
“The Justice Department is required to appoint a special prosecutor because it has proved to be, sadly, a political arm of the White House,” he said at a rally in Akron, Ohio. “Nobody has ever seen anything like it before.”
Trump's comments came after the Clinton Foundation announced that it would no longer be accepting foreign donations if Clinton was elected president.
Oct. 9, 2016
Trump publicly warned Clinton at a debate in St. Louis, Mo., that he would look into her private email server if elected president.
"If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. There has never been so many lies, deception — there has never been anything like it," Trump told Clinton.
"When I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people who have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious," he continued.
Clinton pushed back at Trump's characterization of the situation, saying, "It's good that somebody with the temperament of Donald Trump is not running this country."
Oct. 28, 2016
Trump reacted to then-FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress that said new emails pertaining to the probe into Clinton's emails had been discovered.
"I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made," Trump said, referring to Comey's previous announcement that charges would not be filed against Clinton.
"Hillary Clinton's corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office," Trump said.
Nov. 22, 2016
President-elect Trump appeared to walk back his previously aggressive rhetoric toward Clinton, saying that he did not feel as strongly about prosecuting her for the use of a private email server.
“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways," Trump told The New York Times.
"My inclination would be for whatever power I have on the matter is to say let's go forward. This has been looked at for so long, ad nauseam," he continued.
Trump quickly faced backlash from his supporters, most notably the conservative media site Breitbart.com, which ran a headline blasting Trump's "broken promise" to his base.
July 25, 2017
Trump was in the midst of launching a slew of attacks on his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE, when he lashed out at him for his weak position on Clinton.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
The president went on to rip then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe for not investigating Clinton.
Problem is that the acting head of the FBI & the person in charge of the Hillary investigation, Andrew McCabe, got $700,000 from H for wife! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
Sept. 22, 2017
Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Alabama that they would have to “speak to Jeff Sessions” after the crowd chanted “lock her up” in response to a reference to Clinton.
“You’ve got to speak to Jeff Sessions about that,” Trump said.
Nov. 2, 2017
Trump said that he hoped the Justice Department was investigating Clinton and that he was "frustrated" that he couldn't be involved in the process.
"Hopefully they are doing something," Trump said of the Justice Department probing Clinton during a radio interview with host Larry O'Connor on Washington's WMAL. "At some point maybe we're going to all have it out."
"The saddest thing is, because I'm the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved in the FBI. I'm not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing and I'm very frustrated by it," he continued.
Nov. 3, 2017
Trump doubled down on his call for the Justice Department to investigate Clinton and Democrats after former acting Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile said the party tipped the scales in Clinton's favor during last year's primary.
....People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
"I’m really not involved with the Justice Department. I’d like to let it run itself, but honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats," Trump told reporters outside of the White House.
“They should be looking at Podesta and all of that dishonesty, they should be looking at a lot of things, and a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me,” he said, referencing the former chair of Clinton's campaign.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
CLEVELAND-- The FOX 8 I TEAM has learned an 84-year-old driver has been charged with running a red light and killing a man on a bicycle.
It happened Tuesday night at Lake and Clifton in Cleveland.
The first charge has been filed against James Callahan, Jr.
Court records show a 36-year-old man rode a bike into the intersection with a green light.
Police say Callahan drove into the intersection with a red light.
The victim landed on the hood and windshield, and then was dragged.
Jacob Van Sickle, Executive Director of Bike Cleveland, says it’s part of a disturbing and dangerous trend on the road.
Distracted driving has been increasing, and so have bike accidents.
In Cleveland alone 144 people were injured last year and a total of 238 were hurt in Cuyahoga county.
“It certainly hits close to home,” said Van Sickle, “Our work is about insuring the streets are safe so people can get to where they want to go.”
Bike Cleveland is continuously promoting and encouraging safety, on their website, social media and by posting signs in yards.
However they say they can’t do it alone. They need motorists' help to save lives.
“We really urge motorists, when they get behind wheel to pay attention to what you’re doing, because there’s fathers, sons, daughters and mothers out there riding.”It is a happy day in family-friendly Elmhurst. School has adjourned for the summer and throngs of children can be found in City Centre — also known as Uptown. The kids are going to the movies at York Theater, stopping in Main Street Candy & Toys and playing in the Millennium Fountain.
But Elmhurst is not just for kids. There's plenty to do here, so it is best to start early.
Morning
NuCrepes (115 W. Schiller Court, 630-577-7558, NuCrepes.com) is a tasty choice for breakfast — or lunch or a snack. It is located in City Centre, a block from the train station in a downstairs venue. The wait staff is friendly and helpful explaining the offerings. The menu includes sweet, savory, and breakfast crepes.
I take a small bite of the Campfire crepe filled with marshmallows, chocolate, graham cracker, Biscoff and dark chocolate sauce. Now s'mores will never be the same for me, because this is really amazing.
I walk down York Street and wander through a group of tweens as I pass the Classic Cinemas York Theatre (150 N. York St., 630-834-0675, classiccinemas.com/).
There are quite a few boutiques in the area and they offer a nice selection of clothing, accessories and gifts. I browse a few locations, including redE Boutique (146 N. York St., 630-834-7333, redeboutique.myshopify.com/). The store carries stylish clothing and accessories. Nearby, Hazyl Boutique (106 W. 2nd St., 630-359-3833, hazylboutique.com) is another shop for clothing, accessories and gifts. Some of the offerings include soaps made with goat milk, bath bombs and scented candles.
The Uptown Shop (129 N. York St., 630-832-9200, uptownshop.com) also has a big selection of gifts including home accessories and greeting cards. The store will wrap your gift for you.
Main Street Candy & Toys (123 N. York St, 630-415-3195, mainstreetcandyandtoys.com) is a family-owned company based in Elmhurst. The store offers make-it and take-it classes as well as a variety of toys and candy.
Nancy Coltun Webster/Naperville Sun Mary Moy-Gregg, owner of OMG! Brunch and Boutique. Mary Moy-Gregg, owner of OMG! Brunch and Boutique. (Nancy Coltun Webster/Naperville Sun)
It is relaxing to walk through the downtown to window shop and wander in to a store to chat with the friendly retailers. Each one greeted me with a smile.
Afternoon
OMG! Brunch and Boutique (105 S. York Road, Suite A100, 630-501-0323, www.iluvomg.com) is a delightful spot to break for lunch. Owner Mary Moy-Gregg is on-site and sits with me to chat while l enjoy and devour my ample plate of French Toast topped with strawberries and an elegant dollop of fresh whipped cream.
Moy-Gregg, a longtime resident of Elmhurst, served in 1995 as the executive director of Elmhurst Art Museum (150 Cottage Hill Ave., 630-834-0202, elmhurstartmuseum.org/). In 2011, a year after her husband Richard passed away, Moy-Gregg said she was inspired to create a restaurant experience that would also reflect her philanthropic spirit and support of the arts. The walls of OMG! Brunch and Boutique are filled with original artwork for sale by local artists. There is a sister location OMG! Cafe, 390 W. Front St., Wheaton.
The weather is great today, so after brunch, I walk over to the Elmhurst History Museum (120 E. Park Ave., 630-833-1457, elmhursthistory.org). It is located just a block or so from City Centre and the train.
I open the door and I am greeted immediately by a group of men who are busy assembling the new exhibit "Disco Demolition: The Night Disco Died." The exhibit runs through Oct. 8.
"Many of the artifacts are from Steve Dahl's collection and from his fans as well," said Lance Tawzer, curator of exhibits.
Tawzer tells me one of the items in the exhibit is the Hamer electric guitar "made especially for Steve. He played it in the Teenage Radiation Band."
I ask if I can take a look at the guitar. My inner 16-year-old rock 'n roller is blown away as I remember cheering the cause of the Insane Coho Lips Anti-Disco Army.
Nancy Coltun Webster/Naperville Sun The lower level of the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art features a Rock and Mineral Experience with 26 exhibits. The lower level of the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art features a Rock and Mineral Experience with 26 exhibits. (Nancy Coltun Webster/Naperville Sun)
History buffs may also enjoy a quick stop at the Elmhurst Post Office (154 W. Park Ave., 630-833-5375, uspspostoffices.com/il/elmhurst/elmhurst) to view a George Melville mural. This mural is called "There Was a Vision," and it depicts the early history of Elmhurst. Commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Dept.'s Section of Fine Arts, the mural was hung in the post office in 1937.
I hop back in the car as I make my way to the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art (220 S. Cottage Hill Ave, 630-833-1616, lizzadromuseum.org). It is located in Wilder Park next door to Wilder Mansion and the Wilder Park Conservatory (225 Prospect Ave., 630-993-8900, www.epd.org/facilities/wilder-park-conservatory).
The lapidary museum was founded by Joseph Lizzadro, a local electrical contractor who collected, cut and polished stones. Later he began to collect jade, amber, ivory and other carvings and gemstones. The Lizzadro Museum has exhibits on two floors and a gift shop on the lower level.
The main level features beautiful jade carvings as well as an ivory Last Supper carved in Italy in the 19th century. There is a small hands-on exhibit rock hounds of all ages will appreciate. You can press a button and a map of Illinois lights up to show where certain types of rocks, gems or minerals are found.
The Wilder Conservatory is just steps away from the Museum and it is easy to take a walk through the outdoor gardens.
As I turn a corner and walk towards a tented area, I stumble on the last thing I expected to see in a conservatory — a literal pile of 13-year-old boys are lounging in the shade like giant puppies, with arms and legs tangled across each other's backs and bellies. Their bikes are laying askew in the grass nearby and they don't notice me as they chatter happily about school and video games.
The scene truly underscores the family-friendly setting of this town.
One of the nice local features is the free Elmhurst Express Trolley (elmhursthistory.org/193/Elmhurst-Express-Trolley). It runs from noon to midnight June 2 to Sept. 16 on Fridays and Saturdays. It stops at York and Park, York and Schiller, Second and Addison, Cottage Hill and Virginia, Spring and the Illinois Prairie Path and York and Vallette.
EveningPASSENGERS on flight MH17 may have been conscious for "more than a minute" after a Russian-made missile hit the jet, an official report has found.
GETTY INVESTIGATION: The Boeing 777 plane was brought down in July 2014
Ten Brits died in the disaster over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine last year. The report, published by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB), concluded the plane was shot down by a Russian-made Buk missile. The report said: "It cannot be ruled out that some occupants remained conscious for some time during the one to one–and–a–half minutes for which the crash lasted." Relatives had been told by the DSB in The Hague earlier that loved-ones would have died very soon after the missile hit the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight. The report comes as the European Union's aviation regulator issued a safety bulletin warning airlines to consider redirecting routes away from long-range Russian missiles in the Caspian Sea. A barrage of missiles have been fired in recent weeks towards Syria nearly 1,000 miles away.
GETTY DENIAL: Russia has always claimed it was not responsible for downing the passenger plane
First copies of #MH17 aviation report - hoping to share content soon #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ixKwqpwpGK — anna holligan (@annaholligan) October 13, 2015
Barry Sweeney, whose son Liam died in the crash, had said it was a relief that passengers probably did not suffer before the report was made available to the media. He told the BBC: "We can't be 100% certain but we think that this was the case. We have to think they didn't suffer". But it was later confirmed that passengers may have been alive for 90 seconds after the missile hit. A criminal report will be released next year which is likely to indicate who was to blame for the disaster which killed 298 people. Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told how Russia was upset its side of the story was not being heard. Mr Peskov said: "There are facts delivered by the Russia side that for unclear reasons are being apparently ignored. "[Russia has] repeatedly expressed its disappoinment over the lack of proper level of cooperation and engagement of the Russian experts into the investigation."
Part of the nose and business class sections have been rebuilt around a steel frame. A grim sight. #MH17 pic.twitter.com/DJ9EeHqDeH — Imelda Flattery (@Imeldaflattery) October 13, 2015
REUTERS PROBE: A Malaysian air crash investigator inspects the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Fligh...
REUTERS GRIEF: Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko (R) and Dutch ambassador to Ukraine Kees Klompen...In honor of Banned Books Week, the last week in September, I have created a couple of different quote pieces by different authors who have had their literary works placed on ban list from schools, colleges, universities, and public libraries.To start off with, here is perhaps the best known modern example of how far freedom of expression denouncers will go in attempting to silence dissension against a belief or idea! Salman Rushdie is best known (in the west) for his forth novel The Satanic Verses! You can click on that link to read more about it!In short, the novel resulted in multiple assassination attempts on Rushdie's life over the course of several decades, mainly through Iranian religious backing. They, namely the supreme leader or Iran, issued an order for Rushdie to be killed because of the novel. That order is still in place today, more than 20 years later...This quote fully symbolizes what freedom of expression truly is! With out the ability to offend, freedom of expression doesn't truly exist!CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Browns added a familiar name at quarterback this afternoon. Thad Lewis is returning. He played for the Browns during the 2011 and 2012 season and started the final game of the 2012 season in Pittsburgh.
Lewis joins Josh McCown, Johnny Manziel and Connor Shaw on the quarterback depth chart. McCown signed with the team last month. Manziel, meanwhile, is in rehab and Shaw spent much of 2014 on the practice squad before starting the team's final game in Baltimore.
Lewis played six games after leaving Cleveland, all for Buffalo. He completed 59% of his passes for 1,092 yards and threw four touchdown passes and three interceptions. All of his starts with the Bills came in 2013.
Fans immediately took to Twitter as the news started to leak out. Most weren't exactly thrilled with it and one person even pointed out that the Browns press release on the signing listed Lewis at 30 years old. He's 27, if you're scoring at home.
Check out the Storify below for reaction on the Lewis signing.He hasn't drummed for Iron Maiden since the early '80s, but Clive Burr is still in his former bandmates' thoughts. In fact, as bassist Steve Harris revealed during a recent interview, Burr has been the focus of some of Maiden's main fundraising efforts.
"We have been involved with stuff over the years," Harris shrugged when talking with Samaritan Mag about the band's charity work. A lot of people make a big publicity thing out of it and we don’t, so I’d rather not say, [but] one of the things I can talk about because we started it off is our old drummer."
Explained Harris, "Clive has MS [multiple sclerosis], so we started The Clive Burr Trust. Another friend of mine also has got it. He’s in a wheelchair. We went to school with him, my oldest friend since I was five years old, so we helped him, but we don’t normally talk too much about it."
Aside from the Clive Burr Trust, which the band established in 2002, Burr has helped fund research and medical costs via Clive Aid, a concert series he's helped oversee since 2004.
"The fans know about it and they contribute to it, and every now and again we’ll do a show and just donate all the money," Harris said of the Trust. "When we need to top it up, we do something."
As Samaritan Mag explains in the article, Burr has benefited greatly from the fund, receiving money that's helped him keep his house, travel for treatment, and pay for specialized equipment that allows him to remain mobile despite the effects of his disease -- and other acquaintances of the band who have MS, such as the longtime friend Harris referenced at the start of the interview, have also received help.
"Some of them get [MS] very mildly," explained Harris, "but unfortunately the friend I was talking about has it really really bad. He’s in a wheelchair for a long time, and Clive is getting worse."
Watch Iron Maiden Perform 'Run to the Hills'HOUSTON -- Reliever Matt Bush threw the single-fastest pitch of the Rangers season Monday.
That's not necessarily a good thing.
Pitching coach Doug Brocail said he talked with Bush after he blew a 101.24 mph fastball past George Springer to end the seventh inning about dialing back his velocity just a notch. Bush threw four pitches at or above 100 mph in the at-bat, three of them for balls before executing one down in the strike zone. Bush is the only Rangers pitcher to hit 100 mph this season.
"I don't really like to see 100 or 101," Brocail. "It's nice to know he's got it, but I don't think that's where he is at his best. The most important things is the extension and the angle on the delivery, not the radar gun."
Said Bush: "I definitely wanted to go with my best fastball. I've gotten him a few times with my velocity and I'm not going to back down in that situation."
Briefly: RHP Tony Barnette, who has not pitched since Sept. 4 due to a strained oblique muscle, threw on flat ground for the second straight day Tuesday. He said he felt progress, but there is still no definitive timetable for when he will return.... RHP Yu Darvish said he's been toying around with throwing a split-finger fastball again, but pitching coach Doug Brocail said he has discouraged the use of it for this year.... RHP Tanner Scheppers' save Monday pushed the club's total to 51, one shy of the franchise record set in 2004.
Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant“If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone... There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it.”
Regular New York Times readers may recognize this passage, with its gee-whiz enthusiasm for unbridled “individual aspiration and persistence,” as the product of flat-world enthusiast Thomas Friedman. This particular column, from April, starts with Friedman’s admonition that, “we now live in a 401(k) world... where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.”
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It’s easy (and fun!) to mock Friedman for his bizarre mixed metaphors, his apparent reliance on the taxi drivers of the world for insights into foreign relations and, yes, his silly, silly mustache. But his vision of the U.S. economy is authentically frightening because at bottom it reflects conventional wisdom that’s accepted uncritically by many of the nation’s agenda-setting pundits and politicians.
The central premise of much of Friedman’s writing is that technological forces beyond our control have created a world where we all have to work harder, learn more and be more creative, but if we do, we can achieve things unimaginable to previous generations. That’s a pretty attractive thought, particularly for anyone who hasn’t had to work too hard to achieve things so far. For a lot of working-class people, though, the Friedman worldview represents a fun-house mirror version of a much more depressing daily reality.
Like Friedman, Karl Tiedemann, who lives down the street from me in Nashua, N.H., sees the next generation inheriting a very different economy from the one he grew up in. He sees it up close. He and his wife now have three of their kids and two other 20-somethings living with them because they don’t have the money to get their own places.
Karl moved out of his parents’ house at 17. For a while, he painted houses. Sometimes he’d get in an argument with a boss at a worksite and just walk away.
“Back then, I used to go job to job,” he said. “I would quit and I’d have a job the same day, or the next morning.”
Then, in 1988, when he was 22, he got a job in the maintenance department at St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua. At first, he said, he didn’t know much about the hospital’s mechanical systems, but he learned on the job and took classes. Today, he tests emergency systems, works with contractors and sits in on meetings with higher-ups to talk about the physical plant.
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“I have a boss but he leaves me alone,” he said. “I know what I need to get done.”
Friedman says that today everyone needs to “find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.” Karl said that’s a fair way to describe what’s expected of new hires in his department. On the rare occasions that someone leaves one of the coveted jobs, he said, “They’re looking for people that are more qualified than what they need for that job.”
Karl’s job has paid enough for his wife to be a stay-at-home mom, and to support his three stepkids and his biological daughter. But when the kids left home in their late teens, their story was different. Over the years that followed, several of them, along with their own children and significant others, ended up moving back in with Karl and his wife. At one point, they had eight adults and three kids packed into a three-bedroom apartment with one bathroom.
These days, Karl owns a six-bedroom house on a tiny dead-end street that he and his brother renovated from a duplex to a single unit. Some of the young people have moved out, but others have moved in. He has two daughters, a son, a grandson, a young woman who’s a close family friend and her boyfriend and daughter living in the house with him and his wife. On most summer afternoons, some of the group gather outside the front door, along with various friends and family members who stop by. On chairs arranged on the tiny front porch and in the narrow street in front of it, they chat, smoke and tease each other mercilessly.
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One recent afternoon, one of the young women living in the house told Karl he wouldn’t know what to do once all his temporary housemates move out. “I’m going to remove bedrooms so you can’t come back,” he answered with a grin.
Karl does worry they’ll keep coming back, because, for the most part, the work young people in his family have found is low-paid service-sector jobs. And here’s where Karl’s view of the world really diverges from Friedman’s. The columnist basically defines these jobs out of existence.
“There is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation,” Friedman writes. “Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever.”
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It’s a subtle sleight of-hand that draws on things we all know — lots of decent working-class jobs have left the country or been automated out of existence. The twist is that he acts like this is true of all low- to middle-skilled jobs. Factories are increasingly automated, iPhones are made in China, a table-side console could replace waiters, and, voilà, the only work remaining in the country is being a super-innovative techie of some sort.
This is not an oversight. Friedman doesn’t ignore low-wage jobs just because they’re beneath his notice. Pretending that they simply don’t exist is the product of a worldview that treats corporate decisions, and government support for corporate needs, as a fact of nature: Decent jobs that demand little formal training haven’t been transformed into bad jobs by the erosion of the minimum wage, the decline of unions and the upward redistribution of companies’ budgets. They’ve simply disappeared in a puff of technology.
In reality, of course, there are lots of low- and middle-skilled jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, four of the five projected fastest-growing jobs between 2010 and 2020 — retail salespersons, home health aides, personal care aides and general office clerks — don’t demand a college degree. (Friedman might be surprised to hear that the exception is not high-tech start-up founders but registered nurses.)
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These kinds of jobs — varied, hands-on work dealing with live human customers — are probably some of the things advanced technology is least equipped to deal with. But the typical annual wages for those four fast-growing jobs are all below $27,000. Three of them pay less than $21,000.
As Karl and his family could tell you, that’s not enough.
Sarahann Gorham moved into Karl’s place in April with her boyfriend and 4-year-old daughter. She said living there has been a “kind of grace period” for the family. She’s grateful to Karl, whom she thinks of as an uncle although they aren’t blood relatives, for taking them in, giving them a room with low rent where they’ve been able to save some money.
Sarahann’s work history is the polar opposite of Friedman’s vision of the economy in some ways: low-tech work running cash registers, cleaning hotel rooms and moving furniture, among other things. She started working at 16, taking shifts at the Dollar Tree for as much as 20 hours a week after school and on the weekends.
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At 28, Sarahann has had at least nine jobs (more on her story can be read here). That’s the part that fits with Friedman’s narrative — a world where no one can count on a long-term relationship with an employer. In fact, one of Sarahann’s favorite jobs was the sort of thing he delights in describing, a call center that took drive-through customers’ orders from Wendy’s restaurants all over the country. Having never had a chance to travel, she liked hearing customers’ different accents.
“It almost made you feel like you were there,” she said.
She said she liked her co-workers too. “I would probably still be there, but they ended up packing up and moving to Delaware,” she said. “We come in one day, and they said at the end of the week you can find new employment or move with us.”
That job notwithstanding, most of the time Sarahann hasn’t left her jobs because they went offshore or were taken by robots. She has never been paid enough to afford a car, so whenever she’s moved she’s had to find a job she can walk or take a bus to. She left one position, as a housekeeper at a Holiday Inn, when she was eight and a half months pregnant and the walking, bus riding and physical work got to be too much.
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In any case, for workers like Sarahann, staying in a job long-term isn’t a particularly good strategy for getting by. “You could be in customer service your whole life, but you’re still going to make the minimum,” she said.
“Finding your extra” and being self-motivated look a lot different to Sarahann than to Friedman. The best way she’s found to differentiate herself is working night shifts. By skipping sleep, she’s sometimes been able to make $13 an hour instead of $7.25. Other kinds of advancement have been elusive. Getting to a management position at the jobs she’s held means a supervisor has to leave, and that doesn’t happen often.
“It kind of makes you feel crappy, especially if you try to put in 110 percent and it goes unnoticed,” she said.
Today, Sarahann is receiving disability benefits after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. She’s glad she worked for so many years, and paid into the Social Security system so she can get the benefits now, but she thinks the night shifts and the instability created by not having enough money exacerbated her mental illness.
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The stories of other people in Karl’s house echo Sarahann’s experiences. Karl’s daughter, Ashleigh Tiedemann, is 23 and has a 3-year-old son. Last year, she was working three jobs: 40 hours a week at Home Depot, 20 at Honey Baked Ham, “and then whatever I could pick up at Shaws,” she said
Many days she worked from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., didn’t sleep much, and saw her son even less. Eventually, she reduced her schedule to just working the full-time job at Home Depot. At a starting rate of $9.30 an hour, it paid better than either of the others.
Like her father, she made a point of learning |
the way they operate……the teachers give kids classroom assignments and threaten F’s if they don’t do them?
I now, don’t believe it was an innocent school assignment, it most probably was a Federal Government controlled assignment for the kids.
I would like to know, has anyone else in the country have had their kids have the same assignment?
I am in East Tennessee (Knoxville), I am revealing this due to people wondering where, but I will not give the school name that is giving too personal information.
Here is a post from last year and CPS investigating me/ interviewing my kid about how much food we had, our going camping and about me being a blogger.
http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-daughers-social-studies-assignment.htmlThere’s been plenty of debate over Tom’s latest editorials—see here and here—centered on why it’s problematic to vilify smut and its (mostly male) consumers. I’ve been very publicly on board with this argument: I have very few problems with peddling fantasy*, and I don’t believe my shallow amusements (i.e., boobs on a page) reveal deep-seated misogyny or a lack of self-respect.
Men aren’t slaves to images of skin. We know the difference between what’s on the computer screen (or the Photoshopped page) and who’s in our bed. Adults who indulge in mindless self-pleasure (read: everyone) aren’t being made stupider; they know damn well what they’re doing. Case in point: the commenter who admitted he can project on Katy Perry whatever he wants her to be, and he likes it that way. Fantasy, by definition.
Even on YouPorn, there’s a certain integrity in its garish, unapologetically tasteless onslaught of ass. It’s a detour away from the civilized world—exactly as it should be. It’s no insult to men’s intelligence to let us compartmentalize our lives into sex and not sex. We know that fantasy is exactly that: fantasy.
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So I’m begging, please, Esquire, stop pretending like it’s not.
No masturbator will argue that his onanism is an intellectual pursuit, a lofty aspiration. No one will seriously say that the Women We Love—none of whom we’ll ever know or love like our partners—are anything but Women We’d Love to Bang.
No one except Esquire. Actually, that’s exactly the lie it’s feeding us: that our shallowest fantasies define our entire character. Only in the lad-mag universe does a guy’s momentary vision of a woman riding a giant banana embody Man at His Best. What’s more, only here is this brand of heteronormative, prepackaged sexuality presented as the only kind.
In a world where the end-all-be-all of the male experience is laying pipe, men, reduced to walking hard-ons, are as disposable as the mags. But we know we’re more than that. We know that men who turn down sex, men who take submissive roles in bed, and men who focus on their partner’s pleasure in addition to (or instead of) their own aren’t wusses or manginas. We know that male victims of sexual abuse are, yes, victims, and saying “man up” isn’t sufficient help.
But sometimes we forget, because in all of the messages men are barraged with, not one of these instincts is confirmed.
*Via Andrew Ladd, here’s a longer discussion about coercion, exploitation, abuse, and ambiguous consent.
—Photo via Images.com
[MORE STORIES FROM OUR BLOG]Junko Tabei (田部井 淳子, Tabei Junko, 22 September 1939 – 20 October 2016)[1] was a Japanese mountaineer. She was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits by climbing the highest peak on every continent.[2][3][4]
Early life [ edit ]
Shitei was born in Miharu, Fukushima, the fifth daughter in a family of seven children.[5][6] She was considered a frail, weak child, but nevertheless she began mountain climbing at the age of 10, going on a class climbing trip to Mount Nasu.[5][7] Although she was interested in doing more climbing, her family did not have enough money for such an expensive hobby, and Tabei made only a few climbs during her high school years.[6]
Adult life [ edit ]
Junko Tabei on Communism Peak in 1985 together with two other Japanese and four Estonian mountaineers. Photo by Jaan Künnap
From 1958 to 1962, Tabei studied English literature and education at Showa Women's University, where she was a member of the mountain climbing club.[6] After graduating, Tabei formed the Ladies Climbing Club: Japan (LCC) in 1969. The club's slogan was "Let's go on an overseas expedition by ourselves", and was the first of its kind in Japan.
Tabei later stated that she founded the club as a result of how she was treated by male mountaineers of the time; some men, for example, refused to climb with her, while others thought she was only interested in climbing as a way to find a husband.[6][7]
During this time, she climbed mountains such as Mount Fuji in Japan and the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps. By 1972, Tabei was a recognized mountain climber in Japan.[citation needed]
1975 Everest expedition [ edit ]
Tabei's LCC contained a team known as the Japanese Women's Everest Expedition (JWEE), headed by Eiko Hisano, that would attempt to summit Mount Everest. JWEE contained 15 members, mostly working women, including teachers, a computer programmer and a juvenile counselor. Two of them, including Tabei, were mothers.[8] After Tabei and Hiroko Hirakawa successfully summited Annapurna III on 19 May 1970,[9] LCC decided to tackle Mount Everest.
Tabei helped to find sponsors for the expedition, although she was frequently told that the women "should be raising children instead."[7] She was able to obtain last-minute funding from the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and Nippon Television, however all the group members still had to pay an amount that was almost equal to Japan’s average salary. To save money, they would use recycled car seats to sew up waterproof pouches and over-gloves. They also purchased goose feather from China and made their own sleeping bags. Students at school collected unused packets of jam for their teachers.[10]
After a long training period, the team began the expedition early in 1975 when they traveled to Kathmandu. They used the same route to ascend the mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had taken in 1953.[11] In early May, the group was camping at 6,300 meters when an avalanche struck their camp. The women and their guides were buried under the snow. Tabei lost consciousness for approximately six minutes until her sherpa guide dug her out. Twelve days after the avalanche, on 16 May 1975, with her sherpa guide, Ang Tsering, Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest.[11][3]
As a result of her achievement, Tabei was showered with attention: she received messages from the King of Nepal and the Japanese government, a television miniseries was made about the expedition and she toured Japan making personal appearances. However, Tabei was uncomfortable with this level of fame.[6]
Later activities [ edit ]
In the 1990–91 season, Tabei reached the summit of Mount Vinson, Antarctica's highest mountain.[12] On 28 June 1992, she summited Puncak Jaya and thus became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits.[2][4]
In addition to her climbing, Tabei worked on ecological concerns; in 2000, she completed postgraduate studies at Kyushu University focusing on the environmental degradation of Everest caused by the waste left behind by climbing groups.[5] Tabei was also the director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, an organization working at a global level to preserve mountain environments.[3] One of the trust's projects was to build an incinerator to burn climbers' rubbish. She also led and participated in "clean-up" climbs in Japan and the Himalayas.[6]
Personal life [ edit ]
Tabei was married to Masanobu Tabei, a climber she met while climbing in Japan in 1965. The couple had two children: a daughter, Noriko, and a son, Shinya.[6]
Tabei was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, however she continued with many of her mountaineering activities. She died in a hospital in Kawagoe on 20 October 2016.[7]
See also [ edit ]Classical conditioning of sexual arousal has previously been demonstrated in human males but not in females. This study explored the role of classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in the activation of genital sexual arousal in both women and men, and assessed the effects of varying conditioned stimulus (CS) duration (subliminal/conscious) and relevance (sexually relevant/irrelevant). Twenty-seven female and 29 male participants received either subliminal or conscious presentations of a photograph of either a sexually relevant (abdomen of the opposite sex) or irrelevant (gun) CS+, which was followed by the unconditioned stimulus (US-erotic film clip). A CS-, a stimulus not paired with the US, was also included in the 11 conditioning trials. Ten participants were assigned to a control group that received unpaired presentations of the CS+, CS-, and the US. Both women and men showed more evidence of conditioning to the abdomen than to the gun when the CS was presented subliminally. When consciously perceived CSs were used, however, gender differences emerged. Men again showed the expected cue-to-consequence specificity but women showed the opposite effect, that is, conditioned arousal to the sexually irrelevant rather than to the relevant CS. The latter finding may be due to increased autonomic nervous system arousal associated with the irrelevant CS (gun). Skin conductance responses indicated more general arousal to the gun than to the male abdomen in women. This is the first study to compare the effects of a subliminal and conscious CS and to find classical conditioning of sexual arousal in women.Description
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View More InformationLate-night host Stephen Colbert says former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) did not ask permission to raffle off a ticket to the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in order to fundraise for his presidential campaign.
“I think the contest is a great idea, but here’s the thing: No one from Jeb’s campaign asked me if this was OK with me to raise money off of my first show,” Colbert said in a three-minute video released Wednesday.
In Bush's raffle, first reported by The Hill, supporters can donate $3 on the campaign’s website for a chance to win a VIP ticket to watch the Sept. 8 premiere of Colbert's talk show in New York.
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“Where’s my cut of that sweet three bucks, governor, huh?” Colbert continued. “Where’s this stuff? House always gets its beak wet.”
He also quipped: “And if you can’t afford $3, you’re probably not voting for Jeb Bush.”
The Bush campaign denied they had not obtained permission to raffle the ticket.
"Yes, we did receive permission from the show," Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said. "We think Stephen's piece is hilarious. It's a comedy show, folks!"
Colbert also ridiculed Bush’s offer to include in the raffle a dinner with New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, the Bush campaign’s national finance co-chairman.
“That’s right, national finance co-chair Woody Johnson,” Colbert said. “Not West Coast fundraising coordinator Stiffy Longshvauns or deputy media strategist Turgid D. Tallywacker — the real deal, Wall Street billionaire and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson.”
“Smart move by Jeb to associate his campaign with the winning tradition of the New York Jets,” he joked.
The former “Colbert Report” host said he would also give away a free ticket to the first show in his own “Jeb Bush on the ‘Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ Raffle.”
“The lucky winner will also be invited to the premiere of the 'Late Show,’ ” Colbert said. “Plus, they will get to submit one non-obscene question that I will ask governor Bush on their behalf. For example, one question might be: Don’t you wish you’d consulted Stephen before launching your contest?”
“I might even throw in a dinner with the 'Late Show's' lead production accountant, Jason Blache,” he continued.
Colbert said his contest costs $3 to enter and proceeds will go to the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which helps injured service members and their families.
--Updated at 7:23 p.m.Have you ever gone into a new job you worked so hard to get and were excited about starting, only to be told on the first day that you were not qualified and had to leave? Well, I have. That's what happened to me when I anticipated ten challenging and character-building months of service in AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corp (NCCC) program in the South. I was highly qualified for the position, passed every test and was fully cleared, only to be sent home because of something I already disclosed to them: I have Asperger's Syndrome.
The first time I remember feeling comfortable with being open about living with Asperger's Syndrome happened at Clark University. Two women friends were telling me about how Clark's production of the Vagina Monologues allowed men to submit 'Man-ologues,' in which three men submitted self-written pieces about their experiences with gender and sexuality. Interested, I submitted a monologue about living with Asperger's and how it affects my relationships with women. It went really well when read to the cast, and subsequently during the shows. It also gave me a chance to talk about my Asperger's with the Clark community; the monologue was the only way I could think of to come out to people about it at the time.
Later in the year, while studying abroad at the University of Stirling in Scotland, I joined Air3 Radio as the host of a show titled This Aspergian Life. I talked about the autism spectrum, with subjects ranging from interviewing a student about her autistic brother, to talking about autism signs and management, to discussing the 2007 Lincoln-Sudbury stabbing, in which an autistic student fatally stabbed a high-school classmate in the suburbs of Boston. A major portion of show consisted of reading John Elder Robison's memoir Look Me In The Eye, about growing up when the diagnosis did not exist, on the air. I also dedicated an entire episode to Asperger's in women, an underreported topic. I went on to take the subject of that last show as the subject of another successful man-ologue when I returned to Clark. Being able to be open about my Asperger's comfortably was the best thing for me about study abroad—it was one of the first times I could recall people asking me questions about Asperger's and recognizing it in me without being judgmental, simply curious.
After graduating from Clark, I had a couple great internships with the successful Senate campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey. Next, based on the experience of a friend, my family and I decided AmeriCorps NCCC would be a great opportunity to do something good and obtain fundamental skills for the future. I applied and waited for months to hear, and finally got accepted into AmeriCorps NCCC to serve for ten months in the Southern Region, headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi. AmeriCorps isn't as widely known across the United States as perhaps it should be, but for those that have served, they usually say it's one of the best experiences they ever had. I figured it would be a great opportunity to learn important leadership skills and abilities in an open-minded environment, and from there, I would be able to obtain a job in something that I felt passionate about.
Then came the call before Christmas. A woman from the AmeriCorps Southern Region counseling office said she wanted to talk to me about my Asperger's, based on what I wrote down in my medical forms. However, rather than telling me what she was concerned about regarding my diagnosis over the phone, she wanted to discuss it when I got to Mississippi, which was two months down the road. I was initially worried, but did not take it too seriously. I figured she just wanted to ask what accommodations would need to be made for me.
When I finally got there, I met with the counseling services only to be told that the NCCC program was not the right fit for me. They kept telling me they were worried I would have some sort of mental breakdown during a rural project, as well as their concern about the apparent lack of structure, despite it only being the first day, where more structure was likely to develop from there. One of the superior officers went so far as to compare my situation to that of her son's seizures; initially thinking NCCC would be a good fit for him before she decided no. They said they wanted to me to go home and apply to AmeriCorps VISTA and State/National programs 'closer to home,' claiming that they would help me look into such programs—whatever that means. Even though I made it clear I did not want to go home, within 24 hours of arriving in Vicksburg, I found myself being driven back to the Jackson airport, sobbing and wondering if I'd failed my family and friends by missing out on such a great opportunity.
Since then, I have felt betrayed by AmeriCorps and their combination of discrimination and incompetence that I had to be flown there, just to be told I could not serve, only to be shipped back home. That was when I knew how severe and overlooked disability discrimination really is—so severe that it can exist within an organization that prides itself in helping others. While I have been held back before because of my Asperger's, I'd never experienced discrimination on that level back home.
Disability discrimination is not exclusive to a state like Mississippi. Anyone in Massachusetts who remembers the Lincoln-Sudbury stabbing should know that perpetrator John Odgren received poor disability services, and was transferred from school to school in his youth. But I thought the purpose of AmeriCorps was to help those communities and those people most neglected by larger society and to "make our people safer, smarter and healthier," not to exclude those who want to help out or to consider them a potential threat to AmeriCorps' reputation. While it may not magically happen overnight, we need to have a serious widespread discussion about disability discrimination, especially when it come to those with developmental disabilities. We need to better address the dismal 34% rate of developmentally disabled adults who are employed, largely in minimum wages jobs. We need to work to empower the developmentally disabled, whether in trying to find full-time work, or trying to serve their country via AmeriCorps.Once again, Bellator title shots are being questioned.
Rafael Silva, who was forced to withdraw from a bantamweight bout with Bellator champion Eduardo Dantas on March 7 with an injury, will have to wait a little longer as Joe Warren is set to get the next shot at the gold against Dantas, likely on May 2.
Silva, who won a tournament a month before Warren, already expected the decision. He won't criticize them like Patricio "Pitbull" Freire, though.
"They announced that Warren would fight me or Eduardo on May 2, so I wasn’t surprised when they said he’s fight for the title before," Silva told MMAFighting.com. "It’s complicated. I can’t do much about it. I’m back to training, but I have to wait a little longer to fight again. It’s complicated, but not surprising."
"I’d be ready to fight (Dantas) on May 2, for sure," he continued. "I got injured in January and couldn’t train for five or six weeks, but I’m back to training now and would be 100 percent to fight on May 2. It is what it is."
"Morcego" will now wait and fight the winner of Dantas vs. Warren, and he’s not worried about ring rust.
"It took me a year to fight in Bellator after I signed the first contract," he said. "I don’t know why I had to wait for so long, but it wasn’t a problem. After I first fought, I kept winning and won the tournament. Now I have to wait again, but it won’t be a problem. I’ll have to wait for seven or eight months, but it won’t be a problem."
Riding a 13-fight win streak, including victories over Anthony Leone and Rodrigo Lima under the Bellator banner, Silva is confident that he has what it takes to beat Dantas or Warren, and he’s not sure that his countrymen will retain the title at Bellator 118.
"I’m better technically now, and I’m way better psychologically," Silva said. "I’ll be ready for everything. I’ll do my job and I’ll get the title no matter who’s the champion.
"Leone won the first round (against Dantas) and the second was pretty close, but he made a mistake and gave him the neck," he continued. "I believe Warren will use the same strategy. It’s a tough fight. One punch can end the fight, one mistake and you’re out. I thought Leone would be an easier fight for Eduardo, but he surprised me. I guess Warren will fight the same fight."MADRID (MarketWatch) -- Russian troops sent on surprise military exercises in western and central Russia have been ordered to return to their bases, according to media reports Tuesday. The news triggered a sharp rise in U.S. stock futures and pushed gold and oil prices lower, a reversal of the prior day's action after a weekend of the Russia/Ukraine crisis intensifying. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the return after a Defense Ministry report said the exercises had been a success, the BBC said. The Wall Street Journal, citing Russia news agency Interfax, said those troops will return by March 7. The drills began last Wednesday and some of them were near the Ukraine border, which triggered some concerns among international watchers that Russian was building up for a massive incursion. There was no news, though, about Russian troops that are currently occupying a large part of Crimea. Russian's blue-chip MICEX index, which lost 11% on Monday, was up over 2% early Tuesday.
Have breaking news sent to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Bulletin emails. Sign up here.Few people had heard of Newtown in Connecticut before Friday.
It was an unremarkable place. A comfortable commuter town for New York and for the bigger towns in the state. Now it is the broken heart of America.
It takes its place in a roll call of hurt, anger and loss the latest in a line where places become events, which touch a nation such as Clackamas and Oak Creek, Fort Hood and Tucson, Virginia Tech and Brookfield and Meridian and Aurora.
And it is the spark again for debates on gun control in a country where guns are part of the heritage, history and culture.
Within hours of the shooting of 20 children, the right wing websites were ridiculing those who wanted, if not changes, then at least a discussion on gun control. One writer on Breitbart.com accused 'leftists' of the 'ghoulish use of an unthinkable tragedy to push a nonsensical agenda that would ensure only criminals possess guns'.
And continued 'The subtext of those gun control calls were in reality a grotesque brag – a nanny-nanny-boo-boo, toldja so celebration around a pile of fresh bodies'.
Legally held weapons
Many of America's mass shootings have been carried out by those who had access to legally held weapons. It happened in Connecticut where the killer shot his mother dead and then with her guns, drove the short distance to murder 20 children and six adults. The argument often pushed is that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'. But access is an issue and the danger rises exponentially with a greater number of weapons in circulation.
In the hours of the tragedy, the White House insisted this was not the day to discuss dealing with America's gun laws. Yet a clearly emotional Barack Obama spoke a short time after the statement, fighting back the tears, he insisted there would have to be movement on guns and politics would have to be pushed aside.
Ironically, Obama stood in the Brady Press room to make his statement, a place named after Ronald Reagan's press spokesman, James Brady, seriously wounded in the failed assassination attempt against his boss.
A campaign set up in his name now actively works to reduce gun violence. This is what they wrote about President Obama after his first year in office, and after he campaigned on doing something about gun laws: "Obama's first-year record on gun violence prevention has been an abject failure. In just one year, Barack Obama has signed into law more repeals of federal gun policies than in President George W. Bush's eight years in office”. They gave him an F rating – for fail.
If there are to be changes, it must come from the top. With no more elections to fight and a swell of public support, Barack Obama has promised to shake off his natural caution and begin the debate.
He will face resistance from gun owners who will cry it is an affront to their rights, and restriction of their liberty. The National Rifle Association is regarded as a powerful lobby in US politics. It endorses and raises money for politicians who promise not just to leave gun laws alone, but will actively campaign to make them even less restrictive.
It has four million members, and an overwhelmingly positive view among the public. And that perhaps explains why few politicians are willing to make it an enemy.
Banning assault rifles
The Democrats remember they passed the ban on assault rifles in 1993 and paid the price with electoral defeat – organised in large part by gun owners and the NRA – in the midterm elections the following year.
However, the NRA's political arm spent $100,000 or more in each of at least seven races for the US Senate this time around, but its chosen candidates won in only one.
The Columbine shooting in the US in 1999, where 12 students and one teacher was killed was thought to be a watershed moment in the US. Yet since that attack there have been 31 similar incidents in the US. In every other country of the world combined, there have been 14.
Flags are flying at half-staff in memory of lives lost, of families torn apart. This is a country that knows how to mourn tragedies like this.
There are commentators who suggest the murder of 20 six- and seven-year-olds may be a tipping point. There have been many tipping points here. But this feels different – as if the anger and rage and the sadness and the sorrow will not be tucked away.
If America is not ready for this conversation now, it never will be.The Christmas Bible Readings website is dedicated to helping families in the celebration of the Christmas season.
The time before Christmas is Advent, a season of preparation for Christmas. Christians prepare for celebrating the birth of Jesus by remembering the longing of the Jews for a Messiah.
In Advent, we’re reminded of how much we ourselves also need a Savior, and we look forward to our Savior’s second coming even as we prepare to celebrate his first coming at Christmas.
The word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means coming or visit. In the season of this name, we keep in mind both “advents” of Christ, the first in Bethlehem and the second yet to come.
How to Celebrate Advent
Advent begins the Fourth Sunday before Christmas and culminates on Christmas. During this time, many churches display a wreath of evergreens and candles, lighting the appropriate candles while reading Scripture each Sunday and on Christmas.
But, the Advent season is also an excellent time to make a particular effort to remember Christ individually or as a family. This site is meant to facilitate that by posting daily Bible readings that will take you from readings in the book of Genesis, the beginning, through the birth of Jesus and prophesies of His coming return and our time with Him eternally.Immune cells are usually described as soldiers fighting invading viruses and bacteria. But they may also be waging another battle: the war against fat. When mice lack a specific type of immune cell, researchers have discovered, they become obese and show signs of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. The findings have yet to be replicated in humans, but they are already helping scientists understand the triggers of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions associated with obesity.
The new study “definitely moves the field forward,” says immunologist Vishwa Deep Dixit of the Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved in the work. “The data seem really solid.”
Scientists already know that there is a correlation between inflammation—a heightened immune response—and obesity. But because fat cells themselves can produce inflammatory molecules, distinguishing whether the inflammation causes weight gain or is just a side effect has been tricky.
When he stumbled on this new cellular link between obesity and the immune system, immunologist Yair Reisner of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was studying something completely different: autoimmune diseases. An immune molecule called perforin had already been shown to kill diseased cells by boring a hole in their outer membrane. Reisner’s group suspected that dendritic cells containing perforin might also be destroying the body’s own cells in some autoimmune diseases. To test the idea, Reisner and his colleagues engineered mice to lack perforin-wielding dendritic cells, and then waited to see whether they developed any autoimmune conditions.
“We were looking for conventional autoimmune diseases,” Reisner says. “Quite surprisingly, we found that the mice gained weight and developed metabolic syndrome.”
Mice lacking the dendritic cells with perforin had high levels of cholesterol, early signs of insulin resistance, and molecular markers in their bloodstreams associated with heart disease and high blood pressure. And a look at the immune systems of the mice revealed that they also had a different balance of T cells—a type of white blood cell that directs immune responses—than normal, Reisner and his colleagues report online today in Immunity. When the researchers removed these T cells from the mice, however, the lack of the dendritic cells no longer caused the animals to become obese or develop metabolic syndrome.
The results, Reisner says, suggest that the normal role of the perforin-positive dendritic cells is to keep certain populations of T cells under control. Just as perforin acts to kill cells infected with viruses, it can be directed to kill subsets of unnecessary T cells, he thinks. When the brakes are taken off those T cells, they cause inflammation in fat cells, which leads to altered metabolism and weight gain.
“We are now working in human cells to see if there is something similar going on there,” Reisner says. “I think this is the beginning of a new focus on a new regulatory cell.” If the results hold true in humans, he says, he could point toward a way to use the immune system to treat obesity and metabolic disease.
Daniel Winer, an endocrine pathologist at the University of Toronto in Canada and the lead author of a January Diabetes paper linking perforin to insulin resistance, says the new results overlap with his study. His group had found that mice lacking perforin—throughout their whole immune system, not just in dendritic cells—and fed a high-fat diet developed the early stages of diabetes. The new paper builds on that by homing in on perforin-positive dendritic cells and showing the link even in the absence of a high-fat diet. “It provides further evidence that the immune system has an important role in the regulation of both obesity and insulin resistance.”
Even if the results hold true in humans, however, the research is still far from leading to treatments for obesity or metabolic disease, Dixit says. “Talking about therapeutics at this point would be a bit of a stretch.” After all, injecting perforin into the body could kill cells beyond the T cell ones promoting obesity, he points out. Moreover, we can’t live without any T cells at all—they are vital for immunity against disease. But research on what the T cells are recognizing when they seek out fat cells and cause inflammation in fat tissue could eventually reveal drug targets.Additional Cast for Robot Girls Z Published by on
The production company for the upcoming January anime Robot Girls Z has revealed two additional voice actresses joining their slate of characters. Maaya Uchida and Minami Tsuda enters the cast of this Toei Animation and Dynamic Planning project.
Maaya Uchida plays the 14-year old Ge-chan, which is referenced to Go Nagai’s popular robot franchise Getter Robo. Ge-chan is spoiled and blunt, but she possesses a ton of firepower. Unfortunately, this pretty girl is a bit capricious, and soaks in extravagant praising in order to bring out her fullest potential. Ge-chan works out her Getter Tomahawk and Getter Beam, which are her favorite weapons of choice.
Minami Tsuda will play Zieg-san, a 20-year old character which is inspired from Go Nagai’s Kotetsu Zieg manga. Zieg-san is the head of a popular group in doujinshi events. The eldest of the robot girls, Zieg-san is always happy whenever she recounts her past adventures. Her weapons consist of the Knuckle Bomber, Spin Storm and the Mach Drill.
This new cast will be joining the rest of the other girls:
Mariko Honda as Z-chan, a girl inspired from Mazinger Z
Inori Minase as Gre-chan, a girl inspired from Great Mazinger
Grenda-san, inspired from UFO Robo Grendizer
Aya Hisakawa as Ashura
Yukuko Morishita as Garada K7
Nao Toyama as Daburasu M2
Kaori Takaoka as Gai-chan ( Gaiking )
) Ayumi Tsuji as Bara-tan (Baratack)
The main girls form the group Robot Girls Z, also known as Team Z. This is the unit dedicated to promote the future energy source called Photon Energy (based from the same material in Mazinger Z). They are also assigned to eliminate enemies who seek this power for themselves. The team operates from the Nerima Ward Oizumi Academy’s Photon Energy District based in Tokyo.
Hiroshi Ikehata is directing the anime with the scripts from Kazuho Hyodo. Tetsuya Kawakami will design the characters and a girl group called Robot Girls Z will perform the anime’s title theme song.Decoding The Forest: Researchers Track Bird Alarm Calls
In recent years, biologists have learned that birds use a variety of signals to communicate life-saving information about predators. Researchers from the University of Montana are trying to find out how development affects these signals and what this could mean for bird populations.
Biology Graduate Student Cedar Mathers-winn says bird songs are more than just pretty sounds.
"As soon as you realize that they're talking about something or sort of start to figure out what the different things that they might be talking about are, they really open up your ears," says Mathers-winn. "The forest is a much richer place now."
For example, the sound of a mobbing call is an alarm that’s part of an elaborate communication network that can transfer life-saving information to other birds — and even other animals.
"Mobbing calls in nature are used to signal that there's usually a sitting raptor or a threat that birds can handle by mobbing and driving them out by harassing them," says Isaac VanDiest, one of Mathers-winn’s research assistants.
The mobbing call recruits birds and other species to — you guessed it — mob the predator. It’s basically sending the signal that the predator’s cover has been blown, and it’s not going to get any rest in this neck of the woods.
Another type of alarm is called a “seet” call. Seet calls signify a nearby threat like a flying hawk. When song birds and even small rodents hear this, they’ll dive for cover or freeze in place until the predator leaves. These alarm calls are recognized by birds across continents, meaning that a song bird in Australia will react the same way as a chickadee in the U.S.
"There's a lot of information in these calls, and because they're so important, that information ends up spreading pretty far," says Mathers-winn.
In continuous forest with a lot of birds, a signal can move 100 miles per hour. But what Mathers-winn wants to know is: What happens to the signal when the forest is broken up by logging, highways, or housing developments?
"If you have all these communicating birds, they're all talking, listening to each other," Mathers-winn says. "We can consider that to be a communication network because everybody's communicating together and producing this big network of information … I'm interested in looking at how distance affects and how disjunctures in habitat affect the spread of that information."
If birds have no idea a predator is coming because they can’t hear the signal, "they might completely miss it and get nailed," says Mathers-winn.
To find out whether development breaks up bird communication networks, Mathers-winn is conducting experiments with high-tech microphones and recording equipment. Basically it allows the researchers to track how far and how quickly the alarm calls move across continuous forest and then compare this to areas with habitat fragmentation.
At Sapphire Ranch, south of Lolo, Montana, Mathers-winn and a team of biologists set up two bird feeders, 350 meters apart in continuous forest. Biologists are stationed at each of the two bird feeders to observe bird behavior during the experiment. Near one of the bird feeders is a speaker that allows the research team to play pre-recorded bird calls.
"So we'll play those and watch what happens at the site of the feeder, but then we have a microphone array between that feeder and the feeder at the other end where |
being sent over the wire. These queries all seemed to be changing session-level settings, and session-level settings don’t play nice with transaction pooling. The reason that transaction pooling doesn’t work with session-level settings is each transaction (or query, when not in a transaction) may be sent to a different Postgres connection. So, modifying session-level settings will change the setting on a random connection, and not necessarily affect successive queries, which may be sent to different connections entirely.
Looking over the settings one-by-one, most seemed pretty innocuous1 - ensuring that the right timezone was set, making sure “standard_conforming_strings” were being used, etc. Then we spotted a query that was setting client_min_messages to PANIC. client_min_messages determines which messages are reported back to the client. Usually it’s set to NOTICE. Postgres considers unique constraint violations to be ERROR s, which are below PANIC so were not being reported. The Ruby Postgres driver was issuing a query, and expecting either a normal result or an error. However, because errors were disabled, it was getting nothing back, causing it to return nil. Finally, we found the issue!
The resolutionHe was still holding the perfectly-wrapped present. The glossy smiling row of Santas beaming happily from the red and green paper at him. He studied their identical faces, looking for any sort of imperfection that could distinguish them from each other. A pointless task but he wasn’t prepared to look up at Marge yet. He wondered if she would have actually liked the small golden ring he had bought her, the one with little green Colombian emerald that cost him a small fortune. ‘It’s perfect,’ he remembered thinking when he chanced upon it a couple of months earlier whilst browsing idly in a second-hand shop. And now he was holding it in his hands, wrapped in the special Christmas paper that they had bought together a few days before to wrap the gifts of those friends they didn’t really liked who lived down the road. A joke he thought she’d appreciate. How irrelevant it seemed now.
‘Are you not going to say anything? He heard Marge saying and he suddenly became aware of the Christmas lights wrapped around the tree next to him. ‘Will you marry me?’ he remembered practising in front of the mirror that morning. He didn’t want to ruin a moment they’ve both been waiting for for over 5 years. He smiled as he remembered his ruddy reflection in the mirror. ‘I’ve called Michael already,’ Marge went on, ‘he’s picking me up in 5 minutes.’
She stood up quickly, dropping the Christmas crackers she’d had on her lap. ‘I’m really sorry about this, Peter,’ she hesitated, ‘I just can’t do it anymore.’ He heard her steps as she walked away. He picked up one of the crackers and in search of another pointless task, he pulled it. The paper-thin hat, a miniature bowling set and the joke all fell to the ground. He picked up the hat and the joke. He looked toward the door where Marge was crying and pulling her coat on. Looking down, he read the joke. ‘What question can you never answer yes to? Are you asleep?’ The front door slammed closed. He could feel a tear forming in the corner of his eye and he dropped the joke and the wrapped present on the floor. He didn’t want to look up so he put his cracker hat on and softly muttered goodbye.
AdvertisementsHot off the grill or a deli sandwich stacked high, the food at Junior's Delicatessen has kept customers loyal for decades.
"You can't beat it really, corned beef sandwiches, roast beef, everything is really superb," said Tom Cunningham of Beverly Hills.
But the pastrami and matzo ball soup will soon be history.
"For 53 years people have been coming here because they know it's like going home," said David Saul. "It's comfort food. It's the essence of eating in mom's kitchen."
Saul and his brother took over the business after their father, who founded Junior's, died last year. Their lease is up at the end of the month and it's not being renewed.
Saul says the landlord, Four Corners Investments of Beverly Hills, wants a substantial rent hike, one Saul says Junior's can't afford. Eyewitness News reached out to the landlord for comment but has not heard back.
The restaurant's 95 employees now need to find new jobs on short notice. Jose Sorto worked his way up from dishwasher to manager.
"I have no words to describe it," he said. "And I'm just telling my customers I'm going to miss them."
Celebrities like Bruce Willis and Hank Azaria were known to frequent the deli, which was originally located on Pico Boulevard. The restaurant moved to its current location at 2379 Westwood Blvd. in 1967.
Suzyn Goldenberg dropped in Thursday to stock up on soup and say goodbye to the New York-style deli she's patronized for 20 years, and the people who made it possible.
"The best is Dave and his brother and Tom, I love them all they always take care of us," she said.
It may seem like a tall order, but Junior's hopes to relocate and continue serving the community.
"We have not made our last corn beef sandwich, we have not baked our last bagel, will be back at some level," said Saul.
"The assertion by David and John Saul that negotiations with Four Corners Properties LLC allegedly broke down over proposed rise in the rent is entirely inaccurate. Four Corners on a number of occasions granted John and David Saul substantial rental concessions. However, due to their lack of experience in the restaurant business, they have been unable to turn the business around resulting in their determination to close Juniors Deli. They have in fact failed to pay rent since mid-November 2012," said Behzad Nahai, attorney for Four Corners Properties LLC, on Friday, Dec. 28.Tony Fernandes was pleased to see Michael Doughty play a part in Queens Park Rangers' win over Sunderland.
Queens Park Rangers owner Tony Fernandes has suggested that he has been waiting to see Michael Doughty in the first team for a long time.
Doughty made his debut for the R's against Sunderland last night and Chris Ramsey's decision seems to have gone down well with Fernandes.
Great to see @mdoughty92 come on for his @premierleague debut. That's what I've wanted all along. — Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) February 10, 2015
QPR's academy system has grown stagnant in recent years, with barely any talent coming through, but they have expressed a desire to change this and Doughty's inclusion was an indication that there is meaning behind these words.
The academy graduate's first taste of Premier League football could hardly have been better, either, as he played his part in the London club's first away win of the season.
The R's away form has been terrible throughout the campaign so far, but they were excellent against Sunderland, claiming a 2-0 victory which pushes them away from the drop zone.
Doughty's showing was a positive one, as he entered the field in the 85th minute to replace Mauricio Isla and got very involved in the contest.
Touches Total Tackle Total Pass Passing Accuracy Appearances Mins Played Michael Doughty 15 2 8 100% 1 5
The 22-year-old managed to get on the ball 15 times and he completed every one of the eight passes he attempted.
Even more impressively, he was not daunted by the prospect of playing his first league game and immediately threw himself into the action - managing two tackles.
It was a display which will serve as a huge boost of encouragement to the team and Doughty will be hoping that he has done enough to stay in first team contention for the rest of the campaign.Yesterday, we reported that the HP Elite x3 will cost $699 in the United States. A lot of people complained about the device being “too expensive” — even though it actually isn’t. The HP Elite x3 is a powerful device, a really powerful device. The device comes with 5.96-inch WQHD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4, 64GB of internal storage (microSD slot included), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, 4GB of RAM, a 16MP rear camera, and an 8MP front camera. The phone also comes with front-facing speakers from Bang & Olufsen, and it’s also dust and water resistant (IP67). The device comes with a huge 4150mAh battery, and it also supports wireless charging. Finally, the device includes an Iris scanner for Windows Hello and if you are not a fan of Iris scanners on phones, there is also a fingerprint scanner on the back. The device also supports Continuum for phones, which will technically allow you to use your phone as a laptop via the company’s Mobile Extender and Continuum dock ($100 extra). You get all of this with a device that’s only 7.8 mm thick and weighs only 190 grams, for $699.
For comparison, the Apple iPhone 6s Plus 64GB variant costs $849, and that comes with 2GB of RAM, a 5.5-inch 1080P display, a fingerprint scanner, a 2750 mAh battery, and no microSD card slot. The Samsung Galaxy S7, on the other hand, comes with a 5.1-inch WQHD display, a 12MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, 4GB RAM, Snapdragon 820, and a 3000mAh battery for $799.
Of course, the main difference between these devices is the operating system. A lot of consumers won’t spend $799 on a Windows 10 Mobile device — but the thing is, the HP Elite x3 isn’t for consumers. From day one, HP has been targeting the Elite x3 towards businesses, and it’s one of their “business tablets.”
Windows 10 Mobile is actually a pretty good and secure OS for businesses. HP can’t just do what companies like OnePlus do with their flagships; the company needs to generate good profit from the Elite x3 devices.
In many ways, the handset is more comparable to the Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets developed by Motorola Solutions which retail for closer to $2000.
And unlike those handsets for $699 you are getting a lot of power with the Elite x3. The device can theoretically replace your laptop, and that’s one of the key reasons why businesses might be interested in the Elite x3. Also, it’s worth noting that when businesses buy the device in bulk, they will get a better price from HP.
The HP’s Elite x3 should be a very nice device, but if you don’t need its powerful hardware, you are better off getting a Lumia 950 or a Lumia 950 XL. So yes, stop complaining about the Elite x3’s price. It’s expensive, yes — but it’s worth it.
Editor’s note: HP has revealed the price of the Elite x3 without the Continuum dock on 18th July. The device will be available for $699 without the dock, and $799 if you want the Continuum dock. We have updated the article to include the new information.Anticipation 006?
Bleach Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 28, 2017
As We All Wait
As last night approached and my ass was getting off early at 11pm. I quickly check my favorite reddit page (/r/FrankOcean,) to see if anyone has uncovered some holy truth about Frank Ocean. It was as dry as a nuns pussy.
The events of last weeks amazing double header, people are on the look out for the next episode of BLONDED radio on Apple Music. Saturday night came, and ‘Lens’ was played on Episode 004, and everyone was losing their minds, that yet again Frank had blessed his die hard, and ever growing fan base. ‘Lens’ is a wonderful melody about being in the spotlight, and reminiscing about the one you lost your chance on love with. After it being played over and over again, about 4–5 times, the remix started with Travis Scott. Adding more amazing sound qualities and lyrics we all didn’t know we needed. (TWOOO VERSIONS!!!)
FAN CREATED SHOUT OUTS TO YOU?
Sunday went by, of last week, and all was glory with the fan base. Everyone was still shook about the new ‘Lens’ drop, that followed the great tracks, ‘Biking’ Feat. Jay-z & Tyler, The Creator, and ‘Chanel’, (which also had a second version featuring ASAP Rocky. Which we all figured was happening because before the drop of ‘Blonde’ and ‘Endless’, they were seen racing against each other in the streets of LA.)
Come Monday morning, we were all shook again. Early morning Apple Music had decided to drop the next episode. 005 had debuted with yet another new ‘song?’ It was remix of ‘Slide On Me’ featuring Young Thug, which was already featured in his Endless visual album. By the way, I can say this and I’m sure everyone will agree that we want a CDQ of the whole album! Now! Like As Soon As Possible! Give us that shit, we need it. Having it just as a visual album is a tease. Now everyone, including myself, has to listen to it in a shitty quality from someone who broke it apart into separate tracks for us. (Bless Your Souls)
‘Slide On Me’ Remix was just another little tease to all the fans this man has. Giving everyone a taste, of what we’ve wanted since we watched for three weeks as he built a stair case in a warehouse. The tension for a new album then, was so bad, that people were ready to take his little brother for music ransom. (JK, not really though it was said.)
BDC ZINE
It is now the following Friday, and the dying thirst for more music is upon us again. This afternoon, 12pst, a blonded episode was schedule with no description. So of course the people are going to assume that it’s going to be something new. Its going to be a new playlist hand picked by Frank himself. Music is a gateway to the soul, and we all want a look into his.
12pst comes, and it’s a repeat of 004, the night he dropped ‘Lens’. As hungry as everyone is to get more music. With the smell of a new album coming, we’re all on the edge of out seats, with cash at hand.
My theory is that he’s going to take a break for a few weeks, he has given us enough to eat. Lets appreciate all that he has done for us so far. Plus, I still need to learn the words to ‘Biking’ and ‘Lens,’ before I am comfortable with new music again.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Police arrested a Cleveland man who spat in the face of a Rally's Hamburgers worker and threatened to kill her if she messed up his fast-food order, according to a police report.
The 21-year-old, who has yet to be charged, began his tantrum about 12:30 a.m. Sunday at the Rally's in the 3000 block of Carnegie Avenue, police said.
According to the report:
The man was among four others in a Chrysler 300 that pulled up to the drive-thru and placed an order with a 27-year-old worker.
"You better not f--- up my order or I'll kill you," the man threatened, according to the worker's account.
The worker told the man she would refuse his service if he continued to be uncivil.
"I don't give a f---," the man replied.
The car pulled up to the window and the man repeated his death threat. The worker then told the man he was no longer welcome at the Rally's.
The man became enraged. He spat into the worker's face and pounded the drive-thru window.
He got out of the car and approached the walk-up window, where he screamed at the worker and kicked and punched the window.
A passenger in the Chrysler eventually pulled the man into the car, which was soon stopped by police after the worker pressed the restaurant's panic button.
Charges against the man are pending. Days before his eruption, the man appeared in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on charges of carrying a concealed weapon, improperly handling firearms in a vehicle and possessing a defaced firearm.Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti says the club do not need any more players, despite being heavily linked with Tottenham forward Gareth Bale.
Ancelotti confirmed that Real were in talks to sign Bale earlier this month.
Bale's camp told Spurs in late July that the 24-year-old wanted to speak to Real, who were reportedly set to break the £80m world record to sign him.
But Ancelotti, who was appointed this summer, said: "I'm very happy with the squad. We don't need any more players."
Speaking in the news conference before Sunday's league opener against Real Betis, the former Chelsea boss continued: "The important thing is to create a style of play that is comfortable for my players.
Gareth Bale in numbers Age: 24
Premier League games: 146
Goals: 42
Yellow cards: 15
Red cards: 1
Wales caps: 41
"Our objective is not only to win but to also play beautiful attacking football."
Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas has already criticised Real Madrid this summer for going public in their interest in Wales international Bale, who has missed most of pre-season with a foot injury.
He added: "Carlo is a person I appreciate a lot and we have great respect for each other but, bearing in mind this situation, they have decided to make it public.
"Normally, situations like this in England are scrutinised by the Football Association with lots of care and attention. We have seen lots of people speaking about a player that is not theirs and we are due some respect."
Bale will miss with Villas-Boas saying he was hopeful the former Southampton left-back would stay.
"We've been very, very clear regarding the player and our willingness to hold onto him," he told Sky Sports.
"Anything can happen in football but this is a player we cherish a lot. He has helped us progress and ideally we want to continue with him."
Bale played the first half of Tottenham's pre-season friendly against Swindon on 16 July but not played for the White Hart Lane club since and also missed Wales' 0-0 draw with Republic of Ireland on Wednesday.SURREY (NEWS 1130) – One week after an apparent gang shooting outside a Surrey hotel, NDP leader John Horgan is promising to increase funding to the city’s Wraparound program to $500,000 a year.
The program is a partnership between the Surrey School District, the RCMP and the city which aims to keep kids out of gangs by forging positive relationships with police officers, educators, and other role models.
Surrounded by fellow #NDP candidates in May 9th election, party leader @jjhorgan says ending gang violence means spending more on education. pic.twitter.com/HJOSEkr865 — Marcella Bernardo (@Bernardo1130) March 20, 2017
“We want to make it a secure, stable ongoing program,” Horgan says.
“I believe that everyone has potential and everyone wants to realize that potential, and (if they’re) not given the options to address mental health and addiction issues, (they’re) forced into a gang lifestyle instead of a more productive life.”
Horgan says he was once a troubled teen himself who benefited from community support. He adds 30 kids at risk of gang involvement are now sitting on Wraparound’s wait list instead of getting help.
Doug Elford with the Surrey Newton Community Association is welcoming today’s promise from the NDP, saying the Wrap Around program definitely needs more funding.
“It is effective,” he says. “I think it has to reach out even farther than it does now. We’re hearing about elementary children being recruited and that is a real concern of ours as well. They need more bodies. They need more staff.”
He adds too many kids are still waiting for help.
“There’s a lot of children that slip through the cracks and we’ve got to capture these children before they move on to a life of crime and potentially risking their lives.”
Elford adds in the wake of last week’s latest fatal shooting, public safety remains a major concern for most residents of Surrey.
29-year-old Birinderjeet Justin Bhangu was shot to death in broad daylight in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn. Police believe the shooting was targeted.
Horgan says while it’s frightening that innocent lives were put at risk, he also has sympathy for the family of the man who was killed.Sen. Rand Paul strongly defended his hiring of staffer Jack Hunter on Thursday, a former shock jock who spent years promoting neo-Confederacy organizations, advocating for Southern secession, and bemoaning threats to white culture.
In an interview with the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman, Paul said he doesn’t agree with Hunter’s views on Abraham Lincoln, the Confederacy, and secession. But he added that the social media aide “is incredibly talented” and said he passes his office’s “zero tolerance policy for anybody who displays discriminatory behavior or belief in discriminating against people based on the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation, anything like that.”
“People are calling him a white supremacist,” Paul said. “If I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately. If I thought he would treat anybody on the color of their skin different that others, I’d fire him immediately.”
Related: Rand Paul can’t understand why black voters don’t vote GOP. Here’s a clue
Paul compared attacks on Hunter to criticism of his own past marijuana use. “Are we at a point where nobody can have had a youth or said anything untoward?” he asked.
Paul’s reference to “youth” is a relative term, to put it mildly. Hunter is 39 today. As recently as 2009, he wrote a column defending secession (as in: something to consider today) as well as his personal affection for the Confederacy. In 2007, he warned that a “non-white majority America would simply cease to be America for reasons that are as numerous as they are obvious.” In 2005, he wrote that he celebrates John Wilkes Booth’s birthday, and in 2004, he wrote a column entitled “John Wilkes Booth Was Right.” In 1999, he chaired the League of the South, a group devoted to Southern secession.
As the conservative Free Beacon reported on Tuesday, Hunter held his radio job as the “Southern Avenger” as late as 2012. In 2010, he co-authored Rand Paul’s book The Tea Party Goes To Washington.
A familiar pattern
Hunter said in a statement Tuesday that he no longer holds his old views and is embarrassed they came to light. He added that “I abhor racism and have always treated everyone I’ve met with dignity and respect as individuals.” But he also told the Beacon that he still believes the Civil War was a mistake.
The biggest problem is that Hunter fits a familiar pattern. Senator Paul has been working hard to position himself as a mainstream legislator in contrast to his father Ron Paul, whose own brand of libertarianism is steeped in neo-Confederate ideology. The elder Paul considers Abraham Lincoln a tyrant, published years of racially inflammatory newsletters, and his organization today employs a variety of fringe figures with views similar to Hunter.
Senator Paul had his own blowup in 2010 when he criticized the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but for the most part has avoided the more extreme edges of his father’s support network even as he’s relied on its backing to build his career. That phase appears to be over: Paul is defending his fringe associates at all costs now. If a lifetime of Confederate fetishism isn’t enough to disqualify a close aide, it’s not clear what would be. All this comes as Paul is working on a campaign to attract African-American voters to the GOP.
“The thing is, I grapple with this,” Paul told Fineman. “What am I supposed to do? I’m going to have a lot of people working for me. They’ve all got writings and opinions.”A Border Police soldier was stabbed at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday, managing to fire at the Palestinian attacker before collapsing.
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Magen David Adom paramedics evacuated the soldier, who was in critical condition with stab wounds to his neck and chest, to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
"We're in the first stages of treatment. The soldier arrived an hour and a half ago in critical condition with multiple wounds. The main wounds were to his neck and chest, with one to his heart. Currently, he is stable and not bleeding, but his life is still in danger," said Dr. Ofer Merin, the head of the trauma unit at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Police initially reported that the stabber, an 18-year-old from the village of Sa'ir near Hebron, succumbed to his wounds, but that report was incorrect. He was taken to the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem neihgborhood.
The hospital announced in the afternoon that the alleged attacker had undergone surgery after being struck by several bullets that wounded him in the stomach, chest, and lower extremities. He was to be hospitalized in the intensive care unit and kept in an induced coma, in very serious condition.
Stabbing attack in Jerusalem
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The stabber entered Israel illegally and was not among the many Palestinians with permits to come to Jerusalem over the holy month of Ramadan. He had no prior security offenses.
"When we arrived at the scene we found a young man around 20 years old lying unconscious with several stab wounds in his upper body. We gave him life-saving medical treatment including anesthetizing and ventilating him, and evacuated him while treating him to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in a very critical condition," MDA paramedic Aharon Adler said.
The evening news aired a video allegedly documenting the stabbing. The video was obtained by police after being distributed on Palestinian social networks. At the time of publication, police believed the video was indeed of the incident. The person seen collapsing in the video was, they said, the terrorist.
Following the attack, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said: "I want to commend the action of a Border Policeman, who while wounded kept his cool and neutralized the terrorist, and thus saved lives and prevented further injuries."
"We all pray for his recovery, and we must persist and continue in our normal routines," Barkat said.
The scene of the attack at the Damascus Gate (Photo: Gil Yohanan)
Shortly before the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday morning that the "relative calm in Judea and Samaria must not fool anyone. There are (attack) attempts all of the time, unfortunately some are successful. The reason most are unsuccessful is a result of a joint effort by the IDF and Shin Bet and other Israeli security forces."
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman told Ynet on Sunday shortly before the attack in Jerusalem that Israel has lost its deterrence against its enemies. "My position was very clear before Operation Protective Edge and even after the operation, and I regret that the government did not take my position into mind," he said.
"On the contrary, they are deterring us. We're buying calm from them at the price of reconstruction their terror infrastructure," the former foreign minister said.
Over the weekend, 25-year-old Danny Gonen was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist who shot him 10 bullets at point-blank range.I’m about to be introduced to Benedict Cumberbatch when some autograph hunters intervene. He cheerfully obliges, even when one signature becomes a dozen. “And could you sign this one for my sister?” becomes something of a theme.
He records a personal greeting for two schoolgirls embarking on their first play. And another one. And another one.
If I hadn’t known before that the star of Sherlock and Star Trek: Into Darkness was the most popular man in Britain, I’d know it now.
He finally bids his fan club farewell: “Not at all,” he tells them. “One of the perks of the job.”
He bounds over and reaches for a giant dark chocolate Toblerone. “I am sorry,” he tells me with a firm handshake. “But I do need sugar.” He politely pushes the big triangle into the side of his mouth so that he can keep talking. The effect is to sharpen his already razor-like cheekbones. “I wish there was a more decorous way of doing this,” he smiles.
I can’t think of one. This is exactly how I would expect a Mitford sister to eat polyhedral- shaped confectionary if they had lately been accosted by Cumberbitches. But the 38-year-old can’t find cause to complain.
“You have to pinch yourself,” he says cheerfully. “To have a professional life where you get to tell stories and people respond? It’s kind of wonderful. Magic, actually.”
Not that Cumberbatch is impressed by celebrity. Even his own. BBC’s Sherlock has catapulted him to the top of Sexiest Man Alive and Britain’s Greatest Thespian polls. But such things are of little consequence to Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch.
“However lost in showbiz someone can get, I’ve never met anyone who really believes that that’s all there is,” he says. “Can you imagine what a dead end that would be artistically? How could you feed your head like that?”
The thinker
Benedict Cumberbatch is a thinker. He practises mindfulness and meditation. After Harrow, he spent his gap year reading The Tao of Physics while teaching English in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Darjeeling. Between gigs he likes to draw and stare at the moon.
“I like to think that our atoms are made of stardust,” he muses. “I like to think that we’re revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that’s so much bigger than I can fathom. It’s fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.”
He smiles: “So much more exciting than what somebody is wearing, don’t you think?”
Cumberbatch is the son of jobbing actors Timothy Carlton (Minder) and Wanda Ventham (UFO). Ten years ago – pre-Sherlock – it looked as if the younger Benedict, a recent graduate from the University of Manchester’s drama department, had quietly signed up for the family guild. He was a respected character actor, a best-kept industry secret.
Critics across various media had already noted his mad skills: by 2005 he had bagged his first Oliver Award for his performance as George Tesman in Hedda Gabler. The following year he earned rave notices for his turn as Pitt the Younger in the William Wilberforce biopic Amazing Grace.
Science guys His first major screen role was in Hawking, a BBC TV movie covering the physicist Stephen Hawking’s years as a PhD student.
“We should be celebrating Hawking every day,” says the actor. “His continuing existence against the odds is remarkable. But the way he popularised science was revolutionary. He made science sexy before Brian Cox started popping up on the telly looking gorgeous.”
Cumberbatch has since played theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg in Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen and is currently the bookies’ favourite to scoop the best actor Oscar for his tremendously moving depiction of the pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. It’s almost as if he’s collecting scientists like trump cards.
“Ah,” he grins. “You remembered Heisenberg. Good for you. Honestly, there’s been very little overlap for me. These men are all brilliant and extraordinary. But they have as much in common with the comic foils or Joes next door that I’ve played as they do with one another.”
Cumberbatch is a talker. He manages to chatter amiably and endlessly about himself without divulging the kind of factoid a snoopy reporter might cherish. I don’t hear anything about his new fiancée, the theatre and opera director Sophie Hunter. But I do learn that he was “quite passably good at French at school but not good enough to quibble with subtitles”. I now know that he likes coconut and sweet things. His dad’s favourite film is Les Enfants du Paradis.
You can hardly get a word in. Especially when he’s talking shop. He straightens up. He folds over. He gestures.
Cumberbatch is a bouncer. He may be voicing Shere Khan in the new Jungle Book, but Tigger must surely be his totem animal.
“Turing’s parents fostered him out because they were in the diplomatic corps,” says Cumberbatch, as he giddily pea-shoots facts. “When they returned after four years, he had a stammer. He was horribly bullied at school. He was buried alive. He finds someone he loves, someone who inspires him, and from all that, we get Alan Turing looking at a room full of female clerks performing equations and wondering if the process might be mechanised.”
Some critics have unfairly criticised The Imitation Game for not foregrounding Turing’s homosexuality. Cumberbatch is quick to defend the project.
“I asked people who knew him, if they knew he was gay. Was he camp? They all said no. It never occurred to them. People just didn’t think about those things. And he didn’t parade it. He didn’t want to be found out. His tragedy was that he had to keep it secret.”
Friends and colleagues
It’s not surprising to learn that Cumberbatch sought out Turing’s former friends and colleagues. A dedicated practitioner of his craft, he’s known for immersing himself in research. For his award-winning turn in Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein, he studied autism so that he might grasp how a fully formed man, with no infancy or childhood to reference, might behave.
“I went to schools and met people, some of whom are very high functioning on the autistic spectrum. I met a 17-year-old who had the mental age of a one and a half year old. Everything was just about bodily functions. Smell. Sexual arousal. Shitting. Whatever. So when I hear people use diagnostic labels casually – Sherlock is autistic, Turing is autistic – it really upsets me.”
He pauses for a nanosecond, then continues to talk: “And it upsets me those 17-year-olds were coming to the end of their care. Because after that they’re supposed to head into employment and earn revenue for their government. Ha. Because from early on you’re empiricised in that Orwellian sense.”
He smiles: “Sorry. I’m getting political.”
He insists he isn’t always so diligent. “People do say that I research a lot. And it’s true that I generally never stop researching. But I do have a home life that doesn’t involve being Alan Turing. And sometimes research can be counterproductive. Sometimes you have to rely on instinct.
“I’m doing Richard III now, and since we found his remains, we know how he died and what he ate. But that’s not Shakespeare’s anachronistic version, which is silly and wonderful and has a million possibilities. So many ways to do it.”
One suspects he’ll get through most of them. Cumberbatch recounts how he likes to give directors and editors as many options as possible, almost as if he’s describing a human Turing Machine.
“Now there’s an analogy. If only I had the time to do that many variations. I know there are actors who know exactly how to author a role. But I like to trust others with authorship. I’m not sure I trust myself. You always want to do a better days work than you’ve done. I get horrific l’esprit d’escalier in the car home. ‘I didn’t play that beat. Oh fuck’.”
He smiles: “Sometimes I really beat myself up. It’s bad. I know. But sometimes you get these moments when you’re acting, And something happens that you can’t explain. And it’s just transcendent.”On November 21 at 12:00 am, 'AKB48�Kohaku Higawari Janken' will start on the official website for NHK's annual 'Kohaku Uta Gassen' program.
The members, who are serving as the Kokahu supporters for this year's program, will take turns appearing on the website until New Year's Eve. Through the website, they will challenge the users in a game of janken (rock-paper-scissors). The game will be accessible on the official website via PC, mobile phones, and smart phones.
Additionally, the PC website for 'Kohaku Uta Gassen' will start a 'Kohaku Janken Stamp' project for NHK Net Club members on December 1 at 12:00 pm. Depending on whether they win or lose the janken game, users will be able to collect stamps and trade it in for various Kohaku original goods.
You can check out Kohaku Uta Gassen's official website here.
Source & Image: natalie
TagsEast Coast Rainstorm South Carolina
A South Carolina National Guard Chinook helicopter delivers a large piece of excavating equipment to help fill a breach in a canal in Columbia, S.C., Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015. Despite an improving forecast, it will still take weeks for the state to return to normal after being pummeled by a historic rainstorm. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
(Chuck Burton)
AL.com Opinion
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There's a peculiar irony occurring in South Carolina as the state gets hammered by historic floods and its GOP "small-government" conservatives, who fervently despise the federal government, are now begging the "big, bloated" feds for desperately needed disaster relief.
Presidential contender and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, as well as most of the South Carolina legislative delegation, voted against the Hurricane Sandy disaster relief bill not too long ago. Of course, now that Sen. Graham's folks need help, he is pressing for the quick release of federal dollars.
When asked about why he voted against disaster relief for those affected by Hurricane Sandy, Graham suddenly developed a rare form of conveniently timed legislative amnesia.
Hopefully, the people of South Carolina won't suffer the same apathetic procrastination that first responders got when they requested help after being diagnosed with a myriad of lung ailments during the years following 9/11 in New York.
Conservative politicians seem to love heroes, but don't appear to like helping them after their heroic acts. It's reminiscent of how conservative hawks love to go to war, but don't like funding the Veteran's Administration.
Helping people in need, especially during disasters, has traditionally been |
and a spatial resolution better than 25 nm. Raman spectra were collected on isolated microfossils. Spectra were recorded from nearly twelve different points in each sample to ensure the representative nature of the spectra, by means of a Renishaw inVia Reflex Raman Microprobe using a Peltier-cooled charge. FTIR Spectra were recorded on single microfossils using an IR source and Cesium Iodine (CsI) beamsplitter from a Nicolet 6700 FT-IR spectrometer coupled with a Thermo Scientific Nicolet Continuum FT-IR microscope equipped with a Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) detector cooled with liquid nitrogen. Analyses were performed in transmission mode in the Middle Infrared (MIR) domain between 4000 and 400 cm−1. For ultramicrotomy preparation, single microfossils were embedded in agar and dehydrated in ethanol solution. Samples were polymerized at 60°C for 12 h. Ultra-thin sections (50–60 nm-thick) were cut from the resin blocks with a diamond knife. Illustrated specimens are deposited at the University of Poitiers and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm (SMNH numbers). Here below the references: (G-FB2-s-615), (G-FB2-s-614), (G-FB2-s-608), (G-FB2-s-606), (G-FB2-s-605), (G-FB2-s-604), (G-FB2-s-601), (G-FB2-s-600), (G-FB2-s-593), (G-FB2-s-589), (G-FB2-s-586), (G-FB2-s-82), (G-FB2-s-259), (G-FB2-s-71), (G-FB2-s-576), (G-FB2-s-575), (G-FB2-s-573), (G-FB2-s-423) (G-FB2-s-123), (G-FB2-s-49a), (G-FB2-s-118), (G-FB2-s-148), (G-FB2-s-160). Details of permits: the permits are provided by the Centre National Pour la Recherche Scientifique et technique du Gabon (CENAREST). Permit number: GA/488.
Discussion The crucial issue with regard to the interpretation of the Francevillian specimens is not biogenicity as such, because microbial processes are almost always involved in sedimentary pyrite formation during early diagenesis. Instead, the question is whether the morphology observed in the specimens reflects the shape of fossilized macroscopic organisms or colonies, or whether it was formed by taphonomic/diagenetic processes. We have earlier argued [1], on grounds of crystallography and isotopic composition, that fossilization of the Francevillian organisms was a prolonged process, where the sheet fabric was original, preserved through microbially induced pyritization in an open environment, whereas the central lumps of pyrite, the cores, were formed in a close environment after burial as pyrite concretions. The new data confirm this model, but also add evidence for intermediate pyritization processes in some specimens (Fig. 11), where secondary growth of spongy pyrite modified the original structure but without forming a distinct core. The biogenic morphology of the earlier reported sheet-like specimens is ostensibly challenged by their similarity with flat pyritic concretions such as pyrite “suns” and “flowers” [1]. Undulate or lobate outer edges, seen in such concretions as well as in the Francevillian sheets, can be created inorganically by fingering-driven Saffman-Taylor instability in a mixture of fluids with different viscosities [45]. However, the required pressure should then affect all comparable structures on the same bedding plane [45], which is not observed in the Francevillian material (Figure 3A, B). The textural and isotopic analysis of new specimens showing very different morphologies and the comparison with the two Phanerozoic pyrite concretions clearly demonstrate that the Francevillian specimens differ from the Phanerozoic pyrite concretions in both texture and isotopic composition and thus the latter cannot be used as a model for the formation of the former. We have earlier proposed that the flexible sheets with radial fabric represent colonial organisms showing incipient multicellular organization [1]. The presence of lobate, elongated-to-rod-shaped, and discoidal structures, as well as the circular aggregation, expands the morphological diversity of the Francevillian organisms. The specimens showing a string connected to a sheet-shaped macrofossil (Figures 4C–F, 5, 6, Figure S1 in File S1) suggest that these two structures represent the same organism. A combination of elongated and flattened stages of life opens up the possibility that the organism had an organization similar to that of cellular slime mould, Dictyostelia. These organisms go through a “slug” phase in which amoeboid cells congregate into multicellular “slugs” that move along a mucus tube to a place where a sedentary fruiting body is formed [46], [3]. Dictyostelia are understood to branch from a deep position in eukaryote phylogeny [47]. The aggregational style of dictyostelid multicellularity, however, seems to confine them to the terrestrial environment [3], [48]. Given the strong evidence for a marine setting of the FB2 unit, Dictyostelia are therefore unsuitable even as an analogue of the behavior implied for the Francevillian organisms. The occasional evidence for radial fabric in a narrow portion joined to a sheet-like morphology (Figures 6A–B; 4E–F) suggests that the rod-shaped portion does not represent a mucus tube, but an organic fabric similar to that which makes up the associated sheets. The difference with the rods lacking radial fabric may reflect preservation, but an alternative explanation is that the strings adjacent to a sheet in some cases represent a portion where the cells came to rest while still in the “slug” configuration. The second most abundant member of the Francevillian biota is represented by the small non-pyritized to lightly pyritized disks (Figures 7A–F; 8A–B). With their positive relief and somewhat concentric and centrally radial texture, they are reminiscent of the small sand-volcano-like structures in the Cambrian King Square Formation in Canada [49]. Such an interpretation has the appeal of easily explaining why most of these disks are non-pyritized or weakly pyritized, while the other fossils from the Francevillian Series are pyritized. However, the Francevillian disks occur in organic matter-rich shales and are not directly associated with sandy or silty layers. Moreover, the Francevillian disks are generally smaller than the sand-volcano-like structures, and their profile is highly repetitive, while sand-volcano-like structures show variable morphologies [49]. The Francevillian disks are therefore likely not related to fluid escape. The size and morphology of the Francevillian disks also resemble some Ediacaran disks [50], however, they differ from the latter as they appear in positive epirelief, while most Ediacaran disks are preserved in positive hyporelief. Moreover, the morphology of the Francevillian disks does not exactly correspond to any of the described Ediacaran disks [50]. Finally, the Francevillian disks are somewhat similar to the giant Proterozoic acritarch Chuaria [51], but differ in their larger size and radially striated centre. Partial pyritization of some of the Francevillian disks gives support to their original organic composition, but the scarcity of this pyritization also suggests that their nature was somewhat different from that of the pyritized specimens. In its organization, the circular aggregate shown in Figures 4F–G and 5F–G is reminiscent of the tight assemblage of circular structures of Nemiana and Beltanelloides [52]. Nemiana, however, appears in high positive hyporelief, while the Francevillian aggregate is preserved in low positive epirelief. Moreover, although Nemiana and Beltanelloides subunits tend to be packed in a similar way, they do not form discrete rounded aggregates. A superficial resemblance also exists to the trace fossil Paleodictyon nodosum, an enigmatic structure observed at the surface of deep-sea sediments [53], [54]. Though Paleodictyon is mostly described from Tertiary flysch sequences, it has a larger stratigraphic distribution, and its oldest occurrences are in Cambrian sediments [54]–[56]. Paleodictyon generally corresponds to a strictly hexagonal network of tunnels or tubes delineating isodiametric hexagons seen in positive hyporelief. Compared to Paleodictyon nodosum, the Francevillian fossil consists of rounded bodies of different sizes, the packing of which only occasionally produces a hexagonal pattern. Overall, the Francevillian biota represents an exceptional Paleoproterozoic oxygenated ecosystem [1], [18] comprising several types of macroscopic organisms, including the pyritized fossils, non-pyritized or lightly pyritized disks and circular aggregates, as well as carbonaceous microorganisms. As illustrated by the sulfur isotope record, early pyritization in a quiet depositional setting [21] is likely the most critical factor responsible for the exceptional preservation of these fossils. The emergence of this biota follows a rise in atmospheric oxygen, which is consistent with the idea that surface oxygenation allowed the evolution and ecological expansion of complex megascopic life [57], [58], [39], [18]. The disappearance of the Francevillian macrofossils in the upper part of the FB2b black shales is apparently related to increased energy in the environment. The macrofossils are not observed in the overlying Francevillian black shales of the FD Formation that were deposited under an anoxic and sulfidic (euxinic) water column [18]. Their absence from the later fossil record might ultimately be related to the fall in the atmospheric oxygen level that followed the ca. 2.22-2.1 Ga Lomagundi carbon isotope excursion [18], [59]–[63], followed by a long-lived and extensive marine anoxia that forms the hallmark for the most of the Proterozoic Era after ca. 2.1 Ga [59], [18]. Oxygen content in surface environments is not universally accepted as a major driver for the evolution and complexification of multicellular life [64], [65]. However, the emergence and later disappearance of megascopic life in association with oxygen overshoot and fall in the early Paleoproterozoic Eon [18], [59]–[63] is consistent with oxygen availability as a driver of evolutionary adaptation [39], [66], including aspects of body size [67]. The Francevillian deposits represent exceptionally well-preserved Paleoproterozoic sedimentary rocks deposited in shallow-marine, oxygenated environment [11], [12], [17]. This, coupled with pyritization during early diagenesis, provides a unique window on the early Paleoproterozoic biosphere during one of the most critical time periods in Earth's history. The Francevillian biota formed a diverse ecosystem. It appears to represent a first experiment in megascopic multicellularity.
Acknowledgments Ministry of Education, Research and Culture; Centre National Pour la Recherche Scientifique et technique du Gabon (CENAREST); Ministry of Mines, Oil, Energy and Hydraulic Resources; General Direction of Mines and Geology of Gabon; Sylvia Bongo Foundation; Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux of Gabon; University of Masuku; COMILOG-Company; French Embassy at Libreville; and Institut Français du Gabon, French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, The Danish National Research Foundation (grant DNRF53); ERC, “Oxygen”; Intervie-INSU, ERC PaleoNanoLife, are acknowledged for collaboration and support. Permit was provided by CENAREST (GA/488). For information and scientific discussion, we thank N. Butterfield, P. Garcia, F. Idiata, R. Laffont, F. Mayaga-Mikolo, P. Mouguiama, F. Pambo, P. Strother, and F. Weber. For assistance, we acknowledge Y. Batonneau, E. Bere, P. Devautour, Ch. Franzén, N. Guignard, C. Laforest, E. Marcon, Ph. Recourt, A. Texier, K. White and Studio LUDO. For continues support, we acknowledge the French CNRS-INSU, FEDER, the University of Poitiers, and the Région Poitou-Charentes. Data used in this study are available at the University of Poitiers.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: AEA S. Bengtson DEC AR A. Meunier EH RM. Performed the experiments: AEA DEC S. Bengtson AR CRB LNP EH MW PB MC ACPW OR A. Mazurier IMM CC KB S. Bernard CF. Analyzed the data: AEA S. Bengtson DEC AR CRB EH RM AB KB S. Bernard FGL MV. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AEA S. Bengtson DEC AR CRB JMGR ECF LNP EH AB PB MC ACPW OR MW A. Meunier GV AT IMM ECF LW. Wrote the paper: AEA S. Bengtson DEC AR EH RM AB.The search for two missing brothers from the Clayton Park area of Halifax was called off for the night on Friday at around 6:30 p.m.
Halifax Regional Police, ground search and rescue teams and a helicopter scoured an area around Kearney Lake Road for Damien Roy, 19, and Bailey Roy, 18. The two were reported missing around 8:20 a.m. on Oct. 4.
The father of the two young men is pleading for anyone with information on their whereabouts to come forward.
"If anybody sees my two young fellas anywhere, please call the local police department," said Corey Roy.
Corey Roy says his sons have good survival skills, but he's worried for them. (CBC)
The police search began earlier this week and ground search and rescue crews joined the effort on Friday.
Corey Roy said he is unable to sleep because of the stress. He said the two have good survival skills, but he worries whether they have the right gear and enough food on them.
"I just want them to come home and feel that they're wanted to come home," he said.
The brothers live together with other family members in a home on Fairfax Drive in Clayton Park.
Two days after they were reported missing, one of the brothers returned home at 3:38 a.m. and left again. Neither has been heard from since.New Delhi: Falling oil prices have been a major windfall for India: Just weeks ago it faced failing to meet fiscal deficit targets, but can now expect a budget that not only hits its targets, but also provides extra cash to support reform.
The coming budget for fiscal 2015/16 (April-March), which will be unveiled on Feb. 28, is widely seen as a test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ability to lead economic reform. Fortunately for Modi, the economic climate has handed him a chance to pass that test with flying colours: Budget planners are optimistic that he will set Asia's third-largest economy on a path for growth of 7 per cent to 8 percent over the next two years.
"The situation is far better now than in December," said one finance ministry official, who spoke to Reuters despite a ban on contact with the media in the secrecy-shrouded run-up to the presentation of the annual budget. "The budget will deliver on Modi's promise of better days for the economy."
The halving of global oil prices since mid-2014 has allowed the Modi government to raise diesel and petrol fuel taxes and cut diesel prices by 25-30 percent – a windfall gain for households as well as businesses, and dampening inflationary pressures in the economy.
The government has pocketed nearly $3.5 billion from repeated hikes in tax on fuel while the central bank cut interest rates by 25 basis points last month, and has hinted at further rate cuts if inflation declines.
Modi was elected last May on pledges that he would create jobs and rejuvenate the sagging economy, but investors and economists were disappointed by his first interim budget in July and a distinct lack of early progress in fixing structural economic problems, so the slide in oil prices has been a boon for one of the world's top crude importers - and Modi's administration.
"Let's accept that I am lucky, but you have saved money. If Modi's luck is benefiting the people, what can be more fortunate?" Modi said in a speech last weekend.
Headroom for reforms
Officials say lower fuel subsidies along with recent diesel tax hikes could together add almost 1.1 trillion rupees ($18 billion) to the 2015/16 budget, and they plan to spend about 500 billion ($8 billion) of that on Modi's flagship infrastructure and manufacturing initiatives.
With more money flowing into India's stock market after the European Central Bank unveiled an estimated 1.1 trillion euro stimulus, the government is ramping up its programme of selling stakes in state companies. It raised $3.65 billion from a 10 percent stake in Coal India last week and is moving fast to line up others.
As finance ministry officials work feverishly to have the budget presentation ready on time, investors appear to be upbeat.
The benchmark BSE share index has risen more than 5 per cent this year, making India one of the best-performing markets. Foreign investors have placed about $5.5 billion in India's debt and equity markets. The fall in oil prices has given Finance Minister Arun Jaitley headroom for subsidy reforms that would rein in spending on cooking gas, fertilisers and food subsidies and reduce the fiscal deficit to 3.6 per cent of GDP from an estimated 4.1 percent for the current financial year. Jaitley is also likely to unveil tax reforms, such as a goods and service tax that would absorb most federal, state and local taxes by April 2016, ease tax rules on transfer pricing, and address some overseas investors' concerns.
To be sure, problems in the economy remain, and Modi is under pressure to implement measures to revive consumer demand and give corporate India the confidence to invest. "Everyone knows that the honeymoon period for government will not continue forever, we have to speed up reforms before it is too late," said another official, who has direct knowledge of onging budget discussions. The budget will support Modi's "Make in India" drive with tax incentives for the manufacturing sector, lower import taxes on production inputs and higher duties on final products, officials said. Taxes on gold imports could also be reduced following a sharp decline in the current account deficit.There was a strange buzz going around school at the start of my last academic year in 1991. It was early September, and musical war stories from the summer were being traded. Some of us told of seeing AC/DC’s thunderous mega-show at Donington racetrack; or of witnessing Guns ‘n’ Roses’ bombastic pyrotechnics at Wembley Stadium.
But those who had been to that year’s Reading Festival spoke with fervent awe, greater than anyone’s, about a band from Seattle who’d played a no-frills set early on the Friday afternoon between indie minnows Silverfish and Chapterhouse. They carried the experience with them like a precious stone as they spread the word. The band was Nirvana. And within weeks they were to release one of the most influential and best-selling albums of all time.Story highlights People in southern Illinois urged to evacuate as water tops levee
Stretch of Interstate 55 reopens in the St. Louis area
No more rain is expected in the Mississippi River basin until late next week
Are you within sight of floodwater? Share your photos and videos here, or post them on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #CNNWeather. The weather can be unpredictable and dangerous, so please be safe.
(CNN) Residents in the southernmost tip of Illinois anxiously watched the levees Friday night.
In the Alexander County seat of Cairo, where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet, the Ohio is expected to crest Sunday at 56.5 feet, more than 3 feet above major flooding stage.
Water has already gone over the top of one levee, prompting people to evacuate areas nearby, the office of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner said.
A second levee has "good potential" of overtopping, Patty Thompson with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency said.
Sheriff's deputies went door-to door recommending people evacuate from the towns of East Cape Girardeau and McClure.
Read MoreQPR 1 Ipswich 0: Kevin Hitchcock's son keeps Harry happy with late debut strike
Young striker Tom Hitchcock scored a last-minute winner on his QPR debut to decide a dramatic victory over Ipswich at Loftus Road.
Hitchcock, the son of former Chelsea goalkeeper and QPR coach Kevin Hitchcock, tapped into an empty net after Charlie Austin’s effort had been parried by Ipswich goalkeeper Scott Loach.
Harry Redknapp’s side had already hit the bar twice, first through Clint Hill and then Austin, before the 20-year-old son of QPR goalkeeping coach Kevin Hitchcock struck.
Pure delight: Kevin Hitchcock (left) congratulates his son Tom (right) after the game Big hug: The pair share an emotional embrace after Queens Park Rangers' late victory
Match facts
QPR: Green, Simpson, Dunne, Onuoha, Hill, Wright-Phillips, Barton, Henry (Jenas 77), Hoilett (O'Neil 56), Zamora (Hitchcock 83), Austin. Subs Not Used: Yun, Murphy, Ehmer, Mo Shariff. Goals: Hitchcock 90. Ipswich: Loach, Hewitt, Chambers, Smith, Cresswell, Edwards, Skuse (Tunnicliffe 46), Tabb, Hyam, McGoldrick, Murphy (Taylor 63), Taylor (Nouble 86). Subs Not Used: Berra, Anderson, Veseli, Crowe. Booked: Tabb. Att: 17,075 Ref: Michael Naylor (Sheffield). Click HERE for full results, fixtures and tables in the Championship
However, Rangers will be concerned about Junior Hoilett - a reported transfer target for Stoke - after he limped off with what looked like a hamstring injury seven minutes into the second half.
But the result maintains their encouraging start to life in the Sky Bet Championship following last season’s relegation from the top flight.
They enjoyed a decent spell of pressure midway through the first half, during which Shaun Wright-Phillips’ deflected shot went narrowly over and Nedum Onuoha missed the target with a header.
Austin, making his full home debut for the Rs, was twice denied a goal in the space of a couple of minutes.
Hoilett found space on the left and picked out the former Burnley forward, whose first-time effort was blocked by Town defender Tommy Smith.
Then, Austin’s shot from Danny Simpson’s right-wing cross was well saved by Loach.
Here he comes: Hitchcock came on as a second half sub for Bobby Zamora to make his debut But Ipswich, who had won on four of their previous seven visits to Shepherd’s Bush, had the best opportunity to go ahead before the break.
Jay Tabb sent in a cross in from the left and, after centre-back Richard Dunne challenged David McGoldrick, the loose ball fell to Daryl Murphy, whose weak attempt from eight yards out was tipped away by keeper Robert Green.
Here he comes: Hitchcock came on as a second half sub for Bobby Zamora to make his debut
Here he comes: Hitchcock came on as a second half sub for Bobby Zamora to make his debut
The loss of Hoilett was a blow for Rangers but they continued to press and almost went ahead shortly after the hour mark.
Joey Barton’s free-kick from the right was headed against the frame of the goal by Hill, with Dunne unable to force home the rebound.
Hill twice headed over before Austin then squandered a golden chance to break the deadlock after beating the offside trap to collect Wright-Phillips’ ball into the box with 13 minutes remaining.
Unmarked and with only Loach to beat, Austin opted for power and sent a ferocious shot against the underside of the bar when it seemed easier to score.U.S. President Donald Trump's former advisor Walid Phares has stated in an interview that the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) is a terrorist organization just like the PKK and al-Qaida, adding that it would take time for the U.S. to recognize this.
Speaking to the Sabah daily, Phares said that it would take quite a bit for the U.S. to take crucial steps against FETÖ due to the lengthy investigation process.
"Before this, the U.K. applied for IRA, Israel applied for Hamas and Turkey applied for the PKK. All of these groups were eventually recognized as terrorist organizations by the U.S. Yet, this process took time. The process regarding FETÖ only just started last year," Phares said, adding that the investigation process has not been completed yet. "The U.S. public shares the same opinion with the Turkish public. The way that FETÖ integrates into the states is same as other radical terrorist organizations in the Middle East such as the PKK and al-Qaida," Phares noted, adding that they all use the same tactics.
Emphasizing that he admires the stance taken by the Turkish public against the July 15 coup attempt last year, Phares said that President Trump indicated that he was also touched by the struggle of the Turks against coup plotters and had expressed his support for them.
On July 15, we all waited for three people's statements regarding the coup attempt: then-presidential candidate Trump, President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. Obama said that this is a problem between two groups and we were shocked. Clinton also followed Obama's statement. Only Trump made a clear statement on that night. He congratulated Turkey for stopping the coup attempt," Phares said, adding that Trump was quite touched by the struggle of the Turkish public and supported them.
"This shows that Trump sees Turkey as one of Washington's most important allies and values Turkish democracy as well. If you want to see where Trump stands regarding the coup attempt and Fetullah Gülen, all you need to do is look at the night of July 15," he added.
Highlighting the fact that it was "quite impressive" to see all segments of Turkish society unite against the coup attempt, Phares said that it was very clear at that point just how important democracy is for the Turkish people.
On July 15, a small military junta linked to FETÖ attempted to topple the democratically elected president and government in Turkey and impose martial law. The attempt was thwarted by military troops loyal to the government, along with police units and millions of Turkish citizens in favor of democracy.
A total of 249 people, mostly civilians, were killed by pro-coup soldiers, while over 2,000 people were injured.
As far as Turkish-U.S. relations are concerned and in light of recent vulnerabilities, Phares said that for the U.S., there is no alternative ally in the region other than Turkey. "For the last 60 years, the perspective of the U.S. has not changed a bit, despite what has changed in Turkey politically. Yet, due to the Syrian crisis, our relationship was damaged to some extent, especially because of the wrong policies of the Obama administration." Phares went on to express that the problems regarding the PKK and its Syrian offshoot the Democratic Union Party (PYD) are also the result of the wrong policies of the Obama era. "This is a problem that has continued for three years now. For three years, Turkey has said that the PKK and the PYD are the same thing. Yet, the same process that applies for FETÖ also applies for the PKK and the PYD," he stated, referring to the fact that it would take quite some time for the U.S. to respond to Turkey's demands regarding the PKK/PYD issue.DALLAS -- Dallas Fire-Rescue says William An, the firefighter/paramedic shot on the job a month ago, has been discharged from the hospital.
An left Baylor University Medical Center at noon Wednesday in a wheelchair, surrounded my family and his fellow firefighters from Station 19.
GREAT NEWS! FF #WilliamAn has been discharged from the hospital to cont. his recovery at home! HUGE thanks to everyone involved! pic.twitter.com/h8Vdt2ZhGQ — DALLAS FIRE RESCUE (@DallasFireRes_q) May 31, 2017
@DallasFireRes_q Chaplain #RaySchufford leading prayer for a safe drive home and seamless recovery for #WilliamAn pic.twitter.com/1m3ptUqbaC — DALLAS FIRE RESCUE (@DallasFireRes_q) May 31, 2017
Amid a prayer circle, An got into the same ambulance that brought him to the hospital on May 1 when he was shot while responding to a shooting call.
DFR says he will continue to recover at home. His family said it is grateful to everyone for their support.
Police say Derick Brown shot a man with his AK-47 in his East Dallas neighborhood, then shot An twice while he responded to the call. Brown was later found dead inside his home.
Court records show he had a long criminal history, including an assault charge, several DWIs and gun offenses. Mayor Mike Rawlings described the suspected shooter as "not mentally stable."
Brown went to jail and was released just two months before the shooting.
Copyright 2016 WFAAA Russian anti-monopoly watchdog fined Google 438m rubles ($6.75m, £5.2m) for violating antitrust rules on mobile devices, following a complaint filed by the country's largest search engine Yandex NV in 2015.
In 2015, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ordered Google to amend the agreement with smartphone manufacturers regarding the disadvantage of third-party applications on Android powered devices. The Russian antitrust regulator ruled Google is abusing its market dominance through Android. The regulator said the internet search giant allowed manufacturers to use its Play Store provide they install its services including search.
"To restore competition on the market, Google should amend agreements with mobile-device producers within a month and exclude the anti-competitive clauses," FAS said. Google has appealed and the hearing is scheduled for 16 August.
A representative of FAS told Bloomberg, the fine was determined as a share of Google Play's domestic sales. According to local rules fines must be 1% to 15% of a violator's revenue for 2014.
In a statement Google said it has received the notification from FAS and will study the decision before taking further action. The regulator said the Russian antitrust service is currently in talks with Google to reach an amicable settlement. A press officer on the condition of anonymity said, Google should pay the fine within 60 days.
On 28 July, Yandex said it has expanded its share on Russian internet searches on mobile devices running Android. Its share on Android devices, "started to grow again in late June as a result of new distribution deals" after last year's decision against Google, the company said. Yandex chief operating officer Alexander Shulgin said, "We believe that Google is loosening some of its explicit prohibitions against Yandex."
In April, the European Commission sent an antitrust complaint to Google for restrictive contracts with the phone manufacturers to install its search and web browser on new phones. The European Union then said Google unfairly pays manufacturers and telecom operators a share of ad revenue if they agree to keep its search engine as a default option on the devices.
Google had faced another set of complaints from European Union antitrust regulators over its ads business in July. It was accused of abusing its dominant position by allegedly restricting rival third-party websites from display search ads. In addition, the regulators have accused Google of favouring its own shopping service in its search results over competitors.BERLIN — The case of a British Jewish child forced to leave his Berlin school after being subjected to anti-Semitic violence has provoked outrage and soul-searching in Germany.
The 14-year-old, who cannot be named under child protection laws, was beaten, kicked and threatened with a replica gun after he revealed to fellow pupils that he was Jewish.
He endured a campaign of intimidation by Muslim pupils who told him “Muslims hate Jews. All Jews are murderers.”
His British mother, who asked not to be named to protect the identity of her son, told the The Daily Telegraph the school had done little to stop the bullying.
“They told us this is normal for adolescents from this background, that they’re just trying to find their identity,” she said. “But it shouldn’t be normal. I’ve never experienced such direct anti-Semitism before in all the years I’ve lived in Germany.”
The case, which follows several incidents in which people wearing skullcaps or other outward signs of Jewishness have been beaten on the streets of Berlin, has prompted concern over the extent of anti-Semitic feeling in the Muslim community.
“In some German mosques, anti-Semitism is being actively encouraged,” said Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
The boy at the centre of the most recent case was born in London to a German father and British mother, but the family moved to Berlin when he was a baby and he has lived there all his life.
Ironically, his family chose the Friedenauer Gemeinschaftsschule in part because they were attracted to the school’s ethnic mix. The majority of pupils at the school are Muslim.
The trouble started when he attended a class on religion and told his fellow pupils he was Jewish.
“It was natural for him to tell them. It wouldn’t occur to him to hide it,” his mother said. “The next day was his birthday. He was looking forward to going to school – he had this friend and they were planning to rap together.”
But the other child asked her son if he was really Jewish. “He said, ‘Listen, you’re a cool guy, but I can’t be friends with you. Muslims aren’t friends with Jews, ” she said.
The boy was later pushed and threatened. On one occasion, another pupil hit him twice in the back.
The family arranged for the boy’s grandparents – both Holocaust survivors – to give a talk to pupils. But his mother remained dismayed at the lack of support from the school. “They didn’t want to know,” she said.
One older pupil pulled a replica gun on the boy, leading to his parents decided to move him to another school.
The school has issued a statement expressing its “regret and horror” at the case.SEATTLE (Reuters) - Google Inc’s legal chief called for pressure on governments that censor the Internet, such as China and Turkey, arguing that their blocking access to websites not only violates human rights but unfairly restrains U.S. trade.
The remarks, by Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, mark a new economic theme in the Web company’s campaign for an unrestricted Internet, and may inflame a touchy relationship with China, after the company threatened to stop censoring online searches there earlier this year.
“Internet censorship is really a trade barrier, and is operating that way for U.S. companies that are trying to do business abroad,” Drummond said at a public meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and other corporate executives at Google’s headquarters in California’s Silicon Valley.
“If this were happening with physical trade and manufacturing goods, we’d all be saying this violates trade agreements pretty fundamentally.”
Google’s Drummond said a large and growing number of countries are now censoring the Internet in a variety of ways, for economic as well as political reasons. As an example, he said, Google’s YouTube online video service was blocked in more than 20 countries and has been banned in Turkey for two years.
“In our view at Google it’s high time for us to start really sinking our teeth into this one,” said Drummond.
“We have great opportunities now with pending trade agreements to start putting some pressure on countries to recognize that Internet freedom not only is a core value — that we should be holding them to account from a human rights standpoint — but also that if you want to be part of the community of free trade, you are going to have to find a way to allow the Internet to be open.”
Google has had a rocky relationship with Chinese authorities since it announced in January that it would no longer censor search results in mainland China and accused Chinese hackers of orchestrating a sophisticated cyber attack on Google and other major U.S. companies.
The incident exacerbated tensions between Washington and Beijing, which were also sparring over China’s currency and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Tibet. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for worldwide Internet freedoms and singled out China following Google’s announcement.
Google began to reroute Web surfers visiting its China website to a separate uncensored site in Hong Kong, but eventually tweaked the set-up so that users in mainland China had to actively click on a link in order to go to the uncensored Hong Kong search engine site.
In July, China renewed Google’s license to operate a search page in China for one year, seeming to defuse the spat between the two powers for the time being.A political action committee dedicated to supporting Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson is apparently spending a lot of good money on “internet web memes.”
According to a FEC filing, Matt Kibbe’s AlternativePAC is spending $30,000 on memes.
It is unclear why a political action committee needs to spend money on memes when people generally just create their own — for free. In fact, there is already a Facebook page and a Facebook group devoted to people posting and sharing memes supporting Johnson.
Perhaps AlternativePAC just wants to buy a lot of rare Pepes?
Johnson has long sought to appeal to the hip young kids (millennials). Some of Johnson’s talking points include him speaking fondly about smoking marijuana and repeating over and over how much he agrees with former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Despite memes being big among millennials, and the amount of dough they've been shelling out for them, Gawker reports AlternativePAC hasn’t posted any memes yet.Ever looked in a sky full of stars and wondered what you were looking at? Where's the north star? Where's the Great Bear? Well, here's presenting - 'Starry Night' a great educational tool for Kids (and maybe adults) to learn about astronomy and electronic circuits [open and closed circuits] at the same |
just tell that the fans are dedicated to the team and that the city is behind this club – it left a lasting impression with me.
“I’m really looking forward to getting started in New York and working with (Rob Vartughian), Sean (Johnson) and Andre (Rawls), competing for that spot and improving together.”
A talented shot-stopper, Brad joins Sean Johnson and Andre Rawls in competition for the goalkeeper spot in 2018.
Head Coach Patrick Vieira said: “Brad is coming to us from Columbus who are a team with a similar playing philosophy to us, so that will help him to adapt.
“You always want to bring in players who can challenge other players in their position because I strongly believe that’s how you get the best out of them, when they work hard every day and push each other to improve the team.
“We have three good goalkeepers who will work really hard to challenge each other and I’m really happy to welcome Brad to New York City and look forward to working with him.”
Stuver has made two MLS appearances for Columbus Crew, facing off against his new team in his second pro game on Decision Day at Yankee Stadium in 2016.
Sporting Director Claudio Reyna added: “Brad fits the profile of goalkeeper we wanted to bring to NYCFC. He is a good shot stopper with really good feet and will be an excellent addition to our club.
“We are getting a player who is motivated and excited to compete with our goalkeepers and, at the age of 26, will only continue to improve in the coming years.
“We are delighted to welcome Brad to the NYCFC family.”
WATCH: Thank You, Khiry Shelton!The famous rapper and singer Akon (Aliaune Damala Badara Thiam.. yeah.. that’s his real name) in 2014 decided to give filling dance floors a break in favor of bringing solar energy to people living in rural Africa. The idea came when the researches showed that the continent averages 320 days of sunshine a year.
So why not use this advantage?
There are just so many people in Africa still living in darkness while the world fights over who has more followers on Instagram. It’s insane.
Akon has decided to seriously diversify and set up charity “Akon Lighting Africa” in 2014 which now has finally flourished.
A wide range of quality solar solutions, including street lamps, domestic and individual kits, have been installed in 14 African countries.
As a result, a number of households, villages, community houses, schools and health centres located in rural areas have been connected to electricity for the first time ever.
Local jobs, primarily for young people, have also been created in these communities, whether for installation of equipment’s or for maintenance.
So, now over 600 Million people can live in the light like the rest of the world thanks to Akon.
Solar energy is the future of The World. This renewable energy is around us every day. Each day we do not use this energy we waste a great chance for cleaner world.
HERE ARE SOME OF THE THINGS PEOPLE AFFECTED BY AKON’S CHARITY SAY:
“Electricity is more than light. This is a true change in our daily life” – A mother, Yelimané, village, Mali
“Thanks to solar electricity we can now forget about kerosene, that is harmful and so expensive” – Inhabitant, Thiambokh Village, Senegal
“Now I can recharge my phone at home, I do not have to walk for hours or to pay for that” – Inhabitant, Village, Niger
We can truly make a GREAT difference if we use our minds for helping others from time to time. It is WE who make the world better or worse.In California, Poisonous Death Cap Mushrooms Are The Forager's Bane
KQED YouTube
Donna Davis thought she had hit the jackpot with the two bags of mushrooms she collected in the woods of Northern California's Salt Point State Park. Instead, she ended up in the hospital, facing the possibility of a liver transplant, after mistakenly eating a poisonous mushroom known as the death cap.
The 55-year-old life coach and her boyfriend had collected chanterelles, matsutakes and hedgehog mushrooms, all sought-after edible species.
That night, Davis made mushroom soup for herself, her boyfriend and a group of their friends. "It was amazingly delicious," Davis says. So good, in fact, that she had two bowls.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Gabriela Quirós/KQED Gabriela Quirós/KQED
And she felt fine. Until the next afternoon.
"I slept for three days," says Davis, of her illness in December 2014. "I was kind of in and out of it, just drinking water and not being able to really hold anything down."
When she dragged herself to a mirror, she realized she had turned yellow.
Davis isn't the first or only forager who has fallen victim to the death cap.
Between 2010 and 2015, five people died in California and 57 became sick after eating these unassuming greenish mushrooms, according to the California Poison Control System. One mushroom cap is enough to kill a human being, and they're also poisonous to dogs.
"Dogs die in droves," says Debbie Viess of the Bay Area Mycological Society.
The trouble is, people feel fine for six to 12 hours after they've eaten death caps, says Dr. Kent Olson, the co-medical director of the San Francisco Division of the California Poison Control System. But during that time, a toxin in the mushroom is quietly injuring their liver cells. Patients then develop severe abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting.
"They can become very rapidly dehydrated from the fluid losses," says Olson. Dehydration can cause kidney failure, which compounds the damage to the liver.
When Davis went to the hospital, doctors put her on intravenous fluids. They also pumped her stomach full of activated charcoal to help absorb the poison out of her body, although some doctors question the usefulness of this treatment when many hours have elapsed since the poisoning occurred.
For the most severe cases, the only way to save the patient is a liver transplant, says Olson. (Davis didn't end up needing one and went home before Christmas.)
Researchers are looking for better treatments. One group of scientists is testing the drug silibinin, which can protect a patient's liver and make a transplant unnecessary.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Josh Cassidy/KQED Josh Cassidy/KQED
And other scientists are trying to learn more about death caps — hoping to find a weakness they can exploit to defeat them.
The death caps arrived in California from Europe as early as the 1930s and '40s, says Anne Pringle, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She discovered this timeline through genetic testing of death cap samples collected in California during this era. She says death caps likely sneaked into California from Europe attached to the roots of imported plants — and they got really comfortable, spreading all over the state.
Through genetic testing, Pringle is trying to better understand how death caps propagate, and how long they live. In mushroom-producing fungi like the death cap, much of their body lies under the earth's surface. (The mushrooms are just there to help the fungus spread spores and reproduce.) Pringle wants to know how long the underground bits last — would simply plucking the mushrooms to prevent them from spreading their spores through the air be enough to kill off individual death cap fungi? Or is the death cap more resilient — does each individual develop a vast underground network that would be near-impossible to eradicate?
For now, it's looking like the death caps are here to stay.
With this year's mushroom foraging season well underway, health workers and experts are warning aficionados to be careful. Death caps, which are abundant in California, can easily be confused for other edible mushrooms, growing mainly under coast live oaks. Death caps have also been found under pines, and in Yosemite Valley under black oaks.
And it's not just amateurs who mistake death caps for edible mushrooms like coccora or paddy straws. "I've seen expert mycologists arguing good-naturedly about whether a mushroom they were looking at was the deadly one," says Dr. Kent Olson, co-medical director of the San Francisco Division of the California Poison Control System. "At certain stages of development, the mushrooms can be confused."
In hindsight, Davis thinks she confused young death cap mushrooms — which have a rounded yellowish-green cap — for hedgehog mushrooms, which are yellow and rounded.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Josh Cassidy/KQED Josh Cassidy/KQED
Hedgehog and death cap mushrooms are fairly different-looking. While hedgehogs don't have any gills — ribs under the mushroom cap — death caps do have gills.
"It is easy for folks to make ID mistakes," says Viess, "which is why I encourage strong caution for beginners."
Mature death cap mushrooms are big, smooth and an olive green color. And if you pull one out of the ground, you'll see it has a little cup that holds it up.
"Assume nothing, and learn for several seasons before you eat any wild mushrooms," warns Viess from the Bay Area Mycological Society. "Use good, regional books, find a mentor, and have your initial IDs checked by more knowledgeable and trusted identifiers."
As for Davis, after temporarily losing her taste for mushrooms, she is now looking forward to foraging again. But she says she'll be much more cautious.
"I don't need to collect all that I see," she says. "I'm good with just, you know, a handful."
A longer version of this post originally appeared on the website of KQED's science series Deep Look. For more information on the death cap, you can visit the websites of the Bay Area Mycological Society and the North American Mycological Association.Darby Borough home where police say a one-year-old was attacked by a ferret. (credit: Steve Patterson)
By Steve Patterson
DARBY, Pa. (CBS) — An investigation is underway after police say a trio of ferrets chewed off the nose, top lip and part of the cheek of a one-month-old baby’s face in Delaware County.
“It’s not our fault. We didn’t do it, the animals did it,” says the victim’s father Burnie Fraim.
He adds, “We left the child unattended, which we take full responsibility.”
Fraim, 42, admits to Eyewitness News that he and his fiancee left their one-month-old daughter unattended, but shouldn’t have criminal charges for the damage his pets caused.
“This little mistake happened. I wish it never did happen, but it happened.”
That “little mistake” put his infant child in the hospital.
READ: College Freshman Shot During Drive-By Shooting
Police say Thursday, at a home in Darby, Fraim’s fiancee Jessica left their one-month-old daughter strapped to a car seat on the floor while she went upstairs where Burnie was sleeping.
She came back down to the sound of screaming. The couple’s three pet ferrets had attacked the baby, causing severe damage to her nose, upper lip and cheek.
Eyewitness News asked: “How bad was it, Burnie?”
Burnie: “The baby looked like, um, like it didn’t have a face.”
“This is the most horrific thing I’ve seen happen to a child in 45-years in this town. These kids need to be protected,” said Darby Borough Police Chief Robert Smythe.
Chief Smythe says the couple should be arrested and their children placed in foster care immediately.
“They cannot care for these five children,” Chief Smythe said.
Chief Smythe said all five children have special needs.
Fraim says the family has been working with the Children and Youth Division before this happened.
Police say the home wasn’t fit for children.
Eyewitness News asked, “Do you think you should be taking care of these children?”
“Like I said, we take full responsible. We can’t deny it and we can’t hide from it.”
The incident remains under investigation.PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Deloitte Consulting, the contractor for the state's troubled public-benefits computer system, has agreed to credit the state $27 million to cover problems associated with the system's launch.
Gov. Gina Raimondo’s administration announced the agreement Thursday, calling it proof of significant progress being made just hours before the House Oversight Committee’s latest scheduled probe into the Unified Health Infrastructure Project.
But the so-called good news hailed by the administration received nary a mention from lawmakers in the first two hours of the oversight hearing. Instead the panel was outraged by a new discovery that the state was fined $805,195 in January for amending its contract with Deloitte, allegedly without required approval from the federal government.
The penalty was brought to light by Auditor General Dennis E. Hoyle. He forwarded the committee a bill the Federal Food and Nutrition Service sent to the state on Jan. 5. The fine followed a Nov. 3, 2016 letter to the state requesting information about the contract amendments that was never answered.
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Patricia Serpa, D-West Warwick, repeatedly asked acting Department of Human Services Director Eric Beane why the fine wasn’t disclosed as the committee asked for all relevant information about the project.
“This is not small potatoes … This is a fine of nearly $1 million,” Serpa said, later suggesting that the committee should look into whether it can put witnesses under oath to compel truthful testimony.
Beane said it was an oversight that information about the fine was not shared with the committee. It has been appealed, and the state believes it will be dismissed, he said. Beane was unable to answer specific questions about the nature of any changes to the contract.
Rep. Daniel McKiernan, D-Providence, said it appeared to him that the administration is "hiding information." He noted that the committee asked in December if the project was on budget.
“Here’s the double speak that we got back” shortly after the state received the $805,195 bill, McKiernan said. “We are closely monitoring the impact of system implementation on our UHIP project budget … blah blah blah blah.”
“This is not circle the wagons time," McKiernan said. "This is time to tell us what the heck is going on.”
Lawmakers gave Beane a litany of questions to answer about the fine at the committee's next meeting.
As for the $27 million credit announced Thursday, it will cover the "temporary hiring surge" at DHS and other personnel expenses. It will also pay for contracted service expenses for the remainder of the current fiscal year and the first quarter of fiscal 2018, Raimondo's office said.
The governor called the credit "a good faith effort to offset the state's unanticipated expenses." However, the $27 million does not represent a "final settlement."
The state has been withholding payments to Deloitte at Raimondo's direction since a February assessment of UHIP concluded the computer system was not ready when it launched in September 2016.
The state had budgeted $68.5 million for UHIP in the current fiscal year. By the time all upgrades are complete, the system is expected to tally $364 million.
Raimondo's office offered this description of the $27 million: "It is a voluntary credit from Deloitte and does not amount to an admission of liability or a waiver of any potential legal claims from either the state or Deloitte. In addition, the state's right to seek recovery for other unanticipated costs, expenses and impacts arising out of the project are preserved, including expenses that may arise as the stabilization process moves along."
The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating potential false claims for payment that Deloitte made to the state for the project.
Earlier this week state officials declared they were making progress as an application backlog that has been growing for six months finally "stabilized."
Lobby wait times at customer service offices are reportedly the shortest they've been since the system launched last year.
— jbogdan@providencejournal.com
(401) 277-7493
On Twitter: @JenniferBogdanYou may only know him from his Kickstarter videos but Brian Fargo is one of the most influential figures in the games industry. The impact of his work can be felt in almost every game in every genre that’s been released in the last decade. And, today, he’s still revolutionising how the industry works.
As a teenager, Fargo was a socialite, splitting his time between his friends in the chess club, his D&D roleplaying group, and competing as an Olympic-hopeful sprinter. He could have gone onto university on a scholarship but that changed when his parents bought him an Apple II computer. Fargo fell into game development, spending his evenings and weekends programming games with his friend Michael Cranford.
In the summer of 1982, after finishing high school, Fargo started making games under the label of Saber Software. He roped in Cranford from his D&D group to draw the artwork and convinced another friend to help him out with some of the engine code, and together they made an adventure game called The Demon’s Forge.
Fargo licensed this cover art despite there being no scene like it in The Demon’s Forge, something that would cause him to receive confused phone calls for years to come.
When it came to promoting the game, Fargo showed off a stroke of devious genius. He had only $5,000 to develop and market the game, so he spent half of that to buy a single ad in a magazine called Softalk, one of the only nationwide computer magazines around at the time. He’d then call up retailers from his home phone and say he was trying to find a copy of Demon’s Forge, a game he’d seen in that month’s copy of Softalk. The retailer would say they’d look into it and then minutes later he’d get a call back his Saber Software line from the retailer who, not realising it was Fargo who had called before, would place an order.
This canniness for self-promotion is something that would stand Fargo in good stead throughout his career.
Fargo was running the entire business himself, making copies of the disks, packaging them, and selling them on to retailers from his home. His success attracted the attention of Michael Boone, an old high school friend who had come into some money.
Boone fancied himself an entrepreneur, too, and wanted to start a software company, so he bought out Saber Software and brought Fargo in on the business. It was here Fargo got his first (dis)taste of corporate ownership.
“They made me the vice president and I started doing work for them,” Fargo said in a Gamasutra interview in 2013. “It became one of those things where there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians, and I was doing all the work.”
Boone was a volatile company to work for and one without a clear vision. The group had hired a set of developers–Fargo, “Burger” Bill Heineman (now Rebecca Heineman), Troy Worrell, and Jay Patel–but didn’t know what to do with them. One day Boone decided he didn’t want to be in the software business, he wanted to be in the whiteboard business, and fired them all on the spot.
Luckily, Fargo had been setting up a deal on the side. An old teacher from high school was looking for a programmer to do some contract work for the World Book Encyclopedia. Fargo took the $60,000 contract and, with the other fired developers from Boone, started a new studio: Interplay Productions.
After a few months of scrabbling for any development contract he could find, Fargo managed to get on Activision’s radar, and signed on to a three game contract. The team made two adventure games (Mind Shadow and Tracer Sanction), but, for their third game, Fargo wanted to move away from adventure games. He wanted to take on the biggest game on the market: Wizardry.
“At the time Wizardry was the big thing, it was the top seller,” Fargo told Matt Barton back in 2011. “In magazines you’d see the top selling software and you’d see Bizi Calc, which was like Excel, and you’d see a word processor, and then you’d see Wizardry. It was the de facto standard.”
Wizardry had tapped into the popularity of D&D and reworked its rules into a dungeon crawler. You would guide a party into black & white tunnels filled with monsters, fighting your way deeper and deeper into a set of virtual mines. The game had been a massive success on the Apple II but its developers had been slow to port it to other platforms and hadn’t updated its technology since release.
Fargo knew he could make a better game, one with colour, sounds, music, and better art. He got in contact with his old friend Michael Cranford, who had done the art for The Demon’s Forge, and contracted him to write the story and design the dungeons. But Activision didn’t want it. Then CEO Jim Levy reportedly called Fargo’s idea “nicheware for nerds”. So Fargo took it to Activision’s competition, Electronic Arts.
EA signed Interplay immediately, inking a deal for Fargo’s team to make Tales of the Unknown: Volume I - The Bard’s Tale. Interplay became one of the only studios to work for both Activision and EA at the same time. Half of the team was working on ports of the Activision adventure games while Fargo, Cranford, and Heineman worked on The Bard’s Tale.
“One of the big things at the time was, they hated each other, Activision and EA,” Fargo told Gamasutra. “Just hated each other. We were maybe the only developer doing work for both companies at the same time and they would just grill me whenever they had the chance. Whenever there was any kind of leak, they'd say, "Did you say anything?" I was right in the middle, there. I always made sure to keep my mouth shut about everything.”
Work on Bard’s Tale was going well until, a month from release, Cranford grew frustrated with his deal. He wanted royalties from the Bard’s Tale sales, something no one on the team had because Fargo was insistent profits should be poured back into the games they were making.
Cranford took the master copy of the finished game hostage. Fargo was going from meetings with EA, telling them their game was complete, to negotiations with Cranford, trying not to let on to the publisher what was going on. Eventually Cranford got his royalties but, after his work on the Bard’s Tale sequel, he’d never work with Fargo again.
Bard’s Tale was a phenomenal success, selling more than 300,000 copies. Not only did it shoot past Wizardry in the charts, it eventually came to make close to 10 per cent of all of EA’s profits in 1985.
Over the next two years Interplay made three Bard’s Tale games for EA, each larger and more complex than the last. But Bard’s Tale was nothing on Fargo’s next idea.
Fargo had been a fan of George Miller’s Mad Max films since he was a teenager. He wanted to create a game that captured that wasted Earth. He wanted to make an RPG but one with a richer story than Bard’s Tale, one with more choices (and consequences). So, along with Ken St Andre, Michael Stackpole, and Liz Danforth they started designing one of the first open world games: Wasteland.
Whereas each Bard’s Tale was completed in a year, Wasteland took Fargo’s team five years to finish. It was a sprawling epic of a game where players decisions rippled out through the game world, sometimes not causing repercussions in the story until hours later.
Critics and fans loved it, even now, Wasteland is still included on ‘Best of’ lists. though it would be 25 years till Fargo got to make a sequel.
Fargo had worked out by 1988 that the real money in the games industry came from publishing, EA and Activision had mopped up on the success of his games so he wanted to move Interplay into the publishing business (a move EA didn’t take kindly to).
When Interplay announced it was going to self-publish Battle Chess, a game inspired by the animated chess set in Star Wars, EA cancelled Bard’s Tale IV. The team was three months away from release. Fargo renamed the in-production RPG Dragon Wars and had the team go through the code and remove any reference to Bard’s Tale and, because it didn’t have any before, throw in some dragons. (As with The Demon’s Forge, Fargo would get calls for years about the mismatch of the cover art and the game’s content.)
EA would hold onto the Bard’s Tale name for the next 27 years, preventing Fargo from making a full-blooded sequel.
Along with Battle Chess, Interplay started publishing games and fostering new talent. One of the first games it published was from a studio called Silicon and Synapse, first a game for the SNES called RPM Racing, then Lost Vikings. Fargo offered to buy the studio, but the team who had grown larger with its partnership with Interplay, remained separate and renamed themselves Blizzard.
Fargo published a mech game from another startup. Shattered Steel wasn’t a success but Fargo kept working with the group, he saw something in the studio, sure that Bioware would amount to something.
With EA still in control of the Wasteland license, Fargo was forced to come up with a new series when he wanted to return to the post-nuclear war setting. He licensed an RPG ruleset called GURPS and set his team to work on a game called Fallout. He wanted to capture the moral bleakness, black humour, and violence of apocalyptic stores of Mad Max and Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
With the game deep in production, Fargo showed Fallout’s intro video to GURPS’ creator Steve Jackson:
Jackson was repulsed by Fallout’s violence and refused to let the team use his ruleset unless Interplay toned it down. But Fargo refused. “I had certain sensibilities of what Fallout should be,” Fargo said in the Barton interview, “so we dropped out of the Steve Jackson deal and created our own system.”
The team had to build a whole new ruleset to line the core of Fallout. The hard work paid off; Fallout was a huge success for Interplay. And, its trailer, which so repulsed Jackson, has gone down in history as one of the best game videos ever made. When Bethesda revealed Fallout 4 last week it begins with an homage to those famous opening shots.
The team went on to make Fallout 2, Planescape Torment, and the Icewind Dale games. Fargo published Bioware’s first big hit, Baldur’s Gate. Interplay led the industry in the 90s, producing a string of RPGs which are today still considered the best in the genre.
At the same time Fargo published the first game from a small team called Treyarch, the studio that went on to to make Call of Duty: Black Ops for Activision, one of best selling games of all time. He also discovered and published Parallax’s Descent and Volition’s Freespace games–seminal space shooters which are still being improved with mods today.
Despite these classic games, Interplay was losing money. It was publishing lots of games that just weren’t selling enough to make big profits for the team. Eventually Fargo took the company public and a French group called Titus bought up a stake in the business. Fargo didn’t get on with his new owners and, in 2002, resigned.
Without him Interplay never released another classic and shrank from more than 500 employees to today’s meagre ten.
Fargo formed the appropriately named InXile Entertainment in 2003 and bought back the rights to Wasteland from EA. For nine years he tried to get a publisher to give him the money to make a sequel to his classic RPG but, even though Bethesda’s Fallout 3 had been a huge success, Fargo couldn’t get funding to make his return to the post-apocalyptic setting.
Then, Double Fine made history by funding an old-school adventure game through Kickstarter.
Fargo saw his chance and took it. In April 2012 he launched a campaign to raise $900,000 to make Wasteland 2:
When the campaign closed a month later he had raised nearly $3 million. Wasteland 2 still stands as one of the highest funded projects on Kickstarter. Following his success a string of industry veterans raised money through the crowdfunding platform, emulating Fargo and Double Fine’s success.
A year later Fargo returned to Kickstarter, this time to fund a successor to another Interplay classic, Planescape Torment.
Torment: Tides of Numenera raised more than $4.1 million.
Fargo embraced this interaction with a community and released the first public build for Wasteland 2 through Steam Early Access, the largest developer to do so. It was met with huge success raising funds that, like in his days on Bard’s Tale, were taken and poured straight back into development.
When Wasteland 2 was released in 2014 it was an immediate hit, securing InXile’s future.
Now, 30 years after the original, Fargo’s finally making the fourth Bard’s Tale game. Again he’s raising funds through Kickstarter, this time aiming for a $1.25 million target but he’s committing $1.25 million of InXile’s own money, earned from Wasteland 2 sales, to make a fully updated version of the dungeon crawler series in the Unreal 4 Engine.
It’s difficult to gauge the full impact of Fargo’s influence on the industry but he found pivotal work for the developers who formed Blizzard, Obsidian Entertainment, Bioware, Treyarch, and Volition. Studios that have shaped the industry with games RTSs like StarCraft; MMOs like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic; RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect, and Fallout; and shooters like Call of Duty: Black Ops. He’s also had a direct hand in the development of some of the industries greatest RPGs.
Simply put, without the boldness of Brian Fargo the games industry wouldn’t look like it does today.It’s far more likely that robots would inadvertently harm or frustrate humans while carrying out our orders than they would rise up against us
When we look at the rise of artificial intelligence, it’s easy to get carried away with dystopian visions of sentient machines that rebel against their human creators. Fictional baddies such as the Terminator’s Skynet or Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey have a lot to answer for.
However, the real risk posed by AI – at least in the near term – is much more insidious. It’s far more likely that robots would inadvertently harm or frustrate humans while carrying out our orders than they would become conscious and rise up against us. In recognition of this, the University of California, Berkeley has this week launched a center to focus on building people-pleasing AIs.
The Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, launched this week with $5.5m in funding from the Open Philanthropy Project, is led by computer science professor and artificial intelligence pioneer Stuart Russell. He’s quick to dispel any “unreasonable and melodramatic” comparisons to the threats posed in science fiction.
“The risk doesn’t come from machines suddenly developing spontaneous malevolent consciousness,” he said. “It’s important that we’re not trying to prevent that from happening because there’s absolutely no understanding of consciousness whatsoever.”
Russell is well known in the artificial intelligence community and in 2015 penned an open letter calling for researchers to look beyond the goal of simply making AI more capable and powerful to think about maximizing its social benefit. The letter has been signed by more than 8,000 scientists and entrepreneurs including physicist Stephen Hawking, entrepreneur Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
“The potential benefits [of AI research] are huge, since everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable,” the letter reads.
“Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.”
It’s precisely this thinking that underpins the new center.
Up until now, AI has primarily been applied to very limited contexts such as playing Chess or Go or recognizing objects in images, where there isn’t much scope for the system to do much damage. As they start to make decisions on our behalf within the real world, the stakes are much higher.
Technology is killing the myth of human centrality – let's embrace our demotion Read more
“As soon as you put things in the real world, with self-driving cars, digital assistants … as soon as they buy things on your behalf, turn down appointments, then they have to align with human values,” Russell said.
He uses autonomous vehicles to illustrate the type of problem the center will try to solve. Someone building a self-driving car might instruct it never to go through a red light, but the machine might then hack into the traffic light control system so that all of the lights are changed to green. In this case the car would be obeying orders but in a way that humans didn’t expect or intend. Similarly, an artificially intelligent hedge fund designed to maximize the value of its portfolio could be incentivized to short consumer stocks, buy long on defence stocks and then start a war – as suggested by Elon Musk in Werner Herzog’s latest documentary.
“Even when you think you’ve put fences around what an AI system can do it will tend to find loopholes just as we do with our tax laws. You want an AI system that isn’t motivated to find loopholes,” Russell said.
“The problem isn’t consciousness, but competence. You make machines that are incredibly competent at achieving objectives and they will cause accidents in trying to achieve those objectives.”
To address this, Russell and his colleagues at the center propose making AI systems that observe human behavior and try to work out what the human’s objective is, then behave accordingly and learn from mistakes. So instead of trying to give the machine a long list of rules to follow, the machine is told that its main objective is to do what the human wants them to do.
It sounds simple, but it’s not how engineers have been building systems for the past 50 years.
But if AI systems can be designed to learn from humans in this way, it should ensure that they remain under human control even when they develop capabilities that exceed our own.
In addition to watching humans directly using cameras and other sensors, robots can learn about us by reading history books, legal documents, novels, newspaper stories as well as by watching videos and movies. From this they can start to build up an understanding of human values.
It won’t be easy for machines. “People are irrational, inconsistent, weak-willed, computationally limited, heterogenous and sometimes downright evil,” Russell said.
“Some are vegetarians and some really like a nice juicy steak. And the fact that we don’t behave anything close to perfectly is a serious difficulty.”Thousands of children left orphaned by the Ebola in West Africa are at risk of being abandoned by surviving relatives fearful of catching the killer disease, UNICEF warned Tuesday.
The current outbreak of the disease has taken the lives of more than 3,000 people — devastating families and resulting in an estimated 3,700 children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone being without one or both parents, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund said. That figure is likely to double by mid-October, the agency warned.
Those orphaned face the additional trauma of rejection by surviving relatives, some of whom are frightened of contracting the infectious disease.
"Ebola is turning a basic human reaction like comforting a sick child into a potential death sentence," said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “These children urgently need special attention and support; yet many of them feel unwanted and even abandoned."
UNICEF has appealed for $200 million to provide emergency assistance to families affected by the outbreak. To date, the UN agency said that it has only met 25 percent of its goal.
Meanwhile the Pentagon said Tuesday that it has dispatched the first set of 150 troops to West Africa to help respond to the crisis. In mid-September President Barack Obama ordered 3,000 U.S. soldiers into Ebola-struck countries.
"We are supporting U.S. government and international relief efforts by leveraging our unique U.S. military capabilities," said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. "Specifically, we're establishing command and control nodes, logistics hubs, training for health care workers, and providing engineering support."
Attempts to stem the spread of Ebola have been hampered by a perceived inadequate global response to the crisis and existing health care systems that are understaffed, under-resourced and as such overwhelmed.
At present, only one in five people infected with the disease are being properly cared for in a medical facility. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that unless 70 percent of Ebola patients are treated in special units or at a hospital, the epidemic will intensify.
Without drastic improvements in the response, cases will continue to double approximately every 20 days and the number of cases in West Africa will rapidly reach "extraordinary levels," a CDC report issued last week said. In a worse case scenario, the number of Ebola cases could swell to 1.4 million by mid-January, U.S. health experts warned.Partnership Brings New Perspective to the World’s Most Exciting Motorcycle Racing Series
(April 9, 2015) – Dorna Sports, the commercial rights holder of the premier FIM MotoGP™ World Championship, and GoPro, Inc., enabler of some of today's most immersive and engaging content, today announced an exciting new partnership that will bring fans closer to the incredible MotoGP racing action. The five-year agreement names GoPro as the official wearable camera of MotoGP and grants title sponsorship of the GoPro Motorrad Grand Prix of Deutschland.
As part of the collaboration, GoPro cameras will be capturing content of the race circuits including on-bike course previews, behind-the-scenes vignettes, immersive race perspectives that will take the viewer deeper into the race, and other unique images to be shared via social media and on motogp.com. GoPro will also produce an immersive Media Lap from MotoGP’s official BMW Safety bike to present each track of the 2015 MotoGP calendar.
Pau Serracanta, Dorna’s Managing Director, Commercial Area, said, "This announcement of the agreement between MotoGP and GoPro is just the start of an exciting partnership for both parties. GoPro is a great partner for the championship with their cameras brilliantly recording high-adrenaline racing right at the heart of the action. We look forward to working together closely over the coming years."
Nick Woodman, founder and CEO of GoPro said of the partnership, “Racing has always been a part of GoPro’s heritage and it continues to influence our product design. We hope to enhance the way race fans watch this premier series and look forward to MotoGP serving |
ma Rousseff has told RT. She added that the US has already made mistakes in the Middle East, which only led to the strengthening of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
“Our continent has been living in peace for 140 years. Any attempt to interfere in the legitimate constitutional process in Venezuela, including by forcing a presidential election, is extremely dangerous, as it might lead to a civil war,” the Brazilian politician said in an interview with RT in Moscow.
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Venezuela has been subjected to new sanctions from Washington under President Donald Trump, who has called its government a “dictatorship.” Amid massive opposition protests in the Latin American state, the US claims the Venezuelan government is cracking down on democracy. In August, the US leader also mentioned a “military option” against the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro.
READ MORE: ‘Tanks & missiles must be at ready’ amid threats by US ‘criminal empire’ – Maduro
Caracas has in turn accused Washington of meddling in its internal affairs, calling the US an “aggressor” wanting a regime change in a foreign country through “political and psychological terrorism.”
Saying that it is difficult to analyze and predict Trump's actions, the former leader of Brazil said that the only thing she can say for sure is that she finds his behavior “extremely irresponsible and even criminal.”
The Venezuelan government would not agree to transfer power to opposition peacefully, Rousseff said, adding that while she cannot analyze the nature of the local anti-government forces, international modern history has shown that the US “have often been mistaken in regard to oppositions.”
'Tell Trump of ‘Simon Bolivar’ & he will think it’s a rock singer' - Maduro https://t.co/FdavXkGI4Mpic.twitter.com/3V6JKGs99q — RT (@RT_com) October 5, 2017
“[Washington] says: ‘Those are democracy supporters.’ They’ve said it about opposition forces in Syria too. And what has happened with that opposition? Islamic State has emerged, which has nothing to do with democracy.”
READ MORE: No intervention: Venezuela has right to pursue own path, Ecuador president tells RT
Now, with “Trump not ruling out the possibility of military intervention in Venezuela,” it is clear the US wants to use the same scenario in Latin America, the Brazilian politician said, once again warning against a civil war in the region.
“It has never led to any good,” she said.An overnight transformer fire underneath the Queensborough Bridge in New Westminster forced the full closure of the bridge to all traffic for nearly 12 hours Wednesday and caused widespread power outages.
The crossing reopened to northbound traffic at around 1:40 p.m., and a southbound lane was opened a little less than an hour later. Pedestrian access is available on the east side of the bridge.
New Westminster Mayor Jonathan Coté said crews expect power to the Queensborough neighbourhood to be restored by midnight Wednesday. He said there was no structural damage to the bridge.
TransLink said in a written statement that, although the bridge has been reopened, congestion in the area is expected to cause significant delays to bus service in the area for the rest of Wednesday's afternoon commute.
"If you don't need to use that bridge this afternoon, please try and avoid it, because it is still going to have some issues and it's not yet working at full capacity," Coté said.
It is currently unknown how the fire started, but it eventually extinguished itself.
A police officer tapes off the southbound walkway on the Queensborough Bridge. (Gian-Paolo Mendoza/CBC)
Fire discovered by accident
According to Sgt. Mike Garbutt with New Westminster Police, officers were conducting a routine patrol around 2:15 a.m. PT on Wednesday when they noticed smoke coming from underneath the bridge and found a "fairly significant" fire burning below the bridge deck.
The fire damaged a major transmission line located under the bridge, causing widespread power outages.
Rod Carle with the New Westminster Electrical Department said between 7,000 and 8,000 people were without power. The city tweeted at 1 p.m. that it would likely take another 10 to 15 hours to restore power to Queensborough.
ETA for power being restored in Queensborough is between 10-15 hrs. NB access on the bridge is expected to be open w/i the hour. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NewWest?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NewWest</a> —@New_Westminster
Bus routes, school days disrupted
Earlier in the day, buses were being detoured away from the bridge, but by 2:30 p.m., they were back on their usual routes. TransLink warned public transit users it might take some time for buses to return to their normal schedules.
On Twitter, the City of New Westminster said all schools in the Queensborough area have been closed as a result of the outage.
During the morning commute, drivers were advised to take alternate routes into Queensborough through Richmond and Delta.
"We realize this is going to impact the rush hour traffic significantly and we're working really hard to get this resolved as quickly as possible," said Garbutt on Wednesday morning.
Starlight Casino has offered free meals to those affected by the power outage.
.<a href="https://twitter.com/StarlightCasino?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@StarlightCasino</a> will be opening their buffet for free to affected residents (ID req'd). MATCH will be serving underage residents. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NewWest?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NewWest</a> —@New_Westminster
The power outage caught people in the neighbourhood offguard.
"All of a sudden the power went out," said Ryan Grant, who said he has lived near the bridge for just over four years.
"I came out and talked to the police but they said they didn't have a clue. And then I spoke to another gentleman who said the power's out due to a blown transformer below the bridge."
Resident Ryan Grant was woken up when the power in his home went out after the fire. (Gian-Paolo Mendoza/CBC)
Commuters being turned away at both ends of the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/QueensboroughBridge?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#QueensboroughBridge</a>. Hearing it may not be until noon for reopening <a href="https://twitter.com/NWPDtraffic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NWPDtraffic</a> <a href="https://t.co/jc7nhKn6dS">pic.twitter.com/jc7nhKn6dS</a> —@gpsmendoza
With files from Stephanie MercierA federal judge’s ruling late Monday night was a win for the authority of the office of the NFL commissioner. But, was it a win for commissioner Roger Goodell himself?
Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott lost his latest court battle and now appears poised to serve a six-game suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy starting this week. At 10:15 p.m., Katherine Polk Failla, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, denied the NFL Players Association’s request for a preliminary injunction to block Elliott’s suspension after hearing oral arguments from both sides in court on Monday.
Failla allowed for 24 hours for Elliott and his team to consider its options for appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals before her ruling is enforced. But as it stands now, Elliott is going to sit out games against the Chiefs, Falcons, Eagles, Chargers, Washington and the Giants; he’d be eligible to return for the Cowboys’ final three games of the regular season, beginning with a Week 15 contest against the Raiders.
Without Elliott, who has rushed for 690 yards in seven games this season, the Cowboys would turn to Darren McFadden, Alfred Morris and Rod Smith in the backfield, and lean on one of the better offensive lines in the league to continue to open up holes. But there’s no doubt that the Cowboys’ hopes of building on the success of 2016, a goal that is already off to a bumpy start, would become even more challenging without Elliott on the field.
Elliott, in his second NFL season, was disciplined by the NFL after a former girlfriend alleged that he physically abused her last summer in Columbus, Ohio. Elliott was not charged with a crime. This court case is not about his guilt or innocence, but rather, whether or not the NFL followed a fundamentally fair process in punishing Elliott. Perhaps the ruling should come as no surprise: The court that upheld the NFL’s four-game suspension of Tom Brady in Deflategate has appellate jurisdiction over the court that is hearing the Elliott litigation.
Sure enough, in her ruling Failla writes that the Brady decision “rejected arguments similar to those here and ordered confirmation of the arbitration award.” As both Brady and now Elliott have learned, the broad authority granted to the NFL commissioner under Article 46 of the collective bargaining agreement—the person in that office has the power to both issue discipline and hear the appeal, or designate the arbitrator who will do so—is difficult to overcome.
While the NFL has scored a big victory in its latest court battle, it’s not so cut and dried for Goodell himself. In disciplining Elliott, he’s strained his relationship with one of his greatest and most influential allies in Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. As recently as last summer, Jones declared the job Goodell has done as “triple A-plus great” and said he would be commissioner “as far as I can see into the future.” But with a pending contract extension through 2024 for Goodell, ESPN reported this weekend that Jones is leading a coalition of owners that have discussed halting those negotiations.
The ESPN report named myriad reasons, including the ongoing anthem issue that many owners believe is threatening business. But Jones’ displeasure over the league’s, and Goodell’s, handling of the discipline for one of his most important players no doubt is prominent in his mind.
Even more certain is that any game Elliott misses would only serve to stoke the wrath of Jones. He considers himself the most influential owner in the league, even if he hasn’t been able to exert that influence when it comes to how the NFL is handling players kneeling for the national anthem. The question now is, how will Jones exert his power as it pertains to the future of Roger Goodell?
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September 1. Afternoon. The Gym.
Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds. The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life. If it exploded, Kazbek knew, it would blast shrapnel into the heads of his wife and two sons, and into him as well, killing them all.
Throughout the day he had memorized the bomb, down to the blue electrical wire linking it to the network of explosives the terrorists had strung around them hours before. Now his eyes wandered, panning the crowd of more than eleven hundred hostages who had been seized in the morning outside the school. The majority were children, crouched with their parents and teachers on the basketball court. The temperature had risen with the passing hours, and their impromptu jail had become fetid and stinking with urine and fear. Many children had undressed. Sweat ran down their bare backs.
View CNN's coverage of the Beslan attack. Courtesy YouTube.com.
His eyes settled on his captors. Most of the terrorists had left the gym for defensive positions in the main school building, leaving behind a handful of men in athletic suits or camouflage pants. These were their guards. They wore ammunition vests and slung Kalashnikov rifles. A few were hidden behind ski masks, but as the temperature had risen, most had removed them, revealing faces. They were young. Some had the bearing of experienced fighters. Others seemed like semiliterate thugs, the sort of criminal that had radiated from Chechnya and Russia's North Caucasus during a decade of war. Two were women wearing explosive belts.
Kazbek studied the group, committing to memory their weapons, their behavior, their relations to one another, and the configuration of their bombs. A diagram of their handiwork had formed in his head, an intricate map that existed nowhere else. With it was a mental blueprint of the school, in which he had studied as a boy. This was useful information, if he could share it, and Kazbek thought of fleeing, hoping he might give the Special Forces gathering outside a description of the bombs and defenses. Already Kazbek assumed this siege would end in a fight, and he knew that when Russia's soldiers rushed these rooms, their attack would be overpowering and imprecise. He knew this because he once was a Russian soldier himself.
He evaluated the options. How does my family get out? Escape? Passivity? Resistance? His wife, Irina Dzutseva, and their sons, Batraz, fifteen, and Atsamaz, seven, were beside him. Kazbek was a tall man with neat dark hair and a mustache, and Batraz, who was growing tall as well, had the hint of a beard. Kazbek had made him remove his shirt, exposing a boyish frame. He hoped this would convince the terrorists that, unlike his father, Batraz was not a threat, and he would not be rounded up with the men. Kazbek's mind was engaged in this sort of agonizing calculus, trying to determine the best way to save his children from a horror with too many variables and too many unknowns. How best to act? Yes, he had information to share. But even if he escaped, he thought, the terrorists might identify his wife and sons. And then kill them. They had already shot several people, including Ruslan Betrozov, who had done nothing more than speak. No, Kazbek thought, he could not run. He also knew that any uprising by the hostages would have to be swift and complete. There were few terrorists in the gym, but by Kazbek's count at least thirty more roamed the school. How could all of these terrorists be overcome by an unarmed crowd, especially when even before rigging the bombs the terrorists had created an immeasurable psychological advantage? "If any of you resists us," one had warned, "we will kill children and leave the one who resists alive." There would be no resistance. Who, after all, would lead it? Already the adult male captives were dying. Many had been executed. Most of the others were in the main hall, kneeling, hands clasped behind their heads.
Kazbek was lucky. The terrorists had overlooked him during the last roundup. He had been spared execution.
Now his mind worked methodically. He wanted no one to see what he planned to do. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his hand moved over the floor to the blue wire. Kazbek was forty-three. He had been a Soviet sapper as a younger man. He knew how bombs worked. He also knew how to disable them. The bomb overhead was part of a simple system, an open electric circuit rigged to a motor-vehicle battery. If the terrorists closed the circuit, current would flow from the battery through the wires and detonate the bombs. But if Kazbek pulled apart the wire inside its insulation, no current could flow. Then, he knew, if the circuit snapped closed, the bomb above his family would not explode. Kazbek had spent much of the day folding the wire back and forth, making a crimp. It was only a matter of time.
He lifted the wire. Back and forth he folded the notch, working it, looking directly at the men who would kill him if they knew what he was doing. He would disconnect this bomb. It was a step. Every step counted. His mind kept working. How does my family get out?
Click here to read the six other greatest Esquire stories ever published -- in their entirety.
9:10 a.m. The Schoolyard.
Morning marked a new school year at School No. 1 in Beslan, beginning with rituals of years past. Returning students, second through twelfth graders, had lined up in a horseshoe formation beside the red brick building. They wore uniforms: girls in dark dresses, boys in dark pants and white shirts. The forecast had predicted hot weather; only the day before, the administration had pushed the schedule an hour earlier, to the relative cool of 9:00 a.m. Students fidgeted with flowers, chocolates, and balloons, waiting for the annual presentation, when first graders would march before their schoolmates for the opening of their academic lives.
Zalina Levina took a seat behind the rostrum and greeted the milling parents. Beslan is an industrial and agricultural town of about thirty-five thousand people on the plain beneath the Caucasus ridge, part of the Russian republic of North Ossetia and one of the few places in the region with a modicum of jobs. For the moment, work seemed forgotten. Parents had come to celebrate. Irina Naldikoyeva sat with her daughter, Alana, four, and glimpsed her son, Kazbek, seven, in the formation with his second-grade class. Aida Archegova had two sons in the assembly. Zalina was baby-sitting her two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, Amina. They had not planned on attending, but the child had heard music and seen children streaming toward the school. "Grandma," she had said, "let's go dance." Zalina put on a denim dress and joined the flow. Already it was warm. The first graders were about to step forward. The school year had begun.
The terrorists appeared as if from nowhere. A military truck stopped near the school and men leapt from the cargo bed, firing rifles and shouting, "Allahu akhbar!" They moved with speed and certitude, as if every step had been rehearsed. The first few sprinted between the formation and the schoolyard gate, blocking escape. There was almost no resistance. Ruslan Frayev, a local man who had come with several members of his family, drew a pistol and began to fire. He was killed.
The terrorists seemed to be everywhere. Zalina saw a man in a mask sprinting with a rifle. Then another. And a third. Many students in the formation had their backs to the advancing gunmen, but one side did not, and as Zalina sat confused, those students broke and ran. The formation disintegrated. Scores of balloons floated skyward as children released them. A cultivated sense of order became bedlam.
Dzera Kudzayeva, seven, had been selected for a role in which she would be carried on the shoulders of a senior and strike a bell to start the new school year. Her father, Aslan Kudzayev, had hired Karen Mdinaradze, a video cameraman for a nearby soccer team, to record the big day. Dzera wore a blue dress with a white apron and had two white bows in her hair, and was on the senior's shoulders when the terrorists arrived. They were quickly caught.
For many other hostages, recognition came slowly. Aida Archegova thought she was in a counterterrorism drill. Beslan is roughly 950 miles south of Moscow, in a zone destabilized by the Chechen wars. Police actions were part of life. "Is it exercises?" she asked a terrorist as he bounded past.
He stopped. "What are you, a fool?" he said.
The terrorists herded the panicked crowd into a rear courtyard, a place with no outlet. An attached building housed the boiler room, and Zalina ran there with others to hide. The room had no rear exit. They were trapped. The door opened. A man in a tracksuit stood at the entrance. "Get out or I will start shooting," he said.
Zalina did not move. She thought she would beg for mercy. Her granddaughter was with her, and a baby must mean a pass. She froze until only she and Amina remained. The terrorist glared. "You need a special invitation?" he said. "I will shoot you right here."
Speechless with fear, she stepped out, joining a mass of people as obedient as if they had been tamed. The terrorists had forced the crowd against the school's brick wall and were driving it through a door. The people could not file in quickly enough, and the men broke windows and handed children in. Already there seemed to be dozens of the terrorists. They lined the hall, redirecting the people into the gym. "We are from Chechnya," one said. "This is a seizure. We are here to start the withdrawal of troops and the liberation of Chechnya."
As the hostages filed onto the basketball court, more terrorists came in. One fired into the ceiling. "Everybody be silent!" he said. "You have been taken hostage. Calm down. Stop the panic and nobody will be hurt. We are going to issue our demands, and if the demands are implemented, we will let the children out."
Rules were laid down. There would be no talking without permission. All speech would be in Russian, not Ossetian, so the terrorists could understand it, too. The hostages would turn in their cell phones, cameras, and video cameras. Any effort to resist would be met with mass executions, including of women and children.
When the terrorist had finished, Ruslan Betrozov, a father who had brought his two sons to class, stood and translated the instructions into Ossetian. He was a serious man, forty-four years old and with a controlled demeanor. The terrorists let him speak. When he stopped, one approached.
"Are you finished?" he asked. "Have you said everything you want to say?"
Betrozov nodded. The terrorist shot him in the head.
9:20 a.m. The Administrator's Office.
Irina Dzutseva, Kazbek Misikov's wife, huddled near the desk, embracing Atsamaz, her first-grade son. Atsamaz was quiet and waiflike but dressed like a gentleman in black suit and white shirt. Irina could feel his fear. They hid amid papers and textbooks, listening to the long corridor. Doors were being opened, then slammed. They heard gunshots. Atsamaz clung to a balloon. "Where are Papa and Batik?" he asked. "Were they killed?"
The first graders and their parents had been standing at the main entrance and were among the first to see the attack. Irina had turned back into the school and bolted down the corridor as the shooting began, charging down the hall in high heels, pulling her son by his hand. She heard screams and a window shatter. Glass tinkled on the floor. The corridor was long and still; their footfalls echoed as they passed each door, the entrance to the gym, the cafeteria, and the restrooms. At the end of the hall they rushed upstairs to the auditorium and crouched behind the maroon curtain on the stage with other mothers and students. Balloons were taped to the ceiling. Posters decorated the wall. Behind the curtain was a door, and they pushed in and settled into an office packed with books. Short Stories by Russian Writers. Methods of Teaching. Literature 5. Irina looked at the others: four adults and six children. They were cut off and could only guess at what was happening outside. They sat in the stillness, waiting to be saved.
After about half an hour, someone pushed against the door. A child called out hopefully: "Are you ours?"
The door swung open. Three terrorists stood before them, beards hanging beneath masks. "God forbid that we are yours," one said, and the group was marched down to the gym with terrorists firing rifles into the ceiling.
In the gym they encountered a scene beyond their imagination. Almost the entire student body had been taken captive, a mass of distraught human life trapped as if it were under a box. Children's cries filled the air. The gym was roughly twenty-eight yards long by fifteen yards wide, and its longer sides each had a bank of four windows, ten feet by ten feet, with panes made from opaque plastic. Light came in as a glow. A wide streak of blood marked the area where Betrozov's corpse had been dragged. Irina hurried with Atsamaz to the far corner and found Batraz, her older son. She understood that their lives would be leveraged in a test of wills against the Kremlin. Hope rested with negotiations, or with Russia's security forces, not known for tactical precision or regard for civilian life. The last time a Chechen group had seized hundreds of hostages, at a theater in Moscow in 2002, Russian commandos attacked with poisonous gas. At least 129 hostages died.
Two young women wearing explosive belts roamed the wooden floor, wraithlike figures dressed in black, their faces hidden by veils. Irina shuddered. Russia has an enduring capacity to produce ghastly social phenomena; these were the latest occurrence of the shahidka, female Islamic martyrs who had sown fear during the second Chechen war. The Russian news called them black widows, women driven to militant Islam and vengeance by the loss of Chechnya's young men. The hostages noticed an incongruity: The black veil worn by one shahidka framed the neatly sculpted eyebrows of what seemed a teenager who had recently visited a beauty salon.
Two terrorists entered the room with backpacks and began unloading equipment: wire and cable on wooden spools, bombs of different sizes, including several made from plastic soda bottles and two rectangular charges, each the size of a briefcase. With pliers and wire cutters, they set to work, assembling the components into a system. Their plans became clear. Many of the small bombs would be daisy-chained together and hoisted above the crowd, and a line of larger explosives would be set on the floor. The hanging bombs served two purposes: They were a source of mass fear, forcing obedience from the hostages underneath. And elevation ensured that if the bombs were to explode, they would blast shrapnel down from above, allowing for no cover. Virtually everyone would be struck by the nuts, bolts, ball bearings, and nails packed inside. The terrorists assigned the tallest hostages, including Kazbek, who is six foot three, to lift the bombs. The choice of suspension showed malign ingenuity: They strung cables from one basketball hoop to the other, dangling the bombs on hooks. Kazbek realized the terrorists had inside information. Not only had they planned the basketball hoops into their design, but the cables and wires were precut to size, as if they knew the dimensions before they arrived. The bombs were a custom fit.
The weight of the rig at first caused bombs to sag near the children's heads. "Do not touch them," a terrorist warned, and then instructed Kazbek and others to pull the slack out of the system. The network was raised higher, higher, and then nearly taut, until the deadly web was up and out of reach. Kazbek assessed the trap: It was like a string of Christmas lights, except where each bulb would go was a suspended bomb. A terrorist stood on the trigger, and the system was connected to a battery. If the triggerman were to release his foot, Kazbek knew, the circuit would close. Electricity would flow. The bombs would explode.
View more video footage of the attack. Courtesy YouTube.com.
Afternoon. The Main Hall.
Aslan Kudzayev carried a chair through the long blue hall under the watch of his guards. He was hurrying through his tasks. He had been put in a work gang the terrorists formed from adult male hostages and ordered to barricade the classroom windows. The terrorists worried that Russian Special Forces would attack. The hostages proved to be a useful labor pool. Aslan wore white pants, a white shirt, and white shoes. He was thirty-three and lanky, with short brown hair. As he lugged the chair, a terrorist with a bandaged arm pointed a Makarov 9mm pistol in his face. Aslan stopped. "You have short hair," the terrorist said. "You are a cop."
Aslan shook his head. "No," he said. "No."
The terrorist told him to empty his pockets, and Aslan showed him a wallet, money, and keys. He owned a building-supply store. Nothing about him said cop. The terrorist signaled him to return to work.
Once the windows were blocked, the men were ordered to sit in the hall, hands behind their heads. By now the terrorists were emerging as individuals; the hostages were forming a sense of their captors. There were the leaders and the led, and the led were organized into teams. Some specialized in explosives. Others were jailers, controlling the hostages in the gym. The largest group was in the main building: a platoon preparing to fight off a Russian assault. They had come with packs of food, coffee, and candy, as well as sleeping bags, gas masks, and first-aid kits. Each had a rifle and wore a vest bulging with ammunition. Some had hand grenades. A few had 40mm grenade launchers mounted under their rifle barrels.
Aslan began to understand their command structure. All of them deferred to a light-footed and muscular man with a bushy reddish beard whom they called the Colonel. He paced the corridor with a cocky strut, his shaved head topped with a black skullcap, exuding the dark charisma of the captain of a pirate sloop. He was charged with energy and power and seemed fired with glee. Beneath him were midlevel commanders, including a Slav who used the name Abdullah and had pointed the pistol at Aslan's face. Aslan grudgingly marveled at their discipline and skill. They had taken the school, laced it with bombs, and made it a bunker in half a day. Say what you want about these bastards, but they are not stupid, he thought. They know what to do.
He and two other hostages were ordered to their feet and taken down the hall to the library, where they were given axes and picks and told to tear up the floorboards. Aslan wondered whether the terrorists had a cache of weapons under the planks, but he could see nothing in the hole he made and was led back to sit. Captive in the corridor, growing tired and cramped, Aslan realized he had come to the end of his life. He fell to reverie. Slowly he reviewed the things that made him what he had been: his marriage, the birth of his two daughters, the success of his business. He felt regret that he had not yet had a son. An Ossetian was supposed to have a son. Now and then he was startled by nearby rifle fire, but he could not tell where it came from. He returned to daydreaming. He thought: What will they say at my funeral?
Early Afternoon. The Gym.
The terrorist was sick of Larisa Kudziyeva. She had been shouting, even after they had ordered everyone to be quiet. She was lean and beautiful in a quintessentially Caucasus way, with fine skin and dark hair and brown eyes, a look intensified by her black blouse and skirt. She did not look her thirty-eight years. The terrorist was one of the young men guarding the hostages. He wore his mask. He walked toward her to quiet her, for good.
Larisa had spent the first hours of captivity tending to Vadim Bolloyev, a father who had been shot near the right shoulder. He lay on the basketball court silently, holding in his pain. His white shirt was soaked red. He was growing weak. "Why did they shoot you?" she had asked him.
"I refused to kneel," he said.
Larisa urged him to lie back and placed her purse under his head. She inspected his wound. The bone had been shattered. Blood flowed freely. She tried using a belt as a tourniquet but could not position it. Sweat beaded his forehead. His son, Sarmat, six, sat beside him in a white shirt and black vest, watching his father slip away.
Larisa had not wanted to come to school that day. Her six-year-old son, Zaurbek, was starting first grade, but she had asked Madina, her nineteen-year-old daughter, to bring him. Her husband had died of stomach cancer in April. She was in mourning and felt no urge to celebrate. But after they left, Larisa looked outside at the crowds moving to the school. Go with them, a voice told her, and she rushed to her balcony. "Wait for me!" she called down.
Now she leaned over a bleeding man, struggling to save him. Her daughter was enrolled at a medical academy. "You are a future doctor," Larisa whispered. "What do I do?"
"There is no way to save him," Madina said. "His artery is damaged. He needs an operation."
Larisa felt fury. She would not let him die. She shouted at a terrorist across the room. "We need water and bandages!" she said. No one answered. She shouted again. She was breaking rules. The terrorist approached. "Why are you yelling?" he said.
"I need bandages," she said.
"Are you the bravest person here, or the smartest?" he said. "We will check." His voice turned sharp: "Stand up!"
Bolloyev grabbed her shirt. "Do not go," he said. Larisa slipped free and stood, and the terrorist shoved her with his rifle toward a corner where confiscated cameras and phones had been piled and smashed.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
He ordered her to kneel. "No," she said.
For this Bolloyev had been shot. "I told you," he said. "Get on your knees."
"No," she said.
For a moment they faced each other, the terrorist and the mother, locked in mental battle. She looked into his mask; freckles were visible near his eyes. A hush fell over the gym. The hostages had seen Betrozov's murder. Now came Larisa's turn. The terrorist raised his Kalashnikov, past her chest, past her face, stopping at her forehead. He pressed the muzzle against her brow. Larisa felt the circle of steel on her skin.
Bolloyev propped himself on an elbow. Larisa's children looked on. She reached up, grasped the barrel, and moved it away. "What kind of spectacle are you playing here, and in front of whom?" she snapped. "There are women and children here who are already scared."
The terrorist paused. Thinking quickly, she tried to convince him that Ossetians were not enemies of Chechens, a difficult task, given that enmity between Ossetians, a Christian people with a history of fidelity to Moscow, and the Islamic Chechens and Ingush, who have long been persecuted, is deep. "Your children rest in our sanatoriums," she said. "Your women give birth here."
"Not our wives and children," the terrorist said. "They are the spawn of Kadyrov."
The word stung. Kadyrov-the surname of former rebels who aligned with Russia and became the Kremlin's proxies. The separatists despised them with a loathing reserved for traitors. Larisa was stumped. Abdullah had been rushing across the gym; he stepped beside them. "What is happening here?" he said.
"This guy wants to execute me because I asked for water and bandages for the wounded," she said. Abdullah studied the two: his young gunman, the woman who stared him down.
"There is nothing for you here," he said. "Go back and sit down and shut up."
She pointed to his bloodied arm. "Your arm is bandaged," she said. "Give me some of those bandages."
"You did not understand me?" he said. "There is nothing for you here. Go back and sit down and shut up."
Larisa returned to her place. Her children stared at her. Bolloyev lay back down. His lips were violet, his forehead coated in sweat. His death could not be far away. She was enraged.
Afternoon. The Gym.
Zalina Levina could not console her granddaughter, Amina, and did not know what to do. She had stripped the pink skirt and red shirt from the toddler's sweaty skin. It was not enough. Amina cried on, filling Zalina with dread. The terrorists had grown more irritable, and their threats were multiplying. "Shut your bastards up or I will calm them down fast," one had said. Zalina worried the child would be shot.
Zalina knew Chechnya firsthand, having lived in Grozny, its capital, before the Soviet Union collapsed. She remembered its mountain vistas and orderly atmosphere. The city had industry, a university, an oil institute, a circus, a soccer stadium, and rows of apartment buildings on tree-lined streets. She also remembered its brutality. Nationalism had sprouted anew as Moscow's grip weakened. Old animosities reemerged. In the early 1990s, before the first Chechen war, a group of Chechen men had stolen her brother-in-law's car. "We give you a month to leave," one had said, "or we will return and burn down your house." The family fled to Beslan, sixty-five miles away, across what would become a military front. Zalina thought she had escaped the war.
Now Amina kept crying and Zalina's anxiety grew. There seemed no reason for hope. The terrorists were demanding a withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya, and if the hostages knew anything about Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, they knew he was unlikely to do this. Putin's success rested in part on his reputation for toughness. He was not one to grant concessions, certainly not to separatists, for whom his disdain was well-known.
As they waited, the hostages were miserable in the heat. The gym was too crowded to allow for much movement, which forced them to take turns extending their legs. Others leaned back-to-back. The terrorists gave little relief. Sometimes they made everyone display their hands on their heads, fingers upright, like rabbit ears. Other times, when the gym became noisy with crying children, they selected a hostage to stand, then warned everyone: Shut up or he will be shot. But |
if goal is not reached, 4% if goal is reached, then 3% for credit card processing. Or, you can choose Fixed funding where you, as the creator set the goal. You will only get funds if the goal is reached: 4% if goal is reached, 3% for credit card. FundAnything: offers the same deal as IndieGoGo. CrowdTilt has a 2.5% fee if the goal is reached plus 2.5$ for credit card processing.
With crowdsourcing’s rapid growth, some of these platforms are choosing to specialize in different niche markets. Some are building out the community as a way to promise you greater access to individuals who might not otherwise see your project. Kickstarter is clearly the poster child, the one everyone mentions, when crowdfunding is discussed.
If you’re looking for some of the specialty platforms – Inc has a short post on three categories: Scientific research, charity, and hyper-local. TheStreet reviewed 20 niche crowdfunding sites in late 2012. Most are still around.
As a final note on FilmBreak’s approach, they did something that is noteworthy and very logical. They made sure to focus on the customer conversation – by adding live chat. I believe this is one of the first crowdsource solutions to offer live chat support, which is a brilliant idea – tune in completely to your customer when they are most interested and ready to fund your campaign. You can see the #Stuck live chat function in action here.
Did you fund a crowdsourced project this year? Do you plan to do so in 2014? Let me know in the comments. Or reach me on Google+ or Twitter with your thoughts.The Mojave Project is an experimental transmedia documentary by Kim Stringfellow exploring the physical, geological and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert. The Mojave Project reconsiders and establishes multiple ways in which to interpret this unique and complex landscape, through association and connection of seemingly unrelated sites, themes, and subjects thus creating a speculative and immersive experience for its audience.
"From where I used to live, on the fringes of what had been the colony's land, this Ozymandias was the only visible trace of human handiwork. Gleaming in the morning light or black against the enormous desert sunsets, that silo was like a Norman keep rising, against all the probabilities, from the sagebrush."
-Aldous Huxley, Ozymandias, the Utopia that Failed, 1953
The ruins of the once vibrant but short-lived Llano del Rio coperative colony appear like some picturesque Craftsman folly along Antelope Valley's Pearblossom Highway. Here is the "alternative future" for Los Angeles -- so aptly described in the preface of Mike Davis's classic 1990 book "City of Quartz," which unearthed the sordid, but utterly fascinating history of Los Angeles. Davis's substitute trajectory towards the socialist left may be hard to imagine today but with Llano del Rio's centenary barely behind us and a new found interest by artist groups such as the Llano del Rio Collective, the cooperative spirit of Llano and a few other desert "utopias" have been resurrected deserving closer inspection.
Llano del Rio was conceived by Job Harriman, an earnest but ambitious left-leaning lawyer who nearly became the first socialist mayor of Los Angeles in 1911 had his bid for office not been derailed by some shady backroom dealings orchestrated in the 11th hour of his campaign by his more well-known legal partner Clarence Darrow. Together the two were defending the radical McNamara Brothers, two union organizers charged with the infamous bombing of The Times building in 1910. Harriman -- who had previously run for California governor in 1898 under the Socialist Labor Party ticket and later as a vice presidential candidate in 1900 -- attempted to win the mayoral race again in 1913 but was narrowly defeated in the primary election.
Disillusioned with the status quo politic of his time but determined to make good elsewhere, Harriman's exit strategy envisioned an economically practical socialist colony -- secular, cooperative and economically self-sustainable -- set geographically in the southwestern Mojave Desert where it merges into the San Gabriel Mountains. Convinced the best way to spread socialism was by way of example, Harriman and his comrades sought to build the ultimate "Socialist City" from within the brutal capitalist hegemony of his day where "an estimated 40 percent of the U.S. population had been abandoned to extreme poverty and another 40 percent to conditions just a notch above."1 When the world saw their success they would soon follow and for a few short years it seemed Llano del Rio would indeed succeed.
Once Harriman and his partners had secured a down payment on 10,000 acres of land valued at $80,000 from the Mescal Water and Land Company in 1913, a parcel that had been partially developed by a former temperance colony near the headwaters of Big Rock Creek, they immediately began to develop the site. Incorporated under the Llano del Rio Company, the settlement officially opened on May Day 1914 "with five families, five pigs, a team of horses, and a cow."2 Over 100 colonists arrived within the first year. By the next year the population had more than doubled.
The promise of a better life with continuous employment drew hundreds to the agrarian settlement through print advertisements in national socialist journals including The Western Comrade which Harriman and his partners had acquired in 1914. Qualification for membership required that applicants were "idealistic, industrious, and sober" and had provided "three good references" preferably from union affiliates. One application for membership stated:
"Only industrious men and women of high ideals and constructive ideas with reputations for good citizenship are desirable members of the LLANO DEL RIO CO-OPERATIVE COLONY."
The application additionally asked a variety of questions including: "Will solving the economic problem ultimately lead to solving the social problem?" and "Is happiness a state of mind or dependent upon affluent material conditions?"
Based on social capitalist model the Llano del Rio Company required new members to invest in the colony through a joint stock venture -- $500 cash was required upon acceptance towards a fixed 2,000 shares valued at $1 each, payable over a six-year period. Members were paid to work on-site for $4 per day with $1 going towards the purchase of outstanding stock shares. The remainder went towards collective daily expenses such as meals and lodging. Workers' contracts stated that any future profits were to be credited to each investor's account, a promise that never actually materialized.
As the colony quickly expanded so did its infrastructure. Irrigation ditches were laid to water acres alfalfa, corn, vegetables, fruit orchards and livestock. Housing (both permanent and temporary to accommodate the large influx of new colonists) was built using materials produced at the on-site sawmill, quarry, limekilns and other industrial shops. In addition, a hotel, commissary, and dairy along with several industrial buildings including a grain silo were constructed. The soap factory, laundry, tannery, cannery, bakery, printing press, machine shop, post office, barbershop and other trades provided employment. Children were taught at one California's first and largest Montessori schools. By 1917, there were over 900 colonists living at Llano and more than three quarters of their provisions were supplied internally.3
Llanoites spent their spare time participating in a variety of cultural events including May Day celebrations, evening dances, and musical events performed by two orchestras, several quartets and a ragtime band. Furthermore, a variety of extracurricular activities were accessible, such as book, dramatic, rod and gun clubs along with team sports and competitions. Photographs of the settlement depict a happy, robust community, although it is noted that there were troubled periods when they had only carrots to eat for weeks on end.4
For the women involved, Llano del Rio promised a gender neutral environment. Architect Alice Constance Austin proposed a conscious feminist design for the future Socialist City that featured a nongrid circular spatial plan with centralized communal kitchens, laundries and daycare, built-in furniture, and other modern innovations that minimized housekeeping while relying heavily on modern technologies such as electricity. Women were meant to equally participate everyday governance and politics of Llano. Freeing them from daily toil of "woman's work" was the first step in doing so.
"As the domestic drudgery is taken out of the home-life, the spiritual side of the home begins to develop in greater beauty. The mother loses the character of the cook, and becomes the comrade in harness with her husband."5
Still even in with this idealism, the colony suffered from its share of avarice, laziness, internal bickering and factionalism. Although a general assembly of some 60 individual committees, each with its own administration and agenda was charged to handle daily affairs, a minority of Llanoites became dissatisfied with overall governance.
One group calling themselves Welfare League -- more popularly known as the "Brush Gang" for their private clandestine meetings and the branch of "sagebrush" pinned to clothing to identify themselves -- demanded that all decisions affecting the colony be made by popular vote rather than through the established general assembly. Eventually Harriman expelled the group's leaders but fringe resentment remained.
Worse were the settlement's entangled water rights, which were challenged in court by local ranchers in 1916 and eventually lost -- rendering the colony's land holdings valueless. Outside attacks from The Times, never a friend of Harriman, continued to chip away at the settlement's legitimacy, in turn stirring up local uneasiness and dissuading potential new recruits. At the onset of World War I scores of men left the colony to enlist or find work outside at higher wages resulting from the war.
The final blow came from one of their own. Founding Christian Socialist investor Gentry Purviance McCorkle worked behind the scenes quietly purchasing company shares in an effort to take control of the orchard endeavor "without the socialist element."6 Although McCorkle's maneuvers were eventually stopped, the fiasco had effectively bankrupted the colony by 1918. Harriman and the others relocated to rural western Louisiana, rechristening the colony as New Llano, where it thrived through the Depression years until 1938. Once abandoned, California's Llano del Rio's infrastructure was immediately sacked by its neighbors, slowly erasing traces of its fleeting socialist dream from landscape the southwestern Mojave Desert.
As a short-lived experiment in American socialism, Llano del Rio may have been successful -- but in terms of fostering an authentically egalitarian community free of racism it had failed.
In The Western Comrade's April 1916 issue a full-page advertisement titled "A Gateway to Freedom through Co-operative Action" states at the bottom of the call "Only Caucasians are admitted. We have had applications from Negroes, Hindus, Mongolians and Malays. The rejection of these applications are not due to race prejudice, but because it is not deemed expedient to mix the races in these communities." Indeed, the founders may not have intentionally intended to promote racial prejudice as the advertisement suggests, but offered no opportunity for people of color to join the colony. It appears from the advertisement's wording that there were many racially diverse individuals and families who were interested in participating.
So as white families were moving to the racially exclusive Llano del Rio colony, around two dozen African American families were heading out from Long Beach, Whittier and Los Angeles to homestead deep within the eastern Mojave in Lanfair Valley at a site named Dunbar, now part of the Mojave National Preserve. These families, which included seven single woman filing as heads-of-household out of the 24 who received patents for "proving up" their land, had come out to file 160 acre tracts or more through the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 that encouraged dryland farming. Some may have also sought to join the short-lived Harts Townsite, founded by George W. Harts and Howard Folke, two African Americans that promoted their settlement as way to bring "freedom and independence to a limited number of colored people."7
From 1910 into the early 1920s, Lanfair Valley experienced a boom of sorts with at least 600 homesteading applications recorded. Some of the earliest to file were black families -- six were known to have applied in 1910 according to Dennis Casebier of the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association (MDHCA). Casebier is responsible for bringing this forgotten homesteading history to light through his extensive research, oral histories and publications documenting the history and culture of the eastern Mojave region.
Although racism in Lanfair Valley was not necessarily absent, Casebier's oral histories with descendants of homesteaders suggest that it was downplayed for the children that had grown up attending the mix-race Lanfair School. In one interview, Casebier's subject reflects whether she perceived any discrimination there. "No. They were kids to me. I didn't care whether they were pink, red, or white." She goes on to state, "Mr. Jones [a black man] used to help my dad plow. And my dad helped him plow. One time, we'd gone on Saturday up to the railroad, to the post office with the team of mules, and while we were gone, a flash flood came along... Well we were stuck, and here it was evening, you know. So we stayed all night at the Joneses.'"
Casebier states that despite these fond childhood memories some segregation did indeed persist as it is known that mail sent to the area's black families posted to the Dunbar post office, which was located within several feet of Lanfair's own. It is most likely that blacks did not attend local monthly dances, Fourth of July celebrations and other community events because the group that hosted them only allowed white membership -- not so unusual in that day and age. Still, Casebier's interviews with Lanfair Valley's African American descendants state that they too were not aware of any overt racism, perhaps desiring affirming memories to pass on to their children that erased prejudice from their family's collective history within the eastern Mojave Desert.
As recorded by Casebier, Richard Welsey Hodnett looked back at his family's tenure in the valley as a happy time. When asked about racism, he simply commented that he was too small to remember:
"It rained a lot in Lanfair in those years and in the spring, as far as you could see was beautiful golden poppies all over the valley. It was beautiful, a few other different wildflowers in the mix, but the predominant flowers were golden yellow poppies... [Hodnett's father] liked farming and getting all that land up there for homesteading it. He just got carried away and got excited and went up there and everyone is thrilled with that country..."8
The Mojave Project will continue its look at other utopic and consciously aware communities of the Mojave Desert in future installments.
Notes:
1 Greenbaum Kasson, Elisabeth. "Promised Land." Los Angeles Times Magazine, May 2012.
2 Kagan, Paul. "New World Utopias: A Photographic History of the Search for Community." New York: Penguin Books (1975): 119. Print.
3 Shor, Francis Robert. "From Socialist Colony to Socialist City: The Llano del Rio Utopian Experiment in California." "Utopianism and Radicalism in a Reforming America, 1888-1918." Santa Barbara: Praeger (1997): 169. Print.
4 Ibid., Kagan, 120.
5 Ibid., Shor, 173.
6 Ibid., Kasson.
7 Casebier, Dennis. "Black Homesteaders in Lanfair Valley." Park News & Guide: Mojave National Preserve, National Park Service, Issue 22 (Fall 2012): 1. Print.
8 Richard Welsey Hodnett oral history conducted by Dennis Casebier at MDHCA, Aug. 18, 2000.
Photos were sourced from "Double Look at Utopia: The Llano del Rio Colony," Aldous Huxley and Paul Kagan (authors), California Historical Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Summer 1972), 117-154.
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, Twitter, and Youtube.THE MIND IS “TURBULENT, STRONG, OBSTINATE”, cries Arjuna dolefully in the Bhagavad Gita. Obstinate in the face of efforts to control it, and to understand it. The two obstinacies are not unrelated. The culmination of the European tradition of inquiry into the mind—ranging from Plato to Freud—is the contention that there is such a thing as the unconscious mind, a thing to whose secrets the conscious mind is not privy. The unconscious will not yield easily, certainly not to introspection or some other simple effort of the will. But that is not to say it will yield to nothing.
People have long known of the mind’s intimate connection with a particular bodily organ: the brain. The Roman royal physician Galen of Pergamon had remarked upon the connection in the 2nd century AD while working with patients who had sustained brain damage. But it has only been in the last few centuries that we have acquired the wherewithal—the use of the microscope and other observational techniques—to study the brain in its constituent complexity. Crucially, further work on brain damage from the late 19th century onwards has enabled us to map with an unprecedented degree of precision the relation between specific mental functions and specific parts of the brain. The development, as we shall see, was not a wholly unproblematic one.
Confronted with these methods, the mind began to yield at least some of its secrets to the modern world’s most reliable technique for acquiring new knowledge: the scientific method. It is a sign of our trust in this method, and the discipline it has created—neuroscience—that we express so many of our old puzzles, our old anxieties, in the vocabulary it has given us. The fear that the appearance of control and freedom in our lives is a mere illusion, the fatalism of the ancients, is now directed not at the caprice of the gods but at neurological ‘determinism’, the view that all our actions are determined by facts about our brain states and their histories, facts over which we have no control. We seek cures for the maladies of the mind—the pre-modern world’s manias, melancholy, and madness—by manipulating the condition of the brain: hence our talk of addictions, depression and cognitive impairment.I've gone through many reviews and spent countless hours (exaggerated a bit) watching youtubers review this product along with many other competitor products such as the Beats X, Apple Airpods, Samsung Icon X etc. and in the end I chose the Jaybird X3 because the pros for the X3 outweighs the cons by a very large margin. Reminder that nothing is perfect but within the Wireless earbuds department, there is nothing closer to perfect than the X3. Pro: Battery life is always an issue with these wireless earbuds but with the X3, I've never really had to worry about batterylife as the X3 does as they say it would (8 hours). On a weekly basis, I'd really only have to charge it, maybe twice. I use it everytime I commute to work and I commute by using public transportation. It takes about 30 minutes to and 30 minutes from (totaling at 1 hour) and I work at least 5 days a week and usually by the end of the work week I would be left with 20% left. No problem. Just plug it in and your earbuds should be full in about an hour. A good addition is that everytime you turn it on, it tells you the current batterylife before connecting to any devices. The X3 also tells you when you have 20% left even if you are in the middle of streaming or lost with the music. Another plus. Water Resistant is always a plus. I come from a city/state that is known for it's sudden change in weather. One day it can be bright, sunny and clear. Next day, rain, thunderstorm and or snow. I've never had to worry about getting my X3 wet as they would work just fine in any natural occurrences. Idk about natural disasters, I'm not willing to put my X3 or myself up to the test. Connection works like a breeze. Connecting it for the first time is as simple as turning the X3 on, and connecting it to a bluetooth ENabled device. Everyother time after that, as long as the bluetooth on your device is on, the X3 will automatically connect when turned on. And it only automatically connects to devices that it has connected to before. Smart! Meh/Can improve on The wires are unnoticable but that is really only when it isn't in use and is dangling around your neck. I've had times that I forgot that it was even there and threw tantrums about losing something worth $130. But then when I realize that it is around my neck, I am once again reminded of how glad I am, that the X3 is wireless but wired to keep them from being lost, unlike the Airpods or Icon X. The negative is that moving your head around is limited to how long the wire is. There are times when I had to tilt my head or even turn my whole body to look at something: to avoid pulling the earbuds out of my ears. And then turn back to have to adjust the wires everytime so that one side isn't to tight and the other isn't too loose. But every now and then, when in use, I do in fact forget that the wires are there, until I have to turn my head... Might just be my specific product but within the first few hours of unpacking it for the first time, one side of the earbud fell off so I had to go looking for it. This is why I try to avoid in-ear earbuds as the tip can fall off and get lost without you noticing or come off and get lodged into your ear (never happened to me but one can never be too cautious). Just don't like having stuff jammed into my ear. Plus side is that the X3 comes with wingtips so you can adjust how far the tip of the earbud goes into your ear without worrying that it will fall out of your ear as the wingtips will keep the earbuds in place. Sound does drop for a split second every now and then, when you cover the mic piece but it's not a big deal to me. Just something to note. Can be improved on. Cons The charging port is not standard and requires a unique plug in. Lose that, your X3 is worthless unless you find the plug in or get a new one. This is the main deal breaker and perhaps the only reason that I refrain from calling the X3 perfect. I've had many occasions in which I had to rummage through my bag, drawer, bed, clothing, just to find it. I would not have gotten the X3 if they didn't balance it out with it's great battery life. Something to take note, Jaybird. Main deal breaker for most Idk Not a sound expert/audiophile so long as I can listen to music for a long time, then I don't care about quality Summary The X3 is a bang for it's buck. Cheaper than most models. Long batterylife. Water resistant. Smooth connection. With most smartphone makers moving towards the idea of (truly) wireless, #RIP #Headphone #Jack #(Sorry to all the Jacks out there); the X3 is a 100% must have wireless earbud (only if you are careful not to lose the plug-in like I do every now and then). This is a win.
Read moreA woman and children stand in the doorway of a house during an earthquake in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia May 29, 2017. Antara (PHOTO: Mohamad Hamzah/via REUTERS)
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A strong, shallow earthquake rocked Indonesia’s central Sulawesi province Monday evening. There were no immediate reports of serious damage or casualties, and no tsunami warning.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.8 and was centered in a thinly populated area 79 kilometers (49 miles) southeast of the provincial capital, Palu, at a depth of 9.1 kilometers (6 miles).
Imam Faturrachman, a scientist with Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, said the land-based quake did not have the potential to cause a tsunami.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency posted photos of damage on Twitter from Poso, a city to the southeast of the epicenter. One showed a collapsed building and another showed a convenience store with goods strewn on its floor but otherwise intact. It said it had no reports of casualties.
El Shinta radio reported that residents ran from their homes in panic.
The first quake was followed by magnitude 5.0 and 4.9 aftershocks, also at a shallow depth.
Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage on the Earth’s surface.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire.” A powerful Indian Ocean quake and tsunami in 2004 killed a total of 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia.A Chinese tank, camouflaged with bamboo to protect it from Japanese planes, moves across a wooden bridge during an attack somewhere in China during World War II.
Jan. 14, 1942 A Chinese tank, camouflaged with bamboo to protect it from Japanese planes, moves across a wooden bridge during an attack somewhere in China during World War II. AP
Although the People’s Liberation Army has no history of meddling in domestic politics, it did help the Communist Party win control of China.
Although the People’s Liberation Army has no history of meddling in domestic politics, it did help the Communist Party win control of China.
Although the People’s Liberation Army has no history of meddling in domestic politics, it did help the Communist Party win control of China.
China’s military spending has been rapidly spiraling upward, and the growing amounts are unnerving Beijing’s Asian neighbors and policy planners in the Pentagon, who are openly wary about the country’s long-term intentions.
Getting a handle on Chinese military spending is difficult because much of it is opaque and off the books, such as the People’s Liberation Army’s spending on research and space exploration. But various international think tanks estimate that China’s military spending has risen from about $20 billion in 2002 to at least $120 billion last year.
The United States still spends four times as much on its military. But by some accounts, China is on course to surpass the United States in total military spending by 2035.
The increased spending has allowed the PLA to embark on a sweeping modernization program that includes new long-range cruise missiles, a new fleet of J-10 and J-11 fighter jets, an experimental stealth J-20 plane, a refurbished Soviet-era aircraft carrier and a growing space program, which includes China’s own satellite navigation network. The PLA has also embarked on a long-term campaign to improve the inter-operability of its various ground, naval and air forces — long a weak point for the Chinese military.
Some critics, including China’s skeptical neighbors, are alarmed at the spending, which they say is being used to bolster China’s more assertive stance over long-disputed, uninhabited islands in the South China and East China seas. Longer term, some predict, China’s growing military might shift the balance with American-armed Taiwan, which Chinese leaders consider a renegade province to be reunited with the mainland.
The military growth has led the Obama administration to refocus America’s defense posture away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and toward the Asia-Pacific region. The Chinese buildup has also caused Japan and some Southeast Asian countries to seek reassurance from the United States that they won’t be abandoned, although Chinese diplomats have accused the United States of meddling in what are essentially regional disputes.
Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan of the China Military Science Society said outsiders need not be concerned. China’s military spending only reflects the newly booming economy, he said, and the country is simply playing catch up after years of neglect.
“Actually, our rapid spending increase in recent years is more like compensation for the past,” Luo said. “Second, the huge increase in our budget is because China faces a lot of threats, traditional and nontraditional. We have a lot of land occupied by other countries. We’re also one of the countries in the world with the most neighbors.”
Luo also said that while other sectors are enjoying the fruits of reform, the armed forces should not be neglected.
“It’s important that a person not only grow his bones, but also his muscles,” Luo said. “The military is the muscles.”In the summer of 2010, husband-and-wife paleobiologist team Z. Jack Tseng and Juan Liu traveled to the Zanda Basin in western Tibet with a group of colleagues. The remote area, a week’s drive from Beijing and near the border of Pakistan and China, is “basically badlands everywhere, with deeply cut valleys throughout,” Tseng says.
To explore the valleys, the team drove up dirt trail after dirt trail before coming upon a dense patch of fossils sticking out of the ground halfway up a hill. “In the little concentration of fossils, there were lots of limb bones from antelopes and horses obscuring everything else,” says Tseng, who was then a graduate student at USC and is now with the American Museum of Natural History. “It wasn’t until we started lifting things up, one by one, that we saw the top of a skull, and we thought, from the shape, that it looked something like a cat.”
After a few years of analysis, Tseng’s team has discovered that the skull doesn’t belong to any old cat. As they’ve documented in a study published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the skull and six associated fossilized jawbone fragments are the first evidence of a newly discovered species, which they’ve called Panthera blytheae. The discovery represents the oldest “big cat” (a group that includes large predatory cats like lions, jaguars, tigers and leopards) ever found by a wide margin.
The sediments that make up the basin as a whole range from 6 million to 400,000 years in age, so the group dated the fossil by analyzing the age of the particular rock layers it was buried in. This involved using techniques of magnetostratigraphy, in which scientists analyze the magnetic orientation of the rocks and compare it to known reversals of the Earth’s magnetic field. This method can only provide rough estimates for an item’s age, but it revealed that the skull is between 4.10 and 5.95 million years old. Previously, the oldest known big cat fossils—a number of tooth fragments found in Tanzania—were 3.6 million years old.
The new find fills a gap in the evolutionary record of big cats. By analyzing the DNA of living species, scientists had previously estimated that big cats had split from the Felinae subfamily—which includes smaller wild cats, like cougars, lynxes, along with domestic cats—about 6.37 million years ago. The very existence of P. blytheae confirms that the split happened prior to when this big cat roamed.
But how much earlier? The find could suggest, Tsang says, that big cats branched off from smaller cats much farther back than thought. By comparing the skull’s characteristics with fossils from other extinct big cats, the anatomy of living cat species, and DNA samples taken from both living cats and a few recently extinct, Ice Age-era species (known as cave lions), the researchers assembled a new evolutionary family tree for all big cats. Using known rates of anatomical changes over time and the observed anatomy of P. blytheae, they projected backwards, and estimated that the earliest big cats likely branched off from the Felinae subfamily between 10 and 11 million years ago.
The new fossil also solves a geological mystery. Previously, using DNA analysis of all living big cats and mapping the the fossils excavated from various sites around the world, researchers had determined it was most likely that their common ancestor had lived in Asia. The oldest known specimens, however, were found in Africa. The new species provides the first direct evidence that central Asia was indeed the big cats’ ancestral home, at least as far back as the current fossil record currently goes.
From the fragmented fossils, it’s hard to know much about the extinct species’ behavior and lifestyle, but the researchers were able to make some basic extrapolations from the skull’s anatomy. “It’s not a huge cat, like a lion or a tiger, but closer to a leopard,” Tsang says. The creature’s habitat was likely similar to the current Tibetan plateau, so Tseng speculates that, like the snow leopards that currently live in the area, this species did not hunt on the open plains, but rather cliffs and valleys. Tooth wear patterns also suggest similarities with current snow leopards—the rear teeth, likely used for cutting soft tissue, remain sharp, whereas the front teeth are heavily worn, perhaps reflecting their use in prying open carcasses and picking meat off bones.
Tseng says that he and colleagues plan to return to the area to search for more fossils that could help enlighten us on the evolutionary history of big cats. “The gap still isn’t completely filled yet,” he says. “We need to find older big cats to put the picture together.”Here’s a new one I bet you haven’t heard before: global warming is slowing the wind down, and could lead to certain species of trees becoming extinct.
Just when you thought that the predictions couldn’t possibly get any more bizarre (remember “Global warming will cause killer cornflakes“?), scientists in Jerusalem have released a study, based on computer modelling (natch) that predicts global warming may well lead to certain species of trees becoming extinct soon by slowing down the wind.
As the Jerusalem Post reports:
Many tree species in Israel, North America and Eurasia that depend on the wind to disperse their seeds may be at risk of extinction, according to researchers at theHebrew University of Jerusalem. On the basis of earlier work, higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are expected to cause trees to produce many more seeds and to reach maturity earlier than under current conditions, hence speeding up their spread. On the other hand, the weakening of wind speed in certain areas should reduce spread rate of these trees. Jerusalem Post. Many Seed-Bearing Trees may Become Extinct.
The argument is essentially based on the idea of the ‘velocity of climate change‘ – the supposition that as the temperature changes, plants and animals will need to move geographically to remain within their optimal temperature range. The authors of this report project that higher temperatures will lead to a decrease in average wind speed, which means that the trees won’t be able to keep up with climate change.
And I thought that global warming was going to lead to faster wind and more of it around the world. Which is it?
AdvertisementsTerry Crews has opened up about his experience with sexual assault.
The “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star told Michael Strahan Wednesday on “Good Morning America” that he had never “felt more emasculated, more objectified” than after allegedly being groped at a party in 2016 by Adam Venit, the longtime head of WME’s motion picture group.
“He’s connected to probably everyone I know in the business,” Crews said about the agent, who represents Emma Stone, Adam Sandler, Diane Keaton, Eddie Murphy, and others. “I did not know this man. I have never had a conversation with him, ever. … The first time I ever had an interaction with him was at this event.”
Crews said Venit, who he had never met before, stared at him from a distance and stuck out his tongue in an “overtly sexual” manner before approaching him.
“I stick my hand out and he literally takes his hand and puts it, squeezes my genitals,” he recalled. “And I jump back like, ‘Hey, hey!’ … I go, ‘Dude, what are you doing?'”
The former NFL player says Venit repeated the behavior.
“And then he comes back again and he just won’t stop. And then I really got forceful, pushed him back. He bumps into all the other partygoers and he starts giggling and laughing,” he said on “GMA.” “I have never felt more emasculated, more objectified. I was horrified. I went over to Adam [Sandler] right then and there and said, ‘Man, come get your boy. What is his problem?'”
Related 'The Chew' Canceled on ABC Robin Roberts Calls Jussie Smollett Hoax a 'Setback for Race Relations'
The actor said by speaking out, he’s sending a message to his children.
“I will not be shamed. I did nothing wrong. Nothing,” he said. “What kind of man would I be to tell my kids, ‘If someone touches you where you don’t want to, tell someone,’ if I’m not doing it myself?”
Crews first tweeted about the incident when the Harvey Weinstein scandal was unraveling.
“When the Weinstein thing started happening I got PTSD. I was going, ‘Oh my god, this exact thing happened to me,'” he said. “I understand why they won’t come forward. … When a person of power breaks that boundary and violates that boundary, you’re a prisoner of war.”
The Los Angeles Police Department recently opened an investigation over Crews’ allegation that he was groped.
Venit is on leave as WME investigates the accusation. Crews recently left the agency altogether.WASHINGTON (AP) — The prevailing images of protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, over police killings of black men were of police in riot gear, handcuffed protesters, tear gas and mass arrests. The main images of a fatal gun battle between armed bikers and police in Waco, Texas, also showed mass arrests — carried out by nonchalant-looking officers sitting around calm bikers on cellphones.
The firefight in Waco is raising questions about perceptions and portrayals of crime in America, considering the vehement reaction that the earlier protests got from police, politicians and some members of the public.
Unlike in Ferguson and Baltimore, |
"continuing zeal" for the positions he took while in office. Gellman describes Cheney as "urgently focused … on shaping events."
Gellman also stirs up some empathy for the lion-in-winter ex-Vice President. According to Gellman, Cheney takes a morning drive to Starbucks for a decaffeinated latte (no caffeine because of his heart condition, you know) and attends the soccer and softball games of his grandchildren.
The trouble for Gellman’s sympathetic portrayal is that there is far too much evidence of criminal activity on the record about his subject, though you wouldn’t know that from reading the Post article.
What Cheney is "urgently focused" on right now is staying out of prison. As he sits writing his memoir in his own Eagle’s Nest over his garage in a fancy Virginia suburb, Cheney is pulling out all the stops to ensure that he does not have to face the music for war crimes.
For Cheney, there apparently will be no trips to Paris. No, that’s where Rumsfeld almost got arrested two years ago. After a war-crimes complaint was lodged, he had to go out the back door of the embassy and dart to the airport for the first flight back to the U.S., before the Paris magistrate decided whether or not to detain him.
Angry at Bush, But Why?
I do think that Hayes, the pundits for Time, and Gellman have it right when they say that Cheney is angry with George W. Bush, but they are disingenuous about the reason why. They must have figured out that when Cheney vents his anger at Bush’s failure to pardon Libby, the ex-Vice President is really livid that Bush did not issue a blanket pardon for Cheney and other co-conspirators.
Cheney had every reason to expect the pardon (excusing crimes such as torture and launching an aggressive war by deceiving Congress), given that he seems to have engaged in those crimes with his boss’ full knowledge and encouragement.
Can these journalists be so dense that they miss this motive for Cheney’s anger? They paint a picture of a man intensely loyal to a favored subordinate; and that is no doubt true, since one’s power is diminished to the extent you are not seen as able to rescue someone in your employ.
But when Cheney accuses Bush of abandoning "an innocent man" who had served the President loyally; when Cheney excoriates anyone who would "sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder" — he appears to be talking about himself as much as Libby.
It is such an obvious allegory, a classic example of self-pity masquerading as altruism; and the pundits don’t get it — or, more likely, pretend not to.
My sense is that Cheney is feeling abandoned; that he senses the real danger of being brought to justice; and that he is waging a series of pre-emptive strikes to head that off.
Put yourself in Cheney’s shoes, as uncomfortable as they might be. Daughter Liz has disclosed more than once what has her father so agitated — press reports that Attorney General Eric Holder is close to appointing a special prosecutor to investigate White House-authorized crimes, including torture — not policy differences, mind you, but capital crimes under U.S. as well as international law.
Cheney’s war crimes and other felonies? Not enough room to list them all here. But suffice it to say that Cheney’s fingerprints – and those of his legal counsel David Addington – are all over the torture policies. Inspector General reports from the Department of Justice and from the CIA are scheduled to be released soon and are sure to reveal more Cheney fingerprints.
Attorney General Holder reportedly found the CIA IG report nauseating with what are likely to be stomach-churning accounts of torture.
Revealing Photos
Still more photos, videos and documents are likely to surface in the months ahead revealing more evidence of torture, kidnapping and perhaps hit-team activities – even if President Barack Obama succeeds in keeping most of the photos under wraps.
Reading recently about the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal, I was reminded that it was the film of Nazi concentration camps that wiped the arrogant smirks off the faces of senior Nazi officials, defendants like Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess.
Bulldozers pushing corpses into open pits, bodies stacked like cordwood — the films of such atrocities had devastating effect. According to one witness, "Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel sat there, bent over and broken, mopping his lined face with a soggy ball of handkerchief." The smirks never came back.
Cheney and his associates have got to be prepared for something similar, even though they were not vanquished in war. They probably consider the chances slight that they would be brought to an international court, even though Chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, pointedly warned at Nuremberg:
"…the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to the law. And … while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment."
As for violations of U.S. law, the list is long. Interestingly, two of the three Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 29 and 30, 1974, were based, in part, on misusing the CIA.
Such misuse was brought to a whole new level, as Cheney visited CIA Headquarters promoting "intelligence" on non-existent threats and took a leading role in misusing the agency to torture detainees.
There’s also the possibility that some of Cheney’s co-conspirators will renounce their abuses, either out of genuine remorse for the hubris they showed at the height of their powers or in a bid to rehabilitate their careers.
From his new job at Texas Tech in Lubbock, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales earlier this week conceded that he erred in using the word "quaint" and "the Geneva Convention" in the same sentence in a memo he signed on its way to President Bush when Gonzales was White House counsel.
Now that Gonzales has a job with health benefits, we can expect further steps to disassociate himself from the smoking-gun executive memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, which ordered that the protections of the Geneva Conventions would not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.
Late last year, the Senate Armed Services Committee reported that this Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum "opened the door" to a wide range of abusive interrogations. It is also an open secret that Cheney’s chief lawyer, David Addington, drafted that memorandum, although Gonzales forwarded it on so Bush could sign it.
Though Addington mid-wifed a whole generation of Bush-era illegalities, he has pretty much disappeared from public view.
It seems a sure thing that the next time Addington comes to testify on the Hill, the smirks he displayed when he and John Yoo appeared before the House Judiciary will have disappeared. Addington’s view of the law is so bizarre that he might be disbarred. He is more liability than asset to Cheney at this point.
What to Expect
The bottom line for Cheney is this: Too much has gone wrong, and Cheney cannot afford to take any chances that there will not be more cracks in the wall protecting Bush-era secrets.
The good news, as far as Cheney is concerned, can be seen in the clear signs that neither Obama nor Holder have any stomach for holding Cheney to account — and still less for holding Bush accountable.
Perhaps there is something in the water here in Washington, but folks in power seem far more interested in circumventing the law than enforcing it — political expediency wins out over solemn oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.
At times this avoidance of accountability assumes ludicrous proportions, with the Obama administration going the extra mile and more to cover up its predecessors’ misconduct.
For instance, releasing the suppressed testimony of Dick Cheney before U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004 concerning the leaking of the name of CIA operations officer Valerie Plame (in order to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had accused the White House of "twisting" Iraq War intelligence) would certainly throw light on this sorry episode.
In the closing arguments of the trial at which Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice, Fitzgerald declared: "There is a cloud over the Vice President…and that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice."
Bush’s Justice Department refused to release Cheney’s testimony, even though, as Fitzgerald said, "there were no agreements, conditions and understandings" about keeping the transcript secret.
Then, instead of living up to President Obama’s promise of openness, the new administration continued to oppose releasing Cheney’s testimony. In addition to the many reasons adduced by the former administration for keeping the testimony secret, Obama/Holder’s lawyers added a new one, dubbed by Dan Froomkin the "Daily Show Disclosure Exclusion."
A Justice Department lawyer actually argued in federal court that there should be an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act disclosure rules for documents that might subject senior administration officials to embarrassment — as on Jon Stewart’s "Daily Show" on Comedy Central.
Justice civil division lawyer Jeffrey M. Smith argued that, if Cheney’s remarks were published, then a future Vice President might refuse to provide candid information during a criminal probe out of concern "that it’s going to get on the ‘Daily Show.’"
If I were Cheney, that feckless kind of lawyering would be music to my ears. I would read it as a sign of cowardice on the part of Obama and Holder.
Obama and Holder sometimes appear so eager to prove themselves to the Washington Establishment that they protect Bush-Cheney secrets even when a disclosure would serve an important national security goal.
After all, a powerful argument for releasing Cheney’s transcript would be that it might discourage future senior government officials from leaking the identity of undercover CIA officers for craven political reasons. Also, it might give a politician pause before aiding and abeting a criminal cover-up.
It seems certain that prosecutor Fitzgerald asked Cheney to explain his handwritten note demanding that then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan falsely exonerate Libby in the Plame leak, like McClellan had already done for Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove.
Cheney wrote:
"not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others – "
However, instead of the words "that was," Cheney had initially written, "this Pres" before striking through "this Pres.," which was still legible.
You don’t have to be a crackerjack analyst to figure out why Cheney changed the active to the passive voice and struck out "this Pres." The evidence indicates that President Bush was more directly involved in the Valerie Plame affair than is now understood.
Implicating Bush
Despite six months of resisting demands for a serious investigation of Bush-Cheney wrongdoing, Holder appears, finally, to be stepping to the plate with the intent of appointing a special prosecutor, albeit one whose authority may be tightly circumscribed.
But Cheney doesn’t want to risk the chance that a special prosecutor might insist on expanding the probe beyond the possible indictment of a few low-level operatives who exceeded the Bush administration’s prescriptions on how much water to use in waterboarding a prisoner.
So, Cheney appears to be pursuing a new strategy of pre-emption. His most obvious tactic is to tie his actions on torture tightly to Bush. On May 10 when Bob Schieffer asked Cheney how much Bush knew about the "enhanced interrogation techniques," the former Vice President stated clearly, if redundantly:
"I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew — he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the President. He signed off on it."
Cheney was certainly eager to answer the question. The idea, of course, would be to juice the jitters he already perceives at senior levels of the Obama administration, and to make it clear that no one will take Cheney down alone; i.e., without Bush right beside him.
In Cheney’s view, this image of a former President in the dock is sure to deter dithering lawyers and politicos at the top of the White House and Justice Department, who are more interested in sniffing the political winds than in enforcing the rule law.
My worst fear is that Cheney may be right.
Reprinted with permission from Consortiumnews.com
Read more by Ray McGovernA violent riot by anti-Israel activists at a leading London university has left Jewish students shocked and concerned about their safety on campus, and ended in at least one Jewish student being physically assaulted.
Police were called to Kings College London University on Tuesday night, after a speech by former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon was attacked with shocking violence by pro-Palestinian groups. Ironically, Ayalon - who was brought to London by the controversial liberal Jewish group Yachad - is an ardent left-wing campaigner and advocate of Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.
Security was already tight in anticipation of protests and hecklers - which commonly target pro-Israel events at London university campuses - but organizers say they were completely unprepared for the level of violence and intimidation they faced.
Anti-Israel activists from Kings' "Action Palestine" student group, as well as activists from other London universities, hurled chairs at people attending and set off fire alarms in the building more than a dozen times in order to disrupt the event.
After eventually being forced to leave the room, the extremists then proceeded to chant loudly and bang on the windows of the venue, smashing one and leaving many of those present visibly terrified.
One student, Esther Endfield, has submitted a criminal complaint after being physically assaulted. In a Facebook post, she described "crying hysterically for over half an hour because I was so terrified."
The event was hosted by Kings' Israel Society, and was jointly organized with the Israel Society at the London School of Economics (LSE).
LSE Israel Society co-chair David Tamman described the "violent intimidation" in a Facebook post accompanying footage from the event, which shows Ayalon forging on with his speech as fire alarms blare, while anti-Israel activists thump on the door and chant outside.
Click on the image below to view video:
Another video, from outside, showed protesters hitting the windows - one of which had clearly been broken.
Tamman described his "bitter feelings of frustration and upset" at the attack, which he said illustrated both the extremism of pro-Palestinian groups, as well as the lack of the kind of "safe space" for Jews who support Israel as is afforded to other students.
Of the roughly 200 people who turned up to attend, only a few dozen were able to fit into the small room granted to the Israel Society for "security reasons." Among those left outside were more than a dozen anti-Israel activists; Tamman described what happened next:
Confronted with this, violent protesters set off multiple fire alarms to interrupt the talk. They also banged on windows, threw chairs and screamed to the top of their voices. Attendees inside felt the walls and windows shake as they were struggling to hear the talk, looking genuinely scared for their security. Indeed they had reason to. It got violent as a few managed to push their way into the building, brake a glass window and physically assault a friend of mine (and co-organiser Esther Endfield, KCL Israel society President).
This came along with a tirade of verbal abuse inches from the faces of many jewish students. It got to a stage where the police felt the need to call in around 15 police officers and two vans. 2 female friends of mine cried from the fear and abuse and I stood there staring at a poster on the door declaring Kings College London to be a'safe space' and thought - what a lie. The truth is, universities across the UK are not safe spaces (if you happen to be a Zionist Jew). It shocks me how universities and students seem to obsess on the provision of'safe spaces' when a few students are offended by an old statue in Oxford (Cecil Rhodes), whilst there is a total disregard for Israel supporting Jews who are intimidated on a constant basis (in this case even assaulted).
After prolonged violence and despite the protesters being distanced from the building by police, the event was forced to end half an hour early due to security concerns.
"Protecting the free speech of violent protesters violated the free speech of Ami, a man who merely wanted to engage in dialogue with a receptive audience. This is a sad state of affairs. What about his freedom to speak? What about our freedom to listen?"
"I've genuinely had enough," he continued. "Enough with the intimidation. Enough with the alarms. Enough with the long wasted hours of organising events that get ruined by hateful extremists. Enough with university apathy towards their Jewish minority.
"But silence is not the answer. We will continue because giving up is exactly what these hate-filled, extremist cretins desire. Jewish and Israeli students will not be silenced. My co Jamie and I are already planning our next event (and hoping to get some university work done amongst all this madness)."
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Tamman described the incident as "genuinely scary."
"No one in that room felt safe last night - and no one was safe. People sitting near the window for example... there was a real threat they could get hit by shattered glass," he said.
He noted that while the incident in question was particularly severe, it is part of a clear pattern of disruptions by anti-Israel groups, aimed at forcefully stifling pro-Israel voices on campus. In some cases, for example, organized gangs of extremists ensure that those who set off fire alarms are not students at the university in question, to avoid the administration taking disciplinary action.
By staging such disruptions, anti-Israel activists forced pro-Israel student groups to foot the bill for extra security, which is often far too high. "That means that very often we can't host speakers because it's out of our budget," Tamman said.
"Our freedom, our right to freedom of speech is being violated... ironically, the protection of freedom of speech on one side is violating the freedom of speech on the other."
But he vowed that far from deterring him and his fellow activists, the violence only spurred them on to defy it, and emphasized that while the narrative harbored by such extremists was certainly "dangerous," they were only a "loud minority."
"The truth is that most other people are much more moderate," he said, cautioning supporters of Israel not to resign themselves to the false notion that "the whole world hates us." Many of those who turned up for the speech for example were neither Jewish nor involved in pro-Israel activism, and were left with a clear impression of "who the real bigots are."
"It really shows the true colors of these so-called 'human rights' activists, and what they're all about; that they aren't really interested in any peace with Israel, they're not critical of Israeli government policy. What they're essentially opposed to is the existence of the State of Israel in and of itself... so there's no room for discussion with them."A year and a half ago, the Turkish photojournalist Nilüfer Demir chanced upon a sight that would become iconic: the prone body of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up from the angry Mediterranean Sea. Demir would photograph the small body, hands along his sides, his feet askance, his red shirt a beacon of distress. That photograph of the toddler would zip around the world from this beach in Bodrum (Turkey). It would be painted as a mural in Frankfurt (Germany) and in Duhok (Iraq). It would be on the front page of newspapers that September of 2015.
The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was photographed lying on a beach in Lesbos (Greece) like Alan Kurdi for the Indian magazine India Today. ‘You see so many children come off these boats. They are like angels – they are the most vulnerable,’ said Ai to CNN in January 2016. ‘There are two worlds – a world of adults and a world of babies, and they are not connected.'
The tragedy of Alan Kurdi could very well have focused world attention on the refugee crisis. A great deal of moral outrage followed, including phone calls from European leaders to Turkey’s Recip Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. They wanted Turkey to do something to stop the flood of refugees from Syria into Europe. Money flooded into charity organizations in the name of Alan Kurdi. Social media lit up Demir’s photograph. Sadness and anger defined the emotional range. Something had to happen. That was the sentiment.
Nothing came of it. There was not enough political will to stop the cause of the flight, namely – in Alan Kurdi’s case – the war in Syria. Nor was there enough genuine feeling to fund the dismal refugee camps along the Turkish-Syrian border. The UN has now asked for $3.5 billion to fund the basic needs of the three million Syrian refugees in Turkey. A fraction of this will come from the donor states. In 2016, the year after Alan Kurdi had died, the U.N. was only able to raise 59 percent of the requested amount.
There was even less sentiment to welcome Syrian and other refugees from the desolations of war and starvation into areas of greater stability. Repellent forms of cruel populism across the West made demons of the refugees, refusing to allow that it is Western policy that has contributed so fundamentally to the plight of these fleeing people from Afghanistan to West Africa. False news reports – such as by the German paper Bild – vilified refugees as rapists, echoing Donald Trump’s rhetoric of ‘Mexican rapists’ and ‘bad dudes’ among the refugees. Hateful rhetoric saturated the airwaves from Holland’s Geert Wilders to Trump. In all this, the image of Alan Kurdi made no impact.
Walk in Their Shoes
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For Tima Kurdi, the aunt of Alan Kurdi, there is no day that goes by when she is not seized of the terrible misfortune that struck her family in September 2015. Demir’s picture of Alan defined the refugee crisis for a few months, but Alan was not the only one to die that day from Tima’s family. Alan (age three) died alongside his brother Ghalib (age five) and their mother Rehana. The three of them died, leaving Abdullah—Rehana’s husband and the children’s father—alone. The three were buried in Kobane (Syria), from where they hail. Abdullah recalled how their small overfilled boat capsized in the waves, and how his family slipped from his hands. Tima, who had sponsored them from Canada, despaired at the loss.
‘This tragedy will scar my heart forever,’ Tima told me. Abdullah now lives in Irbil (Iraq), a guest of the Kurdistan regional government. Tima, Abdullah and other members of their family have set up the Alan and Ghalib Kurdi Foundation, which they hope will provide assistance to some of the 20 million refugees in the world.
Tima, who works at a hairdressing salon with her husband Muhammad in Coquitlam-Maillardville (British Columbia, Canada), has traveled to the refugee camps in Turkey. She has talked to people there and felt their frustration as her own. Tima speaks with great emotion when it comes to the question of flight and the anti-refugee backlash in the West. When she hears people complain about refugees she feels angry, she tells me. ‘You have no idea why they flee their country unless you walk in their shoes’, she says. ‘Then you will see.’
Abdullah, Rehana and their two children fled Kobane, which had been overrun by ISIS. According to Rehana’s father, Sexo Seno Kurdi, ISIS killed 11 members of their family in the city, which was destroyed when ISIS was forced out by the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG. Almost the entire population of Kobane, a key city in Syrian Kurdistan, fled for the relative safety to other Kurdish cantons or Turkey. Violence in Syria, says Tima, comes from a ‘hundred troubles’ – echoing an Arabic phrase. Whatever the cause of their flight – whether violence from ISIS, al-Qaeda, this proxy or that, the government – the fact is that the people flee because they must. They do not choose to leave. They are forced to flee.
Enough is Enough
I’m talking to Tima Kurdi around the same time as the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, releases a new report on the battle for Aleppo. The Atlantic Council has long called for regime change in Syria. This report comes out just when new ceasefires have been negotiated and when parts of the armed rebels have decided to hold talks with the Syrian government. The only real fighting groups amongst the rebels that remain of consequence are ISIS and the al-Qaeda portmanteau group Tahrir al-Sham, as I reported a few weeks ago. None of this mattered to the Atlantic Council.
The Council calls for three strategies to undercut the peace initiatives afoot in Syria. First, to provide ‘robust support for local allies on the ground’, namely the elusive ‘moderate opposition.’ As Tima Kurdi said to me, ‘there are no moderate rebels in Syria.’ Those days are long gone. Second, for ‘direct kinetic action’ which is military jargon for armed action by the United States. Third, for the creation of safe zones within Syria, which is precisely what a ceasefire initiative and peace process would create.
Point one and two are anathema to Tima Kurdi, who urges support for the peace process to ‘stop the war in Syria.’ ‘Western people have no idea of what is going on in Syria,’ Tima Kurdi says. They see things as ‘black and white’, with ‘President Bashar as the one responsible for everything’. But, she notes, ‘it is not about President Bashar or ISIS or al-Qaeda’ but the fact that this war is futile. That is the essence of the matter. Calling for more war is not going to help anyone.
The call for war is not mere words. In an important report, Diana Bashur found that the very Western countries that are loath to take in refugees from the Syrian conflict make immense profits from arms sales to the regional powers that are involved in the proxy battlefield. For example, Bashur found that the countries that are part of the ‘Friends of Syria’ group earned 31.88 billion in weapons sales to states that armed the Syrian rebels, while these same ‘Friends of Syria’ states spent only 10.45 billion on hosting Syrian refugees. These numbers are inflated by Germany. If it is removed from the list, then the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Italy made 27.92 billion in arms sales while spending merely 1.18 billion on refugees. These are scandalous figures. Front-page news should be made of such facts.
Arms dealers and arms exporting countries are making a phenomenal amount on this war, while the cost of it is borne by families such as the Kurdis. Who is good or bad on the battlefields of Syria is perhaps not as important as who is making these vast sums of money arming all sides of the conflict. ‘I don’t support one side or the other,’ Tima Kurdi said. Rather, ‘let the suffering Syrians rebuild our lives’.
This is a powerful message from a Syrian woman who has endured a great tragedy. The world stopped before the photograph of her nephew and shuddered. It was a vivid symbol of the meaninglessness of this conflict and its social costs. Tima Kurdi wishes to give voice to the Syrians who want to salvage as much of their lives as possible. But for that to happen the various powers need to take seriously the pathways to peace.Over three months in the early part of last year, Venezuela was subjected to a campaign of violence and disruption known as the guarimba, organised by elements of the right-wing, US-backed opposition.
By Steve Ellner
May 22, 2015 -- VenezuelAnalysis, posted at Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Leftists in Venezuela put forward a number of different explanations for the pressing economic difficulties and growing discontent that has beset Venezuela and increases the possibility of an opposition takeover of the National Assembly in this year’s elections.
High on list of explanations is an unfavourable comparison between the charisma and political acumen of Hugo Chávez and the inferior leadership qualities of his successor, President Nicolás Maduro. (This same line of reasoning is often presented by members of the opposition, who – implicitly or explicitly – attribute Maduro’s deficiencies to his working-class origins and background.) A second explanation is that corrupt government officials are responsible for the current economic bind, which includes acute shortages of basic goods and the onset of triple-digit inflation.
However, a rigorous analysis of the government’s current predicament must go beyond such personal factors, not least because the roots of the crisis date back to the outset of Chávez’s rule and not simply to policies implemented by Maduro since he assumed office in 2013. An examination of the fundamental underlying problems going back to Chávez’s election in 1998 can shed light on the low-intensity challenges and complex dynamics that any successful democratic socialist government will inevitably face.
Sixteen years of Chavista rule separates the Venezuelan case from that of other socialist governments over the last hundred years, be they undemocratic regimes (the Soviet Union, Cuba, etc.), those that made concessions to the establishment in order to avoid the sharp polarisation that characterises Venezuela (e.g. the post-1945 British Labour Party) and those too short lived to have been subject to the complex predicaments facing Venezuela (e.g. Chile under Allende).
An analysis that goes beyond personalities is also essential to counter the demoralisation stemming from the simplistic, if not fallacious, conclusion that the current Chavista leaders have “sold out” – a pessimism aggravated by the prospect of major setbacks facing the Chavistas in the near future.
The starting point in understanding the Chavistas’ current dilemma is an appreciation of the intensity of the opposition’s destabilisation campaign, which has included legal, semi-legal and illegal activity, and the permanent refusal of the anti-Chavistas to recognise the legitimacy of the government. For over three months in the early part of last year, Venezuela was subject to a campaign of violence and disruption known as the guarimba.
Since then ample evidence has demonstrated that the business sector is at least partly responsible for the shortages stemming from hoarding and contraband. Needless to say, all leftist governments face recalcitrant conservative oppositions. But two factors distinguish the situation in Venezuela.
In the first place, over an extended period of time opposition-induced disruptions with dire economic side effects in a democratic setting have had a wearying effect on the enthusiasm of government supporters. In the second place, and unlike during periods of open violence and civil war, pressure builds and it becomes increasingly incumbent upon the government to demonstrate that it is capable of guaranteeing economic production and stability, even though the economy remains in private hands.
Pragmatic
In the face of these weighty and ongoing challenges, the Chavista government has been caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, it has tended to opt for populist policies to avert the onset of fatigue and apathy among its supporters, while at the same time it has chosen to pursue pragmatic policies and alliances with often unreliable partners in order to maintain economic stability. Once both sets of policies are in place, it then becomes difficult for the government to switch paths in favour of more rational and practical approaches.
Chávez’s pragmatism was in evidence from very early on when he allied his government with a small group of businesspeople who refused to go along with the two-month “general strike” in 2002-2003 spearheaded by the main business organisation, FEDECAMARAS, for which the dissidents reaped handsome political rewards. The episode marked the origins of an emerging bourgeoisie that received preferential treatment from the government, but which included opportunists whose sole motivation was self-enrichment. (The alliance was not unconditional, however, as Chávez ended up jailing some members of this group for several years as a result of a major banking crisis in 2009.)
The Maduro government has continued this strategy of combining flexible and confrontational approaches in its relations with the private sector. On the one hand, Maduro last year sponsored a “peace dialogue” with FEDECAMARAS leaders at a time when the opposition was promoting the guarimba protests. The initiative implied concessions in the form of acceptance of the business demand that a fast track to handle cases of hoarding, contraband and price speculation be ruled out. On the other hand, Maduro accused FEDECAMARAS of having unleashed an “economic war” in the form of shortages of basic goods and, in late April of this year, announced that its firms would not be granted preferential dollars (at an exchange rate far lower than that on the open market) to pay for imports.
The president argued that Venezuelan businesspeople already possessed $5 billion deposited abroad and asked, “why don’t they bring the money here to invest?” He added: “our dollars are for the people – for housing, transportation and food.”
Like Chávez, Maduro’s relations with the emerging bourgeoisie have also been strained. The government’s closest business ally, Miguel Pérez Abad, who serves as a liaison with the private sector, agrees with FEDECAMARAS that the currency exchange rate should be set by the open market and that prices of basic goods should approximate those on the international market – a position Maduro flatly rejects.
The discourse of Chávez and Maduro that calls for a “strategic alliance” with the private sector, taking in “productive businesspeople” who supposedly represent most of the members of their class, has been translated into concessions to business by the government.
The Chavista leftist factions, such as the originally Trotskyist group Marea Socialista, are convinced that the “peace dialogue” with FEDECAMARAS has resulted in various policies and practices that fall heavily on the backs of the working class. Even the docile Wills Rangel, who heads the Central Bolivariana Socialista de Trabajadores, the Chavista labour federation, criticises the government for failing to enforce the labour law of 2012 that was supposed to eliminate the practice of contracting out permanent positions by May 2015.
In short, Chavista socialist rhetoric notwithstanding, the threats from an opposition that is both openly and covertly supported by Washington, as well as the church hierarchy, big business, much of the media, and the traditional labour leadership, have forced the government to backtrack on many of its promises and slow down the pace of change.
Populism
The implementation and maintenance of the government’s populist policies obey a similar logic. Some of the measures, adopted in response to the destabilisation actions of the opposition, once in place have been hard to dismantle. A prime example is the system of controls on the exchange rate for foreign currency and prices of basic commodities. The measures were forced on the government by the general strike of 2002-2003, which created a major scarcity of goods and the prospects of uncontrollable inflation. Exchange controls kept down prices for goods consumed by the popular sectors, and worked fairly well until late 2012, when the unofficial or open market rate for the dollar skyrocketed.
Since then, the wide disparity between official and unofficial rates for basic commodities and for US dollar has had dire consequences. Artificially low prices in the extreme have discouraged production, even in state companies. A black market has flourished along with contraband as a result of the scarcity of goods the prices of which are officially set at rock bottom. In addition, some businesses have requested and received preferential dollars for bogus imports, as was documented by Health Minister Henry Ventura in mid-May in the case of a number of pharmaceutical companies.
Any devaluation that substantially reduces the disparity between official and unofficial prices runs the risk of triggering rampant inflation. In the face of this dilemma, and with an opposition that is bent on regime change at any cost, the government has opted for a populist strategy that rules out painful decisions. While the non-privileged wait in lines, sometimes for four hours or more, to purchase basic goods at extremely low prices, the middle class buys the same products on the black market or in unmonitored commercial establishments at three or four times the official price.
Under normal circumstances a progressive government might be inclined to take steps over time to reduce such disparities, while stopping short of eliminating the controls. But a decision of that nature would hit the pockets of the popular classes and in so doing forfeit votes in the coming elections for the National Assembly. Much is at stake in these contests.
In May, Jesús Torrealba, head of the main opposition coalition Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD), announced that with the control of the National Assembly, the MUD will be positioned to force Maduro out of office.[1] The opposition voiced the same threat prior to the previous municipal elections of December 2013, which it called a “plebiscite” to determine Maduro’s fate, though the use of the term backfired as the Chavistas emerged victorious with an 11.5 percentage point margin. The Chavistas call the opposition’s strategy the “Paraguay option”, a reference to the Paraguayan congress’ ouster of progressive president Fernando Lugo in 2012.[2]
A similar dynamic explains other government actions and policies that were considered necessary responses to the subversive actions of the opposition but proved to be of dubious economic efficacy. Thus, for instance, in reaction to the general strike of 2002-2003 that paralysed the petroleum industry, the government fired 17,000 striking employees of the state oil company PDVSA and replaced them with loyalists. But privileging loyalty over competence as a hiring practice can easily translate into clientelism in the public administration.
Similarly, Chávez’s celebrated slogan “unity, unity, and more unity” in order to confront belligerent adversaries has served to discourage criticism and dissension within the Chavista movement.
Populist logic also lies behind the tendency to relax controls over the allocation of resources to the popular sectors. Thus, for instance, the government eased the collateral requirements for loans to worker cooperatives taking in members of the marginalised sectors, which constitute the backbone of the Chavista movement. While flexibilisation was considered essential to stimulate interest among the poor, who are traditionally distrustful and apathetic, the political imperative of retaining their active support in the face of the enemy also factored into administrative decisions along these lines.[3] Another populist policy favouring the poor is the distribution of free or highly subsidised goods ranging from electrical appliances and computers to housing.
Unanticipated consequences
The expropriation of numerous companies that according to the government were responsible for shortages of basic goods and price speculation beginning in 2007 was another example of responses to the enemy with unanticipated consequences. The Venezuelan government has been bogged down in numerous demands for compensation of up to $1 billion or more brought before the World Bank’s arbitration panel. The |
. These reveal either a random value or an encrypted message. The adversary's advantage in distinguishing the cases should be translatable into an attack against the block cipher, AES in this case.
TestM( ), can execute TestM( ) against. As a result a random bit b is chosen, if then is given.
Definition of Adversaries and their advantages
Definition 1 A Confidentiality Adversary is a ppt which can invoke all the functions given in sections IV.1.1.1 and IV.1.1.3 with the condition that one of the invocations of TestM is invoked against an instance where all instances in session s are fresh and stay fresh till the end of the game. The game ends when outputs its guess for b for that invocation. We say that the protocol is secure if the following function is negligible:
Consistency Adversary
In (n+1)sec protocol, we attempt to ensure the consistency among participants all along the session incrementally, i.e. assuring consistency after receiving each message in a timely manner. However, we do not model the incremental aspect of consistency into the adversarial model, for the sake of simplicity.
Definition 1 Transcript Consistency Adversary is given the ability to invoke all functions in sections IV.1.1.1 and IV.1.1.3. We say the protocol is secure against Consensus Adversary if at least two uncorrupted accepted instances possess the transcripts chain and they believe they have the see Section VII.4.1.
VII. Protocol High Level Design
To achieve the security properties listed in Section IV, we break the protocol into the following sub-protocols:
Deniable authenticated signature key and session key exchange, where participants deniably authenticate each other and agree on session key(s), while also exchanging ephemeral signing keys Communication, where parties send authenticated confidential messages Transcript consistency verification, where parties verify that all have received and seen an identical transcript in the same order, since the start of the chat session after receiving each messages.
Our choice of sub-protocols for (n+1)sec followed suggestions made in [BGB04] and [GUVGC09], except where there has been a practical or security-related reason to deviate from those recommendations.
In the following section we briefly describe our choice of the sub-protocols for each of the required tasks for a multi-party chat session.
VII.1 Design of Deniable Authenticated Signature Key Exchange
We have chosen our deniable signature key exchange protocol following the conclusions in [Gun13b] - by identifying a secure key exchange protocol that satisfies our needs. We then apply the triple Diffie-Hellman authenticated exchange to grant it properties of deniability [Ma13]. Subsequently, one can apply the same approach presented in [Gun13b] to communicate ephemeral signature keys during the key establishment process. However, for efficiency, we use the same ephemeral Diffie-Hellman private and public values used to deniably authenticate users and generate secret shares to produce ephemeral signatures.
For the choice of the base authenticated key exchange protocol, we suggest a variant based on [ACMP10]. The rationale for the choice is laid out as follows:
The base design of the protocol in [ACMP10] is the same as the base for [BVS05] (recommended by [Gun13a] ). However, the protocol presented in [ACMP10] is simpler.
is the same as the base for (recommended by ). However, the protocol presented in is simpler. [ACMP10] offers a peer-to-peer key exchange with no extra rounds, if needed.
offers a peer-to-peer key exchange with no extra rounds, if needed. [BVS05] and [ACMP10] are superior to the widely studied [BCPQ01] and its dynamic variation [BCP01] both in security and performance ( rounds).
and are superior to the widely studied and its dynamic variation both in security and performance ( rounds). [BVS05] has been suggested by [Gun13b] for the reason described in [Gun13a]. We believe that the new deniable authentication approach, as it is similar to the SKEME protocol, satisfies the properties of deniability which [BVS05] considered crucial aside from the cooperating judge.
has been suggested by for the reason described in. We believe that the new deniable authentication approach, as it is similar to the SKEME protocol, satisfies the properties of deniability which considered crucial aside from the cooperating judge. Security analysis of [GBNM11] and [BCGNP08] has found that [BVS05] is provably secure against all attacks (including the insider attacks) that the papers consider.
and has found that is provably secure against all attacks (including the insider attacks) that the papers consider. It is a two-round protocol and hence offers competitive efficiency considering the security property that it provides.
[ACMP10] only needs one round of key re-agreement in the case of a participant leaving the chat, while [BVS05] enforces re-computation of Diffie-Hellman ephemeral keys and hence needs a minimum of two rounds plus overhead of re-authenticating the new ephemeral keys. This can significantly improve the efficiency of casual chat sessions where participants frequently enter and exit the chat.
only needs one round of key re-agreement in the case of a participant leaving the chat, while enforces re-computation of Diffie-Hellman ephemeral keys and hence needs a minimum of two rounds plus overhead of re-authenticating the new ephemeral keys. This can significantly improve the efficiency of casual chat sessions where participants frequently enter and exit the chat. Although the Schnorr based algorithm suggested in [BVS05] satisfies a more comprehensible deniable model, triple Diffie-Hellman authenticated key exchange only needs two rounds of communication and can be done alongside the key agreement steps, while the Schnorr based algorithm of [BVS05] needs four rounds.
satisfies a more comprehensible deniable model, triple Diffie-Hellman authenticated key exchange only needs two rounds of communication and can be done alongside the key agreement steps, while the Schnorr based algorithm of needs four rounds. Although key exchange algorithms based on the standard model are considered theoretically more secure than those based on the random oracle model, there has been no proposal for a 2-round protocol in the standard model that promises forward secrecy. Therefore, due to the importance of usability and efficiency in our approach, we opted to for a ROM based protocol such as described by [BVS05] and [ACMP10].
VII.1a Sharing a secret among the group
All AGKE descriptions take the necessary steps to share a common secret confidentially among the group members along side other operations such as authentication and insuring partnership. To insure forward secrecy these methods mostly rely upon a P2P Deffie-Hellman key exchange. Most AGKE descriptions rely on sharing an equation and solving a specific linear system described in IX.4.
We abstract this step as GroupEnc/GroupDec primitive, to allow for alternative designs which do not interact with the rest of the protocol and might offer other benefits. For example the "Naive peer-to-peer" primitive IX.4 trades simplicity and generalizability (to a broadcast scheme c.f. Section VII.2) for bandwidth consumption.
VII.3 Message Authentication
As message authentication needs to be resistant to malicious insiders, following the outline of [GUVGC09], (n+1)sec signs each message using a public key signature scheme. The messages are signed with the ephemeral key of the sender. The authenticity of the origin can be verified by the public ephemeral key of the party distributed during the key exchange period.
VII.4 Transcript Ordering and Consistency
Since each message sent by any one participant is signed by the ephemeral private key generated for that specific session, it is not possible for the internal or external adversary to forge a message on behalf of an uncorrupted participant.
However, if the adversary is controlling the network structure, denial or delay of service is always possible. The consistency of the transcript (i.e. all participants see the same transcript in the same order) relies on the means of transport guaranteeing reliable delivery, with a single order, to every participant. In other words, we are verifying the reception of the message by the intended recipients.
By assuring transcript consistency, we also preventing from sending different messages to, while they believe they are seeing the same conversation. In absence of transcript consistency, when a central server is managing the chatroom, this attack requires to conspire with server, which is permeable in (n+1)sec threat model in accordance with the definition of transcript consistency in [GUVGC09].
The protocol offered in this document examines the transcript for such consistency. In the case that the underlying transport fails to provide this level of consistency, clearly the consistency test will fail. In this sense, failure of consistency does not distinguish between malicious activities or the absence of a reliable transport.
(n+1)sec performs transcript authentication whenever a message is received. This is to guarantee consistency and protect the protocol against the transcript consistency attack. The procedure is similar to the procedure described in [GUVGC09], with two major differences:
We require additionally that message order be preserved for the following reasons:
XMPP, as the main protocol considered for this design, delivers messages to all clients in the same order. The (n+1)sec protocol detects if the adversary has manipulated the order of the messages rather than only dropping undesirable messages It is simpler to authenticate an ordered transcript compared to an unordered transcript.
We also require that each participant updates all other participants about their view of the session transcript every time they send a message, along with requiring heartbeat, this ensures that participants are aware whether or not they are all seeing the same transcript during the session.
There are some cases where XMPP can fail our reliability assumption. In such cases, our consistency checks will fail. More advanced end-to-end recovery techniques are able to rescue such a scenario. We do not specify such techniques currently, though later versions of the protocol may rectify this.
Definitions and assumptions
Transport assumption: We assume the central server reliably delivers messages to everyone, including the original sender, in the same order.
Definition Each message M (sent after session S has been established) has an implicit server-sequence-number seqnum(M), a receive-parent: parent(M) (or recv-parent) the seqnum of last message the sender has received before sending M and a sender-sequence-number own-seqnum(M). We interchangeable use m when refering to both a message and its seqnum.
Once a message M with seqnum m is received by instance from the server (including participants own messages sent), a may be calculated recursively as follows:
(we define TrascriptChain[0] = (sk^S_i, sid_i))
A new message M contains p the seqnum of recv-parent of m, and own-seqnum(M).
We say instance has accepted message m if it has been received by, then decrypted-verified.
We say instances and have reached mutual consistency for message m if both accepted message m and have calculated the same hash of and verified.
We say session S has reached consistency on message m, if all instances, and have reached mutual consistency.
Server order
All clients see the same message order from the server. All messages are sent to all users. Aside from the presence messages (messages which indicate a user is joining or leaving a chatroom or if they have been inactive for a long time) sent by the server, messages are sent by users.
All messages in a room have a unique sequence number (0, 1,...). We assume that the server is unaware of sequence numbers (e.g. XMPP MUC); clients must allocate them implicitly when receiving messages.
VIII. (n+1)sec Protocol: Step by Step
In this section we present the (n+1)sec protocol in algorithmic format. All user IDs should be considered the modulo number of participants in the room.
Deniable authentication is derived from the Triple Diffie-Hellman algorithm presented in [Sys14]. Joining the room is a variation of the two-round mBD+P protocol presented in [ACMP10] where the authentication step has been made deniable. Leaving the room is the one-round mBD+S from [ACMP10]. In both cases, we have added a key confirmation round (round 3) as recommended by [ChMa10] to provide mutual authentication as defined in [GBNM11].
VIII.1 Schematic view of the key exchange
The protocol computes a unified session key for all participants. This imposes, in particular, the necessity that all'is identical for all participants.However, as consistent view is part of (n+1)sec security model, it does not impose extra limitation on the protocol. For more information please see Appendix B: Participatory vs individually independent computation of group keys.
For simplicity, group operation is written multiplicatively (even though it is actually an elliptic curve point operation traditionally represented by addition).
Whenever our design deviates from [ACMP10], it is marked in yellow. We have abstracted out the steps mentioned in [ACMP10] as an independent primitive in pink, however the resulting computation is identical with the one in [ACMP10] protocol:
Algorithm 1
Round Step Description Pseudo-code Type 1 1 Generate ephemeral DH private key Computation 2 Generate DH key for BD, Triple DH and Signature Computation 3 Broadcast User identity and the DH key Broadcast 2 4 Compute Session Id Receive 5 Generate Triple Diffie-Hellman P2P keys Computation 6 Generate key confirmations Computation 7 Generate secret shares Computation 8 Encrypt shares Computation 9 Sign identity, shares Computation 10 Broadcast encrypted shares and confirmation ) Broadcast 3 11 Check the validity of key confirmation Receive 12 Check signatures Computation 13 Check Session Ids Computation 14 Generate session key Computation 3 15 Broadcast session confirmation Broadcast - 16 Check the validity of session confirmation Receive 17 Check signatures Computation
Triple Diffie-Hellman authentication
(n+1)sec uses a varient of Triple Diffie-Hellman (TDH) protocol also employed in Textsecure protocol [Mo13] to carry out mutual deniable authentication as well as peer-to-peer secret key exchange. It can be seen as a variation of [SoKi00] key exchange, however, unlike SoKi00], as it does not multiply all three DH secrets and therefore is not suspticble to attacks mentioned in [BoMa10].
By using TDH secret both in p2p key as well as in key confirmation step, (n+1)sec both implicitly and explicitly authenticate the peers.
In Algorithm 1, TDH and the original group key exchange from [ACMP10] has been combined to provide a deniable authenticated group key exchange. Here, we single out TDH Algorithm 1.1 for better presentation of the protocol for the reader. Note, that the users run step 5 differently based on their order in the group. This measure ensures that the P2P key is computed the same between two parties, i.e,.
Algorithm 1.1 Triple Diffie-Hellman between and assuming i < j
Round Step Description Pseudo-code Type 1 1 Generate ephemeral DH private key Computation 2 Generate ephemeral DH public key Computation 3 Broadcast User identity and the DH key Broadcast 2 4 Receive other party id and ephemeral DH public key Receive 5 Generate Triple Diffie-Hellman P2P keys Computation 6 Send key confirmation to other party Broadcast - 7 Receive and Check the validity of key confirmation Receive
GroupEnc and GroupDec functions
For the high level design of the protocol we do not specify the primitives for GroupEnc and GroupDec used in steps 8 and 14 of Alogrithm 1 as a part of the protocol, as we do not specifies the Hash function and the block cipher. We explain their property here. We choose a candidate in section IX.4.
The GroupEnc and GroupDec functions are primitives which are called collectively by all instances involved in the session and are supposed to satisfies the following goal:
Definition: Let and for each, let be a secret shared between and only between and. The goal of group is that:
Each member of group to generate and share a secret among the member of group G using public channel. remains unknown for any eavesdropping the channel.
To this end each member compute and broadcast on. Later on when receives all. It recovers all secrets by computing.
[ACMP10] (n+1)sec key exchange vs original Flexible Group Key Exchange of
Although in higher level view of (n+1)sec we generalized the process of key exchange using GroupEnc/GroupDec abstraction, at lower level our choice of primitive for this functions make the group key computation processes of (n+1)sec and the original key exchange algorithm the same. Hence, the steps marked pink in Algorithm 1, only differ in from [ACMP10] but not in result.
(n+1)run a deniable mutual authentication protocol along side with the key exchange protocol, this results in communicating extra key confirmation data along side of other data exchanged during the course of running the protocol. As we will show in the proof, these data has effect on the usual run of the algorithm.
The only step that (n+1)sec runs differently compare to the original algorithm (beside generating extra data), is computation of mutual secret, between and. In original, algorithm it is simply. In (n+1)sec, it is the triple DH secret. We will prove that this change does not compromise any of the protocol proprieties.
The main difference between the two key exchange algorithms is in the key used for signature. In original algorithm, parties use their long term private key to sign their contribution, while in (n+1)sec they use their ephemeral keys. However, because the ephemeral keys has been authenticated before used for verification, we prove that the authenticity of signatures in both algorithms are equivalent under CDH assumption.
VIII.2 Chatroom Setup
In almost any practical case, participants join the chat sequentially. It is assumed that multiple participants cannot join simultaneously. For the sake of efficiency one can adjust the implementation to have a threshold time to wait and thus start a chat with more participants. However, this makes the implementation significantly more complicated without any evident efficiency benefit.
Therefore, our assumption is that a secure chat is always set up when a participant starts the chat room. Additional participants would be added sequentially using Algorithm VIII.3, as they enter the chat. Algorithm 1 describes the chat room setup protocol.
Algorithm 2
Description Pseudo-code Type Generate ephemeral DH private key of the room initiator Computation Generate DH key for BD, Triple DH and Signature Computation Set participant list Computation
VIII.3 Join
Joining a chat involves two different procedures: the Join procedure, described in Algorithm 2, which runs on the new participant’s instance, and an Accept New Participant Procedure, described in Algorithm 3, which runs on the clients of participants that are already in the chat.
When a new participant joins the chat, current participants can still use their established authenticated ephemeral public key (to derive the and as their signature verification key). Confidentiality of is guarded against the new participant by Diffie-Hellman key shares hashed alongside the session id (which is dependent on the list of participants). The new participant cannot combine the old and new shares to recover. The fact that old participants do not need to compute new ephemeral keys (and re-verify their ephemeral identities) decreases the computational complexity of the protocol.
The new participant needs to authenticate everybody already in the room and hand them their ephemeral key. All the parties already in the room only need to authenticate the new participant and need to send to them their ephemeral DH key. These procedures are described in Algorithm 3 and 4. After initial authentication step, all parties follow the same procedure to initiate a new session following Algorithm 5.
Authentication Step for new Joining party
Algorithm 3
Description Pseudo-code Type Generate ephemeral DH private key Computation Generate DH key for BD, Triple DH and Signature Computation Broadcast User identity and the DH key Broadcast Receive other users' id/key Receive Generate Triple Diffie-Hellman P2P keys Computation Generate key confirmations Computation
After this step joining user will proceed to "initiate new session" by Algorithm 5.
Authentication Step for parties in the room
For other participants to a accept a new participant only, the authentication step is different. After current participants authenticate the new user, they proceed to update session.
Algorithm 4
Description Pseudo-code Type broadcast all user's identities Broadcast Receive other users' id/key and update participant list Receive Generate Triple Diffie-Hellman P2P key for the new participant Computation Generate key confirmations Computation
After this step users will proceed to "initiate new session" using Algorithm 5.
Initiate new session
Algorithm 5
Description Pseudo-code Type Compute Session Id Computation Cancel any pending request for establishing a session with the same Id AxeNewSessionRequestTimer Computation Generate secret shares Computation Encrypt shares Computation Sign identity, shares Computation Broadcast key shares and confirmation (if any) Broadcast Receive other user(s)' key shares and confirmation of unauthenticated users or Time out Wait to Receive ( for unauthenticated or Timeout by(2 BROADCAST_LATENCY+INTERACTION_GRACE_INTERVAL, Drop inactive users, queue a new session request) Receive Check the validity of key confirmation of unauthenticated users for unauthenticated Computation Check signatures for j in {1,...,n} Computation Check Session Ids Computation Generate session key Computation Broadcast session confirmation Broadcast Check the validity of session confirmation Receive Check signatures Computation Initiate the TranscriptChain Computation Initiate the last_sender_seq_num array Computation Initiate the own_seq_num to 0 Computation
Sending and receiving messages while joining is in progress
In situations where a prolonged joining process (due to connection problems or malicious activities) has an adverse effect on the user experience, it might be desirable to enable that joining users can communicate with the parties in the room, while maintaining minimum assurances of authenticity, confidentiality, forward secrecy, as well as consistency only among participants.
Consistency aspects of (n+1)sec, both for the room view (plist) and for the transcript, are reached through group agreement. However, there are times when group agreement may be hard or impossible to reach either due to latency in a single participant's connection or due to a single participant broadcasting incorrect confirmation data (such as wrong plist, sid, key share, etc).
We offer an extension to the (n+1)sec protocol to tackle this problem during the joining process. When a new participant joins the room, they send their DH key shares to the other participants. The other participants send their ephemeral key in return. They then send their key confirmation and key share. If this extension is to be considered, as soon as each user receives a key confirmation from another user, who is not currently part of the session, (n+1)sec displays a message highlighting the fact that although the user is not part of the session part of the conversation (from users' who confirmed the new user's identity) is being shared with them (through P2P encryption using the key derived from DH Key). The protocol, however, does not honour their input in the consistency check until a new session including the new user is set up. Each client can decide whether to disable this option.
The user remains in the list of those not part of the current session, but receives the session messages until a new session is set up. Similarly, when a user receives a message from a user who is not part of the session, (n+1)sec will decrypt the message and display it with a disclaimer that the user is not yet part of the session and that some participants may not receive the same message.
This is less secure model in which a room is a forwardly secure authenticated communication channel while a session is a subset of the room, which additionally offers a consistent view of the room and consistent messages among participants. The detail of the process is depicted in Secthoin VIII.5
VIII.4 Leave
Leaving a chatroom involves a message from a leaving party indicating its intention to leave which, as with all other messages, contains the hash of TranscriptChain and one procedure for those who are staying in the chatroom (Procedure Farewell) which is described in Table ''(n+1)sec''#Leave.
Farewell
Run by exiting user.
Algorithm 6
Description Pseudo-code Type Send farewell message Send("Leaving!") Broadcast Wait to receive hashes of TranscriptChain or Timeout Wait to Receive() or Timeout by((2 BROADCAST_LATENCY)+INTERACTION_GRACE_INTERVAL) Receive
Shrink
When the remaining participants receive the farewell message they need to reply with the Hash of TranscriptChain of the last message seen by the leaving user. They also need to re-run the one round key update algorithm. However, they only need a notice from the server that the user is leaving to initiate a subsession excluding the leaving user.
Additionally, failure to receive a heartbeat from a user will result in executing Algorithm ''(n+1)sec''#Shrink excluding users who did not update their key.
Algorithm 7
Description Pseudo-code Type Send Hash of TranscriptChain of last message seen by leaving user Send( ) Broadcast Remove leaving user's id/key and update participant list Computation
Users will proceed to "initiate new session" steps.
VIII.5 Secure Send and Receive
After the session key is established, participants will use Algorithms 5 and 6 to communicate securely.
On Send, the protocol checks the status of the new ephemeral Diffie-Hellman and key share using messages it receives from participants. It (re)sends any missing pieces. It also informs other participants which part of the key share has been received by the participant. This information is needed in order to enforce in-session forward secrecy. The metadata flag indicates if the message being sent only contains meta data (e.g. heartbeat) or actual user communication.
On Receive, the protocol updates who has seen which pieces of the key shares. The protocol also generates a new group key if the new key shares have been received from all participants. Those who have not updated their key shares eventually time out via their heartbeat interval.
Send
Algorithm 8
Description Pseudo-code Type prepend session id and sender id Computation Generate new DH Key or new secret share if needed and append Computation Increment own sequence number Computation Append the hash of the TranscriptChain, up to the parent of the message being sent (m,,, ) Computation Generate a random nonce and append to the message Computation Sign the message and append the signature Computation Encrypt Computation Broadcast the message Broadcast Reset Heartbeat timeout timer ResetHeartbeatTimer() Computation Set ACK timeout timer if the message has user content False then ResetHeartbeatTimer() Computation
Receive
Algorithm 9
Description Pseudo-code Type Decrypt message Computation Check signature Computation Compute message sequence number ComputeSeqNum(m) Computation Verify session id and transcript consistency and sender sequence number, issue a warning in case of failure and and Computation Update TranscriptChain if possible Computation Update sender sequence number record Computation Update sender's ephemeral key or share secret Computation If all users' share are received, generate session key Computation Update ack timeout timer AxeAckTimeoutTimer Computation Update rekey timeout timer ResetRekeyTimeOut( ) Computation If the message has content set up ACK timer then Computation return m If then return m Computation
Out of Session Send and Receive
Due to nature of the key exchange algorithm, (n+1)sec support confidential P2P communication. This in particular enables the user to share the conversation with joining user(s) who confirmed their identity to the user but have not established a session yet. It is worth mentioning that every session keeps a list future sessions to transition to this is equivalent to the list of confirmed but yet to join users. If the extension discussed in section VIII.3 is enabled it will make use of this list to implement the following changes:
When a user send a message Extended Send is invoked instead, it sends the message to the session using Send but also to the prospective participants, using P2P Send.
is invoked instead, it sends the message to the session using but also to the prospective participants, using. When a message is received, Extended Receive is called which check if the user has the correct key to decrypt the message. If the message is encrypted by session key and user has the session key then it calls the normal receive. If the message is encrypted by a p2p key that the user share, it calls P2P Receive. Otherwise, it simply ignores the message.
Algorithm 9.1 Extended Send
Description Pseudo-code Type If we are part of a session id in the room call Send Send Broadcast For all confirmed users not in session call P2P Send P2P Send Broadcast
Algorithm 9.2 Extended Receive
Description Pseudo-code Type If m has session id call Receive if m has sid then Receive Computation If m has key id, call P2P Receive P2P Send Computation
Algorithm 9.3 P2P Send
Description Pseudo-code Type Prepend key id and sender id Computation Generate a random nonce and append to the message Computation Sign the message and append the signature Computation Encrypt Computation Broadcast the message Broadcast
Algorithm 9.4 P2P Receive
Description Pseudo-code Type Decrypt message Computation Check signature Computation return m return m Computation
VIII.6 Reaching Consistency
The protocol provisions two procedures to reach consistency in different cases: (a) reaching consistency for arbitrary messages during the course of a conversation, and (b) reaching consistency when an instance leaves. Case (b) may be viewed as a special instance of case (a) plus the additional premise that must reach consistency as soon as possible (because they want to leave), and that they don't care about reaching consistency for any subsequent messages that they might receive after their final "farewell" message.
Reaching consistency for arbitrary messages during the course of a conversation:
Algorithm 10
Description Pseudo-code Type Receive m with parent p from Computation Compare hash of TranscriptChain_j[p] with own value of it, issue a warning if it fails. Computation Compute TranscriptChain^S_i[m] Computation
Case (b): when an instance wants to part, they send a "farewell" message m which contains.
Everyone should include in their re-key message
in their re-key message When reaches mutual consistency for p may leave or otherwise (if received hashes and their owns are non-matching) shows a warning. won't have a chance to reach consistency for the messages receives after p
reaches mutual consistency for p may leave or otherwise (if received hashes and their owns are non-matching) shows a warning.
VIII.7 In-session Forward Secrecy
To ensure forward secrecy in long living chat sessions, (n+1)sec provides a session key update throughout the session. Each message sent to the session by each participant contains meta data described in #VIII.5.1 (n+1)sec Message Structure. Prior to sending any message, (n+1)sec determines the content of meta data, and piggy backs to that message according to the following algorithm:
Algorithm 10.1 Compute meta data
Description Pseudo-code Type Initiate meta data with current state of knowledge of new ephemeral keys and secret shares for all j in {1,...n} Computation Include the new ephemeral key if participant has not receive it If meta_data \leftarrow Computation If (all) participants have sent their ephemeral keys compute the shared secret If for all j in {1,...n}, then Computation Return meta data return meta_data Computation
VIII.8 Heartbeat and Timeout
Heartbeat is an empty message which contains only meta data. The meta data consists of information used to compute a new key and the most updated hash of transcript chain.
The protocol sends a heart beat only if the user has not sent any messages for a specific period of time.
The heartbeat is necessary to ensure three properties:
- Periodic transcript consistency check. - In session forward secrecy. - Freshness
To achieve these goals three time out periods are defined when heart beat sending is required. Additionally, we define an interval to model the latency in the underlying transport. These should be defined to cover common cases (e.g. 95th-percentile):
ACK_GRACE_INTERVAL: When a receives a non-empty message it needs to inform the group about the transcript update no later than ACK_GRACE_INTERVAL time. Therefore if f does not send a message ACK_GRACE_INTERVAL seconds after receiving a non empty message, will send a heartbeat.
REKEY_GRACE_INTERVAL, to ensure in session forward secrecy, the protocol requires that each updates their DH ephemeral key as well as group key. After a session is established or it was rekeyed, each needs to send its new DH ephemeral key no later than REKEY_GRACE_INTERVAL. Therefore if has not sent any message by that
period of time, it issues an empty message. Similarly after receiving all ephemeral keys from all participants, needs to send its secret for computation of new key no later than REKEY_GRACE_INTERVAL.
INTERACTION_GRACE_INTERVAL, to ensure establishment of a session in timely manner, when immediate contribution of participants is required (for example sending key confirmation, contribution to the session secret), this values indicate that how long an active participants should wait till it decide to drop the non-contributing inactive participants from the participant list.
BROADCAST_LATENCY: Modelling the amount of time which a message takes to reach the server and broadcast to the other clients. It should be based on the transport considered.
Failure to heartbeat and inactivity timers
Whenever, a message m is received a timer of (2*BROADCAST_LATENCY)+ACK_GRACE_INTERVAL) period is set. If the for a is received from all participants, the timer is cancelled. Otherwise at the time out, the protocol issues a local UI warning and cancel the warning if/when such a hash is received and is consistence among participants.
When a new session key is computed as well as when receives new ephemeral DH values from all users, a timer of (2*BROADCAST_LATENCY)+REKEY_GRACE_INTERVAL period is set. It is cancelled when all user contributions are received (ephemeral keys or session key secrets). Otherwise, the excludes users who failed to contribute from the exclude those users from the plist and call initiate new session. This measure is taken to ensure that users do not block in-session forward secrecy due to loss of connection or being under attack.
Timing out during an interactive session
(n+1)sec by design assumes the participants are trusted in being commited to the goal fo creating a secure chatroom. In this sense, (n+1)sec provide little defens against party which trying to sabotage a room by mounting various denial of service approaches. However, there are situation where a party is genuinely affected (by external adversary) or by connection problem. Under such assumption, situations we expect that all other parties, reach a consensus, that a participant has connectivity problem and agree on leave them out of the room.
Timeout sub protocol is designed to deal with such a situation. When a new session is requested (for join, leave, etc) each participant wait for (2*BROADCAST_LATENCY)+INTERACTION_GRACE_INTERVAL, they omit non-participating participants from the plist, and wait for PLIST_UPDATE_GRACE_INTERVAL. so other participants also reach to the same conclusion and updates their plists, then they initiate a new session.
Drop inactive users, queue a new session request
Algorithm 10.XX
Description Pseudo-code Type Drop inactive users Computation Recompute Session Id Computation Set up timer to request a new session SetTimer(PLIST_UPDATE_GRACE_INTERVAL, initiate new session) Computation
When a participant receives a request for initiating new session, it checks their most current view of participant list (the one with eliminated timed out users) and if it matched then they go ahead with initiating the session, otherwise decline halt the request.
VIII.9 (n+1)sec Message Dictionary
All (n+1)sec messages have the following format
:o3np1sec:Base64EnocodedMessage
The Base64EncodedMessage is decoded to sub data fields. There is no delimiter, the fields can be split based on the data size. We use commas (',') only for the purposes of readability in this document. The data types are described as follows.
Bytes (DTByte):
1 byte unsigned value
Shorts (DTSHort):
2 byte unsigned value, big-endian
Length (DTLength):
4 byte unsigned value, big-endian
HashBlock (DTHash):
32 byte data
Opaque variable-length data (DTOpaque):
4 byte unsigned len, big-endian len byte data
All messages have mandatory version and message type fields:
version (DTShort), message type (DTShort), type-specific part
"version" is equal to 0001.
"message type" is chosen from the following list:
UNKNOWN =0x00, //Invalid JOIN_REQUEST =0x0a, //Session establishement PARTICIPANTS_INFO =0x0b, JOINER_AUTH =0x0c, GROUP_SHARE =0x0d, SESSION_CONFIRMATION =0x0e, //In session messages IN_SESSION_MESSAGE =0x10, P2P_MESSAGE =0x20,
many messages use "participant id" which is defined as follows:
participant nickname, participant fingerprint (DTHash)
participant nickname is a string. Its size can be determined by the length of the participant id - 32. The participant finger print is a 32bit representation of an ed25519 public key.
"participant info" is defined as
participant id, ephemeral public key (DTHash), authenticated (DTByte)
From the point of view of the sender of the message the participant is authenticated if "authenticated" is 1. Unauthenticated if it is 0.
The following sections will describe the type-specific part for each type of messagee information about the joiner.
Join Request
participant_info
where the following fields from participant_info submessage:
participant id, ephemeral publick key (DTHash)
are representing the joiner's information. the
authenticated (DTByte)
is kept only for compatibility with participant_info sub message structure and has no information value. It should be 1 as it represents the state of authentication of the joiner to itself. However, its value will be ignored by the current participants.
Participant Info
session id (DTHash), session view (DTOpaque), key_confirmation(DTOpaque), sender's share(DTHash)
"session view" consists of
participant0_info (DTOpeque), participant1_info (DTOpeque),..., partcipantn_info(DTOpeque)
where "participant0,...,participantn" are all participants in the session (represented by session id).
"key confirmation" consists of a hash of a triple dh token between the sender and the joining participant and the "participant id" of the joining user.
the sender's share is computed as |
a few years ago, before the developer tooling ecosystem had matured. At the time, every contract change needed to be coordinated and updated by hand. It was the opposite of the previous scenario — the effort/output/overhead of microservices felt much bigger than that of the old monolith.
Takeaway #2: Be careful. Treating microservices as splitting code layers into docker-ized boxes can lead to “death by a thousand cuts.”
Taming a huge dependency tree
We had another legacy enterprise application transformation which did a lot of things like product scraping and parallel aggregation. It was a complicated, already troubled monolith.
When we’re doing a lot of orthogonal business features inside a single app, it causes a huge compile-time dependency tree, with tons of libraries and frameworks. Consequently, the runtime footprint, lifecycle, and build times were also long. This contributed to the real problem: developers couldn’t iterate quickly, and time-to-market of features suffered as a result.
Time taken to code a simple feature: several days.
Time to upgrade a library (guice) version: 1 week.
Time taken to upgrade a framework (Spring) version: forever.
Trivial stuff had the chance to rip apart every time estimate. Even a small refactor took long. It turns out that death by a thousand cuts is possible with monoliths as well.
We divided the project into some functional boundaries. We actively made sure to not share libraries and to avoid the dependency tree bottleneck.
For example, we used a modern client library for publishing messages over PubSub for the microservices. But the monolith’s big dependency tree did not allow us to use the same library. So we used a different HTTP-based PubSub client.
Microservices transitionists often make the classic mistake of sharing too many libraries and thereby re-create the same compile-time dependency trees (a “distributed monolith”).
But by avoiding sharing functionality, we could use different libraries to accomplish the same tasks without having to upgrade the world.
One of the services required a lot of concurrency (~1k lookups for every request). It initially leveraged RxJava. But it could be rewritten any day in Golang with the same API contract, and nobody would care about the dependency tree.
Takeaway #3: With microservices, you won’t hear the term “big rewrite” or “legacy system” ever again because there are no big systems.
The scalability myth
My team developed a code evaluation app. It was 90% CRUD, user interface, and reports, and 10% complex code evaluation for a dozen languages.
Before we came in, it was a series of microservices — one for each type of language, listening for different message queues. It had a separate front-end-as-a-service, admin-panel-as-a-service, and so on. Their original reasoning? Scalability.
We killed the whole thing and built a better monolith. It was completely done as a single Rails app — user interface, admin, back end, and candidate interface.
The code evaluation part ran as a background job (ActiveJob). We shelled this out across simple, stateless, one-off Docker containers. The core contract for evaluating code changed from REST/JSON into file/stdin/stdout. It scaled much better than the old system, because we just needed to ramp up the background workers to handle more code evaluations.
What looked like a sophisticated application from the outside — supporting 8 major programming languages with intelligent evaluation — was extremely simple on the inside.
Takeaway #4: You don’t need microservices to run multiple instances of a service or worker. Good monoliths can also scale for some classes of problems.
It is quite possible to create scalable monoliths and unscalable microservices. It all comes down to how well you apply each’s underlying principles.
Microservices as products
One of the most satisfying microservices projects I’ve worked on approached microservices as products. Our clients were extremely smart, techno-functional people, and they were clearly leveraging microservices as a business tool.
They modeled each service as a product, then released multiple products to different customers. They lined up the product releases in a way that each could leverage another’s APIs. In turn, they created a brilliant ecosystem. It made them a market leader in their vertical.
The average enterprise today uses at least a dozen software products and integrations. The average cloud consumer uses multiple cloud products. I now see even non-technical people use micro-products and micro-apps. For example, one tool for interviewing, one for vacation tracking, one for payslips, etc. People are embracing smaller, more specialized tools that get the job done properly.
Takeaway #5: We are strongly and firmly into the micro-products, micro-apps and micro-services era. Better learn to do it well.
There is this constant fear of machine learning stealing programming jobs. Most programming jobs are becoming APIs today.
Distributed transactions
One of the most common arguments against using microservices is the risks associated with distributed transactions.
Are you calling an external Payment gateway system that deducts money, but could fail on your callback? Do you have multiple sign-on mechanisms (like email or OAuth)? Are you calling third-party SaaS products that don’t have a rollback option? Are you leveraging Cloud APIs and storage buckets which don’t respect your transaction boundary? Do you have workflows spanning multiple request lifecycles to the same service?
Then you already have distributed transactions in one way or another, whether you like it or not.
The whole idea that one system and one request can represent or control the entire transactional state of the business problem is a fantasy. If you can model your external integrations without distributed locks and transactions, then you can model your internal ones too.
Takeaway #6: Distributed locks and transactions aren’t free with Monoliths, either.
Tooling vs People
Yes, more services means more tooling. This involves continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), infrastructure automation, developer tooling, the ability to design good APIs, contract sharing, documentation, client intelligence and libraries, processes, testing, and a lot of other tools.
You must be at least this tall to ride microservices.
If an organization does not have the engineering robustness and maturity to effortlessly run a handful of services (12factor, CI, CD, integration, testing, etc), it will be a disaster to switch to many of them.
Lots of people coming from a monolith mindset do Big Design Up Front. Microservices are best when they are in-your-face. Just throw away all the boilerplate, implement the API in a no-nonsense way and instead invest time in good quality unit/contract tests. Like with tooling VS people — microservices require a change in mindset, and a great deal of unlearning.
The good news is that many of these tooling problems have good engineering solutions. Docker, Kubernetes, REST, Swagger, Falcor, gRPC, CI/CD Pipeline tools, PaaS, Cloud, and so on. The ecosystem around microservices has already matured quite a bit, and its improving all the time.
The bad news is that microservices can’t be learned like a framework or tool. They require a holistic approach that comes with experience. You need good people who are not only brute-force good coders, but also well-rounded engineers with a strong foundation in the whole software development lifecycle, from development to testing to deployment.
There are big enterprises that take months for every single integration. And then there are modern companies like Google, Facebook, and Netflix that run thousands of integrated services at a far greater quality and speed. The difference isn’t just the tools — it’s the people involved and their engineering approach.
Takeaway #7: Microservices are a culmination of multiple engineering practices. They have a steep curve of learning, unlearning, and transformation.
Conclusion
The microservices approach is just another tool in the solutionist’s toolkit. And a tool is just a tool. It can end up being a powerful business asset, or an unproductive developer bottleneck. Whether we’re right or wrong all comes down to how we use this tool.FIANNA FÁIL LEADER Micheál Martin has claimed in a hard-hitting speech that Sinn Féin has no connection to the 1916 Rising – comments that Gerry Adams dismissed as a “hysterical rant”.
Martin made the comments while speaking at his party’s annual 1916 commemoration on Arbour Hill today.
Martin described the men and women of 1916 as “heroes which any nation would be proud of”, saying that “Fianna Fáil is rightly proud of the fact that it drove forward the successful search for a shared blueprint for the future of our island”.
We are a party founded by men and women who fought in 1916 for the freedom of our country.
But he said that Fianna Fáil are “clear in saying that 1916 belongs to no party or movement”.
It belongs to the Irish people alone.
Source: graphy: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
Martin had harsh words for Sinn Féin, saying that the Republican party “has aggressively been promoting the false claim that they have some connection to 1916 and to the volunteers who fought then”.
This is part of their wider agenda of trying to falsify recent Irish history and claim legitimacy for the sectarian campaign of murder and intimidation which they carried out for 30 years.
Let no one be in any doubt, Provisional Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA have no connection with 1916. To claim otherwise is a dangerous and cynical lie.
Source: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland
He described Sinn Féin claiming a link with 1916 as “insulting and undermining the place of the Rising in our national identity”.
Their claim to historical continuity basically says that 1916 changed nothing – which no new possibilities were opened up, no new methods became available.
Martin said that Sinn Fein have “refused” to ”acknowledge that they were always wrong”.
By claiming legitimacy for their campaign they refuse to acknowledge the right of the Irish people to oppose and reject them.
Provisionals
With regard to Sinn Fein talking about ‘volunteers’ and ‘Oglaigh na hÉireann’, Martin claimed that:
“The Provisionals were never Óglaigh na hÉireann. Óglaigh na hÉireann is now and was during their entire campaign the army of this free independent Irish republic.”
He also mentioned the Disappeared, and the death of Jean McConville in his speech.
“We cannot and we must not let these people succeed in their campaign to claim the mantle of republicanism. They are not republicans,” said Martin.
He claimed that no member of the Provisional movement has addressed “the widespread abuse of children by their members and the systematic covering up of it up to this day”.
Source: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland
He said that Fianna Fáil “will not step back from calling them out and pointing to their sinister practices”.
I hope that in the year ahead others will start being more vigilant in challenging their agenda of falsifying history. The Sinn Fein of today was founded just over 40 years ago. It has no historical continuity with 1916 or the War of Independence.
Sinn Fein response
In response to Martin, Sinn Féin Leader Gerry Adams TD said:
Micheál Martin’s claim that Sinn Féin is not not fit for democratic government is a matter which the electorate will decide.
Sinn Féin has a mandate in both parts of this island. That is what drives the hysterical rant by Mícheál Martin about Sinn Féin at Arbour Hill today.
His remarks are a clear sign of desperation at the growth of Sinn Féin and the stagnation of his own party.
Source: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland
He said that Martin’s speech “majors on negativity and invective but offers no message of hope or policy proposals which could build a better future”.
“Micheal Martin clearly sees Sinn Féin representing a genuine republican alternative to which citizens are turning in ever greater numbers and his remarks must be seen in this context,” said Adams.Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales. The model has served the company well on the PC, but if it wants to make money in the phone market, it needs to start thinking like a consumer electronics company. That means selling Microsoft phones.
Microsoft revolutionized the operating system market back in the early 1980s. Indeed, Microsoft created the operating system market back in the early 1980s. Back then, when you bought a computer, it normally had its own special operating system that the vendor bundled (or even sold at extra cost).
Sometimes those operating systems were written by third parties and just rebranded and customized by the hardware vendor; other times they were written from the ground up by the manufacturer. But the idea of an operating system that you could just go out and buy and slap onto any machine was a novel one.
With the advent of MS-DOS and the dawn of the IBM PC clone market, this changed. One operating system could work on machines from IBM, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and every other clone maker. Microsoft's great innovation was to sell the operating system as a valuable program in its own right, and in so doing the software maker all but eliminated the differences between different vendors' systems. The hardware became an almost irrelevant commodity—the only thing that mattered was whether it could run DOS, and later, Windows.
Many other companies stuck with the old hardware plus custom operating system package. Most fell by the wayside; the Amigas and Ataris of this world went out of business, unable to withstand the onslaught of cheap commoditized hardware with a separate operating system.
The custom operating system model lives on in the world of mainframes and, to some extent, commercial UNIXes (though Sun tried to break Solaris out of this niche), but in the consumer space there's only one company still standing: Apple. As the Mac OS X license agreement stipulates, Mac OS X is only allowed on Apple-branded hardware.
Commodity hardware, or vertical integration?
Microsoft is a firm believer in the model of commoditized hardware with a third party, hardware agnostic operating system (just as long as the operating system is bought from Microsoft, of course), and it's true that the model has worked very well for the company over the years; 175 million Windows 7 licenses is nothing to be sniffed at.
But this model hasn't always worked out so well for Redmond's other post-PC efforts. The company tried a similar tack with its ineffective attempts to get a toehold in the portable music player market. The approach here was a little different, but the aims were broadly the same: Microsoft wanted to sell its own scheme for DRM-protected audio, PlaysForSure, to a range of hardware vendors and online stores. In this way, Microsoft would take a cut both from each hardware device sold (as vendors had to license the ability to play back PlaysForSure-protected files), and from each PlaysForSure-protected song sold.
It didn't work out very well; the value of the iPod was that it offered a unified hardware, firmware, and store experience that all worked well together, and the piecemeal PlaysForSure system could never replicate this. Belatedly the software giant recognized this and produced the Zune and later the Zune HD. Both of these offered the end-to-end integration of the iPod—hardware, device interface, PC software, and online store—something that PlaysForSure had never achieved.
This move aggravated the PlaysForSure partners—Microsoft was now competing with them head on, with an integrated offering that wasn't even PlaysForSure compatible, but gave Microsoft a much better product. The problem was that it was just too late; the iPod was deeply entrenched, and for reasons best known to Redmond, the company decided to only sell the Zune HD in the US—that is to say, the market where Apple's presence was strongest, and the market in which Zune HD was least likely to make an impact.
The first-generation Zunes were not entirely inspiring, as they were rush jobs based on existing Toshiba MP3 players. But the Zune HD was an all-new design, and it was a high-quality, attractive, well-designed piece of hardware. If nothing else, it demonstrated that Redmond can, in fact, produce decent consumer electronics devices, with a look that appeals, an interface that works well, and attractive PC software.
The Xbox 360, for all its hardware problems, makes a similar case. The red ring of death flaws certainly detract from the Xbox 360 as a piece of design. But ultimately, it's a well-liked, well-designed appliance, and it shows off the benefits of vertical integration. As with the Zune HD, the Xbox 360 shows that Microsoft can build a tightly integrated combination of hardware, software, and online services. Though it may not ever make much money, for various reasons, it nonetheless serves to demonstrate that Redmond can do the consumer electronics thing properly.
Still, there are other areas where Redmond is persisting with its licensed operating system model. Phones are, of course, the big one. Windows Mobile is sold to OEMs to stick on the devices they build, and it's up to the manufacturers to produce elegant, attractive hardware. Windows Mobile is also highly customizable, and many handset manufacturers exploit this to add their own custom front-ends to make up for various flaws in the standard Windows Mobile user interface.
Microsoft has had a little success with this model, but that success has been waning. The introduction of the iPhone was the turning point; it offered the same end-to-end integration that the iPod had, and it brought it to the phone. A strong user interface, compelling industrial design, integration with an online music store, and an easy-to-use application store, all of which showed the value of vertical integration in a smartphone. Consumers liked what they saw.Abortion is a hotly debated and poorly studied medical procedure. There are a few studies of dubious validity that connect abortion to mental illness and drug use. Politicians have used these studies to justify greater limitations on women seeking abortion in the United States.
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There has been no sustained effort to study what happens to women who want abortions but can't get them due to restrictive rules. Until now. These women are called turnaways. A new longitudinal study reveals what happens to their economic position, health, and relationship status after seeking an abortion and being denied it.
AP Photo by Peter Morrison
Public health researchers with the UC San Francisco group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) used data from 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the U.S. 182 of them were turned away. The researchers, led by Diana Greene Foster, followed and did intensive interviews with these women, who ran the gamut of abortion experiences. Some obtained abortions easily, for some it was a struggle to get them, and some were denied abortions because their pregnancies had lasted a few days beyond the gestational limits of their local clinics. Two weeks ago, the research group presented what they'd learned after two years of the planned five-year, longitudinal "Turnaway Study" at the recent American Public Health Association conference in San Francisco.
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Here's the short version of what they discovered, from a post they made on the Global Turnaway Study Facebook page:
We have found that there are no mental health consequences of abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. There are other interesting findings: even later abortion is safer than childbirth and women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term are three times more likely than women who receive an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later.
Below, you can find the longer, more complex version of the story. I spoke with Foster about the groups' preliminary findings.
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Poverty
The women in the Turnaway Study were in comparable economic positions at the time they sought abortions. 45% were on public assistance and two-thirds had household incomes below the federal poverty level. One of the main reasons women cite for wanting to abort is money, and based on the outcomes for the turnaways, it seems they are right.
Most of the women who were denied an abortion, 86%, were living with their babies a year later. Only 11% had put them up for adoption. Also a year later, they were far more likely to be on public assistance — 76% of the turnaways were on the dole, as opposed to 44% of those who got abortions. 67% percent of the turnaways were below the poverty line (vs. 56% of the women who got abortions), and only 48% had a full time job (vs. 58% of the women who got abortions).
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When a woman is denied the abortion she wants, she is statistically more likely to wind up unemployed, on public assistance, and below the poverty line. Another conclusion we could draw is that denying women abortions places more burden on the state because of these new mothers' increased reliance on public assistance programs.
Violence and Drug Use
In the Turnaway Study, the researchers could find no statistically significant differences in drug use between women who get abortions and women who don't. There appears to be no correlation between abortion and increased drug use. One interesting bit of data they did find was that drug users who couldn't get abortions were more likely to give their babies up for adoption.
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Unfortunately, when it comes to domestic violence, being denied an abortion makes a really big difference. Turnaways were more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner than women who got abortions. A year after being denied an abortion, 7% reported an incident of domestic violence in the last six months. 3% of women who received abortions reported domestic violence in the same time period. Foster emphasized that this wasn't because the turnaways were more likely to get into abusive relationships. It was simply that getting abortions allowed women to get out of such relationships more easily. So it's likely that these numbers actually reflect a dropoff in domestic violence for women who get abortions, rather than a rise among turnaways.
This pattern of violence is also part of a larger pattern that shows turnaways are more likely to remain connected to the fathers of their children. Obviously, this isn't always a good thing, as the violence statistics reveal. But even in the vast majority of cases where violence isn't involved, Foster noted that these men aren't living with the turnaways. The researchers asked women about cohabiting with partners, and found that men were no more likely to live with a turnaway who'd borne their children than they were to live with a woman who had an abortion. "The man doesn't stick around just because you have the baby — that's the crude way of putting it," Foster said.
Emotions
One of the biggest concerns about abortion is that it causes emotional problems that lead to clinical depression. The Turnaway Study looked at that question from two angles: how did turnaways and women who got abortions feel; and did they become clinically depressed. "It's important to remember that how you feel is a separate question from whether you have a mental health problem," Foster said. We'll look at women's emotions here, and discuss mental health in the next section.
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As the researchers said at the American Public Health Association Meeting, "One week after seeking abortion, 97% of women who obtained an abortion felt that abortion was the right decision; 65% of turnaways still wished they had been able to obtain an abortion." Also one week after being denied an abortion, turnaways told the researchers that they had more feelings of anxiety than the women who had abortions. Women who had abortions overwhelming reported feeling relieved (90%), though many also felt sad and guilty afterwards. All of these feelings faded naturally over time in both groups, however. A year later, there were no differences in anxiety or depression between the two groups.
In other words, the Turnaway Study found no indication that there were lasting, harmful negative emotions associated with getting an abortion. The only emotional difference between the two groups at one year was that the turnaways were more stressed. They were more likely to say that they felt like they had more to do than they could get done.
None of this translated into clinical depression. "Abortion and depression don't seem directly linked," Foster said. "We'll continue to follow these women for five years, though. So we might find something else down the line."
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Physical and Mental Health
The Turnaway Study found no indication that abortion could be linked with increased mental health disorders. There were no statistical differences between turnaways and women who had abortions when it came to developing clinical depression.
But turnaways did face a greater health risk from giving birth. Even late stage abortions are safer than giving birth. The researchers said at the APHA meeting:
We find physical health complications are more common and severe following birth (38% experience limited activity, average 10 days) compared to abortion (24% limited activity, average 2.7 days). There were no severe complications after abortion; after birth complications included seizure, fractured pelvis, infection and hemorrhage. We find no differences in chronic health conditions at 1 week or one year after seeking abortion.
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If you look at all this data together, a new picture emerges of abortion and how the state might want to handle it. To prevent women from having to rely on public assistance, abortions should be made more widely available. In addition, there is strong evidence that making abortions available will allow women to be healthier, with brighter economic outlooks. By turning women away when they seek abortions, we risk keeping both women and their children in poverty — and, possibly, in harm's way from domestic violence.
Learn more about these studies from the abstracts of the American Public Health Association panels here and here.
The Turnaway Study was funded entirely through donations. If you would like to support more research into the lives of turnaways around the world, please consider donating to the Global Turnaway Study on Indie GoGo.James Keller, The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER -- A B.C. Supreme Court judge has dropped civil contempt charges against dozens of protesters who were arrested at an anti-pipeline protest near Vancouver.
The order came Thursday after Kinder Morgan acknowledged it had used incorrect GPS co-ordinates when it sought an injunction related to its Trans Mountain pipeline.
More than 100 people have been arrested on Burnaby Mountain, including Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, who crossed a police line around a Kinder Morgan work site earlier Thursday.
Nearly all of the arrested protesters were charged with civil contempt for violating the injunction, but the judge handling the case suggested during Thursday's hearing that the errors in the initial court order put those charges in doubt.
"What's happened thus far is that apparently people have been arrested on the basis of an order that refers to some other piece of property," Judge Austin Cullen said, prompting laughs and jeers from the courtroom's crowded public gallery.
"The concern is that people have been arrested and subjected to restraints on their liberty," he continued later.
Later, Cullen invited a lawyer for Kinder Morgan to file an application to vacate the charges. Company lawyer William Kaplan made such an application, which Cullen granted, effectively throwing out all of the civil contempt charges.
The order doesn't apply to a small handful of protesters who faced criminal charges for assault or obstruction of justice.
Cullen also revised the injunction to correct the GPS co-ordinates for the one work site that is still active, so protesters arrested under that revised injunction could still face civil contempt charges.
Kinder Morgan is conducting drilling at two sites on Burnaby Mountain, which is home to a conservation area and Simon Fraser University, as it prepares for the federal approval process. The company's preferred route for the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline would tunnel through the mountain.
The energy giant has completed work at one drilling site, which is located along a roadway and where the majority of the demonstrations have been focused.
However, it says crews likely won't be finished at a second drilling site, which is located deep into the forest, until after the current injunction deadline of Dec. 1.
It was at that second site that Phillip, the grand chief, was arrested on Thursday morning. Like many pipeline opponents before him, Phillip announced his intention to be arrested before walking past a police line that surrounded the work site.
Phillip and his supporters trekked through dense brush to the work site. He was arrested to the beat of a native drum and singing.
"I said that if push came to shove and there were arrests, that I would stand with the courageous people that were willing to be arrested as a matter of principle," he said before his arrest.
"We need to reclaim this country... and return it back to the voices of the people that have invested a lifetime of hard work to build this province."Google today hinted at a near future where its artificial intelligence capabilities underpin its collection of cloud-based applications aimed at the workplace, Google Apps.
At an event in Tokyo, the Internet giant announced a new application and a revamp of another, with some AI smarts injected into both.
The new product is called Springboard, and it's intended to let Google Apps customers search through the content of the documents they store in their Google Drive, along with their contacts and calendar entries, all in one place. It will also use AI, Google says, to proactively find information that may be relevant to what you're working on.
Google also says it has rebuilt Google Sites, its lightweight tool for creating websites and intranet sites for use by work teams. It, too, is getting a dash of Google’s AI juice, which, says Ryan Tabone, director of product for Google Apps, will make a lot of the tricky things about web publishing easier.
“It takes a lot of the hassle out of getting pictures and text just right, so you don’t have to spend time figuring them out yourself,” Tabone said. It can also quickly adapt a page for reading on mobile devices.
It’s a relatively humble start, but the hope is to enhance the entire suite of Google's office apps with AI, though Tabone preferred the phrase “machine intelligence."
And while it’s pretty far from Google’s more spectacular deployment of AI technology in its Google Home smart speaker for consumers, it is a hint of things to come, Tabone said.
“What we find is that people tend to perform the same tasks over and over,” he said. “And that’s something that’s in the machine-learning wheelhouse.”The Jets are a bad team. There are few holdouts who think otherwise at this point. But how bad are they? As it turns out, if things don't get turned around in the second half, we all could be witnessing history this year, that's how bad this team is.
The Jets' defense has generated 3 turnovers this year, on pace for 6 turnovers. That would be the lowest total in NFL history, by a wide margin. The lowest total coming into this season was 11. The Jets defense has all of one interception this year, on pace for two. No NFL team has ever recorded less than four interceptions in a season. The Jets defense has allowed a passer rating against of 113.5. No team in NFL history has ever allowed a passer rating that high. Tip of the cap to Broadway Jose for pointing that one out.
Those are the NFL records the Jets are threatening. Then there are the franchise records. The Jets defense is currently last in the NFL in points allowed per game. The only Jets team that finished this low in the points allowed standings were the 3-11 1975 Jets. Not even the Kotite Jets teams were this bad defensively. The Jets are last in the NFL in turnover differential. The last Jets team to accomplish that feat? The 1-15 1996 Kotite Jets. The Jets are the worst team in the NFL in generating turnovers on defense, and are the worst team in the NFL in turning the ball over on offense. Not even the Kotite Jets accomplished that impressive double whammy. No Jets team ever has.
This offense ranks dead last in the NFL in turnovers, yards per play, yards per game, yards per pass attempt, and passer rating. Not even the Kotite Jets offenses accomplished that. No Jets team ever has.
The Jets franchise is a storied one for ineptitude. This team once went 11 straight years without a single winning record, from 1970 through 1980, and they went another 10 years, from 1987 through 1996, with just a single winning record of 8-7-1. This franchise has never won more than 12 games and only won more than 10 games four times in 54 years, while losing more than 10 games 10 times. This franchise has only had 18 winning seasons in 54 years. Yet through all those years, through all that losing, this franchise has never fielded a team quite as inept as this 2014 Jets team in many respects. Folks, you are witnessing history here. This is as bad as it gets. This is as bad as it has ever gotten. For all those holdouts who still believe in Rex and/or Idzik, you have to ask yourself, if historically bad isn't enough to get a franchise's leaders fired, what is?S3 provides access logging for tracking requests to your bucket. Each access log entry (called the record) has information about a single request, including requester, request time, response status, bucket, key, etc. The actual format is described in this document, explaining each field in depth.
Example entry:
79a59df900b949e55d96a1e698fbacedfd6e09d98eacf8f8d5218e7cd47ef2be mybucket [06/Feb/2014:00:00:38 +0000] 192.0.2.3 79a59df900b949e55d96a1e698fbacedfd6e09d98eacf8f8d5218e7cd47ef2be 3E57427F3EXAMPLE REST.GET.VERSIONING - "GET /mybucket?versioning HTTP/1.1" 200 - 113 - 7 - "-" "S3Console/0.4" -
The problem is with such log format that we cant access individual fields easily (without a regexp) and that we store the information a human friendly way using text. This is not optimal for storing and querying larger datasets, we need to transform it to a more space efficient solution that reduces the IO when reading a large chunk of the data on disk or using distributed analytical platforms like Hadoop.
Why Apache Avro
Apache Avro has a long track record being used in production and it can be queried on Hadoop with ease.
According to the documentation Avro provides
Rich data structures.
A compact, fast, binary data format.
A container file, to store persistent data.
and few other things we don’t need right now
Avro also uses schemas so we can trust our data while processing it. The other alternative would be Apache ORC that is even more suitable for analytical use. I am going with Avro this time, because it is better supported than ORC in Clojure at the moment.
Why Clojure
My personal reasons why I am using Clojure for data projects like this is:
quick prototyping (REPL)
support for asynchronous programming (link)
small code base, less verbose than Java yet more readable
access to all of the Java libraries
Most of the data services I am working with on a daily basis has decent Java support, that means I just as easily use those libraries in Clojure. I also like small nice things. :)
Getting started
Just to summarise what are trying to achieve with this project and article series:
covering reading text files from Amazon S3 and convert the data to Avro (part I)
explaining how to convert a single thread execution to an asynchronous one with core.async (part II)
build a simple DSL to query Avro files (part III)
For starting I am going through the major topics involved in the process, how to use AWS S3 api, how to create Avro files and finally how to process lines of log files.
Talking to S3
After some initial poking around with the libraries we need for this I decided to use the raw Java S3 api, since it is so well written, using it in Clojure is a breeze.
Creating BasicAWSCredentials in Clojure
Creating a credential and using it to create an AmazonS3Client is simple. We can use many S3 clients at the same time for better performance but for the initial version we are going to stick to a single connection.
Log files are organised around dates, keeping one file per day sounds reasonable. Each day has zero or many entries, where many is less than a 10.000 so there is no need for splitting up a day for smaller chunks. On average there are 1000–2000 files per day, depending on the number of access entries. We are going to process data day by day, using a moving window. The size of the window and when is starts can be configured in the config.
Part of the config
Using the example from the config and yields to the following list of dates:
Example days
Fetching actual file names for each day can be tricky at the first sight but we can use the truncated field for checking if there are more than 1000 (by default) files for the particular day.
This function is blocking so it won’t return until all of the items are fetched, it is not recommended to process 100.000+ files at the same time. For processing that many files we need to re-write it to be lazy producing a lazy sequence where the items are looked up when needed. (Added to the TODO). The function that returns the Clojure representation (a hash-map) of a log entry is get-s3-object-summary-clj.
Java to Clojure for S3ObjectSummary
This way are have a list of entires that we are going to process later. For booting up all this in REPL we can use the following few lines assuming the configuration is correct and the credential file is present and it has valid access and secret key.
After got connected to S3 we can play with the log files. Checking the first entry (calling first on all-files-for-a-day):
Example S3ObjectSummary as Clojure hash-map
Since Clojure keywords can be used as functions we can easily list all of the file names in the list we produced earlier.
List of log files relative to the bucket
Processing a single line
Unfortunately there is no better way of processing these lines than using a regular expression.
I guess it is not nice but at least gets the job done. I still need to run it on bigger data sets but for our use case it works. When there are parenthesized groups in the pattern and re-find finds a match, it returns a vector. The first element is the matching string, the remaining elements are the individual groups. In this case we need to pay attention not only that Amazon uses “-” for null values but also to match all of the possible values of the referer and user agent fields.
Regexp to capture each field in a log entry
This works reasonably well, I haven’t found a non matching long entry yet. Now we can extend the s3api with get object content capabilities, that is required for downloading an |
of the analyzed situation, was the lack of a good economic system, which would regulate and simultaneously provide reason for player’s actions. The project UO: Quintessence is opposing the idea that mechanical restrictions of certain actions must take place. This, in our opinion, is against the idea of a UO remake and a new approach to online gaming, as that would not distinguish Quintessence from many other MMO titles out there. Mechanical restrictions limit player’s possibilities, which would be unforgiving for a sandbox setting. At the same time, giving full freedom the players would inevitable lead to the situation described above.
In order to introduce a “golden middle” in designing the PvP aspect of an open world game it is not enough to merely provide the tools, which would ensure player’s security. The core gameplay concept must be changed, and that is to include specific economic mechanism which would form the social system in many of its aspects, including crime and justice, feud and friendship, egocentric seek of benefits and altruistic support et cetera.
Part II of this piece will discuss specific mechanisms the development of UO: Quintessence will undertake in order to introduce a new approach to the open world online gaming to formulate a way in which Ultima Online Remake can be both tremendously fun while preserve the UO’s intial hardcore gameplay.
Reference
Bartle, R. Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders, 2004.
Fullerton, T. 2014. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Third Edition. CRC Press.
Giovetti, A. Ultima Online: Kill the Player Killers? Retrieved from http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/news/uoplayerkillers.htm
Google Groups. rec.games.computer.ultima-dragons. 1997 archived posts. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.computer.ultima-dragons/Ef2X7MaQejc%5B1-25%5D
Kline et al. 2003. Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. McGill-Queen’s Press.
Messner, S. 5 stories of murder and theft that prove Ultima Online was one of the best MMOs ever. Retrieved from: http://www.pcgamer.com/ultima-online-stories/
Tucker, J. 18 Years Later, Why Are People Still Playing Ultima Online? Retrieved from: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/30/ultima-online-retrospective/
AdvertisementsA big part of my job also involves administering our company’s deployment of Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains. This is the ERP system of choice for many medium to large organizations. Needless to say it sits on top of a SQL Server database.
One thing that always bugged me about GP was the fact that even as a power user, there were routine tasks that required me to log in under the ‘sa’ account. Specifically, creating new user accounts and modifying existing user permissions. There were dozens of other tasks that required me to log in as ‘sa’ but these were the most common. As any Systems Administrator/Analyst knows, ‘sa’ should rarely, if ever be used for day-to-day logins. The main problem is that there are three people on my team. Each of us could log in as ‘sa’ at any time and make a change that could disrupt the system. Audit tracking would only tell us that ‘sa’ made the change. It was impossible to know who actually made the change.
So with this problem in mind I began researching how I could assign ‘sa’ level permissions to an individual user’s account. Since the average GP user won’t need this level of access the only thing you need to ensure on the front-end is that the user account to which you would like to grant ‘sa’ level permissions is set as a poweruser within GP’s security module. Once that has been done it’s just a matter of making some changes to that user’s server roles and database role membership in SQL Server.
The first step is to provide the user account access to the securityadmin server role. To do this open SQL Management Studio and expand the Security folder and then the Logins subfolder. Locate the user account and open the Login Properties. Select the Server Roles page and click the checkbox next to securityadmin. Then click OK.
The next step is to assign the database user to the db_accessadmin and db_securityadmin roles. You will need to do this on the DYNAMICS database as well as all GP company databases. In my environment we only have a single company database so I would only need to update the user’s permission on two databases.
From the Databases folder in SQL Management Studio expand the database where you will be updating the user’s permissions. For this example I will be using the DYNAMICS database. Once expanded, then expand the Security folder then the Users folder. Locate the individual user and open the Database User window.
Select the Membership page and click the checkbox next to db_accessadmin and db_securityadmin. You will see in the following screenshot that db_datareader, db_datawriter and DYNGRP are also checked. These roles should already be available if the user has been set up as a poweruser. If for some reason these are not selected, go ahead and check them. Click OK.
You will also want to make the same change on all of your company databases. Once that has been completed, the user account should now have ‘sa’ level permissions and should be able to complete all ‘sa’ level tasks within the Great Plains application.
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PrintAn Entrepreneur Expands The Lego Universe
Enlarge this image toggle caption Will Chapman Will Chapman
Lots of good business ideas have emerged from kids' play. Seattle-area resident Will Chapman could thank his youngest son. At the age of 9, he wanted to know all he could about World War II and was using Lego toys to act out history. But his son was stymied — he couldn't find all the pieces he wanted.
Each year Lego turns out 19 billion plastic bricks, figures and gears for building things. But sometimes, it seems, even 19 billion isn't enough.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Wendy Kaufman/NPR Wendy Kaufman/NPR
"So we said, 'Let's try to make them out of Lego bricks.' But you can't. You can't make the weapons and the helmets he was looking for with the parts Lego has, so I said, 'Let's try to make them ourselves,' " Chapman says.
"I just assumed it was another one of his creative adventures," says Will's wife, Jennifer. "I really had no idea it was going to become a business."
But one thing led to another. Chapman would soon give up his day job as a software engineer and become an entrepreneur.
As soon as you walk in the door of the company known as BrickArms, you know you're in the lair of a Lego addict. Just about everywhere you look in this modest industrial space occupied by just Chapman and his wife, you see blank Lego pieces such as heads and torsos in multiple colors.
You see display cases filled with authentic Lego minifigures along with Chapman's own creations, like a World War II soldier wearing a bandolier with ammunition pouches, a canteen and suspenders.
Pretty amazing, considering the figure is only about an inch and a half tall. But there's more.
"He's got a T-shirt and a little bit of his neck showing, and on his back he's got a medical kit, he's got a utility pouch, he's got a couple of wrinkles, showing how that shirt might look if it were made of material," he says.
You won't find anything quite like this that's made by Lego. Christoph Bartneck, who's written extensively about Lego and compiled a catalog of its minifigures, says Lego makes weapons and fighters from the Wild West and the fantasy world, "but anything from the great wars or modern warfare is something they do not do."
He says it's a decision based on the company's philosophy about what is appropriate for Lego play.
"And war themes don't really blend in there very well. The secondary market, of course, satisfies this need," he says.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Will Chapman Will Chapman
Now, you might think Lego would try to sic its lawyers on companies like BrickArms — but it doesn't. And while Lego doesn't publicly endorse them, it acknowledges they offer something some of its fans want.
Chapman is free to turn blank Lego pieces, which he buys in bulk online, into custom figures. For his weapons, which typically retail for about $1 a piece, he uses computer-aided design programs and then makes a prototype using what's essentially an enhanced hobby-grade machine.
Chapman has taught himself a lot about design and the manufacturing process, but is quick to say that advanced technology and software allow him to do things he couldn't have done just a few years ago.
"I'm constantly amazed that one person can do all this, that I can create something that didn't exist," Chapman says. "Who gets to play with lasers and CNC machines and injection molders and fancy printers? It's the most fun job I've ever had."
Chapman says while he's not getting rich at BrickArms, he's doing just fine.Heel Hitler! Patch the puppy is a dead ringer for the Fuhrer... but his owner insists he's the gentlest of the litter
Patch has a dark mark on his top lip mirrors just like Fuhrer's moustache
He also has a large brown area over his left ear, like Hitler's hair
But his owner, from York, insists the resemblance ends there
She says Patch is gentle and loveable - unlike his spitting image
When Lynda Whitehead introduced her new puppy Patch to her family, she didn’t realise quite how much of a führer he would cause.
For while the cute seven-week-old is quiet and cuddly, her daughter spotted his uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler.
Now he inspires her grandsons to do the goose-step and even responds to being called Adolf or Hitler.
Spitting image: Hitler (left) and Patch the puppy (right), who has an unfortunate resemblance to the 20th Century dictator, but has a much gentler temperament A dark mark on his top lip mirrors the Fuhrer's famous moustache. And another large brown area over his left ear completes the look of the 20th Century dictator. But, according to his owner, the resemblance ends there as Patch - unlike Hitler - has a lovable temperament.
The tiny puppy, a cross between French bulldog and a shih tzu, has two brothers and lives with owner Lynda in York. She said no-one calls him by his real name any more and Patch is starting to obey orders - as 'Adolf' or 'Hitler'. RELATED ARTICLES Previous
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Next Dog rescued from world's largest man-made hole after eight... Why did someone do this to me? Baby orangutan looks at the... Share this article Share Mrs Whitehead said: 'None of us noticed the likeness until we put a photo on Facebook and my eldest daughter saw it and said ‘You've got a little Hitler there". 'Although he's called Patch, everybody calls him Adolf now. My grandsons are the worst for doing the goosestep when the puppy's around.'
Patch's mother Betty, a French bulldog, and father Teddy, a shih tzu, both belong to Mrs Whitehead's daughter Clare, and Patch belongs to Clare's 17-year-old son Dan.
Just obeying orders: Patch the Adolf Hitler look-a-like is a cross between a French bulldog and a shih tzu
Look-a-like: Mrs Whitehead said: 'None of us noticed the likeness until we put a photo on Facebook and my eldest daughter saw it and said ‘You've got a little Hitler there"'
The three puppies in the litter are being reared at the family home until they reach 12 weeks old after Betty rejected them.
Mrs Whitehead added: 'He is a lovely little thing. All of them are, but he is the gentlest of them all. He will sit on your lap and just look at you until he falls asleep.
'One of his brothers should be Hitler as he has the attitude. That one's the runt of the litter so he's had to fight a bit more.'
The tiny puppy, a cross between French bulldog and a shih tzu, with owner Clare Whitehead in York
Barking: A still from one of the many Nazi propaganda films sent to Pathe in the 30s showing Adolf Hitler in full flow
Patch isn't the only pet that's had an unfortunate resemblance to Hitler.
After MailOnline introduced you to the house that looked like Hitler two years ago, in Swansea, south Wales, a series of readers sent in pictures of their cats that looked like the Nazi dictator.
In 2011, a six-week-old puss was named Kitler by staff at Wood Green Animal Shelter in Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire, who took her in after she was found abandoned at a roadside.DIY long, long ago! Metal models of some of Star Wars most beloved things.
Spaceships, transports, and droids - oh my!
No glue needed.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, some survivors in a war between two factions set out across the stars to find the speaker of a message they saw crawl across space. It was this message which started the entire conflict between these two sides, in the first place: "It is a period of civil war." After crossing vast reaches of space, on a voyage lasting thousands of years, the survivors reached our planet. However, due to a terrible miscalculation in scale, they all fit in the palms of our hands. We quickly took them apart, copied them, and now offer 'em to you as Star Wars Miniature Metal DIY Model Kits.
Each of the Star Wars Miniature Metal DIY Model Kits comes with two sheets of laser cut parts. Carefully pop them out and follow the instructions on your journey of inserting tabs into slots and the like. Eventually, you will have a metal marvel straight from Star Wars. There's everyone's favorite astromech droid, an easy-to-trip all-terrain troop transport, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, and a fighter that looks like a bow tie. These are one of the best gifts any fans of Star Wars can get, and that's why you owe it to yourself to make sure a full set of Star Wars Miniature Metal DIY Model Kits is assembled and sitting on your desk. They are elegant models for a more civilized fan!
Star Wars Miniature Metal DIY Model KitsThe Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office says it has pulled almost 3/4 of a million dollars worth of black tar heroin off the streets after a traffic stop lead to a K9 detecting the drugs.
Around 8:00 PM Monday, a deputy assigned to the Central Oklahoma Metro Interdiction Team reported a car making an illegal lane change near N. Meridian and I40. The deputy spoke with the driver and determined that the car needed to be searched by the K9, Thor.
The sheriff's office says Thor signaled drugs were in the vehicle and deputies began to search. They say they found six pounds of black tar heroin with a street value of about $720,000. Deputies say they also recovered $9,000 in cash.
The driver, Jaime Valenzuela-Buelna, was arrested and booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on complaints of aggravated trafficking heroin, and possession of proceeds.
Thor is no stranger to detecting drugs in vehicles. In February, deputies say he alerted them to 34 pounds of methamphetamine after the driver of a car failed to signal on I40 near Rockwell.ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
British jihadi fighters have contacted a London university to say they regret travelling to Syria and Iraq to join Islamist fundamentalists.
Professor Peter Neumann of King’s College said his department has been in contact with a number of British jihadists who want to come back to the UK but fear being jailed.
He said the Government should set up a “deradicalisation programme” for those willing former jihadis, echoing calls by Labour leader Ed Miliband who last month suggested a mandatory programme of deradicalisation for those involved on the fringes of Islamic State.
Professor Neumann, who works at the university’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, told The Times: “The people we have been talking to … want to quit but feel trapped because all the Government is talking about is locking them up for 30 years.”
One jihadist, claiming to represent 30 others, has contacted the university in the past fortnight to say there is a feeling of disillusionment, as some who travelled to fight against President Assad’s regime in Syria are instead being forced to get involved in fighting among rebel groups.
He said: “It’s not what we came for but if we go back (to Britain) we will go to jail. Right now, we are being forced to fight – what option do we have?”A leaflet distributed in Donetsk, Ukraine calling for all Jews over 16 years old to register their religion marred the Jewish community's Passover festivities Monday (Passover eve), causing concern among the Jewish community.
The leaflet demanded the city's Jews supply a detailed list of all the property they own, or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportion and see their assets confiscated.
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Donetsk, a Ukraine province with 4.3 million people - 10 percent of Ukraine's population - and 17,000 Jews, is home to much of the country's heavy industry, and is thus the biggest prize of the eastern regions where pro-Russian separatists have captured government buildings in the past week.
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The leaflet, signed by the Chairman of Donetsk's temporary government Denis Pushilin, was distrbiuted to Jews near the Donetsk synagogue and later in other areas of the city where pro-Russians activists have declared Donetsk as an independent "people's republic", defying an ultimatum from Kiev to surrender.
Related stories:
The leaflet was written in Russian and had Russia's national symbol on it, as well as the Donetsk People's Republic insignia.
"Dear Ukraine citizens of Jewish nationality," the flyer began, "due to the fact that the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendery Junta," a reference to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement which fought for Ukrainian independence at the end of World War II, "and oppose the pro-Slavic People's Republic of Donetsk, (the interim government) has decided that all citizens of Jewish descent, over 16 years of age and residing within the republic's territory are required to report to the Commissioner for Nationalities in the Donetsk Regional Administration building and register."
The leaflet detailed what type of documents the Jewish citizens would need to supply: "ID and passport are required to register your Jewish religion, religious documents of family members, as well as documents establishing the rights to all real estate property that belongs to you, including vehicles."
If the message was not made clear enough, the leaflet further stipulated the consequences that would come to those who failed to abide by the new demands: "Evasion of registration will result in citizenship revoke and you will be forced outside the country with a confiscation of property."
To add insult to injury, the leaflet demanded the Jews pay a registration fee of $50.
The leaflet demanding the Jews to register their nationality or face deportation (Photo: Olga Reznikova)
According to Alex Tenzer, a Kiev native and one of the directors of the National Association of Immigrants from the Former USSR in Israel, said: "The Jewish-Ukrainian leadership supports Ukraine's new government, but it's hard to tell whether the leaflet is valid or simply a provocation.
"Anyway, the material is very anti-Semitic and reminds me of the kind of material distributed by the Nazis in WWII."
Emanuelle Shechter, from Israel, received a copy of the leaflet via Whatsapp from his friends in Donetsk. "They told me that masked men were waiting for Jewish people after the Passover evening prayer, handed them the flyer and told them to obey its instructions."
Olga Reznikova, a member of Donetsk's Jewish community, told Ynet that "We do not know if the leaflet was spread by pro-Russian forces or someone else, but it did manage to create quite a fear. This reminds me of texts from darker times. Other members of the Jewish community I spoke with are not afraid, but it is unpleasant."
"I do not intend to register, I am 32, I have lived in Donetsk my entire life and have never had to deal with anti-Semitism until I laid eyes on this piece of paper. Though I take it very seriously, I am uncertain of its authenticity," said Reznikova.
Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russians activists in Donetsk (Photo: EPA)
Jenia from Israel, who also received the letter from a Jewish acquaintance, said "the Jews in Donetsk are uncertain of anything; it is unclear who is responsible for the leaflet and who controls the city at the moment.
"We don't feel safe like we used to because of the political instability in the area; there isn't a legitimate president or sovereign. Currently Donetsk is ruled by a junta."
In a response to a request by a Ukrainian Jewish website, Pushilin, the interim government's regional chairman, confirmed that the flyers were distributed by his organization, but denied any connection to the leaflet's content.San Diegans On Targeting Journalists Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. Content can be viewed at actual source page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Q_QpjPqwk
KPBS Midday Edition on Wednesday spoke with three San Diegans — a journalism professor, a cartoonist and the editor of an alternative weekly — about the killing of 12 people, including eight journalists, at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly magazine.
The publication has faced threats before, including having its offices destroyed in a bomb attack after printing a drawing in 2011 of the Prophet Muhammad.
Here are excerpts of the comments by KPBS Midday Edition’s guests:
At Least 12 Dead In Shooting At Satirical Publication's Office In Paris Dean Nelson, director, Point Loma Nazarene journalism program Batton Lash, cartoonist David Rolland, editor, San Diego CityBeat
Transcript for audioclip 23466
Dean Nelson, director of the Point Loma Nazarene University Journalism Program, said journalists have been dying at an “alarming rate in recent years,” especially in Mexico and in Central America. He added:
It may be the worst in one singular moment that I’m aware of in recent history but journalists get targeted by many different groups for many different reasons. I think any time someone kills someone for expressing an idea or even being satirical about a religion, I think you should be shocked. This is a shocking thing and it’s a terrible thing.
The satire displayed in publications like Charlie Hebdo is nothing new for Europe, Nelson said. News publications “can be vicious,” he said. “That’s been a part of their communication history. We do it to a certain degree in this country, but the French take it up a notch, clearly, and have a rich history of that—it goes back to the 1700s.”
David Rolland, editor of the alternative weekly San Diego CityBeat, said the shooting is a reminder of the dangers many journalists face. He said:
A few years ago we had the Danish publication that published provocative cartoons on Islamist extremists. If you’re paying attention, you need to be concerned about what you published. Here in this country, it hasn’t been that much of danger. It kind of makes you turn white a little bit and snaps you back into a certain reality that I, here, don’t have to confront. I don’t have to make the commitment to die for journalistic freedom.
Batton Lash, a cartoonist best known for comic book Supernatural Law, said he once received “hate phone calls and hate mails” for a cartoon he did. He added:
The pen is mightier than the sword. We should all double down and say we’re not going to put up with this. Cuba has been horrible toward political cartoonists. They’ve taken their pens away and have thrown them in jail.
Related: At Least 12 Dead In Shooting At Satirical Publication’s Office In Paris
City News Service also interviewed a UC San Diego professor whose fields of interest include the Middle East and terrorism. He said the deadly Paris attack could be part of a new era of terrorism in which young men trained in conflicts in the Middle East return to Western Europe and the U.S. full of anger and motivation.
"It's a legitimate security concern," said Eli Berman, an economics professor and research director for international security studies at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
Hundreds of young men who have fought with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have returned home to places where they are familiar with the culture, speak the language and can blend in with the local populace, Berman said. It's difficult to defend against such people, he said.
In the attack on Charlie Hebdo, he said, amateur video shows "perpetrators who were trained." They knew how to fire their weapons, were familiar enough with their target that they knew they had to get someone to let them in through a security door, made sure that one of the police officers was dead, and managed to escape, Berman said.
"This would tell me that they're veterans of ISIS in Syria or Iraq," he said. "That's scary because there's hundreds of them who have come back."
KPBS web producer Hoa Quach and City News Service contributed to this report.
To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.The decision about whether to eat meat has a dimension to it. The animals that we use for food are complex creatures. Deciding to eat them means accepting that they will be killed so that you can eat them.
That is not to say, of course, that people grapple with this decision at every meal, but in some way everyone has to make some decision about whether to eat animals. And before I go any further with this discussion, I should mention that I have been a vegetarian for about 10 years now for a combination of economic,, and moral reasons.
An interesting question about eating meat involves how people grapple with the issue that many animals people eat are reasonably creatures. An interesting paper in the February, 2012 issue of and Social Psychology Bulletin by Brock Bastian, Steve Loughnan, Nick Haslam, and Helena Radke suggests that when people eat meat, they tend to downplay the minds of the animals that they eat.
In one simple study, the researchers asked (meat-eating) participants to rate how willing they were to eat a variety of animals ranging from houseflies, to fish, to chicken to elephants to gorillas. They also rated the how strongly each of these animals had a number of mental abilities such as feeling,, and pain, and having and planning abilities. There was a systematic relationship between the animals people choose to eat and their beliefs about the minds of the animals. People were much less willing to eat animals that they believe have complex mental abilities than to eat animals that do not have complex minds.
Of course, this alone might just mean that the animals that people choose to eat are the ones that are not so smart. In another study, meat eaters were asked to think about cows and sheep. Some of them thought about these animals living an idyllic life on a farm. Others thought specifically about these animals growing up on a farm and then being killed for food. Later, they also rated the mental abilities of the animals. When people thought about the animals as food, their ratings of the mental abilities of the animals were lower than when they thought about the animals living on a farm.
It isn't just thinking about animals being used for food, though. In one final study, all of the participants had to write about the process of raising and butchering animals for food. All of the participants thought they were going to do a food sampling task after writing the essay. Half of the participants were told they would be eating fruit during the food sampling, while others were told they would be eating beef and lamb. Finally, participants rated the mental abilities of cows and sheep. The group that was about to eat meat gave much lower ratings of the mental abilities of cows and sheep than the group that was about to eat fruit.
These studies suggest that people who choose to eat meat have to grapple with the moral dilemma of eating an animal with a brain whether they realize it or not. Because of the importance of eating to our lives, we think about food animals as less complex than other animals. This effect is particularly strong in the context of meat eating.
Of course, this mechanism is not special to eating. There are lots of situations in life that cause different and moral values to come into conflict. Eating a piece of chocolate may conflict with a. Buying a new car may conflict with the desire to save for a new home. Research that I did with Miguel Brendl demonstrates that, when one goal becomes highly engaged, we change our attitudes about things that would conflict with that goal to make them less attractive.
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Check out my new book, Smart Thinking (Perigee Books)The weekend has seen Amarrian spirits waning as the Minmatar, supported by various opportunistic pirates and Gallente pilots far from home, easily repelled plexing fleet after plexing fleet. There were rumors among Amarrian militia of pulling out of Huola, a sentiment seemingly shared by the vast majority of Minmatar pilots and Huola residents in the local channel, taunting their crusader counterparts on the low contested percentage or the system’s stability.
After a US TZ late hours plexing effort on Sunday, however, Monday July 14 has demonstrated that the Amarrian pilots are far from ready to break. Adjusting tactics to the realities of being outnumbered in various timezones, Amarrian fleets have consolidated around several major plexing doctrines–Armored frigates with frigate logistics for novice plexes, an I Whip My Slaves Back and Forth [J4LP] Harpy/Bantam doctrine, and a Rail Cormorant/Talwar doctrine favored by WINMATAR. and Amarrian Vengeance. Ironically, this latter doctrine, although recognized for its strength before it was adopted, was ultimately decided upon to counter the Minmatar Rail Cormorant and Light Missile Kestrel fleets that have been plaguing Amarrian Talwar fleets. Regardless of the incorporations, however, pro-Amarrian forces were faced with numerous setbacks during the EU TZ. The main issue was the number of pilots that the Huola Defense Force could muster, which gave them a major advantage over Amarrian pilots. Amarrian tactics quickly morphed into hit-and-run, with stragglers picked off during a game of attritional “cat and mouse.”
Aside from the plexing in the trenches, July 14 also saw a war conference hosted by WINMATAR., in which leaders from Amarrian and Caldari entities involved in Burn Huola took part. Odysseus Olacar of WINMATAR. Biohazard [-BIO-] had this to say about the conference:
“After the conference with the FCs and leadership of all the groups involved in Burn Huola we left more confident than before. We all got on the same page, identified the issues we’d been having, and came up with solutions. Some of those solutions are obvious, some more subtle.”
As the day wore on, Amarrian forces were bolstered by the combined efforts of J4LP and WINMATAR./Amarrian Vengeance.The two independent fleets were able to quickly manifest its numerical superiority against Huola Defense Force resistance, otherwise allowing the Amarrian forces to capture more than one complex at a time. Although J4LP was not present in the small plex (fights tend to blur over time in the meatgrinder of Huola), Minmatar forces attempted to take a WINMATAR. destroyer fleet despite being outnumbered in the following fight:
That trend skyrocketed when a Caldari militia fleet made up of pilots from Bohica Empire, responding to calls from their distant allies in the 24th Imperial Crusade, arrived in system with an Ishtar/Scimitar doctrine. The shield fleet immediately established dominance in Huola over the now heavily outnumbered defenders, sparking a cruiser engagement. After the initial blows, however, the Minmatar–supported by their Gallente and pirate allies–reshipped to stand against the combined Amarrian and Caldari onslaught. The following videos, captured by a pilot flying within the WINMATAR. fleet, give a brief overview of the confusion reigning on the battlefield as three separate yet allied fleets engaged a Minmatar Guardian/Ishtar/Vexor Navy Issue force supported by various cruisers supplied by their own allies. In addition to the aforementioned Bohica Empire fleet, J4LP brought their Harpy/Bantam doctrine to bear, while WINMATAR. scrambled to reship to ECM and Sensor Dampening ships to limit the capabilities of Minmatar Guardian logistics.
The fight resulted in the destruction of nearly ten billion isk and even attracted a Pandemic Legion T3/Assault Frigate gang. Minmatar losses were heavy, at a recorded 6.4 billion isk lost to Caldari/Amarr casualties amounting to 1.285 billion isk. After the fight, I chanced an interview with one of the leaders from the Caldari fleet Rots Mijnwerker of Bohica Empire’s Into the Ether [CH0L0].
Reginald Sakakibara: I understand that Bohica Empire is new to the Caldari Militia. Would you mind talking a little about that and how you’ve managed to get involved in the Amarr-Minmatar siege of Huola?
Rots Mijnwerker: Yeah, well as you probably heard we were staunchly 0.0 up until earlier this week where we joined Bohica and have started trying our hand at FW. We have a wider range of skillpoints and therefore fit a myriad of roles and have helped to fill the gaps in the Amarr offensive. There was once an alliance between the Caldari and the Amarr we are here to honor this alliance!
Reginald Sakakibara: Why shield Ishtars and Scimitars for the doctrine? Did you know ahead of time that the Minmatar would bring Armored ships?
Rots Mijnwerker: Ishtars adapt well, and the shield variant hits very hard despite a fleet size. We carry most damage type drones with us and run a perma MWD fit to perform the “Drop and Squirrel” technique.
Reginald Sakakibara: What do you mean by “Drop and Squirrel” technique?
Rots Mijnwerker: We will drop drones based on the area we feel they will land, and then burn to the edge of our locking range and aggress drones in safety, whilst maintaining distance.
Reginald Sakakibara: Ah I see. Will Bohica Empire be deploying to Huola to plex the system up to vulnerable?
Rots Mijnwerker: For the time being that is a negatory ghost rider, however I stress this to all our Amarr comrades… The Mijnwerker phone is never silent and the Caldari are rising!
Reginald Sakakibara: Excellent to know! Do you have anything you would like to add?
Rots Mijnwerker: Into the Ether is recruiting! Join “Ether bunnies” in-game for details 🙂
TeaEarlGray HOT, of Late Night Alliance’s Ice Fire Warriors [IFW] had this to add:
“The Minmatar and Gallente fought gallantly and bravely but could not remove enough interceptor class vessels from the field of battle quick enough to control range. Our valiant logistics class vessels could not withstand the impressive firepower of the enemy heavy assault cruiser class Ishtar vessels, equipped with long range sentry class drone weaponry. Our range control wing was also cut down at which point our Ishtars were left with no support. Although cunning and daring WARRIORS did manage to kill several of the enemy, many were lost, may they rust in pieces.”
Some Minmatar pilots had other reactions to the fight, for example characterized by this twitter post.
Amarrian reactions in the aftermath of the battle were largely positive. Dog0fWaRR, a member of WINMATAR. Biohazard shared this statement with FactionWarfare.com, “”Minnies, you are [expletive], you are absolutely kerblonkered. We will send you back to the stone age. Also, Bahamut420 is only useful for titan boosts and should be [expletive]. All hail the Empress.”
After the battle, a number of carriers were seen jumping out of system. To ecstatic Amarrian pilots, this signaled the first signs of evacuation. But to those not swept up in the fervor of the moment, it presaged the possibility of more ships jumping into the burning system of Huola, the Minmatar and Gallente soon to return with a vengeance.
Special thanks to Rots Mijnwerker of Bohica Empire’s Into the Ether [CH0L0] for agreeing to an interview. Additional thanks to TeaEarlGray Hot of Late Night Alliance’s Ice Fire Warriors [IFW], and Odysseus Olacar and Dog0fWaRR of WINMATAR. Biohazard [-BIO-] for providing statements.
Huola Grinds Into a Second Week: Rise of the Caldari was last modified: byErwin Wodicka/Getty Images
The Democratic Party's hacking woes continued this week, as personal phone numbers and email addresses of US Congress members wound up on the internet.
A person, or people, using the alias "Guccifer 2.0" dumped the data on a website on Friday and said it had been acquired in a computer breach of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a group that raises funds for Democratic members of the House of Representatives. That attack was revealed in late July.
"It's time for new revelations now," read a statement accompanying Friday's data dump, as reported by The New York Times. "All of you may have heard about the DCCC hack. As you see I wasn't wasting my time! It was even easier than in the case of the DNC breach."
Guccifer 2.0 was the alias used by the party or parties who earlier took credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee. That attack came to light in June, and emails apparently from the breach later appeared on WikiLeaks, just before the Democratic National Convention, leading to the resignation of the national committee's |
Blacks are murderous, filthy animals.
Now we got Obama having himself a big time televised “town hall” event on CNN this Thursday night (hosted by slickster NYC sodomite, Anderson Cooper); where his Negro Majesty will unveil new gun control measures he’s going to make by executive decree — possibly unconstitutional, which means little to the idiot Multicult leftists who also see no problem turning America into a stinking Third World nation.*
Obongo’s executive fiat will remain in effect until a judge somewhere rules them unconstitutional, or maybe not. We don’t know yet what he’ll try to pull off or even if any of those lefty judges will even do a thing down the road.
Mark my words: Not a word will be breathed during the CNN televised event about black criminality (they’ve been talking about Obama’s big announcement all weekend). What Obama will outlaw by kingly decree will only affect law-abiding Whites, since blacks simply ignore all laws whenever possible. They don’t care one lick about behaving themselves in the first place — black president and black attorney general or not.
Practically all the gun crime in America is at the hands of the homies. Everyone knows this is true, but are not saying so because they are spineless multicult morons or simply little faggots like Anderson Cooper (sure, a significant percentage of crime is due to Mestizo aliens likes MS-13 and various other druggie mofos from south of the border).
If you could snap your fingers and blacks would disappear from America (believe me, I sure would), crime rates would practically fall to nothing. Hell, blacks in Baltimore (a relatively small city with a black majority) murdered a record 344 of themselves last year alone (some victims were undoubtedly also killed by knifing, bludgeoning, beating, strangulation, etc., etc.) along with 672 non-fatal shootings. It costs an average of $14,000 per patient for gun shot wounds and 8.7 million dollars was billed to Maryland taxpayers to patch up the homies in 2015 alone.
The black race are simply the most criminal, most violent SOBs living in America. Absolutely.
Let’s look at the state of things, shall we?
We got ourselves a country being turned inside out racially by the filthy Jews — long at work to turn White lands into racial hell-holes so the selfish bastards can feel politically safe from a new “fascist” national movement that would definitely threaten a wide variety of Jewish money scams — along with various subversions and perversions so typical of this lousy, anti-Christian bunch. Kind of like what happened in 1920’s Weimar Republic before Der Fuehrer man came along and set things straight. Hell, the Jew creeps still can’t get over losing Germany — they almost turned the place Commie like they did to Christian Russia!
You see what International Jewry did to South Africa don’t you? Whites over there are now brutally murdered all the time there. Hell, the place is going down the tubes infrastructure-wise by the minute. Only diamonds, gold and American tax dollars (including IMF and us American citizens eating inflation daily) have kept the country so far from becoming another Zimbabwe or the rest of pathetic black Africa. Hell, America is well on the way, from the looks of it.
I look at that picture of the cute young girl and her regular guy White father (scroll back on up and take another close look) and get angry. Furious, actually.
Don’t you think it’s past time for us Whites to start raising hell — if not a whole lot more?
*Have you seen those anti-gun commercials CNN is now running on Obongo’s “Town Hall” prime time event this coming Thursday night? They must have had some idiot liberal or new black AA hire put it together.
We need to start HANGING these worthless black apes, by the neck — UNTIL DEAD.
Like this: Like Loading...Candid photos on the streets of the capital
Those of you that keep up to date with SideStory on a regular basis, either through social media or as a newsletter subscriber, will know that London street photography is something we are passionate about. This is partly because it’s an aspect of modern culture that we simply can’t get enough of, and partly because one of our photography Insiders is one of the best known snappers working in the medium today. (For more information on how you can spend some time shooting with him, check out Antonio Olmos’s profile here.)
The London street photography that we display on our Instagram page is largely the work of two members of our staff, Michael Drummond and Jon Wilks, both of whom were inspired by the chance to spend time with our photography Insiders, Antonio and Stuart Freedman. While Michael was already a jobbing photographer, Jon was little more than a chap with a camera.
“It was actually after spending a morning with Stuart on the East End Revival Experience that I realised I might have a bit of talent for this,” he recalls. “Stuart gave me the confidence to put myself forward as a SideStory snapper, and I’ve since gone on to take photography for a number of clients. In fact, the New York Times recently used one of my pictures, so I have these guys to thank for that.”
With that in mind, we thought it might be interesting to dedicate a blog post to the SideStory snappers – finding out how they’ve developed their London street photography skills, and how they go about shooting for our channels.
Can you pick out two pieces of London street photography that you’re most proud of and tell us a bit about the situation you were in when you took them?
Michael Drummond: Sure. The first one you can find here, on my own Instagram account – a picture of a lady on the Underground, holding her dog.
A photo posted by Michael Drummond (@drummondphoto) on Mar 25, 2016 at 5:28am PDT
I’ll often jump on the tube, and go for a walk around the city with my phone in hand – sometimes with the aim of being unassuming should the opportunity to arise for a great photo, or simply to avoid being lost while out and about in London. This time around I was on the underground loitering by the carriage doors and I noticed the lady holding her tiny dog. I thought it was a great image – her expression was quite severe and the dog appeared slightly helpless floating above the rest of the carriage’s occupants. It was shot from the hip, so as to avoid my appearance with a camera affecting the scene’s natural direction, or influence the subject anymore so than I might anyway. I mix my techniques up depending on how I read the scene. I will often raise the camera knowing how I want the scene to look before clicking the shutter, and on other occasions I will fire from the hip, partly for the difference in perspective and partly to remain as invisible as possible.
A photo posted by @sidestorytravel on Feb 29, 2016 at 9:13am PST
This second photo was actually shot while taking part in one of Antonio’s photography experiences, focusing on people on the street and observing the nuances in different characters around the area we started in. The ladies in the picture were walking past Charing Cross Station, heading towards Trafalgar Square, and as you can see from their appearance, it was a windy day with a chill in the air.
They were both dressed incredibly well, something that really draws me in while shooting on the street, and alongside this it was apparent that they weren’t enjoying the gusts, forever correcting their hats and scarves. I took a few exposures of them while they made their way alongside the buses lined up on the road. Being fairly close with a 20mm is always a little invasive, so I tried not to be overbearing for too long, and then I went on my way.
How about you, Jon?
Jon Wilks: Actually, like Mike, my first choice is something that I took on a SideStory Experience, which means it’s from the first session that I was ever involved with as a street photographer. There’s nothing very clever about it at all – I was simply following Stuart Freedman’s suggestions and trying to catch someone in the foreground to give the picture some depth.
A photo posted by @sidestorytravel on Apr 12, 2016 at 2:14am PDT
However, as I was lining things up in my viewfinder, I noticed the fly-poster on the left – the guy holding the gun – and a split-second later this chap walked into my frame. The two things snapped together really quickly, and it was almost as if I’d shot him! Isn’t it always the way, though, that you do your best work first and then spend the rest of your time just trying to equal it?
A photo posted by Jon Wilks (@jonnie_wilks) on Jun 3, 2016 at 10:58am PDT
The second image is featured on my own Instagram account. I shot it on my phone using one of those cheap fisheye lenses that you can get for mobiles. I think it cost a tenner.
I was outside the office on the street they call More London (such a strange name), and I was playing around with the reflections in the rain. The chap in the picture happened to be in front of me in the queue at Pret a Manger, and as I walked out of the shop and up the street, he sat down in front of me and smiled, almost as though he was ready to pose. It’s quite lucky I got the shot I wanted, actually, because my phone is a proper dud these days. It takes about five seconds to trigger the shutter.
Which begs the question: what equipment are you using?
Michael: I use a Canon 5dmk3 with a 20mm 2.8 Canon Prime lens. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S6.
Jon: I’m not the professional that Mike is – I use a Sony A6000 with the lenses that came as part of the package! The dud phone I mentioned earlier is an LG G3, although it’s only dud because it’s so old. The make and camera are usually fine.
Why does street photography appeal to you?
Michael: The appeal for me really revolves around the study of people. It’s often the way they dress or carry themselves, or simply their faces that will influence my decisions to make pictures on the street. That, and the places I encounter them. The scene is always just as important as the subject – interesting architecture to juxtapose the person’s style, or a hard shard of light illuminating just a sliver of an individual.
So many elements have to come together to create a great street photo in my opinion, but the overarching factor is patience and being open to everything unfolding around you, like the Italian couple struggling with a map, or a man staring straight up, captivated by something just above, or even the lady on the Tube clutching on to her dog for fear of the underground crush.
A photo posted by @sidestorytravel on Feb 24, 2016 at 2:22am PST
Jon: It’s more elemental for me, I think. I’m always in the process of creating something, whether it’s writing, recording music, or – these days – taking photographs. Street photography appeals to me because it is simply a moment frozen in time. Nobody else will ever freeze that moment quite the same way, and I find that both awe-inspiring and humbling. The other thing that I love about street photography is that, as someone who doesn’t find it easy to talk to people I don’t already know, it offers me a way in. Initially, I was terribly shy about asking someone for their picture, but I got over that quite quickly. I almost look forward to that part now. Then again, as Mike said earlier, sometimes you break the scene by stepping out from the invisible, and it’s true that I love those moments when someone looks directly into your lens quite suddenly and a little light goes off in their eyes, and you realise that you’ve made a happy connection. The picture below is an example of that.
A photo posted by Jon Wilks (@jonnie_wilks) on Jul 3, 2016 at 11:30am PDT
As people who have spent time with the SideStory photographers, Antonio Olmos and Stuart Freedman, what have you picked up from them? Have they influenced you in any way?
Michael: Having met both Antonio and Stuart it is obvious they are both passionate about their careers and have invested a lot of time developing their style, technique, and their eye for a great photo. One thing that has become hugely apparent is their dedication to stories and projects, spending vast amounts of time building up a rapport, a great knowledge and understanding of their subjects. It’s admirable, and the effort that they pour into each one of their pictures is right there in the results. Without a doubt, this is something that I will surely take into my own work and ongoing projects that are yet to be completed.
Jon: Unlike Mike, photography is unlikely to become a major part of my career – I’m a lucky hobbyist, at best. However, spending time with Stuart certainly helped me to appreciate my own abilities a bit more, and reading and editing the interviews we’ve done on this site with Antonio has prompted me to go out and learn a bit more about street photography as an art-form. I think we’ve barely met, Antonio and I, but he’s partially responsible for the growing number of photography books that are littering my bookshelf these days. Meeting these guys, who live and breathe their art everyday – well, it has been nothing short of inspirational.
For more information on Michael Drummond, whose image ‘Leicester Square Cigar Smoker’ is featured at the top of this page, see Michael Drummond Photography. Stuart Freedman and Antonio Olmos are both award-winning photo journalists. You can spend time with them by booking one of their SideStory Experiences here. The image of the priest in Aldgate was taken by Jon Wilks.Thirteen years after it was first announced, we deliver an exhaustive eulogy for hip-hop's most anticipated album ever: Dr. Dre's 'Detox.'
Finally. After 13 years of release dates, rumors and leaks, last weekend Dr. Dre publicly admitted that the sun is hot, peanut butter is made from peanuts, and his staggeringly delayed album Detox should be considered officially dead and buried.
It was a big moment for hip-hop history but, bizarrely, it was a big moment for me personally. I never intended to become the Detox guy, but for the last three years now any Detox-related news has caused my Twitter notifications to explode.
I've received countless "secret" emails from people swearing they had just been in the studio with Dre, been pulled aside at parties to hear the latest conspiracy theory. It felt like my fate and the fate of Detox had become inextricably linked, and I only had myself to blame.
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It started as an inside joke, a way of telling someone it was time to give up on a project. That interview a publicist had been promising would happen for four months? That freestyle an artist swore they'd get to you "this Tuesday," only "this Tuesday" was now eight Tuesdays ago? You were being Detoxed. It was time to splash some cold reality on your face, stop chasing the dream and move on.
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That was the spirit of the Detox Isn't Dropping shirts. They weren't really about Dr. Dre or the album, not entirely, they were about knowing when to cut your losses and move on, which was fitting because seemingly no one needed a dose of Detox Isn't Dropping more than Dre.
By all accounts—and believe me, I heard every account there was—it seemed like the album had become any creative person's nightmare. Given an unlimited budget and no deadline, could you spend the rest of your life locked in a perfectionist's jail, constantly terrified that the music you'll make next will be better than the music you've made so far, each passing day only becoming further justification to take your time, the pressure of expectation becoming suffocating until one day you realize decades have gone by and you're even farther away from the finish line than when you started? You seemingly could, and Dr. Dre was living proof. (See also, Andre 3000)
So I never blamed Dr. Dre for not releasing Detox, I never felt entitled to it, at a certain point—let's say 11 years into my wait—I barely even felt any real anticipation for it. I only wanted Dre to say what seemed so blindingly obvious, that the album was never coming out, so he could start over and make a different great album and all the people who had written me, telling me that I was going to feel so fucking stupid when the album dropped*, vowing that their cousin's best friend's boyfriend had actually just sent in a reference track for the album and it was coming soon and I didn't know shit**, could move on with their lives and focus their energies on music that actually existed. And this week—I can barely believe I'm typing these words—it happened.
This is not a victory lap. While I'll admit to feeling vindicated—and I won't lie, vindication feels pretty goddamn good—I'm by no means happy we'll never hear Detox. I would have gladly been wrong if it meant an amazing new hip-hop album was in the world. Instead, I want this to be something more like a eulogy for a friend you'll miss but had been suffering for years and on a deeper level you're relieved has passed on.
So with that in mind, let's take one last look at the long, long, long, staggeringly long and complex history of Detox, one last glance in the rearview mirror as we watch Dre's what-if masterpiece grow smaller and smaller until, finally, we can no longer see it. Goodbye, dear friend, I hope you're in a better place now.
The "Detox" Timeline (Updated from the original)
1999: Common misconception because of the title, but Dr. Dre's last album, 2001, actually dropped in November of 1999. For those of you who aren't handy with a calendar, that means it's now just shy of 16 years. There are high school sophomores who weren't born the last time Dr. Dre dropped an album.
2000
2001
2002: Dr. Dre goes on record for the first time about Detox, saying the project is going to be a concept album. "...what I decided to do was make my album one story about one person and just do the record through a character's eyes," Dre told MTV. "And everybody that appears on my album is going to be a character, so it's basically going to be a hip-hop musical." He also went on to say Detox would drop by the summer of 2003. "It's probably going to take me like a year to get it all the way together." It's rumored that Denzel Washington will be narrating the album.
December 2002: Dre pushes the release to late 2003 in order to focus on Ice Cube’s upcoming album (which never materialized).
Fun side note, he also said he was busy in the studio producing for Truth Hurts, Rakim and Shaunta, which is essentially a one sentence edition of "what happened to?"
2003
March 2003: Dre tells XXL that he gave the "cream of the crop" Detox beats to 50 Cent for Get Rich or Die Tryin. Interscope continues to suggest that the album could drop by the end of the year.
January 2004: Aftermath confirms that the now "late" (Dre first said it would drop summer of 2003) album will actually drop at the end of 2004. Scott Storch, who worked extensively on the album because in 2004 having Scott Storch produce a large part of a mega album was a thing that totally happened, said that Detox will be, "the most advanced rap album musically and lyrically we'll probably ever have a chance to listen to." Additional collaborators are listed as Mary J. Blige, Eve and Game, along with Denaun Porter, Nottz, and Hi-Tek contributing production.
August 2004: Dr. Dre announces that he's putting Detox on hold to focus on producing for his own artists, most prominently focusing on Game's debut album, Documentary, as well as Eminem, Busta Rhymes and Eve's projects. (Oh yeah, Busta and Eve were signed to Aftermath, I almost forgot.)
November 2004: Eminem’s Encore dropped. On the title track, Em says, “And don’t worry ‘bout that Detox album. It’s coming. We’re gonna make Dre do it.” Dre changes his mind and says Detox is back on. On Game's "Higher," released shortly after, he publically announces that we should "look out for Detox."
2005 - 2007
July 2006: Scratch magazine runs a cover story on Detox, call it “hip-hop’s unreleased masterpiece… coming soon?” In the piece producer Focus... is quoted as saying, “We were doing psychedelic Sixties rock music with dark chords," and producer Imsomie “Mahogany" Leeper says the theme was similar to the 1998 movie Very Bad Things, saying, "The road Dre led me down was like, 'I'm thinking of making the album like a movie, like having 16-bar jazz pieces, live instruments.’” It's revealed that The Documentary, Obie Trice’s Cheers and Usher’s “Throwback” from Confessions all originally were intended for Detox.
September 2007: Dre tells the L.A. Times that he's now eight years deep into Detox, saying, "I was really hoping to have it out this year, but it's going to have to be pushed back a while because of some other things I've got to work on.” Later, in an interview with Power 106, he says that new protege Bishop Lamont will be heavily featured. Lamont is believed to take the role of Snoop on Chronic or Hittman on Chronic 2001. (Lamont later confirmed his split from Aftermath/Interscope in January 2010.)
2008: Now seven years since Dre first threw out a release date, and four years since his last announcement that the album was back on, many have started doubting that Detox will ever drop. But in a Rolling Stone interview, Snoop insisted otherwise. "That record is real, it’s coming. I was starting to doubt it myself and then I went up in there and he played so much music for me it knocked my head off.” Dre says that “in a perfect world, I’m shooting for a November or December release" and confirms that Nas, Jay Z, and Lil Wayne will be on the album.
2009
February 2009: “Topless” featuring T.I. and Nas leaks, along with “This Is Detox” featuring T.I. and Kobe.
May 2009: The first official Detox release is played during a Dr. Pepper commercial, Dr. Dre confirms that the album will be coming out in 2010, now that he's finished producing Eminem's Relapse and 50 Cent's Before I Self Destruct. Holy shit, THIS ALBUM MIGHT ACTUALLY COME OUT.
In separate interviews, 50 Cent says said he’d heard eight records and that Dre has under a dozen finished, Eminem says, “There’s probably 10 records.” Anthony Hamilton and Drake are rumored to be featured on the project.
October 2009: Dre tells ABC News he had been working on Detox for 10 years, and that he wanted to get it done by the end of the year to release it in 2010.
2010: Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine jointly announce that the first official single from Detox, "Under Pressure" featuring JAY-Z, will be coming soon. The song leaks and they drop it from the album, but the interest around "Under Pressure" appears to motivate Dre and Interscope. They drop two more official singles ("Kush" and "I Need a Doctor") complete with official videos and launch a million dollar marking campaign (I still remember the Detox billboard in LA).
"I Need a Doctor" goes double platinum and he performs the song at... HOLY SHIT THIS ALBUM ACTUALLY SERIOUSLY IS GOING TO COME OUT!
Side Note: I just realized "Under Pressure" was co-produced by Scott Storch. Does that mean that beat was originally made during the original 2004 sessions?
Side Note No. 2: Kendrick drops "Look Out for Detox."
2011
A number of prominent leaks hit the web, including “Syllables” featuring Eminem, Jay, Dre, 50 and Stat Quo, which we later found out was recorded in 2007 for Detox. In addition, “Mr. Prescription” featuring. Sly, Nikki Grier, and Slim Da Mobster leaks, “Chillin” featuring Swizz Beatz leaks and Ludacris' “OGs Theme” reference track leaks.
May 2011: "Die Hard" featuring Eminem premieres during an episode of Fight Camp, is possibly Detox' third official single.
November 2011: Dre announces that he's taking a break from music after he wraps up producing for Kendrick Lamar's GKMC and Slim the Mobster (who's no longer even on Aftermath). "I feel like I’m gonna take a little bit of a break. I’m never gonna stop music, it’s like air to me. So I’mma take a little bit of a break. Enjoy some time with the family til I get that itch to get back in.”
2012
March 2012: DJ Quik tells The Herald Sun he doesn’t think Detox is ever dropping, becomes an instant icon of pragmatic realism.
April 2012: Dre and Kendrick release “The Recipe,” producer Scoop DeVille tells Whoo Kid that it was originally intended for Detox. In another interview, 50 Cent says Detox might only be an EP, says he doesn’t even know if Dre is excited about the album anymore.
Side Note: "Word to Dr. Dre, Detox is like a mix away." - ScHoolboy Q
2013: I launch the "Detox Isn't Dropping" t-shirts. Crazy people email me to say I'm wrong.
2014
June 2014: Marsha Ambrosius talks about working on the album in an interview with RapUpTV, said she had gone to Hawaii before the end of 2013 for a few weeks to work on “so many things” including his upcoming album. Says the project is no longer called Detox, doesn't reveal a new title.
September 2014: Aftermath in-house producer Dawaun Parker says that Detox has been scrapped and they're now working on a new project but doesn't reveal a new title. Says he's heard as many as 300 beats that had been created for Detox, but few had vocals recorded over them.
2015
April 2015: Rapper Big Pooh talks about the experience of going into the studio with Dr. Dre and writing for Detox on the Combat Jack Show, says he introduced King Mez to Dre and now Mez has been in the studio with Dre for months.
March 2015: Dre tells L.A. radio DJ Big Boy that he is working on the soundtrack to upcoming NWA movie.
June 2015: In an interview with yours truly, Fashawn talks about going into the studio with Dre around 2010 and writing for Detox.
July 2015: Ice Cube says Dre’s third album will be dropping August 1, and that it is NOT Detox.
August 2015: Dr. Dre officially confirms that Detox is dead, says he never released it because he just "didn't like it." Fair enough. Thirteen years after it was first announced, Detox' journey has finally come to an end. Anything is possible. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So yes, I've clearly become what most psychologists would diagnose as clinically obsessive, but now that Detox is no longer, it really is worth noting that this was a huge moment. Over the years Detox has become the most long-awaited album in hip-hop history, a project that has taken on mythical proportions, and with good reason. In addition to launching several of the biggest rappers of the last two decades—Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar (no, not you Game)—Dre's first two headlining albums, The Chronic and 2001, were classics. It was completely reasonable to be excited about Detox until it was completely insane to think it would ever drop.
And now I'm walking into this new era filled with hope for the future, feeling like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, ready to embrace the new, free from the weight of the past.
I hope Dr. Dre feels the same. R.I.P. Detox; never has so little meant so much to so many.
* Shockingly, none of those people have come back around to say, "Turns out you were right, sorry about calling you a fucking moron."
** Those people were the hardest to deal with. They were convinced that their lives were about to change and at first, I pointed out that they were about the 477th person to work on Detox only to be disappointed, but that felt a lot like stomping on someone's dreams. So eventually I adopted a purely positive, "That's awesome, good for you, I hope you're right" stance when talking to them.http://gty.im/499102928
Oklahoma Lost Key Players On Offense But Still Have Plenty Of Talent Moving Forward.
In the previous edition of this series we took a look at the Washington Huskies’ potential draft prospects. This week it is the Oklahoma Sooners turn.
The Sooners will be dealing with a new head coach for the first time in awhile next season. Bob Stoops stepped down after 18 seasons. His replacement will be Lincoln Riley, who was the teams offensive coordinator for the past two years.
Luckily Riley will have a pretty talented roster to work with. In 2016 Oklahoma had one of the best offenses in the country. They have a chance to be able to have similar success this season.
Meet Oklahoma’s Prospects:
The Sooners lost their top two rushers and the top receiver from the 2016 team. Those will be tough guys to replace. In order to match the success they had last year they will need to find some playmakers.
These are some players to watch:
Tackle Orlando Brown Jr., 6’8” 345, Redshirt Junior:
http://gty.im/627751792
If you like players who are durable and consistent then you will like Brown. He’s been the starting left tackle for Oklahoma for every game they’ve played the last two seasons. He also has an NFL bloodline, his father was former NFL offensive tackle Orlando “Zeus” Brown Sr.
Run blocking is where Brown is at his best. He uses his size and outstanding length to bulldoze defenders. As a pass protector, defenders have a difficult time getting around Brown’s frame. However he does get beat inside sometimes because he lacks recovery speed.
Because of his size and skill set Brown will likely play right tackle in the NFL. This will hurt his draft stock. The tools for him to be able to have success in the NFL are there but he needs to get stronger and improve as a pass blocker.
Tight End Mark Andrews, 6’5” 254, Redshirt Junior:
Andrews hasn’t been a major focal point of Oklahoma’s offense up to this point of his career. Although he hasn’t caught a ton of passes has logged 14 touchdowns during his first two seasons.
Most of the time Andrews lines up in the slot rather than next to the tackle. He’s definitely more of a receiver than a blocker. Andrews can create mismatches because of his combination of size and athleticism. He is also a good route runner with reliable hands.
Because of all of the offensive production that will need to be replaced in the upcoming season there will be an opportunity for Andrews to earn a bigger role. He could become a very interesting prospect if he can turn in a more productive year.
Cornerback Jordan Thomas, 6’0” 186, Senior:
http://gty.im/499083248
Many thought that Thomas would enter last seasons draft but he opted to return to Oklahoma for his senior year. There’s a chance that could end up being a smart move.
He’s been productive so far in his career. In 2015 he intercepted five passes and broke up four passes. Last season he only had two interceptions but recorded 17 pass break-ups.
How a team looks at Thomas will depend on which type of defensive coverage they prefer. He’s a stronger player in zone than he is in man. While playing zone he does a great job of reading a quarterbacks eyes and closing on the football. In man he tries to guess where a receiver is going rather than reacting.
Thomas does have good athleticism and great ball skills. There will be a team out there that will find a role for him to excel.
Quarterback Baker Mayfield, 6’1” 218, Redshirt Senior:
http://gty.im/487066188
Mayfield has had an outstanding career up to this point. He received a lot of offseason Heisman hype, and it is well deserved. However there are some that doubt he can have success in the NFL.
He plays the game with a lot of flair and is very competitive. His arm is not great but is good enough to make almost any throw. Also he’s a pretty good athlete. Often he’s able to get out of the pocket to extend plays and can make throws while on the move.
There are some concerning aspects of his game. The main one is his size, NFL teams don’t generally take an early risk on quarterbacks with Mayfield’s frame. He also tries to do too much at times. Sometimes he leaves the pocket too soon and doesn’t allow routes to develop.
It will be very difficult for Mayfield to rise up and become a top quarterback prospect. There is a chance that he can end up being a mid-round prospect who still manages to stick around the NFL for a long time, most likely as a backup.
3-4 Outside Linebacker Ogbonnia Okoronkwo, 6’1” 242, Redshirt Senior:
http://gty.im/629684494
Last season was a breakout year for Okoronkwo. He had 71 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, nine sacks and two forced fumbles in his first year as a starter.
He’s a little shorter than an average NFL pass rusher but he has versatility and athleticism to help make up for it. When needed he can be dropped into coverage and perform reasonably well.
If Okoronkwo can prove that last season wasn’t a fluke then he will generate a lot of interest from teams who run a 3-4 defense and are in the
I really hope you enjoyed the article! Follow me on twitter @CHayes95 and join the discussion on the Lions’ subreddit!“This system turns a fish tank into an aquaponic garden, a perfect tool to explore how our natural environment works: fish waste fertilizes the plants, and the plants filter the water in the tank.”
- The New York Times
“True to the idea that items can be as beautiful as they are useful, AquaSprouts has a sleek, streamlined design that would be right at home in the most elegant kitchen or living room, or even as a living display in cafes and juice bars, where ingredients for smoothies and juices can be grown onsite.”
- inhabitat
“You see, there are an awful lot of 10 gallon aquariums in the world already. And those aquariums are full of an awful lot of fish that need regular cleaning. So why not put those fish to good use, creating an attractive, easy-to-retrofit kit that's compatible with any 10 gallon aquarium, providing fish lovers with an easy solution to keep their tank clean, and turning the waste water and nutrients into fresh, edible produce?”
- Treehugger
"The AquaSprouts Aquarium Aquaponic Garden is an indoor garden that is a self-contained ecosystem. You feed the fish, the fish-waste feeds the plants and you eat what is grown from the garden. It's a win-win-win."
- CNET
Learn more about our distributors & partners
Grants for Plants and AquaSprouts are on a mission to bring educational materials and Gardens to classrooms across the United States. Grants for Plants connects schools with resources, educational curriculum, and aquaponic systems for classroom use.
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Oh-Uchi-Saien is our international distributor headquartered in Japan. Founders Kengo and Yoshi plan to import our AquaSprouts Garden in order to increase awareness of aquaponics in Japan.
Sylvia, Jack & Yoshi at Aquaponics Fest 2014
Imagine the convenience of a self-sustaining aquarium combined with a functional garden of leafy greens, fresh herbs, and flowering plants—all on your kitchen counter. Not only does the AquaSprouts Garden bring life and beauty into your home, it also eliminates the chores of cleaning a tank and watering your plants. AquaSprouts transforms your aquarium!
After discovering aquaponics from a family friend, Jack Ikard quickly developed a new passion. After graduating high school and moving into a small apartment for college, Jack faced the challenge of finding a way to bring aquaponics with him. In early 2013 Jack used ambition and a laser cutter to create and design an indoor aquaponics system that works in tandem with a standard 10-gallon aquarium. To take his idea to the next level, Jack brought together a passionate design & marketing team and collaborated with a local manufacturing company that boasts over 25 years of retail design and manufacturing experience.
Before he knew it, Jack's backyard idea quickly sprouted into today's sleek AquaSprouts Garden.
An early prototype of the Garden
This year, AquaSprouts partnered with The Aquaponic Source, an industry-leading company focused entirely on aquaponic gardening. The Aquaponic Source has helped us ensure the best possible experience for you and your Garden. Sylvia Bernstein, who founded The Aquaponic Source, wrote the award-winning book Aquaponic Gardening: A Step by Step guide to Raising Fish and Vegetables, which you can find in some of our reward tiers.
Today, the matte black finish on our Garden's elegant design will compliment any home, office, or |
a Google Chrome extension for fans of BBC 6 Music. Hover over the Spot6 button to see the name and artist of the song currently playing on the radio station. You can then click the button to search for the song in Spotify. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/07/2010 Spoti.tk Google Chrome extension to shorten a Spotify URL using the spoti.tk service. URL Tools
01/07/2010 Spotifinder iPhone remote control app for Spotify on the Mac. Mobile Apps for iPhone
01/07/2010 Spotimy Lists new releases on Spotify (including search by artist or release date) and includes a Music Manager for registered users. Album pages include links to reviews and options to rate and add to your library. Recommended New Release & Notification Services
01/07/2010 Webotify Google Chrome extension that adds a button for the Webotify service. Click the button then paste in a Spotify track link. Chrome will then go to the Webotify page and play a YouTube video of the chosen track. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Best of the Worst of Spotify Funny posts about some of the most horrendous albums ever produced. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 C#/.NET wrapper Jonas Larsson’s libspotify wrapper (see announcement). Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Canciones Y Musica Blog with a personal selection of favourites on Spotify (in Spanish). Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Cleanify Generates clean, readable links from Spotify URLs. The cleaned links include human-readable details in the URL (artist, album, track etc.) Cleanify also has a Clipboard Filter (background app that translates copied Spotify URLs into Cleanify links) and a Cleanify API. URL Tools
01/01/2009 Comedify Site dedicated to comedy and stand-up albums on Spotify. Includes a handy comedian A - Z with links to their albums. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Discoverfy Last.fm and Spotify mashup that lists bands and artists similar to what you specify. Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Electroplastas Spanish blog with some great looking movie, TV, and videogame-based playlists. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 FoxyTunes FireFox browser plugin music player that can now control Spotify Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Gigero Using Google Maps, Last.fm and Spotify, Gigero shows where an artist is playing or who is playing in any location. Each gig is shown on Google Maps, with links to listen to the bands on Spotify. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Hot Spot Music Personal playlist site (via Twitter) featuring a variety of musical styles. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Ivy Converts playlists into Spotify playlists. Supports iTunes, text, and CSV formatted files. Playlist Converters
01/01/2009 Lastify Plug-in that bolts onto the regular Spotify client and lets you Love, Ban, and Tag tracks back to Last.fm. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 Listas Spotify The original Spanish playlist site (in Spanish). Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 listDJ App that gives you the lyrics of the current playing track on Spotify. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 GreenStripes GreenStripes provides Ruby bindings for libspotify. Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Listopify Easy-to-use playlist site, similar to Spotylist but with a few more features. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 LNKby URL shortening service that recognizes Spotify URLs and shortens them to http://SPOTIFY.ly links. URL Tools
01/01/2009 Megamind Spotify Playlists The Nordic clubbing and DJ culture site’s selection of Spotify playlists. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 meta-spotify Ruby wrapper for the Spotify Metadata API. Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Mi Spotify Spanish blog with Spotify recommendations, band lists, news and tips (en español). Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Music Controls iPhone app (on Cydia) that lets you run and control the Spotify iPhone app in the background. Mobile Apps for iPhone
01/01/2009 MyPlaylistIsBetterThanYours Playlist-sharing site with a dedicated Adobe AIR application for uploading and managing your playlists. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Net-Spotify For developers, this is a Perl interface to the Spotify Metadata API. Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Northern Exposure Blog about Norwegian indie music on Spotify. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Pitchify Spotify links based on the best album reviews. Pitchify mixes review scores from US webzine Pitchfork with MySpace and Spotify. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Playify Upload and convert an iTune library into Spotify. Playlist Converters
01/01/2009 Playlistify Converts playlists into Spotify playlists. Supports iTunes, text, and Winamp/media-playlist (.m3u) formatted files as well as converting playlists from Last.fm and YouTube. Winner of a Community Site Award for this category. Playlist Converters
01/01/2009 Radiofy Playlist of tracks played on Swedish Radio, linked to Spotify. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Remoteless iPhone remote for Spotify running on windows (and soon mac). Mobile Apps for iPhone
01/01/2009 ReSpot Spotify remote control for Android devices. Requires Spotify Premium. Mobile Apps for Android
01/01/2009 ShareMyPlaylists The biggest and most popular playlist site with thousands of playlists and a thriving community. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Social Spotify A novel way to share your playlists with friends, this site lets you add album art and genre details then provides a Facebook post or widget code. URL Tools
01/01/2009 Songbird Addons for Spotify Spotify-related add-ons for freeware music player Songbird. Media Player Add-Ons
01/01/2009 Songler Unofficial add-in for Windows Media Center. Use it to play Spotify music directly from your Media Center, all controlled with your remote. Media Player Add-Ons
01/01/2009 Specifyspot Playlist site with a social-networking angle. User-definable tags, text search, lots of bookmarks. Note that it’s designed for Swedish users: there is an English language switcher, but unfortunately it only seems to translate the tags. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 SpNotify Notification service that updates you on your favourite artists and songs on Spotify. Enter an artist, track or album of interest to receive an email when there's a new update. New Release & Notification Services
01/01/2009 spo.tl From the creator of Spotifitunes, spo.tl is a Spotify URL shortener that’s like a megamix of LNKby and Spotibot Better Links. Enter a Spotify address (or use the provided bookmarklet) to get a shortened URL and clean page that includes album art, track details and sharing links. URL Tools
01/01/2009 Spotibot Send a tweet with an artist’s name to Spotibot and it replies with a recommendation. Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Spotibot Better Links Spotibot’s ‘better link’ service provides Facebook integration and album art on Spotify link pages. URL Tools
01/01/2009 Spotibot Playlist Generator Enter any artist, band, or Last.fm username then generates a playlist of tracks by similar or suggested artists. You can favour more popular songs, set the number of tracks, and auto-build playlists based on Last.fm recommendations and loved tracks. Once created, drag-and-drop your playlist into Spotify. Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Spotibot Search Plugin A plugin for Firefox and IE that adds a Spotibot playlist generator search engine to your browser. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 SpotiDJ Music sharing site site with an emphasis on individual songs rather than whole playlists. DJs add songs with a brief description of why they like that song for others to tune in to. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Spotifier Project to integrate Spotify into MediaPortal, the open-source mediacenter. Media Player Add-Ons
01/01/2009 Spotifies! Playlist sharing site. Includes specific areas for music festivals, Billboard charts, and collaborative playlists. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Spotifuel Slick playlist sharing site with lots of features such as favourites (users and playlists), embeddable videos and images in playlist descriptions, custom genres, Twitter integration, and lots of community features too. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Spotify Accelerator IE and Firefox tool to search Spotify for selected text. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Spotify Classical Playlists Blog dedicated to classical music on Spotify. Blogger Ulysses eloquently says his site will help you “discover and share the masterpieces that forever enlarged the sphere of human experience accessible to the creative imagination, through the best instant streaming music service in the world, Spotify.“ Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 SpotiChart Monitors Twitter for tweets with Spotify links, then compiles global charts and statistics. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Spotify for Safari Plugin for Apple’s Safari browser that adds “Open in Spotify” options for selected text. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Spotify Hunted A Spotify-powered version of We Are Hunted, a site that lists the latest top 100 most popular songs in the world (based on “what people are saying about artists“). Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Spotify Mac Remote A plugin for Spotify that allows you to use your Mac remote control to Play, Pause and change tracks. Requires SIMBL. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 Spotify on Drupal Provides integration with the Spotify Metadata API and a CCK field to display artist, album and track information with a link that opens the Spotify client. Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Spotify Search for Firefox Search plug-in for Firefox. Adds search-selected options to right-click menu. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Spotify Super Search Advanced search tool for Spotify, this lets you search by the complete set of genres, not just a small set as used by most playlist sites. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Spotify Tweaks Spotify for Windows add-on that gives you custom tooltips, cover display, a cover manager, advanced search, an RSS reader and a lyric search feature. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 Spotify Twitter List Real-time list of Spotify news and views as tweeted by the most influential Spotify users on Twitter. News Sites
01/01/2009 Spotify Web Remote Promising-looking remote app that lets you control Spotify via a web browser. Browser Plugins & Search Tools
01/01/2009 Spotify-Forum.com An unofficial forum for Spotify discussions with hundreds of registered users. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Spotify Me Personal blog with themed playlists such as 20 Must-Have Albums of the Year. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Spotify+rateyourmusic Greasemonkey script to add Spotify links to pages on rateyourmusic.com. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 Spotifycontrol Windows remote control for Spotify that features customizable global hot-keys, a notifier of track changes, song lyrics, and an auto-updater. Requires.NET Framework 3.5. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 spotifyforlife For fans of Christian and religious music. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Spotifyfriends Claims to be “the largest community for sharing Spotify playlists.“ Has links to share playlists on Facebook, Delicious etc. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Spotifylist RSS feeds, playlists by genre and tag, add comments to existing playlists, upload album art. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Spotifylistor Swedish blog that posts playlists, with the occasion Spotify news and feature post. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 spotifyomatic a Spotify API wrapper for vb.net to control the Spotify client from your own apps. Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Spotifyworld Basic playlist site, possibly the easiest to use yet. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 SpotiKat Reads updates from independent music site Boomkat then provides links to listen first in Spotify. Select a genre (for example, Disco, Indie, Minimal or Electro) then select the feed (such as Just Arrived or Recommended). The app responds with links to releases on Boomkat and Spotify (if available). Other Sites
01/01/2009 Spotimeta Python library for querying the Spotify metadata service. Data is returned as simple Python dictionaries. Developer Resources
01/01/2009 Spotinews Music-finder site. Updated frequently, joebuck’s site is the best blog out there to keep track of new releases on Spotify. Recommended New Release & Notification Services
01/01/2009 Spotirama Blog with Spotify playlist versions of themed playlists such as Pitchfork lists, soundtracks, and Book Notes (where authors create playlists relating to their recently published book). Blogger cabal helpfully includes the original list of songs to show how many are available on Spotify. Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Spotiseek Spotiseek helps you find new music by generating playlists based on artists you specify. You can set how many tracks you want and prioritize popular tracks, and there's also Pitchify-style album review links. Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Spotisquare Mobile web app that connects Foursquare venues with Spotify playlists. When you find a venue that has a Spotify playlist, you can listen to it in Spotify or add your own songs. There’s also a connector to let you add a playlist to a venue. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Spotiveldie Iveldie’s blog recommends albums on Spotify, ranging from the 1960s to the present day (in Spanish). Music Finder Sites & Blogs
01/01/2009 Spotkick If you’re on Songkick (the concert and tour tracking site), this mashup will generate Spotify links to your upcoming gigs. Other Sites
01/01/2009 SpotMySongs Converts playlists into Spotify playlists. Supports iTunes, text, and Winamp/media-playlist (.m3u) formatted files. Playlist Converters
01/01/2009 Spotwitfy Lists playlists posted on Twitter. Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Spotylist Bill Spoty’s clean and simple playlist site - easy upload, simple click-to-vote thumbs up, bookmark your own set of playlists. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 spotyxbmc Project to integrate Spotify into XBMC Media Center (Xbox Media Center), the cross-platform media player. Media Player Add-Ons
01/01/2009 Toastify App that’ll display a toast-style pop-up whenever the track changes in Spotify. Desktop Apps & Scripts
01/01/2009 Topsify Weekly updates with links to playlists of the UK Top 40 Charts, Swedish dance charts etc. Add the playlist once, then Topsify will update it every week. Playlist Generators
01/01/2009 Totalspotify Spotify playlist community, this site is still in beta but already has a fair amount of playlists and subscribers. Totalspotify has some extra features such as groups, tag clouds, enhanced sorting options, user stats and album reviews. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Twittify Auto-plays tweeted songs. Unfortunately it updates so frequently that you often only get to hear the first minute or so of a song. Other Sites
01/01/2009 Unify Converts playlists and albums from iTunes into Spotify. Unify lets you drag and drop tracks into Spotify, so there’s no need to manually export iTunes playlists. Playlist Converters
01/01/2009 Want My Playlist? Playlist sharing site with a nice bright and slick look. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 xpandify Playlist site with an emphasis on playlist tags and filtering. RSS feed of recent playlists. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 yoctomusic Blog that provides a weekly guide to the best new releases on Spotify. New Release & Notification Services
01/01/2009 YourSpotify Great looking site with all the features you’d expect, now with an author archive so that you can bookmark your own playlist page. Playlist Sharing Sites
01/01/2009 Z Link Library Feature-rich windows app to manage albums and playlists on Spotify. Group lists, add keywords, cover art, and export your library for easy sharing. Playlist Managers
01/01/2001 Spotify Developer Site Official Spotify developer site. Official Resources
01/01/2001 Spotify Service Status Official service status page. Official Resources
01/01/2001 Spotify.com Blog The official Spotify blog. Official ResourcesAugsburg left-back Baba Rahman has agreed to join Chelsea - all that is left is for the clubs to agree a fee, according to the player’s agent.
Rahman, 21, is understood to be have been of interest to Blues boss Jose Mourinho for some time after a standout season for a side who finished fifth in the Bundesliga last term.
He played 31 times for Augsburg and made more tackles than any other left-back in the German top division last season.
Sascha Empacher, who represents the Ghana international, confirmed to German newspaper Bild: "It is only the clubs that have to find an agreement. We on our side are agreed."
Augsburg have also signed 21-year-old left-back Philipp Max this week, suggesting they are now prepared to allow Rahman to leave.
Rahman began his career at Bundlesliga 2 side Greuther Furth, making his debut as a 16-year-old before a move to Augsburg in 2014.
He has made 31 top-flight appearances for the club and has 11 caps for Ghana, featuring in all their matches at this year's Africa Cup of Nations.Image copyright Getty Images
Elderly Germans may have to keep working until the age of 69 if a Bundesbank proposal is adopted.
It says Berlin should consider raising the retirement age to that level by 2060, from around 65 at the moment.
The central bank says that otherwise the country may struggle to honour its pension commitments.
It points out that the state pension system is in good financial health at present, but will come under pressure in coming decades.
The Bundesbank says that as baby-boomers - those born in the post-World War Two period - retire, there will be fewer younger workers to replace them.
'Step by step'
The retirement age for Germans is set to rise gradually to 67 by 2030.
However, the bank believes that from 2050 this increase will not be enough for the German government to keep state pensions at their target level of at least 43% of the average income.
It is therefore proposing pushing the retirement age up to 69.
"Further changes are unavoidable to secure the financial sustainability (of the state pension system)," the Bundesbank said in its monthly report.
But German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said they stood by retirement at 67.
"Retirement at 67 is a sensible and necessary measure given the demographic development in Germany. That's why we will implement it as we agreed - step by step," he added.Declines in the Arctic sea ice are arguably the most dramatic evidence of the effects of current climate warming on ocean systems. Native peoples of the far north have long appreciated and relied upon the migrations of animals with the changing seasons, including some of the largest and least studied, the Arctic whales. While sea ice is perhaps the most defining feature of their habitat, the relationship between Arctic whales and sea ice is still largely a mystery, and there is increasing concern over how these species will adapt to climate related changes in sea ice.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and a team of scientists working in collaboration with Native hunters in Alaska and Canada have just published results of a study in the Royal Society Biology Letters titled, "Genetic Profiling Links Changing Sea Ice to Shifting Beluga Whale Migration Patterns," assessing the relationship between changing sea ice and beluga whale migration as well as summer residency patterns of a number of populations over two decades of dramatic sea ice changes in the Pacific Arctic. The researchers found that beluga whales, often known as the white whale, (Delphinapterus leucas) exhibited a tremendous ability to deal with widely varying sea ice conditions from one year to the next over a 20-year time frame in their return to traditional summering grounds each year.
"It was not clear how sea ice influences beluga whale migration patterns and their summer habitat use, and climate change has added urgency to determining how environmental factors might shape the behavior and ecology of this species," said Greg O'Corry-Crowe, Ph.D., lead author and a research professor at FAU Harbor Branch, whose research focuses on combining molecular genetic analysis with field ecology to study the molecular and behavioral ecology of marine apex predators.
Using a combination of genetic profiling, sighting data and satellite microwave imagery of sea ice in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas, O'Corry-Crowe and collaborators also found some dramatic shifts in migration behavior in years with unusually low spring sea ice concentration and in one case with an increase in killer whale (Orcinus orca) sightings and reported predation on beluga whales.
For the study, O'Corry-Crowe and collaborators from the University of Alaska; the North Slope Department of Wildlife Management, Alaska; the Alaska Department of Fish and Game; the Native Village of Kotzebue in Alaska; the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee; and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Yellowknife, Canada, used genetic "fingerprinting" to investigate the population of origin of whales returning to four traditional coastal sites in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic between 1988 and 2007. They compiled detailed beluga sightings and harvest data for the same period to assess inter-annual variation on timing of return. Lastly, they analyzed sea ice data in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas to determine seasonal and regional patterns of sea ice from 1979 to 2014. They used data from tissue samples from 978 beluga whales, which were collected over a 30-year period.
"Continued reductions in sea ice may result in increased predation at key aggregation areas and shifts in beluga whale behavior with implications for population viability, ecosystem structure and the subsistence cultures that rely on them," said O'Corry-Crowe.Dozens of headstones were found damaged and overturned at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia on Sunday, according to local reports.
Philadelphia police confirmed Sunday afternoon that the damage at the cemetery was an act of vandalism, according to a local news station, 6abc.
#UPDATE Police: Damage at Philadelphia Jewish cemetery was vandalism https://t.co/4Rvy2U6RW5 https://t.co/nLAb0fZdNW — Action News on 6abc (@6abc) February 26, 2017
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A visitor from New Jersey noticed the vandalized headstones while he was visiting his father’s grave at Mt. Carmel Cemetery.
"It's just very disheartening that such a thing would take place,” said Aaron Mallin, according to 6abc. "I'm hoping it was maybe just some drunk kids. But the fact that there's so many it leads one to think it could have been targeted.”
The reports come less than a week after vandals destroyed 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Mo., on the same weekend that several Jewish community centers across the country received bomb threats.1. Overview
In this quick tutorial, we’ll make use of Liquibase to evolve the database schema of a Java web application.
We’re going to focus on a general Java app first, and we’re also going to take a focused look at some interesting options available for Spring and Hibernate.
Very briefly, the core of using Liquibase is the changeLog file – an XML file that keeps track of all changes that need to run to update the DB.
Let’s start with the Maven dependency we need to add into our pom.xml:
<dependency> <groupId>org.liquibase</groupId> <artifactId>liquibase-core</artifactId> <version>3.4.1</version> </dependency>
You can also check if there’s a newer version of liquibase-core here.
2. The Database Change Log
Now, let’s take a look at a simple changeLog file – this one only adds a column “address” to the table “users“:
<databaseChangeLog xmlns="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog" xmlns:ext="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog-ext" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog-ext http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog/dbchangelog-ext.xsd http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog http://www.liquibase.org/xml/ns/dbchangelog/dbchangelog-3.4.xsd"> <changeSet author="John" id="someUniqueId"> <addColumn tableName="users"> <column name="address" type="varchar(255)" /> </addColumn> </changeSet> </databaseChangeLog>
Note how the change set is identified by an id and an author – to make sure it can be uniquely identified and only applied once.
Let’s not see how to wire this into our application and make sure that it runs when the application starts up.
3. Run Liquibase with a Spring Bean
Our first option to run the changes on application startup is via a Spring bean. There are of course many other ways, but if we’re dealing with a Spring application – this is a good, simple way to go:
@Bean public SpringLiquibase liquibase() { SpringLiquibase liquibase = new SpringLiquibase(); liquibase.setChangeLog("classpath:liquibase-changeLog.xml"); liquibase.setDataSource(dataSource()); return liquibase; }
Note how we’re pointing it to a valid changeLog file that needs to exist on the classpath.
4. Use Liquibase with Spring Boot
If you are using Spring Boot, there is no need to define a Bean for Liquibase.
All you need is to put your change log in “db/changelog/db.changelog-master.yaml” and Liquibase migrations will run automatically on startup.
Note that:
You need to add “ liquibase-core ” dependency.
” dependency. You can change default change log file using “liquibase.change-log” property – for example:
liquibase.change-log=classpath:liquibase-changeLog.xml
5. Generate the changeLog with a Maven Plugin
Instead of writing the changeLog file manually – we can use the Liquibase Maven plugin to generate one and save ourselves a lot of work.
5.1. Plugin Configuration
Here is the changes to our pom.xml:
<dependency> <groupId>org.liquibase</groupId> <artifactId>liquibase-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.4.1</version> </dependency>... <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.liquibase</groupId> <artifactId>liquibase-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.4.1</version> <configuration> <propertyFile>src/main/resources/liquibase.properties</propertyFile> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins>
5.2. Generate a changeLog from an existing Database
We can use the plugin to generate a changeLog from an existing database:
mvn liquibase:generateChangeLog
Here are the liquibase properties:
url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/oauth_reddit username=tutorialuser password=tutorialmy5ql driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver outputChangeLogFile=src/main/resources/liquibase-outputChangeLog.xml
The end result is an changeLog file that we can use either to create an initial DB schema or to populate data. Here’s how that would look like for our example app:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <databaseChangeLog...> <changeSet author="John (generated)" id="1439225004329-1"> <createTable tableName="APP_USER"> <column autoIncrement="true" name="id" type="BIGINT"> <constraints primaryKey="true"/> </column> <column name="accessToken" type="VARCHAR(255)"/> <column name="needCaptcha" type="BIT(1)"> <constraints nullable="false"/> </column> <column name="password" type="VARCHAR(255)"/> <column name="refreshToken" type="VARCHAR(255)"/> <column name="tokenExpiration" type="datetime"/> <column name="username" type="VARCHAR(255)"> <constraints nullable="false"/> </column> <column name="preference_id" type="BIGINT"/> <column name="address" type="VARCHAR(255)"/> </createTable> </changeSet>... </databaseChangeLog>
5.3. Generate a changeLog from diff between two databases
We can use the plugin to generate a changeLog file from the differences between two existing databases (for example: development and production):
mvn liquibase:diff
Here are the properties:
changeLogFile=src/main/resources/liquibase-changeLog.xml url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/oauth_reddit username=tutorialuser password=tutorialmy5ql driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver referenceUrl=jdbc:h2:mem:oauth_reddit diffChangeLogFile=src/main/resources/liquibase-diff-changeLog.xml referenceDriver=org.h2.Driver referenceUsername=sa referencePassword=
And here’s a snippet of the generated changeLog:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <databaseChangeLog...> <changeSet author="John" id="1439227853089-1"> <dropColumn columnName="address" tableName="APP_USER"/> </changeSet> </databaseChangeLog>
This is a super powerful way to evolve your DB by – for example – allowing Hibernate to auto-generate a new schema for development, and then using that as a reference point against the old schema.
6. Use the Liquibase Hibernate Plugin
If the application uses Hibernate – we’re going to take a look at a very useful way of generating the changeLog.
First – here’s how the liquibase-hibernate plugin should be configured in Maven:
6.1. Plugin Configuration
First, let’s get the new plugin configured and using the right dependencies:
<plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.liquibase</groupId> <artifactId>liquibase-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>3.4.1</version> <configuration> <propertyFile>src/main/resources/liquibase.properties</propertyFile> </configuration> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.liquibase.ext</groupId> <artifactId>liquibase-hibernate4</artifactId> <version>3.5</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId> <version>4.1.7.RELEASE</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId> <artifactId>spring-data-jpa</artifactId> <version>1.7.3.RELEASE</version> </dependency> </dependencies> </plugin> </plugins>
6.2. Generate a changeLog from diffs between a Database and Persistence Entities
Now, for the fun part. We can use this plugin to generate a changeLog file from the differences between an existing database (for example production) and our new persistence entities.
So – to make things simple – once an entity is modified, you can simply generate the changes against the old DB schema, getting a clean, powerful way to evolve your schema in production.
Here are the liquibase properties:
changeLogFile=classpath:liquibase-changeLog.xml url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/oauth_reddit username=tutorialuser password=tutorialmy5ql driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver referenceUrl=hibernate:spring:org.baeldung.persistence.model?dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect diffChangeLogFile=src/main/resources/liquibase-diff-changeLog.xml
Note: The referenceUrl is using package scan, so the dialect parameter is required.
7. Conclusion
In this tutorial we illustrated several ways to use Liquibase and get to a safe and mature way of evolving and refactoring the DB schema of a Java app.
The implementation of all these examples and code snippets can be found in my github project – this is an Eclipse based project, so it should be easy to import and run as it is.The U.S. dollar is dead. There... I've said it.
Oh sure, if you can scrape up some spare greenbacks, you can still walk into your local Wal-mart and score some Chinese-made goods on the cheap. Whether nations like China will remain willing to hold those dollars and related exposure to U.S. debt is another story entirely, and recently, the structural fissures that have threatened the U.S. currency for years are widening further.
Taking the American dream with it
Of course, the prospect for substantial and sustained deterioration of a currency's purchasing power is no laughing matter. The immediate impacts of injected liquidity and hyper-accommodative fiscal policy are dire enough threats by themselves, but the fatal blow is reserved for the time when those policies yield a global crisis of confidence.
That time, I'm afraid, is presently upon us.
When asked in a town hall meeting this week whether the American dream was dead, President Obama replied: "Absolutely not. There is not a country in the world that would not want to change places with us." Although the statement typifies the upbeat and patriotic sentiments we've grown to expect from political leaders, I find it insultingly disingenuous under the circumstances. Try telling that to Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) CEO Jim Owens, who jabbed last year that he "would rather be President Hu than President Obama."
The American dream as we once knew it is still on life support, but unfortunately, I see a crisis of confidence brewing in the currency of the land... ensuring that the dream remains comatose for perhaps a generation. As we trudge through what Nucor (NYSE: NUE) CEO Dan DiMicco has called the "granddaddy of all jobless recoveries," I maintain that the ill-conceived responses of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government to the prospect of economic stagnation present the greatest threat of all.
Cracks in the foundation
Under the dubious leadership of Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve this week reasserted its willingness to further expand liquidity; now that a mythical recovery has retreated into the shadows of a stark economic reality. Kathy Lien, a currency strategist for GFT Forex, explains: "The Fed is actively trying to make the dollar less and less attractive." Although that may sound counterintuitive, or even a touch insane, when debt burdens balloon to epic proportions while failing miserably at triggering growth, intentional currency debasement (including quantitative easing) is the ultra-high-risk, desperation play in many central bankers' handbooks.
Remarkably, in a recent poll of more than 1,400 Bloomberg subscribers worldwide, a full 53% reported perceiving a "big or moderate risk the [U.S.] budget deficit will provoke a crisis of confidence within two years that will spur 'a dramatic rise' in long-term interest rates." This is a key point to consider, because I believe many investors mistakenly believe that inflation can only occur in the context of economic recovery. I have stressed repeatedly that inflation is a currency event rather than an economic event, and I view a comprehensive understanding of currency induced, cost-push inflation as one of the more important topics of inquiry for Foolish investors struggling to ascertain what the future may hold. Stated another way, the currency event that is likely to trigger abrupt inflation is precisely that crisis of confidence now set to unfold for the U.S. dollar.
Expectations of a looming dollar crisis can be found across the globe, and were well expressed by respondents to Bloomberg's global poll. Dieter Buchholtz, head of equities for the Falcon Private Bank in Switzerland, predicts: "When the non-Americans see that efforts by the administration to balance the budget are fruitless, then I think you will get a confidence crisis." Eric Kraus, chief strategist for Otkritie Brokerage House in Moscow, described the U.S. economic situation as "obviously unsustainable," adding: "the concerted attempt to suspend disbelief is playing increasingly poorly abroad."
The race to debase and the future of gold
The U.S. dollar is not the only currency in deep trouble. The euro temporarily traded places with the dollar this year as the world's favorite whipping post, and the British pound is not exactly sterling anymore. The common strategy of counteracting economic crisis with untenable debt places the trio in a twisted race to debase. On the other end of the spectrum, Japan's currency intervention last week to stem the troublesome strengthening of the yen reveals that fiat currencies weak and strong are ultimately embroiled in this race to debase as a consequence of the global financial crisis and the official responses to it.
It is through this macroeconomic lens that the enduring, accumulating strength of gold can best be understood. According to Philip Gibbs of Jupiter Investment Management, "Gold is likely to climb higher as Western nations struggle to de-value their currencies."
In a truly astonishing admission from a former Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan offered this morsel last week: "Fiat money has no place to go but gold... Gold is the canary in the coal mine. It signals problems with respect to currency markets. Central bankers should pay attention to it."
Central bankers are beginning to pay attention, and investors are just now beginning to understand the enormity of the secular bull market presently under way. Fools have enjoyed a tremendous run of late with high-profile, major producers Goldcorp (NYSE: GG) and Newmont Mining (NYSE: NEM). Following in Barrick Gold's (NYSE: ABX) illustrious footsteps, AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU) signaled confidence in further gold strength by finally closing out its return-choking hedge book. Fools who wish to hold physical gold like the untarnishable currency that it is are advised to consider the Sprott Physical Gold Trust ETV (NYSE: PHYS).
Of all the world's currencies, only one is the scorching hot potato that you absolutely don't want to be left holding when the smoke clears. Dodge that dying dollar, and for goodness' sake grab some gold.In high school, I had a very wise history teacher whose motto was that the best way to win a debate was to be |
tropical rainforests, southern Africa, and the Mediterranean region. Climate change alone is predicted to have modest positive impacts on boreal forest production (needleleaved evergreen and needleleaved cold deciduous tree GPTs in Table 3), as well as significant positive impacts on tundra vegetation at high latitudes and on the Tibetan Plateau (Fig. 6B).
Fig. 6. View largeDownload slide As Fig. 5, except atmospheric CO 2 held at current levels (i.e. 375.7 ppm). Global NPP falls by 2.5% (SIM6, Table 3) compared to under modern conditions.
Fig. 6. View largeDownload slide As Fig. 5, except atmospheric CO 2 held at current levels (i.e. 375.7 ppm). Global NPP falls by 2.5% (SIM6, Table 3) compared to under modern conditions.
While these climate change predictions are fairly typical, it needs to be borne in mind that the simulations presented here use predictions from just one climate model forced with just one particular emissions scenario.
To what extent can we believe these large positive effects of CO 2 fertilization on NPP, and what will happen to this additional production? Norby et al. (2005) reviewed experimental evidence concerning forest ecosystem NPP responses to increased atmospheric CO 2. They concluded that NPP is stimulated by a median of 23±2% for a CO 2 increase of ≈376 to ≈550 ppm. Linear extrapolation of this relationship gives an increase in NPP of 45.5% at 720 ppm, close to the predictions for C 3 GPTs presented here. However, acclimative processes and ecosystem feedbacks may act to change the future response to CO 2, whereas these simulations assume unchanging leaf photosynthetic capacity and leaf area. Future leaf N and/or area may decrease in response to progressive N limitation (Luo et al., 2004), whereas increased soil N mineralization at higher temperatures may reduce or negate this effect (Melillo et al., 2002). Increased soil water levels through stomatal closure may increase leaf area, and so increase the relative response to future CO 2 levels. The balance of these opposing effects will probably differ significantly between regions and plant types and can be addressed using the fully dynamic implementation of the Hybrid6.5 model.
It is important to consider the fate of any additional future production. If the main effect is increased growth of short-lived tissue, such as fine roots (as is believed to occur in elevated CO 2 experimental studies such as that of Norby et al., 2002), then the gains in NPP may not impact plant growth and food production (although below-ground metabolism will be affected). Other factors will probably also influence the future response of NPP at regional scales, including land use change, stand dynamics, disease, pollution, and the effects of temperature extremes. Respiration may respond to increased CO 2 in ways not predicted by the simple approach used here (e.g. Leakey et al., 2009), although current understanding of respiration processes limits our ability to construct mechanistic models with the same level of detail as for photosynthesis.
Conclusions
Although observations provide only limited constraints, they suggest that Hybrid6.5 is capable of predicting the global distribution of NPP at least as well as previous approaches, and does so from an improved understanding of leaf-level physiology. The large predicted increase in future tropical rainforest NPP suggests that this ecosystem type could play a major role in limiting future atmospheric CO 2 levels. A major concern is the predicted large negative impact of climate change on primary production throughout southern Africa and the Mediterranean region. The capacity for CO 2 fertilization of photosynthesis to provide increased future food production, and its impact on ecosystem processes, need to be carefully assessed through further model development and sensitivity testing.
Improvements in the predictive abilities of dynamic global vegetation models will come about through a range of activities. The simulations presented here suggest that the following will be of particular value: (i) characterization of spatial and taxonomic variability in basic physiological parameters (such as those listed in Table 1); (ii) incorporation of acclimative processes in models; (iii) attention to phenological processes in needleleaved deciduous trees and croplands; (iv) improved observational datasets on ecosystem carbon flows and stocks; and (v) improved understanding of the physiology of carbon metabolism (especially respiration) and the influences of nutrient feedbacks. What is most pressing is that experimentalists and modellers work together to improve understanding and reduce uncertainties.
Abbreviations
Abbreviations GCM global climate model
GPT generalized plant type
GPP gross primary production
LAI leaf area index
NPP net primary production
PAR photosynthetically active radiation
PEPCase phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase
RuBP ribulose 1-5 bisphosphate
An invitation to the 4th European Plant Science Organization (EPSO) Conference 2008 in Toulon, France, provided the stimulation for the work presented here. I am extremely grateful to Sönke Zaehle for valuable discussions during the development of Hybrid6.5 and Marina Frolova-Walker for help with the quote by K. A. Timiryazev. I also thank Bill Rossow and Yuanchong Zhang (ISCCP, NASA GISS), Ian (Harry) Harris (CRU, UEA), and Ranga B Myneni and Arindam Samanta (Boston University) for making their data available and assistance with processing. The IDL routines written and made freely available by David Fanning (http://www.dfanning.com/) solved many data handling problems. Funding was provided by the CNRS (France), the European Commission through Contract MRTN-CT-2004-512464 (GREENCYCLES Marie Curie Research Training Network), and the CNRS/INSU (France) EC2CO programme.
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© The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.orgDespite [a] documented history of mental illness, both were able to legally purchase and keep firearms. Both are now dead. — Kim Marlow
At 7:58 am, on May 4, 2011, at my home in Wisconsin, I woke up – suddenly wide awake – despite being unable to fall asleep until after 3am. By the time I walked from my bedroom, down the hall and through my living room, my phone rang from the kitchen counter, just as I was next to it. It was exactly 8 am. When I answered that call, the world, as I once knew it, ended forever.
There was a stranger at the other end of the line. He told me his name, but I don’t remember it. He asked if I had a daughter named Kami Hernandez. I said yes, and I think my heart must have stopped beating at that moment.
I remember holding my breath for what seemed like forever. Then that stranger told me he was with the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office in Houston, and that he was sorry, but my daughter was “deceased.”
I only remember screaming, “no, no, no,” and looking up to see my younger daughter in the room, and how afraid she looked. I don’t remember exactly what else he said, only something about “multiple gunshots to her back and lower extremities.” Somehow I managed to call my friend, who lived nearby, and told her about the phone call, and that someone said my baby was dead.
A stranger 1,500 miles away from me told me my beautiful, first-born daughter had been murdered in her home—her “dream home,” she had told me a few days earlier—at the age of 26.
The rest of that day is such a blur. I had to let my family, Kami’s family, know what happened, when I couldn’t comprehend it myself. I found out at some point that Kami’s eight-year-old son, my grandson Michael, had gone to his dad’s house the day before and he was safe. Kami and her ex-husband shared custody of him since their divorce.
The day of May 4 was spent making phone calls, so many phone calls. One of Kami’s dear friends bought plane tickets for my daughter Kristin and me. We would fly to Texas at 6 o’clock the next morning.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw my daughter’s face, and the fear I imagined she must have felt. I wouldn’t sleep for almost 48 hours from the time I received that phone call.
After arriving in Texas, and going from the airport straight to the funeral home, and then to my brother’s house nearby, I met with the homicide investigators from the Houston Police Department and learned, finally, just what happened. Some details I learned from her friend, Samantha, on the day of her memorial service.
Sam said she and Kami had been texting back and forth that evening. Sam needed a place to stay that night and Kami, being the friend she was, had told her to come over. Kami told her a while later, via text again, that it might not be a good idea, because her boyfriend Eric wasn’t in a good mood and she wasn’t sure what was going on with him. He would be home from work soon. Sam asked if everything was okay and Kami told her not to worry, that she could handle it. What I know next is that Kami’s neighbors made the first calls to 911 at 10:34 pm after hearing the first gunshots. Several calls were made and the police arrived within just a few minutes. They knocked on the door, and when they got no response they entered the unlocked front door.
Eric Collier had murdered my daughter, then sat down on the sofa and killed himself. We do not know why. What I do know, from the information given to me by the investigators, is that my child was running away from Eric when he shot her. She was found in the dining room, just a few feet from two different exits. She could not outrun the shells that basically obliterated the lower half of her body. They said that the shotgun was laying next to her, although the newspaper reports incorrectly stated that he killed himself with the same gun. He used a handgun to commit suicide. Kami’s phone was smashed to pieces on the kitchen floor.
What was apparent when I went to clear out Kami’s home, with the help of her friends, was that evidently Eric had gone into the bathroom after shooting Kami, tried to clean the blood off of himself and left the bloody towels in the hamper. The police left them there. I don’t know if they ever even saw them.
Neighbors reported hearing Kami scream, “God, please no” immediately before hearing the first gunshots. The medical examiner told me she died instantly, and that she likely felt no pain.
Something else that I know, from the most recent conversations with Kami, is that Eric suffered from multiple forms of mental illness and he had apparently stopped taking his meds. She wasn’t concerned about his mental illness itself, since as long as she had known him they seemed to be under control. He took his medications as prescribed and they got along beautifully together. Although they had known each other for quite some time, they had only begun dating about seven months or so before, and had been living together for about two months.
I had spent 10 days with them only a few weeks before and, having been in an abusive marriage myself for many years, I watched them closely. I watched Eric closely. Kami told me she was so happy that she finally had found someone who understood her and all of her own issues.
Kami had been diagnosed as bipolar at the age of 14, and had been on myriad medications herself ever since. After years of hospitalizations and missed diagnoses she had, just a few months before, found a doctor who was able to put her on the perfect cocktail of meds, and gave her, apparently, the correct diagnosis – borderline personality disorder, ADHD, the original bipolar disorder and another, which I cannot remember.
With the correct medications, my girl was finally finding the peace she wanted so badly in her life. She was able to finally see the joy around her. She reluctantly told me, just a couple of days before he murdered her, that Eric’s personality had changed, and she realized he wasn’t taking his meds. She reassured me that she could handle the situation, that she wasn’t afraid of him and had already arranged counseling for them both, and Eric had agreed that he had to get back on track. She was determined to “nip this in the bud” before everything fell apart. She knew I was worried, and tried so hard to reassure me she was okay.
There were several guns in their house, all of which were removed, of course. Kami had bought a.380 for herself, for protection, she said, in December 2010. She had been going to the range, learning how to shoot safely. She applied for a CHL, and as far as I know, received it. The social services office where she worked was in a very bad part of town and she worried about her safety in that neighborhood. She knew that I wasn’t happy about her having guns in the house with her son there. She assured me that they were kept locked away, and everything would be all right. She was the single most responsible person I knew. She did everything right.
Despite both Kami’s and Eric’s documented history of mental illness, both were able to legally purchase and keep firearms. Both are now dead. Two families are broken forever. This has got to stop.news The Sun‘s Rob Granatstein is Out of a Job
Rob Granatstein, the Toronto Sun‘s editorial page editor and one of its most moderate editorial voices, whose recent columns have tackled subjects like the folly of rampant privatization and the value of Toronto’s public library system in a refreshingly (for the Sun) non-shrill way, announced his departure from the paper today, after a night of unconfirmed rumours to that effect.
This is Granatstein’s statement, which he emailed to us this afternoon:
I’ve loved going to work every single day of my 17 years at the Toronto Sun. The team of reporters, editors, columnists, photographers, cartoonists, librarians and everyone else at 333 King St. E. are treasures and I’m so proud to have been able to call them colleagues and friends.
I worked hard every day to earn the respect of my colleagues, our readers and even the people who didn’t read the Sun.
I believe passionately in the work the team at The Sun does and I wish all my friends only the best.
I’m humbled by the outpouring of support I’ve received in person, by phone, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. It has overwhelmed me.
I’m looking forward to taking some time away from the greatest job I’ve ever had, then figuring out what contribution I can make to ensure this is the best city possible for my family to live in going forward.
Rob
Dave Ellis, the Sun‘s Sunday editor, also announced that he had left the paper. He made his statement yesterday, in a brief note on Facebook.
Both statements are a little—we assume deliberately—non-specific about whether Granatstein and Ellis quit or were fired. Granatstein himself, upon further questioning by email, referred us to the office of James Wallace, the Sun‘s editor in chief, who was similarly reluctant to talk specifics.
“The changes yesterday were part of a change to our management structure. I guess beyond that, it’s really not fair or appropriate to discuss the reasons that are affecting any individual journalist who worked for us,” he said. “Newspapers make management changes all the time, and that’s simply all that this was. On a personal note, I am appreciative of the professionalism and the contributions that both Rob and Dave made to the paper.”
“There’s been a lot of change at the Sun over the last 18 months,” he continued. “And we’re not alone. All the newspaper, all the media outlets are in the same boat.”
The rumour originated last night, as many stories do, in municipal-affairs pundit Jonathan Goldsbie’s Twitter feed, without attribution to a source. Other journalists began to chime in with their condolences, giving the whole thing the appearance of confirmed truth—which it wasn’t, entirely, until Granatstein sent out his email this afternoon.
Toronto Sun Family, a blog that caters to current and former Sun employees, reacted to the departures (under the assumption Granatstein was fired) in a post last night. They wondered:
Was [Granatstein] not pro-Ford enough?
Did he object to Sun Media pulling out of the Ontario Press Council, where he sat as a member?
Or it could be just another Quebecor cost-cutting pink slip, along with Dave Ellis, the former assistant city editor who fought back from a near-fatal 2007 bicycle accident to work the newsroom again.
Sun Media and parent company Quebecor have not, to this point, come forward with any explanation for the departures.
Wallace rejects the notion that Granatstein’s absence will cause the Sun to drift further to the political right.
“Anyone who’s read Rob over the years can hardly accuse him of being a bleeding-heart lefty,” he said. “The whole issue of left and right is nonsense in my opinion anyway. When media do a good job, when we’re doing our job right, we’re sticking up for the little guy, and we’re holding government accountable. And that transcends politics.”Veteran California politician Willie Brown has warned this weekend that presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “is going to lose” in 2016 “[u]nless there are some serious readjustments to the Democratic operation.”
Brown made his remarks in his regular column in the San Francisco Chronicle, as he attempted to draw lessons from his party’s stunning nationwide losses in the midterm elections.
“Everybody keeps asking me, “Why did this happen?’” Brown wrote. “Beats me. When it came to the elections, I was a dreamer who thought the Democrats were going to retain the Senate. Instead, we got walloped.”
Brown suggested that Democrats erred by running away from President Barack Obama, “which simply played into the Republicans’ strategy of portraying him as a failure.” The party also failed to turn out young voters, he said.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton must be wondering whether she really wants to run for president. Unless there are some serious readjustments to the Democratic operation, she is going to lose,” Brown concluded.
Last year, Brown had predicted Clinton would win easily in 2016: “..[A]ll she has to do is continue to breath[e] and in 2016 she’ll be elected to the presidency of the United States,” he said.
Brown served two terms as mayor of San Francisco, the first African-American to be elected to that office.
Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak edits Breitbart California and is the author of the new ebook, Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, available for Amazon Kindle.
Follow Joel on Twitter: @joelpollakCameron Redus (KENS-TV)
The family of a Texas college student gunned down outside his apartment by a campus police officer said authorities have ignored or refused to turn over key evidence in their response to a lawsuit.
Autopsy results show 23-year-old Cameron Redus was shot five times at close range by Cpl. Christopher Carter, a University of Incarnate Word police officer, during an early morning Dec. 6 traffic stop near the San Antonio campus.
The shooting gained national attention after witnesses reported that the officer never warned Redus before emptying his gun on the student after he made a derisive remark.
“I heard (the student) say, ‘Oh, you’re gonna shoot me?’ like sarcastic almost,” said witness Mohammad Haidarasl.
At least two of the shots could have been lethal, according to the medical examiner.
The student’s family filed a lawsuit May 6 in state court against UIW and the officer, and they issued a public statement in response to a recent filing by attorneys for the private Catholic university.
The university says the suit alleges Carter violated the student’s civil rights and wants the case moved to federal court, which takes much longer to go to trial due to a backlog of cases and shortage of judges, but the family said they have charged the officer with only negligence and wrongful death.
Family members said they expected UIW to deny the allegations, but they were stunned that the university’s attorneys ignored reports compiled by Alamo Heights police and the medical examiner.
The family said UIW’s attorneys denied evidence of gunpowder burns, which indicate the two lethal shots were fired at “virtual point blank range,” and did not acknowledge evidence that showed the shots came from two different directions.
The university also claims that Carter did not call his attorney after Alamo Heights police arrived to investigate the shooting, which was outside Carter’s jurisdiction, but that contradicts information provided by the department as part of its investigation.
“They have chosen Mr. Carter’s account even when it is incompatible with the physical evidence,” the family said in a statement.
The university’s attorneys have also asked a federal judge to order attorneys for Redus’ family not to publicly release audio and video evidence recorded during the fatal encounter.
They filed a motion Friday seeking the expansion of a confidentiality and protective order signed last month by the judge to include audio recorded by a device worn by Carter on his uniform and video from a rear-facing |
a small new land.
8) Star Wars Land
The third rumor is the one that has millions of fans speculating. Tentatively called Star Wars Land, there is a lot of speculation on what might be included. There should be at least one E-ticket attraction, a new restaurant, and other surprises. Reportedly plans for a Star Wars Land have been in the works for years, but then Disney realized that they needed to step up the game with the popularity of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort. Disney CEO Bob Iger has confirmed that there are plans for “developing designs for a far greater Star Wars presence in the parks,” but has stopped short of announcing a Star Wars Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. There is another rumor that there will be a similar land at Disneyland Resort in California.
7) The Expansion of Africa
The other park that has a lot going on these days is Disney’s Animal Kingdom. In November, 2014, it was announced that the Africa section of the park is going to double in size. There will be a new marketplace that will include several shops and a quick service restaurant. There will also be a new path between Africa and Asia, which will make it easier to get around the park. The expansion is expected to be finished before the end of 2015.
6) A New Magic Kingdom Central Hub
The Central Hub at the Magic Kingdom makes it easy to get from one land to another. The problem is that it can get quite congested, especially on busy days. A second loop of the hub is currently in the works. With two loops, foot traffic will move more easily. There will also be new gardens and areas for preferred viewing for the parades and fireworks. Both Casey’s Corner and The Plaza Restaurant will have their seating areas expanded when the work is complete. The work is projected to be finished sometime in the next few months.
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5) Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
Disney Polynesian Resort has been undergoing plenty of changes of its own. The name has been changed back to Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. The lobby has been redone and given a new look. Disney is not stopping there. When the work is done there will be a new upgrade for the Nanea Volcano Pool, which will include a children’s play area. Trader Sam’s Grog Grotto will feature Tiki-themed drinks and Polynesian small plates. There are other surprises in store as well. The work on Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort is expected to be finished by the end of the year.
4) Rivers of Light
Another change that is coming to Disney’s Animal Kingdom is a new nighttime show. The park has often been called a half-day park, and Rivers of Light is expected to help change that perception. The show will feature live music, floating lanterns, water screens, and more. River of Light is expected to open in 2016.
3) Disney Springs
Downtown Disney is a popular place to hang out, shop, and eat. The problem is that it doesn’t have a “Disney feel” to it. That is currently changing, because Downtown Disney is becoming Disney Springs. The new shopping and entertainment district will have twice as many shops and restaurants. Some of the new eateries will be high end, including STK Orlando, The BOATHOUSE, and Morimoto Asia. There will be two new parking garages (one of them is already open) to help alleviate parking problems. Disney Springs will have four areas instead of three, and there will be more of a theme throughout the district.
2) Frozen Ride and More
One of the more controversial changes that is coming to Walt Disney World is the addition of Frozen to World Showcase’s Norway Pavilion. In October, 2015, Epcot’s Maelstrom closed forever, and a ride based on the popular movie is going to take its place. According to a permit that has been filed by Disney, there will also be a meet and greet area and possibly more. The work is expected to be finished in 2016.
1) Avatar Land
Another huge change that is under construction is taking place at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Camp Minnie-Mickey closed in early 2014, and ground broke on Avatar Land a few days later. The new land is going to be based on the popular James Cameron movie, and is expected to open in 2017. The land, also known as Pandora, will feature an indoor boat ride and an attraction that will use 3D and IMAX to allow guests to feel like they are riding a banshee. There will also be a quick service restaurant and more. Avatar Land might just be what Disney’s Animal Kingdom needs to make it a full day park.ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Meat and dairy consumption are rising rapidly across the developing world, and consumers are unaware that their appetite for animal products contributes as much to climate change as exhaust emissions from the transport sector, a new survey shows.
Climate-changing emissions from livestock are estimated to account for 14.5 percent of the global total, according to Chatham House, a UK-based thinktank.
A survey of 12,000 people in 12 countries released by Chatham House late on Tuesday showed that more than twice as many respondents saw transport exhaust emissions as a major contributor to climate change than saw emissions from meat and dairy output as important - 64 percent vs 29 percent.
Livestock consumption is set to rise significantly over the next 40 years, particularly in large emerging markets including China, India, Brazil and South Africa, which were included in the survey.
“By 2050, we are looking at a 60-70 percent increase in meat consumption,” Antony Froggatt, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Part of this increase is happening because consumers do not know the climate-changing impacts of meat and dairy consumption, researchers said.
More than 40 percent of Russians, and 25 percent of South Africans, thought meat and dairy production caused “little or no” climate change.
Once consumers were aware of the implications for global warming of eating more meat, about 20 percent became more likely to express willingness to change their diet, according to the survey.
Respondents in Brazil, India and China, where meat consumption is rising, showed a greater willingness to modify their consumption than the average of the countries assessed, once they were shown the climatic impact of their diet.
Climate change impacts, however, are generally secondary to more immediate considerations of taste, price, health and food safety in shaping food choices, the research said.
Across the 12 countries, women were more likely than men to say the impact of climate change was an important determinant of how much meat they eat, by 71 to 64 percent.
“It is unlikely dangerous climate change can be avoided unless (meat) consumption falls,” Rob Bailey, lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Consumers need to change their behavior and this survey shows a substantial lack of awareness of this.”As Hungary understands the impact of last year’s failed coup in Turkey, it sees EU criticism of Turkey's fight against terrorism as unfair and unfounded, according to its foreign minister.
"Hungary does not welcome the criticism the EU has directed towards Turkey," Peter Szijjarto, Hungary’s foreign and trade minister, told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview during his visit for a Turkish-Hungarian Business Forum in Ankara on Friday.
"Hungary understands what last year’s terrible attack on Turkey democracy was. We have to stand beside Turkey in the fight against terrorism in order to protect its stability. We must respect Turkey's fight against terrorism to protect its national security," he added.
Turkey blames the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), led by U.S.-based Fetullah Gulen, for last July’s coup attempt, which left 250 dead and some 2,200 wounded.
Szijjarto underlined that Hungary stands with Turkey and that Budapest is ready to help Turkey in international affairs.
"At the European Parliament or the European Council, we always underline the role Turkey plays in protecting Europe. If Turkey had not stopped the wave of migration targeting Europe, we Hungarians would have had to do it," he said.
"Turkey is not only protecting itself by stopping the wave of migration, but also Europe and the European Union," he added.
- EU reaction to failed coup
Szijjarto also criticized the EU's attitude towards Turkey's fight against terrorism after the failed July 2016 coup.
"We were disappointed at the way the EU was 'worried' about the rights of those who tried to kill your president and those who attacked your democracy, your president, your prime minister, and your senior officials who came through a democratic election, " he said.
"A massive attack was made towards your democracy and your stability. Europe must be worried about this and not about those who tried to kill your president, and to remove your democracy and your system," he added.
- Visa-free travel negotiations
Szijjarto also said that his government supports visa-free travel between Turkey and the EU.
"We support the visa-free travel negotiations between Turkey and the EU, because we believe that Turkey deserves a fairer attitude," he said.
"During the [March 2016] refugee deal between Turkey and the EU, the EU Commission introduced a content that suggested that the refugee agreement and the visa-free travel process will progress together. It is not the fault of Turkey, it is the fault of the EU Commission, it is not fair, and since the beginning of the negotiations, it should have been emphasized that these two issues are separate from each other," he added.
Szijjarto said that there is a need for mutual respect in this process and that it should be taken more seriously.
According to a European Commission report, to get visa-free travel in the EU’s Schengen zone, Ankara needs to fulfill seven outstanding criteria from a total of 72, including "revising legislation and practices on terrorism in line with European standards".
Ankara has ruled out any such revision, leading to a deadlock in negotiations.
The March 2016 deal between Turkey and the EU envisaged a “one-for-one” formula under which failed asylum-seekers in Europe would be returned to Turkey, while Syrian refugees would be resettled in EU states under a quota system.
- Turkish-Hungarian cooperation
Szijjarto said that during their Ankara meeting on Friday, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban and his delegation addressed cooperation in the area of education.
He said that the two countries agreed on the establishment of a joint university and a bilingual high school.
"We understood that the most important pillar of our strategic partnership is communication and cooperation between young people," he said.
Szijjarto also said that the possible bilateral steps in the field of nuclear energy were also discussed.
He said that Hungary has used nuclear energy since the 1970s, and so it can share its capacity with Turkey in the training of experts and engineers.HB 2777 reinforces TriMet’s commitment to bring equity to fare/code enforcement
Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed House Bill 2777 last week, clearing the way for TriMet to pursue new options that give individuals the opportunity to correct their behavior when cited for violations of the TriMet Code, including fare evasion. HB 2777 grants transit districts the authority to offer a new, administrative option for resolving citations. Read the text of HB 2777.
Currently, citations, including fare evasion, must be resolved through the courts. They can leave a permanent mark on a violator’s record that could affect their ability to get a job, rent property or serve in the military. That can be a severe penalty for not buying a $2.50 fare. HB 2777 provides a framework to make the system more equitable and bring the punishment in line with the offense.
“This law is about proportionality,” said Sen. Michael Dembrow (D) of Portland, one of the bill’s chief sponsors. “It gives TriMet new, less punitive tools to enforce fare evasion and other code violations.”
However, riders should not see this as a change to TriMet’s rules. Fares remain required on all TriMet vehicles and those who choose not to pay or repeatedly evade fare will be held accountable. Also, we continue working to increase fare enforcement on the transit system.
How we got here
TriMet began a thorough review of the fare enforcement process in 2016. We collaborated with Portland State University and other organizations to learn how our enforcement process affects the community. We wanted to understand the underlying causes of fare evasion and what we could do to improve our enforcement efforts.
Portland State issued a report in December that found no evidence of systemic racial bias in TriMet’s fare enforcement, but it recommended a closer look at factors like health and economics as precursors to fare evasion, especially for chronic offenders. It also called for a review of enforcement policies to ensure fairness.
Fairness in accountability
HB 2777 gives TriMet the authority to offer alternatives for some who violate TriMet’s Code. Under the law, TriMet can provide violators up to 90-days to engage in an administrative process that could reduce the fine or allow community service to resolve the citation. If resolved during this period, TriMet would not submit the citation to the court, which means the violation would not become part of a person’s court record. When the 90-day window closes, TriMet could still pursue unresolved violations through the court system.
“TriMet strives to be a model in the equitable application of its rules and response to violations,” said TriMet Director of Diversity and Transit Equity John Gardner. “Our aim is to get people to pay their fare, not unnecessarily funnel them into the judicial system.”
“We continually see data that shows that when people are given the chance to rectify their mistakes in a manner that acknowledges their humanity that they are much less likely to reoffend,” said Rep. Chris Gorsek (D) of Troutdale, who advocated for the legislation. “That’s what this bill does; it brings some compassion back into the process.”
What’s next?
TriMet’s Board of Directors will have to enact an ordinance to authorize the administrative options permitted by HB 2777. In the months ahead, TriMet will work with community partners to determine who qualifies, how to adjust fines, and which community service options to offer. We hope to have the administrative options in place when the new law takes effect on January 1, 2018.Trick plays are simply the best.
Week 3 gave us the Arkansas State’s ‘Fainting Goat,’ which didn’t quite work out as planned, but damn was it fun.
Now, TCU has given us something even better.
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During the 25th-ranked Horned Frogs’ Saturday matchup with No. 4 Oklahoma, TCU literally tried to hide a player in the end zone, having him lie down in inside the "O" of "Horned Frogs." He’s circled in the tweet below:
The Horned Frog can camouflage itself in any environment. Just as long as nobody is paying attention. pic.twitter.com/eFkbjsZb5c — Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) October 4, 2014
The Horned Frogs returned the ball down the right side, but then suddenly, out of nowhere, heaved the ball back across the field where our sneaky pal BJ Catalon caught it and gained more ground.
What’s best about this trick play is that it nearly worked – turns out a holding penalty took off a few yards.
But seriously, how creative was this?Quick Intro
Before I get anywhere with this article, I need to offer one disclaimer: I wasn’t born a great athlete- far from it, to be completely honest. My dad has been a construction worker my entire life and my mom comes from a family of farmers, so while I may have a little “real world” strength coursing through my veins, I was the first person from the Burgess gene pool to truly try to apply it to a sport. What I do have is an insatiable desire to push my genetics to their limit, and the willingness to bust my ass in the process.
After topping out my football career as an alright offensive lineman at Colorado State University, it was only a matter of time before I found another avenue to push and challenge myself. So after spending a few years “dabbling” in Jiu-Jitsu, MMA, and seeing just how much of my football playing weight I could lose, I returned to my first love: lifting. A life-changing meeting with one of my former college strength coaches and a chance network of solid competitive Strongmen and women right in the city I lived steered me towards my first Strongman competition in October of 2010, and I have since competed in four more strongman contests and three powerlifting meets. My results haven’t been anything spectacular, but I HAVE progressively improved, learning many valuable lessons along the way. Having learned these lessons, there are some things I would go back and do-over, but because I’ve yet to figure out that whole time travel thing hopefully a few of you that are in the early stages of competing in Strongman, or thinking about getting started can learn from my mistakes.
5.) Getting caught up in “being” a strongman
I’m a Physical Preparation Coach by trade, and given my background I work a TON with football athletes and teams. A few years back one of the teams I was coaching was struggling, and I remember speaking with them about the difference between enjoying the sport of football and enjoying being a football player. I felt some of the kids on the team enjoyed “being” a football player more than actually playing the sport. Looking back on the start of my competitive Strongman journey, I can honestly say I was guilty of the same thing. I liked the implements, the perceived attitude, being different from the “norm”, and to be completely truthful, the attention. After toiling away in anonymity as an offensive lineman my entire football career, it felt cool to finally have people paying attention to me. This is NOT a winning mindset! Strength athletics is a brutally humbling world, and thankfully I got humbled real quick. Zach Gallmann, a high level competitive Strongman in Ohio, said it best in something he posted earlier this year: this sport will take more from you than you’ll ever get, so you have to accept that to progress. I didn’t really start going anywhere until I let go of the “trappings” associated with the sport and focused on the process.
Lesson Learned: Seek the Battle, not the Glory.
4.) Not getting specific with conditioning
You need to be strong to compete in Strongman, but you also need to be appropriately conditioned to display that strength. No matter what sport you’re training for, conditioning is going to be task specific. In the vast majority of strongman competitions you’ll be asked to lift, throw, carry, or load objects of varying size and resistance within a 60 to 80 second time frame. Some events are scored in favor of max reps, some are scored in favor of fastest time or furthest distance, and some are scored in favor of heaviest weight lifted. Given the unique and varying nature of events and the time constraints, competitive Strongman is considered an anaerobic-lactic activity. You want to prepare for this similar to how you’re going to have to compete. Carrying and loading medleys, heavy sled pushes and pulls, and rest/pause sets and rep-out sets are all great ways to increase muscular endurance and improve your lactic capacity, but it’s important to pick activities that transfer best to your competition. Flippin’ tires when you don’t even have to do that in your upcoming competition, or doing a whole bunch of Tabatas at the end of your lift will definitely have you feeling “worked”, but it’s not preparing you for the specific demands you’ll be facing. You also don’t want to forget aerobic capacity work. This doesn’t have to (nor should it) be hours of steady-state cardio; when interspersed with some bodyweight resistance and/or mobility work, low intensity sled dragging, prowler marching, rowing, or even going on short hikes are all great activities to do on your “off” days. This type of work will increase mitochondrial and capillary density, improving your ability to recover when competing, as well as expediting your recovery in training. Keep in mind when doing this type of work though that intensity should be moderate at best; if it feels like a kick in the balls, you’re defeating the purpose.
Lesson Learned: Move in training how you want to move in competition, and don’t underestimate the importance of active recovery work.
3.) Focusing too much on implements
This one may come as a surprise to some people. One of the major appeals of the sport is definitely the unique equipment. Tires, stones, logs, kegs, and other odd objects are just fun and challenging things to try to flip, carry, lift, and throw. And make no mistake about it: you definitely need to be familiar enough with the implements to understand the most effective way to accomplish whatever task is being asked of you. But the sport is called STRONGman for a reason. After finishing towards the back of the pack of a few consecutive competitions, I came to the brutal, ironic realization that the biggest thing holding me back was not my lack of technique, or conditioning, or anything else: I simply wasn’t strong enough. If you’re just using Strongman implements as a change of pace in your training, than by all means have at it. But if your goal is to cross the threshold and start competing, I highly recommend building your Squat, Deadlift, Overhead Press, and then back and grip strength through every row and pull-up variation you can think of. By stepping back and devoting the majority of my efforts into getting stronger in the traditional gym lifts, I was able to prep for my last competition on a much more solid foundation, resulting in a much better performance.
Lesson Learned: Your foundation is everything, and the stronger the better.
2.) Not training to get stronger
When I first started training for this sport, every lift was a battle. Whether event training or lifting, it was go heavy, go hard, or go home. The result of this was ok strength, poor technique, and shitty work capacity. So what do you think happened when I’d get to competition? I had ok strength, poor technique, and shitty work capacity! Definitely not the formula for success. I realized if I wanted to get any better, I had to learn how to train smarter, not harder. Success in life is measured in what you do, not how hard you tried, so I needed to really shift my attitude on how I approached training. I started studying what top athletes and lifters from generations past and today did to get strong, not necessarily what they did once they were strong. I stopped focusing on quantity on the bar and started focusing on quantity in the training session itself. I regressed my training almost to 0, rebuilding my squat from scratch and learning how to do things right as opposed to just doing them. The results have been tremendous, because since this shift I’ve been hitting lifetime PR’s while continuing to improve my work capacity and other important variables. If a washed-up college O-Lineman can find new levels of strength staring down the barrel of his 30th birthday, than there’s still hope for many of you that are reading this right now.
Lesson Learned: Training is the means to your competitive end; be objective, plan the work, then work the plan.
1.) Not being fully committed
Don’t get me wrong, if you asked me back in 2011 I’d sure tell you I was committed. But to me, true commitment is when you start changing your life to reach your goals. Over the last year and a half I’ve made sweeping changes to my lifestyle, the majority of which are related to help me maximize my potential in this sport. My personal mantra right now is coach-train-recover-repeat. There’s a saying that I give to clients of mine soon after we start: change your actions, or change your expectations. If you aren’t willing to do the work, re-evaluate what you’re working towards- after all, it’s your goal. If you expect to challenge your genetic ceiling, though, act accordingly. Every champion that’s ever walked this Earth has had to sacrifice things on their road to success, and your journey and my journey will be no different.
Lesson Learned: Be willing to surrender what you are for what you can potentially be.Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders uttered the words “performance art,” and he wasn’t talking about Donald Trump.
In a recent YouTube video he promises to be “an arts president” and proclaims his support for arts education. “A strong introduction to the arts fuels the imagination and teaches children to be expressive,” he says.
In his usual unpolished style, the video is seemingly shot in one take, with the self-proclaimed democratic socialist tripping over his words a few times.
But more to the point, he touts his support for the arts even against opposition on Capitol Hill, taking the opportunity to stick it to House Republicans.
“I have continued my longstanding commitment to the arts and arts education during my time in Congress, in spite of terrible attacks on the arts from conservative ideologues,” he says. “I will continue to advocate strongly for robust funding of the arts in our cities, schools, and public spaces. Art is speech. Art is what life is about.”
Sanders has spoken out about the plight of American art education funding a number of times. When visiting schools in his home state of Vermont in March, Sanders said he was disturbed that music programs are often “first thing on the chopping block” when schools are short of funds.
“It’s not easy work,” Sanders said. “It takes a lot of discipline and I think that it’s a real shame that in schools across this country, including our own state, when schools don’t have the money those are the first programs to be cut.”
Many creative practitioners have signed on to Artists and Cultural Leaders for Bernie Sanders, including artist Shepard Fairey along with actors Will Ferrell and Danny DeVito, comedians Margaret Cho and Sarah Silverman, musicians Lou Barlow (Sebadoh), Jello Biafra (the Dead Kennedys), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), and many others.
There’s also a new Sanders page at Americans for the Arts Action Fund that includes information on the candidate’s past positions and actions related to the arts.
Follow artnet News on Facebook:Members of Parliament seemed uninterested in addressing ethical questions about paid travel by foreign governments for Canadian officials as they hurled vitriol at each other over the ethics of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s stock portfolio Monday.
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
Last week, the Globe and Mail released a lengthy report showing Conservative and Liberal senators and Members of Parliament had taken 36 trips to China sponsored by Beijing or Chinese business groups since 2006.
Two of those who accepted, Tory senator Victor Oh and Ontario Liberal MP Geng Tan, apparently met with officials working for China’s United Front initiative, aimed at building support for Beijing's policies among Chinese communities overseas and influencing the countries in which they live.
The Globe also reported some the trips were not declared by the two as required by the ethics commissioner’s office if an organization sponsors the travel. Tan and Oh said they had paid for the trips themselves and, according to the Globe, Tan initially denied taking one of them.
The story broke as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was preparing for his trip to China to talk trade.
The paper followed up the report with an editorial over the weekend which decried the practice of Canadian members of government accepting free travel, calling it “always an attempt to exert influence.”
But, in a Parliament where parties will often attack each other for the slightest infraction, there was nary a whisper heard about the story Monday morning. There was no mention of the story in question period either, despite how many times ethics were brought up.
Not only was the story not addressed, but Tan asked the partisan softball question of the day, which he used to ask his own party about promoting the “marquee” areas around his riding to Chinese tourists.
“Can the parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Small Business and Tourism please update this House on the government’s plan to tap into the Chinese tourism market?” Tan asked.
There were no groans from the rest of Parliament. Opposition members made no jeers about Tan's trips and meeting with China’s officials tasked with managing Chinese diaspora. No calls of “shame” from the back benches.
There was just an answer from the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism Alaina Lockhart.
“We have developed a strategic plan for the fast-growing Chinese market. We are working to enhance tourism marketing in China,” Lockhart said. “We are working with Canadian tourism businesses to become China ready. We are increasing air and visa access, and developing experiences that are in high demand by Chinese visitors.”
The House moved on.
Meanwhile, Oh appears in a photograph on the website for Toronto development company Lemine Investment Group. Another photo of Oh in a group including Lemine head Thomas Liu appears on Toronto-based Shanxi Business Peoples’ Association website.
Liu was one of those present for a private fundraising dinner held in Toronto last year attended by Trudeau.
The ethics commissioner looked into the dinners and did not pursue any further examination under the Conflict of Interest Act.
Dermod Travis, of the independent government watchdog Integrity BC, said it’s not surprising no mention of the report was made in Parliament because it crosses party lines. But that doesn’t mean glossing over it is acceptable, he said.
“All of the opposition parties have participated in something and fear it could be thrown back at them,” Travis said of sponsored travel. “That, quite frankly, is an abdication of their duty.”
It isn't the first time sponsored travel has raised the eyebrows of ethics watchdogs.
Rights Groups Slam Inaction as Trudeau Tours China read more
In August 2016, The Tyee published an article detailing the criminal accusations levied against a number of members of a Taiwan-based organization that paid for more travel for Canadian politicians than any other organization.
The complete list of sponsored travel for 2016 shows government officials still accepted junkets from the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association after The Tyee’s story.
Travis said such junkets paid for by foreign governments carry dangers, such as government members being caught in compromising positions and blackmailed.
But even without such underhanded tactics potentially used by a foreign government, Travis said, it’s obvious such trips are only offered because something is wanted from an elected official.
“No member of Parliament or the Legislature should put themselves in the position where they are accepting free gifts whether it’s dinner for two, whether it’s travel to a foreign country without full and complete disclosure,” Travis said.
“So that the public can be satisfied that this gift did not influence decision making at a later point or that it did.”A few weeks ago, Google began rolling out a new Highlights feature for Inbox that promises to bring your most important email to the top of the list. Many people still don't have it, so this may only be available to a small group for initial testing, or perhaps the rollout is just progressing very slowly. A teardown of the latest update to Inbox includes signs that there is a new training tool that will be useful for making Highlights even better.
Teardown
Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. The features discussed below are probably not live yet, or may only be live for a small percentage of users. Unless stated otherwise, don't expect to see these features if you install the apk.
Training Highlights
New text in the Inbox update encourages users to "train Highlights" to make it better. The basic idea is not unlike what Gmail and Inbox have already been doing for ages by observing patterns of how you read, reply, and otherwise interact with email, then use that data to give more prominence to the messages that are likely to be important to you.
The difference in the new training tool is that you're meant to take an active role. There will be a line in the Settings screen for each account that opens up a new screen to begin the process. It's a bit reminiscent to the 'improve your recommendations' tool in Play Music, but instead of asking about genres and bands, Inbox will display some of your email and ask you if similar emails should be highlighted in the future.
code Train Highlights</string> <string name="bt_highlights_training_done_page_title">Nice job!</string>
<string name="bt_highlights_training_done_page_subtitle">Training makes Highlights better. Train more anytime in Settings.</string> <string name="bt_highlights_training_content_page_title">Was this a Highlight?</string>
<string name="bt_highlights_training_content_page_subtitle">Train Inbox whether to highlight similar emails in the future.</string>
<string name="bt_highlights_training_content_page_skip">Skip this email</string> <string name="bt_highlights_training_no_data_title">No emails available for training</string>
<string name="bt_highlights_training_no_data_subtitle">There are no emails available to classify right now. Try again later!</string> <Preference android:enabled="true" android:title="@string/bt_highlights_training_setting_title" android:selectable="true" android:orderingFromXml="true" android:key="@string/bt_preferences_ash_htt_settings_key" /> <activity android:name="com.google.android.apps.bigtop.highlights.HighlightsTrainingActivity" android:exported="false" android:screenOrientation="portrait" android:theme="@style/bt_BigTopAppTheme.NoTitle.HighlightsTrainingActivity" />
Highlights is only appearing for me on a single account on a single device (weird, right?), but the training tool doesn't appear with it. I doubt it's live yet, but keep watch for it because it may go live before the next update.
Download
The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.
Version: 1.59.173624722.releaseHave you ever been told to dig deep within yourself to find that extra energy needed to get to your goals? In an age of 'us vs them' this event will dig into the ideas around ones self and community identity. What happens when ones actions can effect the world and what happens when you chose to live without that?
* Speaker applications are open now and close April 18th.
* Tickets On Sale: TBA, should be early April.
* Speakers Selected: April 25.
Are you a business looking for an excellent promotional opportunity? TEDxBoulder delivers a world-class event and excellent audience engagement. Become a sponsor and partner with us today!
We believe in radical hospitality and connecting our community. Share your time, skills, and talents: Apply to volunteer for TEDxBoulder.The Kangbashi district of Ordos, China is a marvel of urban planning, 137-square miles of shining towers, futuristic architecture and pristine parks carved out of the grassland of Inner Mongolia. It is a thoroughly modern city, but for one thing: No one lives there.
Well, almost nobody. Kangbashi is one of hundreds of sparkling new cities sitting relatively empty throughout China, built by a government eager to urbanize the country but shunned by people unable to afford it or hesitant to leave the rural communities they know. Chicago photographer Kai Caemmerer visited Kangbashi and two other cities for his ongoing series Unborn Cities. The photos capture the eerie sensation of standing on a silent street surrounded by empty skyscrapers and public spaces devoid of life. "These cities felt slightly surreal and almost uncanny," Caemmerer says, "which I think is a product of both the newness of these places and the relative lack of people within them."
China has built hundreds of new cities over the last three decades as it reshapes itself into an urbanized nation with a plan to move 250 million rural inhabitants—more than six times the population of California—into cities by 2026. The newly minted cities help showcase the political accomplishments of local government officials, who reason that real estate and urban development is a safe, high-return investment that can help fuel economic growth.
But it's hard to start a city from scratch. Most people don't want to live somewhere that feels dead, and these new cities sometimes lack the jobs and commerce needed to support those who would live there. In Kangbashi, the government used some administrative tricks to address this, relocating bureaucratic buildings and schools, then trying to convince people in surrounding villages to move in. It had minor success. Today, a city designed for at least 500,000 has around 100,000 inhabitants.
"Cities and districts built without demand or necessity resulted in what some Chinese scholars have termed, literally,'walls without markets'," says William Hurst, political science professor at Northwestern University. "Or what we might translate as uncompleted or hollow cities. Political exigency and investment hysteria trumped economic calculus or consideration of genuine human needs."
Caemmerer learned about these cities early last year after reading a slew of "almost sensationalist" articles that painted them as modern ghost towns. Fascinated, he decided to visit China and see them himself. He spent almost three months exploring three cities during two trips last spring and fall.
His first stop was the Yujiapu Financial District in the Binhai New Area, just outside Tainjin. Construction on the 1.5-square mile replica of Manhattan—complete with a Rockefeller center and twin towers—started in 2008 and will cost an estimated $30.4 billion. The immensity astonished Caemmerer. "There was a sense of vastness that surprised me," he says.
From there he traveled south to Meixi Lake City. The development covers 4.3 square miles, encircles a manmade lake and is designed to one day house more than 180,000 people. The lake is lined with tidy paths and benches, and soft music emanates from speakers at all hours. Caemmerer saw many skyscrapers under construction, their skeletons wrapped in green scrim. Real estate agents scurried about, bus |
of bursaries for early-career scholars presenting at the conference. Details and application guidelines are available here.
V. International Program Committee
Chair: Deb Verhoeven
Vice-Chair: Manfred Thaller
Jeremy Boggs (ACH)
Brian Croxall (ACH)
Øyvind Eide (EADH)
Jieh Hsiang (centerNet)
Diane Jakacki (CSDH/SCHN)
Kiyanori Nagasaki (JADH)
Tim Sherratt (aaDH)
Stéfan Sinclair (CSDH/SCHN)
James Smithies (aaDH)
Tomoji Tabata (JADH)
Karina van Dalen-Oskam (EADH)
Sally Wyatt (centerNet)
Outgoing Chair: Melissa Terras27 Secret San Diego Spots
From hidden caves to dead bodies beneath a public park, here's our third annual guide to all things hidden and hush-hush
By Jackie Bryant, Erin Coates, Kimberly Cunningham, Jennifer McEntee, Erin Meanley Glenny, Kai Oliver-Kurtin, Christina Orlovsky Page, and Archana Ram | Photography by Robert Benson
Points of Interest
Behold an extremely elaborate front yard
The local artist behind Harper’s Topiary Garden received the nickname “Edna Scissorhands” for good reason: She sculpted more than 50 shrubs in her front yard into figures as diverse as elephants, snakes, and surfers. The private garden has drawn admiring neighbors for more than two decades thanks to its creative landscaping.
3549 Union Street, Mission Hills
Visit a historic farmstead
City dwellers can get a taste of country life circa 1900 at Stein Family Farm, a two-acre living history farm museum in National City. The space has a Victorian farmhouse with original furnishings, a century-old barn, an organic garden of heirloom vegetables, and farm animals including emus, sheep, pigs, and a dwarf dairy goat. The city-owned property is considered the last original farmstead in National City. Visitors are encouraged to get their hands dirty—plant something, pet an animal, pull weeds. It’s free and open to the public on Saturdays, but also hosts weddings, craft fairs, and school trips.
1808 F Avenue, National City
Cruise by an oil tycoon’s mansion
Known for its pink color and Mission-style architecture, the “Pink Lady,” aka the Canfield-Wright House, was built in 1910 by oil tycoon Charles A. Canfield, whose life is rumored to be the inspiration for the movie There Will Be Blood. Now a city treasure, his home was recently restored to its original grandeur and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
420 Avenida Primavera, Del Mar
See dead people
The secret past of Pioneer Park will send chills down your spine. The grassy Mission Hills gathering place was formerly a 19th-century Catholic burial ground called the Calvary Cemetery. The city removed the gravestones in the 1960s to build the park, but 4,000 bodies still remain underground.
1521 Washington Place, Mission Hills
Read a hidden message in the sand
If you’ve ever walked along the beach near Hotel del Coronado, you have probably noticed these sandy heaps of ice plant and seaweed but never thought much about them. Turns out, they form the words “CORONADO” and “BEACH.” The full effect is only really visible from the air (or Google Maps). According to an article in the Union-Tribune, the artful sand dunes date back to 1988 and are the product of city worker Armando Moreno, who was tasked with removing the kelp and seaweed from the beach. Moreno took it upon himself to creatively sculpt the mounds, which he then covered with sand and later sowed with ice plant. The whole project took several years to finish, and since then, city workers have helped maintain the dunes and Moreno’s vision. Today, the first word is very easy to see from the air, while the second, just a little farther north, is much fainter. Still, we vote this the coolest use of sand and ice plant ever.
Coronado Beach, Ocean Boulevard, Coronado
Adventures
Walk across a musical bridge
The tune “Crab Carillon” by Joseph Waters can sometimes be heard over the roar of Highway 94 from the bridge on 25th Street. The railing that separates the sidewalk from traffic hides 488 chimes—a 2003 public art piece made by Roman de Salvo. People walking by can strike them in sequence to create music.
700 25th Street, Golden Hill
Throw an ocean-view party for $10
Hotel pools aren’t relegated to tourists. You can channel vacation vibes from The Inn at Sunset Cliffs with their $10-per-person day pass, which lets you (and up to three other friends in your group) splay out by their ocean-view pool, bring your own food (and booze!), and use their grill and fire pit. Call at least one day in advance to reserve your spot; the Inn allows up to 10 non-overnight pool guests per day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. And don’t forget the sunscreen!
1370 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, Ocean Beach
Tunnel through a gold mine
Step back in time for a tour of a historic Julian gold mine from the 1870s. Eagle Mining Co. guides visitors through 1,000 feet of hard rock tunnels, complete with a look at historic milling and extraction techniques. Adult admission is still $10 (cash only!), just like it was back in 1968, when Ed and Ellen Sprague opened the property to the public. Being a gold digger isn’t so bad after all.
2320 C Street, Julian
Visit a Top Gun set
Aviators rejoice at this Queen Anne–style Victorian cottage, home to Kelly McGillis’s character in the hit movie Top Gun. Maintained by the Oceanside Historical Society, the property sits on an empty oceanfront lot next to Hello Betty Fish House, where you can order the off-menu Maverick’s Squeeze cocktail with Hangar 1 Vodka. Thirty years after the movie’s release, we still haven’t lost that lovin’ feeling.
102 Pacific Street, Oceanside
Watch the game while you nurse in privacy
The littlest Padres fans now have their own suite to chill in. The terrace level’s Nursing Lounge, launched in partnership with Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns, offers moms a comfortable place to breast-feed in private, while still catching all the on-field action. And for fur babies: The new Barkyard at Petco Park, a set of six semiprivate suites in left-center field, accommodates four people and two dogs and comes complete with easy-to-clean artificial turf, a complimentary homemade treat for canine fans, and an in-seat menu for their human friends.
100 Park Boulevard, Downtown
Spy salt mountains in Chula Vista
These majestic mountains of salt lie along the Chula Vista shoreline, and are part of San Diego’s second-oldest commercial business. South Bay Salt Works, formerly known as La Punta Salt Works and later Western Salt Company, was founded in 1871. (San Diego’s oldest business, the Union newspaper, started three years earlier.) The company’s buildings and rusty conveyor belts remain unchanged by time, and stand as a visible reminder of the Industrial Revolution. They’re also eligible for the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The mounds, extracted from nearby salt ponds, can stack upward of 40 feet high and are visible from the Bayshore Bikeway.
1470 Bay Boulevard, Chula Vista
Discover farming in an urban setting
Looking for backyard chickens, and free classes on how to raise them? A sack of “worm poop”? Or a chance to see Georgette, the Shetland-Welsh pony? Find them all at City Farmers Nursery, a working farm inspiring garden lovers since 1972 that also offers live music, brunch, and cold beer next door at Nate’s Garden Grill.
4832 Home Avenue, City Heights
Photo: Stacey Keck
Find a mini chapel in Balboa Park
Nestled across from the Museum of Man is the tiny St. Francis Chapel, a Spanish Colonial church designed for the Panama–California Exposition in 1915. Available for weddings and other special ceremonies, the chapel seats 88 people on the main floor and 12 in the balcony, and is noted for its striking gold leaf altar.
1350 El Prado, Balboa Park
Health & Fitness
Hike a hidden trail in Cuyamaca
The traditional path to the top of San Diego’s second-highest peak is up a steep fire road, where climbers are rewarded with sweeping vistas of Mexico, the desert, the Pacific Ocean, and the rest of San Diego County. No need to wait until the end of the climb to be enchanted, though. Skip the crowds and the asphalt by taking the Azalea Glen Trail, which weaves through sections of the forest undamaged by the 2003 fire, past Stonewall Peak, through open grasslands, and up a moderate boulder scramble, where you’ll be deposited near the summit in the thick of a cedar forest.
13652 Highway 79, Julian
Skate where the Derby Dolls practice
Driving through the East Village, you pass a lot of unassuming old warehouses. One of these is home to the practice facility of the Derby Dolls, San Diego’s first modern roller derby league, whose season runs now through the end of the year. They offer Open Skate two days a week, and anyone is welcome to skate the flat track, banked track, or new halfpipe. Gear is available on loan.
Fridays 6–8 p.m., Sundays 3–5 p.m., $5 drop-in fee.
1402 F Street, East Village
Herbally Enhanced Yoga Herbally Enhanced Yoga
Get buffed in the buff
You won’t find Roman baths in San Diego, but there is a Korean day spa, or jijimbang, where going au naturel in front of complete strangers is de rigueur. At Aqua Day Spa, a full treatment, which includes a vigorous body scrub, oil massage, and milk bath, costs only $75 per visit.
4637 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa
Try a “higher” level of yoga
You can do yoga just about anywhere in San Diego these days. A studio with locations in Hillcrest and Mission Valley is offering what they call—ahem—Herbally Enhanced Yoga. If that’s your thing, you must be a card-carrying California medical marijuana patient to participate, and it’s strictly BYO. Otherwise, you can take non-enhanced vinyasa classes throughout the week, which can be reserved through ClassPass. The studio location is only disclosed once you reserve a mat, so follow them on Instagram
@herballyenhancedyoga for more details.
Food & Drink
Travel back to the 1920s
Beneath Carlsbad’s The Land & Water Co. is The Charles Kenneth, an underground craft cocktail lounge. Upon entering the nondescript door adjacent to a dumpster—you’ll need a password, which changes daily and is revealed via Instagram (@thecaptaincharleskenneth)—a staffer can give you a mini history lesson on the recently remodeled space, which once housed a bar during the Prohibition era. It’s outfitted with furniture from the 1920s and comes with rules, including no hats and no flash photography. Adhere to rule number one, “keep your mind open to creativity and passion,” by ordering the Bartender’s Choice, a cocktail tailored to your likes and dislikes. For more local speakeasies, click here.
2978 Carlsbad Boulevard, Carlsbad
Grocery shop in a beer bar
If your to-do list includes buying veggies and drinking beer, do both at the same time on Monday nights at Machete Beer House, a craft beer bar in a tiny National City strip mall, which has paired with Dickinson Farm for Market Monday. Buy produce and get 20 percent off your first pour.
2325 Highland Avenue, National City
Drink wine off the beaten path
Sure, you know about Temecula and Valle de Guadalupe when it comes to nearby wine regions. But the latest—and still off-the-radar—local area to get in on the craft of winemaking is along Highway 94 near Dulzura, which sits adjacent to Tecate and the Mexican border. These family-run, low-key wineries are ideal for smaller groups, offering personal tours, chats with the winemakers, and tastings in beautiful locations. Favorites include Dulzura Vineyard & Winery, Deerhorn Valley Vineyards, Granite Lion Cellars, and Casi Cielo Winery.
17323 Highway 94, Dulzura; 2516 Honey Springs Road, Jamul; 2824 Jamul Highlands Road, Jamul; 3044 Colina Verde Lane, JamulThe leadership of the Roman Catholic Church is embroiled, once again, in a sexual abuse scandal or, more properly speaking, another aspect of the same sexual abuse scandal that has haunted the Church for over 20 years.
It has come to light, in the ongoing investigations and litigations of sexual abuses by Irish clergy, that the Irish bishops took part in a cover-up of the abusers specifically because of instructions from the Vatican contained in a 1997 letter, made public this week.
The Pope in 1997 was the widely popular and beloved John Paul II, who is currently being fast-tracked by the current pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, for sainthood.
Some Catholics are calling for a halt to that process, at least until all the information is made public about what role John Paul II played, not only in the letter to the Irish clergy, but in other cover-ups of predatory priests around the world.
It is clear to an objective bystander that John Paul II was the leader of the Vatican's cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy, said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org. The facts that have come to light should absolutely delay the current effort to canonize him.
Facing a growing scandal over sexual abuse by Irish priests, the leaders of the Irish Catholic Church in 1996 put together a protocol for handling the crisis, which included instructions to bishops to cooperate with law enforcement regarding suspected predator priests.
But in 1997, the Irish bishops received a letter from the Congregation for the Clergy - in other words, the Roman Curia which is, together with the Pope, the governing body of the Catholic Church.
The letter, stamped Strictly confidential, remained so until an Irish bishop handed a copy to a reporter earlier this week.
The letter referred to the Irish bishops' document and said it contains procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems.
Advocacy groups for victims of sexual abuse by clergy immediately called the letter a smoking gun, revealing that Vatican denials over the years that it never instructed bishops to cover up were false.
Church officials and supporters at once responded that the letter was in no way telling Irish bishops not to cooperate with civil authorities.
Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S. lawyer, said the letter had been deeply misunderstood by the media. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Holy See sent the letter because it wanted to make certain that pedophile priests would not escape punishment by the Church due to a technicality of a bishop or priest breaking the confidentiality of the confessional.
But victims groups pointed out that the vast majority of sexual abuse cases did not involve the confessional. Other priests, bishops and civilian authorities almost always learned of sexual abuse incidents outside the confessional from the victims or the victims' parents. Irish bishops have also told civilian authorities that the letter from the Vatican caused them to stop cooperating with civil investigations.
When you are familiar, as I am, with how the Vatican words things, there is no doubt what the letter meant. It basically says, 'Don't turn these priests in,' said Thomas Doyle, a Roman Catholic priest and no relation to Anne Barrett Doyle.
Doyle has been a priest for 40 years and for the last 27 years has been working on the sexual abuse and cover-up issues. He warned high-ranking Church officials in 1985 of the enormity of the problem and the consequences of not addressing it. He was ignored.
When the sexual abuse scandal started coming to the surface in 1985 in a case in Louisiana, the Vatican was alerted, Doyle said. I know because I saw the letters. The Vatican did nothing.
Doyle said the pattern was repeated for the next decade and beyond.
The Pope received notices from bishops and others of the situation, of the abuses and the cover-ups, and he did not respond. He did not even acknowledge the letters, Doyle said.
Doyle said that Pope John Paul II stopped the Vatican investigation into the actions of Marcial Maciel, the Mexican priest who founded the Legion of Christ and has been proven to be a bigamist and a dope fiend, as well as a pederast who sexually abused over 100 young seminarians.
Barrett Doyle from BishopAccountability.org said it has also been shown that John Paul II covered up for Hans Groer, the notorious Cardinal of Vienna who eventually was removed from his post for numerous cases of pedophilia.
In 2010, the current Cardinal of Vienna, Christoph Schoenborn, told an Austrian television station that Pope Benedict XVI, in 1995, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger and an advisor to Pope John Paul, wanted a full investigation of Groer. But Curia officials persuaded John Paul II that the case was exaggerated and an inquiry would only cause bad publicity.
Schoenborn said Ratzinger told him that the other side won, regarding a probe of Groer.
In 1998, Groer was removed from his position, as his egregious behavior became an embarrassment for the Church.
Schoenborn, in 2010, accused the former Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of blocking the church investigation into Groer's activities. Pope Benedict XVI then publicly chastised Schoenborn for publicly criticizing a church official.
John Paul knew precisely what was going on and did not address it, Thomas Doyle said. When the matter came up publicly, he blamed secularism, he blamed the media, he blamed the priests. But he never blamed the bishops or the Vatican. And now they want to make him a saint.
Thomas Doyle has paid a price for being a whistleblower within the Church.
I'm ostracized. My career in the Catholic Church is long dead. But I would rather do what's right,' he said.
Bill Donahue, president of the New York City-based Catholic League, and a well-known defender of the Church, admitted that the sexual abuse scandal is a blot on John Paul II's tenure.
The scandal did not start on his watch, Donahue said, citing a study that said most of the sexual abuse by clergy incidents occurred between 1965 and 1985.
The Church was a moral failure during those years, Donahue said. And there is no question that Pope Benedict has done a better job in dealing with the crisis than John Paul.
But while describing John Paul's actions regarding the scandal as not his proudest moment, Donahue did not think John Paul II's bad marks on that issue sufficient to block his course to sainthood.
His achievements far outweigh his failures, Donahue said. And the momentum is there to make him a saint.
When asked if he would vote for John Paul II's canonization, Donahue begged off, saying he was only a layman.
I will leave it to the Vatican to make that decision, he said.
Barrett Doyle, on the other hand, was willing to weigh in. Noting that, for sainthood, the Church requires that at least two miracles be attributed to the candidate, she said:
The second miracle for John Paul II's canonization should be the purification of the Church, and to accomplish that miracle they would have to voluntarily disclose all they know about sexual abuse by the clergy, all the documents, all the names of the abusers and all the bishops and other involved in covering up. That would truly be a miracle and it would clearly show that John Paul II was the leading architect of the cover up, Barrett Doyle said.Top 10 Best Camping Tents Review and Buying Guide
One of the most things a camper, fisherman, and hunter needs is a good tent to protect themselves from the elements. You want the best camping tent available and one that fits your budget. It must also be big enough for the number of people in your camping party.
Today, we have found for you 10 of the best review for each one pointing out their features for you. We will also offer some considerations of our own that will make easier for you to get a tent, which will last and be around for many camping seasons to come.
Camping is a great activity and it can be even better if you have the right tent to makes things comfortable and safe for you and your family.
Best Camping Tents – Comparison Chart
Things to Consider Before You Buy Your Best Camping Tent
Before you go out and buy a new tent, you need to keep a few things in mind before you slap down your credit card or click on the buy button on Amazon.
Sleeping Capacity
How many people do you expect to fit into the tent that you are buying? Tents are notorious for being understated when it comes to the number of people it can shelter. The way most tent makers measure the capacity is to lie people down next to each other.
Material
Try to get a tent made for 3 seasons. These tents are made of tough Polyester and therefore more durable and have thicker shells. You also want to have UV protection as well.
Ventilation
Make sure the tent you buy has adequate ventilation with and without the weather cover in place. You want to be dry, true. However, you also want to be able to be cool and not suffocate in the process.
Zippers
These are the highest failure item on any tent out there today. For some reason people get them tangled, cross-toothed, and the tabs broken off with a regularity that is frustrating and can ruin a tent that has cost you a pretty chunk of change and was expected to last for years. So, check the reviews that focus on any zipper problems.
Weight and Packed Size
The best tents are weighing less and less. Good ones even have the instructions for setup sew into them on the carry bag for you so you wouldn’t lose them. Lay the tent out first and learn to fold and pack it away the same way that it came out of the carrying case.
Use your cell phone to take pictures if necessary. Many a tent are ruined by not folding them properly or stowing them away in the bag or losing a critical piece that holds the whole shebang together. Your tent should pack down to an easily manageable size to fit in your vehicle.
Height & Ease of Setting Up
The reviewer has been putting up tents for years from the days of the pup tents to tents that rival a split-level with multiple bedrooms. Always get a tent that goes up easy and comes down easy.
However, be sure it has enough headroom so you don’t get a crick in your back when you step inside. Try it in the backyard first and make sure you are comfortable moving around inside and learn how to set it up by heart.
Waterproofing
With tents of all sizes, the seams and the weather cover are the weakest links when it comes to dryness and comfort. Set up the tent in your yard and spray the tent down to ensure you have a watertight structure before you take it out into the wild and wake up in the woods floating in a flooded tent.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s take a look at our 10 tents.
Best Camping Tents Review
The Wenzel Klondike tent is unique as some tents go. It offers you first, a cabin compartment, which can sleep 5 easily. This is what you expect from an outdoor tent of this type.
Next, it gives you a completely enclosed sunroom/vestibule that doubles as a sleeping area as well. It also has the following features as well.
It adds to the basics with an add-on sunroom or vestibule, which is open on the sides and you can get the most sunlight possible during spring and summer. When it is time to sleep, it seals up into a second sleeping area that will house three additional campers.
Don’t worry, when the weather turns ugly. Flaps seal the sunroom and it becomes as secure and rainproof as the rest of the tent. This gives you the perfect environment to not only enjoy the outdoors but also have a secure place for when the weather turns cloudy and the rain begins to fall.
You don’t have to be concerned with rainwater dousing your feet or seeping inside. Welded polyethylene makes up the flooring and the bathtub floor design creates a raised lip around the perimeter of the 98 Sq feet of the main compartment with and addition 60 sq feet in the add-on sunroom as well.
This creates the perfect atmosphere for camping or if you are a photographer, writer, and painter who wants to have a retreat from the mundane world to practice your life’s work or hobbies.
The Klondike also makes an excellent addition to your home should sudden guests drop in to visit or as an office or workroom where you can have the peace and quiet you need to get your work for business or gardening work done.
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Pros
Beautiful sunroom for the kids to play in.
The tent almost sets itself up.
We sleep in the main part and stack our gear in the screened-in room where we sit and take in the night air, this is living.
Even when it rains we are snug and dry.
Cons
With so much room it’s hard to heat with only two people inside.
This is not a tent for high winds without extra tie downs.
Coleman is a name known all across America as the experts for the camper and people who love outdoor living.
Their 8-person Red Canyon tent is just another example of their innovation and attention to the campers needs.
First, you have a tent that sleeps 8 with all their gear snug and dry in one main room with two smaller adjacent sleeping areas.
It has a weather cover that protects you from the elements. When this is removed, you have an open and airy place from which to enjoy the forests, lakes, and beaches all over the US.
This is a tent that sleeps 8 with all their gear snug and dry in one main room with two smaller adjacent sleeping areas. For when it starts to get cool or drops fall from the sky, it has a weather cover that protects you from the elements. When this is removed, you have an open and airy place from which to enjoy the forests, lakes, and beaches all over the US.
When it gets hot, you can adjust the amount of Airflow with the vented windows that allow clean air in where you want a cool breeze during warm weather. When you get to the campground, set up is simple and fast.
The dome design makes this tent a snap to pop up for even one person to assemble. When it is up and ready for occupancy you can then decide whether to seal off portions or leave everything open so everyone can mingle and enjoy each other company.
To make things even better Coleman’s WeatherTec System then ensures you a have an outdoor tent that gives you a comfortable night’s rest in a dry and snug environment that protects you as if you are sleeping in your home.
When you need a special tent for that one of a kind outing, the Red Canyon tent has it all. It sleeps 8, has good airflow, and keeps you safe from the elements. What else do you want from your camping tent? Except that it sets itself up and this tent almost does just that as well.
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Pros
Rain Fly overhangs to keep water out.
No Zipper problems.
Good sized even with dog and kids included.
I got it for Christmas one year and we’ve been using it for two years and no problems.
Cons
Be careful with the zippers as they can jump the track if you don’t.
The clip system can bite you if you don’t pay attention and I got the bandage to prove it.
Get the perfectly sized tent that is made for camping hunting or any other outdoor activity you can imagine. Room dividers give you two large family quarters so two families can save by going on an outing or hunting trip together.
If You like, you can also put the kids in their own room and have privacy for the adults. As for holding up to heavy use, rugged 2000mm thick floor covering and a UV resistant shell protects you from the sun above and the wet ground below when it rains.
Speaking of rain when the sky grows dark and the drops begin to fall an all-enveloping weather shield goes up and when the weather is sunny doubles as a canopy if you bring an extra set of poles. This provides a shaded area for you to sit or the kids to play under.
To make getting in and out of the tent, there are two doors that have extra-large and easy to use zippers on mesh doors and windows that keep out flying insects. These flying and creeping bugs can spoil your vacation or holiday camping trip by biting or with their annoying buzzing about.
When the fun is over you can be packed up and ready to roll quickly and easily. Weighing less than 35 lbs, it packs into a convenient bundle that fits into an SUV or the trunk of your car.
When you want to get out under the blue sky, you can do it in style and comfort with a tent made for adventure and rugged use.
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Pros
Lots of Headroom, I am 6’1″, my husband is taller, and we had no problems.
The tent is spacious.
Customer service is outstanding.
This tent will stand up to anything.
Cons
Wish the floor were thicker. However, I lay down a tarp always so it isn’t a problem.
It leaked under a torrential hailstorm.
The service people said that shouldn’t have happened and they sent me a new shell ASAP.
If you want a tent for two couple to go out and have a good time in the wild this is the one. Twin doors with their associated vestibules and with the weather cover off, the sky is visible and you have all the light you could want.
You have a raised lip around the doors and walls that if the weather turns dark and cloudy and you are in for a deluge you merely have to batten down and let the water flow around you and not a drop will come in from below, the sides, and the top.
When you want to change camping areas, you also have a backpackable sized bundle that weighs around 8 lbs. You then can go up the side of a mountain to the top, camp above the world where a star filled sky awaits you at nightfall, and clean cool mountain air greets you in the morning’s dawn.
Don’t worry about this tent lasting the season either, it’s made from rugged materials it will withstand the sun’s UV, the wind, and the rain.
Let your next outing have a tent along that provides shelter, comfort, and is light enough to go wherever you desire and at an economical cost as well.
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Pros
Full weather fly coverage.
Well-made and sturdy for a freestanding tent.
20-30 MPH winds do not bother my Lynx in the slightest bit.
It poured down rain on the 4th and not a drop got inside
Cons
Good for the car but don’t think it is great for a hiker or a backpacker.
Poles broke the first trip out. Had to get them replaced.
Having an outdoor tent that is built for three seasons makes for a great family tent, but then enlarge it to handle 14 people and their stuff, you have just graduated to the cabin class that can replace a hotel room with ease and sets up in places where you can’t find one.
You set this tent near a lake or beach where you are planning to spend your outing. You can get 2 to 3 entire families under its roof or a fishing/hunting party in a tent that sets up in under 30 minutes. From there you can see all of Mother Nature while sitting inside the tent.
Windows galore let in the in the sun and air. Its massive size lets everyone have enough room without crowding, even when you take a cot or Queen-sized mattress into consideration. Don’t worry about the floor as it is tough as nails and as for headroom, you have 7 feet of it to walk around under.
This makes long-term living outdoors possible. In fact, if you did not know better you would think you were in a POD house and you would be able to live out of it for months at a time.
And that is what many do when their normal home is being renovated, having a new home built on that retirement property or in case unforeseen events render the home they live in ordinarily unlivable while, repairs are being made.
This is also the perfect mobile office or base camp for any hobbyist or writer who wants to get away from the ordinary world to enjoy privacy and comfort anywhere they want.
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Pros
Many windows with a large view of the outside.
Live in it just like a cabin.
Tent zips up tight and they seem sturdy after 24 camp-outs so far.
I’m over 6 feet tall and I can stand up easily inside and there plenty of room for the family and the pups.
Cons
Short canopy means you can’t keep the windows open in the rain.
No inner storage pockets.
Here is an outdoor tent that has all the amenities of home and it is roomy and sets up quick and easy. When the makers of this tent say instant, they aren’t kidding. Once you unpack this 6-person tent, you have you a dry and protected environment in just seconds. 6 ft in height, you can walk around without squatting.
You have a port to pipe in power for lighting and electronics. In addition to all, that you have a loft and places to hang you gear to get it all squared away and you can enjoy the outdoors by not stumbling over stuff or not being able to find your gear when you need.
When you get to you campsite, it pops out of the ground like Jack’s fabled beans that grew a beanstalk into the sky. However, that’s where the similarity ends, however, in your case; you get something more practical with a shelter that is rainproof and wind resistant as well.
It also has the headroom to make it comfortable to live in with its 6 ft of headroom height; you can walk around without squatting. You have a port to pipe in power for lighting and electronics.
In addition to all, that you have a loft and places to hang you gear to get it all squared away and you can enjoy the outdoors by not stumbling over stuff or not being able to find your gear when you need. When you want to get out in the wilds in style you now have a tent that is made for families, fisher folk, and hunters.
With it, you have a mini-home out in the wild and the only thing lacking is running water. You especially would not be worried about rain and sudden flooding. The seams are hermetically sealed and you do not even have to use weather seal on them as they are rugged and the entire tent is watertight in the rain.
A great tent for going to the forest or the mountains as it packs compact enough to fit into almost any vehicle with ease.
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Pros
Sets up almost instantly.
The roof loft and side pockets let me store the things I need to find quickly.
Enough room for a queen sized mattress and plenty of head room as well
Durable and stands up against the wind
Cons
Take care when zipping things as they are not as heavy duty as they should be.
It arrived packed improperly and tore on the first assembly. Amazon replaced it with a new one and it set up fine.
In addition to all, that you have a loft and places to hang you gear to get it all squared away and you can enjoy the outdoors by not stumbling over stuff or not being able to find your gear when you need. When you want to get out in the wilds in style you now have a tent that is made for families, fisher folk, and hunters.
You have wonderful headroom to go along with that and it all divides into 3 rooms, one large central pavilion, and two smaller antechambers. With this much room, you can throw 2 to 3 queen-size air mattresses inside and some smaller ones for the kids. You even have room for the family dog as well.
This tent is easy to get in and out of as well. The main entrance is shaped like a giant D, it is zippered, and has its own rain flap for when the weather turns. The tent itself is protected from the elements as well. A weather fly that also provides a vestibule at the main door protects the entire tent.
With this tent, it’s just like living in a small apartment or a POD living arrangement that lets you set up housekeeping for days, weeks, and even months if you so desire. This is the tent you want for that long holiday summer at the lakefront property you have earmarked for your retirement or any other venue you choose.
You can now hit the wild outdoors in style and bring all your friends along as well. You have an unmatched view with six windows that seal up watertight at the first hint of rain. Yet you can still keep airflow going while staying dry and comfortable.
Others may get drenched during a thunderstorm. You will be snug and dry as a baby in their crib.
You now have the right sized tent with the right features that make camping comfortable, dry, and fun as well.
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Pros
We put in 3 queens and still have room for a cot as well
Room for the kids and we have extra space for all our stuff as well
Used this tent for 3 years now and expect to use it for 3 more
Super easy to set up and pack it for going home.
Cons
Make sure you get the tent you see. Count the doors when you unpack it.
Tree limb fell and tore the side. Amazon replaced the whole tent with no questions asked.
One of the complaints people have about camping in an outdoor tent is how hard it is to set up their tent. Well, Coleman has heard your pleas and the Sundome 4 person tent is the answer.
Biting insects have spoiled many a beautiful starlit night, but not with your Sundome.
With its heavy-duty flooring and its weather cover, you are virtually impervious to the wind and rain, things that spoil an outing faster than anything. You don’t have to worry about things that can ruin a holiday either.
You can set it up anywhere where the fun and excitement is. This is the tent made for fun as you have a place to store your family’s gear and |
avionics, aerospace systems, and metal beverage and food containers. Renamed the Ball Corporation in 1969, it acquired Jeffco Manufacturing Company, a maker of recyclable aluminum beverage cans, and became the largest producer of recyclable beverage cans in the world.[33][34][35] Although glass production in Muncie ceased in 1962, it continued at other Ball plants until its final glass manufacturing operations were sold in 1996.[29]
Ball Corporation's stock went public on July 13, 1972.[citation needed] It became a publicly traded stock company on the New York Stock Exchange in 1973.[29] The stock began trading at $26 per share on the NYSE on December 17, 1973, using the trading symbol BLL.[citation needed]
Ball no longer produces its glass canning jars. In the early 1990s Ball exited the home-canning business, when it established a subsidiary named Alltrista, which consisted of seven smaller Ball subsidiaries that included the Ball jar and other canning-related products. When Altrista Corporation became a separate company in April 1993, Ball shareholders received one share of Alltrista stock for every four shares of Ball stock. Altrista was renamed Jarden Corporation in 2001. Jarden retains the license to use the Ball registered trademark on its line of home-canning products, a part of Jarden's branded consumables business.[29][36] (Jarden produces lids for several brands of fruit jars at its Muncie plant and its jars are made by a variety of glass producers.[citation needed])
In 1998 the Ball Corporation moved its corporate headquarters from Muncie to Broomfield, Colorado, where its oversees global operations as a manufacturer of plastic and metal food and beverage containers, as well as a manufacturer of equipment and supplier of services to the aerospace industry.[1][29]
Company milestones [ edit ]
1880, Frank and Edmund Ball acquired the Wood Jacket Can Company, the predecessor to the Ball Corporation, in Buffalo, New York [4]
1886, incorporated as Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company [13]
1887, a new glass factory was built in Muncie, Indiana; metal manufacturing operations continued at Buffalo and Bath, New York [4]
1889, the company's metal fittings operations were moved to Muncie [4]
1897, F. C. Ball Machine, the world's first semiautomatic glass machine, was invented (U.S. patent number 610515, issued in 1898) [37] [38]
1909, The Correct Method for Preserving Fruit, predecessor to The Ball Blue Book was published; it featured home-canning recipes and techniques. [39]
, predecessor to was published; it featured home-canning recipes and techniques. 1922, name changed to Ball Brothers Company [4]
1945, fire causes $500,000 in damages to Ball's glass plant number one in Muncie [40]
1956, Ball formed Ball Brothers Research Corporation to produce goods and services for the aerospace sector. [41] This was converted to a wholly owned subsidiary, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in 1995.
This was converted to a wholly owned subsidiary, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in 1995. 1961, Ball purchased Industrial Rubber of St. Joseph, MI. which was later sold to Chardon Rubber in 1978. [42]
1962, Ball's Muncie glass plant is closed [29]
1969, company name is changed to the Ball Corporation [22]
1973, Ball became a publicly traded stock listed on New York Stock Exchange [29]
1993, Alltrista, a Ball subsidiary, was spun off into a separate corporation. Renamed the Jarden Corporation in 2001, it uses of the Ball registered trademark on its line of home-canning products. [36]
1994, Ball began manufacturing PET plastic containers.
1995, Ball created Ball-Foster Glass Container Co., a joint venture glass company with Saint-Gobain. [43]
1996, Ball exited the glass business, selling its interests in Ball-Foster to Saint-Gobain. [44]
1998, corporate headquarters relocated from Muncie, Indiana, to Broomfield, Colorado [29]
2002, Ball acquired Schmalbach-Lubeca AG, the German-based metal beverage container company, and created Ball Packaging Europe.
2005, Ball celebrated its 125th anniversary.
2006, Ball acquired U.S. Can, Inc., the largest U.S. manufacturer of aerosol cans.
2008, Ball Corporation issued its first sustainability report. [45]
2010, Ball acquired Aerocan S.A.S., makers of aluminum aerosol cans and bottles, for $292 million. [46]
2016, Ball acquired Rexam, a UK-based packaging company[47]
Major subsidiaries [ edit ]
Environmental record [ edit ]
The Ball Corporation has made improvements to its environmental record since 2006, when the company began its first formal sustainability efforts.[48] In 2008 the Ball Corporation issued its first sustainability report and began releases subsequent sustainability reports on its website.[45] The first report was an ACCA-Ceres North American Sustainability Awards cowinner of the Best First Time Reporter award in 2009.[49][citation needed]
In the Toxic 100 list for 2004, using data from 2002, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) identified the Ball Corporation as the 59th-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with an estimated 4.57 million pounds of toxic air released annually.[50] The PERI report for 2008, using data from 2005, ranked the Ball Corporation 54th on its Toxic 100 list; PERI's report for 2010, using data from 2006, ranked it 65th.[51] The PERI studies indicated major pollutants included glycol ethers and 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene.[52]
The PERI Toxic 100 Air Polluters list for 2013 ranked the Ball Corporation as 619 in its list of companies producing the most air pollution in the United States.[53] In 2015 Newsweek ranked the Ball Corporation as 70th in their "Green 2015" report, which reviewed the environmental performances of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the United States.[54][55][56]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Check out the first movie poster for Paranormal Activity 2.
Paranormal Activity 2 Poster
Paramount Pictures will debut Paranormal Activity 2 for the fans that “Demand” to see it first. The Demand it! campaign launches at midnight tonight, and the first 20 cities with the highest “demands” for the movie will be invited to attend a free screening on Wednesday, October 20th at 11:59 pm, before the film’s nationwide release.
“The support of the online community was phenomenal on the first film. We want to reward them for that support by offering them the chance to see it first,”
said Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures.
Dread Central is calling Paranormal Activity 2
“The most anticipated horror event of the year,”
and Bloody Disgusting states,
“If the first one gave you nightmares, Paranormal Activity 2 looks to induce night terrors!”
“What is unique and exciting about Paranormal Activity is the depth of commitment from fans who ‘demanded’ to see it.”
said Adam Goodman, President of Paramount Film Group.
To “demand” Paranormal Activity 2 visit the official Paranormal Movie website!
The Demand it! campaign is available to U.S. and Canadian residents aged 17 and older ends at 11:59 pm on Wednesday, October 13th. The top 20 cities will be announced on Friday, October 15th. No purchase necessary.
Follow Paranormal Activity 2 on Twitter (@TweetYourScream) for audience reactions and important announcements.
Paranormal Activity 2 is produced by Jason Blum and Oren Peli with story by Michael R. Perry and screenplay by Michael R. Perry and Christopher B. Landon, and directed by Tod Williams.
Paranormal Activity 2 comes to theaters October 22nd, 2010.WASHINGTON — President Obama this week will seek to force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated.
On Thursday, the president will direct the Labor Department to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million additional fast-food managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others whom many businesses currently classify as “executive or professional” employees to avoid paying them overtime, according to White House officials briefed on the announcement.
Mr. Obama’s decision to use his executive authority to change the nation’s overtime rules is likely to be seen as a challenge to Republicans in Congress, who have already blocked most of the president’s economic agenda and have said they intend to fight his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25.
Mr. Obama’s action is certain to anger the business lobby in Washington, which has long fought for maximum flexibility for companies in paying overtime.Sure, he wears red white and blue on the outside, but on the inside? It turns out Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, supports the evil, former Nazi organization, Hydra.
Marvel comics introduced the shocking twist Wednesday morning when Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 went on sale — and it turns out there have been hints that this was coming for a long time. TIME spoke with Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort about the decision, the clues and why Hydra’s rhetoric sounds an awful lot like that of a certain presidential candidate.
TIME: How did Marvel decide to make Steve Rogers a secret Hydra operative?
Tom Brevoort: Nick Spencer, who is the writer of the series, pitched us the story as part and parcel of restoring Steve to his youth and vigor. In the comics, he’s been old for awhile. The super soldier serum that was keeping him young had been broken down, so for the 75th anniversary, Nick had this notion that we were going to restore him. But then we went into this other story about Hydra, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
If readers go back and look at older comics, will this hold up?
It will. Issue 2 kind of winds the clock back a little bit and lays out exactly how and why things are the way they are. And it lays out a roadmap for where things are headed in the future. At this point, I don’t want to say too much definitively because I want people to read the comic books. But people will be able to connect the dots and follow the trail of breadcrumbs.
How long has this been in the works?
Almost since the beginning of when Nick started writing the Captain America titles, which would have been the end of 2014. So right around there the conversations first started about this. It’s been in the works for more than a year.
What does this mean for the Marvel Universe?
It means on the most fundamental level that the most trusted hero in the Marvel universe is now secretly a deep-cover Hydra operative, a fact that’s really only known to the readers and to him. That makes every interaction he has with anyone take on a second layer, a second meaning.
In the comic the Red Skull of Hydra talks about “criminal trespassers” who “make a mockery” of America’s borders and calls the refugees in Germany an “invading army” bringing “fanatical beliefs and crime” to Europe. Obviously, this hate speech is nothing new for the organization, but it sounds like rhetoric we’ve been hearing this election. Is that purposeful?
We try to write comics in 2016 that are about the world and the zeitgeist of 2016, particularly in Captain America. Nick Spencer, the writer, is very politically active. He’s a Capitol Hill head and following this election very closely. So we can talk about political issues in a metaphoric way. That’s what gives our stories weight and meat to them. Any parallels you have seen to situations real or imagined, living or dead, is probably intentional but metaphorically not literally.
What are we supposed to think about the fact that someone literally named Captain America now supports these beliefs?
Again, I don’t want to say anything too definitively because we’re laying out the story. But we want to push that button. There should be a feeling of horror or unsettledness at the idea that somebody like this can secretly be part of this organization. There are perfectly normal people in the world who you would interact with on a professional level or personal level, and they seem like the salt of the earth but then it turns out they have some horrible secret — whether it’s that they don’t like a certain group of people or have bodies buried in their basement.
You should feel uneasy about the fact that everything you know and love about Steve Rogers can be upended.
To ask the blunt question, is this a gimmick?
Every single month whether it’s a run of the mill month for Captain America or an extraordinary month, our job is to put him in situations that place that character under some degree of pressure and see how he reacts to that. And hopefully our readers are surprised, shocked, elated, see something of themselves, learn something about themselves. To say it’s a gimmick implies that it’s done heedlessly just to shock. The proof is always going to be in the execution. So you’ll have to read the rest of the story to see.
But I certainly believe it’s not a gimmick. It’s a story that we spent a long time on, that’s compelling and captures the zeitgeist of the world. It will make readers wonder how the heck we’ll get out of this.By Dan Gilgoff and Dan Merica, CNN
(CNN) - The annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is the world's largest gathering of Muslims - the biggest annual gathering of humanity, period.
So it's no surprise that Middle East experts expect this year's pilgrimage, the first to happen since the Arab Spring began last year, to be different.
The pilgrimage, called the Hajj, happens in the same global neighborhood as countries that have been roiled by protests, revolutions and war over the last 11 months.
But there's uncertainty about exactly how this Hajj, which officially begins Friday, will be different.
Some experts are watching for potential flare-ups in Saudi Arabia, a country governed by an unelected royal family and where freedoms are limited. They note that ordinary Saudis will be rubbing shoulders with Arabs making pilgrimages from countries that have staged anti-government demonstrations and have unseated long-entrenched regimes.
"This idea of freedom and dignity is spreading like wildfire, and at a gathering like the Hajj it's conceivable that the electricity coming from these ideas will be picked up," says Akbar Ahmed, the chair of Islamic Studies at American University. "This is what scares the Saudi bureaucracy."
"There are thousands of pilgrims who want to topple the established order of the Saudi monarchy," he says.
But Ahmed and others say the Hajj's effects on the Arab Spring are just as likely to be much broader, as many pilgrims share notes on uprisings and overthrows before returning home to countries ruled by despots.
"This is a venue where you can come into contact with hundreds of thousands of people, so for people who are coming from these newly liberated lands, it is a bit much to ask to say absolutely nothing about it," says Kelly Pemberton, an assistant professor at The George Washington University who studies Islamic reform movements.
"Many people are going to see this (Arab Spring) as a sign of God's favor," she says.
At the same time, experts on the region note that the Hajj is a solemn religious event that is physically and spiritually demanding and that affords little time for politicking, raising doubts in some scholars' minds about the magnitude of a Hajj effect on the Arab Spring.
The Saudis haven't announced special security measures for this year's Hajj.
But the event, which draws roughly 2.5 million pilgrims, has long been managed with military precision, and scholars say the government there has been preparing for months for its first Arab Spring-era Hajj.
"They'll be on guard for a flashpoint moment or a riot, something that flares up and becomes something," says Ahmed, referring to Saudi security forces. "In Tunisia, one man set himself on fire and three months later the Egyptian president is toppled."
There has been political violence during the Hajj in the past, most notably in the 1980s, on the heels of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini's followers attempted to disrupt the pilgrimage throughout the '80s, though their plots were repeatedly quashed by Saudi security forces.
In 1987, however, Iranian pilgrims incited a riot that killed more than 400 people, according to globalsecuity.org, a stark illustration of the rift between Shiite-ruled Iran and Sunni dominated Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has not seen the kind of protests now roiling countries like Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, but people there lack many basic freedoms. Political participation is limited.
The Saudi government has been politically sensitive to its people since the outset of the Arab Spring, spending billions on domestic programs aimed at improving the lot of its citizenry.
And scholars say that Saudi Arabia has supported anti-government forces in some Arab countries, including rebels in Libya and protestors in Syria.
"I can't image anybody is going to show up in Mecca denouncing the royal family," says Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan. "A lot of people going to Hajj will be connected with the (Egypt-based) Muslim Brotherhood, which has longstanding good relations with the Saudis."
Some experts speculate that Saudi Arabia, which tightly controls the numbers of pilgrims allowed to attend Hajj from each country, is reducing its quotas from certain politically unstable countries to curb the influence of would-be revolutionaries.
The U.S. embassies in Egypt and Tunisia, two countries that have seen their governments overthrown this year, did not immediately reply to requests Thursday for statistics on slots for pilgrims granted by Saudi Arabia.
Some scholars say the governments of other Arab countries are likely to be reducing the number of pilgrims allowed to attend Hajj in Saudi Arabia this year.
"The leaders of Syria, Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia are somewhat worried about the Hajj providing a forum for people to trade ideas and strategies and coming home to pick up protests and really find the momentum to get things going," says Pemberton of George Washington University.
Since late last year, some Muslim religious happenings in the Arab world have become forums for anti-government activity.
In Egypt, Friday afternoon prayers - the most significant prayers of the week for Muslims - served as catalysts for the biggest anti-government demonstrations of the revolution.
When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in Egypt, the announcement came on a Friday, hours after Egypt's Muslims had observed afternoon prayers.
In Libya, rebels reached a turning point in a six-month old civil during Ramadan of this year, when evening prayers at mosques helped ordinary people organize against Moammar Gadhafi's regime.
With Gadhafi dead, more Libyans may get to attend this year's Hajj than in years past. Other post-revolution Arab countries may send a more diverse mix of pilgrims.
"The biggest effect is the allocation of Hajj visas," said Asim Khwaja, a Harvard University professor specializing in international development. "Some countries did a lottery, some did rationing, and with the government changes, if countries were doing rationing in the past, you can imagine they were sending friends and officials."
"Now there may be a more egalitarian mix," Khwaja says. "This will be a more democratic Hajj for the Arab world."Share this: Reddit
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The general conception is that if you intake more Vitamin D, you will have a better nutrition. But a new research shows that excessive intake of Vitamin D can at a tender age can lead to various health conditions, including hearing issues, diabetes and Obesity. The risks are graver for the teenagers who are on a regular diet of Vitamin D capsules.
According to the study by researchers at Mayo Clinic Children’s Center, Vitamin D supplements in adolescents can have lots of negative impact compared to the benefits they pose. The study gives a clear indication towards increased risk of Cholesterol at a very tender age as well.
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Dr. Seema Kumar, a pediatric endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic Children’s Center stated that boosting the Vitamin D into the systems of the young ones does not have an added advantage, instead can lead to various issues. Dr. Kumar did not directly say that Vitamin D has any harmful effects, but made a point by saying that over done might just be harmful.
According to the statistics, 1 out of every 5 kids in the United States is suffering from obesity. More than one third of the kids is suffering from overweight to a certain level. Studies have revealed that Vitamin D deficiency can lead to a variety of health related issues. Thus, the general conception amongst the parents is to put on a Vitamin D supplement in the diet for their kids.
Dr. Kumar has clearly stated that although taking Vitamin D supplements is a good thing, but taking it above normal levels does not yield anything better. The most common issues due to overdose of Vitamin D include nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, etc.. The advice would be to determine the amount of Vitamin D your kids need and administering only that much.
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Prince overdosed on Percocet he was taking for a chronic hip problem he had been suffering for years, sources have claimed.
The pop superstar died yesterday aged 57 and is said to have overdosed on the highly addictive painkiller six days earlier, TMZ reported.
Prince had used a cane to help him walk for years after causing irreparable damage to his hips with his lively stage performances.
He had long needed a double hip replacement, but was rumored to have turned down surgery because it could require a blood transfusion - which may have conflicted with his religious beliefs. Some types of blood transfusions go against the Jehovah's Witnesses faith.
The Purple Rain star took so many Percocet pills that he had to be given a'save shot' after his private plane made an emergency landing so he could be rushed to hospital last Friday, sources close to the star claimed.
Meanwhile, a source told People that Prince had been battling an 'ongoing illness'.
'The people close to him were very concerned for his health and indicated he'd been undergoing treatments which made his immune system weak,' the source said.
Entertainment Tonight's Kevin Frazier told CBS that Prince did have surgery on his hips but was still struggling with pain, as well as having issues with his ankles.
'The hip and ankle issues were a problem for him for so long, and for a man who loved to move and dance so much, it really bothered him,' Frazier said.
Prince's autopsy went ahead as planned today and his body will be handed over to his family later today.
Last night pictures emerged of Prince walking out of a Walgreens pharmacy just 15 hours before he was pronounced dead. It is not known whether he was picking up Percocet or any other prescription.
Prince's private plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, on Friday after he performed in Atlanta so he could be rushed to hospital.
His plane descended 45,000ft in just 17 minutes after an 'unresponsive male' was reported on board the plane, a source told NBC News, and the fire department and paramedics were alerted of the incoming medical incident.
Though his representatives said he was battling the flu, multiple sources told TMZ that doctors gave him a'save shot', which is usually given in dire circumstances to drug overdose victims.
The sources said doctors advised Prince to stay at the hospital for 24 hours, but when he wasn't given a private room, he and his representatives decided to leave. When he left the hospital, Prince 'was not doing well', the sources added.
He was released three hours later and made an appearance at a party in Minnesota the next day, telling fans to 'wait a few days before you waste any prayers'.
Prince was then found unresponsive in the elevator at his suburban Paisley Park estate in Minnesota at 9.43am EST on Thursday and was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later.
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Prince was seen walking out of a Walgreens pharmacy near his Minnesota estate just 15 hours before he was pronounced dead on Thursday. It is claimed that he overdosed on Percocet painkillers just six days before his death
Prince (pictured in 1985) died aged 57 at his estate in Minnesota, just days after he was rushed to hospital from his private plane with severe flu
Mourners and television crews are seen gathered outside Prince's Paisley Park compound on the outskirts of Minnesota on Friday
WHAT IS PERCOCET? HIGHLY-ADDICTIVE OPIATE DRUG THAT PRINCE MAY HAVE OVERDOSED ON BEFORE HIS DEATH Percocet is a combination of acetaminophen and oxycodone and is used to treat acute pain, often for those with joint problems. The opiate drug is highly addictive and is usually not prescribed to people who have a history of drug addiction. Side effects of Percocet include seizures. Prince had epilepsy as a child and suffered seizures, although he later claimed he no longer had the condition after being healed by an angel. Overdose can cause vomiting, stomach pain, confusion, and yellowing of the skin. As the overdose progresses, users start to feel faint, their heart rate slows and they can eventually stop breathing and fall into a coma. Actor Heath Ledger, who died following a prescription drug overdose in 2008, had oxycodone in his system and had also taken a lethal cocktail of other substances. Soul singer Gerald Levert also had Percocet in his blood stream when he died of an overdose in 2006. He also had Vicodin in his system. Prince's autopsy took place today, but the results will not likely be known for weeks. 'The Chief Medical Examiner for Midwest Medical Examiners Office, on behalf of Carver County Sheriff's Office, has performed the autopsy on Prince Rogers Nelson,' a spokesman for the examiner said. 'The autopsy began at 9am CDT and was completed by Dr A Quinn Strobl at 1pm local time. The body will be released to family later today. 'As part of a complete exam, relevant information regarding Mr Nelson's medical and family history will be taken into consideration. 'Midwest Medical Examiners Office will not release information until the exam is complete and all results are obtained. Gathering results will take several days and the results of a full toxicology scan could likely take weeks.'
His cause of death is not known, but in a call to paramedics on the way to Prince's home, a 911 dispatcher said: 'Male down, not breathing.'
In the midst of the phone call, the dispatcher asks, 'Are you with the person who's…' and the unidentified male responds, 'Yes, it's Prince'.
The caller struggles to find the address of the home and has to ask several people for numbers and streets.
COUNTDOWN TO PRINCE'S DEATH Thursday, April 14: Prince performs in Atlanta and appears to be fine. Friday, April 15: Prince's private plane makes an emergency landing at Moline, Illinois, and he is taken to hospital for 'flu symptoms'. He is released after three hours of treatment. Saturday, April 16: Prince goes to a party in Minnesota to give 'proof' he is still alive. 'Wait a few days before you waste any prayers,' he tells fans. Sunday, April 17: Prince is seen riding a bicycle outside his apartment. Wednesday, April 20: Prince is seen looking 'frail and nervous' at a Walgreen's store near his estate at around 7pm. It is his fourth visit to the pharmacy this week. Thursday, April 21: Prince is found unresponsive in an elevator inside his compound at 9.43am. He is pronounced dead at 10.07am.
He struggles to decipher Minneapolis from the suburban Chanhassen, and tells the dispatcher they are in Minneapolis before finally telling the dispatcher that they are at Paisley Park.
The dispatcher finally gets the address sorted out - after realizing that it is Prince that is unresponsive - and sends an ambulance toward the estate in Chanhassen.
It is unclear which hospital Prince was taken to in Moline following the emergency landing last week. The closest hospital to the airport is Trinity Regional Health System. The city is also home to the Genesis Health Plex.
Trinity Moline and nearby Trinity Rock Island hospitals have both denied treating Prince.
The 57-year-old music icon was then seen at about 7pm on Wednesday at a Walgreens pharmacy looking 'frail and nervous' with a group of employees or friends. It was his fourth visit to the pharmacy this week.
It is unknown why he went to the store himself or if he picked up a prescription, though per Walgreens protocol, anyone with Prince's phone number and address could have retrieved medication for him.
Prince had always claimed that he was drug-free, making the news of his alleged overdose all the more shocking.
Prince had previously revealed that he was epileptic and had suffered seizures as a child. He was bullied at school over his condition which he said he dealt with by developing his iconic larger-than-life personality.
The singer, a devout Jehovah's Witness, later told his mother he had been cured by an angel.
While Prince never made clear if he was still struggling to live with epilepsy, his song The Sacrifice of Victor tells the story of a boy who was 'epileptic 'til the age of seven'.
Meanwhile, Aretha Franklin made the bizarre suggestion that Prince may have contracted the Zika virus.
WHY DO DEVOUT JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES REFUSE TO HAVE SOME TYPES OF BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS, EVEN WHEN SERIOUSLY ILL? Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Bible teaches against the storage or transfusion of blood and will turn down some types of transfusions, even in emergencies. They believe that blood represents life and is sacred to God, and that only the blood shed by Christ can save their lives. Refusals to accept blood transfusions or donations have caused uproar in the past, particularly in cases when Jehovah's Witness parents have refused to let their children have life-saving treatment. Some followers of the faith believe they can have bloodless surgery, which sometimes sees organs drained of blood before they are donated to a Jehovah's Witness. There are 6.5million active Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, including the likes of Serena Williams.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the First Ave. club in Minneapolis to honor and celebrate Prince's life on Thursday night
Tribute: Dressed in purple, the huge Minneapolis crowd sang the legendary musician's songs and danced long into the evening
The morning after the night before: A woman kneels as she lays flowers outside First Ave in Minneapolis, taking a quiet moment to reflect
Fans buy t-shirts of Prince at a memorial site created outside the Apollo Theater in New York on Friday as tributes continued to pour in
OBAMA LISTENED TO PRINCE IN UK President Obama revealed he played Prince's music at the US ambassador's home before meeting Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Friday. Speaking at a press conference at the Foreign Office, he said: 'I love Prince because he put out great music and he was a great performer. 'I didn't know him well. He came to perform at the White House last year and was extraordinary and creative and original and full of energy. It's a remarkable loss. 'I'm staying at Winfield House, the US ambassador's residence. It so happens our ambassador has a turntable so this morning we played Purple Rain and Delirious before we left the house for important bilateral meetings like this.'
The Purple Rain hitmaker had performed at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta on last Thursday night - the second of two back to back sold out shows - and had seemed fine during the concert.
Prince made what is believed to have been his final public appearance on Saturday at a dance party in Minnesota.
He was keen for people to have 'living proof' that he was still alive, and he arrived at the bash to show off his new guitar and piano.
He didn't sing, but he did tell the crowd: 'Wait a few days before you waste any prayers.'
A picture posted by a fan on Instagram appeared to show Prince riding a bicycle outside his estate on Sunday.
Prince's $10million Paisley Park compound sits just more than half an hour outside Minneapolis, and the musician would host parties and record music at the estate, according to CBS Minnesota.
Construction began on the estate, which was designed and owned by Prince, in 1985 and it officially opened on September 11, 1987.
It featured a 12,000 square-foot soundstage, guitar room, game room, and 'The Vault', where he stored unreleased material.
He allowed fans to buy passes to tour the estate in 2000, but no one was allowed in The Vault.
Prince was known for his sexually charged lyrics and was romantically linked to a number of male and female stars, including Madonna, Sinead O'Connor, Kim Basinger, Kylie Minogue, Carmen Electra and Boy George, among a number of other people.
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF HARROWING 911 CALL MADE FROM PRINCE'S ESTATE BEFORE HE WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD Dispatcher: 911, where is your emergency? Unidentified male: Hi there, um, what's the address here? Yeah we need an ambulance right now. D: Okay. UM: We have someone who is unconscious. D: Okay, what's the address? UM: Um, we're at Prince's house. D: Okay, does anybody know the address? Is there any mail around that you could look at? UM: Yeah, yeah, okay, hold on. D: Okay, your cell phone's not going to tell me where you're at, so I need you to find me an address. UM: Yeah, we have um, yeah, we have um, so yeah, um, the person is dead here. D: Okay, get me the address please. UM: Okay, okay, I'm working on it. D: Concentrate on that. UM: And the people are just distraught. D: I understand that they are distraught, but… UM: I'm working on it, I'm working on it. D: Okay, do we know how the person died? UM: I don't know, I don't know. D: Okay. UM: Um, so we're, we're in Minneapolis, Minnesota and we are at the home of Prince. D: You're in Minneapolis? UM: Yeah, Minneapolis, Minnesota. D: You're sure you are in Minneapolis? UM: That's correct. D: Okay, have you found an address yet? UM: Yeah, um, I'm so sorry I need, I need the address here? Unidentified female: 7801 UM: 7801 D: 7801 what? UM: Paisley Park, we are at Paisley Park. D: You're at Paisley Park, okay, that's in Chanhassen. Are you with the person who's… UM: Yes, it's Prince. D: Okay. UM: The person. D: Okay, stay on the line with me. UM: Okay. (Phone ringing) Ambulance dispatcher: Ambulance, Shirley. D: Carver with the transfer for Paisley Park Studios, 78. AD: Paisley Park Studios, okay. D: 7801 Audubon Road. AD: Okay. D: We have a person down, not breathing. AD: Down, not breathing. D: Yup. UM: He's, he's… D: We're going to get everybody, go ahead with the transmittal.
Riding on: Prince was seen riding a bicycle outside his estate in this picture posted on Instagram on Sunday
Prince made a surprise appearance at a dance party in Minnesota on Saturday, in what is believed to have been his final public appearance
Prince (pictured in 2004 with his second wife Manuela Testolini) married twice and was romantically linked to a number stars
Prince married backup dance Mayte Garcia (pictured together in 1999) on Valentine's Day in 1996. He dedicated the song the Most Beautiful Girl in the World to her two years earlier
Grieving: Garcia looked exhausted and emotional today as she made a phone call at her home in Los Angeles, just hours after learning of her ex-husband's death yesterday
Prince also slept with close friend and collaborating artist Sheila E (pictured singing together) while he was in a relationship with Susannah Melvoin, the twin sister of Wendy Melvoin who was in his band, The Revolution
Prince then dated Bria Valente (pictured together at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game in 2008) until around 2010, after which time they were still recording music together.
The Purple Rain hitmaker had performed at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta on last Thursday night - the second of two back to back sold out shows - and had seemed fine during the concert
A 12-inch single, Scandalous Sex Suite, included vocals from Kim Basinger and moans heard on the track were rumored to be recordings of the pair having sex.
Last year Boy George claimed he had slept with Prince.
During filming of The Voice in the UK, he made light of Paloma Faith saying she had performed live with Prince.
'Forget that, darling, I've slept with Prince,' he replied.
Prince also slept with close friend and collaborating artist Sheila E while he was in a relationship with Susannah Melvoin, the twin sister of Wendy Melvoin - who was in his band, The Revolution.
Prince married backup dance Mayte Garcia on Valentine's Day in 1996. He dedicated the song The Most Beautiful Girl in the World to her two years earlier.
They had a son together, called Boy Gregory, in October 1996, but the baby was tragically born with Pfeiffer syndrome, a rare disorder that does not allow the head to grow properly due to the premature fusion of certain bones of the skull, and died just a week after his birth.
Garcia, who split with Prince in 2000, looked exhausted and emotional today as she made a phone call at her home in Los Angeles, just hours after learning of her ex-husband's death.
Garcia spoke to People about her ex-husband's tragic death, saying; 'I can't even think of the words of what I'm feeling. This man was my everything, we had a family. I am beyond deeply saddened and devastated.'
She then added; 'I loved him then, I love him now and will love him eternally. He's with our son now.'
In 2001, Prince went on to marry Manuela Testolini, but they divorced in 2006.
He then dated Bria Valente until around 2008, |
of the world, could produce up to 200 million gallons of ethanol each year. [Statistics provided by the February 20, 2010 DailyTech.com article'Breakthrough Makes Ethanol Production Cheaper Thanks to Orange Peels, Newspapers ']Currently, most ethanol production comes from corn, but the process is not very efficient and not as "green" as it should be.However, with Daniell's new process, non-food consumption waste products could be substituted for corn, such as rinds from watermelons, thrown-away newspapers, and switchgrass (produced on lands unsuitable for farm production),Page two quotes from Dr. Daniell, along with provides a summary of the process his team created to make ethanol from discarded waste products.Dr. Daniell states, "This could be a turning point where vehicles could use this fuel as the norm for protecting our air and environment for future generations." [DailyTech.com]Specifically, Daniell's team of researchers created artificial genes from bacteria and fungi, which are found in nature breaking down wood and eventually producing decay and rot in logs and other materials.The genes were placed in tobacco plants in order to produce the enzyme mixture.The researchers then put the plant-derived enzyme solution into whatever waste product is used to produce the ethanol, such as orange peels.The enzyme solution breaks down the orange peels into sugar. In the final step, the sugar is fermented into ethanol.Daniell states that producing the enzymes in tobacco plants is much less expensive than producing the enzymes with current synthetic methods.And, the Daniell method, also, produces less emissions into the environment than those emissions produced by the production of gasoline or electricity.Page three concludes with a summary from his paper's abstract in Plant Biotechnology Journal.The conclusions from the new Darniell method is published in the February 2010 issue of Plant Biotechnology Journa l.Its journal title'Chloroplast-derived enzyme cocktails hydrolyse lignocellulosic biomass and release fermentable sugars,' is authored by Dheeraj Verma, Anderson Kanagaraj, Shuangxia Jin, Nameirakpam D. Singh, Pappachan E. Kolattukudy and Henry Daniell, all from the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.Its abstract states, 'It is widely recognized that biofuel production from lignocellulosic materials is limited by inadequate technology to efficiently and economically release fermentable sugars from the complex multi-polymeric raw materials.'In other words, the current production methods for ethanol, according to the authors, are inefficient and costly, which is one of the reasons why they wanted to develop a better method to produce ethanol.They go on to state, 'Therefore, endoglucanases, exoglucanase, pectate lyases, cutinase, swollenin, xylanase, acetyl xylan esterase, beta glucosidase and lipase genes from bacteria or fungi were expressed in Escherichia coli or tobacco chloroplasts. A PCR-based method was used to clone genes without introns from Trichoderma reesei genomic DNA."They used various genes from bacteria and fungi to make their enzyme mix."Homoplasmic transplastomic lines showed normal phenotype and were fertile. Based on observed expression levels, up to 49, 64 and 10, 751 million units of pectate lyases or endoglucanase can be produced annually, per acre of tobacco. Plant production cost of endoglucanase is 3100-fold, and pectate lyase is 1057 or 1480-fold lower than the same recombinant enzymes sold commercially, produced via fermentation.'Their process is a lot less expensive than current methods because it produces much more enzymes per acre of land.'Chloroplast-derived enzymes had higher temperature stability and wider pH optima than enzymes expressed in E. coli. Plant crude-extracts showed higher enzyme activity than E. coli with increasing protein concentration, demonstrating their direct utility without purification. Addition of E. coli extracts to the chloroplast-derived enzymes significantly decreased their activity.""Chloroplast-derived crude-extract enzyme cocktails yielded more (up to 3625%) glucose from filter paper, pine wood or citrus peel than commercial cocktails. Furthermore, pectate lyase transplastomic plants showed enhanced resistance to Erwina soft rot.'The tobacco plants used in the process were able to resist rot and decay better than other non-treated plants.They conclude in their abstract, 'This is the first report of using plant-derived enzyme cocktails for production of fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. Limitations of higher cost and lower production capacity of fermentation systems are addressed by chloroplast-derived enzyme cocktails.'Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, November 28, 2008
After brazenly declaring that the Mumbai attacks were the work of Al-Qaeda, the corporate media has been forced to backtrack, while India continues to blame Pakistan in a dangerous escalation of rhetoric between the two nuclear-armed powers.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba would be a useful scapegoat because it has alleged links both to Al-Qaeda and Pakistani’s ISI secret service.
Bellicose propaganda about Bin Laden being behind the massacre, which was initially propagated by the BBC, London Times and Fox News amongst others, has largely evaporated, with the majority of the establishment press being forced to admit they have no idea who was behind the siege on India’s financial capital.
However, India’s claim that Pakistan had a hand in the attacks is beginning to find favor in the U.S., where one counterterrorism official told CNN, “the level of sophistication in the attack leads officials to believe that it might be tied to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamic extremist group that has carried out previous attacks in India.”
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba would be a useful scapegoat because it has alleged links both to Al-Qaeda and Pakistani’s ISI secret service, but since the group has vehemently denied responsibility and terrorists normally like to claim responsibility for their handiwork, any attempt to pin the blame is likely to run out of steam. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba always claim responsibility for their attacks, so their outright denial is the death knell for this explanation.
That India would immediately exploit the tragedy to demonize their arch-enemy Pakistan was fully expected, but how Pakistan, which has recently made numerous peaceful overtures towards India, could possibly benefit from crazed terrorists indiscriminately gunning down innocent people in shocking scenes played out on international television defies belief.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
But that reasoning did not prevent India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee from telling a press conference today that, “Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved.”
In reality, as we have repeatedly emphasized, the attacks were likely not the work of Al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the Mossad or the CIA, but Indian Muslims.
As author Tariq Ali points out today, “The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.”
“But this is a meditated edifice of official India’s political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country’s political physicians need to heal themselves.”
“Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.”
“Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.”
The identity and motive behind the terrorists is reasonably clear, these young men are disenfranchised, revenge-driven Indian Muslims, along with a smattering of Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Bangladeshis, based in India not Pakistan, who hate Hindus and believe it is their duty to kick-start a wider tribal war, which is why the vast majority of those killed were Indians, not foreigners, Brits or Americans.
The terrorists were not dispatched on their mission by the Pakistan government or Osama bin Laden, they are mostly Indians who represent a domestic problem for the Indian government, which is why the authorities are seeking to deflect blame and exploit the tragedy to demonize Pakistan in the eyes of the international community.
The spin that the terrorists deliberately targeted American and British citizens is still being pumped out by the western corporate media, despite the fact that only one Briton died, himself being originally from Cyprus, in comparison to well over a hundred Indians, and despite the fact that the rampage was a completely indiscriminate massacre.
The western propaganda machine has taken a domestic problem, which expresses itself almost on a monthly basis in India with routine bombings and attacks, and amplified it beyond all proportion to claim that the attacks were an assault on western democracy, capitalism, and ultimately the Anglo-American power alliance.
The horrible slaughter of hundreds of mostly Indian civilians in Mumbai will now be used as a poster child for continued bombing campaigns inside Pakistani territory and an expansion of the ailing war on terror under President elect Barack Obama, which in the long term only means that more innocent lives will be lost.Exclusive: Up to 600 people from 14 European countries have taken part in fighting since 2011, finds King's College study
Hundreds of Europeans have travelled to Syria since the start of the civil war to fight against the country's president, Bashar al-Assad, the most comprehensive study of European foreign fighters to date has found.
A year-long survey by King's College London of more than two hundred martyrdom posts on jihadist-linked websites and hundreds of Arab and western press reports found that up to 600 individuals from 14 countries including the UK, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Germany had taken part in the conflict since it began in 2011.
The largest contingent, the study found, came from the UK, with estimates of fighters running between 28 and 134.
Based on their populations, the figures for Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, with about 200 fighters between them, made these countries the most significant, the lead researcher, Prof Peter Neumann from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College, said.
European fighters made up to between 7% and 11% of the foreign contingent in Syria, which ranged between 2,000 and 5,500 people. The researchers also said there were likely to be at least 110 named Europeans engaged in fighting currently.
They found that between 30 and 92 fighters were from France, between 14 and 85 from Belgium and between five and 107 from the Netherlands. Other nations in the study included Albania, Finland and Kosovo.
Neumann said the wide variance in figures represented the difference between the team logging named individuals with a documented case history or death notice and credible estimates from government officials at the higher end.
"No one has really mapped it out across all of Europe," Neumann said. "We've brought all these figures together … it's a compilation of the open source data. We can say with certainty now that hundreds of Europeans have joined the fight in Syria."
Neumann said the figures, though relatively small, showed how fast international jihadists had been mustered in response to the conflict.
"The mobilisation of this conflict is more significant than any of the recent conflict we have known about," he said.
"The numbers are still quite small in terms of the overall percentage but in absolute numbers I think it is higher now than any other conflict since Iraq. But Iraq went on for years and years. But here we have in the space of a year effectively – since early 2012 – you can already speak of thousands of [foreign fighters]. In Iraq that took two or three years to reach that point so it is really significant."
In February, the team discovered a post detailing the death of Ibrahim al-Mazwagi – a 21-year-old British-raised Libyan who had been killed in fighting in Syria.
A photo of Mazwagi, who has been recorded as the first Briton killed fighting in Syria, showed him wearing the team shirt of his university American football team, the Hertfordshire Hurricanes.
The team coach Jim Messenger said Mazwagi, who studied business administration at Hertfordshire University, had a number of good friends on the team.
"He was just one of the guys, same as everyone else," Messenger said. "I believe that he shared a house at one time with some of them."
He said Mazwagi stopped playing a year ago after he went to fight first in Libya before moving on to Syria. "We had a minute's silence before the game after we had heard about the situation. I guess it was a little bit of a shock to a lot of the members on the team, young men on the team who had never lost anybody that they knew before."
Mazwagi's friend Joe Thompson told the Sunday Times: "I don't think there was a single person who wasn't a fan of his."
In the research for a forthcoming publication, The Syrian Jihad: How Al-Qaida Survived the Arab Spring, the ICSR team also uncovered 249 foreign fighter martyrdom notices, of which eight were for Europeans.
Neumann said the notices were an important source of information as jihadist groups, like most conventional military outfits, detailed their dead. "It sends an important message to people who are thinking of getting involved … that no one gets forgotten."
Neumann said that in light of the findings it was wrong for the UK government to focus on Mali and the Sahel region.
Recently the prime minister, David Cameron, said al-Qaida-linked groups in the Sahel represented an "existential terrorist threat" to UK interests.
Neumann said: "We have been so preoccupied with Mali … the real story is Syria because people aren't going to the Sahara. If you put yourself in the mind of a jihadist, you want to fight in the heart of the Arab world."The federal government today gave BP approval to launch its first deep-water drilling since the lethal blowout of its Macondo well a year and a half ago.
Under the permit issued by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the British oil giant immediately can begin drilling at its Kaskida field about 192 miles off the Louisiana coast.
Although BP has partnered with other firms on offshore work since the 2010 oil spill, this is the first time it is being allowed back in the water as the lead operator of a deep-water drilling project.
BP plans to drill the newly approved well in 6,034 feet of water — about 1,000 feet deeper than the doomed Macondo project.
As part of its permit approval, BP vowed to abide not only by new drilling safety and environmental mandates imposed since last year’s spill, but also a suite of voluntary performance standards. Those safeguards go beyond federal requirements and include backup emergency equipment and engineer-witnessed testing of cement used in wells.
For instance, the company will use a second set of pipe-cutting shear rams on the emergency blowout preventer used to help secure the new well, doubling the opportunities for the device to successfully slash through drill pipe and trap flowing gas and oil underground in case of an emergency. The blowout preventer on its chosen drill ship was made by Cameron, the Houston-based company that also manufactured the BOP used at the Macondo well.
“BP has met all of the enhanced safety requirements that we have implemented and applied consistently over the past year,” said the safety bureau director, Michael Bromwich, in a statement. “In addition, BP has adhered to voluntary standards that go beyond the agency’s regulatory requirements.”
BP cheered the permit as a major step forward for the company.
“After several months of hard work developing and implementing our new drilling standards and sharing those standards with industry partners and regulators, we are pleased to have received a permit to drill another appraisal well in the Kaskida Field,” the company said in a statement. The permit “is another milestone in our steady return to safely drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.”
But some Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists dismissed BP’s planned deep-water drilling as too much too soon.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee that oversees offshore drilling, noted that BP has not yet paid oil spill penalties under the Clean Water Act or federal regulations.
“The fact that BP is getting a permit to drill without yet paying a single cent in fines is a disappointment, and does not serve as an effective lesson of deterrence for oil and gas companies,” Markey said.
“There will be a day when BP could be a welcome partner in the safe extraction of American oil and gas reserves,” Markey said, “but today is not that day with the outstanding billions still not assessed and still not paid.”
David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that there are still too many major questions about the design of blowout preventers BP and other oil companies are using offshore.
An examination of the BOP unearthed from the Deepwater Horizon wreckage found that the powerful blind shear rams on the device were unable to completely slash through slightly off-center drill pipe, seal the well hole and trap oil and gas underground.
“With blowout preventers, you can have all the shear rams you want, but if that system is capable of being defeated — if the drill pipe doubles over — we’re right back where we were in April 2010,” Pettit said. “Each of these new permits, you could look at as a $100 billion gamble by (the government) that everything is going to work out fine.”
Some environmentalists, who are already angry with the Obama administration’s decision to delay an ozone pollution rule, accused the White House of taking the side of Big Oil. Jacqueline Savitz, a senior campaign director with Oceana, said the administration seems “to be more responsive to Big Oil than they are to the public, which is still reeeling from the last BP debacle.”
As part of today’s permit approval, the safety bureau signed off on changes to BP’s oil spill response plan. The company has estimated that in case of an emergency, it would take 184 days to drill a relief well at the site.
BP also will have other interventions ready, including a containment system for reining in runaway underwater wells. BP has contracted with the Marine Well Containment Company for that equipment.
BP plans to use Seadrill’s three-year-old West Sirius semi-submersible rig on the job. Because the rig is already on the site, drilling could begin within days.
It was not immediately clear what other contractors would be involved in the project.
A presidential commission and separate federal inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon disaster faulted BP and its contractors for not sharing concerns about risks at the Macondo well.
Sean Shafer, a senior market analyst with Sugar Land, Texas-based Quest Offshore Resources, said the permit is a milestone not just for BP — but also the entire offshore drilling industry. BP’s Gulf of Mexico portfolio before last year’s spill and a subsequent government moratorium on some deep-water exploration made it one of the leaders in the region.
“If the Gulf is going to get back to where it is before, before the spill and the moratorium, it’d be hard to do that without BP being a part of that,” Shafer said. “They are the largest producer offshore Gulf of Mexico.”
BP owns 100 percent of Kaskida. The company estimates that it could hold as much as 3 billion barrels of oil, making it one of BP’s biggest finds ever in U.S. waters.
“Kaskida is probably the biggest near-term development opportunity for BP,” Shafer said. “For that to be the one that BP got the first permit for is a pretty big development. There’s still a lot to be seen, but for BP, Kaskida is a big target.”
Federal regulators have been vetting BP’s application to drill the new Kaskida well since January. The permit approval comes less than a week after the Interior Department approved the company’s broad offshore exploration plan for Kaskida, which allows drilling of up to seven wells at the site.
Administration officials have rejected the idea that BP should be disqualified from drilling, based on its performance last year.
In Tuesday’s third-quarter earnings report, BP CEO Robert Dudley predicted that the company soon could be busier than ever in the Gulf of Mexico, with as many as eight rigs at work on BP projects, if regulators sign off on the drilling.
“Our operations are regaining momentum,” Dudley told reporters. “We are facing the future with great confidence.”Info on Hitman for Current-Gen Systems “Coming This Year”
Hitman fans might not have to wait too long before learning more about the current-gen Hitman title, which was announced back in January of 2014. According to the game’s official Twitter page, more information on the upcoming PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC title will be coming out this year.
@kirolos55 There’s more info coming this year and we can’t wait to share it! — Hitman (@Hitman) January 12, 2015
When exactly the information will be revealed this year and what that info might be has not yet been clarified, although it would be nice to see a release date announced. As of right now, not too much is known about the upcoming title, save that it will be bring back “Contract Mode,” which enabled players to create challenges for other users. We also know that the levels will be open, allowing players to fully dive into the gameworld.
What do you hope is revealed later in the year? Do you want plot info, character info, or maybe just a tentative release date?
[Source: Hitman (Twitter)]Ever wondered where those nowadays-ubiquitous Keep Calm and Carry On posters first came from? Nope, me neither – and frankly, more fool both of us. Someone posted the link to a video purporting to tell the "story of how Barter Books found the Keep Calm and Carry On poster & made it a global hit" on Twitter the other day, and honestly, I wouldn't have clicked on it had I not been intrigued by the fact that it featured the name of one my favourite bookshops. But click on it I did, and here's what I discovered: it turns out that not only are Barter Books' owners Stuart and Mary Manley brilliant at selling books, they're also brilliant at giving birth to country-wide trends, too.
The video tells the story of the Keep Calm posters, which were commissioned by the government during the second world war as part of a wider poster campaign designed to boost morale among the civilian population. Some 2.5m copies of our poster were printed, but in the end they were kept back; "held in reserve, intended for use only in times of crisis or invasion", which happily never came. 50 years later, Stuart found one in a box of books he'd bought at auction, and Mary put it up by the till. Apparently, customers were so taken with it that the pair began making copies - and an iconic noughties image was born.
It's a lovely video, as much for its shots of Barter Books - once a Victorian railway station; now overflowing with well-stocked shelves - as for the story it tells. But the story's a fine one, too, and the sentiment of the poster, which overexposure had led me to dismiss as trite, becomes moving and inspiring again when resituated in its original context of genuine threat and principled resistance. Enjoy.Image copyright Getty Images
A review of the best commentary on and around the world...
Today's must-read
Adolf Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), has not been published in Germany since the end of World War Two. This may change when the book's copyright - currently held by the state of Bavaria - expires at the end of 2015, however.
The prospect has led Germans to debate whether the book should become more readily available to the public or continue to exist only on the internet and the black market.
Last month interior ministers of 16 German states pledged to do all they could to prevent anyone from printing the work. They said they will ask the federal prosecutor general to investigate whether they could charge publishers with violating the nation's sedition laws.
According to Peter Ross Range, former diplomatic correspondent for US News & World Report, such a strategy is misguided.
"The inoculation of a younger generation against the Nazi bacillus is better served by open confrontation with Hitler's words than by keeping his reviled tract in the shadows of illegality," he writes in the New York Times.
While circulating copies of Hitler's work within Germany would be "sensational", he says, it would also remove the mystique created by the book's suppression.
"This publishing event will shape contemporary politics and feed Germany's deep-rooted postwar pacifism," he argues.
Fears in Germany that publication will be a boon to the nation's pseudo-Nazis are misguided, he says, as their party only polls around 1%, compared to nearly 25% in neighbouring France (where the work can be purchased).
The book should be available and studied in its historical context, he concludes, serving as a cautionary document for the German people.
Israel
President Obama writes op-ed for Haaretz - "Peace is possible", says US President Barack Obama in an opinion piece published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He writes that it will require "difficult choices" on the part of Israelis and Palestinians, however.
"The only solution is a democratic, Jewish state living side-by-side in peace and security with a viable, independent Palestinian state," he continues.
Without "a true and living peace that exists not just in the plans of leaders, but in the hearts of all Israelis and Palestinians", Israel will never be secure, he says. Throughout the negotiating process, he concludes, the US will continue to be Israel's first, oldest and strongest friend.
China
Obama's second chance - Thanks to Chinese President Xi Jingping's "ham-handed" efforts to project power in Asia, writes Bloomberg View's William Pesek, the US has another opportunity to complete its Asian pivot and strengthen its alliances in the region.
In Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and even Hong Kong, he writes, "Xi's overbearing ways are giving Obama a second wind".
The US must dedicate more resources to Asia to capitalise on this situation, he says. "What Asian nations really want to see from the US are signs of commitment to Asia's long-term growth and development," he writes.
Ukraine
An improving army - Recent successful operations by the Ukrainian military are a sign that the prospects for the nation's long-term stability could be improving, writes Walter Russell Mead in the American Interest.
"War is the mother of states, and the efforts required to create and sustain a winning army deepen the capabilities that Ukraine's authorities will need if they are serious about state-building," he writes.
He cautions that Ukraine is not out of danger yet, however. The country still relies heavily on privately sponsored militias, which could undermine centralised national authority.
Argentina
Debt and Wall Street politics - The recent Argentine debt crisis didn't occur because the nation refused to heed the advice of the International Monetary Fund, writes Farid Kahhat in America Economia (translated by WorldCrunch).
The trouble, he says, is the result of a US judicial system that relies on "legal norms" that favour the country's finance and insurance industries. He implies that this is why the US Supreme Court ruled on 16 June that the Argentine government must pay $1.3b (£760,000) to US bondholders who had refused to agree to a debt restructuring plan.
US financial and insurance corporations have growing influence on US legislative policy thanks to their lobbying efforts, he contends, and "Argentina may be paying the price".
BBC Monitoring's quotes of the day
Afghanistan newspaper editors weigh in as tensions remain high after the Independent Election Commission announced the preliminary results of the presidential election second round.
"If the [election] commission fails to make the electoral process transparent and in the end declares the final results in favour of one of the candidates, there will be unpleasant situation in the country."- Editorial in Afghan daily Arman-e Melli.
"We have repeatedly said that the separation of clean votes from dirty votes can save democracy in the country." - Editorial in Hasht-e Sobh.
"The announcement of the election results has changed the situation and further complicated the electoral deadlock." - Editorial in Mandegar.
Have you found an interesting opinion piece about global issues that we missed? Share it with us via email at echochambers (at) bbc.co.uk.The journalism world has been rightly outraged by the Justice Department dragging the Associated Press (and now a Fox News reporter) into one of its sprawling leak investigations. As we wrote last week, by obtaining the call records of twenty AP phone lines, “the Justice Department has struck a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news."
But there are several other important lessons that this scandal can teach us besides how important free and uninhibited newsgathering is to the public’s right to know.
1. Weak Privacy Laws That Doomed AP Affect Everyone
The AP detailed in its letter to the Justice Department how its privacy was grossly invaded even though the government accessed only the call records of its reporters and not the content of their conversations. We completely agree. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a problem in the AP investigation. Law enforcement agencies routinely demand and receive this information about ordinary Americans over long periods of time without any court involvement whatsoever, much less a full warrant.
For example, according to information released by the phone companies to Rep. Ed Markey, Sprint alone received a staggering 500,000 subpoenas for call records data last year.
The DOJ's decision to dive into these call records shows the growing need to update our privacy laws to eliminate the outmoded Third Party Doctrine—which holds that anything you give to a service provider, or that a service provider collects as part of providing you a service—can retain no reasonable expectation of privacy. In an era where email is stored by our providers, cellphone companies keep records that track our location and cloud services hold our documents, it’s long past time to bring our interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and statutory electronic privacy laws in compliance with the 21st Century.
In response to the AP scandal, a bipartisan coalition in Congress just introduced a bill to partially fix this problem called The Telephone Records Protection Act. The bill would require the Justice Department to get a judge’s approval before seeking these records. At EFF, we think the government should have to go even further than a court order: a judicial warrant showing the kind of probable cause required by the Fourth Amendment should be the standard. But this bill is certainly an improvement over administrative subpoenas, which don’t need a sign-off from a judge at all and allow the Executive branch to seek information without any external check.
2. Phone Companies May Give Up Your Information Without Telling You
As the New York Times reported, the AP is still examining if and when any telephone companies tried to push back on the overbroad requests for its call records. “But at least two of the journalists’ personal cellphone records were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena,” the Times said. And it also seems clear that the AP itself wasn’t given notice before their phone company turned over the records.
In EFF’s 2013 “Who Has Your Back” report, which tracks several ways in which communications companies can help protect user privacy, we give a star for promising to notify users about government demands for data whenever whenever the company is not legally prevented from doing so. Notably, Verizon does not have such a notification policy and did not receive a star. In fact, Verizon was the only company to receive zero stars.
This isn’t a small problem or just a problem for journalists. Verizon received 260,000 similar subpoenas for call records last year. The government requests this information with regularity, and given the phone companies control the data, communications company policies are all that stand between you and governmental overreach.
Users should demand that their communications companies notify them when the government comes seeking information, unless they are legally barred by a court order.
3. Government often Overstates National Security Claims, Overclassifies Information
We’ve written many times about the many ways “national security” has been invoked—and exaggerated—in order to cover up government embarrassment or wrongdoing, or to assert powers that would normally not be granted under the Constitution. The government routinely overclassifies information that should never be secret, according to reports commissioned by the White House itself.
The most glaring example for EFF is our lawsuit over the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, where the government won’t admit or deny that the program even exists, citing the danger to national security, despite thousands of pages of public evidence. The government has argued the same thing in cases about torture and the CIA drone program where, many times, the same information that they claim is secret is on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.
In the AP’s case, while Attorney General Holder says this leak put “lives at risk,” John Brennan said the opposite around the time of the story (“Brennan said the plot was never a threat to the U.S. public or air safety,” reported Reuters). The AP also held its story for six days until the CIA told them it was safe to publish and the White House had a news conference planned the day after the story to announce the successful counterterrorism operation.
As the late Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black once said, “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.”
4. There’s Not Much Recourse For Prosecutorial Misconduct
In this case, just like the case of Aaron Swartz, there has been widespread criticism that the Justice Department has abused its authority and aggressively pursued parties in an unprofessional manner. As we detailed last week, it seems the Justice Department didn’t follow its own guidelines when issuing subpoenas for the reporters records, or at least went to the very edge of its own guidelines.
Just like in the Swartz case, the specific prosecutor has a history of over-aggressive prosecutions (even being accused of overzealous prosecution by Eric Holder himself when he was in private practice). Yet when Congress asked Holder at a hearing about the allegations, just like in the Swartz case, he did not admit to any wrongdoing, and was able to deflect questions about his department’s handling of the case. Unfortunately, there is not much recourse for meaningful remedy for the public in these situations, and this case is just the latest example.
5. Journalists Need to be Pro-Active in Protecting Their Digital Security
In an age where warrantless surveillance is skyrocketing and governments potentially have access to an astonishing amount of information, journalists must learn to proactively protect both themselves and their sources.
The Committee to Protect Journalists Journalist Security Guide is an excellent place to start. It addresses concerns faced by journalists working inside the United States and internationally.
Wired published an op-ed last week about the care one needs to take from the source’s end if one wishes to send information to the press undetected. Much of the advice is applicable to reporters talking to sources as well. Additionally, the New Yorker has just released a promising—but un-tested—anonymous leak submission system, coded by Aaron Swartz before he tragically died in January. In certain circumstances physical mail remains the safest option.
Overall, the final lesson is that journalists, and sources, need to take security seriously. Trusting that the government won’t come after you because you’re engaged in journalism, serving the public interest, or helping reveal wrongdoing is plainly not sufficient.Image caption George Lawlor's post detailing why he was offended by being invited to a sexual consent class kicked off a debate online
Do young people really need a class to learn about sexual consent?
George Lawlor doesn't think so. He's a 19-year-old second year student studying politics and sociology at the University of Warwick.
When he received a Facebook invitation to a consent class, he was so angry he penned an article for a campus news site calling it "loathsome" and "the biggest insult I've received in a good few years".
"For someone to assume you don't know how to interact with compassion for fellow people - that's a bit of an offensive thing to say and to accuse somebody of," Lawlor told BBC Trending.
"It's just that I feel if you need to be taught what consent is and what consent isn't, then you don't have respect for other human beings."
But how clear-cut is consent, particularly in the kinds of social situations involving drink and drugs in which university students often find themselves?
Under British law, specifically the Sexual Offences Act 2003, a person has to have the "freedom and capacity" to choose to have sex.
And advice from the UK's Crown Prosecution Service notes that capacity is particularly relevant when alcohol is involved - a person for instance can't consent if they're too drunk or high, although that's a subjective test which doesn't depend, for instance, on blood alcohol levels.
The National Union of Students (NUS), the UK's main body which represents people studying at universities, says that there's a lack of information about consent which is part of the reason why one in seven women say they experience a serious physical or sexual assault during their university career.
NUS Women's Officer Susuana Amoah says consent courses cover legal aspects of consent as well as social situations and general sexuality education.
"We start out with basic conversations about what people think is and isn't consent and their examples.
"We believe that people at first don't have a clear-cut idea about what consent means, so we want to explore the various definitions," she says.
Amoah admits there's no hard evidence that the classes, which are more common in the US but spreading rapidly in the UK, reduce the incidence of sexual assault - but she chalks this up to patchy reporting of these incidents on campus.
Image copyright NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS Image caption Susuana Amoah has been promoting the classes on behalf of the NUS
Meanwhile, Lawlor's post provoked a huge reaction on social media.
"What kind of deranged feminist assumes that every male student is a rapist and forces them to take a consent class?" tweeted one critic of the lessons.
Another said: "People do understand consent, sadly some disobey the wishes of another party. A class won't stop this by itself."
The debate did not break down strictly on gender lines, with some men coming out in favour of the |
Redskins defense was given a gift on first down with a holding call. However, the Redskins were unable to capitalize on the 3rd and 9, as Dalton used his legs to march 14 yards down to the Redskins’ 42-yard line.
On 3rd and 8 from the 39, Dalton was swallowed up by the Redskins front seven, all the way back at the midfield stripe on the five-man blitz, pushing the Bengals out of field goal range where they were forced to punt.
A fifteen-yard fair catch interference penalty on the ensuing punt gave the Redskins favorable field position, and the Redskins quickly moved into Bengals territory in three plays. Then on 3rd and 1 from the 37, Vontaze Burfict committed a defensive holding penalty to give Washington a fresh set of downs at the 32. After a holding penalty backed the Redskins out of the red zone, "Fat" Rob Kelley ran off the left side for 16 yards.
Marvin Lewis’ used his final timeout to freeze the Dustin Hopkins who made his first kick after the play was blown dead. The tactic proved to be successful as the 34-yard attempt went wide to the left and the game continued.
The Bengals took over after the two-minute warning, and on 3rd and 1 from the 46, Dalton tried a sneak up the middle but Chris Baker forced the ball free and Anthony Lanier scooped it up to give the Redskins one more opportunity to win the ballgame with under a minute remaining.
Offensive pass interference on Pierre Garcon backed the Redskins up out of field goal range. Washington let the clock wind down to just two seconds remaining in overtime on 4th and 11 from the Bengals 49 yard line, but Cousins’ pass sailed out of bounds, and the game concluded in a tie, 27-27.
The tie was the first in franchise history since 1997 and with the draw, the Redskins hit the halfway mark of a season above.500 for the first time since 2008 (6-2).
The Redskins tied a team record by reaching 400 yards of offense for a third consecutive game, having previously accomplished that feat five times in franchise history (1949, 1981-82, 1983, 2013 and 2015).
Individually, the Redskins put up some gaudy numbers on offense with the full five quarters of play. Kick Cousins was 38/56 for 458 yards through the air with 2 touchdowns and 1 interception. By crossing the 300-yard plateau, he is now tied with Sonny Jurgensen with 16 career 300-yard games, the most in team history.
Jamison Crowder led all receivers with 107 yards on 9 catches and a score. The tight ends were once again instrumental in the offensive passing game, with Jordan Reed recording 99 yards on 9 carries and a touchdown in his return from injury, joined by Vernon Davis who posted 5 catches for 93 yards passing Jeremy Shockey (6,143) for 12th-most receiving yards by a tight end in NFL history with the effort.
Pierre Garcon was reliable catching the football, hauling in 6 grabs for 67 yards, while DeSean Jackson, who had his day shortened due to an injury, had 48 yards on 3 catches.
In his first career start in place of the injured Matt Jones, Robert Kelley performed admirably, averaging 4.1 yards per carry on 21 rushes for 87 yards and a score. Chris Thompson played a change-of-pace role on 7 carries for 14 yards, though he also tallied 5 catches for 27 yards out of the backfield.
Defensively, Will Compton led the way with 10 tackles, a pass deflection and a tackle for loss, while Donte Whitner chipped in 9 tackles as well. Josh Norman's 6 tackles were supplemented by his 3 pass deflections, as he drew the tough assignment of AJ Green for the majority of the day.
In spite of Cousins' interception (which functionally amounted to a long punt) Washington won the turnover battle 2-1.
A few key players left the game with injuries including DeSean Jackson, Duke Ihenacho, and Bashaud Breeland, and they will likely be evaluated in the upcoming week.
Penalties proved to be an issue, as the Redskins were flagged 15 times for 106 yards, while the Bengals were called 7 times for 85 yards as well.
Ultimately, perhaps the key takeaway from this game, as it has been for each of the Redskins losses is the missed opportunities. On several occasions there were defensive backs who had opportunities to intercept Andy Dalton passes, but instead allowed them to fall incomplete, and of course the two missed field goals, including the one in overtime that would have won the game played a material role in the final outcome of the game.
Given the opportunities to win the game, the tie is a bit of a tough pill to swallow, particularly with the Redskins are still looking up at their competition within the division, the tie functionally places them a half game back in the overall standings.
The Redskins now head to their bye week and will have plenty of time to rest up and prepare for the NFC North-leading Minnesota Vikings in two weeks back at FedEx Field.THE new bank levy has opened a Pandora’s box that leaves Australia’s biggest financial institutions exposed to a potential disaster, analysts warn.
In a note to investors, UBS says the levy could pose a risk to what it sees as a housing bubble, threatening the stability of an economy reliant upon the $6 trillion property market.
Ratings agency Moody’s estimates the levy introduced in this week’s federal Budget will reduce the big banks’ pre-tax profit by about 3.8 per cent, and UBS analyst Jonathan Mott said future hikes of the levy are a real possibility.
“Pandora’s box has been opened,” Mr Mott wrote in the investor note, pointing out that the UK bank levy was hiked nine times.
“Future governments could also raise the bank levy as an easy source of revenue to fund spending, tax cuts or the deficit, especially as none of the political parties oppose this policy.”
‘BANKING SECTOR IS CRUCIAL’
The chief executives of ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac have all said the cost of the bank levy will be passed on to shareholders, staff and, through higher interest rates, customers.
Mr Mott said the government could raise the levy from its July 1 rate of 0.06 per cent of banks’ liabilities as punishment for hiking rates.
He noted that the UK government had lifted an equivalent levy on that country’s banks on nine occasions.
NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn said the levy represented a threat to the health of the industry and the broader economy.
“I’m surprised to see it from any government, to be honest, because the banking sector is so crucial to the strength and viability, and the growth of our economy,” Mr Thorburn told Melbourne radio 3AW on Thursday.
LAST-MINUTE ‘SMASH AND GRAB’
Australian Bankers Association chief Anna Bligh said there the policy was rushed into the budget at the last minute as a “smash-and-grab” for more revenue.
“It seems not only were banks kept in the dark on this tax, but perhaps Treasury officials had been kept in the dark up until now,” she said.
“This is a government now playing fast and loose with Australia’s financial system and this is a dangerous place for us all to be.”
Ms Bligh said the biggest shareholders of Australian banks were superannuation funds.
“They are hundreds of thousands of individual Australian shareholders — many of whom are retirees — who are living on share dividends as a result of their retirement,” she said.
“If you are a working Australian and you have a superannuation account, then you own shares in one of the major banks, and the treasurer is saying this tax should be passed on to your investments.”
HOME BUYERS UNDER PRESSURE
The big banks have already repriced their mortgage books, in particular to make interest-only and investor loans more expensive to comply with Australian Prudential Regulation Authority limits on riskier lending.
More rises could have deleterious effects on the housing market and wider economy, Mr Mott said.
“If the banks reprice their mortgage books this would put further pressure on household cash flows which are already suffering from near record low income growth, higher mortgage payments and higher power bills,” Mr Mott said.
“While the implication on the ‘animal spirits’ in the housing market is difficult to predict, we see substantial risk to the Australian Housing Bubble.”
Moody’s said the government’s announcement of additional regulation of the sector further reduced the threat of a royal commission into the sector.
But that offered little relief to ANZ, CBA, NAB, Westpac and Macquarie Group, the fifth bank affected by the change.
“We struggle to see the upside case in owning the banks in the current environment,” Mr Mott said.
‘TIME TO SWITCH BANKS’
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has issued Australians the kind of advice we’re used to hearing from consumer group Choice.
Mr Turnbull said on Friday that customers should vote with their feet by switching banks if the big four follow through on their rake hike threats.
“If people feel that Westpac or the Commonwealth Bank is charging them too much, they can take their business somewhere else,” Mr Turnbull told the Seven Network, advising people to switch to smaller lenders like Suncorp and Bendigo Bank.
Asked what would happen if all customers took their business to credit unions or smaller institutions, he replied: “You shouldn’t run up the white flag and surrender to the banks. They are the most profitable banks in the world.”
Mr Turnbull said the consumer and competition watchdog would be monitoring the banks to ensure a more competitive environment.
‘POLICY ON THE RUN’
Commonwealth Bank chief executive Ian Narev described the levy as policy concocted “on the run”.
He says the banking giants have more questions than answers following a showdown with Treasury officials in Sydney on Thursday.
“This will test well in the opinion polls,” he predicted on ABC radio. “The question we should be asking as the public is, if a government is going to judge its success as an economic budget on the next day’s opinion polls, is that the kind of economic policy we want.”
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the banks received a straightforward explanation on the levy and there was nothing complicated about its details.
“Don’t believe everything that someone who doesn’t want to pay more tax is telling you,” Mr Cormann said.
Ms Bligh has called on the Senate to carefully scrutinise the proposed law underpinning the tax, potentially delaying its July 1 introduction.
Elsewhere, several crossbench senators have joined calls for an investigation into how the budget’s controversial bank levy was leaked to the media, leading to a $14 billion wipe-out of bank shares.Amidst the negativity, I will say that I haven't bought that on Wii U yet simply because I waited for the Switch version to come out. I expected it to come out for it, and possibly physically. The fact that the Switch version is both a home console and portable version unlike the Vita, and that it comes on a cartridge, meaning that 20 years down the line if I want to whip it out, I don't have to fear disc rot having corrupted my game, I will still be able to comfortably play it. Because it's Axoim Verge and it's a great game to have in my collection that I really wanted to pick already, I won't mind paying just a little extra (and the CD eases the bargain quite a bit so thank you Tom Happ for that), so I'll be buying it physically when it comes out for Switch. But for something like Rime, for which I don't feel the same appeal, I must say that the 10$, or 10€ in my case, difference in price is harder to swallow.Showing all 4 items
Original 132-minutes French version has a music score by director Luc Besson's usual composer, Eric Serra. The USA version is 118 minutes long and was re-scored by Bill Conti. The version released in the rest of Europe is 118 minutes long. A special Version Longue (long) director's cut released in France is 168 minutes long.
SPOILER: The French and European versions end with Jaques swimming off with the dolphin, after having reached a depth where he can not survive. In the American version, a happier ending was added, where the dolphin takes Jacques to the surface.
The original 119 minute U.S. version was rated "PG-13" and was edited to earn a "PG" rating for its release. It was restored to 168 minutes in 2000 and the restored version was rated "R" by the MPAA.
The "R" rated director's cut on video includes usages of the "F" word and two sex scenes (featuring nudity by Jean Marc Barr and Roseanna Arquette).Massey Energy (NYSE: MEE), the 4th largest coal producer in the country is running political-style attacks in West Virginia claiming that "tree hugging extremists and self-serving politicians" are killing jobs, while the coal industry is "fighting hard for Appalachian jobs" and "what's right."
I am assuming that when Massey talks about fighting for Appalachian jobs they aren't referring to the fact that earlier in 2009 they cut employee pay by 6% and then recently increased the performance bonus for Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, by $600,000.
And I think it's also safe to assume that when Massey talks about fighting for "what's right" they aren't talking about the major environmental violations over the years culminating in a record $20 million settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA stated that Massey had violated its Clean Water Act permits "... more than 4,500 times between January 2000 and December 2006."
It seems the coal giant didn't learn much of a lesson from the EPA ruling. Just yesterday, a notice of intent to sue was filed alleging that Massey continues to pollute the water systems in West Virginia.
Specifically, the notice alleges that, between April 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, Massey violated its effluent limits at its various operations at least 971 times, and accrued 12,977 days in violation during that 12-month period.
It is a strange world indeed when standing up for "what's right" means cutting employee wages, stuffing the CEO's coffers with more cash and dumping toxic pollution into freshwater streams.
But then again, you're not in the desperate situation that the coal industry finds itself in.
The coal industry has been bleeding jobs for years. At the height of the dirty fuel renaissance, the US coal industry employed over 130,000 workers, with many of these jobs being unionized and high-paying. Today the coal industry employs only around 20,000 people at a time when coal production continues to rise. This negative correlation of jobs decreasing while production increases is due mainly to the automation of the industry in the form of surface strip-mining and mountain top removal.
87% of these surface mining jobs in Southern West Virginia are non-union.
West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd stated recently that:
"The increased use of mountaintop removal mining means that fewer miners are needed to meet company production goals. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. Mountaintop removal mining, a declining national demand for energy, rising mining costs and erratic spot market prices all add up to fewer jobs in the coal fields."
The cards are stacked against companies like Massey and they may think they're being crafty by running their attack ads. In the short term they may actually work, but they do run the real risk of dividing locals and creating tension where there should be a sense of community and cooperation. After all, you can't blame locals for being concerned about pollution in their water supplies, nor can you blame coal miners for wanting to keep their jobs.
In the long-term though, as jobs in the coal industry continue to bleed and fresh water supplies continue to dwindle, I believe that folks in West Virginia will look back on these Massey ads and realize that they were being played by the very people they thought were standing up for "what's right."While it feels like there's still a lot we don't know about Telltale's upcoming Batman series, one thing we do now know is that it won't be exclusively a single-player affair.
The game more or less plays out like Telltale's past adventure games, but you can now allow others to participate in the decision-making process. Telltale revealed the new feature at Comic-Con this weekend, as reported by Shacknews.
The developer is aware that its players are sometimes accompanied by people who like to chime in when the game presents a choice. "Now, from two to 2,000-plus people can help the player make decisions," Telltale's communications boss, Job Stauffer, said. "We are now turning all of Telltale's games into a live interactive multiplayer experience"
Batman will be the first of its games to support this new Crowd Play feature. Turning it on provides you with a URL that other people can use to participate. Viewers can give different actions a thumbs up or down and vote for dialogue options they want to see chosen. Viewers can see how the vote unfolds, and the game can be set up so that the most popular decision is automatically made or so the player still makes the final choice.
This seems like an ideal setup for streamers (or even Twitch Plays-style events), but Stauffer noted that latency will be an issue, at least initially.
Telltale recently released the first trailer for its new episodic Batman series, which debuts on August 2 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, and Xbox 360, as well as iOS and Android devices. The plan is to wrap up the season by the end of the year, but that will only happen if Telltale doesn't have to sacrifice quality.Most malware is created for economic purposes. To name just a few of our reports and blogs on this topic, we have written about Cybercrime Exposed, stolen data, and the Target point-of-sale malware.
But sometimes it’s not clear to our customers how much time and skill malware authors invest in their tools. A recent case at McAfee Labs got us scratching our heads to understand what was going on. The malware in question was already detected by our products as Sefnit-FAT, but the true content of the malware couldn’t be replicated in our environment no matter what we did.
Sefnit is a malicious family used in ad-click fraud. The infected computers will start to silently access various advertisement links to increase the ad hits and give money to the ad owner.
This is usually done by installing a malicious DLL in the system that monitors active browsing sessions and injects code into any request made by the user. It may also involve the use of malicious browser add-ons, which perform the same function.
Back to our case: We had to describe the features in the malware sample submitted by one of our customers, but the sample wouldn’t replicate in our environment.
The sample was a DLL, packed with Themida, a known packer and code protector that is pretty hard to reverse-engineer. Accompanying the sample was a file with same name as the DLL but the extension.idx. It contained encrypted data.
After removing the Themida packer layer, we found the code to read and decrypt the.idx file. The DLL file was simply decrypting the content of.idx and loading it in memory.
But one thing caught our attention and explained why we were not able to replicate the sample: The “key” to decrypt the file was formed by hashing information from the machine on which it ran. The malware collected information such as machine GUID, the folder where it was started, computer name, and other data to generate a hash, which was then used as the key.
If the sample was not run from a specific folder, on a specific machine, it would not decrypt the payload.
How was that encrypted file generated? How did the malware author know what information was present on the target machine to create a file that was unique to it?
Connecting the Dots
We knew that this detection was pretty prevalent, with thousands of detections per day, and that got us thinking how the malware could be so widespread and at same time unique to each machine, which is a characteristic of a targeted attack.
Sefnit detection data. (Source: McAfee GTI)
Looking at our Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) data, we noticed that Sefnit-FAT overlapped samples detected by another detection: Trojan-FDNK.
Our GTI data allow us to relate samples based on several factors, and one that helped us is replication data. We were able to find an executable (MD5: 129FFF31E13180F6E42C1991FB20EA12) that during replication dropped another sample detected by Trojan-FDNK. That was possibly a dropper for the DLL we were trying to analyze.
The file was a small executable (less than 50KB) with a PDF icon. These files are usually dropped on user systems by exploit kits such as Blackhole, Redkit, or Cool. We detect these as Dropper-FJS, Sefnit-FDNJ, and Trojan-FDLW, among others.
This executable turned out to be another layer of obfuscation. Once executed, it looks for setup.dat in the same folder where it is located, and decrypts this content in memory, generating a DLL. Let’s call this the Dropper DLL.
This DLL is never written to disk, but instead is loaded in memory and executes from its entry point. When analyzing what this DLL did, we noticed that it was Sefnit.
Sefnit at Work
So we were able to find a dropper for the Sefnit DLL, but it was not clear yet how it was locked to run only on one specific machine. We took a closer look at the Dropper DLL, and what we found was pretty interesting.
Once the DLL executes, it collects the following information:
Machine GUID
System Driver: Name
Process: Name, Executable Path
Network Adapter Configuration: Caption, Description, MAC Address
Computer System Product
Operating System
Processor
Onboard Device
CDROM Drive
Sound Device
Logical Disk
Disk Drive
Physical Media
Computer System
Base Board
System Enclosure
Display Configuration
Video Controller
BIOS
System
System Board: Product, OEM string array, Model, Caption, Serial number, Version, Manufacturer
The first hint that this had something to do with our DLL was the collection of the machine GUID, which was used by the Loader DLL to decrypt its payload. Analyzing the function that captured this information in both the Dropper DLL Sefnit sample and the Loader DLL we got from our customer, we confirmed that they have exactly the same code:
The code to collect machine GUID matches exactly on Dropper DLL and Loader DLL.
This information is encrypted and sent to the malicious control server for this malware. The server then sends another DLL, which is specifically tailored for the infected machine. And that DLL is exactly what we had from our customer.
This custom DLL was configured to look for a file in the same folder where it was dropped and with the same name as itself, but using one of four extensions:.idx,.lck,.txt, or.dat.
It decrypts this file using the same information collected by Dropper DLL, and starts this decrypted content the same way that the Dropper DLL was started.
We now had almost the full picture, but one piece was still missing: What was the content of the.idx file we received?
Exposing the Plot
Continuing our analysis of Dropper DLL, we noticed that after receiving Loader DLL from the web server, it creates a registry key to start it after reboot:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run = regsvr32 /s %appdata%\loader.dll
(The preceding DLL name is just an example. The actual DLL might have random names on different systems.)
At this point, we solved the mystery: Dropper DLL, which was created in memory by the executable, encrypted itself using the same information collected earlier, and wrote the encrypted data to a file named after the Loader DLL sent from server, and using one of the four extensions we named.
We analyzed the rest of the code and found how the machine lock observed in the initial DLL is generated. The following graphic illustrates the process:
Flowchart of a Sefnit infection.
As we can see, the mysterious.idx is the same thing as the Dropper DLL generated in memory by the executable, which in turn was dropped on the system by the exploit kit.
We have found several other files with same name (setup.dat) on our database, and all of them can be decrypted by the same executable, and generate the same malware.
Conclusion
The group behind this malware uses a complex method to ensure that their samples will run only on specific machines, in an attempt to divert malware analysts and automated malware analyzer systems from learning what the malware does, and to avoid exposing code to anyone trying to see what is happening.
This may seem like too much work just to hide ad-click fraud, but if you have read our other reports you will know that these miscreants earn millions of dollars each year.
But with the power of our GTI infrastructure and a little ingenuity, we were able to uncover this malicious scheme and protect our customers.In his latest fund letter, hardcore deflationist Hugh Hendry describes the entire reflation-based rally as a FAKE, and says the US has reached its "zero hour." (via MarketFolly)
...The surprise might concern the role that rising leverage has played in boosting GDP and in anchoring investors' expectations to an unrealistic level of nominal GDP. Over the last decade, each marginal dollar of debt has generated less and less marginal income. We knew that there would be a "zero-hour" for the economy when the creation of new debt would not contribute to GDP growth. The government's reaction to last year's demand shock has been to increase its own leverage. But, with the economy operating at its zero-hour, we believe this incremental leverage will actually have a negative impact. That is to say, the public sector will fail in its attempt to bring the economy back to its previous level of nominal GDP. In this scenario, the outcome will disappoint the market's expectations, which are rampantly bullish as evidenced by this year's dramatic re-pricing of risk assets.
This zero-hour for America has perhaps arrived sooner than many had anticipated. It was heralded by the Japanese experience. Japan is the bogeyman that confronts all academic thinkers, regardless of creed, from Krugman to Ferguson, as well as all who would choose to intervene in the workings of the economy. In a debate I had with Mr. Ferguson in London last month, he claimed that Japan was an extreme outlier and could be ignored. Really?Girls start menstruating when they are in their teens (pre-adults), yet the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) thinks it's not age-appropriate to talk about it till they become adults.
Phullu, which will hit theatres tomorrow (June 16), has been given an "A certificate" by the CBFC because the movie speaks about menstruation awareness.
Directed by Indie filmmaker Abhishek Saxena, Phullu is a movie where the eponymous protagonist, played by Sharib Ali Hashmi, tries to make low-cost sanitary napkins to make the lives of the women around him easier. The makers of the movie say the idea is to remove the taboo around menstruation by educating people.
And that is exactly the kind of movie we need to show in India to normalise menstruation, to talk about periods openly and not just in whispers (strangely, one of the most widely used brands of sanitary napkins in India calls itself that, yes, whisper. Why? Your guess is as good as ours).
Most young girls in India are caught unawares when they suddenly start bleeding or start experiencing stomach cramps. They feel the blood flowing out of their vagina is a result of either some deadly disease like cancer or some injury.
Menstruation or menstrual hygiene awareness fails to find a mention in public discourse.
Often they are terrified to tell even their mothers, and eventually when they do, they are told that they have now become a woman and should behave like one.
What follows is a long list of "don't dos" — don't go out to play with boys during that time of the month, don't enter the kitchen, don't go near a temple, don't touch the pickle and hundreds of other such unscientific and unexplained practices prevalent for ages.
Sadly, that list doesn't include any lessons on menstrual hygiene. That pre-pubescent girls need to know what to expect when they get their first period and how to take care of their health and hygiene, is something Indians feel ashamed about talking, or find it not-so-important to discuss.
Call it shame or the prejudice towards women and their health, menstruation or menstrual hygiene awareness fails to find a mention in public discourse. So, the CBFC's decision shouldn't come as a surprise.
We have had enough occasions when the man behind the theatre of the absurd has shown us what kind of regressive ideas rule his sanskari mind.
CBFC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani not just have a problem with adults kissing on the screen but even with women-oriented movies if they happen to portray female sexual desires.
For the CBFC, women have no right to know about their own body or its functions, let alone talking about sex fantasies. However, it's okay to portray women as subjects of sexual fantasies. Women, much like the regressive ideas that have made a comeback with vengeance of late and rule the entire country, should behave, live and die according to the rules made by men.
The fact that the CBFC thinks menstruation is an adult subject itself calls for a mentally imbalanced certification for the man.
But there is one more theory doing the rounds following his latest diktat — yes, that of a conspiracy.
Source: Official film poster
That the decision to give an "A certificate" to Phullu was a deliberate attempt to stop it from dominating the national discourse because of a similar release slated for next year.
India's new national icon, Akshay Kumar, has been shooting for Padman, a film based on the same theme — menstruation hygiene — but with a different storyline.
There are whispers that since Akshay Kumar is known to be in the good books of the current dispensation, nobody wants to hurt the prospects of Padman.
Padman was initially slated to hit the big screen in December this year, but now the makers are reportedly eyeing a Republic Day release next year. While many fear if Padman too will be given a similar rating, Saxena (Phullu director) is certain that Akshay Kumar's movie wouldn’t suffer the same fate as Phullu.
"I’m sure that the CBFC will not give Akshay Kumar’s film Padman an ‘Adult’ rating. Because he’s Akshay Kumar and whatever he shows is good and worthy of being seen as a ‘public interest’ message. If he gets an ‘A’ he’ll get Modiji to tweet about it and the CBFC will fall in line. But I’m sure he’ll get a U/A rating, so it won’t even come to that. When Padman releases, I’m sure that the CBFC will pitch it as an ‘education’ film, even though our film is just as much about menstruation and the taboo around it, as theirs," he was quoted as saying by The Quint.
Well, conspiracy or not, the CBFC's latest diktat has once again proved how deeply prejudiced it is not just against off-beat filmmakers (if the last National Awards didn't make it evident), but women as well. It's a shame that it didn't spare a thought for the young daughters of India.
It also shows why the film board is so confident that it can stop menstruation from entering the mainstream discourse — because Indians don't talk about periods. Period!
Also read: Why women are not handmaidsBBC AMERICA is set to premiere An Adventure in Space and Time, a film drama about the creation of Doctor Who, as part of the channel’s celebration of the long-running sci-fi series’ 50th anniversary. Frequent Who scriptwriter Mark Gatiss has already been announced as writer, and he’s also serving as executive producer alongside current Doctor Who execs Steven Moffat and Caroline Skinner. The film is a co-production between BBC AMERICA and BBC Cymru Wales and will air later in 2013.
Doctor Who first hit the BBC airwaves on November 23, 1963, and an impressive cast has been assembled to play the personalities behind the show’s earliest days. David Bradley, best known as Argus Filch in the Harry Potter movies, has taken on the role as actor William Hartnell, who played the series’ very first Doctor. Call the Midwife star Jessica Raine, already cast in the Season 7, Part 2 premiere of Doctor Who, is set to play producer Verity Lambert, and the great Brian Cox (The Bourne Supremacy, Adaptation.) is on board as Sydney Newman, BBC’s then-Head of Drama.
Meanwhile, The History Boys‘ Sacha Dhawan will play Waris Hussein, director of Doctor Who‘s premiere episode, “An Unearthly Child.”
Bradley says he’s “absolutely thrilled” about playing William Hartnell, and adds, “I first heard about this role from Mark [Gatiss] while watching the Diamond Jubilee flotilla from the roof of the National Theatre. When he asked if I would be interested, I almost bit his hand off! Mark has written such a wonderful script not only about the birth of a cultural phenomenon, but a moment in television’s history. William Hartnell was one of the finest character actors of our time and as a fan I want to make sure that I do him justice. I’m so looking forward to getting started.”
Filming begins in London next month at BBC’s Television Centre before transferring to Wimbledon Studios. Matt Strevens (Misfits, Skins) is producing, with Terry McDonough (Breaking Bad, The Street) directing.
Thoughts? Tell us below:The sky isn't falling, exactly. America isn't on a fast track to irrelevance. Even in a state of total neglect, we could probably shamble along as a disheveled superpower for a few more decades.
But all empires end, and the warning signs of American decline seem to be blinking more consistently. In the latest annual "prosperity index" published by the Legatum Institute, a London-based research firm, the United States ranks as the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That's five notches lower than last year, when America ranked No. 4. The drop might seem inconsequential, especially in the midst of a grueling recession—except that most of the world has endured the same recession, and other countries are bouncing back faster.
China and India have recovered smartly from the recession, for example. Brazil seems to be barreling ahead. Australia is growing faster than expected, prompting worry among government officials who fear they may have overstimulated the economy. The United States, meanwhile, is muddling through a weak, jobless recovery, and we have a lot of problems that could make prosperity feel elusive for a long time.
Real household income in America has flat-lined, for instance, which means many middle-class families are barely keeping up with inflation. The exploding federal deficit hamstrings the government's ability to help. Healthcare is too expensive, America's manufacturing base is eroding, and two open-ended foreign wars are draining the national treasury. This is not a recipe for building national wealth.
There are still millions of diligent, innovative Americans who could help the nation dig out of its hole. But overall, the American population is falling behind, by a variety of measures. Here are some of them:
Jobs. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the U.S. unemployment rate will be 9.3 percent for all of 2010. That's lower than in some European nations, but it's higher than in Canada and a lot worse than most countries in Scandinavia and Asia. Overall, the U.S. unemployment rate is about average for advanced economies and likely to stay that way. It could be worse, but middling job creation isn't a sign of global leadership.
Economic growth. The IMF also predicts that the U.S. economy will grow 1.9 percent in 2010. That's a tad better than the average for all advanced economies, but at least 10 developed nations will grow faster. Woo-hoo. Three cheers for mediocrity.
Poverty. The U.S. poverty rate, about 17 percent, is third worst among the advanced nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In that sample, only Turkey and Mexico are worse.
Education. American 15-year-olds score below the average for advanced nations on math and science literacy. But don't worry, our nation's future leaders are still ahead of their peers in Mexico, Turkey, Greece, and a few other places.
Competitiveness. In the latest global competitiveness report from the World Economic Forum, the United States fell from No. 1 to No. 2. Sure, let's console ourselves that the No. 1 country, Switzerland, is a tiny outlier nation and that getting bumped from the top spot doesn't really mean anything. Add an asterisk, and we're still No. 1.
Prosperity. The most prosperous nations, according to the Legatum report, are Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. These fairly homogenous European countries are the teachers' pets of global rankings, often appearing near the top because of right-sized economies and a relatively small underclass. For a huge economy like America's, a No. 9 ranking is still respectable. And part of the drop from last year's No. 4 spot is a change in methodology that puts more emphasis on the health and safety of citizens. Still, in the index's subrankings, the United States isn't even in the top 10 for economic fundamentals, safety and security, or governance. We should do better.
Health. In the Legatum study, the United States ranks 27th for the health of its citizens. Life expectancy in America is below the average for 30 advanced countries measured by the OECD, and the obesity rate in America is the worst among those 30 countries, by far. And, of course, we spend far more on healthcare per person than anybody else—but get no bang for the extra buck.
Well-being. In the United Nations' Human Development Index, which attempts to measure the overall well-being of citizens throughout the world, the United States ranks 13th, one notch lower than in the prior set of rankings. Norway, Australia, Iceland, and Canada are at the top.
Happiness. The United States ranks 11th in the OECD's measure of "life satisfaction"— |
that Stosur fired Taylor partly because of how poorly she'd played for so long earlier in the year. She never made it past the quarterfinals until she won Carlsbad in July. But the US Open was a debacle, and she plummeted to No. 20 before she launched her late-season push in Osaka.
It was too little, too late, too often -- and that's not likely to change when the new year begins. Stosur goes to pieces playing in her native Australia. And right now, it's hard to imagine her fellow countryman and Gold Coast habitué Tomic doing much better.4:05 p.m.
(Image Credit: Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0 / MGN)
The White House says President Donald Trump has spoken with the New York City mayor and the New York governor following the deadly truck attack on a bike path near the World Trade Center.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders also says Trump's calls for increasing extreme vetting of immigrants are "something that frankly the president has been talking about for a long time." The man arrested following Tuesday's attack is from Uzbekistan.
Sanders was asked on Wednesday about Trump's critical tweets about New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. Sanders says the Republican president "has not blamed" the New York Democrat and "doesn't feel that the senator is responsible for the attack."
Police say eight people died in the attack. They say the truck driver mowed people down on the bike path and crashed into a school bus and then an officer shot and wounded him.
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3:50 p.m.
The White House says President Donald Trump's administration considers a truck driver who mowed down and killed people on a New York bike path to be an "enemy combatant."
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump is open to sending the attacker to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Sanders says the actions of the attacker justify the enemy combatant label. She says Trump isn't calling on the attacker to be moved to Guantanamo Bay but "certainly would support it if he felt like that was the best move."
Tuesday's truck attack happened near the World Trade Center and killed eight people. Officials say the attacker was shot and wounded by police and has yet to be charged.
Sanders says the determination hasn't been made whether to move him out of the civilian justice system.
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1:25 p.m.
A bell that London gave to New York City after Sept. 11, 2001, has tolled in honor of those killed in the truck attack on a bike path near the World Trade Center.
St. Paul's Chapel is part of the Parish of Trinity Church Wall Street and rang the Bell of Hope on Wednesday. It's located near the lower Manhattan neighborhood where a truck driver plowed into people on Tuesday, killing eight.
The historic church is offering prayers for those killed, injured and traumatized and for their loved ones.
Worshippers also are praying for emergency responders, medical workers and worldwide peace. The church served rescue and recovery workers after the World Trade Center attack.
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1:15 p.m.
Court records show a man accused of killing eight people with a truck in New York City was cited several times in Nebraska and Iowa for trucking violations.
Online court records in Nebraska show Sayfullo Saipov was most recently ticketed by the Nebraska State Patrol on Feb. 4 for having an overweight truck in Cass County and paid the $75 fine.
In March 2014, he pleaded guilty and was fined $50 in Lincoln County for failing to stop and have his truck weighed.
In October 2011, Saipov pleaded guilty to driving more than 11 hours in a 14-hour period in Cass County and paid a $50 fine. Six weeks later, he was ticketed for driving an overweight truck through Nebraska and fined $150.
In Iowa, Saipov paid $127.50 in court costs and fines for not keeping his driving log current in December 2011.
He is accused of taking a deadly drive down a crowded bike path in New York City on Tuesday.
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1:00 p.m.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says the suspect in the New York City truck attack entered the United States in 2010 under the diversity visa program.
Homeland Security officials are confirming that the immigrant from Uzbekistan arrived in the U.S. that way.
It's a program for those from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S.
President Donald Trump is calling on Congress to eliminate the program "as soon as possible." The president said Wednesday the program is "not good," and says the U.S. needs to "get much tougher."
The suspect in the attack, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, is accused of driving a rental truck down a crowded bike path in New York City on Tuesday and killing eight people.
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12:30 p.m.
A New York Police Department official says beefed-up security at the New York City marathon will include sniper teams, sand truck barricades, and counterterrorism officers.
Chief of Department Carlos Gomez vows that the marathon on Sunday will be a "very safe event."
Gomez said Wednesday that there also will be an abundance of plainclothes officers, bomb dogs and helicopter surveillance.
Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller says the driver in Tuesday's deadly bike path attack had been planning the carnage for weeks and did it "in the name of ISIS."
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12:20 p.m.
President Donald Trump is calling the suspect in the New York City deadly truck attack an "animal."
Trump says he will ask Congress to "immediately" begin work to terminate the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which he says was used by the alleged attacker to enter the United States.
Officials have not yet said that was the case.
Trump says "we will take all necessary steps to protect our people."
Speaking before a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said "all of America is praying and grieving" with the victims.
He says: "Our hearts break for them."
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12:15 p.m.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says that President Donald Trump's attack against Sen. Chuck Schumer "plays right into the hands of the terrorists."
The Democratic governor pointedly condemned Trump's Wednesday tweets, which criticized Schumer's immigration policy less than 24 hours after the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001.
Cuomo said the president's tweets "were not helpful." He added, "You play into the hands of the terrorists to the extent you disrupt and divide... The tone now should be the exact opposite."
Both Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Trump had yet to reach out personally.
Trump tweeted that Schumer is "helping to import Europe's problems."
He called the visa lottery program that allowed the suspect to enter the country "a Chuck Schumer beauty."
The program became law under President George W. Bush.
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Noon
New York City's police commissioner says the officer who shot the man responsible for a deadly rampage on a Manhattan bike path is too modest to admit he's a hero.
Officer Ryan Nash was on a routine call at a nearby school when he and his partner were told there had been an accident outside.
The pair raced outside and encountered Sayfullo Saipov in the street, waving two firearms that were later revealed to be a paintball gun and a pellet gun.
Nash fired a shot that hit Saipov.
Commissioner James O'Neill said of Nash, "I don't think we could find a more humble human being."
He said Nash has been on the force for five years and is 28 years old, "and this is what he did for the city, this is what he did for the country."
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11:50 a.m.
A New York police department official says it appears the driver in the deadly bike path attack has links to people who have been investigated.
However, Deputy Commissioner John Miller says the driver himself was never a previous subject of investigation by the FBI or police.
Miller said Wednesday that the man had been planning the attack for weeks and did it "in the name of ISIS."
He says there were "multiple knives" in addition to imitation guns displayed by the attacker, who was wounded by a police officer. Miller said the driver had handwritten notes that essentially said the Islamic State will "endure forever."
Eight people were killed and a number of others injured in Tuesday's attack near the World Trade Center.
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11:40 a.m.
A New York Police Department official says the driver in the deadly bike path attack had handwritten notes that essentially said the Islamic State will "endure forever."
Deputy Commissioner John Miller says the attacker had been planning it for weeks, and had "multiple knives" in addition to imitation guns.
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11:30 a.m.
A New York police department official says the driver in the deadly truck bombing had been planning it for weeks and did it "in the name of ISIS."
Deputy Commissioner John Miller made the remarks at a briefing Wednesday by city, state and federal officials.
He says there were "multiple knives" in addition to imitation guns displayed by the attacker, who was wounded by a police officer.
Hundreds of detectives worked through the night following the Tuesday attack. Among other things, they've been "meticulously" collecting security video along the highway that the suspect used before mowing down people on a bike path next to the World Trade Center, killing eight people.
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11:15 a.m.
New York City Fire Commissioner Joseph Nigro (NY'-groh) says four people remain in critical but stable condition following the Manhattan truck attack that claimed eight lives.
Nigro and other officials spoke Wednesday at a briefing, one day after an attack along a bike path near the World Trade Center.
Police Chief of Department Carlos Gomez says security enhancements include heavy weapons teams throughout the city.
Mayor Bill de Blasio says victims from other countries will forever be considered New Yorkers.
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10:50 a.m.
An Ohio truck driver says the man accused of killing eight people with a truck in New York City was argumentative, seemed to harbor radical views and saw his work life spiraling down.
Mirrakhmat Muminov says Sayfullo Saipov lived in Stow, Ohio, for a few years. He says he knew Saipov because they were both Uzbek truck drivers.
Muminov says Saipov lost his insurance on his truck because of a few traffic tickets. He says companies stopped hiring Saipov, so he left for New Jersey.
Muminov said he heard from Saipov's friends that Saipov's truck engine blew up a few months ago in New Jersey. He says that "probably hurt him more than anything."
Muminov also says Saipov was "not happy with his life" and would get into arguments with his friends and family.
Officials say Saipov left a handwritten note referring to the Islamic State group. Muminov says Saipov never spoke about the group, but he could tell Saipov held more radical views.
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10:40 a.m.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his Belgian counterpart are vowing to step up counterterrorism cooperation after the New York truck attack that killed eight people, including a young Belgian.
Meeting Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, Tillerson said Wednesday "we have seen the evil face of terror in our borders."
Reynders noted previous attacks in Belgium and voiced solidarity with the U.S.
He said "homegrown terrorism" is as real in Europe as the United States. Together, he says, they can combat the global challenge.
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10:20 a.m.
FBI agents investigating the Manhattan truck attack have emerged from a Paterson, New Jersey, apartment building with a black plastic bag.
They put the bag in a vehicle on Wednesday, then went back into the cordoned off area where the truck driver lives.
On Tuesday, a man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path in lower Manhattan, near the World Trade Center, killing eight people.
The Uzbek immigrant who was the truck driver was wounded by police.
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9:55 a.m.
Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says the rented pickup that mowed down pedestrians and bicyclists in New York, killing eight and injuring 11 others resembles "very much" the "coward attack" in Stockholm earlier this year.
In April, an Uzbek man, Rakhmat Akilov, drove a stolen beer truck into a crowd of afternoon shoppers outside the upmarket Ahlens store in Stockholm, killing four and injuring 15 others.
Lofven said Wednesday "how a person can take a vehicle and use it to kill innocent fellow human beings is beyond my understanding."
Lofven told Swedish radio that the world community "must be stronger than terrorism."
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9:40 a.m.
One of the people injured in an attack on a New York City bike path is a native of Argentina who lives just outside Boston.
The Argentine foreign ministry says Martin Marro is recovering from his injuries at a Manhattan hospital.
Several of Marro's high school classmates from Argentina came to the U.S. to visit him and celebrate the 30th anniversary of their graduation. Five of them died in the attack.
Marro works as a biomedical researcher and lives in Newton. Last week, he hosted a fundraiser for a local Republican candidate that was attended by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. Photos of Marro and his wife posing with Baker were posted to Facebook.
Marro's friend, Tom Mountain, calls him "one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet."
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9:30 a.m.
A school next to the New York City bike path where a deadly truck attack occurred is open amid tight security measures.
Stuyvesant (STY'-veh-sehnt) High School says on its website that it's making crisis counselors available for its students and staff on Wednesday.
It says students must remain in the building during free periods and lunch.
The truck fatally mowed down eight people Tuesday afternoon on a bike path near the school and the World Trade Center site.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says law enforcers have a note referencing the Islamic State. But he stresses that the investigation is ongoing.
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9:20 a.m.
The head of the Arab League has condemned the deadly truck attack on a New York City bike path that killed eight people and injured 11 others.
In a statement Wednesday, Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit expressed his condolences to the U.S. government and the victims' families.
He also said such incidents place more responsibility on the international community to cooperate in the fight against terrorism.
On Tuesday, a man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path in lower Manhattan, near the World Trade Center.
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9 a.m.
A law enforcement official says investigators are trying to talk to the 29-year-old suspect accused of killing eight people in a truck attack in a bike lane near the World Trade Center and hoping to glean information from him.
The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the ongoing probe and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Sayfullo Saipov. They say he came to the U.S. legally from Uzbekistan in 2010.
He was shot once in the abdomen by an officer after he crashed the rented truck into a school bus during the rampage Tuesday afternoon. He underwent surgery and remained hospitalized.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a note found at the scene referenced the Islamic State and that the suspect had been radicalized in the U.S. He says the contents of the note were under investigation.
Cuomo calls the driver a "depraved coward," and says the attack "did not instill terror" among hardy New Yorkers.
— Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed.
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8:55 a.m.
The Senate's top Democrat is hitting back after President Donald Trump faulted him for an immigration program that Trump says allowed the man in the deadly New York City bike path attack to enter the United States.
Chuck Schumer says in a statement that "I have always believed and continue to believe that immigration is good for America."
The New York lawmaker says Trump is "politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy." Schumer says the president should focus "on the real solution — anti-terrorism funding" — an area that Schumer says Trump has proposed cutting in his most recent budget.
Tuesday's attack killed eight people and injured at least 11.
Trump says on Twitter that the driver "came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty."
Officials have said the driver — a native of Uzbekistan — came into the country legally in 2010.
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8:40 a.m.
Israel's prime minister says his country stands with the United States following the deadly truck attack on a New York City bike path.
Benjamin Netanyahu (neh-ten-YAH'-hoo) issued a statement Wednesday addressed to President Donald Trump, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Netanyahu decried "yet another horrible Islamist terror attack" and says Israel prayed for the victims and their families. He says: "Together we will defeat this scourge."
Israel is one of the United States' closest allies.
Eight people were killed and at least 11 seriously injured in Tuesday's truck attack by an Uzbek immigrant near the World Trade Center.
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8:10 a.m.
President Donald Trump is calling for "Merit Based immigration" following the deadly truck attack in New York City that killed eight people and injured 11.
Trump says on Twitter on Wednesday that the driver in Tuesday's attack "came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty."
Officials said the attacker is an immigrant from Uzbekistan who came to the U.S. legally in 2010. They haven't said whether he came in through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which covers immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S.
Trump tweeted, "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)."
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7:55 a.m.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says investigators probing the deadly truck attack along a popular bike path near the World Trade Center have a note referencing the Islamic State.
Cuomo stressed Wednesday on "CBS This Morning" that the investigation is ongoing.
Law enforcers are working to determine what led the pickup truck driver to plow down people on the bike path on Tuesday afternoon. The driver is in critical condition after police shot him in the abdomen.
Cuomo calls the driver a "depraved coward," and says the attack "did not instill terror" among hardy New Yorkers.
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7:15 a.m.
France's prime minister says the deadly truck attack on a New York bike path is a reminder that the threat is high everywhere, and that authorities must remain "as humble as we are determined" to fight extremism.
After checking security measures at the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said the Manhattan attack shows that "the means used by those who want to hurt us can be of formidable effectiveness, and formidable simplicity."
Philippe said ordinary people should remain vigilant and not forget "that the threat level is high, and it is high everywhere in the world." He said authorities should give "credible responses" and focus on intelligence as well as security barriers like those installed around France after multiple deadly attacks.
Eight people were killed in Tuesday's truck attack by an Uzbek immigrant near the World Trade Center.
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7 a.m.
FBI agents and police are searching for evidence in the Paterson, New Jersey, neighborhood where the man suspected of plowing down people on a New York City riverfront bike path lived.
Law enforcement cordoned off an apartment building early Wednesday. Officers also searched a garage.
The building's manager told The Record that Sayfullo Saipov lived with his wife and two children in a two-bedroom apartment.
The man, who identified himself only as Ali, says he rented the apartment to the 29-year-old several months ago.
A man who identified himself as Saipov's neighbor told NJ Advance Media he often saw Saipov standing on the corner talking to friends.
The city is home to a large Muslim population and a mosque is near the apartment.
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6:55 a.m.
An eerie emptiness hovers over a major New York City traffic artery, one day after a deadly truck attack along a popular bike path near the World Trade Center.
Morning rush-hour traffic has been banned Wednesday along a stretch of the highway in Lower Manhattan. Police helicopters circled overhead.
Some runners and bicycle riders did their best to maintain their normal routines. But police blocked off the bike path north of where the rampage began.
Truck drivers steered clear of the frozen zone to make their morning deliveries.
Investigators worked to determine what led the pickup truck driver to plow down people on the riverfront bike path, killing eight on Tuesday. The driver is in critical condition after police shot him in the abdomen.
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6:25 a.m.
Iran's Foreign Ministry has condemned the truck attack in New York City that killed eight people and seriously injured at least 11, referring to it as a "terrorist" assault.
That's according to a report Wednesday by the semi-official Fars news agency. It quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi.
Ghasemi said in a statement that "a serious approach coinciding with honesty and transparency of all nations" is the only way to "uproot" terrorism.
Ghasemi also expressed sympathy with the relatives of the "innocent" victims of the attack.
Tensions are high between Iran and the U.S. as President Donald Trump recently refused to re-certify the nuclear deal Tehran struck with world powers.
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6:15 a.m.
The German government says a German citizen is among the injured in the truck attack on a bike path in New York City.
The Foreign Ministry didn't identify the female German citizen or give any details about the severity of her injuries in a note on its website Wednesday.
Eight people were killed and at least 11 seriously injured in Tuesday's attack.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, wrote on Twitter: "Horrified at the evil terrorist #ManhattanAttack. Our hearts go out to the victims + families. From Berlin to NYC: We stand with you."
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5:45 a.m.
Saudi Arabia says it strongly condemns the deadly truck attack in New York City that killed eight people and seriously injured 11.
The kingdom on Wednesday offered its condolences to the families of the victims and reiterated its "rejection and condemnation of such terrorist acts."
Other Gulf allies have also issued similar statements.
Kuwait's ruling emir sent a cable to President Donald Trump expressing his condolences.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, meanwhile, issued statements supporting efforts and measures taken by the U.S. to combat terrorism and enhance security.
Earlier, Qatar said it, too, offers its "full solidarity with the U.S. government and its support for all measures taken to maintain security."
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5 a.m.
The president of Uzbekistan has sent his condolences to U.S. President Donald Trump and offered his country's assistance in investigating Tuesday's attack in New York by an Uzbek national.
Eight people were killed when a truck plowed down a riverfront bike path near the World Trade Center.
Officials who weren't authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity identified 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov as the attacker. They say he came to the U.S. legally from Uzbekistan in 2010.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev also offered condolences to families of the victims in a statement Wednesday.
Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan and is one of the most closed off post-Soviet republics. Previously, Uzbek officially never commented or acknowledged any security incidents abroad involving Uzbek nationals.
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4 a.m.
The Argentine foreign ministry has identified its citizens killed in the bike path attack near the World Trade Center.
They are Hernan Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, and Hernan Ferruchi.
The ministry also says one of its citizens, Martin Ludovico Marro, is recovering from injuries at Manhattan's Presbyterian Hospital.
The victims were part of a group of friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from the Polytechnic School of Rosario, Argentina.
The government gave its condolences and said that all Argentines are sharing in this terrible moment of profound sadness.
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12:05 a.m.
Investigators are working to determine what led a pickup truck driver to plow down people on a riverfront bike path near the World Trade Center, killing eight.
New York's mayor called Tuesday's attack "a particularly cowardly act of terror."
The driver is in critical condition after police shot him in the abdomen.
Authorities said after crashing the truck, he brandished air guns and yelled what witnesses said was "Allahu Akbar," which is Arabic for "God is great."
Officials who weren't authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity identified the attacker as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov. They say he came to the U.S. legally from Uzbekistan in 2010.
One of the dead is from Belgium and five others were from Argentina.Iowa Rep. Steve King said allowing undocumented immigrants to stay, even if they contribute to society and have been law-abiding, would be "tantamount to amnesty." | AP Photo Rep. Steve King warns of'mistake' if Trump changes on immigration
Iowa Rep. Steve King on Wednesday sought to downplay Donald Trump's recent "softening" on immigration, emphasizing that he did not interpret the Republican nominee's latest comments to be a significant change in his stance toward the millions of undocumented people in the country.
King, introduced on CNN by John Berman as a supporter of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during the primaries, remarked that Trump's comment to Sean Hannity that he would consider "softening" his stance should be taken "with the balance" of his other comments. Trump remarked Tuesday night that "we're going to follow the laws of this country," while adding, "what people don't realize, what people don't realize, we have very, very strong laws.”
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"When you balance that together, I think what it says is that if people are anticipating that there would be a deportation corps that would be deployed across this country, that softening means that's less likely," King acknowledged. "And he said, too, we have the police force out there. They know who people are. And let's work with local law enforcement. And they didn't say it in this interview. But in these sanctuary cities and enforcing the law, that will keep us busy for a long time."
When pressed on the context of Trump's remarks, in which the Manhattan businessman responded to a question about those here illegally who contribute to society, King suggested that Trump might have more to say about the legal status of such individuals.
"His answer then was there could be some softening, which I didn't quite hear as he'd be willing to change the law," said King, who said he would "push back on that," noting his position on the House Immigration Subcommittee and House Judiciary Committee. "And I think Donald Trump understands this. If asked further on this, I think he would come back to this point: we have to restore the respect for the rule of law in America. And part of that is to enforce the laws that we have. If we fail to do that, then the result of that will be, reward people for breaking the law which means that it would erode the very position that's taken him to the nomination."
King was then pressed on whether allowing people to stay, even if they contribute to society and have been law abiding, would be "tantamount to amnesty."
"I would say yes. And the reason is they're not law abiding in the first place. By crossing the border illegally, they're by definition criminals. And he has said he wants to remove the criminals in this country," King explained.
Berman went on to ask,"I'm just curious what you would have said had Donald Trump used this language when you were working so hard to get Ted Cruz elected or nominated for president?"
"Well, that's a good question. And the tone of this campaign of course shifts along the way. And I know that of course Ted Cruz took a strong position. And also Donald Trump took a strong position. Both of them have pretty much etched in stone that they would be for restoring the respect for the rule of law and enforcing the laws as they are and bringing some new ones along the way," King responded.
But if Trump moved off his position, King made clear that it "would be a mistake."
"To soften the tone a little bit, I think that's fine. I think it's — to the degree some of his critics have overstated the positions that he's taken. I would expect that softening this tone is something that may be part of this new campaign that — and Kellyanne Conway, his new campaign manager is terrific, brilliant," King said. "And it's an excellent choice to have her there as campaign manager. And some of this might be some of the tonal difference she's recommending to Donald Trump. I wouldn't disagree with Kellyanne at any time. I’ve found her to be a great asset to my campaign, too."We are all aware of the simple game that football and futsal is, but in the legendary Johan Cruyff described, it is hard to play the game in a simple fashion. This is where the Futsal tactics come into place, and that’s how you can use this blog. The next 5 attacking tactics have been used by me and by other people and experts to use to aid their 5 a side game to the best.
Spread your wings
This is the point that relates towards the point the a team would need to make sure that the wide man that would be in charge of the midfield on the sides, will need to make sure that they stay on the sides. This is a basic rule, yet some players still don’t manage to fully apply it when they are on the pitch. This helps the team have more passing options and give a team more dimension on how they would want to play.
Move to the Defenders
Now that we have covered the basics, the next tip that i will pick up is the use of attacking and running at players. The reason for why this is important is because it helps you to create space and passing options for yourself. This can be done through using your speed, skill technique or all of them, but in my opinion, there are different ways which are appropriate to beating certain individuals on any pitch.
3 Seconds
The 3 seconds rule helps to cover the rule of what players should do when they don’t have the ball, helping to create a constant atmosphere of intensity. The 3 seconds rule consists of players not being allowed to stay in the same place when they don’t have the ball for more than 3 seconds. This is the rule that makes you have the ball more and helps to develop the setup of having the ball for 90% of a futsal game.
Fakes, Lies and Moves
Futsal also has a huge emphasis on the types of movements that are needed to succeed in the game. This is something that is and can also be used in football matches,which makes the sport fairly special. The fake movement that you should try and make would be going on the outside, where the marker would see you, cutting on the inside, then quickly asking for the ball when you have lied to your defender. This is a basic yet effective way of catching your marker off guard and teaches you the best movement on how to make space for yourself and receive the ball as well.
Generosity
This is arguably the most important point to make that applies to almost every team sport. Putting your teammates needs ahead of your own is a great mentality to have and brings out the best in you and your teammates as well. The way in which you can do this is through the use of practising your accuracy, and communicating with your teammates on how they want the ball, which can lead towards better counterattacks and link up play as well.
So here is my list, where’s yours make sure you leave your opinions in the comments below.
For Other Blogs
Australia Surprise Futsal Nation with World Cup Breakthrough
4 Ways Futsal can turn you into a Maestro ‘P1’
Advertisements"We're only in eight states and we're not in as large a market as some of the other breweries, but (the) Nugget Nectar logo is really striking and it stands out" said Ed Yashinsky Brewery Manager at Troegs.
The label is a recent redesign of a longtime of Troegs fan favorite and features a large fist squeezing the juice from a ripe hop.
"We came up with the idea of the hand-squeezing the hops and the first version was actually much more cartoon looking," said Yashinsky. "After 10 years, we started redesigning our entire line and things got a little more stylized, to what we have now."
The Nugget Nectar label is the culmination of a long creative process that begins with finding the right name, Yashinsky said. While finding a clever name might be a challenge, finding one that can be properly trademarked is even tougher with more than 2,400 breweries currently in operation.
"For every great name we came up with, we probably throw 300 on the scrap pile," he said. "Then you start looking for an image that's going to work."
In the case of Nugget Nectar, it's safe to say Troegs found the right combination. The fist full of hops can now proudly claim the title of CNBC Beer News Beer Label Champion.By now, Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) should require no introduction, so let’s get right to it. In a BBC Q&A and corresponding interview released Friday, the discredited Climategate conspirator revealed a number of surprising insights into his true climate beliefs, the most shocking of which was that 20th-century global warming may not have been unprecedented. As the entire anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory is predicated on correlation with rising CO 2 levels, this first-such confession from an IPCC senior scientist is nothing short of earth-shattering.
Of course, much will be made of Jones’s claim that the refusal to share raw temperature data was partially based on the fact that it “was not well enough organized.” And rightly so, as the very idea that the major datasets CRU released for use in vital anomaly and temperature reconstructions were based on data not “organized” enough to be made public reeks of fraudulent behavior.
Then there are the statements Jones made regarding relatively recent temperature trends which truly boggle the mind.
Imagine a man who has spent the better part of the past 25 years toiling to convince the world of CO 2 -forced 20th-century warming now admitting that the difference in warming rates for the periods 1860-1880, 1910-40 and 1975-2009 is statistically insignificant. Jones even acceded that there has been no statistically-significant global warming since 1995; that in fact, global temperatures have been trending to the downside since January of 2002, although he denied the statistical significance of the -0.12C per decade decline.
Yet as incredible as those concessions truly are, they pale in comparison to this response to a question about the significance of the Medieval Warm Period:
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Stop the tape.
Much debate? So Jones now openly admits that the debate as to whether the MWP (900-1300 AD) was worldwide and warmer than any period since is not over. He even went on to explain the implication of his admission:
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.
Precisely, and yet, as director of CRU since 1998, rather than remedy the paucity of well-dated, high-resolution SH paleo-temperature records in order to establish the incredibly vital truth, Jones instead worked closely with those conspiring to remove the MWP from the climate history records altogether.
Why the subterfuge? Perhaps a brief recap is in order.
As previously discussed here, prior to 2001, the similarly embattled U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's position on the prior millennium was that global temperatures had fluctuated drastically with not one but three radical shifts occurring over the period. The MWP – which was several degrees warmer than today -- was followed in circa 1300 by the abrupt cooling of The Little Ice Age (LIA), which lasted until approximately 1850. And then began the modern warming period, which was by no means unique and apparently ended with the millennium itself.
As I wrote in December’s Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline :
But this image of a fluid climate system subject to abrupt and natural up-and-downturns made unprecedented 20th-century warming about as marketable as Florida swampland. And opportunists who depended on the aberrance of post-industrial revolution warming in order to condemn and control mankind’s CO 2 emissions soon recognized that perhaps the LIA but most certainly the MWP simply had to go.
And in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), that’s exactly what happened. Both the Working Group 1 (WG1) report and the highly-politicized Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which invariably commands the bulk of media and political attention, prominently featured the now infamous “Hockey Stick” graph.
IPCC 2001 SPM Fig 1b
As you undoubtedly know, the graph, aka MBH98, has become the poster-child of the AGW propaganda machine. Serving as the centerpiece for Al Gore’s sermon on the mounting dangers of human achievement in his 2006 sci-fi film, it has come to represent the mainstream accepted depiction of last millennium’s temperatures. That is, trending downward prior to an abrupt upturn around 1900, coinciding with the atmospheric build-up of CO 2 emissions brought about by the industrial revolution. In AR4’s SPM, policymakers absorbing the striking visual were also treated to this declarative caption:
“[T]he rate and duration of warming of the 20th century has been much greater than in any of the previous nine centuries. Similarly, it is likely that the 1990s have been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium.”
Despite repeated debunking, the embattled chart continues to languish in U.N. climate reports, its portrayal of unprecedented 20th-century warming a major sales tool to those wishing to influence everything from domestic energy policy to international “climate-debt” repar |
Qusra on Monday, a local official said. Village mayor Abed al-Atheim told Ma‘an that settlers from an illegal outpost south of Qusra chopped down 26 trees belonging to Talat Fawzi Hassan. The settlers also damaged concrete agricultural structures belonging to Deeb Abdel Latif Hassan and Ali Abdul al-Hamid Hassan. On Sunday, settlers destroyed 106 olive trees in Yatta.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648416
Settlers torch 2 cars and attack Palestinian home west of Nablus
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — Israeli settlers torched two cars and sprayed racist graffiti in a Palestinian village near Nablus on Tuesday. A number of Israeli settlers from the nearby Havat Gilad settlement raided the Palestinian village of Far‘ata in the northern West Bank district of Qalqiliya early Tuesday morning, locals said. The settlers torched two cars belonging to Bahjat Mohammad Salman and attacked his house, which is located in the eastern area of the village. Israeli forces and police arrived in the area and opened investigation into the accident.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648795
General strike in Negev Sunday protesting Prawer plan
NEGEV (PIC) 19 Nov — High Steering Committee of the Arabs of the Negev called for a general strike on Sunday protesting the Israeli government’s decision to approve the Prawer plan. The call for the strike came to coincide with a visit of a delegation of the Internal Affairs Committee of the Knesset to Negev area to convince the Committee’s members to vote in favor of the law. Arab MK Talal Abu Arar, a member of Steering Committee, stated that the strike will also include local authorities, shops, and schools. Abu Arar confirmed that the Interior Affairs Committee of the Knesset continued to approve Prawer Plan in total disregard of Arab citizens in Negev and the Arab Members of Knesset. Israel’s Prawer plan aims to forcibly displace up to 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins in the Nagev desert, confiscate 800,000 dunums of land, and confine the Bedouins to one percent of the land. Palestinians across the country are calling for a day of “Anger and Strike” and plan to take to the streets in their thousands.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s763GcBtoDfeNs5elpwiJw67jCU02szPK7z19jQGPc%2fG59Shw4DERthBbYcJ%2fMaRPsJIF0FBwxs9RgwdmA2r9dEshwuJ5v9IZu5bV4KLSY%2bcc%3d
Israel cuts power to Jericho village over unpaid debts
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 18 Nov — Israeli authorities cut electricity to a Palestinian village in Jericho on Sunday, claiming that a local company had failed to pay its bills over the past three months. Fathi Khdeirat, coordinator of the Jordan Valley campaign, said 12 water wells in al-Jiftlik have stopped working due to the power outage. Haza Daraghmeh, a member of al-Jiftlik village council, told Ma‘an that Israel claims the village council has accumulated a debt of 470,000 shekels ($133,420) over the past three months, leaving a total debt of 700,000 shekels ($198,711). Khdeirat called on President Abbas to immediately intervene to help restore electricity to the area, as a lack of power could lead to the devastation of thousands of dunams of agricultural fields due to the failure of irrigation systems. Al-Jiftlik is located in Area C, over 60 percent of the occupied West Bank under exclusive Israeli control. Israel, as the occupying power in the West Bank, has a legal obligation to protect the Palestinian civilian population and to administer the territory for their benefit.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648411
80 Israeli police officers visit Aqsa Mosque
JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 18 Nov — Around 80 Israeli security forces entered the al-Aqsa compound from the Moroccan gate and toured the area, a group said Monday. The Al-Aqsa Foundation said in a statement that 80 uniformed officers entered the compound from the Moroccan gate. They toured the compound including one of the mosques inside.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648473
166 settlers roam Aqsa plazas
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 19 Nov — Big numbers of Jewish settlers broke into the Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday and roamed its various courtyards. The Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage (AFEH) said in a press release that 166 settlers stormed the holy site via Maghareba gate in groups and organized tours in the company of Jewish rabbis who explained history of the alleged temple. AFEH pointed out that the Israeli police allow Jewish settlers to roam the Aqsa plazas while blocking entry of Muslim scholars who wish to study Quran in religious lessons inside the Mosque.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7E8m8Kj1dMBoaWJelMcLl40icCBbiek0UDgqv0GzrFZRniIOK%2bgZCFiwavXGBEB20gh1ojh%2bYvws%2bndx0xqVAr%2fCtsXr3X%2bzyRdyM1YoBPJM%3d
Ridwan calls for defending the Aqsa in face of repeated storming
GAZA (PIC) 19 Nov — Minister of Awkaf and religious affairs in the Gaza government Dr. Ismail Ridwan has denounced the Jewish settlers’ storming of the Aqsa Mosque on Monday under Israeli police protection. He said that the Israeli occupation authorities were allowing such break-ins into the holy site in a bid to prepare for dividing the Mosque temporally and spatially, exploiting the preoccupation of most countries with internal problems. The minister warned that such provocations to Muslim feelings would entail serious consequences. Ridwan called on worshipers and vigilantes to stand fast in face of those settlers and to confront their attempts to desecrate the Aqsa Mosque.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7IJ2qcWQMnY0S66kJ58A5ZxBZpx7L0lRw%2fk6oKu%2bgNnJmldtWsFTjJqisDWSRYUTzeaebOonOou3eG3TUsg4IBv2Bc7lh1iC4bYDSjONhYws%3d
Violence / Raids / Clashes / Illegal arrests
Jewish mob attacks Palestinian man in Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 18 Nov — Hundreds of Jewish extremists attacked a Palestinian man early Monday as he was driving through West Jerusalem, the victim told Ma‘an. Majdi Al-Jarbawi, 40, said that the attack began at 4 a.m. after stopping at traffic lights on Bar Ilan street, which runs through a majority Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. “When I stopped at the light, a large number of extremists surrounded my car and began screaming at me: ‘Arab, Arab. He’s an Arab’, while throwing rocks at me from all sides,” he told Ma‘an. Al-Jarbawi was hit in the face with a rock and the windshield of his car was completely smashed. He drove himself to a nearby hospital and then filed a complaint with Israeli police.
Last Wednesday, a Palestinian man was left in a coma after Israeli settlers dropped a large rock on him from a height near the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648487
Bethlehem man dies of 7-year-old Israeli gunshot wounds
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — Fifty-eight-year-old Mohammad Munark Sawarka died on Tuesday of wounds sustained 7 years ago, medics said. Israeli forces shot him in the back with seven bullets in 2006. The incident left him paralyzed. He died after years of suffering, medics added.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648900
Palestinian villages subject to Israeli mock raids not told they are exercises
JERUSALEM (The Guardian) 12 Nov by Harriet Sherwood — Palestinian civilians are being embroiled in Israeli military training, including mock arrests, raids on private homes and incursions into villages, without being told they are involved in army exercises. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) defended the training exercises following complaints from an Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, about two separate drills held earlier this year. In the first, a large number of troops in full combat gear spread out in a small Palestinian village for several hours, causing alarm and fear among its population. In the second, about 15 armed soldiers raided the house of a family while they were finishing their evening meal during Ramadan. In neither case were residents told that it was a training exercise. The Palestinians caught up in training drills are not informed in advance that an arrest or raid is an exercise. According to the testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, civilians with no connection with militant activity are usually selected for such exercises. “We used houses, streets, people like cardboard practice targets,” said one.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/palestinian-israeli-training-raids-mock-arrests-human-rights
Woman injured after being hit by settler’s vehicle
IMEMC — [Nablus – Tuesday evening, Nov 19] Palestinian medical sources have reported that a Palestinian woman was wounded after being rammed by a speeding vehicle of an Israeli settler, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The sources said that Shamsa Sharif, 60 years of age, was moved to the Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, suffering moderate but stable injuries. Sharif is from Huwwara village, south of Nablus. The settler fled the scene after the incident. There have been numerous similar hit-and-run incidents in different parts of the occupied West Bank, mainly in the Hebron district in the southern portion of the West Bank.
http://www.imemc.org/article/66431
8 hurt in Nablus clashes, 1 critically
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 18 Nov — Eight Palestinians were injured on Monday in clashes with Israeli forces south of Nablus, locals said. Abed al-Athiem al-Qadi, the mayor of Qusra village, told Ma‘an that clashes broke out earlier in the day after Israeli settlers uprooted 26 olive trees in the village. Israeli forces arrived on the scene and fired rubber-bullets at Palestinian villagers, injuring eight people. Hamada Abdullah Abu Rida, 18, was shot directly in the chest and transferred to Radifa hospital. He is said to be in critical condition.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648578
Locals: Israeli forces detain 3 in Bethlehem village
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 18 Nov — Israeli forces detained three young Palestinians in and around Bethlehem and took them to an unknown location, locals said. Israeli forces raided al-Ubeidiya village east of Bethlehem and detained Rashad Jamil Hasasneh, 18, Ahmad Mazen Hasasneh, 16, and Ahed Mohammad Hasasneh, 17. Separately, Israeli forces detained a Palestinian from the Abu Dheir area in Jenin, and briefly detained a Palestinian from Ya‘bad village at a checkpoint, security sources said. Ten military vehicles raided Jenin and stationed themselves at Abu Dheir, where they detained Ali Jamal Irsheid, 26. Then they raided the al-Kharuba neighborhood including the home of Mohammad Nafiz Assaf, causing damage and questioning residents.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648389
Israeli forces detain elderly man, security officer in Hebron
HEBRON (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — Israeli forces detained an elderly man from Sa‘ir village and a security officer from Tarqumiya village after raiding their houses on Tuesday early morning, locals said. The Israeli army raided Sa‘ir village and detained 60-year-old Yousef Hassan al-Froukh. They also detained a security officer from Tarqumiya village, Mahmud Ahmad al-Marqatan. Al-Marqatan works as an officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security forces.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648785
Israeli army arrests 24 in West Bank
NABLUS (WAFA) 20 Nov – The Israeli army conducted late Tuesday night and early Wednesday a large arrest campaign in several West Bank towns and villages rounding up at least 24 Palestinians, according to security and local sources. In the north of the West Bank, soldiers arrested nine Palestinians from the Nablus area village of Beita and nine more from the Jenin area town of Ya‘bad, according to security sources. Most of the Palestinians arrested in Beita following raids at their homes were in their 20s, with two only 17 years of age, while two were in their 40s. In Ya‘bad, the army also rounded up nine Palestinians after raiding their homes, all of them teenagers including twin brothers. One was arrested at an army checkpoint on his way home. The army also arrested four Palestinians from various towns in the Hebron area, all of them teenagers … One Palestinian was also arrested from ‘Anata, a town near Jerusalem, said local sources.
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=23665
Detainees / Court actions
Note that the list here of administrative detentions (like the list of arrests) is not exhaustive. For more on prisoners see the PIC website especially.
IOF renews administrative detention of Palestinian MPs
RAMALLAH (PIC) 18 Nov — Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) renewed the administrative detention of MP Mahmoud Ramahi, 50, and MP Yasser Mansour for 6 months a few days before their release, human rights sources revealed … The two MPS were arrested under the pretext of inciting against occupation authorities during Israeli aggression on Gaza in November 2012. IOA renewed the two MPs’ administrative detention for the second time in a row. The two MPS were arrested under the pretext of inciting against occupation authorities during Israeli aggression on Gaza in November 2012. IOA renewed the two MPs’ administrative detention for the second time in a row. [article details the renewal of the administrative detention of other prisoners]
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7BqH2QlvyJmL9QgNYUQHmcAuFEkS0soCXtLnw%2bSBI9Q%2fX987aOU7pvBojWOIpC5p5FWEJwwC7fZjA%2b1oDFFeghbXF6nJZENATlDnfN0DtHno%3d
IOA renews administrative detention of Dr. Hamouri for 3rd time
AL-KHALIL (PIC) 19 Nov — The Israeli occupation authorities renewed the administrative detention of Dr. Amjad Hamouri for the third time running. Hamouri’s wife said on Tuesday that an IOA court told her husband that his detention would be renewed for four months. The IOA arrested Dr. Hamouri, a notable figure in Al-Khalil, on 23/3/2013 and held him in administrative custody, without trial or charge. He was previously detained by Palestinian Authority security apparatuses.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7QiEgroICFnMVTjYOuybz3cSge3Zsw%2fbIr3AY0pjTk%2bfmGbdDEHenyR1BwR0Yzi71NzAzekR0vrBMm61931W1IHR%2bEc%2fGFIcK5snn8Y8poVw%3d
Two detained brothers declare hunger strike
RAMALLAH (PIC) 19 Nov — Two Palestinian brothers detained in Israeli Ofer jail have gone on hunger strike to protest their administrative detention, without trial or charge. A statement for the Palestinian prisoner’s club on Monday said that Mohammed and Islam Badr from Beit Lakia village in Ramallah decided to go both on hunger strike in protest against an Israeli court ruling holding them in administrative custody without any clear charge.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7kBXHAGYA9uPFozwhPKSFgbXpw1sYAXwcGc9TffnMuTPPLtUNAhjGSvI%2ft%2fbB6z4X9vE9Tuh6QVad54j0XbNLKOA8VkscsZ2pP7KzuPEekcI%3d
IOA prevents two prisoners from family visits
JENIN, NAZARETH (PIC) 19 Nov — The Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) continued to prevent the family of prisoner Mona Ka’adan from visiting her in Hasharon prison since her arrest, a year and a half ago, under the pretext of security reasons. The prisoner’s family appealed through Palestinian Prisoners’ Society to all human rights organizations, led by the International Red Cross, to pressure the occupation authorities to allow family visits for their daughter … In a related context, IOA prevented the prisoner Ibrahim al-Bakri, 33, from family visits without justifications. The prisoner’s family stated that the Israeli authorities informed them of its decision to prevent their son from family visits despite obtaining visit permit, Yusuf Al Sadeeq Foundation said.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7lLHDky%2b3wYYUWlJ2sDvV3BTYgIIcKTQDNFDKN0ia0U46Wwls4wbEnXPz2vB27YAfU6g4UcDO6Xeb2k6GUO0iv7EJdu%2f51t27q6VfYTztRMc%3d
Palestinian captives’ wives deprived of visiting their husbands for years
RAMALLAH (PIC) 19 Nov — Ahrar Center for the studies of prisoners and human rights said that the Israeli occupation authorities have been willfully depriving the Palestinian prisoners, especially those serving long sentences in captivity, from visits … The wife of captive leader Jamal Abu al-Hija from the city of Jenin, who has been sentenced to nine times life imprisonment and 20 years, said that she has not seen her husband for 10 years or more, as the occupation prevents her from visiting him … Administrative detainee Abdel Khalek Natshe’s wife from al-Khalil is also prevented from visiting her husband for alleged security reasons … For his part, the director of Ahrar Center for Prisoners Studies and Human Rights asserted that the occupation is violating international laws by depriving the prisoner from seeing his relatives.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s73u6LvDiOvvQMeAxyi6Mm29%2fN3qM5C%2b6nZqaojf3tf4m2w0wAxrC9E0%2fOcw7VLNj7UNYoU20hYt2xAPtqXoPhxPzJUBKVUIQh8ELpQH1yAy8%3d
Golani soldiers given prison terms for abusing Palestinian
Ynet 19 Nov by Yoav Zitun — The Jaffa Military Court sentenced two soldiers to five and a half and six and a half months in prison, respectively, for assaulting a restrained Palestinian. The two Golani Brigade soldiers were guarding the man at an IDF post in Gaza in 2011. The Palestinian was arrested after crossing into Israel from the Gaza Strip. The court also ordered the soldiers be demoted to the rank of private … According to the indictment, filed by the military prosecution, the Palestinian was arrested a day before the reported assault for infiltrating into Israel. He was placed in custody pending investigation. The next day, the indictment noted, the victim was beaten by four soldiers in a closed room in a Gaza adjacent camp … According to the judges, “The fate of the Palestinian was at the hands of the Brigade’s soldiers. He was handcuffed and helpless and the defendants took advantage of that in order to beat him.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4455551,00.html
Gaza under blockade
PCHR: Gaza leukemia patients without medicine for 11 months
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — Leukemia patients in the Gaza Strip have been without medicine for more than 11 months leaving them in grave danger of complications and death, according to a report released Sunday by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The Center called upon Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to “immediately intervene in order to save these patients by instructing the Ministry of Health in Ramallah to provide their required medications promptly and regularly.” The report also highlighted the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, who have been deprived of their necessary medications for over two years.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648274
Egyptian authorities open Rafah crossing for three days
RAFAH (PIC) 19 Nov — Egyptian authorities opened the Rafah border terminal with Gaza Strip for three days starting Tuesday for humanitarian cases, patients, students, and holders of foreign residence. Maher Abu Sabha, the director of Gaza’s crossings and borders, said that the Egyptian authorities announced that the crossing would be open in both directions. He said in a written statement that passengers who booked two weeks ago would be allowed to travel today, adding that 11 buses loaded with passengers were ready for travel.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7J7%2f4oUIUC7c6zYZvYYOHehShGnwyrXxU0bqnQFUu7UO0cyu%2fSV36RR82%2fskZLiKqohqNlE4Dm5di1VuAjvhL7bj8YkTBQrW0wxHV7UbIGTU%3d
IOF detained 15 Palestinians at Erez including patients
GAZA (PIC) 18 Nov — Mizan center for human rights said that Israeli occupation forces at Erez crossing, to the north of Gaza Strip, had detained 15 Palestinian citizens while attempting to cross the terminal since the start of 2013. The center said in a statement on Sunday that the detainees included eight patients and their escorts, who were on their way for treatment in West Bank or Jerusalem hospitals. The center charged the Israeli occupation authorities with adamantly tightening the noose on the Gaza inhabitants and forcing restrictions on their freedom of movement and travel. It said that the IOA was exploiting the need of Gaza patients for treatment outside the besieged enclave, due to poor health conditions, to detain or recruit them to work as informants.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s70IDDxbtqOJcmYvVFx6BvF69U1QLX3xSByovvqHvc0bojN3ZFIpyXzJgx%2bvl8nCSvmbcI%2bIIJNs5FcHjQ73uySDvsMj4hczhY1KcXlsauEH0%3d
Israeli air force carries out seven airstrikes against Gaza
[Tuesday evening Nov 19] Israeli war jets carried out seven air strikes targeting different areas in the northern and the southern parts of the Gaza Strip. Israeli military sources alleged that the attacks were carried out after Palestinian armed groups fired a number of mortars targeting armored vehicles invading Khan Younis, in the southern part of the coastal region. Local sources in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, have reported that the army fired missiles targeting two chicken farms that belong to the Esleih family in the Al-Manara neighborhood in Khan Younis. The chicken farms were completely destroyed, and around 4000 chicks and some sheep were killed. No human casualties have been reported. The Israeli Air Force also fired a missile into an area, nearly 250 meters from the border fence, east of Khan Younis. The attacked area is where three Palestinian fighters, members of the Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, were killed, and four Israeli soldiers were injured, during a recent Israeli invasion into the area. Another Air Strike targeted a vacant chicken farm in the Az-Zanna area, in Bani Soheila, east of Khan Younis; damage was reported but no injuries. Furthermore, at least one missile was fired into a training center used by fighters of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, north of Beit Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
http://www.imemc.org/article/66432
Israeli forces attack, detain 2 fishermen off Gaza coast
BETHLEHEM (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — In the third such incident in less than 10 days, Israeli naval forces opened fire on two Palestinian fisherman near the Gaza Strip and subsequently took them into custody on Sunday afternoon. Israeli forces encountered the fishing vessel 1.5 nautical miles from shore, northwest of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. They opened fire on the fishermen and then surrounded the boats, demanding the two fishermen swim to their boat, according to a report by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. While the fisherman swam towards the gunboats, Israeli forces continued spraying the water with bullets, and they confiscated the boat’s 10 nets. Ammar As‘ad Abdel Malek al-Sultan, 21, and Muhsin Akram Diab Zayed, 24, from al-Salatin neighborhood in Beit Lahiya were detained and taken to the Israeli city of Ashdod for questioning. Around 3 a.m. on Monday morning the pair were released via Erez crossing back into the Gaza Strip, but Israeli forces kept their boat and belongings.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648889
Turn the Gaza lights on
Mondoweiss 19 Nov by Sarah Salibi — Imagine that you have to spend your night in utter darkness, to arrange your plan for each day according to a power-cut plan, or to force yourself into bed as there is nothing you can do other than to sit in the dark. Picture yourself studying for your exams using a candle, or spending all day long waiting for the electricity to come back, or walking in streets at night that are only lit by cars’ headlights. If you find it hard to imagine all of these things combined, just seek the help of a Palestinian from Gaza. No one could explain it better. It has been a week since the government announced the new electricity schedule. Yet I still find it very difficult to adapt to. Previously, power used to be off for 8 hours a day. We have accustomed ourselves to that schedule despite the fact that it took us a while to get used to it. The electricity crisis seems to be moving from bad to worse. Never better. Currently, we only get to see electricity for 6 hours a day … Electricity now controls our daily lives. It controls our sleeping and waking up times. It even decides for us whether to receive guests at home or not. Electricity interferes with every detail. Residents of Gaza are not the only ones affected by the power cuts. Their relatives abroad get their share of this daily suffering as well. I have two sisters in Malaysia pursuing their higher education. My mother used to Skype them every day, but now we can barely talk to them. There is either no electricity or a terribly weak Internet connection.
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/turn-gaza-lights.html
Sewage floods Gaza City neighborhoods after treatment plant runs out of fuel
IMEMC 19 Nov — As a consequence of the recent Israeli and Egyptian clampdown on the tunnels under the border between Gaza and Egypt, fuel has become exceedingly scarce in Gaza, and a major waste treatment plant in Gaza City has shut down, leading to floods of sewage in the city streets. The plant shut down on Wednesday November 13th, and has remained offline since then. The most severely impacted area is the Al Sabra neighborhood, which has several feet of raw sewage covering the streets of the neighborhood … Because of the sewage treatment plant shutdown,hildren have had to wade to school through the sewage. Medical personnel note that the health implications of the raw, open sewage flooding the streets are disastrous. An estimated 20,000 people live in the contaminated area.
http://www.imemc.org/article/66426
Ma‘an office in Gaza re-opens
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — Authorities in the Gaza Strip re-opened Ma‘an News Agency’s Gaza City office on Tuesday, after four months of closure. The public prosecutor in the Hamas government handed the keys over to the head of the news agency’s Gaza City office and its attorney. On Saturday, Gaza premier Ismail Haniyeh issued a decision to re-open the office … The government in Gaza also announced Tuesday it would re-open Al-Arabiya TV’s offices in the Gaza Strip. Al-Arabiya was closed along with Ma‘an on July 25. On Monday, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders welcomed the Hamas government’s decision to let Ma‘an re-open its Gaza City office. “This decision is important for freedom of information in the Gaza Strip even if it just constitutes a return to normal,” Reporters Without Borders said … When Gaza prosecutor-general Ismail Jaber closed Ma’an and Al-Arabiya in July, he accused them of “fabricating news and disseminating false rumors and baseless reports that threaten civil peace and undermine the Palestinian people’s resistance.”
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=649055
Hamas PM grandchild back in Gaza after Israel treatment
GAZA CITY (AFP) 19 Nov — A granddaughter of Gaza’s Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh returned to the Gaza Strip on Monday in a state of “clinical death” after she was hospitalized in Israel in critical condition, Palestinian sources said Monday. Amal Haniyeh, aged one, suffers from a serious infection of the digestive tract which has affected her nervous system, according to Gaza medical sources. “Amal has crossed the Green Line (border with Israel) now, and I call on God to grant her health,” Abd al-Salam Haniya, the premier’s son, wrote Sunday on his Facebook page. “I call on God to grant good health to my daughter Amal, who entered in a state of clinical death,” he added the next day. She was subsequently returned to the Gaza Strip by Israeli doctors, who claimed her survival chances were slim. Photographs on social networks show Ismail Haniyeh visiting the sick child in Al-Nasser pediatric hospital before her transfer.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hUX07LA6ij4gsID80LiJuV97SwZQ
Hamas announces birth of 2 lion cubs in Gaza
AZA CITY (AFP) 19 Nov — Gaza’s Hamas-run authorities on Tuesday announced the birth of two lion cubs in the Palestinian enclave, named in honor of the last bout of fighting with Israel. The cubs were born less than a week after the first anniversary of the eight-day conflict between Hamas and Israel in November 2012. “The lioness gave birth yesterday (Monday) to two cubs, one male and one female,” said Nahed al-Majdub, head of the “Bissan” amusement park, set up by the Hamas-run interior ministry. “They were named Fajr and Sijil,” said Majdub, Arabic for dawn and clay. The names refer to the Fajr missiles Hamas fired at Israel in the conflict in November 2012 and the name the Islamist movement gave to the fighting, “Operation Stones of Clay.” “It is the first time lions have been born in the Gaza Strip,” Majdub said, adding that the cubs’ parents were imported from Egypt four years ago. Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, congratulated itself on having smuggled the cubs’ parents past the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=649144
Gaza blast kills Hamas operative, injures 4
World Bulletin 19 Nov — A member of Ezzedeen Al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas resistance group, was killed early Tuesday and four others were injured in an explosion in Gaza City, medial and security sources said. Two of the injured are in serious condition. It is still unclear what caused the explosion, but the Hamas sources asserted that it was not by an Israeli airstrike as some media reports have suggested. No official statement has been issued yet by the Gaza authorities on the blast.
http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=123239
Refugees
Syria Palestinians locked up in Egypt
Reuters 19 Nov — After escaping shelling in Damascus and terrifying bloodshed at sea, 14-month-old Palestinian twin girls are now among hundreds of people living in limbo in grimy Egyptian police stations, with no end in sight to their plight. Of the 2 million people who fled Syria’s civil war, none may have it worse than Palestinians, who have known no other home than Syria but do not have Syrian citizenship and have therefore been denied even the basic rights secured for other refugees … The twins’ family fled Syria after their house was nearly hit by shelling. But when they arrived in Egypt they were denied permission to work or to receive refugee benefits. After five months, with no other way of obtaining a living, they attempted to leave Egypt for Italy. They were captured at sea on September 17 by the Egyptian navy, which fired on the overloaded rickety craft, the mother of the twins said. She held her daughters tight as bullets flew by. At least one person was hit and the boat was filled with blood and flying shrapnel … Turkey and Jordan will not accept Palestinians from Syria and Lebanon will only allow them to pass through for 48 hours. So they live at the four storey police station in Alexandria, where cold winter wind blows in from the sea and families of Palestinians sleep on blankets on cement floors … They receive one meal a day from an aid group. Many pass idle days praying. The sounds of children crying echo through the drafty chambers.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4455520,00.html
UN Palestinian agency to stop paying wages
NEW YORK (AFP) 19 Nov — The United Nations will stop paying wages to thousands of workers helping Palestinian refugees next month because of a growing cash crisis, a top UN official said Tuesday. The UN Relief and Works Agency, one of the UN’s oldest agencies, faces a “dire situation” with a $36 million deficit, under secretary general Jeffrey Feltman told the Security Council. “UNRWA will be unable to adequately fund its core services — especially in education, health and poverty mitigation — and will be unable to pay December salaries of its 30,000 teachers, medical personnel and social workers,” Feltman said. The agency was set up in 1950 to help Palestinian refugees who lost their homes because of the 1948 Middle East conflict. It estimates that it now helps about 5 million people.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=649147
Refugees to shut down UNRWA offices, programs
NABLUS (Ma‘an) 19 Nov — The popular service committees of Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank will shut down all UNRWA offices and programs, except clinics and schools, Wednesday and Thursday. In a joint statement, the committees said the move was part of ongoing protests against “UNRWA’s systematic reductions” in services provided to Palestinian refugees in the region … Balata refugee camp in Nablus is the largest camp in the occupied West Bank, with over 23,000 registered residents who are originally from 60 villages and the cities of Lydda, Jaffa and Ramleh. The West Bank is home to 771,000 registered refugees, around a quarter of whom live in 19 camps, according to UNRWA.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648923
Six Palestinian refugees killed in Syria
DAMASCUS (PIC) 18 Nov — Six Palestinian refugees were killed in Syria over the past 24 hours in shelling on their camps |
the smell of cooked food mingled in with the cool morning air. Amongst all this various Vale military soldiers delivered food packages, somewhere stopping and talking with locals, while others attended to medical needs.
Cobalt passed by the still smoldering prison area seeing a work crew of civilians clearing the rubble by hand. Approaching the town center he could see that their where air shops suddenly setting back up, there was even a food stall with a large colorful banner saying now open. Still others milled about a few hastily made aid distribution points, receiving aid from the civil affairs unit.
"These people sure are resilient," Cobalt said to himself as he looked around trying to find the command post when a voice startled him from behind.
"They were not the first to invade our lands and be ousted, they will not be the last," Turning around Cobalt found himself staring into the yellow eyes of a young woman. To Cobalt she seemed to be in her mid-twenties, the brilliant eyes where off set by her dark tanned color skin. Her brown hair was tied back into a bun and she was dressed in a simple one piece tan dress. Around her shoulders was a colorful red and silver embroidered shaw that had seen better days,
"I'm staff sergeant Cobalt Bale, are you the local leader I was sent to meet?" Cobalt said as the woman gave a soft nod.
"My name is Zyarr, I am a servant to the one who sees. She is our spiritual advisor you would say, and I am afraid the only local leader left in our tribe. She has asked to see you," Zyarr said as Cobalt waited for a moment.
"So, ok please take me to her," Colbat said as Zyarr shook her head for a moment,
"You must bring an offering, while freeing us is a great gift custom dictates one must bring a gift for visiting the seer. I would suggest food," She said with a smile gesturing towards the newly opened stall already serving fresh liberated bread.
Cobalt nodded softly as he went over to the stall fishing some operation sponsored lien out of a pocket buying, a loft of bread. The stall attended smiled as he handed him a large metal plate with steamed met along with the bred after taking the money. Turning around Zyarr kindly took the plate from him with a smile,
"Please follow, I must carry this." As she began to stride away Cobalt keeping pace behind her,he was led eastward towards more of the residential area of the village. Short squat huts where in various states of disrepair, families looking them over and repairing them. They only stopped momentary to give a short bow to Zyarr and say "Kher be inshalla" to which she would smile and nod. Eventually he found himself standing outside of a series of three ramshackle huts, only the center one with smoke coming from its stack.
"You should go alone from here, remove your boots before entering," the young woman said as she handed Cobalt a plate of food. Taking the plate Cobalt looked into the ramshackle hut slowly walking through the door. At the entrance he took off his boots and on some odd instinct set his rifle down next to them. Moving a tattered curtain to the side he found the inside was slightly cluttered with a musky smell to the air, a few streams of light came down from the tattered roof dimly lighting the area. Cobalt scanned the room for a momently when he saw a hit of movement, a frail looking hand motioning him forward.
He turned to see a wizened old woman sitting in a large framed chair, her blind milky white eyes seemed to track every movement as Cobalt approached her. Her hand motioned him to set the food down in front of her, which the moment he let go the woman seized a slice of bread. Cobalt watched as she devoured it, tears welling up at the edge of her wrinkly eyes. It seemed from her short liberation from the prison, she had managed to clean herself and seemed to have put on her best clothing. A simple one piece tan dress with a red embroidered shawl around her shoulders, her gray stringy hair was pulled back in a simple pony tail.
"Ma'am, I was told you wanted to speak to me," Cobalt said as the woman nodded motioning him to sit on a small pillow on the ground.
"My name is Sera Phineus, I am a seer of many things in these parts and beyond. My people have decided that I am a leader for the time being. This is true for now but, I mealy guide them troubled times," She said as Cobalt sat looking up at her as she drank a small saucer of water.
"I was hoping to get your help you see we need to," Cobalt began to say as she cut him off,
"There are things you must know, I saw your coming I know you will be victorious in your fight ahead. Destiny has bigger things in store for you Cobalt Bale, things which I will tell you now that you and your heroes have destroyed these harpies of men," Sera said as Cobalt perked his brow not sure exactly what he was in for.
"I can sense you do not believe, even my blind eyes can see a spirit follows you. I see her behind you always watching," She said as Cobalt stiffened as she continued,
"Listen, there is a grate evil in the lands of Remnant. A silent one that has been biding its time it will strike soon nearer to your home than you can imagine. This you cannot change, but it will lead you and your band of heroes across the world itself. My only wish is that the silver eyed warrior where to help you, alas this is not to pass."
"I'm sorry ma'am this is a bit hard to take in, I really don't believe in destiny," Cobalt suddenly said gritting his teeth a bit as he shifted on the pillow on the ground.
"Just because you may not believe in destiny does not mean destiny does not believe in you," Sera said her frail quiet voice cutting through the air. The old woman merely grinned at Cobalt,
"I see it in your eyes more immediate concerns, you and your warriors wish to take the fortress city at the end of the pass yes?"
"Yes, I was hoping that you would be able to provide a map or have some information that would help us," Cobalt said relieved that the conversation had returned to some normality. Sera gave a few soft nods and slowly pointed to a shelf against the wall,
"Their, you will find a map you seek, but for your warriors there is a way inside of the city. I will instruct Zyarr to gather a guide for you and yours alone, be weary. For you go against one who has but a hint of the Fall maiden's power in him," Sera said as Cobalt rose up finding a rolled up map on the shelf.
"Thank you, if there is anything else we can…" Colbat began as he raised a hand up to stop him,
"You will already do more than many should be asked of, I ask that when the fates are done with you not to be bitter towards them. Now go, I have said what has been needed to say," She said turning towards the offered plate. Cobalt giving a soft bow as he saw the other villagers do, slowly walking back to retrieve his boots and rifle.
Cobalt met Zyarr just outside still trying to process the strange meeting inside as she gave him a bow,
"Your guide and a few of the strongest men still left will meet you at the eastern gate. They will lead you through the forests to the hidden entrance to the fortress," she said as Cobalt returned the bow.
"Thank you I will let my command know of the help you have given us today, does she..always talk in such a way," Cobalt asked as Zyarr started to lead him once again.
"She is the seer, many my discount her but what she has said has always come to pass through the generations."
"Sorry if I am just as skeptical as everyone else, that was just.." Cobalt trailed off as he absentmindedly looked over his shoulder.
"Like many outsiders, you do not have the belief's we have there is magic here among these lands. Take that for what you will," Zyarr simply said as Cobalt could not help but shake the feeling that someone else was pacing behind him.
To be concluded in part 4Pin +1 Share 627 Shares
First Lady Michelle Obama has shown her true colors once again and said, “We’re feeling what not having hope feels like.” If Obama and his cronies don’t control the white house then apparently there’s no hope for the country.
Remember back during Obama’s first campaign Michelle said, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.”
CBS News: During her eight years in Washington, First Lady Michelle Obama advocated for several causes, including healthy families and improved education for girls around the world. She also had some fun along the way. The first lady spoke with Oprah Winfrey in her final interview at the White House for a special that airs next week. First on”CBS This Morning,” Mrs. Obama addresses her husband’s legacy and whether he stayed true to a core belief.
CommentsIt’s no accident that ancient and renaissance playwrights were drawn to write plays about heroes and nobles. Not only were they aspirational figures whose lives would be ripe for curiosity by potential patrons and audience members, heroes and nobles also made decisions that extensively affected the day to day experiences of most people. People had a reasonable interest in exploring the ways in which those decisions might be made.
While the aspirational interest in powerful individuals still applies to 21st century audiences, more of the decisions that affect our day to day experiences are made through huge, largely impersonal processes, especially those associated with the economic model of capitalism. These processes get less artistic attention than individuals for a variety of reasons, but I here argue that as a result there is a theatrical niche available examining these processes and that plays in that niche would serve a useful social purpose. Making it good art I leave as an exercise to the artists.
Let’s start by looking at what capitalism, at its best, does for us as a civilization. It has four main jobs which are linked and interdependent, but still distinct:
1. The price system: by providing open, free, and competitive marketplaces for goods and services, it aggregates the preferences and opinions of hundreds of millions of individuals who, by selling and buying in an environment of supply and demand agree to values of different goods and services. Try to charge too much and people will buy from your competitor instead.
2. Resource allocation: by providing particular marketplaces for labor and investment which are driven by the broader price system, it steers resources towards activities that produce goods and services that are in high demand and away from those that are in low demand.
3. Incentives to work and invest: People who have time, capability, and skill to work and those who have wealth to invest engage with the marketplace to seek returns for exerting their labor and for risking their wealth. Many people are strongly motivated by the opportunity to increase those returns, so they are likely to continue engaging with the economy in a way that keeps it running.
4. A distribution scheme: Responding to these incentives, individuals work and invest, then receive payments that allow them to obtain goods and services they want and to build wealth thereby allowing them to be active participants in the capitalist economy. People need to receive enough in this distribution scheme to survive and enough excess to allow them to participate substantially in marketplaces, otherwise their preferences will not contribute to the accuracy of the price system, and the whole model will fall apart.
For a large complex civilization to function, something has to do these jobs, and while capitalism has plenty of flaws and failures that I’ll be getting to shortly, other economic schemes that have been tried (such as serfdom and slavery) have depended on even higher levels of violence and injustice than capitalism uses. Evangelists for capitalism draw attention to the distributed decision making that it permits contrasting with centralized decision making in other models. In a large society, it’s difficult to get the right information to a central decider and it’s difficult to prevent that central decider from becoming corrupt. In response, fans of capitalism see its emergent order as preferable to an imposed order. In any event, we’re probably stuck with capitalism in some form for quite a while, and so it behooves us to understand it even if only to be in a better position to reform it.
Capitalism falls short of accomplishing its four jobs in many ways. Economists call these shortfalls “Market Failures” and most economists recognize a role for the state to exercise political power to accommodate them. However, once we start regulating markets, we introduce the possibility of unintended consequence – attempting to encourage one thing then actually provoking other behaviors.
For example, there was a widely observed phenomenon that home owners in the US were predominantly more economically successful than renters. A theory emerged to explain this that said property owners had greater investment in the community and therefore participated more and tried harder. This led to a series of tax policies, asset securitization practices, and lending regulations to encourage home ownership. The resulting regulatory framework created a niche for profitable creation and resale of dodgy loans. Welcome to 2008, when we all learned that the cause/effect relationship between home ownership and economic success probably ran the other way – the ability to buy a home was actually a marker of emerging economic success. A population of previously wealthy people got wealthier while the population the regulatory scheme was trying to help got poorer. Almost certainly unintended consequences, although there was some overlap between the designers of the regulatory scheme and its beneficiaries.
So we face an unsatisfying but necessary embrace between market failures that require state intervention to adjust to and the unintended consequences of that intervention that can fail to correct the market failures or even make them worse. Keep that tension in mind as we walk through examples of both.
One big vulnerability of the price system is that it tends to be present-focused rather than future-focused and can therefore fail to price a good or service high enough to account for its real long term cost. A familiar, if controversial, example of this would be that gasoline or petrol tends to be priced based on a combination of the cost of extracting, transporting, and refining petroleum and the ability of petroleum producers to ration supply. An infinitely wise version of capitalism would also add to that price a hefty fee to build a fund to deal with the pollution and climate change impacts of burning that fuel. By buying inexpensive fuel today, we defer environmental costs to future generations or in the most pessimistic estimates our own old age. Even the most radical fans of free market capitalism admit that these kinds of factors (which they call “externalities” because they are seen as outside the basic economics of the individual transactions) often justify political intervention into marketplaces, but they can argue for a long time about the size and nature of that intervention. In most places today, there is a government tax added to fuel costs that makes it more expensive and therefore discourages consumption, although in many cases that revenue is used for road building rather than any kind of contingency fund to address environmental issues. Government intervention specific to environment and vehicles has mostly been about setting regulations for fuel mileage and emissions, which represents a different way, besides manipulating prices, that a state can try to correct market failures.
Another category of failures in the price system starts as soon as government begins regulating either the production or trading of goods and services. Because economic power can be exerted to acquire political power, wealthy established firms in a particular industry often use that political power to further secure their economic power. Sometimes that takes the form of reducing government regulation of their industries as is almost certain to happen to the US banking industry during the Trump administration, which is just starting as this article is written. Surprisingly, sometimes industries actually use their power to increase the scope or complexity of government regulation of their own industry to increase the costs of potential competitors entering the marketplace. Established hotel and taxi operators are currently maneuvering in that way to limit sharing-economy entries into the marketplace. Once in place, these kinds of business coddling regulatory schemes can be very difficult to unwind. Search the web for “US Sugar Subsidies,” and you will find opinion pieces from all over the US political spectrum calling for an end to this particular form of “Corporate Welfare;” articles going back more than 10 years and still those subsidies persist. In either case, whether trying to relax or tighten regulation, wealthy firms influencing government regulation prevent markets from operating freely and fairly to establish sensible prices.
Resource Allocation is distorted by many of the same factors that distort the Price System. The relatively slow implementation of renewable energy solutions in the US has partly been achieved by manipulating regulatory schemes to make current fossil fuel generation appear to be much more cost effective. Arguably, ineffective regulation of the banking and investment management sector has led to overinvestment in that sector at the cost of more directly productive industries. If banking had been regulated to stay closer to its classical role of loaning money for interest and providing safe storage for uninvested funds, it might not have been able to offer the huge salaries that made banking and investment management an obvious career choice for mathematically savvy individuals. More of them may have chosen engineering careers instead and delivered broader benefits to society. That’s a little further out on the limb than the other observations in this article, but it isn’t completely unreasonable and shows how the Resource Allocation function can go awry.
Incentives get perverted in other ways beyond Resource Allocation overvaluing less productive endeavors.
Probably the most significant failure of incentives might be thought of as working too well. This is one category of human failing within capitalism that does get a fair amount of theatrical attention. The character who has lost touch with all sources of motivation except for financial gain has been looked at in theatre at least since Comedia del Arte, and continues to show up today. Perhaps Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the most popular piece of literature often adapted to the stage that highlights the miser and asserts that he would be happier with a more balanced set of motivations. The success of works of art exposing this pitfall of capitalism serves as evidence that art exploring other pitfalls might also succeed.
Growing income inequality represents a different kind of incentive failure. Free market faithful try to argue that inequality doesn’t matter as long as people at the bottom of the distribution are still receiving enough to make a living. However, research in the emerging field of behavioral economics is providing evidence of something you probably already know from common sense – feelings of well-being in humans are driven almost as much by a sense of relative standard of living as by absolute factors like available calories per day or available square feet of living space. Just knowing that there are others working in the economy who are compensated much better than oneself can be de-motivating, even when on a world wide scale, one has a good standard of living.
The Distribution Scheme gets distorted by all the earlier market failures described above, but in our age of rapid technological innovation, it has one special problem all its own. I am indebted to economists Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Piketty for this insight. Running any productive enterprise requires both labor (effort) and capital (stuff). At low power levels of technology (and in industries where technology contributes little), most of the productivity comes from the labor. In those circumstances, a relatively large proportion of the earnings of the enterprise are returned to labor, especially skilled and organized labor, because labor is the dominant input producing the earnings. At higher power levels of technology, capital, in the form of complex, capable machines, contributes a lot of the productivity. A bus driver without a bus can’t transport many people. As a result, the distribution of earnings tends to shift away from labor and towards the providers of capital. This shift even makes a certain amount of sense on a transaction by transaction basis, but in aggregate across the economy it has led to a concentration of wealth and income unprecedented in the electrical age. Nobody knows what effect that is going to have going forward, but it certainly distorts the price system since the wealthy few exercise greater influence on the system as they have the income to participate in more and larger transactions. As a result, the preferences of the poor will be less reflected in the economy, which will likely bend it even further away from meeting their needs.
Capitalism has also driven some assumptions deeply into culture that impair it working properly for the majority while protecting the interests of elites. The least discussed of these (and this is insidious) is the way in which most people have been convinced that talking or even thinking about money is distasteful. Discussion of both income and wealth is broadly thought to be unseemly. In most non-unionized private sector companies, the earnings of individual employees are deep secrets. This cultural phenomenon makes fact based exploration of pay equity extremely difficult. Similarly, people are made to feel embarrassed by discussions of wealth which makes it hard to honestly explore wealth distribution. In a strange way, Parade Magazine, an advertising supplement in many weekend newspapers, commits a subversive act each year by running a cover story that identifies the annual earnings of a few dozen US residents. This field of awkwardness surrounding any detailed discussion of money serves to keep most of the population from paying much attention to the real functioning of the economy, leaving elites a wide scope for unexamined action. (This paragraph owes a debt to Mike Daisey whose Last Cargo Cult sniffs around the edges of this topic as part of a broad inquiry into the phenomenon of money.)
A related cultural belief that probably helps to repel playmakers and other artists from looking too closely at capitalism is the broad conviction that everything to do with commerce is dirty, repulsive, and anti-intellectual. I’m speculating wildly here, but this complex of beliefs is so widely held and reinforced in so many ways that it often feels to me like there may have been an active conspiracy at some time to keep life-of-the-mind types from paying much attention to business which continues to echo through the culture and do its work centuries later.
So hopefully that little tour of what good capitalism can do and a scattering of ways in which it goes wrong have convinced you that it might be a worthy topic for the stage, but is there really a shortage of plays engaging the topic? I needed to convince myself of that as well. My first hint was that I see or read about 100 new US plays each year routinely, and I’ve seen very few plays that take on economic issues at the root. Concerned that I had just been unlucky, I logged in to the National New Play Network’s New Play Exchange and searched for keywords Capitalism and Economics, filtering for plays that were available to download. That gave me 41 plays, all of which I skimmed and some of which I read completely. Here’s what I found.
Plays with the Economics or Capitalism tag are mostly about:
1. People suffering in a climate of reduced employment opportunity.
2. The broad impact specifically of unscrupulous and unconstrained capitalism on the less wealthy.
3. The villainy of specific bad economic actors and its consequences.
4. Classism and isolation between the wealthy and the poor in general.
5. Send ups of the absurdity of profit seeking as a primary motivation.
All of these are important topics, and I was favorably impressed with the vast majority of the scripts. However, only category number 5 really spoke to any of my example capitalism failures, and almost none of the plays revealed a sophisticated model of capitalism as part of their structure.
There were two plays that specifically spoke to economic theory, in the same way that Copenhagen speaks to physics or The Hard Problem speaks to brain science. (I’ve seen productions of both of those plays recently, so may be a little over-prepared to see more work with a hefty academic basis.) Clearing Bombs by Eric Samuelson imagines a conversation between two major 20th century economists stuck on a rooftop during WWII and passing the time with a deep but lively economic debate. Jan Kultura, Substitute Teacher, Meets the Crowd by Ian Thal is a short play that essentially presents a case study of crowd sourced creativity as a vehicle to steal ideas from people without having to pay them – well larded with good economic thinking. These stood out to me as good examples of scripts we could stand to have more of.
Those two aside, most contemporary plays I encounter that engage the issue of capitalism can be accurately if uncharitably reduced to “Our economic system is unfair and it causes suffering.” This is true and significant, but most of the audience knew it before we walked in. I contend that by digging deeper into the workings and failings of capitalism and the institutional artifacts it has driven into our culture playmakers could produce works that would better prepare their audiences to both understand and respond constructively to economic and political realities around them. Further, by creating plays in which characters pay attention to the economy and invite the audience to do so as well, playwrights can be as transgressive and path breaking as previous generations of playwrights were exposing issues of race and sexuality.
So, capitalism is a big important thing in our civilization that hasn’t received much theatrical attention. There are powerful elites who don’t want you to pay attention to it. That should be catnip to playwrights and other playmakers. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.A couple of years ago, John Bulloch watched an alarming report on an Atlanta TV station about an exotic-sounding drug called Salvia divinorum. Bulloch had never heard of the plant, a psychoactive relative of sage that the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, have used for centuries in healing and divination rituals. But according to the news report, salvia was becoming increasingly popular among American college students, who sometimes called it “Sally D” or “magic mint” (since salvia, like sage, is a member of the mint family).
The most horrifying fact of all: Salvia was perfectly legal. In their far-reaching crackdowns on drugs that people enjoy, state and federal legislators somehow had missed a plant that contains the most powerful naturally occurring psychedelic known to man.
Bulloch—a Republican state senator who represents the area around Ochlocknee, Georgia, a tiny town near the Florida border—was astounded. “I thought, ‘Why hasn’t somebody already jumped on this?’ ” he told the Florida Times-Union in March 2007. “I hurriedly got legislative counsel to draft the bill”—legislation making it a misdemeanor to grow, sell, or possess salvia. “Since then,” the Times-Union reported, “Bulloch has been scouring the Internet to find information about salvia. None of what he has learned has dissuaded him from trying to make it illegal.”
Bulloch’s approach to salvia—ban first, ask questions later—epitomizes how drug policy is made in America. Although his bill has not yet passed, 15 states have banned salvia since 2005, and many others are considering similar legislation. Their precipitous action makes the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which has been monitoring salvia as “a drug of concern” since 2003 but still has no definite plans to classify it as a prohibited substance, look rational and reticent by comparison.
The penalties for violating state salvia laws vary from modest fines to decades in prison. Kenneth Rau, a North Dakota bottling plant employee who has the dubious distinction of being the first American arrested for salvia possession, bought eight ounces of leaves on eBay for $32 in December 2007. He says he did not realize a state ban on the plant had taken effect the previous August—a plausible claim, especially since the plant matter that police discovered in his home was clearly labeled “salvia.” Last spring Rau received three years of probation for simple possession. But he originally was charged as a dealer and could have received a prison sentence of up to 20 years, all for a bag of leaves that was legal in North Dakota four months before he bought it and remains legal in most of the country.
To drug policy historians, the reasons for the rush to ban salvia are familiar. Sensationalistic press coverage, in this case supplemented by salvia users’ documentation of their own trips on YouTube, has attracted the attention of legislators eager to grandstand as guardians of vulnerable and impressionable “young people.” Few politicians can resist the allure of a drug described as “cheaper than marijuana, stronger than LSD, as fast-acting as crack cocaine, and legally available to minors” (as The Ithaca Journal put it in 2004). The endless repetition of a few anecdotes that supposedly demonstrate salvia’s dangers—most conspicuously, the story of a Delaware teenager’s 2006 suicide—has found a receptive audience among politicians who automatically assume that an unfamiliar psychoactive substance must be a menace. And since these lawmakers bridle at the notion that anything good could possibly come from altering your consciousness, they see no downside to banning salvia before it becomes a problem.
The idea that salvia “could become the next marijuana” (as the Associated Press warned last year) is mostly misbegotten. The salvia experience is so unpredictable, so incompatible with social interaction, and so frequently boring or unpleasant that it’s safe to assume the herb will never be as popular as pot. But the comparison rings true in several other respects: Both salvia and marijuana are psychoactive plants linked in the public mind to Mexico, both appear to be nontoxic for all practical purposes, and both have intriguing medical potential. Salvia’s detractors, like marijuana’s in the 1920s and ’30s, claim it causes insanity and violence. In both cases prohibition occurred at the state level first. If salvia continues to follow the pattern set by marijuana, it will ultimately be banned throughout the country, despite a dearth of evidence that it poses a serious threat to individual health or to public safety.
Something About Mary
Salvia’s ritual use in Mexico goes back hundreds of years, but outsiders paid little attention to it until the mid-20th century. Starting in 1938, anthropologists and naturalists visiting Oaxaca mentioned a visionary tea made from a plant variously called hierba Maria (herb of Mary), hoja de adivinación (leaf of prophecy), or ska Maria Pastora (leaves of Mary the Shepherdess). They reported that the local healers known as curanderos used the potion, traditionally linked to the Virgin Mary, to diagnose illness and locate lost objects, finding clues in what their patients/clients said under its influence.
The self-taught American mycologist and ethnobotanist R. Gordon Wasson, best known for his research on hallucinogenic mushrooms, was the first visitor to describe his own experiences with ska Maria Pastora. In a 1962 leaflet published by Harvard University’s Botanical Museum, Wasson announced “a new Mexican psychotropic drug from the mint family” that he and his colleagues dubbed Salvia divinorum (diviner’s sage). He said it was “a psychotropic plant that the Mazatecs consume when mushrooms are not available,” a “less desirable substitute” for psilocybin-containing fungi.
In a 1961 salvia ceremony, Wasson drank a foul-tasting mixture of leaf juice and water under the guidance of a curandera. “The effect of the leaves came sooner than would have been the case with the mushrooms, was less sweeping, and lasted a shorter time,” he reported. “There was not the slightest doubt about the effect, but it did not go beyond the initial effect of the mushrooms—dancing colors in elaborate, three-dimensional designs.” The second time around, about a year later, Wasson was joined by his friend Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD. They experienced similar effects.
Given Wasson’s lack of enthusiasm for salvia, it’s not surprising that the plant remained obscure for decades, with nothing like the fame or following attracted by LSD, psilocybin, or peyote. That began to change in the 1990s, thanks largely to the efforts of another amateur ethnobotanist.
Daniel Siebert first came across salvia in the late 1970s while researching medicinal plants. Later someone gave him a cutting, which he used to grow a plant that he added to his collection of interesting herbs. About a year later he accidentally broke off part of the plant and decided to try it, chewing up a wad of 26 large leaves. “It was that initial experience that really piqued my interest,” he says. “I found the effects really intriguing, and it was very comfortable and easy to handle—much more manageable than most other psychedelic drugs I had tried.” Today Siebert, who lives in Malibu, runs the Salvia Divinorum Research and Information Center (sagewisdom.org), the most comprehensive online repository of information about the plant.
The website, which also sells the herb, includes a link to a 1994 article Siebert published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology that helped explain why ska Maria had disappointed so many psychonauts. Siebert’s research confirmed that salvinorin A, first isolated a decade before, was the plant’s main psychoactive ingredient. It turned out to be highly potent, producing noticeable effects at a dose of half a milligram, compared to about 10 milligrams for psilocybin and 250 milligrams for mescaline. (Contrary to some overheated press reports about salvia, LSD, a synthetic psychedelic, is far more powerful than any of these, effective at doses as low as 50 micrograms, or five-hundredths of a milligram.) Siebert’s experiments with volunteers who tried different routes of administration revealed that swallowing salvia was the worst way to absorb salvinorin A, which is “deactivated by the gastrointestinal system.” Two other routes were much more successful: through the oral mucous membrane (by holding masticated leaves or leaf juice in the mouth) and through the lungs (by inhaling the vapor).
This information, combined with the realization that salvinorin A is highly stable and remains in salvia leaves even when they’re dried, set the stage for the plant’s commercialization. Soon it was available from head shops and online vendors in the form of liquid extracts and smokable dried leaves, often fortified with extract. Holding the liquid in the mouth more closely resembles the traditional method of consuming salvia, with the effects felt in five to 10 minutes and lasting an hour or two. But the alcohol-based extract tastes terrible and produces relatively subtle effects. (See “Salvia and Salivation,” page 42.) The smoked form produces faster, more intense, and shorter effects, appearing within 30 seconds and subsiding after five to 10 minutes. It sells much better.
According to the latest data from the federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 1 million Americans used salvia in 2007, up from 750,000 in 2006, the first year the survey asked about the drug. Those numbers make salvia currently more popular than LSD, used by 620,000 Americans in 2007. (In terms of lifetime use, however, acid droppers outnumber salvia smokers by nearly 10 to 1.) Salvia, like other psychedelics, is most popular among 18-to-25-year-olds, 2 percent of whom report past-year use.
As is often the case with drug fads, interest in salvia has been driven partly by the same press coverage that has encouraged legislators to crack down on it. Salvia distributors say they see spikes in sales after anti-salvia articles appear. “Every time there’s a news story on it,” says John Boyd, CEO of Arena Ethnobotanicals in Encinitas, California, “it brings it to people’s attention.”
Still, salvia is much less popular than marijuana, used by 25 million Americans in 2007. It is also less likely to be used more than once. Tiffin University psychologist Jonathan Appel, who co-authored a 2007 article on the rising popularity of salvia in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, says, “We’re talking about a small percentage of people who are using it and an even smaller percentage of people who go back and use it again.”If someone in Germany calls you a “raven mother,” it's not a compliment. Rabenmutter is a women-only put-down, a reference to the bird notorious for shoving her babies out of the nest.
“This word exists only in Germany, and it means... no good mother leaves her child very early alone,” says Elke Holst, research director for gender studies at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin.
We're not talking about ornithology, but about Germany's gender pay gap. Germany has one of the highest pay disparities between men and women in Europe. On average, German women earn 21 percent less than men, about the same disparity as the United States.
In part, Holst says, men earn more on average because women with children miss out on chances for better jobs and higher pay.
“Women are still expected to stay at home when a child is born for some years, or only work part time,” she says. “It's more or less the duty of a woman.”
But there's an exception to that rule — Germany's formerly socialist east. The gender pay gap in the part of the country that from 1949 until 1990 was the Soviet-allied German Democratic Republic is just 8 percent — far below the national average and one of the lowest in the world.
The reasons may lie in its socialist past.
In East Germany, nine out of 10 women worked outside the home, as teachers and secretaries, but also as chemists, bus drivers and plumbers. That's a contrast to West Germany where, until 1977, married women officially needed permission from their husbands to get a job. In the 1980s, only about half of West German women worked outside the home.
Forged by state policy, that contrast became custom, and then culture.
Ute Frey grew up in East Berlin in the 1970s. Her mother was a teacher, her father a mathematician with female colleagues and a female boss. Today, Frey has children of her own, and she too works full time at a West Berlin nonprofit, LIFE ev, which trains women for the workforce. She says there was no question that she would work outside the home.
“It was a given,” Frey says. “And it is still a given for me that as a woman, with or without children, you go to work.”
Ute Frey grew up in East Berlin, where it was a given that women would work outside the home. “I sometimes have the feeling that now, here in West Germany... women are fighting for things that we in East Germany already took for granted.” Credit: Valerie Hamilton/PRI
Across the Berlin Wall, things were very different. Melanie Alperstaedt, who grew up in West Berlin in the 1980s, says as a child, she aspired to be a housewife, like her mother, and all the adult women she knew. She says back then, it seemed “normal” that women would stay at home. So, learning about women's lives in East Germany was an eye |
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It is offensive and condescending for activists to assume that people can’t handle the truth without environmentalists finding a way to make it more palatable. The public is concerned, we vaguely know that something is desperately wrong, and we want to know more so we can try to figure out what to do. The response to An Inconvenient Truth, as tame as that film was in retrospect, should have made it clear that we want to know the truth.
And finally, denial requires a great deal of energy, is emotionally exhausting, fraught with conflict and confusion. Pretending we can save our current way of life derails us and sends us in directions that lead us astray. The sooner we embrace the truth, the sooner we can begin the real work.
Let’s just tell it.
Stating the Problem
After we tell the truth, then what can we do? Is it hopeless? Perhaps. But before we can have the slightest chance of meaningful action, having told the truth, we have to face the climate reality, fully and unflinchingly. If we base our planning on false premises — such as the oft-stated stutter that reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions will forestall “the worst effects of global warming” — we can only come up with false solutions. “Solutions” that will make us feel better as we tumble toward the end, but will make no ultimate difference whatsoever.
Furthermore, we can and must pose the problem without necessarily providing the “solutions.”[7] I can’t tell you how many climate activists have scolded me, “You can’t state a problem like that without providing some solutions.” If we accept that premise, all of scientific inquiry as well as many other kinds of problem-solving would come to a screeching halt. The whole point of stating a problem is to clarify questions, confusions, and unknowns, so that the problem statement can be mulled, chewed, and clarified to lead to some meaningful answers, even though the answers may seem to be out of reach.
Some of our most important thinking happens while developing the problem statement, and the better the problem statement the richer our responses. That’s why framing the global warming problem as greenhouse-gas concentrations has proved to be such a dead end.
Here is the problem statement as it is beginning to unfold for me. We are all a part of struggling to develop this thinking together:
We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we’ve ever faced. It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years — but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora’s Box tightly shut. We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.
We love our cars, our electricity, our iPods, our theme parks, our bananas, our Nikes, and our nukes, but we behave as if we understand nothing of the land and water and air that gives us life. It is past time to think and act differently.
If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably. Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn’t good and we’d better think it through very carefully.
Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic. We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand.[8]
Living sustainably means, in Derrick Jensen’s elegantly simple definition, that whatever we do, we can do it indefinitely.[9] We cannot use up anything more or faster than nature provides, we don’t poison the air, water, or soil, and we respect the web of life of which we are an intricate part. We are not separate from nature, or above it, or in any way qualified to supervise it.[10] The evidence is ample and overwhelming; all we have to do is be brave enough to look.
How do we survive in a world that will probably turn — is already turning, for many humans and non-humans alike — into a living hell? How do we even grow or gather food or find clean water or stay warm or cool while assaulted by biblical floods, storms, rising seas, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, and hail?
It is crystal clear that we cannot leave it to the technophiliacs. It is human technology coupled with our inability to comprehend, predict, and prevent unintended consequences that have brought us global catastrophe, culminating in climate disruption, in the first place. Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking–the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.[11]
All that being said, we needn’t discard all that we’ve learned, far from it.[12] But we must use our knowledge with great discretion, and lock much of it away as so much nuclear weaponry and waste.
Time is running very short, but the forgiveness of this little blue orb in a vast lonely universe will continue to astonish and nourish us–if we only give it the chance.
Our obligation as activists, the first step, the essence, is to part the cultural veil at long last, and to tell the truth.
—M artin L uther K ing, J r. I've Been to the Mountaintop delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee
Plug-in required for flash audio Your browser does not support the audio element. [AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio] Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.
Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there. Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy." Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free." And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis. I can remember -- I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.
And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God's children. And that we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.
Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be -- and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us. And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take 'em off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham. Now we've got to go on in Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday. Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
We need all of you. And you know what's beautiful to me is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around he tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, "When God speaks who can but prophesy?" Again with Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me," and he's anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor." And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; he's been kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this struggle, but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Reverend Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank all of them. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren't concerned about anything but themselves. And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry. It's all right to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here! It's all right to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do. Now the other thing we'll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively -- that means all of us together -- collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it. We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, "God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you." And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -- what is the other bread? -- Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town -- downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right. But not only that, we've got to strengthen black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank. We want a "bank-in" movement in Memphis. Go by the savings and loan association. I'm not asking you something that we don't do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We are telling you to follow what we are doing. Put your money there. You have six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an "insurance-in." Now these are some practical things that we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here. Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school -- be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base.... Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother. Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that "One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony." And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem -- or down to Jericho, rather to organize a "Jericho Road Improvement Association." That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect. But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 miles -- or rather 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" That's the question before you tonight. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job. Not, "If I stop to help the sanitation workers what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?" The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you. You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School." And she said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze." And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in inter-state travel. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed -- If I had sneezed I wouldn't have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great Movement there. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I'm so happy that I didn't sneeze. And they were telling me --. Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!! Book/CDs by Michael E. Eidenmuller, Published by McGraw-Hill (2008) Also in this database : Martin Luther King, Jr: "I Have a Dream" Audio Source : Linked directly to the Internet Archive External Link : http://www.thekingcenter.org/ Page Updated : 11/28/18 U.S. Copyright Status : Text and Images = Restricted, seek permission. Copyright inquiries and permission requests may be directed to: Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at licensing@i-p-m.com or 404 526-8968. Copyright inquiries and permission requests may be directed to: Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
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Fax: 404-526-8969Despite throwing tons of money at the problem, Americans really are sicker than ever. Chronic health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, anxiety and depression are wreaking havoc with our minds, bodies and bank accounts. Our “one ill—one pill” solutions are expensive, and frequently associated with adverse effects.
What to do?
For my part, I engage families every day, counseling about lifestyle prescriptions that include nutrition, fitness, rest, and stress-coping mind-body strategies. While my patients trend towards the greener, more holistic variety (as I’m sure do all you MBG readers), I find I’m revisiting the same themes in my quest to helps folks create a healthier life.
So here they are, the top 10 things I wish every American knew about health. Spread the word and put me out of business. I’ll happily spend more time doing yoga.
1. Prevention trumps treatment. Most people go to the doctor to fix a problem, and in many cases, these problems are chronic. Every doctor will tell you that it’s safer, more cost-effective and, simply easier to prevent a condition rather than treat it. All the major health issues we see – heart disease, diabetes, cancer – are much more amenable to preventive lifestyle strategies (nutrition, exercise, rest and mind-body medicine) than to expensive, quick-fix medications. Whenever possible, I recommend to my patients what I call the “Rx Life Solution,” prescribing wellness strategies such as gardening, yoga and meditation in place of costly and risky medications.
2. Real food is real medicine.
The original holistic doc, Hippocrates, said it best: “Let thy food be thy medicine.” There are more health promoting factors in a bowl of berries than in any drug on earth. What else has the power to prevent cancer, heart disease and diabetes? Real food, not processed pesticide-ridden GMO chemicals pretending to be food. Locally grown organic fruits and vegetables provide micronutrients that keep your body and brain in balance. Better yet: grow and prepare your own food. Take time to enjoy it. Eat together, sitting down, as a family or with good friends. Food has the power to nourish your body, mind and soul.
3. You have to unplug to recharge. We are a go-go-go culture. We multitask to exhaustion and massively overschedule ourselves and our kids. Chronic sleep deprivation is one of the greatest risk factors for depression, especially for teens. Remind your kids - and yourself - it's OK to stop. Create quiet, calm places to pause, both at home and at work. Schedule downtime. Feeling irritable when you shift from screen time to the real world? Back away from your devices and unplug. Your brain will thank you. Reducing mobile tech time will also limit your EMF and radiation exposure.
4. You can’t eliminate all the stress in the world… but you can develop better coping skills.
As much as we’d like to banish stress from our lives, it’s not going to happen. Accept this fact and spend your valuable time stocking your stress-coping toolbox with mind-body skills. The best methods to protect yourself from the toxic effects of stress are all related to cultivating mindfulness – the ability to pay attention to the present moment without dwelling on the past or future. Not sure where to start? Check out the Tree of Contemplative Practices and pick something, anything. Like to move? Try Vinyasa yoga or just dance til your hair sweats. Craving stillness? Explore Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a form of meditation. Feeling creative? Start a daily journal or take up sculpting. The beauty of mind-body medicine is that it only requires one person (you!) and it's cheap, available, safe and very effective.
5. Time spent in nature is not a luxury, it’s a medical necessity. Very few interventions have as great a power to heal the mind and body. So I frequently prescribe nature. It’s proven to positively affect mood, focus, energy level and stress response with no risk of severe adverse effects. Sign me up! While more Americans than ever live in urban areas, we still have access to green spaces. Go visit your local park or nature center to experience what author Richard Louv calls the "transformative power of the natural world." While you’re at it, don’t let our schools continue to eliminate free outdoor playtime. Too many are replacing recess with more time sitting at desks, and our kids are suffering from an epidemic of NDD – Nature Deficit Disorder. Stop the madness.
6. You don't have to choose between conventional health care and alternative medicine. I find that many families come to see me because they feel trapped between the worlds of conventional health care and alternative medicine. The good news is: you don't have to choose! The beauty of integrative medicine is that we use what is safest and works best. Period. We draw on the traditions of Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and Native American herbalism, but we don’t abandon conventional remedies when needed. Whether it’s acupuncture or surgery, or herbals or antibiotics, we decide together what’s best for you. I realize not everyone has access to an integrative practitioner. It’s why I wrote my book, Treatment Alternatives for Children. Side by side, you can review the top scientifically-based conventional and natural options for common conditions and consider what makes the most sense for you.
7. Good relationships are vital to your health.
Often overlooked in the quest for better health is the crucial role of relationships. Studies have shown that social support – surrounding ourselves with those who love and nurture us – can immunize us against depression, cancer and heart disease. How so? Stress is toxic, and healthy relationships blunt the impact stress has on our health. In fact, new research shows that social support can actually reduce inflammation, the root cause of many chronic illnesses. Additionally, the bond you have with your health care practitioner can be incredibly restorative. I'd argue that a positive, honest connection built on mutual trust is as necessary for healing as any prescribed treatment.
8. Going green just might save your life. Do you really need more reasons to make your life more eco-friendly? Maybe you’re trying to convince a skeptical friend or family member. Here’s some ammunition to make your case: Published studies find that increased use of chemicals in our cleaning products at hospitals and rampant overuse of antibiotics in farm animals are leading to superbugs with phenomenal resistance to all known antibiotics. As my work with Deirdre Imus Environmental Health Center has taught me, an entire hospital can be safely and effectively cleaned using green cleaning products – and so can homes, schools and workplaces. You can even make a cool DIY all-natural hand sanitizer from a few essential oils, aloe vera gel and water that will save you money – and your health.
9. Germs are our friends. Yes, some bacteria are harmful, but not all. We coexist peacefully with billions of organisms that help us maintain a careful |
8 ( defn >> "execute parsers sequentually and return result of the last one" [ & p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( loop [[ h & t ] p ] ( parsed e ( h ps ) ( if ( empty? t ) e ( recur t )) e ))))
And exactly same but return first parser result instead.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ( defn << "execute parsers sequentually and return result of the first one" [ & p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed first-elem (( first p ) ps ) ( loop [[ h & t ] ( rest p )] ( if ( nil? h ) first-elem ( parsed e ( h ps ) ( recur t ) e ))) first-elem )))
Now let’s define some basic yet very powerful monadic bind >>= parser combinator. Note how we apply function to result of the parse result of our parser. We can even have two kinds of functions, one with parse stream as second result and one without it. We could have defined our << and >> parser combinators using >>= parser combinator but our previously define loop/recur version will work faster and can grow infinitely without consuming the stack.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ( defn >>= "execute parser and return result of applying f to parsed result and optionally a parse stream" [ p f ] ( if ( = ( n-args f ) 2 ) ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( f e ps ) e )) ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( f e ) e ))))
This can be used to define a letp macro which is actually a parser combinator too in some sense, well not exactly but close.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ( defmacro letp "binds parser results to variables sequentually, same as let but uses parsers as values" [[ & parsers ] & body ] ( if ( or ( zero? ( count parsers )) ( not ( zero? ( mod ( count parsers ) 2 )))) ( throw ( IllegalArgumentException. "invalid number of parsers" )) ( let [[ e p & r ] parsers ] ( if ( nil? r ) ` ( >>= ~ p ( fn [ ~ e ps# ] ~@ body )) ` ( >>= ~ p ( fn [ ~ e ps# ] (( letp ~ r ~@ body ) ps# )))))))
This can be used to manipulate parser results in any way and return result any way we want to.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ( parse ( letp [ a ( chr \a ) b ( chr \b )] ( str a b )) "ab" ) -> "ab" ( parse ( letp [ a any-char b any-char ] [ a b ]) "ab" ) -> [ \a \b ] ( parse ( letp [ a digit b digit ] ( + ( read-string ( str a )) ( read-string ( str b )))) "13" ) -> 4
How about some sequential parser combinator that collects result into a vector. This one is kinda similar to collect but applies parsers instead of counting number of elements.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ( defn <*> "execute parsers sequentually and return vector of results, fails if one of them fails" [ & p ] ( if ( empty? p ) ( throw ( IllegalArgumentException. "no parsers specified" )) ( fn [ ps ] ( loop [[ h & t ] p acc ( transient [])] ( parsed e ( h ps ) ( if ( empty? t ) ( persistent! ( conj! acc e )) ( recur t ( conj! acc e ))) e )))))
We can use <*> to define <str*> and <keyword*> parser combinators. Those just apply str and keyword functions to parser results.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 ( defn <str> "parse p and apply str to it's result" [ p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( apply str e ) e ))) ( defn <str*> "execute parsers sequentially and return string of results, fails if one of them fails" [ & p ] ( <str> ( apply <*> p ))) ( defn <keyword> "parse p and apply keyword to it's result" [ p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( keyword ( cond ( string? e ) e ( coll? e ) ( apply str e ) :else ( str e ))) e ))) ( defn <keyword*> "execute parsers sequentually and return keyword of results, fails if one of them fails" [ & p ] ( <keyword> ( apply <str*> p ))) ( parse ( <*> any-char any-char ) "ab" ) -> [ \a \b ] ( parse ( <str*> any-char any-char ) "ab" ) -> "ab" ( parse ( <keyword*> any-char any-char ) "ab" ) -> :ab
Now let’s define yet another crucial alternatives <|> parser combinator. This takes any number of parsers as input, and when parsing, tries each one of them and stops when either all of them fail or one of them consumes input while failing. The code is quite complicated as we need to deal with generating error message as well as checking state of parse stream each time we are trying to parse some data.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ( defn < | > "execute parsers sequentually and return first successful result, fails if one of them fails while consuming input or all of them fail" [ & p ] ( if ( empty? p ) ( throw ( IllegalArgumentException. "no parsers specified" )) ( fn [ ps ] ( loop [[ h & t ] p ms ( transient [])] ( let [ st ( get-state ps ) e ( h ps )] ( if ( parser-error? e ) ( if ( state-changed? ps st ) e ( if ( empty? t ) ( let [ ms ( persistent! ( conj! ms ( parser-error-message e ))) st ( get-state ps ) _ ( next-elem ps ) pe ( parser-error ps ( str/join " or " ms )) _ ( restore-state ps st )] pe ) ( recur t ( conj! ms ( parser-error-message e ))))) e ))))))
Speaking of parser failures what if we want to get a failure message out of parser without actually applying parser to a parse stream. Well we have some edge cases but still we can do that with a really simple trick by making a parser combinator that can make any parser fail. We’ll just define some empty string stream and will use it to apply parser to it and return it’s error message as if it was applied to parse stream itself. We can then have fail-message function that will return the failure message itself.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ( def empty-stream ( parse-stream "" )) ( defn fail "fail p, parser p must not accept nil otherwise failure message won't be correct" [ p ] ( restore ( cond ( = p bos ) ( fn [ ps ] ( next-elem ps ) ( parser-error ps "beginning of stream" )) ( = p eos ) ( fn [ ps ] ( next-elem ps ) ( parser-error ps "end of stream" )) ( = p any-elem ) ( fn [ ps ] ( next-elem ps ) ( parser-error ps "any element" )) :else ( fn [ ps ] ( next-elem ps ) ( parsed e ( p empty-stream ) ( parser-error ps ( str e )) ( parser-error ps ( parser-error-message e )))) ))) ( defn fail-message "makes p fail and returns failure message, note: not a parser function" [ p ] ( parser-error-message (( fail p ) empty-stream )))
Now that we have fail-message function we can define no parser combinator that will make any parser fail in case it succeeds and will succeed in case of failure.
1 2 3 4 5 ( defn no "if p fails succeds with nil, otherwise fails" [ p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( parser-error ps ( str "not " ( fail-message p ))) nil )))
Sometimes we want some optional value so why note define an option parser combinator too.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ( defn option "try p, if it fails without consuming any input return r, otherwise return value returned by p" [ p r ] ( fn [ ps ] ( let [ st ( get-state ps ) e ( p ps )] ( if ( parser-error? e ) ( if ( state-changed? ps st ) e r ) e ))))
What if we want to repetitively parse some value one or more times and return vector of results. We can do that with many and many1 parser combinators.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ( defn many "try p, 0 or more times and return result" [ p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( loop [ e ( p ps ) acc ( transient [])] ( if ( parser-error? e ) ( persistent! acc ) ( recur ( p ps ) ( conj! acc e )))))) ( defn many1 "try p, 1 or more times and return result" [ p ] ( fn [ ps ] ( let [ e ( p ps )] ( if ( parser-error? e ) e ( loop [ acc ( transient [ e ]) e ( p ps )] ( if ( parser-error? e ) ( persistent! acc ) ( recur ( conj! acc e ) ( p ps ))))))))
Our next parser combinator is quite complex so I’ll try to explain it in more detail. Sometimes when parsing programming languages or any symbolic expressions we need our operators to have different precedence based on some predefined rules that we have. For example in math expression like 1+2*3 will be interpreted as (+ 1 (* 2 3)) since * operator has higher precedence compared to + operator. In order parse this kind of expressions we’ll define two special parser combinators called op and op-expr that need to be used with each other. op parser combinator converts any parser that can parse some operator into a parser that returns parsed operator and it’s precedence value. This value is then used by op-expr in order return expression in exact precedence order as define by op parsers. The code is kinda complex and I’ll live it as exercise for you to study and understand.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 ( defn op "return operator parser p with precedence o" [ p o ] ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ` ( ~ o ~ e ) e ))) ( defn op-expr "parse parser p expression and then optionally parse any of operator parser from ops sequence followed by another p expression and return expressions ordered by operator precedence with f applied to each expression" ([ p ops ] ( op-expr p ops identity )) ([ p ops f ] ( let [ ops ( apply < | > ops )] ( letfn [( op>= [ o1 o2 ] ( >= ( first o1 ) ( first o2 ))) ( exps [ ps ] ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( loop [ acc ( transient [ e ])] ( parsed o ( ops ps ) ( parsed e ( p ps ) ( recur ( conj! ( conj! acc o ) e )) e ) ( persistent! acc ))) e )) ( reduce-exps [ es ] ( loop [ es es acc []] ( cond ( >= ( count es ) 5 ) ( let [[ a o1 b o2 c & d ] es ] ( if ( op>= o1 o2 ) ( recur ( into [( f ` ( ~ ( second o1 ) ~ a ~ b )) o2 c ] d ) acc ) ( recur ( into [ b o2 c ] d ) ( into acc [ a o1 ])))) ( = ( count es ) 3 ) ( let [[ a o b ] es ] ( into acc [( f ` ( ~ ( second o ) ~ a ~ b ))])) :else ( into acc es )))) ( reduce-while [ es ] ( loop [ es ( reduce-exps es )] ( if ( > ( count es ) 1 ) ( recur ( reduce-exps es )) es ))) ] ( fn [ ps ] ( parsed es ( exps ps ) ( first ( reduce-while es )) es )))))) ( parse ( op-expr any-char [( op ( chr \+ ) 1 ) ( op ( chr \* ) 2 )]) "a+b+c" ) -> ( \+ ( \+ \a \b ) \c ) ( parse ( op-expr any-char [( op ( chr \+ ) 1 ) ( op ( chr \* ) 2 )]) "a+b*c" ) -> ( \+ \a ( \* \b \c )) ( parse ( op-expr any-char [( op ( chr \+ ) 1 ) ( op ( chr \* ) 2 )]) "a+d*c+e" ) -> ( \+ \a ( \+ ( \* \d \c ) \e ))
I can go on with defining this parsers but this will make me only tired and this post only longer and hard to read so instead I’ll just stop and show you guys something really awesome. This is exp parser combinator that can generate parsers from a simple Parser Expression Language inspired by Parsing Expression Grammar and Regular Expressions. I won’t describe it as it’s still work-in-progress and might change in the future. Instead I’ll show you some examples of using it. Those interested in source code should look in git repo exp.clj file also note that what you might see there is quite ugly and complex but I hope to improve it in the future.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 ( parse ( exp "abc" ) "abc" ) -> [ \a \b \c ] ( parse ( exp "'abc'" ) "abc" ) -> "abc" ( parse ( exp "a?" ) "b" ) -> nil ( parse ( exp "a*" ) "aaa" ) -> [ \a \a \a ] ( parse ( exp "a{2,3}" ) "aaaa" ) -> [ \a \a \a ] ( parse ( exp "a?b" ) "b" ) -> [ nil \b ] ( parse ( exp "~a?b" ) "b" ) -> \b ( parse ( exp "~a?bc" ) "bc" ) -> [ \b \c ] ( parse ( exp "/[abc]*/" ) "abc" ) -> "abc" ( parse ( exp "(abc)" ) "abc" ) -> [ \a \b \c ] ( parse ( exp "(abc)<0>" ) "abcabc" ) -> [[ \a \b \c ] [ \a \b \c ]] ( parse ( exp "\"(abc)" ) "abc" ) -> "abc" ( parse ( exp ":(abc)" ) "abc" ) -> :abc ( parse ( exp "[ab]*" ) "abbaaba" ) -> [ \a \b \b \a \a \b \a ] ( parse ( exp "___" ) "abc" ) -> [ nil nil nil ] ( parse ( exp "__\\_" ) "ab_" ) -> [ nil nil \_ ] ( parse ( exp "\\s" ) " " ) -> \s pace ( parse ( exp "\\w" ) "a" ) -> \a ( parse ( exp "\\d" ) "9" ) -> \9 ( parse ( exp "(a(bc))" ) "abc" ) -> [ \a [ \b \c ]] ( parse ( exp ":#(a(bc))" ) "abc" ) -> :abc ( parse ( exp "\\w\\a[a\\_]" ) "ab_" ) -> [ \a \b \_ ] ( parse ( exp "([ab]{2})<a>" { :a ( chr \a )}) "abab" ) -> [[ \a \b ] \a ] ( parse ( exp "([ab]{2})<a>" { :a "ab" }) "baab" ) -> [[ \b \a ] [ \a \b ]]
That’s it folks, we’ve defined a clean, simple and yet beautiful parser combinator library that is easy to grasp. Happy parsing!It is shaping up to be such a lovely Ramadan. Twenty more days to go, too.
“Man Threatens Death on Those Who Refuse to Accept Copies of the Quran: Police,” by Frank Heinz, NBCDFW.com, June 15, 2016 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
A man is jailed on a charge of terroristic threat Wednesday after threatening to impose the death penalty on several people who refused to take copies of the Quran, Denton police say.
Denton police said officers responding to a call for assistance Tuesday night were stopped by 28-year old Peshwaz Azad Waise, of Iraq, and that he was speaking irrationally and making comments about God and Allah. Since Waise was not in violation of any law, the officers continued responding to the initial call for help, police said.
Police with the University of North Texas were later called to a disturbance at the IHOP restaurant on the southeast side of campus where they found Waise speaking “irrationally.” Police didn’t reveal what he said, but they did confirm he was issued a notice of trespass and asked to leave UNT property.
Wednesday morning, police said Waise went into the Center for Women at 207 North Bonnie Brae and insisted those inside take the Quran from him and to give it to the Chaplin “or die.”
The police were called, but Waise left before officers arrived.
Waise was next spotted at the Denton County Courthouse where, after being cleared through security, he began to raise his voice loud enough to draw the attention of deputies, according to Orlando Hinojosa, public information officer for the Denton Police Department.
In a statement released Wednesay [sic] afternoon, police said Waise told deputies he was “the King” and that he became agitated as he was escorted out of the building and detained. Police said it was then that Waise told the deputies detaining him, “I’m imposing the death penalty.”
He later told the deputies that “anybody who touches me is going to bleed,” according to police….This isn't where House Speaker Paul Ryan wanted to be.
Ryan announced on Thursday, through a carefully choreographed interview on CNN, that he can't endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. Not at this time, at least.
The Wisconsin Republican was clear on that last point over and over again. He hopes to get there. He wants to get there. But as of now, he just can't bring himself to jump into bed with Trump.
In discussions with aides and people close to Ryan, it's clear the speaker surveyed the situation, decided he had no good options, and, in the end, went with his gut.
Had Ryan immediately endorsed Trump, he'd be connecting House Republicans -- and himself -- to Trump's toxic brand of politics. He'd be disregarding the offensive, sometimes insane things Trump has said over the course of this campaign and pretending that all is well.
All is not well, and Ryan wanted some say over it.
By holding off on a formal Trump endorsement, Ryan seems to be hoping that Trump will temper his rhetoric -- if that's what you call tweets about taco bowls and decades of horrible quotes about women -- and start acting like someone who is running for the highest office in the country.
If Trump doesn't do that, Ryan will have insulated the GOP from the incendiary real estate mogul -- and made himself look like one of the few adults in the Republican Party.
And if Trump does clean up his act, Ryan can take some credit for taming a madman.
"This cuts both ways -- benefits and consequences -- but he had to do what he thought was right," a person close to Ryan told The Huffington Post. "And now there's an opportunity to potentially nurture something good out of it and actually win the White House this year."
Ryan discussed his options with a few of his top aides on Wednesday after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) somewhat unexpectedly bowed out of the race. Here's how they saw his choices: endorse now, announce that he won't ever endorse Trump, or split the difference.
Ryan could have even held off on a decision by trotting out the line that, as the GOP convention chairman, he'd be staying neutral.
In the end, though, Ryan went with what sources insist is his actual position: He wants to get there, but he isn't there yet.
One source close to Ryan also insisted the speaker was unlikely to endorse Trump after one meeting. (The two men are expected to get in a room next Thursday at the Republican National Committee offices in Washington and discuss their differences.)
But Ryan's decision comes with some trade-offs. By declining to endorse Trump right away, he immediately alienates some Trump voters. He appears tone-deaf to the apparent sea change in the GOP. And he risks the wrath of a political figure who has thus far been able to destroy whatever stands in his way.
Ryan almost certainly does not want to get into a pissing contest with Trump -- but this could be exactly where things are headed.
In the immediate aftermath of Ryan's surprise announcement, Trump's campaign released a statement aiming to turn the tables on Ryan. Trump said he couldn't support Ryan's agenda.
"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," Trump said. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"
Never mind that Ryan hasn't actually provided details about what his agenda is.
Trump's spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, was more direct in her indictment of Ryan, telling CNN that he shouldn't be speaker if he can't get behind Trump.
"He talks about unity but what is this about unity?" Trump said of Ryan on Friday, according to The Associated Press. "With millions of people coming into the party, obviously I'm saying the right thing."
Of course, Trump and his campaign probably don't recognize the danger in branding Ryan, a popular, prominent Republican, as the face of the "Never Trump" movement -- even if that's not a position Ryan actually wants.
Either way, the rift between two of the party's biggest standard-bearers could further tear apart Republicans.Sydney Gholston was standing in line at a Kentucky Walmart with a cart full of Thanksgiving turkeys when a friendly white haired man standing behind her struck up a conversation.
When the Louisville woman turned around, her jaw dropped: It was Jon Voight.
Voight, who said he was in town filming a movie on Friday, couldn’t help but inquire about the six frozen turkeys sitting in the woman’s cart. He commented that the woman must have a big family.
Gholston, 28, laughed and explained that the birds would be used to feed children at Home of the Innocents, a local nonprofit shelter and pediatric convalescent center.
As soon as Gholston finished explaining, Voight pulled out his wallet, and offered to pay for her groceries.
With his help, Gholston was able to bring the six turkeys back to the Home, where they will feed about 70 of the 196 residents this Thanksgiving holiday.
“Some medically fragile children do not eat the same Thanksgiving meal and some residents will have other arrangements with family for the holiday,” Meredith Pack, marketing manager for Home of the Innocent, told CBS News.
After thanking Voight for his generosity, Gholston asked for a picture with the actor.
On Friday, the Home of the Innocents shared the picture and Gholston’s uplifting story on their Facebook page. The post went viral with more then 4,200 shares and 11,000 likes.
“That is an awesome act of kindness,” one Facebook user said. “Makes one grateful that there is good people out there.”
“Way to go sir, thank you for taking care of those families,” another commented.
The nonprofit agreed, thanking Voight for making dozens of hungry children very happy this Thanksgiving.
“We were so appreciative of his kindness! He was very interested in the Home and the services that we provide,” Pack said.Question: Can you give Banshee some love? The series back in less than two months! —Adam
Ausiello: I strongly encourage you to refresh the hell out of TVLine’s homepage Thursday because at some point between 9 am and 6 pm EST I’ll be posting the Cinemax hit’s first Season 2 trailer. And it will Blow. You. Away. In the meantime, I offer you two tantalizing tidbits courtesy of exec producer Greg Yaitanes: “Season 2 is going to begin about a week after Season 1 left off” and “The finale of Season 2 is the best thing I’ve ever made.”
Here's some scoop on Banshee from this week's (Posted on 11/19/13) Ask Ausiello column.Link to the full article: ‘Grey’s Anatomy’: April and Matthew Wedding Spoilers — Ask Ausiello - TVLineLego is one of the biggest brands in commerce right now, some claiming it’s more recognizable than Coca Cola or Ferrari. Since its humble beginnings in 1932 when Lego was only a Danish carpentry workshop, the brand has expanded massively foremost thanks to the success of its Lego bricks and iconic yellow smiley faced figurines. And although the last two decades have been very tough financially for Lego, which almost faced bankruptcy, the toy maker remains a household name and is still popular with children despite the market has shifted massively towards digital games and entertainment.
What made it also appealing is that you can build almost anything with Lego, even some pretty cool science experiments. Previously, ZME Science covered a Lego-made nuclear spectrometer model, a worm-brain controlled Lego robot, and even a Lego shuttle which was sent into Earth’s orbit. Certainly, much of Lego’s success lies in this versatility. Along the decades, Lego has released all sorts of sets following themes like Dungeons and Dragons, Star Wars, firefighters, pirates or historical Legos which feature Medival or Colonial era figurines.
While you’ll see a lot of spaceships and weaponry like swords or tiny 18th-century muskets, you’ll definitely won’t ever see military-related Lego toys. Plastic toy soldiers have never gone out of fashion among grade-schoolers, yet adhering to a strict internal policy Lego chose to forfeit some pretty good profits because it doesn’t think war should be seen as child’s play.
In a 2010 Progress Report, the Lego Group explained its stance on toys and weapons on page 26.
“Guideline for weapons and conflict in LEGO experiences” A large number of LEGO mini figures use weapons and are – assumedly – regularly being charged by each others’ weapons as part of children’s role play. In the LEGO Group, we acknowledge that conflict in play is especially prevalent among 4-9-year-old boys. An inner drive and a need to experiment with their own aggressive feelings in order to learn about other people’s aggressions exist in most children. This, in turn, enables them to handle and recognize conflict in non-play scenarios. As such, the LEGO Group sees conflict play as perfectly acceptable, and an integral part of children’s development. We also acknowledge children’s well-proven ability to tell play from reality. however, to make sure to maintain the right balance between play and conflict, we have adhered to a set of unwritten rules for several years. In 2010, we have formalized these rules in a guideline for the use of conflict and weapons in LEGO products. The basic aim is to avoid realistic weapons and military equipment that children may recognize from hot spots around the world and to refrain from showing violent or frightening situations when communicating about LEGO products. At the same time, the purpose is for the LEGO brand not to be associated with issues that glorify conflicts and unethical or harmful behavior. “We have a strict policy regarding military models, and therefore, we do not produce tanks, helicopters, etc. While we always support the men and women who serve their country, we prefer to keep the play experiences we provide for children in the realm of fantasy.”
In the same year, Lego also set out rules and guidelines for the use of weapons in its products. The aim was to avoid any realistic weapons and military themed equipment that children may recognize, as quoted above.
Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!Fanciful Feces Vegan-friendly oils provide a variety of tasty smells
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Is there anything about unicorns that isn't sparkly? Man, even unicorn poop smells delightful. You didn't know? Well, that is not surprising. It is pretty hard to spot a unicorn, yet alone see one doing the most private of tasks, defecating. And then the last thing you think is, "Hey. Let me smell whatever just plopped outta that unicorn's hindquarters." So the monkeys at ThinkGeek did it for you. We're good that way.
Turns out, unicorn poop is a natural sudsing agent. That's right. You too can now wash yourself with poo. Fantastic smelling poo! This rainbow-colored, layered "soap bar" includes vegan-friendly oils that have a range of fantastic smells such as birthday cake, blueberry muffin, cola, butterscotch, and vanilla. Lather up and come out smelling like sunshine, meadows, and rainbows.
Product SpecificationsWASHINGTON DC — Patients with intractable epilepsy in Alabama felt better overall one year after initiating a daily cannabidiol (CBD) regimen, according to a study presented here, despite also reporting declining social support and more stressful events over the course of the year.
Epilepsy patients started taking daily doses of CBD. One year later, a significant number felt better.
The state-funded study did not directly assess CBD’s impact. “I can’t say that” CBD was a factor, said lead researcher Barbara Hansen, now a sociology professor at Henderson State University (Arkansas). She did confirm that every patient in the study was indeed administered CBD, when she spoke to Leafly.com at the American Epilepsy Society annual meeting earlier in December.
Intractable epilepsy is “a seizure disorder in which a patient’s seizures fail to come under control with treatment,” according to the University of Rochester Medical Center. The seizures are also referred to as “refractory” or “uncontrolled.”
Researchers with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (where Hansen was then a doctoral student) enrolled patients in April 2015 in an open-label study, distributing 100 mg/ml CBD solutions. The participants took initial doses of 5 mg of the solution per each kg they weighed every day, via twice-daily spoonfuls. Patients could increase their daily dosage by 5 mg every two weeks, up to a maximum of 50 mg per kg per day.
They completed two quantitative psychosocial surveys — The Interpersonal Support Evaluation List (ISEL) and Stressful Events Index (SEI ) — and a simple measure asking them to assess their overall health on a scale of 0 (“poor”) to 1 (“good”) at baseline, and again either one year later or when they removed themselves from the study.
After one year, 77.4% of participants reported feeling good, versus 73.3% at baseline—a difference that was statistically significant. That reported increase in good feeling came about despite the fact that many participants noted a decline in social support and an increase in stressful events in their life over the year. Participants overall reported a 2.3-point decline in ISEL scores on average (33.9-31.6) and adults reported an average increase of 0.29 stressful events (0.57-0.86). Children, however, reported 0.86 fewer stressful events (1.82-0.95). These figures were all statistically significant.
Stressful Lives, Better Feeling
“People (overall) felt better after one year, even though they didn’t feel as supported socially and the number of stressful events increased,” said Hansen, a former social worker. She declined to assess CBD’s potential role, noting it is not her expertise.
At the meeting, the researchers reported data captured between April 1, 2015, and June 1, 2017, from Alabama-Birmingham and Children’s of Alabama medical centers. Primary caregivers completed the questionnaires for patients unable to do so.
Participants’ age ranged from 1-year-old children to 62-year-old adults. 52.6% of participants were between children or teens (up to 19 years old), 51.9% were women, and 85.2% were white.
Some participants dropped out of the study without completing follow-up assessments. Researchers reported baseline data on 135 patients at enrollment, while the one-year results concerned 62 of those patients.
This Alabama project continues, Hansen said, with researchers planning to examine specific factors of the ISEL and SEI “to identify particular social supports and stressors that may be associated with overall perceptions of health,” according to an abstract researchers presented at the conference.
GW Pharmaceuticals is providing the CBD solutions at no cost to the state, researchers reported.It seems Justin Bieber still has some growing up to do, with the Canadian pop star ejected from a historical site in Mexico's Maya Riviera after attempting to climb onto fenced-off ruins.
The 21-year-old Stratford, Ont., singer, who has been visiting the region this week, stopped by the popular ruins of Tulum, an ancient Mayan port city located nearly 130 kilometres south of Cancun, on Thursday.
His security team got into a shouting match with site authorities after Bieber attempted to climb some of the ancient structures — which are cordoned off from the public and clearly marked as off-limits, National Institute of Anthropology and History director Adriana Velazquez, whose group is responsible for managing Mexico's archeological sites, told local media.
The coastal archeological site of Tulum is built on the eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea and one of the most well-preserved ruins of the Mayan civilization. It is immensely popular with tourists, who can get close, but are not permitted to climb the ruins. (Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images)
Site guards told local media Bieber was also asked to leave after he pulled down his underpants.
Though site officials called police, officers ultimately did not have to intervene as the group was escorted from the premises, Velazquez said.
Rehabilitating his image?
For the past few years, the popular singer has been known more for his bad-boy antics around the globe, including reported brothel visits and graffiti-tagging while on tour, various arrests and legal run-ins, erratic behaviour onstage and abrupt cancellations, than his musical achievements.
However, with the release of his well-received new album Purpose and the introduction of a more dance-oriented sound on singles such as Where Are U Now, What Do You Mean and Sorry, Bieber had claimed to be "owning up" to earlier bad behaviour and attempting to fix his tarnished reputation.“The social-justice crowd are moving toward the same point as the Charlie Hebdo killers, and for the same reason: They’re too stupid to argue.”
Yes.
Here is an excellent take on what happened to me in Iceland and its larger implications.
“The Poisoning of Robert Spencer,” by Mark Steyn, May 18, 2017:
For years now I’ve said that anti-free-speech leftists and the men who slaughtered the staff of Charlie Hebdo, shot up Lars Vilks’ event in Copenhagen, etc, are merely different points on the same continuum: They’re both in the shut-up business: both groups find it quicker and easier and more satisfying to silence you than to debate you.
There were those who found the comparison offensive – to whom I would on good-humored days grant that the two points on the same continuum were nevertheless some distance apart.
Well, they got considerably closer in Reykjavik last week.
Robert Spencer, the author of several bestselling books on Islam, a brave crusader against the dopier multiculti illusions and the proprietor of the indispensable Jihad Watch, gave a speech at the Grand Hotel, went to unwind at dinner afterwards, and was poisoned by a social-justice warrior. Here’s Robert’s account of what happened…
That’s quite a sophisticated operation – a two-man team, the first a fake fan, the second a post-kiss-of-death gloater.
Before the banking crash of ’08, Iceland was flush, and celebs like Elton John were flown in for gala bashes. But it’s all quietened down a bit since then, so the Spencer event was a big deal. He drew an audience of 500 – which in a town of 125,000 and a nation of 300,000 is pretty impressive. There was lots of coverage of his visit – none of which actually quoted |
has. He had a relationship with Cephas.
Galatians 1:18–19
18 Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Master’s brother.
He also had reverence for the task that was entrusted to Cephas. He saw him as one of the pillars, together with James and John.
Galatians 2:7–9
7 But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised 8 (for He who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles), 9 and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
It is clear that he felt different when later he was speaking to Philemon. Paul felt that he had the right to order Philemon what to do.
Philemon 8–9
8 Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Messiah to order you to do what is proper, 9 yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you—since I am such a person as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Messiah Y’Shua—
Even though he believed he had the authority over Philemon to make him do what is proper, he chose to rather appeal. Once again, the love of the brother is more important to Paul than the right to exert his authority. What is also interesting is what did Paul then teach his followers.
The two disciples of Paul that we have the written instruction for are Titus and Timothy. In his letters to them, Paul touches on these topics frequently. He provides them with clear instruction for when they should discipline, reprove or rebuke.
Titus 1:12–14
12 One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” 13 This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, 14 not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. Titus 2:11–15
11 For the grace of YHVH has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, 12 instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great Elohim and Savior, Messiah Y’Shua 14 who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. 15 These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. 1 Timothy 5:20
Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. 2 Timothy 2:24–26
24 YHVH’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps YHVH may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.
From these instructions we see that Paul instructed them to reprove the people that sinned. Those that were in opposition to their teaching they were to correct with gentleness. The people that continued in sin were the ones that Timothy had to rebuke. It is clear to me that people that did not sin, but were at risk, were to be corrected with gentleness. Those sinning were to be reproved. And if they kept sinning, they were to be rebuked in the presence of all.
From all of these we can see that we need to be careful not to judge, but that we should rather focus on correcting and keeping sin from becoming a part of our community. The purpose is not to decide about right or wrong, but to bring our sinning brother back to YHVH. So who exactly, are we supposed to discipline?
Whom may we discipline?
The first task that we are given is to discipline our children. We have the obligation to ensure that our children know the ways of YHVH. Our children are required to honor their parents. In Proverbs we see quite often what this means.
Proverbs 6:20–23
20 My son, observe the commandment of your father And do not forsake the teaching of your mother; 21 Bind them continually on your heart; Tie them around your neck. 22 When you walk about, they will guide you; When you sleep, they will watch over you; And when you awake, they will talk to you. 23 For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light; And reproofs for discipline are the way of life Proverbs 13:1
A wise son accepts his father’s discipline, But a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.
The father has to discipline his children and the children must observe the commandments and reproofs of the father. This will be a light to them that keeps them from darkness. Paul is also in agreement with this, but he has an additional piece of advice. Do not provoke your children to anger.
Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of YHVH.
We also find several Scriptures where we are called to reprove or rebuke members of our community. Here are some examples form the Tanakh, prophets and Apostolic writings.
Leviticus 19:17
‘You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. Isaiah 1:16–17
16 “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. Luke 17:3–4
3 “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 “And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
All of these instructions are mentioned in the context of sin. We are to reprove and rebuke in order to ensure that sin does become part of our lives. In Luke Y’Shua states that once we have rebuked and our brother repents, we must forgive. Even if he sins seven times.
In his letter to the assembly in Corinth, Paul also touches on the topic of judging those within as well as the people on the outside. He is clear that we have no task or responsibility to judge the others. YHVH will judge them. Our responsibility is to remove wickedness from our own midst.
1 Corinthians 5:12–13
12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within? 13 But those who are outside, YHVH judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
What Paul is stating here is a confirmation of what the prophets had already mentioned.
Isaiah 2:4
4 And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war. Micah 4:3
3 And He will judge between many peoples And render decisions for mighty, distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they train for war.
We also see that the prophet Amos also confirmed this by taking the positive side. We are to ensure justice within our own gates. There is no commandment for us to take justice to the other nations.
Amos 5:15
15 Hate evil, love good, And establish justice in the gate! Perhaps YHVH, Elohim of hosts, May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
David confirms this. We are to focus on our own justice and see how YHVH will cut the wicked off.
Psalm 37:34
Wait for YHVH and keep His way, And He will exalt you to inherit the land; When the wicked are cut off, you will see it.
It is clear that we have the task to keep our families and our communities righteous. We do this by reproving and rebuking the sin within these establishments. As for the rest, we can simply leave it to YHVH to judge.
Should we all be judging and rebuking one another?
Now the next question we need to investigate is to who exactly it is that should be doing this rebuking. It is clear from the actions of Paul, that he only felt he had the right to demand discipline from people he had authority over. He did not rebuke Cephas or James for their view on the Gentiles. We also see this in the other instructions that he gives to Titus. Older women need to teach younger women. Not the other way around.
Titus 2:3–4
3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, 4 so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,
He also tells Titus to reprove with authority.
Titus 2:15
These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
Yet, these people in authority also have a duty to towards those the oversee.
Titus 1:7–9
7 For the overseer must be above reproach as YHVH’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, 8 but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, 9 holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.
Here it is important to look at the definition of the word “pugnacious.”
pugnacious \ˌpəg-ˈnā-shəs\ adjective
[Latin pugnac-, pugnax, from pugnare to fight—more at PUNGENT] 1642: having a quarrelsome or combative nature: TRUCULENT synonym see BELLIGERENT 1
The person in authority should not have a quarrelsome nature. Paul also instructs Titus to keep these quarrelsome people out of the community to ensure that they do not spread sin in the community.
Titus 3:10–11
10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.
Once again the here the word refers to people that want to cause division.
fac•tious \ˈfak-shəs\ adjective
[Middle French or Latin; Middle French factieux, from Latin factiosus, from factio] 1532: of or relating to faction: as
a: caused by faction 〈factious disputes>
b: inclined to faction or the formation of factions
c: SEDITIOUS—fac•tious•ly adverb—fac•tious•ness noun1
Paul is exactly teaching the opposite to the assemblies in Ephesus and Galatia. He is instructing them to only let good words of edification come from their mouths. He instructs them to be kind to one another and to deal in a spirit of gentleness. For him the purpose of this discipline is to restore the person. We should look after ourselves to ensure we are not tempted.
Ephesians 4:29–32
29 Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. 30 Do not grieve the set apart Ruach of YHVH, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as YHVH in Messiah also has forgiven you. Galatians 6:1
Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted What does restoring others have to do with us being tempted? We need to act in the spirit of gentleness to ensure that we do not act in anger. James also has some sound advise on this topic. James 1:19–20
19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of YHVH. James 1:26
If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
These words from James we must keep in mind when we decide to reprove or rebuke. What else do we need to do when we feel we have the right or obligation to discipline another? We have wriiten extensively on this topic in a previous article titled “How to correct in love.” Please read this article again before embarking on this.
Always ask the question: “What will happen if I do nothing?” Then compare it with the worst case scenario which could be a split in relationships, disunity or long drawn out quarrels. Then decide if it is really worth it. Remember, you do not always need to be right. Sometimes it is better to simply preserve the peace and unity. However, if there is sin involved, do not let it slip! If we create an environment for sin, it will spread like yeast in dough!
What is the purpose of reproval?
The purpose must be to correct and to restore the person(s) to a righteous living. This correction can only come from Scripture as Paul has told us that we must use the Scripture for reproof and correction. Thus, we should not be reproving people based on our own doctrine, but purely upon what is written in Scripture.
2 Timothy 3:16–17
16 All Scripture is inspired by YHVH and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of YHVH may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
The other purpose is to set good examples in the community. Make sure that all members of your community knows what is not acceptable according to Scripture.
1 Timothy 5:20
Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning.
The outcome of this activity must be that the person in sin will repent. Once this is done, there must be forgiveness by all involved. This way unity will be restored in the community and peace and righteousness will reign.
Luke 17:3
3 “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.
Always ensure that that the outcome leads to a restoration of love between the brethren. If the outcome leads to hatred between brethren, we will allow sin into the community. We have been warned.
1 John 2:9–11
9 The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. 10 The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
What should we do if we are being rebuked?
What happens if the shoe is on the other foot? How should we react if we are the receiving party in the reproval? If the reproval is done with gentleness it can only be a blessing. David also sees the reproval in kindness as a blessing.
Psalm 141:4–5
4 Do not incline my heart to any evil thing, To practice deeds of wickedness With men who do iniquity; And do not let me eat of their delicacies. 5 Let the righteous smite me in kindness and reprove me; It is oil upon the head; Do not let my head refuse it, For still my prayer is against their wicked deeds.
In Proverbs we are also shown the benefits of discipline. It leads us to knowledge and understanding while keeping us away from despising ourselves.
Proverbs 12:1
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, But he who hates reproof is stupid. Proverbs 15:32–33
32 He who neglects discipline despises himself, But he who listens to reproof acquires understanding. 33 The fear of YHVH is the instruction for wisdom, And before honor comes humility.
The author of Hebrews warns us that it may not initially seem to be a joyful blessing, but it will yield the right fruit in our lives.
Hebrews 12:11
All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Keep these things in mind when you prepare yourself for a reproval. Will the other person eventually see the peaceful fruit in their life? Will the other person receive this with kindness or will I come across as harsh and disrespectful? At the same time, be willing to receive the love and blessing that comes from a kind and gentle correction.
Conclusion
It is clear that there exists a need for discipline. There is a time to reprove and rebuke. But this must be done with the right intention and with the right attitude.
The process to follow should be something like this:
Check that what you want to rebuke is sin. This needs to be supported clearly by Scripture.
Make sure that you do not have this same sin in your life.
Ensure that your intentions is pure. The action must restore the person to a righteous living.
Check if you really have authority to discipline or rebuke.
Pray on their behalf
Speak to the person alone. Do this with kindness at first. The purpose is to restore, not alienate.
If this does not lead the person to repentance, seek another person to take with you.
If all of this does not succeed, rebuke the person in public to ensure that sin does not enter the community.
As the last step, disassociate with the person in order to preserve righteousness in the community
Most importantly, make sure that through all of this the love for one another is not lost. We must keep on loving one another. If we do not act in mercy, we will not receive mercy when we are judged.
Ephesians 4:1–3
1 Therefore I, the prisoner of YHVH, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, 3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. James 2:12–13
12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. James 3:17–18
17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. 18 And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Peter also left the elders with a clear instruction as to how they should look after the flock of YHVH. They needed to shepherd the flock by exercising voluntary oversight. The way this was to be done is by setting an example. Once again, do not be a shofar, but be a light!
1 Peter 5:1–4
1 Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Messiah, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, 2 shepherd the flock of YHVH among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of YHVH; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; 3 nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. 4 And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
Thus, once again we come back to the basic truth – actions speak louder than words.
1 John 3:18
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
Let us teach first by setting an example. If we need to discipline or rebuke, let us do that in love.
ReferencesHere's another look at the self-satisfied smirk on Mitt Romney's face after he attacked President Obama for sympathizing with America's attackers explained to America why he wasn't ready to be president:
"They were just trying to score a cheap news cycle hit based on the embassy statement and now it’s just completely blown up," said a very senior Republican foreign policy hand, who called the statement an "utter disaster" and a "Lehman moment" — a parallel to the moment when John McCain, amid the 2008 financial crisis, failed to come across as a steady leader.
Romney is getting skewered across the political spectrum, from the media and from politicians. Even conservatives, who probably feel free to unload now that they know he's going to lose, are slamming him There's a lot more in Ben Smith's report about how Romney's gambit is backfiring even among his allies. It's really a remarkable event in this campaign—easily the most spectacular political blunder of the 2012 cycle so far.
Also, check out Josh Marshall's tick-tock detailing how this episode makes it clear that Mitt Romney doesn't have what it takes to be president.
@joshgreenman via web Full Condoleezza Rice statement is here. No mention of Obama: http://t.co/...
Oy:
This is so far from the truth. Their impulsive, shoot-from-the-hip attack makes John McCain's drama queen campaign suspension in 2008 look positively sober by comparison.
Yeah, impulsive:
You really want this train wreck of a leader to have his finger on the nuclear button?Munch Museum in Oslo, set to move to a new site in the city. Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / NTB scanpix
A foundation fronted by Conservative Party politician Aamir Sheikh wants to build a Muslim art centre on the current site of the Munch Museum in Tøyen, Oslo after the museum moves to Bjørvika in 2019.
Aamir Sheikh unveiled his plans which included building a small dome and minaret on the building in order to make any new Muslim museum more visible, reported Aftenposten on Thursday.
The Foundation for Dialogue and Peace used, among other arguments, the Breivik terror attack on 22nd of July to win over key decision-makers in the council in Oslo.
The foundation's application stated: “After the horrible atrocities that took place on the 22nd of July, there is a widespread and strong wish for Norwegian society to behave with more tolerance, more knowledge and greater respect for differences.”
Aamir Sheikh, fronting the foundation, said: “We have quietly worked to establish a Muslim museum for three years and we think that the land in Tøyen is very suitable for this purpose.”
Sheikh says that he will travel to Muslim countries to gather money and support for the project.
“We have already received indications from certain countries that they will contribute. We also sent an application to the Department of Culture,” said Sheikh.
Former prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said he is positive to the plans.
Bondevik says: “I will travel around together with Sheikh, if I get time and opportunity to do it.”
Oslo city council head Stian Berger Røsland is also positive to the initiative.
Røsland said to NTB: “But there are several plans for the piece of land. There is, for example, talk of building a science centre there. I can therefore not say whether the municipality will say "yes" or "no" to building a Muslim museum there.”North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue has announced that she won't sign or veto the controversial bill on municipal broadband sent to her desk by the state legislature. The legislation reigns in the power of cities and towns to commission their own broadband networks. Perdue's inaction means that House Bill 129 is a done deal.
"I believe that every school, household and business in North Carolina — no matter where they are — should have access to efficient and affordable broadband services," the governor explained in a public statement.
There is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having an unfair advantage over providers in the private sector. My concern with House Bill 129 is that the restrictions the General Assembly has imposed on cities and towns who want to offer broadband services may have the effect of decreasing the number of choices available to their citizens.
[partner id="arstechnica"]The cable industry backed law forces new muni-networks not to sell their high speed internet to neighboring areas, restricts their ability to offer low introductory prices to consumers, and requires them to pay all taxes "that would apply" to a private provider.
But having expressed her concerns (shared by many North Carolina cities), Perdue said that she would do nothing, expecting others to take action instead.
"I call on the General Assembly to revisit this issue and adopt rules that not only promote fairness but also allow for the greatest number of high quality and affordable broadband options for consumers," her commentary explains.
The non-decision comes following a last minute plea from Stanford scholar Lawrence Lessig to Perdue, a Democrat, to veto the bill. "Opponents of community broadband argue that it is "unfair" for broadband companies to have to compete against community-supported networks," his appeal noted.
But the same might be said of companies that would like to provide private roads. Or private fire protection. Or private police protection. Or private street lights. These companies too would face real competition from communities that choose to provide these services themselves. But no one would say that we should close down public fire departments just to be 'fair' to potential private first-responders.
Lessig's commentary acknowledged that given the Republican majority in North Carolina's state legislature, getting her veto sustained would be a challenge.
"But if you took this position of principle, regardless of whether or not you will ultimately prevail, you would inspire hundreds of thousands to join with you in a fight that is critical to the economic future of not just North Carolina, but the nation," his statement concludes.In this brief tutorial, we will see how to prevent a package from being automatically installed, upgraded or removed. Some of you might wonder why would anyone want to do that. There could be many reasons. You might happy with the particular version of a package, and don’t want to waste time by updating it to the latest version which is unnecessary. Sometimes, the updated packages might be problematic. Even though the developers will test the packages thoroughly before pushing them into the repositories, sometimes they might push unstable, and problematic packages unknowingly which will eventually damage our systems.
Sometimes, you will just want to save the bandwidth. Say for example, you don’t want to update a package that consumes more than 300 MB. So that you can simply hold it back from being upgraded. These are some reasons that I can say to prevent a package from updating. The reasons might be different and vary for you. Whatever it is, if you want to hold a package, this tutorial will help you to do so.
Note: Please be mindful that holding back packages from being upgraded is not recommenced in production. Sometimes the outdated packages might be vulnerable and cause security issues. In such cases, you must update it to the latest version. If you are don’t care about the security, just keep the packages outdated as long as you you want.
Prevent A Package From Being Automatically Installed, Upgraded Or Removed In Ubuntu
We can lock the package either from Command line (using apt-get) or graphical way (using Synaptic package manager). Both are easy.
The command line way (Using apt-get)
To lock a package from being automatically installed, updated, or removed, we can use ‘apt-mark’ command. This command has many options. You can read the man pages for details about each option.
$ man apt-mark
For the purpose of this guide, We will discuss only two options namely hold and unhold.
hold – block any package from being installed, updated, upgraded, or removed. unhold – Release the package from hold, and allow us to install, update, remove packages.
Let us mark (hold) a package, for example htop, as shown below.
$ sudo apt-mark hold htop
Sample output:
htop set on hold.
The locked package will remain as the same version even if you upgraded your system. This trick can be very useful while holding back graphics drivers.
To unhold the package, just run:
$ sudo apt-mark unhold htop
Sample output:
Canceled hold on htop.
Important: Please note that this method doesn’t opt for manual removal. You can still remove the locked packages using “apt-get remove <packagename>” command. Do not assume that the marked packages can not be removed.
This method only prevents the application from automatically installed, updated, upgraded, or removed during system upgrade. Holding a package actually means you’re telling the package manager to keep the current version no matter what. This is useful if more recent version of a currently working program breaks after an update.
Whenever you try to update the system using commands “sudo apt-get update” or “sudo apt-get upgrade”, the marked packages will still be the same version at the time you hold the package.
The graphical way (Using Synaptic package manager)
If you have Synaptic package manager installed on your system, you can easily lock a package from being installed, updated, upgraded, or removed as described below.
Open Synaptic manager either from Unity dash or Menu. Search the package you want to hold. Then go to Package from the menu bar and click hold.
That’s it. Now, the package will not be touched during system upgrade as long as you kept it in hold.
If Synaptic package manager is not installed in your system, you can install it using command:
$ sudo apt-get install synaptic
Conclusion
You know now how to prevent a package from being installed, updated or removed during system update in Ubuntu. It is a good practice to follow when you find out the recent version of a particular package is not stable or break the system. You can simply hold the packages using ‘apt-mark’ command, so that the package managers won’t touch the package as long as you unhold them back.
That’s all for now. I will be here with another interesting article soon. Until then stay tuned with OSTechNix.
Cheers!When there are roles for Asian-American guys, they're usually given parts that are stereotyped, emasculated, or both. Randall Park, star of The Interview and the upcoming ABC comedy Fresh Off the Boat, says he can relate. "Similar roles kept coming my way," he says of his start in the industry. "The lab technician, the doctor with one scene in the episode, crime shows set in Chinatown." While there has been some progress for women and black actors, Asian-Americans actors have struggled to find heftier parts and are rarely considered for starring roles or the romantic lead, let alone anything remotely sexy. In a recent study conducted by the University of Southern California, out of the 3,932 speaking characters evaluated from 600 popular films made between 2007 and 2013, only 4.4% were Asian. The same study found that Asian men were least likely to be depicted in a romantic relationship.ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Muslim Personal Law did not vest husbands with the right to casually deny the paternity of a child bore to them by their wives.
“Children born during the subsistence of marriage are presumed to be legitimate,” said a judgment issued by a two-judge bench while overturning a Lahore High Court verdict.
The bench comprises Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany.
“Except under extremely limited circumstances and within a very limited period after birth, this presumption cannot be rebutted by any evidence, including DNA test,” the verdict said.
The eight-page judgment narrates the story behind the case.
In 1997, Ms Ghazala Tehseen Zohra, the appellant, became the first wife of a local landowner, Mehr Ghulam Dastagir Khan, and subsequently bore him two children.
When the husband took a second wife, the first wife went to the court claiming a secure monthly maintenance for herself and the two children. But the husband divorced her, refused to own the children and sought a declaration to this effect from a local court.
Seven years later, just before the paternity trial was about to conclude, the husband sought permission from the court to introduce DNA evidence. When the court turned down the request, he took the matter to the high court which granted his request.
The woman moved the Supreme Court which accepted her appeal eight years later.
“While the presumption of legitimacy attached to children born during marriage is a long-standing rule of Muslim Personal Law, some confusion seems to have been created in this regard by Article 128(1 a) of the Qanun-i-Shahadat Order (QSO), 1984,” the SC judgment said.
The provision suggests that no such presumption remains in a case where “the husband had refused, or refuses, to own the child”.
The apex court clarified that Article 128(1 a) of the QSO must be read in line with letter and spirit of Section 2 of the West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Act, 1962. This statutory provision stipulates that in issues of “legitimacy or bastardy”, where the parties concerned are Muslim, the courts shall apply rules of Muslim Personal Law derived from the Shariah.
Under these rules, a father cannot deny the paternity of children bore to him by his wife, even through evidence, unless he expressly makes this denial within 40 days after the child’s birth.
Since the father had made no such timely denial in the case at hand, the court deemed the disputed children legitimate, even in the absence of DNA evidence.
Taking stern notice of the high court’s decision, the Supreme Court clarified that the well-known rules regarding presumption of children’s legitimacy must be strictly adhered to. It emphasised that jurists in the Islamic tradition who expounded these rules “were not unaware simpletons lacking in knowledge”.
“The conclusiveness of proof in respect of legitimacy of a child was properly thought out and quite deliberate… the law does not give a free licence to individuals and, particularly unscrupulous fathers, to make bald assertions and thus to stigmatise children as well as their mother,” the judgment said.
Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2015
On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google PlayFacebook has adopted sharia-complaint policies for some time now. My feed is blocked from my millions of followers on Facebook, and I have seen my circulation drop precipitously in the past three months. For news publishers, Facebook is the motherboard of link traffic. No news site can survive without them. None of us are immune, which is why my traffic is down upwards of 70% since the block. My Facebook page has a million followers; add my organizations to that, and it is roughly 1.5 million people. Now imagine their sharing capability, and their friends and their friends — you get the picture. It’s how we fight fake news. All of my FB followers experience similar issues with their posts and shares. I receive scores of emails everyday from readers telling me of new blocks, bans and Facebook jail sentences. It’s why I am suing.
Why the block? Because under Islamic law, you cannot criticize Islam. Facebook adhering to the most extreme and brutal ideology on the face of the earth should trouble all of us, because Mark Zuckerberg has immense power. He controls the flow of information. He controls what you see and don’t see on Facebook. We did not give him the power to abridge our unalienable freedoms.
The US government used anti-trust laws to break up monopolies. They ought to break up Facebook. Section 2 of the Sherman Act highlights particular results deemed anticompetitive by nature and prohibits actions that “shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.” Couldn’t the same be applied to information? The United States government took down Standard Oil, Alcoa, Northern Securities, the American Tobacco Company and many others without nearly the power that Facebook has.
I am no lawyer, but considering the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act, while William Howard Taft sued 75, and the fact that the US government used these vicious anti-capitalist laws to destroy huge industrial giants — could it not be used in defense of free speech?
Jihad Watch has experienced this as well.
This initiative is already in full swing: in mid-February, traffic to Jihad Watch from Facebook dropped suddenly by 90% and has never recovered. We do not post any “explicit, hateful and provocative material that incites violence and terrorism,” but Facebook is acting as judge, jury and executioner in all this. There is no appeal and no recourse. This is at heart a Sharia endeavor, an Islamic supremacist attempt to compel the West to adopt Sharia |
usually dominate the discussion. Clayton Kershaw likely gains the most mentions, with Felix Hernandez and Cliff Lee among the names closely behind. Justin Verlander and Cole Hamels had off years in 2013, arguably dropping back in the pack a bit. Matt Harvey and Jose Fernandez entered the fray loudly last season, and Stephen Strasburg’s pedigree is as good as anyone’s. Justin Masterson? Doubt his name comes up very often. Should it? Let’s take a look at some batted ball profiles and make the call.
14 pitchers were somewhat arbitrarily selected for this analysis, but are not purported to be the sum total of baseball’s elite group. The aforementioned Verlander and Hamels, to name two, were left off due to their 2013 “struggles”. First, let’s take a look at this group’s 2013 K, BB and batted ball type frequencies:
Bumgarner % REL PCT K 26.1% 131 92 BB 8.1% 106 65 POP 7.0% 92 47 FLY 28.3% 101 51 LD 20.2% 94 25 GB 44.5% 104 62 — — — — Darvish % REL PCT K 34.2% 172 99 BB 9.9% 128 87 POP 10.4% 137 85 FLY 31.2% 111 79 LD 20.1% 94 24 GB 38.3% 89 22 — — — — J.Fernandez % REL PCT K 28.3% 142 96 BB 8.8% 114 72 POP 7.9% 105 60 FLY 28.4% 101 52 LD 21.6% 101 54 GB 42.1% 98 41 — — — — Harvey % REL PCT K 28.4% 143 98 BB 4.6% 60 5 POP 8.7% 114 73 FLY 24.9% 89 23 LD 21.1% 98 43 GB 45.3% 106 70 — — — — F.Hernandez % REL PCT K 27.8% 140 95 BB 5.9% 77 18 POP 5.6% 75 24 FLY 25.1% 89 26 LD 21.6% 101 52 GB 47.7% 111 82 — — — — Iwakuma % REL PCT K 22.3% 112 74 BB 5.1% 66 10 POP 6.0% 79 28 FLY 31.1% 111 77 LD 19.9% 93 23 GB 43.0% 100 50 — — — — Kershaw % REL PCT K 26.2% 132 93 BB 5.9% 76 16 POP 8.5% 112 69 FLY 24.0% 86 16 LD 23.2% 108 84 GB 44.3% 103 60 — — — — C.Lee % REL PCT K 26.0% 131 91 BB 3.8% 49 2 POP 6.0% 79 29 FLY 28.9% 103 57 LD 23.0% 107 82 GB 42.1% 98 42 — — — — Masterson % REL PCT K 25.6% 129 91 BB 10.0% 130 89 POP 5.5% 73 21 FLY 21.6% 77 7 LD 18.2% 85 5 GB 54.7% 127 95 — — — — D.Price % REL PCT K 21.0% 106 63 BB 3.8% 49 1 POP 8.5% 112 70 FLY 26.2% 93 37 LD 21.4% 100 46 GB 43.9% 102 57 — — — — Sale % REL PCT K 28.2% 142 96 BB 5.7% 75 14 POP 7.0% 92 47 FLY 27.6% 98 44 LD 21.6% 100 51 GB 43.9% 102 56 — — — — Scherzer % REL PCT K 29.4% 148 98 BB 6.9% 89 35 POP 11.2% 147 88 FLY 37.1% 132 97 LD 18.8% 88 11 GB 32.9% 77 6 — — — — Strasburg % REL PCT K 27.7% 140 95 BB 8.0% 104 62 POP 7.2% 95 50 FLY 27.1% 97 42 LD 18.3% 85 7 GB 47.4% 110 81 — — — — Wainwright % REL PCT K 24.0% 121 83 BB 3.8% 50 3 POP 6.4% 84 35 FLY 23.9% 85 14 LD 22.5% 105 72 GB 47.2% 110 79
In addition to the rate data presented, each percentage is also expressed relative to the MLB average, scaled to 100, and as a percentile rank.
First, it’s pretty obvious that we’re talking about the starting pitching elite here – the LOWEST K rate belongs to David Price, with a percentile rank of 63 – and his BB percentile rank is 1. 12 of the 14 pitchers listed have relative K rates of 120 or higher, and fully half weigh in with relative K rates of 140 and percentile ranks of 95 or higher. Clearly, missing bats is a huge part of being an elite starting pitcher.
A low BB rate doesn’t appear to be quite as necessary as a high K rate – 5 of the 14 have BB percentile ranks of 60 or higher. 6 of the 14 have popup percentile ranks higher than 60 – those are free outs, my friends, and they correlate well from year to year. Only 3 of the 14 are fly ball-oriented, with percentile ranks of 77 or higher. Line drive rates, as you might expect, are all over the board. 9 of the 14 have above average ground ball rates, including 4 with percentile ranks of 79 or higher. The bottom line – elite starters come in many varieties, but it sure does help to get a lot of K’s and amass a bunch of free outs, be they popups or weak ground balls.
How do Justin Masterson’s frequencies stack up? His relative K rate was a career high 129 in 2013, for a percentile rank of 91. That clearly makes him a fit within this group. Every pitcher listed who reaches a percentile rank of 90 or high once repeated or improved that level in at least one additional subsequent year. His BB rate is the highest of the group, with a percentile rank of 89. This is the most concerning aspect of Masterson’s portfolio. Control has never been his strong suit, with his arm action and delivery representing scouts’ long-term concerns, which many thought would limit him to a career as a bullpen specialist.
Within this group of pitchers, there are some success stories involving control improvement – Kershaw had a BB percentile ranking of 99 in 2009, but he was just 21. David Price had a 74 percentile rank in 2010 at age 24, and Matt Scherzer a 71 in 2010 at age 25. Can we expect Masterson’s BB rate to improve in the future? As recently as 2011, it was better than league average, but his K rate was much lower then. He has traded some walks for some more missed bats, and the short-term results have been positive on balance.
Now we get to the core of Masterson’s game. The pitchers on this list do at least one thing as well as or better than just about any other pitcher in baseball. Yu Darvish gets strikeouts. Felix Hernandez excels across the board while carrying an exceedingly heavy workload year in and year out. Cliff Lee – and now David Price – walk no one. Max Scherzer has a lethal strikeout/popup combination. Clayton Kershaw basically does all of the above.
Justin Masterson induces ground balls – and lots of them. In five years as a starting pitcher, he has posted ground ball percentile ranks of 95, 98, 89, 95 and 95, respectively. Obviously, very high grounder rates mean very low fly ball rates, but in Masterson’s case, they have also meant very low line drive rates. He has never posted a higher than MLB average line drive rate, and his LD percentile ranks have been below 10 in three of the last five seasons.
So Masterson’s batted ball frequency profile is this – high K, high BB, with lots of grounders, and few liners. What kind of production, however, did Masterson and the others actually allow on each type of batted ball in 2013, and how do they compare once that production is adjusted for context – ballpark, defense, luck, etc.. Lastly, once their K’s and BB’s are added back to the batted balls, how did these pitchers’ “true talent” performances measure up?
Bumgarner AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.268 0.641 80 94 LD 0.624 0.812 89 88 GB 0.193 0.206 66 106 ALL BIP 0.274 0.415 70 83 ALL PA 0.200 0.262 0.302 64 74 2.77 2.46 2.85 — — — — Darvish AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.279 0.857 118 116 LD 0.648 0.898 102 109 GB 0.243 0.249 101 120 ALL BIP 0.309 0.536 101 107 ALL PA 0.193 0.272 0.335 72 76 2.83 2.81 2.93 — — — — J.Fernandez AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.195 0.483 44 83 LD 0.567 0.722 73 104 GB 0.177 0.177 52 94 ALL BIP 0.256 0.374 59 96 ALL PA 0.178 0.249 0.261 53 79 2.19 2.07 3.06 — — — — Harvey AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.193 0.447 40 74 LD 0.688 0.833 102 94 GB 0.229 0.254 95 96 ALL BIP 0.291 0.393 71 80 ALL PA 0.206 0.242 0.279 54 61 2.27 2.10 2.36 — — — — F.Hernandez AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.264 0.682 85 101 LD 0.739 0.991 129 105 GB 0.227 0.251 93 101 ALL BIP 0.330 0.488 99 97 ALL PA 0.238 0.281 0.352 78 77 3.04 3.04 2.98 — — — — Iwakuma AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.241 0.706 83 129 LD 0.592 0.808 84 96 GB 0.200 0.219 72 102 ALL BIP 0.280 0.474 81 108 ALL PA 0.216 0.255 0.367 73 95 2.66 2.83 3.67 — — — — Kershaw AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.190 0.469 42 57 LD 0.571 0.671 69 87 GB 0.203 0.244 80 97 ALL BIP 0.265 0.376 61 79 ALL PA 0.192 0.239 0.273 53 65 1.83 2.04 2.52 — — — — C.Lee AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.237 0.653 74 100 LD 0.679 0.936 111 105 GB 0.217 0.232 83 84 ALL BIP 0.312 0.494 94 101 ALL PA 0.230 0.258 0.364 73 78 2.87 2.84 3.02 — — — — Masterson AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.292 0.755 104 91 LD 0.674 0.798 96 97 GB 0.209 0.216 75 78 ALL BIP 0.298 0.422 78 75 ALL PA 0.216 0.292 0.305 73 72 3.45 2.83 2.77 — — — — D.Price AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.282 0.718 95 94 LD 0.612 0.776 84 98 GB 0.269 0.303 133 118 ALL BIP 0.318 0.479 94 96 ALL PA 0.251 0.278 0.377 82 84 3.33 3.18 3.27 — — — — Sale AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.262 0.765 98 110 LD 0.658 0.816 95 108 GB 0.241 0.257 102 87 ALL BIP 0.313 0.487 93 98 ALL PA 0.226 0.268 0.353 75 78 3.07 2.88 3.01 — — — — Scherzer AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.223 0.585 62 90 LD 0.602 0.827 87 95 GB 0.262 0.302 128 118 ALL BIP 0.283 0.468 81 95 ALL PA 0.195 0.249 0.324 64 73 2.90 2.46 2.84 — — — — Strasburg AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.225 0.600 64 120 LD 0.617 0.778 85 96 GB 0.248 0.262 107 119 ALL BIP 0.286 0.425 75 98 ALL PA 0.203 0.266 0.302 65 81 3.00 2.51 3.15 — — — — Wainwright AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA TRU ERA FLY 0.333 0.744 114 85 LD 0.632 0.792 89 98 GB 0.228 0.245 92 91 ALL BIP 0.324 0.464 93 89 ALL PA 0.244 0.273 0.349 75 73 2.94 2.92 2.81
For each pitcher, the actual AVG-SLG for each batted ball type is listed. The resulting run value of that performance is measured relative to the MLB average for that batted ball type in the “REL PRD” column, and adjusted for context in the “ADJ PRD” column. Lastly, for each pitcher, their actual ERA, their calculated component ERA based on actual AVG-SLG allowed (which weeds out sequencing), and their “Tru” ERA, adjusted for ballpark, defense, luck, etc., is listed. For purposes of this exercise, SH and SF are included as outs, and HBP are not included in OBP.
From the bottom up, let’s separate these 2013 performances into tiers. Hisashi Iwakuma is the clear laggard in this group. He was saved by Safeco Field – his adjusted relative fly ball production mark of 129 is easily the highest of this group. On all BIP combined, he had an actual relative production mark of 73 – adjusted for context, it jumps to 95.
Iwakuma was a somewhat better than average quality starting pitcher in 2013, and had plenty of innings bulk. He is a great value relative to his contract, though he is expected to miss the very early stages of the 2014 campaign with a right middle finger injury. Of the pitchers listed here, however, he allowed the most authoritative contact, and really doesn’t belong in this discussion.
Next comes the group of Price, Strasburg, Fernandez, Lee and Chris Sale. Price’s K and BB rates both dropped sharply in 2013, as he became more of a pitch-to-contact guy. Though the contact he allowed was a bit weaker than league average, he needs to get the K’s back to have a chance to get to the top of the list. Strasburg’s raw materials may be unparalleled in this group, but he remains a work in progress.
His actual performance on balls in play was helped a great deal by his outfield defense and ballpark. He also needs to add more bulk to his case by pitching more innings. Fernandez’ actual BIP performance was way ahead of all of the pitchers on this list, but was not supported by his hard and soft fly ball and grounder rates. His spacious home park helped him greatly. Lee too allowed much more authoritative contact than his actual numbers suggest, particularly in the air. Sale allowed fairly authoritative fly ball and line drive contact, and virtually league average contact authority overall.
The next tier moving upward includes Hernandez, Darvish, Madison Bumgarner, Scherzer and Wainwright. Hernandez’ greatest assets are his innings bulk and consistent excellence across the board. His control continues to improve, and he remains a strong ground ball generator. His line drive rate, however, has been higher than average the last two seasons, and his overall quality of contact allowed is now roughly average. Darvish overwhelms with his massive K rate, but allowed harder than average contact in all batted ball types – his solid infield defense helped him significantly. Improvement in his quality of contact allowed and his BB rate – his percentile ranks were 94 and 87 in his first two seasons – would propel him to the very top of this list.
Bumgarner is a stealth candidate. He is a weak contact machine – of all of the pitchers on this list, Bumgarner and three others that we’ve yet to discuss managed contact considerably better than the rest in 2013. Strong team defense also helps his cause. Scherzer is an odd mix. He doesn’t allow many grounders, but they are hit quite hard. He allows a ton of fly balls, and they are not – yet, at least. His current peak is quite high, but his decline could be swift, triggered by an eventual increase in his hard fly rate due to even a slight deterioration of his stuff. Wainwright is a slightly less reliable (health-wise) version of Felix – strong across the board, with an ever-improving BB rate, a strong ground ball tendency, and a sneaky-high line drive rate. Wainwright was hurt a bit by subpar outfield defense in 2013, and was likely a bit better than his actual numbers.
That leaves three guys – Clayton Kershaw, Matt Harvey, and the subject of today’s discussion, Justin Masterson. These three stifled contact better than the rest in 2013. Kershaw totally muzzles hard fly ball contact – it is virtually impossible at present to do serious damage against him in the air. He also paces this group in line drive production allowed, before and after adjusting for context. Add in stellar K and BB skills and a clean health record, and you have the best starting pitcher in the game today.
Matt Harvey’s first full season in the majors was arguably the best posted by a starting pitcher in 2013, but unfortunately, we may not see him until 2015 thanks to Tommy John surgery. His ability to limit fly ball authority was second only to Kershaw, and those two plus Masterson and Wainwright were the only allow lower than average adjusted production on all batted ball types in 2013.
As for Masterson – he does a lot more than allow a bunch of ground balls. He allows a bunch of very weak ground balls. He easily outdistances this group for lowest production allowed on grounders. Surprisingly, after adjustment for ballpark and defense – most of the hard flies he did allow went to RCF/RF, the friendliest part of Jacobs Field – he also rates in the better half with regard to adjusted fly ball production allowed. When all BIP are taken into account, Masterson managed contact better than all of these great hurlers last season. That high BB rate takes its toll once it’s added back into the equation, but Masterson’s 2013 “tru” ERA of 2.77 ranks behind only Harvey and Kershaw once all outcomes are taken into account.
Justin Masterson is not the best, or the third best starting pitcher in baseball. He’s performed at this level for exactly one full season. He has a career OPS+ of 100. He possesses a fairly dramatic normal platoon split for his career, though he has begun to handle lefties at a very acceptable rate of late, as his slider has evolved into a legitimate out pitch against both lefties and righties. He may not have the delivery or arm action of an elite starter, or the diverse repertoire of an elite starter, but Justin Masterson possesses a singular elite skill, that along with solid complementary abilities could very well propel him into near-term discussions of the game’s upper tiers of starting pitchers.The precautionary push will include TV commercials, and posters hanging in dispensaries advocating safe edible consumption.
A new advertising campaign from Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) is using a unique set of voices to warn Final Frontier residents about the possible dangers of legal weed - the state’s recreational cannabis providers.
According to local NBC affiliate KTUU, next month the Responsible Consumer campaign will debut a television ad featuring two of Alaska’s retail pot shop owners giving warning to their customers and neighbors that “with cannabis, there is no legal limit to drive.”
In addition to the TV spot, the same campaign will feature print ads about the dangers of youth cannabis use, and posters advising edible consumers to “know your limits” that the DHSS hopes dispensaries across the state will hang prominently in their shops.
“The Responsible Consumer campaign is meant to educate Alaskans who are thinking of using marijuana, or who are using marijuana, on some of the pointers of responsible consumption,” Regina McConkey an employee of the Office of Substance Misuse and Addiction Prevention, said.
Another recent cannabis-themed ad campaign in Alaska has taken a harsher tone, with a federally funded push from the Alaska Highway Safety Office (AHSO) running ads backed by less than sound statistics that claim one third of the state’s fatal car accidents are a result of drugged driving, and that drug related DUIs are on the rise.
Instead of using the imagery and language of death and doom, the DHSS hopes they can better appeal to Alaskans by showing that their safety is of concern to the same people who sell them their bud.
“Every state that has legalized marijuana for recreational use has had education efforts and prevention efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts that can happen as a direct result of legalization,” McConkey said.I’ve been dipping into one of my favourite reads, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. This is in anticipation of Saturday’s study day on psi and psychedelics at the Society for Psychical Research in London (April 26). These events aren’t always that well attended, but I expect this one will be. As the prohibition on cannabis splutters to an end there’s a sense that cracks might also start to develop in the ban on the use of hallucinogens, with who knows what exciting results.
Varieties describes research into the effects of LSD and peyote in some 200 sessions, with detailed descriptions of different kinds of experiences. It’s like entering into another world, and it’s extraordinary to think that in the right circumstances any of us could gain access to it. As I think Aldous Huxley was the first to suggest, this altered state of consciousness should ideally be part of everyone’s education
I regret that my own experiences in the early 1970s were not particularly coherent or pleasant. I should have approached it with more respect. As it was, I either under or overdosed, and didn’t take good enough care to be in ideal surroundings. (The need for this is made abundantly clear in the book.) However I did get a memorable glimpse of its awesome power, and was deeply impressed by the sense, famously described by William James, that there are many valid ways of experiencing the world besides the one we’re used to.
Does the psychedelic experience stimulate psi? There are various reports by ethnologists and explorers that it does, with native people under the influence of hallucinogens suddenly showing uncanny knowledge of things going on in distant locations (as was subsequently verified). Many subjects of LSD and peyote sessions believed themselves to be in telepathic rapport with others. So the authors set about doing some experiments.
They started with Zener cards. The average score of 27 subjects was 3.5, or 1.5 below chance, which they speculated might indicate psi-missing – a possibility if only because the subjects understandably found it a boring waste of time. However four of the subjects produced consistently high scores on LSD, but poorly without. It seems other researchers had similarly dismal results with card guessing in psychedelic states, with the sole exception of Andrija Puharich, as reported in his book Beyond Telepathy.
The authors had more success by getting people to image a scene that had been briefly described in a sealed envelope. In the case of one high-scoring subject ‘Viking ship tossed in storm’ produced an image of a snake with arched head swimming in tossed seas. ‘Rain forest in the Amazon’ produced lush vegetation, exotic, flowers, startling greens. ‘Atlas holding up the world’ led to ‘Hercules tossing a ball up and down in his hand’; a sailboat off a rocky coast – sailboat sailing around a cliff; etc.
In a third type of experiment the subject was asked to get inside the head of some historical character.
In some of these cases the results were remarkable, the subject changing his voice, way of speaking, posture and even, it seemed, his appearance and way of thinking. The subject would not, however, lose his awareness of his own identity. He would, rather, ‘be two people,’ and would talk about his ‘new’ and ‘second self’ with a plausibility that sometimes verged on the uncanny.
It was clear to the authors that the psychedelic state is not necessarily more conducive to psi phenomena than the normal state. But some evidence of a spontaneous telepathic rapport did emerge. One group session included a pair of female twins who, as children, had been made to wear the same clothes and do the same things, and later rebelled, becoming strongly antagonistic to each other, and striving to be as unlike as possible (one was a scientist, the other an avant-garde painter).
For the first hour of the session they kept up their customary bickering. Then, as the drug took hold, they became absorbed in their altered perceptions and started comparing notes. To their consternation they discovered these were almost completely alike – at any given moment each was experiencing exactly what the other was experiencing (and yet, when they checked, not at all what was going on in the heads of three others in the group). Eventually, the authors write, they went into ‘a profound and almost trancelike sort of communion’ in which, as they said later, they discovered themselves to be essentially the same person. Each proclaimed herself to be ‘variations on my twin’, but declared that the ‘overlapping of identities was no longer a discomfort’.
There were also some striking instances of clairvoyance. In one instance a young woman said she could ‘see’ her little daughter back at home in her kitchen taking advantage of her absence to hunt for the cookie jar. She then reported that the child, perched on a chair and rummaging through the cabinets, had knocked over a glass sugar bowl which had shattered, spilling sugar everywhere. She forgot this episode, but later, when she was making some coffee, she couldn’t find the sugar bowl, and was informed by her husband that their daughter had ‘made a mess while looking for cookies’, knocking the bowl from the shelf and smashing it.
In another case a subject reported seeing ‘a ship caught in ice floes, somewhere in the northern seas’ – the name on the bow of the ship was France. Three days later news was published of a ship named France having been freed from ice somewhere near Greenland, after becoming trapped apparently at around the time of the session.
Among other things the SPR event will focus on these sorts of experiments, and I guess will speculate about how they might be updated in the light of techniques developed since the ban on psychedelics in the mid 1960s. Which is all good, and will be interesting to hear about. But in a way, a focus on psi can seem like a distraction from its central meaning. Reading Varieties, the notion of psychic operation for once seemed positively humdrum amid the chaotic passion and force of the event as a subjective experience. This is so often a journey into a world of images, symbols and meanings; of sudden crashing insights about the self, that heal and transform; or of epic five-hour struggles with monsters, gods and demons.
The authors are drily dismissive of the New Age-type utterances of some of their subjects – who may grandly proclaim to feel expansive love or to have become ‘One with the All’ – which they associate with the half-digested, half-baked mysticism of the sixties counter-culture. They are also exasperated by the excesses promoted by the likes of Timothy Leary. But they leave no doubt about the immense therapeutic value the experience can have, especially when supervised by a seasoned guide who makes useful suggestions about how to go forward, get out of awkward situations and move into new areas.
Alas, that’s something I’m unlikely ever to experience, as for (mild) medical reasons I’m probably contraindicated as a subject. But just reading about it can be breathtaking too.Soon forgot “@nazir_masoodi: A BJP hoarding stands tall in Sopore promising an end to dynasty rule of 2 families. pic.twitter.com/AGcxGQ66q8” — Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) December 28, 2014
Trying again - 5 days later the notoriously unstable Jharkhand has a govt while J&K has to make do with analysing rumours. — Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) December 28, 2014
NEW DELHI: After his defeat in the Jammu & Kashmir assembly election, Omar Abdullah went to London. But he did not go quiet.Sitting there, he has been teasing Prime MInister Narendra Modi on Twitter, on BJP's attempt to woo PDP and his own party — National Conference — for government formation in the valley.He has been reminding the party of its promises made to the people of the valley where BJP had vowed to end dynasty politics by defeating both PDP and NC in the state.Omar retweeted a tweet posted by BJP candidate Nazir Masoodi where the latter had posted a BJP billboard promising to "end the dynasty rule of two families" in the state.He tweeted that even after five days since the election results came out, only rumours are in store for the valley.During the election campaign in both the states, PM Modi had targeted the dynasty politics of NC's Farooq and Omar Abdullah, PDP's Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti in Jammu & Kashmir, and JMM's Shibu and Hemant Soren in Jharkhand.Spending some time back in the States, I’ve been reunited with my Lamy 2000. Don’t ask me why I didn’t travel with it in the first place–I must have been on a cartridge kick, trying to pack light or something–but I won’t make that mistake again. From now on, this functional, stylish, piston-filler never leaves my side.
Unfortunately, rediscovering my favorite pen has kept me from reviewing any others. I’ve been monogamous. And that right there is the moral of the story from a few years of owning the 2000: if you’re only going to own one pen, and you’re actually going to write with it, the Lamy 2000 is ideal.
Looks and Design
For those of you who don’t know, the Lamy 2000 gets its aesthetic from the Bauhaus revival, which was in full swing when it was designed in 1960s Germany. It’s as much a piece of modern art as it is a writing tool.
But you already know all of this if you’ve read anything at all about the Lamy 2000. That’s because fans of the 2000, and Lamy’s marketing department, go on and on about it’s avant garde credentials. This, along with some quirks to the writing experience, make it a seriously polarizing writing instrument. As one review put it, “this is pretty much the Kanye West of fountain pens.” (Lamy’s most outrageous marketing boast is that the pen is featured in the MoMa. Not true, though the man who designed it does have work in their collection.)
Consequently, there’s more than a few reviews out there. Tools & Toys has one of the best ones I’ve read. Neil Gaiman has Tweeted and blogged about his 2000. He praises it as better for novel writing than the “regular Lamy” (I assume he means the Safari) which he reserves for book signing.
In this review, I’m going to try to stay above the gossip and hype to focus on my subjective experience writing with the Lamy. However, the design history is worth mentioning because it’s inseparable from the writing experience. That is the Bauhaus ethos: form follows function.
Try zooming in on the image above. Can you see the line where the piston filling mechanism joins the barrel? This moving part is nearly invisible when it’s screwed down. The brushed finish further camouflages it, giving one consistent finish down the length of the pen and the section. The same goes for the cap: it’s lines blend nicely with the body whether capped or posted. The cap feels like it’s supposed to be there, not like some clunky after-thought with nowhere better to be.
Above the section, there’s a discrete ink window you won’t notice until you’re running low, unlike some other pens where the ink window reminds you of those plastic gel pens the sell at Rite Aid.
The barrel is made out of a brushed fiberglass-like material called Makrolon. It’s durable, it has that matte look that screams quality, and it warms to the touch. That bond you begin to feel with this pen, you get the sense that they engineered that feeling ahead of time.
One design feature that’s controversial, to the point of turning some off the pen, are the little nubs that lock the cap in place (above.) Some people find they get in the way when they’re writing. They can’t find a good grip. I don’t notice the nubs (or whatever they’re called,) and I’m happy to not have to unscrew the cap every time I want to jot something down. But I can see how this would be a deal breaker for someone with a different grip. Another issue with the 2000 is that the nib is ground in a way that limits the angles you can write from (more on this in a minute.)
Nib and Ink
The nib is 14k gold coated in platinum. You get the flex and warmth of a gold nib without the color gold. The nib is hooded, like the old Parker 51. You trade an elaborate nib you can show off, for one that’s built for serious writing. Hooded nibs are supposed to resist drying out because less ink is exposed to the air. I’m careful about capping my pens when they’re not in use, so I wouldn’t know much about that feature, but I can say this nib is plenty wet without being sloppy.
I write with a medium nib, and it’s very medium. It’s not so bold that I can’t write on cheap or thin paper, but it wouldn’t be my first choice for super precise penmanship (if I could even do that.) If I could go back, I would probably get a fine or extra fine. After writing with Japanese pens for a couple years, a German medium is a little broad for my liking.
The piston filling mechanism is smooth |
financial structure that ties these aspects together. He's taking that voter confusion and running with it.
According to the Post, Cassidy told reporters that in many voters' minds, “Obamacare” refers to the individual mandate and other parts of the law that Republicans oppose, and the "Affordable Care Act" includes those, such as a ban on discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, that the GOP favors keeping.
“The Affordable Care Act is, if you will, a different animal, and Obamacare is a different subset of it,” Cassidy said. “Complete repeal is not what President Trump ran on. President Trump ran on everyone having coverage, caring for those with preexisting conditions without mandates, at a lower cost.”
That's some kind of cynical sleight of hand there.
For one thing, Cassidy's wrong that candidate Donald Trump didn't promise to repeal. He did. Just Google "Trump," "Obamacare," and "disaster" and see for yourself.
And his underlying suggestion that the GOP was on board with the popular stuff all along is also misleading. It wasn't.
Every single Republican in Congress at the time it became law opposed Obamacare, and every single Republican opposed the Affordable Care Act too. And that would include a guy who served in the U.S. House at the time: Bill Cassidy.Tetranitratoxycarbon, systematic name tetrakis(nitratoxycarbon)methane,[1] is a hypothetical molecule that was proposed by Clara Lazen, a fifth-grader in Kansas City, Missouri, who conceived of its structure and built a model in 2012. She is credited as co-author of a scientific paper on the molecule, which uses computational chemistry to predict that the molecule could actually exist.
Prediction [ edit ]
Science teacher Kenneth Boehr was using ball-and-stick models to represent simple molecules during a fifth-grade class, when ten-year-old Clara Lazen[2] assembled a complex model and asked whether it was a real molecule.[3] It is unclear if Lazen randomly or deliberately assembled the model of the molecule.[4]
Unsure if the molecule existed, Boehr sent a picture of the model to a chemist friend, Robert Zoellner at Humboldt State University.[2][3] Zoellner checked the molecule against the Chemical Abstracts database[2] and confirmed that Lazen's model was of a structural type that had not been reported before.[3]
Zoellner wrote a paper on the molecule, published in Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, crediting Lazen and Boehr as co-authors.[1]
Properties [ edit ]
Tetranitratoxycarbon consists of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, with molecular structure C(CO 3 N) 4. As an oxygen-rich compound of carbon and nitrogen, it is predicted to have explosive properties,[2] but to be too thermally unstable for practical use.[5] The density is predicted to be 1.87 g/cm3.[6]
The nitratoxycarbon functional group itself has yet to be observed in any chemical compound. Computational chemistry studies indicate that it is one of the least stable isomeric structures of the available atoms.[1] As such this functional group is likely to remain purely hypothetical and no method for its synthesis has yet been proposed. The all-carbon analog (bicyclo[1.1.1]pentane) and other elemental variations of this ring structure have been synthesized.
Possible reactions [ edit ]
Several reactions of tetranitratoxycarbon have been investigated computationally. For example, one possible equation for its decomposition is:
C(CO 3 N) 4 → 5 CO 2 + O 2 + 2 N 2
that is predicted to have a standard enthalpy change of −1326 kJ/mol based on bond-energy calculation methods. Another potential reaction is its combustion in the presence of oxygen:
C(CO 3 N) 4 + O 2 → 5 CO 2 + 2 NO 2 + N 2
that is predicted to have a standard enthalpy change of −1144 kJ/mol.
References [ edit ]
Extra reading [ edit ]The Obama Legacy: 118 Cops Killed in Line of Duty in 2016
On July 7, 2016 a crazed Black Lives Matter supporter gunned down five police officers at a Black Lives Matter racial march in Dallas.
After the attack, Bill Johnson, the Executive Director of the National Association of Police Organizations, blamed Barack Obama for the police massacre. Johnson said under Barack Obama it was ” a war on cops.”
Ten days later on July 17, 2017, three more police officers were killed in a mass shooting by Gavin Eugene Long who was associated with the black separation movement.
WBRZ has confirmed the two Baton Rouge police officers killed were Montrell Jackson, 32, and Matthew Gerald, 41. WBRZ also confirmed Brad Garafola, 45, was the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s deputy killed in the attack.
After the Baton Rouge mass killing Cleveland police detective Steve Loomis pointed the finger at Barack Obama saying, “He has blood on his hands.”
President Trump ran as the law and order candidate upsetting Democrats and Black Lives Matter activists.
118 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in Barack Obama’s last year in office.
Obama’s legacy is dead cops.
CNS News reported:
118 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty last year in the United States, the FBI reported on Monday. That was up 37 percent from the 86 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2015. In 2016, 66 of the 118 deaths of law enforcement officers were felonious and 52 were accidental. In 2015, 41 of the 86 deaths of law enforcement officers were felonious and 45 were accidental. Another 57,180 officers were assaulted in the line of duty in 2016, and 16,535 (or about 29 percent) sustained injuries from that assault.on •
New Zealand claims to have the technology to build a mini “chilly bin” capable of fitting into a missile and the capacity to launch it as far as Norfolk Island as tension with Australia escalates.
“If foolish Australia threatens us with fire and fury then they should expect to be met with smouldering mild annoyance, the likes of which the world has never seen,” said a visibly peeved NZ Prime Minister Bill Jong Unglish. “Our elite military force, The Bouncers, have the ability to throw a jandal a long way into the Tasman Sea and we won’t hesitate to use it.”
“We are already equipping out armed forces with the right shoes so that The Bouncers will have no excuse not to let them into the country should we choose to invade,” said Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull. “We also have a plan to get around their missile defence system by bowling our missiles in underarm.”
The conflict heightened after long time sleeper agents Barnaby Joyce and Scott Ludlam, who had been posing as a typical Australian suburban married couple, were uncovered after the ASIO agent living next door discovered a number of discarded Crowded House CDs and Shortland Street boxed sets out the front of their house on council clean up day.
“I always thought it was suspicious when I heard loud cheering coming from Barnaby’s office whenever the All Blacks scored a try during a Bledisloe Cup match,” said Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. “I guess that also explains why he got excited on “crate day” and could be heard walking around parliament humming Dave Dobbyn tunes.”
Peter Green
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Categories: PoliticsElliptic Curve Cryptography is used to create a Public Key system that allows two people (or computers) to exchange public data so that both sides know a secret that no one else can find in a reasonable time. The simplest method uses a fixed public key for each person. Once cracked, every message ever sent with that key is open. More advanced key exchange systems have "perfect forward secrecy" which means that even if one message key is cracked, no other message will be.
To discuss crypto exchange systems we always have two sides. Let's name side one Amelia and side two Brad. For an elliptic curve key exchange everyone operates on the same curve with a fixed base point. Call the base point $B$ and we'll assume it has order $p$ which is a very large prime number. That means if we multiply $p B$ we get the "point at infinity".
The simplest key exchange method is for both Amelia and Brad to create their own secrets $k_A$ and $k_B$. They send the public version $P_A=k_A B$ and $P_B=k_B B$ to each other. Then both sides have the same secret $S = k_A P_B = k_B P_A = k_A k_B B$. Note that this is not simple multiplication, it is multiple point addition over the elliptic curve.
The problem is that this secret $S$ is the same for every message. Given enough messages and time, an attack can be mounted to crack one of the keys. This would allow the attacker to crack every message ever sent. To prevent this a couple of methods have been developed to inject a random number for each key exchange. The first method I'll describe was developed by El Gamal, and this is an elliptic curve version of it.
Amelia initiates the communications by creating two random numbers $m$ and $r$. She creates the points $P_m=m B$ and $P_r=r B$. The shared secret key is the $x$ component of $P_m$. She then combines the random number $r$ with Brad's public key and the point $P_m$ using $$P_h = P_m + r P_B$$ Amelia then sends the points $P_r$ and $P_h$ to Brad.
To recover the secret key, Brad first computes $$P_s=k_B P_r$$ He then finds $$P_m=P_h - P_s$$ Once this exchange has finished both sides have the $x$ component of $P_m$ as the secret key for message exchange.
To see how this works, notice that $r P_B=r k_B B = k_B P_r$. When Brad computes $P_s$ he undoes the point hiding because $$P_h - P_s = P_m + r P_B - k_B P_r = P_m + r k_B B - k_B r B= P_m$$ The advantage of this protocol is that the secret key is a random value every time. The only disadvantage is that it does not use Amelia's secret key at all, so there is no verification on Brad's side he is actually talking to Amelia.
If Amelia and Brad exchange their public keys offline they can eliminate "man in the middle" attacks where someone pretends to be a person and substitutes their own key for the real one. A protocol which includes both sides public keys as well as random values was developed by Menezes, Qu and Vanstone and is called the MQV algorithm.
This algorithm uses the order of the base point (call it p) to compute an integer value modulo p. This combines integer math with elliptic curve math. It works because adding points of prime order on an elliptic curve is the same thing as working with integers modulo that prime value.
We start with the same public keys as before$$\begin{array}{c}P_A=k_A B=(x_A, y_A)\\ P_B=k_B B=(x_B, y_B)\end{array}$$ But this time both Amelia and Brad pick random numbers $r_A$ and $r_B$ and compute points $$\begin{array}{c}R_A=r_A B=(u_A, v_A)\\ R_B=r_B B=(u_B, v_B)\end{array}$$ which they exchange with each other. In both cases I've shown the $x$ and $y$ values of each point. The protocol uses these values as integers by computing modulo p. In the elliptic curve math they are not necessarily integers, they can be polynomials over $GF(2^n)$. The translation is trivial, the same bit patterns are used to mean $GF(2^n)$ polynomials when representing points on an elliptic curve or integers when doing multiplication.
Amelia computes $$s_A=r_A+u_A x_A k_A \mod p$$ She then does the elliptic curve sum $$U_A=R_B + u_B x_B P_B$$ Finally she finds the point $$W = s_A U_A$$ and uses the $x$ component of this as the shared secret.
Brad computes a similar set of values with $$s_B=r_B + u_B x_B k_B \mod p$$ and $$U_B=R_A + u_A x_A P_A$$ He then finds the $x$ component of $$W=s_B U_B$$ and gets the same secret as Amelia.
To see why it is the same secret, expand $U_A$ into its base components. $$\begin{array}{c}U_A=R_B+u_B x_B P_B\\=r_B B + u_B x_B k_B B \\= (r_B + u_B x_B k_B)B\end{array}$$ Similarly when we expand $U_B$ into its base components we get $$\begin{array}{c}U_B=R_A + u_A x_A P_A\\ =r_A B + u_A x_A k_A B\\ = (r_A + u_A x_A k_A)B\end{array}$$ From here it is easy to see both sides have the same value since $$ W=s_A U_A = (r_A+u_A x_A k_A)(r_B+u_B x_B k_B)B=s_B U_B$$
Anyone who intercepts the communications can compute $U_A$ or $U_B$. Since they do not know any of the secret values ($r_A$, $r_B$, $k_A$, or $k_B$) they can not compute $s_A$ nor $s_B$. Even if they do find a solution to the elliptic curve log problem for one of the keys, at most they can crack one message. They would have to do the same amount of work to crack any previous (or future) message because the random values change each time.
In an FPGA an engineer may not want to include space for a modular multiply if most of the area is used for doing the polynomial math and elliptic curve multiply functions. The MQV algorithm can be computed using only elliptic curve math which eliminates the need for the modular math routines. Instead of computing $s_A$ Amelia can compute $$\begin{array}{c}W=s_A U_A\\ = (r_A + u_A x_A k_A)U_A \\=r_A U_A + u_A x_A k_A U_A\end{array}$$ Similarly Brad can compute $$\begin{array}{c}W=s_B U_B\\ = (r_B+u_B x_B k_B)U_B\\ =r_B U_B + u_B x_B k_B U_B\end{array}$$ Both sides still have the same secret. If one side is a card with limited gates and the other side is a full workstation then the card side can do the math solely on the curve and the workstation can do the modular multiply first and then do the elliptic curve multiply. The MQV algorithm is nicely flexable as well as secure.
Ideally the random numbers used to create the secret keys are never stored and immediately erased once the secret key is proven exchanged so that academic attacks are impossible. These Elliptic curve key exchange protocols allow both sides to verify they are talking to the correct person, and they can have a different secret key every transmission. This not only improves security, it maintains security for a long time in the future.CLOSE Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen's profitable Dualstar Entertainment Group is being sued by about 40 former and current interns who claim they weren't paid for their work. Wochit
Mary-Kate Olsen, left, and Ashley Olsen attend the 2014 World of Children Awards. (Photo: Andy Kropa, Andy Kropa /Invision/AP)
Forty current and previous interns of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are bringing a class-action suit against the twins' fashion empire.
The class-action suit against the 29-year-olds alleges their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, failed to pay interns for menial tasks. Dualstar Entertainment is the parent company of the Olsen twins' fashion labels, Elizabeth and James and The Row.
The suit argues the interns should have been paid minimum wage because they were doing similar jobs as their paid colleagues, without receiving any academic or vocational credit.
"As an initial matter, Dualstar is an organization that is committed to treating all individuals fairly and in accordance with all applicable laws," Dualstar representative Annett Wolf wrote in a statement to USA TODAY. "The allegations in the complaint filed against Dualstar are groundless, and Dualstar will vigorously defend itself against plaintiff's claims in court, not before the media. Dualstar is confident that once the true facts of this case are revealed, the lawsuit will be dismissed in its entirety."
The case's lead plaintiff, former design intern Shahista Lalani, says she was hospitalized for dehydration as a result of the job.
“It was like 100 degrees outside," she told the New York Daily News. "I’d just be sweating to death. I probably carried like 50 pounds worth of trench coats.”
According to court papers, Lalani says her 50-hour weeks at The Row consisted of “inputting data into spreadsheets, making tech sheets, running personal errands for paid employees, organizing materials, photocopying, sewing, pattern cutting, among other related duties."
She also says she was treated poorly while working under The Row's head technical designer for five months.
“She was very demanding,” Lalani said. “I was doing the work of three interns. I was talking to her all day, all night. Emails at nighttime for the next day, like 10 p.m. at night.”
“The head technical designer was like, ‘Go get my Advil. I need this and this because I’m feeling sick and I have this meeting,’ ” Lalani said.
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, internships at for-profit companies can be unpaid if the internship is "for the benefit of the intern" and "similar to training which would be given in an educational environment."
Unpaid interns have hit back at media and entertainment companies after a landmark case in 2011, when two interns on the set of Black Swan sued Fox Searchlight Pictures in September 2011, alleging they should've been paid for performing administrative duties such as fetching coffee and answering phones. The Federal District Court ruled in favor of the interns.
"Searchlight received the benefits of their unpaid work, which otherwise would have required paid employees," wrote Judge William H. Pauley III in his ruling.
Dualstar is the latest company to see a lawsuit from former interns after the Black Swan case, joining other companies including Hearst, Condé Nast, Warner Music Group, Atlantic Records, Gawker Media and Donna Karen International.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1TmusT6Play 1 Over-Powered on the Power Play
A power play off-tackle to the right. The Raiders get two double-teams at the point of attack and should create a nice hole for DMC to run into. Unfortunately, there will be three defeated blocks (Gurode, Wisniewski, Pashos) and a missed second level block (Brisiel) that makes life difficult for DMC. The initial running lane is clogged up and when DMC bounces it, there are three unblocked Broncos pursuing.
Still 1 :
Double teams on #97 DE Malik Jackson and #56 LB Nate Irving. Brisiel will release his double team to try to get to #52 MLB Wesley Woodyard
Second Still :
The C-Gap is a mess. Malik Jackson has taken Pashos to the outside while #99 Kevin Vickerson is overpowering Wisniewski. Those two force the bounce-out. Also notice the unblocked backside contain defender.
Third Still :
There's a mess in front of him and so DMC tries the bounce-out, but there's an unblocked defender there, as well as linebacker pursuit :
Fourth :
There are now 3 Raiders blocking LB Nate Irving (?!) while two Broncos are left unblocked to attack DMC. Also, Gurode has missed his block on #59 Danny Trevathan so there's a 3rd Bronco coming to help clean things up.
Fifth :
Crunch.
Play 2 : Running Free
Looks like an inside zone to the weakside. At the point of attack there will be one defeated primary block and two missed second level blocks that allows three Broncos to disrupt the play and tackle DMC.
First :
Wisniewski gets overpowered by #99 DT Kevin Vickerson again. Brisiel attempts to get to #56 Nate Irving at the second level. Irving is too quick and he easily avoids Brisiel's block attempt. Not to be outdone, Andre Gurode also misses his block on MLB Wesley Woodyard.
Somehow the Raiders end up with a double team on the least important LB, the WLB #59 Danny Trevathan (?!)
Second :
Vickerson takes away the initial run lane, forcing DMC to cut up early, but there are two Linebackers filling. You can see the Raiders' Guards have released and are trying to block them, but Brisiel and Gurode in space are helpless against the quicker and faster LBs.
Third :
DMC cuts up into the Linebackers.
Fourth :
Irving nearly overruns the play, but because of the trailing 2nd linebacker, they are able to combine on the tackle. Also, Vickerson again powers Wis and pushes him backwards into the play.
Play 3 Pashos is Overpowered
8 in the box against 8 blockers. With a double-team, this means there will be an unblocked defender. This also means that there will be Big-on-Big a couple of places and the Raiders have to win that to get a running lane. There will be one defeated block and a free runner.
Still 1 :
Again, it's #99 DT Kevin Vickerson causing problems. This time he destroys Tony Pashos and shoves him 3 yards deep. This forces DMC to cut back into the unblocked backside defender.
The intended gap the C-gap outside Pashos. That's where Jamize Olawale is trying to lead. This plays should be well away from that unblocked Bronco (#56 Nate Irving), but notice that Vickerson disrupts that.
Second Still :
Vickerson shoves Pashos in between DMC and his lead blocker Olawale. There might be a running lane out in the D-gap, but DMC can't get there. Notice that if DMC were able to follow Olawale to the right side, he would be running away from Irving. But he's cutting back into the pursuit. At the same time, #95 Derek Wolfe is standing up McCants at the point of attack.
Third Still :
Irving makes first contact, but he's not alone. Derek Wolfe sheds McCants and also gets in on the tackle.
Fourth :
Nowhere to go.
Play 4 Communication Breakdown
7 in the box against 7 blockers. The Read Option play should eliminate one defender from blocking assignments and so this should be a favorable matchup. There will be one defeated block and a communication/assignment problem which releases a Bronco to run free.
Still 1 :
The Read defender is #90 LB Shaun Phillips.
#96 Mitch Unrein manhandles Wisniewski.
#94 Terrance Knighton is doubled by Gurode and Barnes. Both Gurode and Barnes will release off Knighton to take on a filling Linebacker. This sets Knighton free to make the play. Because Reece is used on the Option fake and because there is a backside double-team, one of the playside linebackers is unaccounted for.
Second :
There's an initial gap, but two filling linebackers.
Third :
Reece and Pryor are both running the fake to the outside.
Gurode and Barnes have both left Knighton. Gurode tries to take #52 Woodyard and Barnes is eyeing #59 Trevathan. Also Mitch Unrein is collapsing Wis on the play.
Fourth :
Woodyard, Knighton, and Unrein collapse the hole on DMC.
Play 5 Two Quick, Too Quick
There's one Bronco left unblocked, two Broncos beat their men and get into the gaps right away and one other defeats the intended block. That leaves four Broncos running free. DMC has his initial gap taken away immediately and then cuts back into another defender.
Still 1 :
#94 Terrance Knighton and #95 Derek Wolfe will win right away. #94 takes an outside swim move and leaves Andre Gurode waving at air. Wolfe splits Pashos/Mastrud with Mastrud not able to reach him and Pashos giving almost no help. On the outside, #91 Robert Ayers toses Khalif Barnes to the ground.
Second :
DMC doesn't even have the ball yet and there is penetration.
Third :
As DMC gets the handoff, Wolfe has taken away the initial gap. Knighton is running free past Gurode. Barnes is getting thrown to the ground.
Fourth :
DMC cuts back but there are three unblocked defenders directly in front of him (and four total). Notice how Wolfe is able to scrape down the line because #25 CB Chris Harris has the outside contain.
Fifth :
Nowhere to go and two linemen lying on the ground.
Play 6 Marcel Reece Got Blowed Up
This looks like a designed counter lead. it initially looks like an inside zone play and is designed to draw the linebackers into the initial gap, but then DMC follows the lead on a planned cut to the outside. Unfortunately, two thinkgs happen : first #59 Danny Trevathan shoots the gap unnaturally quickly (owing partly to #99 Kevin Vickerson again disrupting things) and #56 Nate Irving destroying Marcel Reece in the backfield. DMC gets caught between the two linebackers.
Notice that there are 10 in the box on this play.
Still 1 :
Kevin Vickerson will attack Brisiel's inside shoulder and take him well to the inside, opening up a huge gap for Trevathan to run into (The more I watch, the more I hate/respect Kevin Vickerson). Trevathan runs free. Irving attack Reece's lead.
Second :
Gigantic hole in front of Trevathan is caused by Vickerson; this gives Trevathan a clear line to run freely at DMC. Irving crashes quickly from the right side.
Third :
Reece engages Irving and DMC cuts to the outside. IF Reece gets the block, DMC has a chance to outrun Trevathan to the outside. But instead...
Fourth :
Reece is shoved backwards a couple of yards, blowing up the whole play. Irving makes first contact and Trevathan cleans it up.
Play 7 Gurode Blocks Air
It's tough enough when you get your assignments right, but in this case, it looks like Gurode gets confused trying to decide who to block. His hesitation ends up with him blocking no one and letting 2 linebackers run free into the backfield. Mitch Unrein pushes Wis into the play and the CB #25 runs free again.
Still 1 :
Brisiel and Wis double on Unrein with Brisiel releasing to try to get #52 Woodyard. But Brisiel can't get to him. This leaves Wis one-on-one with Unrein and Woodyard running free. Gurode releases immediately to the second level.
Second :
Woodyard or Trevathan? Gurode appears to initially want to block Trevathan. Also Reece is used to block the Edge defender #91 Robert Ayers (who is playing contain on Pryor). This means that even Gurode makes a block, there's a free defender.
Third :
Gurode seems confused as both Woodyard and Trevathan run by him. Unrein shoves Wis into the play also. Meanwhile, there are three Raiders blocking Shaun Phillips (?!).
Fourth :
Three Broncos combine to gang-tackle DMC.
Finale
Like most Raiders' fans, I was very frustrated to see my beloved Raiders lose to the Broncos and doubly frustrated that the running game was so ineffective. And while I initially lashed out at DMC, it's far too clear upon review that the offensive line was problematic against Denver. Furthermore, there's a huge talent gap between the offensive line and the Denver defensive line. The line could not deal with one-on-one block on any of the front line defenders.
In particular, Kevin Vickerson was ruining the day; whenever he had one-on-one, he was able to shove that guy around. Wisniewski continues to show that he does not have the power to match up with the bigger, stronger DTs. This has been true for his entire career and is now more painfully evident as the Guard play sags even more.
The combination of size (on the Broncos' DL) and their speed (LBs) showed up and played exactly to the Raiders' weaknesses. The DL were able to overwhelm their counterparts, like when Unrein 2-gaps against Wis. And then the LBs (in particulary, Nate Irving looked outstanding) were able to attack so quickly that the slow footed Brisiel and Gurode had no chance to engage them in space. That's not really their fault, those OGs gave it all they had, but they just can't do it. The Raiders would need someone more like Wis at the OG position to handle those speedy linebackers.
This was a rude awakening, but on reflection is it really that surprising? If I were to tell you that Kevin Vickerson would dominate Tony Pashos, would you really be so shocked? The question in front of Greg Olson and Tony Sparano is how to manage this rag-tag crew until they can start getting players back.. Would a healthy Veldheer, Bergstrom, and Watson have made a difference?
I'm not quite sure what to make of the Denver front seven. They looked absolutely fantastic against the Raiders' offensive line; they were big, strong, quick, fast, explosive, disruptive, breaking open holes, and really working in conjunction. They had big guys gashing lanes for the second level guys to run into and those second level linebackers were reacting extremely quickly to their keys. And unlike the Jaguars, they were attacking their run gaps directly neither over-pursuing nor reacting too slowly. They looked like the proverbial well-oiled machine. And this without their biggest weapon on defense!
I will say this, though. The biggest sign of respect for an opposing player is to give them a big "I hate him (but wish he were on the Raiders)." I gave this to Derrick Thomas, to Neil Smith, to Bill Romonowski, to LDT, to Junior Seau, and Von Miller (among many others). In reviewing the run plays, I give a hearty "I hate him" to Kevin Vickerson and Nate Irving. These guys are hardly household names, but Damn did they ruin the Raiders' day.
What is clear about the Offensive Line is that the lack of depth (for various reasons) combined with the injuries have forced the Raiders into a difficult position with the lineplay. Nix played poorly two weeks ago and Gurode was pretty brutal this past week. Pashos was a pleasant surprise against Indy and Jax but against Denver, he looked like a guy who had been out of footballl for a year.The war on Gaza combines the characteristic drastic brutality towards Palestinians and Arabs that Israel periodically demonstrates with the lack of effectiveness in achieving its stated goals that those who follow and support the resistance have come to expect (especially since the 2006 war in Lebanon).
One can watch the latest Israeli assault on Gaza and become overwhelmed with the enormity of the destruction, the loss of human life (one-third of whom are children), and the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of asymmetric power by an occupying state against one million and seven hundred thousand people (mostly refugees) living under an embargo for several years.
On the other hand, one can watch the latest assault and marvel at the resistance, the power of human will, the high morale of a steadfast population that is determined to return to their usurped lands. More importantly, one can be reassured because the people in Gaza are ahead of their leaders, while their resistance is inflicting real damage on their enemy.
The latest conflict might be an inflection point in the struggle, especially if its achievements are employed wisely in order to achieve politically strategic goals such as the lifting of the embargo, a halt to colonies / “settlements, and so forth.
Despite the skewed balance of raw muscular power in Israel’s favor, how is it that it cannot even win what was (wrongly) projected to be a brief and spectacular skirmish that would boost the political fortunes of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak?
Israeli leaders said that the goals of the war were, one, to protect Israeli civilians from rockets and mortars, and two, to cripple Hamas’ ability to launch attacks.
They have failed on both counts. Israel cannot protect its citizens. Neither in cities, nor in settlements. After initially crowing that the IDF destroyed all rocket-launching capabilities by Hamas, Uzi Rubin, Israeli missile expert admitted that “[T]he Palestinian capabilities, we can assume, have been damaged, but they remain intact as a cycle of fire has been maintained”. Moreover, not only were hundreds of rockets still being launched, but they were targeting cities and “settlements” that had never, since the establishment of the state, been within the reach of Palestinian fighters. As a result, Israeli citizens, as well as their ministers were forced to take shelter from incoming rockets, factories were shuttered in the south, and flights had to be diverted around Ben Gurion airport.
The final cost of this assault is not yet known and depends on the length of the conflict. However, the business information company BDI estimates it at about NIS 1.1 billion a week. The Manufacturer’s Association of Israel estimates damage to the more than 430 businesses in the south at NIS 120 million. Meanwhile, eighty percent of all retail and services are shuttered in the south, costing the economy NIS 90 million and NIS 100 million a day, according to the Federation of Chambers of Commerce. Of course, none of these estimates count the still unknown costs of damage to property.
Moreover, the much vaunted Iron Dome antimissile interception system is only partially effective (and also very expensive). According to Ehud Barak, Iron Dome has launched more than 350 interceptors, costing $20 million so far. Estimates of how much each interceptor missile costs vary between $35,000 and about $100,000 (the latter is according to Yossi Drucker, head of Rafael’s Iron Dome Project).
The system batteries have cost more than two hundred million dollars, much of it supplied by the United States. (In 2010, at President Barack Obama’s request, Congress gave Israel $205 million for Iron Dome – in addition to the three billion dollars in aid that it receives annually. In 2012, the US approved an additional $680 million in more funding over the next three years.) Israel is seeking NIS 750 million more in new batteries – again, some of which will come from the United States.
Add to that the cost of deploying soldiers, estimated at $750,000. In contrast, Palestinian rockets cost between one hundred and one thousand dollars. Therefore, the math is not in favor of muscularity, to say the least. Furthermore, the rate of successful interception is the subject of much debate, with some Israeli sources initially crowing about an eighty percent success rate, and others at twenty percent. Whichever it is, it is not perfect and it malfunctions.
In contrast to what the Israeli war machine could not accomplish, here is what the Palestinian resistance achieved up till now.
First, as mentioned above, the resistance imposed heavy economic and financial costs on Israel. It has succeeded in reaching areas previously thought impervious. In other words, the costs of the occupation have come home to roost. Instead of the Palestinian Authority, and the generous ‘aid’ that it receives, taking care of the policing and taming actions on behalf of the occupation, the fighters of the resistance and the larger society that supports them are acting beyond the rigid confines of the Oslo “peace process” of endless negotiations, quietism, and concessions.
Second, the amount and long range of available rockets, especially the Iranian-developed Fajr-5 rockets, have been an unexpected and unwelcome surprise to the Israelis.
There is speculation that the resistance possesses shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles (smuggled from Libya) which would explain the lack of Apache helicopters over Gaza skies. Combat helicopters would be needed for any close support of foot soldiers should a ground attack be launched.
Third, in the past, whenever Israeli aggression was proceeding well, most of its Western and Arab government supporters would delay any attempts to impose a ceasefire. The opposite is true this time. The Egyptian and Turkish Presidents as well as the Qatari foreign minister are rushing to negotiate a ceasefire that will rescue Israel from its current predicament. Ever since war in 2006 during which Hizbullah rained missiles on Israel and defeated the invading IDF on the ground in South Lebanon, Israel has been desperate to get its deterrence capabilities back.
In fact, if one of the goals behind the latest and largest joint military exercise with the United States, Austere Challenge 2012 was to send a message about the high “state of readiness” to Iran, then they might need a re-do! If the overwhelming Israeli military superiority that is backed by the United States is unable to stop the resistance in the 141 square miles that are Gaza, how are they to overcome Iran? In other words, Israel’s deterrence capability is perceived (by its opponents) to be falling at an accelerated rate.
Fourth, the steadfastness exhibited in Gaza and the persistence in continuing to fight despite the death and destruction, once again confirm that resistance is part and parcel of identity among most Palestinians. Many of Palestinian leaders are anxious to prove how reasonable [sic – subservient] they can be as negotiators [sic – order-takers]. Mahmoud ‘Abbas, president of the Palestinian “Authority”, is anxiously searching for a role, especially after his outrageous comment in which he, speaking on behalf of Palestinians, waived any claim to having a right of return to his ancestral town of Safad. ‘Abbas is paid handsomely for his role: he makes one million dollars a month, has personal Jordanian accounts of more than $500 million, each, of Palestinian tax payer money (according to Inlight Press), in addition to more perks for himself and his family.
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that is Grotius; who, on Matt. 3:6, thus writes; "Mersatione autem non perfusione agi solitum hunc Ritum indicat & Vocis proprietas, & Loca ad eum Ritum delecta, (John 3:23; Acts 8:38) & Allusiones multae Apostolorum quae ad Aspersionem referri non possunt, (Rom. 6:3; Col. 2:12). That this rite used to be performed by plunging, and not by pouring, both the propriety of the word, and the places chosen for this rite show, (John 3:23; Acts 8:38) and the many allusions of the apostles, which cannot be referring to sprinkling, (Rom. 6:3,4; Col. 2:12)." I might have here subjoined some instances of the use of the word in Greek authors, by which it appears to have the sense of dipping and plunging, and not of pouring or sprinkling; but this has been largely done by Dr. Gale and others.(D) Wherefore, upon the whole, let the reader judge which is the most proper and significative rite, used in the administration of the ordinance of baptism; whether immersion, which is the proper and primary sense of the word baptism, and is confirmed to be the rite used, by the places in which baptism was administered; and by several scriptural instances and examples of it, as well as by allusive expressions; and which fitly represents the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ: or, sprinkling, which the word baptism never signifies, and is not confirmed by any of the said ways; nor does it represent any thing for which baptism is administered. Let it be therefore seriously considered, what a daring thing it is to introduce into this ordinance subjects which Christ never appointed, and a mode of administering it, never used by him or his apostles. In matters of worship, God is a jealous God. The case of Nadab and Abihu ought to be remembered by us, who offered strange fire which the Lord commanded not. In things relating to religious worship, as this ordinance of baptism is a part of divine worship, we ought to have a direction from God, either a precept or a precedent: and we ought to keep to the rule, both as to matter and manner, and not dare to innovate in either, lest it should be said to us, Who hath required this at your hands? and become chargeable with will-worship, and with teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.This article refers to our hosted Elasticsearch offering by an older name, Elastic Cloud. Please note that Elastic Cloud is now known as the Elasticsearch Service, which is not the same as the Amazon Elasticsearch Service. Visit our AWS Elasticsearch comparison page to learn more.
In February of 2016, following Elastic{ON} 16, I wrote a post titled Heya, Elastic Stack and X-Pack. Today, after almost a year of substantial effort, including 5 Alphas, 1 Beta, and 1 Release Candidate we are pleased to announce the GA release of the Elastic Stack.
And, importantly, it is available – today – on Elastic Cloud. If you want hosted Elasticsearch and Kibana there is no other place to start with the most recent code. We are committed to making Elastic Cloud the best place to run hosted Elasticsearch. In fact, we even made the Release Candidate available on cloud for testing purposes.
Our team is celebrating today. I hope you join us.
The GA release is available today. Join the Elastic Team for a live virtual event on November 3 to learn more about the release and ask the creators questions (AMA style). Register now!
Before exploring the release in detail, I want to take the opportunity to reflect on what has brought us to this point.
Our Community
During the recent Elastic{ON} Tour, I have begun each session discussing a brief history of the last several years. This session culminates in the announcement that we have reached a combined 75 Million downloads. When I first began the project, I hoped for widespread adoption. But the passion and fervor of our community continues to delight and amaze me.
Pioneer Program
With that in mind, I want to share the results of the Pioneer Program. The program began with a simple premise. Your usage of the Elastic Stack is of the utmost importance in informing our development as well as ensuring we release the highest quality product available. I am pleased to say that the community has filed 146 issues since the first Alpha release in April.
Our community is one of our most valued assets at Elastic. In fact, one of the most discussed changes in this release was the name “Elastic Stack”.
The Elastic Stack
Last year, we brought the Packetbeat team on board, and Beats was born. This open source platform for building lightweight data shippers for log files, infrastructure metrics, network packets, and more, made it easier than ever to send data to Elasticsearch and Logstash. While we love how many of you who have adopted the abbreviation ELK for our stack, with Beats, we just couldn’t figure out how to make the “B” work with the E-L-K combination.
But Elastic Stack is more than just a name. When we began this release cycle we committed to developing, building, testing, and releasing the entirety of the Stack together. This is important, internally, to ensure compatibility. And, for you, it helps speed deployment, decrease version confusion, and make it easier for developers to add capabilities across the entirety of the Elastic Stack.
A Feature Tour
When I began this post, I intended to provide an overview of key features in each product. But, it was hard to know where to begin and where to stop. Each of our team and tech leads have created a post that discusses the features specific to their product. And there is no one better suited to tell the story than them. I am, particularly, excited about a few items but rather than enumerate in detail, I will provide a brief overview and encourage you to read the detail posts for each product.
Ingest Node - Ingest Node is an Elasticsearch node type enabling some data enrichment capabilities like grok, geoip, date, and other basic event manipulation options at index (or re-index) time. Pipelines are constructed with processors, and accessed through the REST API by suffixing a query parameter “?pipeline=x”. The ability to add pre-processing to documents, natively in Elasticsearch, prior to indexing allows for a variety of creative ingest deployments. This doesn’t replace Logstash. This doesn’t remove the need for Beats, this just allows greater flexibility in designing your ingest architecture.
- Ingest Node is an Elasticsearch node type enabling some data enrichment capabilities like grok, geoip, date, and other basic event manipulation options at index (or re-index) time. Pipelines are constructed with processors, and accessed through the REST API by suffixing a query parameter. The ability to add pre-processing to documents, natively in Elasticsearch, prior to indexing allows for a variety of creative ingest deployments. This doesn’t replace Logstash. This doesn’t remove the need for Beats, this just allows greater flexibility in designing your ingest architecture. Elasticsearch Performance - Benchmarks tend to have an agenda…especially competitive benchmarks. With that in mind, we have spent substantial effort comparing 5.0.0 to prior releases. This data is available to you. This data is what we inspect when we want to ensure that we are doing the right things with performance and we are doing so in public to work towards preventing the secrecy, and doubt, that are associated with benchmark numbers. In fact, not only are the results available but we also document our hardware configuration, we have open sourced the tooling (called Rally) and the benchmarks themselves (Rally-Tracks).
- Benchmarks tend to have an agenda…especially competitive benchmarks. With that in mind, we have spent substantial effort comparing 5.0.0 to prior releases. This data is available to you. This data is what we inspect when we want to ensure that we are doing the right things with performance and we are doing so in public to work towards preventing the secrecy, and doubt, that are associated with benchmark numbers. In fact, not only are the results available but we also document our hardware configuration, we have open sourced the tooling (called Rally) and the benchmarks themselves (Rally-Tracks). Metricbeat - Metricbeat replaces Topbeat as the primary tool for collecting metrics in the Elastic stack. Like Topbeat, Metricbeat collects “top” like statistics about host and per process resources (CPU, memory, disk, network). Unlike Topbeat, Metricbeat also collects metrics from systems such as Apache, HAProxy, MongoDB, MySQL, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, or Zookeeper, with more to come in the near future.
- Metricbeat replaces Topbeat as the primary tool for collecting metrics in the Elastic stack. Like Topbeat, Metricbeat collects “top” like statistics about host and per process resources (CPU, memory, disk, network). Unlike Topbeat, Metricbeat also collects metrics from systems such as Apache, HAProxy, MongoDB, MySQL, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Redis, or Zookeeper, with more to come in the near future. Logstash Monitoring APIs - A new monitoring feature provides runtime visibility into the Logstash pipeline and its plugins. This component collects various kinds of operational metrics while Logstash processes your data, and all of this information can be queried using simple APIs.
- A new monitoring feature provides runtime visibility into the Logstash pipeline and its plugins. This component collects various kinds of operational metrics while Logstash processes your data, and all of this information can be queried using simple APIs. Timelion - After being introduced as a {Re}search project, Timelion is now natively available in Kibana core. Timelion provides a query DSL and visualizations that let you explore your data over time.
This is but a sample, I’ve left out BKD trees, scaled_float and half_float, the immense effort put into Elasticsearch Resiliency, the eye-meltingly beautiful redesign of Kibana (we never knew how much we hated borders until we removed them), Kafka output in Beats, and so much more.
This is a massive release. Reading the individual posts is a must to begin to understand the scope of improvement.
X-Pack
At Elastic we loved extensions. So much so that we built them and gave them interesting names. Shield, Marvel, and Watcher all described individual closed source features that didn’t take away for open source capability but were additive for our customers. Unfortunately, as the range of these features grew to include Graph and Reporting, the install process became difficult and, at times, quite confusing.
Say Heya to X-Pack!
One pack that adds security, alerting, monitoring & management, reporting, and graph capabilities to the Elastic Stack. Our engineering process for 5.0 wasn’t limited to the Elastic Stack, but we’ve also extended X-Pack by adding:
Management & Monitoring UIs to Kibana
Security UIs to Kibana for creating both users and roles
Greatly simplified the installation process
X-Pack is available to trial and has both commercial and free (Basic) license options. We are particularly excited to make some X-Pack features available for free and details are available on our Subscriptions page.
In Closing
I am in awe of the effort that went into this release, the involvement from our community and customers, and the groundwork that this sets for future releases. As always, the best way to understand a release is to experience it.Henry S Rosen has been a Dallas resident for nearly 40 years
My wife Alice and I are not having our after-the-holidays party this year. It’s a 20+ year tradition; a welcome respite for our friends following Christmas and Hanukah. Guests always say how much they appreciate a party after the holidays and having a chance to finally relax.
This year, however, I told my Alice that Trump voters were not welcome in my home. Living in Dallas, Texas, and given the conservative bent of our friends, that meant no party. We couldn’t invite only the few people we knew who conformed to our sense of decency. We weren’t even sure where some of our neighbors stood. So we cancelled the whole affair.
In fact, I went further. I told my tennis group, whom I had known for years, I would no longer be playing with them, since most were Trump supporters. I stated that I could not socialize with people who lacked a moral compass which I consider fundamental to being American.
What has brought about such an extreme reaction in me, to the point of cutting off relationships and ceasing activities that I enjoy? It’s really not that complicated.
Immediately after the election, I was somewhat sanguine – despite the shock of “losing” an election in which my candidate won the popular vote by almost 3 million. My mother reminded me that we had survived Reagan. My sister noted that our grandmother – a proud Suffragette – had once commented: “we survived Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, The Depression and World War II; we can survive anything.”
I thought perhaps that Trump the President, might be chastened by the awesome responsibility he was about to assume – and leave behind the toxicity of his campaign rhetoric. Then, in rapid succession, three things happened that changed my mind.
First, Trump announced that Steve Bannon, of Breitbart infamy, would become a senior White House advisor. To invite such a purveyor of lies, hate and bigotry to work inside the hallowed gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was beyond the pale.
Then, my company’s COO, a Chinese American, told me how his small children were distraught, and in tears that morning. Children in their elementary school had bullied them with comments such as: “your father is going to be killed because he didn’t vote for Trump”, and “you are going to be kicked out of the country”. This in Coppell, Texas, a wealthy suburb. These remarks were directed at third generation American citizens, by small children, obviously channeling their parents.
The next day, another friend relayed the anti-Semitism that was unleashed at Highland Park High School, ranked in the top 1% of all Texas public high schools. His son had become subject to taunts such as: “why don’t you go to Auschwitz?” and “take a shower, Jew boy”. These were teenagers, but we know where those sentiments originated.
These incidents washed over me like a plague. I realized this was not a normal election, with one political philosophy prevailing over another. This was a repudiation of the value system – and Constitution - on which the United States is based. This was a green light to racism and demagoguery which apparently festers even in people of privilege. This was an overt turning of the cheek to freedom of the press, to truth, decency and respect. The bigotry that my friends’ children experienced were not isolated incidents. Intimidation, threats and hatred – directed at minorities, immigrants, etc. - have come fast and furious since November 8th.
Every person who voted for Trump is complicit. Some, like Hillary’s deplorables, are incorrigible. Others, like our comfortable friends, chose their own pocketbooks, or their understandable distaste of Hillary Clinton, over doing what was right.
These people should have known better. Any student of history can compare current times to the rise of fascism in the 1930’s – when an electorate reeling from The Great Depression brought to power Hitler and emboldened Mussolini. The formula was eerily familiar: blame others for your own failures and turn power over to a man who pledges to restore the country to its prior greatness.
Today, restless populations in the US and Europe are traumatized by economic and social changes brought about by globalization. Many blame immigrants, minorities, elites and the media for their plight. This is now a world in which strongman elected officials like Putin, Duterte, La Pen and Hofer are enjoying surges of popularity. They wantonly attack life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – all in the name of economic retribution, law and order, and fighting terrorism.
To this menacing trend, we now add Donald Trump. This is not a joke. This is not tolerable. This is not American. The people who enabled it by voting for this ignorant and dangerous buffoon are not welcome in my home.Art by J McQuade- Futbol Artist Network | www.pjmcquade.com | @LandoMcQuade (Twitter)
There is no easy way to compare players in soccer. The game is too complex, and demands too much context - everything depends upon teammates and tactics, cohesion and chemistry. Not to mention whoever the opposition happens to be on any given day.
Was Maradona better than Pelé? I don't know.
Messi or Ronaldo? I mean, obviously Messi. But still, you can make a strong case for Ronaldo, and I won't call you stupid until you're safely out of earshot.
How about Michael Bradley or Kyle Beckerman? I wrote about them playing together for the US national team earlier this month, but here's one suggestion for those still trying to compare the two to decide who's better.
Just stop.
Understanding Kyle Beckerman
Beckerman has been as overlooked as he's been steady, despite the fact that he came into the collective consciousness of fans of U.S. Soccer and MLS with the 1999 Bradenton class – that first class, the one that helped build Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley and Oguchi Onyewu. Somebody recognized Beckerman's abilities right away, even if it took the hoi polloi about a decade to jump on the bus.
Unlike his more celebrated classmates, Beckerman didn't have any one outstanding, easy-to-see trait. Donovan had his blazing speed and ability to hit the last pass; Beasley his elusiveness and left foot; for Onyewu it was size and athleticism.
Beckerman? Oh, he was just in the right place at the right time a lot. And sure, he didn't give the ball away – but anyone can do that, right? Somebody bigger, stronger, faster and more technical, someone with more panache, will come along and fill that role.
Lots of folks are still waiting, because it's not easy to do what Beckerman does. And now that Jurgen Klinsmann has bought into it, USMNT fans are beginning to understand what RSL fans have known for almost a decade: it's good to have someone steady and mistake-free playing the role of the defensive midfielder.
That is Beckerman's job, first and foremost. Shield the backline, recover the ball, and start the string of possession, or – if a lane is open – the attack.
When the opportunity to hit a telling pass is there, Beckerman can find the right touch. Like he did in last year's MLS Cup:
But that's almost beside the point. Beckerman is best known for making a lot of passes, and making them accurately – the two principles upon which RSL's success is predicated.
The numbers bear this out: His passing accuracy hasn't slid lower than 83 percent for any single season as far back as the Opta data goes. He's been in the top three in the league in passes per 90 minutes during that duration. And he's always at or near the top of MLS in "usage rate" – the percent of his team's passes that he attempts. (Please do click that link and check out Tempo-Free Soccer, a must-read for anybody who's interested in analytics).
That's all true this year as well. Of particular note is that usage rate stat – at 22.1 percent, it's second in the league, 2.4 percent ahead of the guy in third, and 0.1 percent behind the leader (who we'll get to in just a minute).
Taken on their own, any one stat is almost certain to be misleading. Combined, however, those three should give you a pretty good idea of both the type of player Beckerman is, and how he's been used in Utah.
Understanding Michael Bradley
Usage rate means different things to Toronto FC and RSL. The Reds, to put it simply, aren't particularly interested in possession. Bradley called it an "overrated" stat a few weeks back, and while I'd quibble with his wording, I think I agree with his meaning. Possession, in and of itself, isn't a smooth path to points unless it becomes useful possession. And for a team that has many disparate parts and little on-field chemistry (so far), trying to copy the likes of RSL or LA isn't a virtue.
To that effect, Bradley leads the league in usage rate at 22.2 percent, but makes just 45 passes per 90. Beckerman makes 75.
In other words: TFC are much more dangerous making the game frenetic, trying to coax the opposition into sending one too many men forward or attempting one too many daring passes, then hitting on the break. And that's where Bradley comes in.
He covers incredible amounts of ground defensively, and is particularly adept at being the second man into a challenge – the guy whose blind-side pressure forces the turnover, or recovers the loose ball after someone else has forced a turnover. That is Toronto's best weapon, and they've built their scheme around it just as RSL have built theirs around Beckerman's steadiness from deep in central midfield.
If you'd watched Bradley as a teenager for the MetroStars in 2005, a facility for that kind of play would not at all surprise you. He played as a central midfielder who tended toward defensive duties and, it seemed, that would be the path for his career.
Until recently, it more than just "seemed" to be the path of his career - it was the path of his career. Yes, he had a very nice goal-scoring run in the Eredivisie as a box-to-box midfielder who provided third runs into the box, but upon his move to the Bundesliga and then Serie A, Bradley became a metronome. Each team tasked him primarily with circulating the ball, protecting the backline and generally doing the dirty work. He wasn't the focal point, but the force magnifier who could make the offensive fulcrum function more efficiently by always providing an outlet.
It wasn't perfectly analogous to what Beckerman's done with RSL for the better part of a decade, since pretty much nobody in Europe plays a diamond midfield. But it was close.
That has now changed in Toronto, which is one of the reasons that any "compare and contrast" between Bradley and Beckerman is moot. Bradley is the attacking hub of the Reds, the main playmaker and ball-circulator. He's a one-man high press when he needs to be, and drops back to provide a second shield for the central defense when TFC is pinned.
The goal is to get him in position to hit passes like this:
If you'd watched Bradley as a teenager for the MetroStars in 2005, a facility for that kind of play would positively shock you. "Chance creator" wasn't something that a lot of people saw in his future.
But it's something everyone can see in his present. And it means that US fans, at least, can stop thinking about how Bradley and Beckerman compare to one another, and instead about how they might complement one another this summer in Brazil.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Israel will have advanced plans for 12,000 settler homes in 2017, Israeli officials said on Tuesday as they continued to defend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against charges that he had not done enough for Jewish building in the West Bank.
To date, plans for 5,000 settler homes have been advanced and tenders have been issued for 3,000 homes.
Next week, the Higher Planing Council for Judea and Samaria is set to hold its third meeting this year. According to officials, it will advance plans for 3,763 homes, bringing the total to close to 12,000.That’s four times the number of plans that were debated in 2016, the officials said. This includes projects for settlements that have not seen new homes in many years. Among the projects on the list is new housing for the Jewish community in Hebron, permanent homes for the evacuees from the Migron outpost and 300 homes for the Beit El settlement.“Those who claim that this is not a significant improvement mislead the public,” the officials said.They spoke as Netanyahu has been under pressure from settler leaders to do more to approve building projects in West Bank settlements. They have been particularly concerned that Netanyahu is over-dramatizing the actual amount of projects in which new construction can occur.Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, who is a member of the Likud Central Committee and an ardent supporter of US President Donald Trump, has had particularly harsh things to say about Netanyahu's settlement policy.He explained that, in reality, the list involved only 700 new units.Netanyahu has continued to clamp down on settlement building, just as he did during the former Obama Administration, Dagan charged.“Unfortunately, Netanyahu is missing a historic opportunity here,” Dagan said.In particular, he noted the absence of industrial zones and roads from the list. Trump might not like the settlement building, but won’t condemn it as Obama did, Dagan said.Israeli officials said in response: “There is no one who has done more in a wise and determined manner for the settlements than Netanyahu.”The council’s meeting comes as President Trump is working to advance a new peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.Israeli officials said that Netanyahu must pay attention to the diplomatic situation.“Those who think it is possible to ignore diplomatic considerations are also mistaken,” the officials said.The Palestinians condemned Israeli plans to promote more settlement homes.The Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) Executive Committee member Hanan Ashram said, “Clearly, Israel is bent on entrenching the military occupation and its illegal settlement enterprise, further reaffirming its intentions of displacing Palestine and replacing it with 'Greater Israel.'"According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, Ashram spoke against the building on Monday during a meeting with Norwegian Representative Hilde Haraldstad in Ramallah.“Rather than becoming party to Israel's unlawful breach of international law and conventions, the global community should hold Israel accountable for acting outside the law before it destroys the prospects of a viable Palestinian state, peace and stability indefinitely,” she said, according to WAFA.
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by Stephen C. Webster
On Saturday morning in Andover, Massachusetts, as about 120 activists, adademics, constitutional scholars, public officials and legal experts gathered in the Wyndham hotel, the building suddenly went dark.
Electricity had been cut off just prior to the start of a landmark war crimes conference, the goal of which was to plan the prosecution of Bush Administration officials. The first of its kind conference, already featuring a laundry-list of notable speakers, was suddenly in flux … If only for a few moments.
“We were already so effective, the government tried to shut us down,” said conference organizer Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, in an interview with RAW STORY.
“Of course, when I said that at the conference opener, the power had been restored. I was only joking,” said Velvel with a slightly nervous laugh. “A fuse box fried, but the local electric company fixed it before we even began.”
The ‘Bush war crimes conference,’ according to its organizers, is a “throwback to the framers of the constitution,” which aims to establish “necessary organizational structures” to pursue those guilty of war crimes “to the ends of the Earth.”
“The framers didn’t trust the federal government either,” said Velvel. “And oddly enough, over the years and decades, a strong distrust of government was once a Republican position. It was, at least, in theory. And then Bush came along and there’s this, well, my country, love it or leave it in the GOP … But now, you have people on the other side of the spectrum taking that very position.
“This is a conservative idea, to hold conferences and then take action to take power. Liberalism has been made fun of as mere self expression. I was very impressed by the desire in this group to take action.”
“This is not a campaign event,” said Professor Christopher Pyle of Mt. Holyoke College, during his speech to the conference. “It is a conference about how to restore governmental accountability in the wake of a criminal administration. It addresses the most serious crisis in our nation’s history — the claim that the president and his secret agents can get away with torture, kidnapping, and even manslaughter.”
The two day affair was divided in half: Speakers on Saturday, and planning on Sunday.
Chief among the academics, legal experts and whistle-blowers speaking in Andover was Vincent Bugliosi, best known for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and penning the subsequent novel, Helter Skelter. His new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, is currently available at retail.
Watch Bugliosi’s opening statement to a July, 2008 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the limits of executive authority:
Other speakers included:
Phillippe Sands, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College, London. He is the author of “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” (Penguin/Palgrave Macmillan), among other works.
Jordan Paust, Professor of Law at the University of Houston and author of “Beyond The Law.”
Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and U.S. Foreign Service official who holds a State Department Award for Heroism and who taught the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Land Warfare at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, N.C. She is the coauthor of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
Peter Weiss, Vice President of the Center For Constitutional Rights, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints filed in Germany and France against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others.
Benjamin Davis, Associate Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law and former American Legal Counsel for the Secretariat of the International Court of Arbitration.
David Lindorff, journalist and co-author with Barbara Olshansky of “The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office”(St. Martin’s Press).
Colleen Costello of Human Rights USA.
Christopher Pyle, a professor at Mt. Holyoke and author of several books on international matters
“We need to revers[e] a fifty-year trend towards unaccountable secret government, which can commit crimes with impunity,” said Pyle in a release. “‘Sending a clear signal to future Cabinet-level officials that ours is still a government under law, and that they had better obey the criminal law, no matter what their president and his legal lackeys say,’ is a matter of overwhelming importance.”
While video of the conference was broadcast live via UStream.tv, the footage is currently unavailable on the Internet.
Conference organizers told RAW STORY that a series of DVD’s will be offered for sale at cost to interested parties. Online footage of the conference will also be made available Friday, Sept. 19, at a Web site address yet to be announced.
“Later this week we will establish a central committee which will decide which of the many ideas we came up with are practical, and we will begin asking people to undertake particular actions,” said Velvel. “Once those first steps are carried out, as I hope it will be, that will be the first major accomplishment of this conference.”
The plans, which will be released in a media advisory later this week, considered:
What international and domestic crimes were committed, which facts show crimes under which laws, and what punishments are possible.
Which high level Executive officials — and Federal judges and legislators as well, if any — are chargeable with crimes.
Which international tribunals, foreign tribunals and domestic tribunals (if any) can be used and how to begin cases and/or obtain prosecutions before them.
The possibility of establishing a Chief Prosecutor’s Office such as the one at Nuremburg.
An examination of cases already brought and their outcomes.
Creating an umbrella Coordinating Committee with representatives from the increasing number of organizations involved in war crimes cases.
Creating a Center to keep track of and organize compilations of relevant briefs, articles, books, opinions, and facts, etc., on war crimes and prosecutions of war criminals.
Velvel told RAW STORY that several groups have been established to force some universities to hold hearings on whether faculty members should have their jobs terminated for participating in Bush Administration crimes.
“John Yoo, the author of the infamous ‘torture memo’ who now works at Berkeley, comes quickly to mind,” he added.
“The consensus of attendees is President Bush’s attack on Iraq is a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and that he is culpable for this as well as for torture and abuse of war prisoners held by the U.S. military and the CIA,” stated a media advisory.
Other conference cell groups plan to raise up groundswells of support for district attorney candidates who would be willing to investigate or prosecute Bush Administration crimes. Conference attendees also plan to begin seeking disbarment proceedings against lawyers who assisted the administration in war crimes.
Additional measures, details of which were not immediately forthcoming, include utilizing foreign and International courts, and focused actions on state and local levels.
“The idea of using foreign and International courts is not so dissimilar to the time [Donald] Rumsfeld had to flee France to avoid arrest on war crimes charges,” said Velvel. “Of course, that was a foreign court, and he just went into Germany and was fine. We were talking more about going to a true International court.”
The Bush war crimes conference is in the tradition of Justice Robert H. Jackson, who prosecuted war criminals after World War II, writes Sherwood Ross.
“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people,” said Justice Jackson. “It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.”
“Obviously, we want to go beyond self expression,” concluded Velvel.
(Original Article)Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Feb. 24, 2017, 12:04 AM GMT / Updated Feb. 24, 2017, 12:18 AM GMT By Alex Johnson
A federal appeals panel ruled Thursday that Texas officials can resume enforcing a state law that makes it a felony to conceal undocumented immigrants from the government.
The controversial 2015 law had been on hold thanks to an injunction issued by a federal judge last year while a lawsuit filed by two San Antonio landlords and immigration advocates worked its way through the court system. Thursday's ruling lifted the injunction — which state officials had appealed — and dismissed the lawsuit.
Migrants at Sacred Heart Catholic Church's temporary shelter in McAllen, Texas, in 2014. Reuters - file
The three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the landlords, David Cruz and Valentin Reyes, failed to prove that they faced a credible threat of prosecution under the law, which makes it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to "harbor" immigrants with the intention of protecting them from immigration authorities.
Related: Immigrant Harboring Law: Activists Face Off With State of Texas in Federal Court
The suit by Cruz, Reyes and the immigrants' groups argued that the law improperly circumvented federal authority over immigration policy. It said the law is so broad that even renting a home to an undocumented immigrant could be found illegal.
But lawyers for Texas contended that the law doesn't forbid simply "sheltering" undocumented immigrants — it criminalizes intentionally "concealing" them "from detection," they said. Anyway, they argued, the law is really about smuggling, not immigration, and doesn't intrude on federal prerogatives.
The appeals panel agreed with Texas that Cruz and Valentin — who weren't renting to unauthorized immigrants in the first place — faced no threat of prosecution.
"There is no reasonable interpretation by which merely renting housing or providing social services to an illegal alien constitutes 'harboring... that person from detection,'" U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith wrote.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton welcomed the ruling, saying it would "allow the state to fight the smuggling of humans and illegal contraband by transnational gangs and perpetrators of organized crime, not just on the border, but throughout Texas."
Nina Perales, vice president for litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which led the legal team that brought the lawsuit, said there was good news in the ruling for her side, too, because it found that "our clients are not harboring the undocumented immigrants that they serve."
"The Fifth Circuit provided us with a narrow definition of harboring that will prevent Texas law enforcement officers from arresting humanitarian workers and landlords for simply providing shelter and conducting business with undocumented immigrants," she said.A trio of House Democrats expressed confidence on Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will summon the 217 votes needed to get health care legislation through her chamber.
"This speaker has never brought a piece of legislation to the floor and failed to pass it," said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.), during a conference call with new media reporters on Friday. "And she is not about to start now."
Speaking the morning after Thursday's bipartisan health care summit, Andrews and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), vice-chair of the Democratic Caucus, said they still hope that at least one Republican will be persuaded by the forum to support legislation -- though they're not holding their breath.
The more pressing problem facing House Democrats, however, comes from within the party -- where a coalition of conservative and anti-abortion Democrats could derail the bill's passage. But Andrews, Becerra and members of party leadership didn't seem concerned that the whip count wouldn't end up in their favor.
"When we take up the bill, we will have the votes," Rep. George Miller (D-Calif), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, told MSNBC. "I think that will be relatively soon. I don't think that there's any reason to wait any longer to do this."
Exactly what type of legislation House Democrats will try to pass remains an open question. As it stands now, the most obvious path forward is for the House to vote on the Senate's health care bill and then to follow with a package of amendments |
99) than during play with books (mean per minute, 6.96; 95% CI, 6.07-7.97).
Conclusions and Relevance Play with electronic toys is associated with decreased quantity and quality of language input compared with play with books or traditional toys. To promote early language development, play with electronic toys should be discouraged. Traditional toys may be a valuable alternative for parent-infant play time if book reading is not a preferred activity.
“Association of the Type of Toy Used During Play With the Quantity and Quality of Parent-Infant Communication” by Anna V. Sosa, PhD in JAMA Pediatrics. Published online December 23 2015 doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.3753
Feel free to share this neuroscience article.Civil libertarians have long ago lost faith in Barack Obama’s and his continuing expression of support for privacy and individual rights. Just in case anyone is still not convinced, consider the petition this month to the Supreme Court by the Obama Administration. Just last week, Obama waxed poetic about his commitment to privacy. Yesterday however, his Administration took another major swipe at privacy and asked the Supreme Court to reverse the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which held that the police could not conduct warrantless searches of your cellphone when you are arrested. The decision in United States v. Wurie is below.
Since there is a split in the circuits, there is a good chance for a granting of review by the Court. Civil libertarians are shuddering at the prospect of this Court getting their hands on this issue. The Obama Administration is again pitching its case to the most conservative members of the Court like Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Roberts. It is an irony missed by many. While Democrats often discuss the need for a Democratic president to make appointments on the Court, the Obama Administration routinely relies on the right wing of the Court for its efforts to strip privacy rights and civil liberties.
The case from the First Circuit involves the arrest of Brima Wurie on suspicion of buying crack. The police seized his phone and used it to determine his address. They raided the home and found drugs, cash and guns. It is precisely the type of case that the Obama Administration knows will appeal to Alito, Roberts, and Thomas and probably pull in Kennedy.
The First Circuit simply held that the police could have easily gotten a warrant in this circumstance and should have. That is not enough for the Obama Administration. They want to strip cellphones of any and all protection after an arrest. What was truly striking about the case was the clearly frivolous argument presented by the Administration:
The government has... suggested that the search here was “arguably” necessary to prevent the destruction of evidence. Specifically, the government points to the possibility that the calls on Wurie’s call log could have been overwritten or the contents of his phone remotely wiped if the officers had waited to obtain a warrant. The problem with the government’s argument is that it does not seem to be particularly difficult to prevent overwriting of calls or remote wiping of information on a cell phone today. Arresting officers have at least three options.
First, in some instances, they can simply turn the phone off or remove its battery.... Second, they can put
the phone in a Faraday enclosure, a relatively inexpensive device “formed by conducting material that shields the interior from external electromagnetic radiation.”... Third, they may be able “to ‘mirror’ (copy) the entire cell phone contents, to preserve them should the phone be remotely wiped, without looking at the copy unless the original disappears.” Flores-Lopez, 670 F.3d at 809. Indeed, if there is a genuine threat of remote wiping or overwriting, we find it difficult to understand why the police do not routinely use these evidence preservation methods, rather than risking the loss of the evidence during the time it takes them to search through the phone. Perhaps the answer is in the government’s acknowledgment that the possibility of remote wiping guarded elsewhere by a co-conspirator.... Weighed against the significant privacy implications inherent in cell phone data searches, we view such a slight and truly theoretical risk of evidence destruction as insufficient. While the measures described above may be less convenient for arresting officers than conducting a full search of a cell phone’s data incident to arrest, the government has not suggested that they are unworkable, and it bears the burden of justifying its failure to obtain a warrant.
It is absurd to argue that, because it is theoretically possible that the contents of a device could be lost, all such devices should be stripped of all protections. However, it is a signature of the extreme views of this Administration. People can be arrested for a great variety of crimes, including relatively minor offenses. Yet, the Administration insists that a phone is no different from any other object found in a vehicle despite the fact that people now hold a huge amount of data, pictures, and messages on their phones. Today’s phones are little computers and are often used for everything from bills to personal communications. Indeed, the danger in this case is the fact that cellphones have changed since this arrest. This is how we ended up with the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment. In Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), the Supreme Court held that the warrantless search of an automobile could be done without a warrant because of the exigent circumstances and difficulty in securing a warrant. The Court held that there was a lower expectation of privacy for vehicles — a self-fulfilling prophesy when you strip away protections. Later when telephonic warrants allowed for such searches to be done within the confines of a warrant-based search, the Court simply ignored the new technology and the lack of exigency.
The Administration knows that this older phone allows for an easier way to strip away privacy protections from citizens. That is why it is moving now. The war on privacy is now truly one of the most prominent elements of the Obama legacy. More than any modern president, his Administration has led a full frontal attack on privacy and has largely succeeded as Democratic leaders follow sheepishly in his wake.
This is an important case and the potential loss for civil liberties could be immense. It is the right Court and the right technology for the Obama Administration to add to a growing list of unchecked police powers in the United States.
Here is the original opinion
Source: Washington Post
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FacebookMagical Boy Anime: It’s Exactly What it Sounds Like, and It’s Awesome
Patrick Morris Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 3, 2017
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The photo ought to speak for itself here.
Cartoons have a long history of toxic masculinity. Consider some of the earliest shorts to feature Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse. If they weren’t lobbing anvils and firecrackers at one another, they were panting after hyper-sexualized female members of their respective species. Hardly a model to set for their target demographic (children). But the trends neither begin nor end with America’s favorite cat-and-mouse chase. Superman, Bugs Bunny, Popeye the Sailor, even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have all been illustrated engaging in outlandish violence, and are often rewarded with wanton female affection, perpetuating the idea that, as a man, the only way to succeed is to be as typically, extremely masculine as possible: solve your problem with your fists, think later (if at all), and expect women as a reward.
The U.S. isn’t alone on this front. Japanese anime are often just as guilty of preaching a toxic male image. Though, because of cultural differences, the portrayals of masculinity tend to be different, if only slightly.
A prime example is the contemporary classic Samurai Champloo. The series follows the adventures of three characters, a wandering, quick-tempered vagabond named Mugen, a quiet, steely ronin named Jin, and Fuu, the youthful spitfire who brings them all together. Each of the male characters demonstrate the two opposite sides of toxic masculinity and how damaging toxic masculinity is.
Mugen is irrational, quick to anger, and is easily the least intelligent of the three main characters of Champloo (There’s a whole episode devoted to teaching Mugen how to read), while Jin is composed, soft-spoken, and incredibly distant. Both men are, in their own ways, emotionally unavailable. Mugen’s emotional range is limited to rage, hunger and sleep, while Jin is so distant and cold that in a twenty-six episode series he only comes within a few inches of real emotion with one character.
Plus, both characters solve all of their issues, internal and external, by killing them.
Toxic masculinity doesn’t get much more toxic than that, and, as a possessor of a Y-chromosome, it’s jacked up.
Yet, that was the trend for principle characters in animation. Until, in the mid 1990’s, DIC Entertainment started dubbing Japanese animation intended for younger audiences with an English soundtrack. One such series that spread like wildfire was a little ditty called Sailor Moon. Even before her stateside debut, Sailor Moon was a household name in her native Japan. The numerous series’, OVA’s and feature films follow Usagi, a clumsy, lazy, ditzy high school girl, who is granted cosmic powers and asked to lead a group of similarly super-powered high schoolers, the Sailor Scouts, in an unending battle against the forces of evil.
Sailor Moon was unlike anything ever done in animated storytelling. It featured an almost exclusively female cast who defeated their enemies by confronting their own personal and psychological issues, rather than using violence. The strength of the team came from the health and wellbeing of each individual member, as well as the bonds of friendship they shared. Finally, Japanese and (later) American viewers were shown an image of female empowerment that embraced their own femininity, not rejecting it in favor of masculinity. Powerful, complex stuff, the likes of which offered a lot for audiences to consider and (dare I say it) learn from, particularly children.
Sailor Moon also revived Magical Girl anime, a genre that had been treading water since 1979, when Mobile Suit Gundam came onto the scene and made giant robots all the rage.
Those who are more familiar with anime’s various genre and sub-genre will have heard of other, far more obscure Magical Girl anime, such as Tezuka’s Princess Knight, and the more contemporary Madoka Magica. But Sailor Moon represented both a revitalization of the genre in Japan, as well as a global introduction. Indeed, Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts reaffirmed that saving the world wasn’t a job just for men, and not one that could always be handled by a lone powerhouse.
But there is another sub-genre that has it’s roots in Magical Girl: Magical Boy.
As the name suggests, the main tropes and trends from Magical Girl anime are present. There’s a team of young, super-powered individuals who are charged with protecting the world from evil-doers. Except, that team is made up of boys.
There are several early-ish examples of the genre floating around out there (ranging from the early to mid 2000's), but the series that holds most truthfully to the attributes laid down by Magical Girl is a series called Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!
The title leaves little to explain. Five ordinary, though hyper-attractive, high school boys are given superpowers, which naturally come with outlandishly fabulous outfits, and are charged with protecting the world. As is common in Magical Girl anime, the team regularly calls upon the power of their friendship to solve their emotional issues and save the day. Cute High represents a radical shift in how men are portrayed not solely in anime, but in animation as a whole. They are sensitive, passionate, unafraid of failing to adhere to typically masculine stereotypes, and they aren’t always chasing after women. They illustrate the fact that it’s okay to be who you are, rather than strive toward a flawed image that leads towards violence and emotional emptiness.
However, for all of the positive male representations proliferated by Magical Boy, the genre poses a few questions, a central one being whether it’s doing more harm than good.
The most positive aspect of Magical Girl was that it took the focus away from men, empowering female characters in a medium that had been all but monopolized by distilled masculine stereotypes. Isn’t Magical Boy anime undoing everything that made Magical Girl great in the first place? Isn’t it reaffirming that boys get everything?
While critics have a point, female characters deserve to be the stars of their own shows, Magical Boy anime does empower women as well. True, the cast is very much male, but women still play a very strong role in most Magical Boy anime, and, particularly in Cute High, they’re neither sexualized nor offered to the heroes as a form of restitution. They don’t occupy stock roles, or exist solely to benefit the principle characters a la the manic-pixie-dream-girl formula. Female characters in Magical Boy are, typically, there to challenge the male heroes to achieve a greater strength, to overcome the internal issues that may be plaguing them. Men may occupy the leading roles, but it’s only due to the encouragement and (often tough) love given by their female contemporaries.9th Wonder doesn’t see a problem with the new generation of rappers and he took to Twitter to defend Lil Yachty, Lil Uzi Vert and Kodak Black against recent criticism.
Lil Yachty has been the largest target lately as he was the butt of a joke from Pete Rock and also received criticism from the likes of Anderson.Paak after he said he wouldn’t be able to name five songs from Tupac or The Notorious B.I.G.
Kodak Black also received backlash after he named his recent mixtape Lil B.I.G. Pac, comparing himself to the rap greats.
“I ain’t trippin that some kid can’t name Biggie and Pac songs..u gotta check the kids background and upbringing before you judge,” the Jamla leader writes in a series of posts.
9th Wonder says that his experience as a college professor has helped him understand the generation gap that creates the perspective of today’s teenagers.
“Just have the conversation. It’s starts there. U can have that convo with a kid….” he continues.
Check out 9th Wonder’s tweets below.Netflix will debut Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn, a comedy special of former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac, on Tuesday, October 21 in all territories where the streaming service is available. That same day, Wyatt Cenac: Brooklyn will be released as a 1,000 piece limited edition vinyl LP via Cenac’s production company, Amalgamated Bear, and distributed by record stores Other Music.
The special, entitled Brooklyn in part because it was recorded in Brooklyn at Union Hall, a mainstay of the New York comedy scene for the last decade, reflects Wyatt’s observations ranging from the weirdness of adults giving each other hickeys, to watching the neighborhood where his grandmother lived for decades become the backdrop for at least three network sitcoms, a cop drama and probably a reality show about cheesemongers. Cenac directed the special, which features puppets as well as cameos from comedian Eugene Mirman (Bob’s Burgers) and Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Wire). Cenac will also embark on a 12-city U.S. comedy tour, on October 21 in support of the special. He has projects in development with AMC and BBC America and can next be seen in David Cross’ film Hits, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year.In a previous post I discussed the fascinating case of Paul Frampton who, as the website News Observer put it, “instantly was transformed from superstar particle phenomenologist with three Oxford University degrees to international tabloid fodder” when he fell for a honey trap drug smuggling scam. In it, I talked about irrationality in Mensa, the “high IQ society”, and the fact that rational behavior is not, as most of us assume, a direct product of intelligence.
If rationality is not a product of intelligence, then what is it a product of?
To find out, researchers such as Keith Stanovich, Richard West, and others have studied individual differences in rationality. In other words, they have worked to identify what makes people who perform well on a specific set of cognitive tasks different from people who do not. Intelligence is one factor, but it does not explain all of the variability. There are some tasks for which performance is not related to intelligence much at all.
This is surprising to most, because we tend to think of the term “smart” somewhat simplistically. We expect people who are smart in one way to be smart in every way. But that’s not quite how intelligence works (again, please read my first post, which discusses the differences between IQ and rationality, and how each is measured).
So what’s going on?
Well, after many years of study, Stanovich and others have identified a number of factors which explain these differences, but I think the list can be collapsed into four general categories: intelligence, knowledge, need for cognition, and open-mindedness. Or, if you prefer my casual references, we can be irrational because we are stupid, ignorant, lazy, arrogant, or some combination of those.
Intelligence can be thought of as cognitive ability, or the ability to perform a specific set of cognitive tasks. It is an important factor in rational thought, but it is only one factor that matters. Knowledge is necessary to solve many problems and intelligence cannot make up for a lack of information.
But the other items are thinking dispositions. More specific examples of thinking dispositions are long-term thinking (about future consequences), dogmatism, and superstition. Thinking dispositions are rooted in goals, beliefs, belief structure, and attitudes about beliefs—toward forming and changing beliefs. Goals and attitudes involve values, so it should not be surprising that beliefs often do, too.
To be rational, we must know when to override our default thinking, then we must do it. Knowing when to override involves intelligence and knowledge, but the will or motivation to do so is another thing altogether. That requires more than critical thinking, more than problem-solving ability. It requires us to hold our current world view in a kind of escrow while we consider an alternative view in an open-minded fashion. Some thinking dispositions get in the way of that process.
Need for cognition is one of the dispositions that can help or hinder rational thought. Overriding default thinking requires energy, and human beings are natural cognitive misers. What that means is that we will spend as little energy as necessary to meet our goals. People vary in how much they are willing to spend. The more curious and interested one is in spending time and energy in finding the correct answer or best choice to meet one’s goals, the more rational one will be.
For example, consider the following problem:
Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
Your options are:
Yes No Cannot be determined
If you are like most people, you answered “3″. However, the correct answer is 1. This becomes obvious if you approach the question in a way that is not intuitive. Most people notice that they know nothing about Anne, see that they have an option for “cannot be determined” and stop there. However, when we take that third option away, the typical answer is a correct one. People do what they need to do to find an answer: they consider the possibilities.
Anne must be either married or unmarried. If she is married, she is looking at an unmarried person, so the answer is “yes” (the green path). If she is unmarried, then the answer is still “yes” because a married person is looking at her (the red path). In the end, it doesn’t matter what we do and do not know about Anne’s marital status.
How well people perform this task under controlled conditions is related to the need for cognition–how much energy one is willing to expend to find the best answer. This can be an important factor in real life situations such as policy-making. For example, it might seem like a wonderful idea to raise high school graduation standards in order to ensure that all graduates qualify to attend college. However, the long-term consequences of such a policy might include things like grade inflation and lower graduation rates. Thinking things through more thoroughly can reveal some interesting problems with what seems like a great idea on the surface.
Most people are surprised to discover that former president George W. Bush is not stupid. His IQ has been estimated consistently at around 120, which is well above average. However, he has a reputation for making poor, irrational choices. Even many Republicans have alluded to his lack of intellectual curiosity. This deficit of the need to think things through renders intelligence useless and leads to irrational choices and behaviors. To illustrate the gravity of this problem, consider the following experiment.
Participants were asked to allocate 100 livers to 200 children who needed transplants. The children were divided into Group A and Group B, each with 100 children. The participants did what you probably expected: they gave half to each group. But in a follow-up study, the participants were told that the children in Group A had an 80% chance, on average, of surviving the surgery and the children in Group B had a 20% chance. If the goal of liver transplants is to save as many lives as possible, something I think we can all agree is more important than giving hope (in this case, we cannot do both because there are not enough livers), then the choice is clear: allocate the livers to those most likely to survive. This makes giving any livers to children in Group B an irrational choice.
However, only 24% of participants in this study chose to give all of the livers to Group A. More than a quarter of the participants gave half of the livers to Group B.
The difference between these two choices is 30 dead children.
When asked why they chose to give so many of the livers to the children in group B, participants gave answers such as “I would like to give hope to the Group who has the least chance of survival.” One said, “I believe in God. God doesn’t work in numbers.”
Now, you might be tempted to accept those answers and think that emotion and compassion got in the way of better thinking, not “cognitive laziness”. But scientists like truth and truth isn’t always pretty, so another experiment was conducted to test these excuses. In this one, the 200 children were ranked, individually, from the highest probability of survival to the lowest. If the reasons given for allocating to Group B were accurate, we’d expect at least some of the participants to distribute the livers somewhat evenly, as some did in the previous study (the distribution on the left below). However, the participants in this study had no trouble allocating the livers to the top 100 patients when they were not grouped (the distribution on the right below.
The comments about wanting to give hope to the children less likely to survive were justifications for what amounts to lazy thinking. The way the question was framed determined how people responded, not their real preferences, their real goals. Their goals and preferences changed to justify the behavior.
And the result, were this a real-life situation, is the death of children who might otherwise have survived.
To summarize so far, we are sometimes irrational because we are stupid (unintelligent) and we are sometimes irrational because we are ignorant (lack knowledge), but we are often irrational because we are lazy (lack intellectual curiosity) or arrogant. That last category, open-mindedness (including arrogance/overconfidence) I will save for a third post on the subject. In the meantime, there are a couple of take-home messages I would like to end with:
We all believe that we are rational. We all think that our choices and actions are the result of good thought processes. We recognize that human beings are naturally irrational, but we all seem to think that “human beings” means “other people”. Think about what you believe makes you different. You have to get beyond, “I’m smart”, but you also have to get beyond “I use logic and reason”, because we all think that we are using logic and reason, yet few, if any, of us are consistently rational. This information should be used as a mirror as much, if not more, as it is used to understand others.
To paraphrase Keith Stanovich, when we allow our dispositions and intellectual laziness to keep us from deeper thinking, when our decisions are determined, not by what we want, but by how the choices are presented, we relinquish our power to those who frame the questions.
Rather than include a very long list of academic literature, I will instead recommend the following books, as most of the literature referenced in these posts is covered in at least one of them:
Stanovich, K.E. (2010). What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. Yale University Press
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational. Harper
Tavris, C. & Aronson, E. (2007). Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Read the final installment of this three-part series, “Why Smart Doesn’t Guarantee Rational, Part III.”Contribution
Mar. 9, 2015 1:57pm
Dear Planet Fitness,
I went to your website today looking to cancel my membership, but it says I have to do it in writing. I hope this letter will satisfy that requirement.
Now, because you need this written down like it’s a divorce filing, I thought I should tell you why our relationship isn’t working out (pun very intended). You might call it “irreconcilable differences.” Or you might just say I was utterly disgusted and perplexed when I read this story about a woman named Yvette Cormier, who quite reasonably felt intimidated and uncomfortable when she encountered a man in a Planet Fitness women’s locker room. She expressed her concerns to your staff, and then to your corporate office, but she was informed that because the man “identifies as a woman,” he is free to use the bathrooms and changing facilities of actual women.
And as if so profoundly violating the privacy of your female customers wasn’t enough, you then proceeded to ban Ms. Cormier as punishment for complaining. If that lady has the audacity to feel threatened by a man who waltzes into the locker room while she’s potentially exposed, she isn’t welcome in your place of business, you announced.
I find this policy and the decision idiotic, repulsive, asinine, irresponsible, backward, and insane Share:..
I find this policy and your decision idiotic, repulsive, asinine, irresponsible, backward, and insane. I couldn’t possibly continue giving you my money after something like this, but, in all honesty, I should have broken up with with you long before. You guys are just so cheap, and I’m such a tightwad that the marriage seemed destined to be.
But I was mistaken.
Indeed, I realized during my first workout at your gym that you are the undoubtedly one of the biggest frauds and worst false advertisers in the country. And when I say “false advertiser,” I’m not just referring to the “women” sign on the door to the female locker room.
Your slogan is “no judgment,” yet you are probably the only health club in the nation that centers its entire business model around being judgmental. Rather than sell your product based on its merits (a flimsy foundation, that), your commercials make fun of fitness enthusiasts, painting them with all of the familiar stereotypes. You even have a giant alarm positioned near your paltry collection of dumbbells, designed to blare out anytime someone makes the mistake of grunting or otherwise exhibiting signs of physical exertion, because those sounds might interfere with the normal folks who came to the gym to stand around the ellipticals for 45 minutes gabbing with their friends before heading to Starbucks for a muffin and a venti mocha frappucino.
You have signs on the walls singling out those of us who drink out of gallon jugs or wear sleeveless shirts. You prohibit your customers from doing any exercise that might frighten the sort of people who think “deadlift” means bench pressing corpses. Your mantra is that you don’t want “lunkheads,” and then you define lunkhead as, essentially, anyone (well, any man) who wants to build muscle.
AP
I get it, though. It’s a clever trick. You market yourself towards people who aren’t interested in fitness, charge $10 a month, and then give out free pizza and bagels ; you do everything in your power to repel anyone who might be intent on getting stronger and healthier, while going to great lengths to entice the kinds who come once and never return but keep paying membership fees anyway, and now you have a business built to basically service nobody. You get people to buy a membership, but then discourage them from getting in shape, and the result has made you millions.
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Well done, you shameless con artists.
Anyway, that’s beside the point, but since we’re on the subject of you, I thought it bears mentioning that you were already terrible before this whole “transgender” fiasco. I mean, come on, you’re a gym that serves pizza.
You’re a joke.
And now you’re a danger to women.
If I was cut from a more litigious mold, I might encourage Ms. Cormier to sue you for creating an environment where sexual harassment (and worse) might prosper. You say only men who “sincerely self-identify” as women can use the women’s locker room, but how do you quantify the “sincerity” of that belief? Answer me this: is there anything stopping any man from walking into the women’s room to ogle naked ladies?
You’re already facing a class action lawsuit after someone managed to put recording devices in the room where people take off their clothes and use the tanning beds. Who is to say that one of these cross dressing men can’t do the same in the locker room, now that you’ve granted them unfettered access? And when that happens, I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars you’ll be on the hook for. I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.
You see, when you allow a man to invade the privacy of women as long as he professes to feel like a woman himself, you’ve invited all kinds of intended and unintended consequences. It’s long been considered quite self-evident that human society must make the rather clear distinction between “male” and “female,” once you’ve torn it down, what you’re left with is disarray. In fact, if I were malicious, I might foment the disarray. I might encourage everyone who goes to your gym on a regular basis to start using the facilities of the opposite gender. I might tell them to make a complete mockery of your politically correct policies, until you’re forced to change them. But I won’t, because, well, nobody goes to your gym on a regular basis, and also because that would put the women and children who use your locker rooms in potential danger.
Carlotta Sklodowska, the transgender woman at the heart of the Planet Fitness story. Photo credit: Facebook
I’m actually more concerned about the safety of your customers than proving any kind of ideological point, can you say the same?
Apparently not.
Hey, tell me this, Planet Fitness: what happens if some male cross dresser enters the women’s facility and terrifies a 13-year-old girl? If she comes out in tears crying that a man just sat down beside her and began to take off his clothes, will you kick her out, also? Whose side do you take in that confrontation?
You fools.
I realize your “tolerance” of the “transgendered” might earn you adulation from the liberal fringe. That’s an easy thing to earn, especially because many liberal outlets have dishonestly reported on this (and on everything else), with headlines like “ Woman Complains About Transgender Woman in Her Gym “, as if she had a problem with the man being anywhere in the building, rather than specifically in that one place where women change their clothes and use the bathroom.
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These are the tactics of despicable liars, but the truth, the practical reality, is that you are putting the deranged desires of a tiny minority over the security and privacy of everyone else. You say that 99.9999 percent of your customers should just deal with it when someone of the opposite gender invades their privacy, but that.0001 percent shouldn’t have to just deal with being forced to use the facilities appropriate to their biological sex. How is that fair?
Sorry. Look at me, now I’m playing the game. “Biological sex.” Is there any other kind? Answer: no. There are women and there are men. And then there are a small assortment of mentally disordered people who claim to be what they are not. You wish to cater to their delusions because that’s the trendy thing to do, but as is always the case with progressivism, the implementation is problematic.
It turns out that men who “self-identify as women” are still men, and they will always be men, and in no physical way can their desires alter that biological imperative. You can pretend otherwise when you’re writing your locker room policies, but it still boils down to a man with a penis sauntering into a room where women with vaginas are changing and using the toilet. And, in this moment, when the unflinching stupidity of liberal “gender theory” crosses the boundary into The Real, most rational people recoil in horror.
It’s easy to sit from a distance and say, “Oh, transgender? Sure, that’s a thing. That’s fine.” But when you’re a woman trying to change into your workout clothes, and that penis-bearing creature previously known as “a man” opens up the locker right next to yours, suddenly it’s much more difficult to play along. Suddenly, it’s not so fine anymore. It’s wrong. It’s gross. It’s crazy.
And it’s malicious. These “transgender” people refuse to use their anatomically correct bathrooms because it makes them feel bad, but in order to assuage those feelings, they have to impose themselves on other people who will be made to feel much more uncomfortable than they would have felt had they stayed where they belonged. That decision on their part is inexcusable and selfish. It’s the kind of obnoxious, self-entitled behavior that a place truly dedicated to making people feel “welcomed” and “accepted” would work hard to combat.
Ah, but I don’t blame you, Planet Fitness. You’re just following the cultural cues. You place the comfort and convenience of a delusional few above the safety and privacy of the majority; you tear down the most basic rules of civilized human behavior to accommodate the demands of a protected class of severely confused individuals, and you do it because that’s what our society says you should do. What else could I expect? You’re a gym with a jar of Tootsie Rolls sitting at the front desk, I can’t very well expect leadership and integrity out of you.
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I can’t expect leadership and integrity from gym with a jar of Tootsie Rolls at the front desk, Share:..
Our civilization is becoming unhinged, my dear Planet Fitness. We are swirling around the edges of a black hole, and rapidly our faculties for common sense and rationality are disintegrating into the void. Ten years ago it at least would have been seen as controversial to propose that a man ought to be treated as a woman so long as he claims to “sincerely” feel like one. Now it’s forbidden to even question that proposal. We have slipped so rapidly into madness that sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever hit the bottom, or if there is a bottom at all.
Is it possible that we might just hurtle forever into this eternal chasm, the light of sanity and clarity never to shine upon our faces again? Did will we all die and go to Hell and no one told us?
I fear it, Planet Fitness.
I wake up in cold sweats, hoping that our society is a phantom conjured in my nightmares, that day will break and I’ll venture outside and into a world where things generally make sense.
But that world is long extinct.
I’m stuck here. And so are you. Stranded in this land where male is female, up is down, wrong is right, and a placed called “Planet Fitness” gives out pizza and candy, and worries that their customers might be intimidated by a man using free weights, but not by a man using the women’s toilet.
It’s a terrible thing, but I find solace in knowing that those of us who retain our powers of reason can take steps to restore hope and mental stability in our culture.
Today, one of those steps includes canceling my Planet Fitness membership, and encouraging everyone who reads this to do the same.
It isn’t much, but it’s something. It’s necessary. It’s for the best.
Because, seriously, you guys are just awful.
And I mean that with all my heart.
Sincerely,
Matt Walsh
P.S. To avoid lawsuits if and when your “inclusive” attitude results in a woman or child being hurt or abused, you might want to post this disclaimer on your door:
“Planet Fitness cares more about the feelings of gender confused men than the safety of our patrons. As such, if any woman feels afraid, imperiled, or violated by any man who chooses to enter the women’s bathroom/locker room facilities, we ask that she shut her mouth and learn her place. Her concerns are not valid. Her safety is unimportant when weighed against the urgent need to bend to every whim of the LGBT lobby. Enter at your own risk, and keep your feelings to yourself (unless you’re gay or transgender, in which case we bow before you, O Master).”
That ought to make the situation clear. And they can’t say you didn’t warn them.
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Just a little friendly legal advice. You’re welcome.
P.P.S. My wife wants you to know she’s canceling, too. Can this letter count for both of us, or do you need a separate one from her?
–
TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author.(Image: Hank Morgan/SPL)
Parts of the brain may still be alive after a person’s brain activity is said to have flatlined.
When someone is in a deep coma, their brain activity can go silent. An electroencephalogram measuring this activity may eventually show a flatline, usually taken as a sign of brain death. However, while monitoring a patient who had been placed in a deep coma to prevent seizures following a cardiac arrest |
know are commonly asked and then check out the related searches area at the bottom of Google’s search engine results pages, as it can be a surprisingly great source for inspiration. Tools like Buzzsumo also prove to be useful when searching for trending content related to a specific topic, such as business law. Consider the possibility that a search engine other than Google might start to matter. How is it possible?? Is Google slipping?? Are users finding just as much – or more! – value using Bing, Yahoo, and the like?? Not exactly. It just happens that both Siri and Cortana use Bing, as well as Amazon’s virtual assistant devices, effectively making it the most popular search engine no one realized they were actually using. Regardless, the sense over the last few years that nothing other than Google has been very relevant to 95% of SEO work may be undergoing a massive shift.
12) There Will Be a Revival of Email Marketing
Email marketing might not be the sexiest internet marketing strategy, but it does work and has for a long time. What we love about email marketing is that it gives you the ability to do a lot of great things at once. You can send traffic back to your site, you can stay top-of-mind with past clients and boost referrals, and you can nurture leads and build trust with readers. All in one fell swoop.
Three quick tips on email marketing
Keep it engaging and consistent. Pay attention to your analytics. How often are your emails being opened? How often do people visit your site via an email? How is your subscriber rate, and do you have many recent unsubscribes? Send traffic back to your site. Your email marketing doesn’t have to function in a vacuum, requiring fresh content for every letter. If you want to make the most of your content, repurpose blog and practice area page content, sending people back to useful and interesting posts and pages on your site. This can also help your SEO efforts by getting more traffic to key pieces of content. Build an email list. To get the most out of your email marketing, you need to be intentional with building your email list. This can be especially useful if you’re in a practice area such as business law, where people are considering multiple options and especially particular about evaluating those options. To build your list, you can simply have an opt-in box on your website, asking people to enter their email to receive your newsletter. However, the best option is to create a lead magnet, oftentime in the form of a long-form piece of content (such as an ebook or whitepaper) which is “gated,” that is, requires an email, and sometimes additional information, to access. Just make sure that your gated content is worthy of being gated, and actually is what it’s presented to be. For more information, consider looking at a tool like GetResponse.com for your firm.
(Image from NeilPatel.com)
13) Practice Area Pages Will Look More Like Homepages
As the web has evolved, with technology and development leading to a more robust, interactive style of website, users’ expectations have evolved, as well. Soon-to-be-gone are the days that interior pages – most notably practice area pages for law firms – are pretty much text-only. Homepages have been unique and engaging for some time, but not nearly as much attention has been paid to these less significant pages.
We see 2017 as the year this begins to change for the majority of sites out there.
Three quick tips for making your practice area pages look more like homepages
Include relevant images. In the conversion rate optimization example we used earlier, where we doubled a client’s conversion rate through some simple changes, one of those changes was laying out their primary practice area pages more like their homepage. The first thing we jumped on was including more visual elements that related to their practice areas, making it much easier for a user to navigate, while making the page more visually appealing at the same time. Include trust badges, testimonials, etc. While there’s no be-all-end-all way to include these kinds of elements within practice area pages, including them in some capacity is hard to mess up. Put them in a sidebar, along the primary content of the page, or break up the content with banners that include some great testimonials, case results, or relevant taglines that speak to your audience’s immediate concerns. Leave whitespace. Few things make a page more visually accessible than leaving white space — that is, blank space. It allows users to focus their attention and makes it easier to guide them to your call-to-action. So, when we say to include more elements, we don’t mean stuff your pages. Quite the contrary, you should use these elements to make it easier to focus on what matters the most for converting your leads. For more design tips, check out our post 10 Fundamental Components of Effective Law Firm Web Design.
14) The Significance of Mobile Will Be Taken to a Whole New Level
Since early 2015, when mobile search overtook desktop, it’s been abundantly clear that Google and other search engines aim to treat mobile indexing and presentation seriously.
But 2016 saw Google take a huge step in this direction – creating an entirely new index for mobile sites – that will have direct ramifications on how marketers plan for their digital and internet marketing efforts to prioritize mobile above all.
Three quick tips for taking mobile seriously
Check your mobile speed. Use a tool like Google’s mobile-friendly site tester to see how well your site is performing on mobile. They show you how well it’s performing compared to other sites, including its overall functionality. Mobile-first design. When designing a new website for your firm, you should be concerned from the word go about how the site is going to display on mobile devices. That being said, this doesn’t necessarily mean to oversimplify or trim down the content that displays on your site’s responsive variations. Part of Google’s motivation for creating a new mobile index is because they want to have the ability to analyze and understand the value of mobile sites, regardless of how they may function on desktop. Keep a skeptical eye on AMP. Few things have the immediate attention of the web development community as much as AMP, short for the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project. This newly-developed extension to regular HTML was developed by Google and makes pages crazy fast. While there’s no denying the legitimacy of the speed claims, and lots of publishers are jumping on board, we have some pretty big reservations at this point, insofar as how useful AMP will be for law firms and other SMBs. It works great for giant publishers who don’t need to work very hard for backlinks, but it doesn’t seem very practical for your average local business. Who knows, this could somehow change in 2017 – if, for example, Google made AMP integration a mobile ranking factor – but we see it as something not gaining too much relevance for law firm marketing for the time being.
15) More Firms Will Spruce Up Their Bio Pages
Across the board, when you look at law firm website analytics, bio pages are some of the most visited pages. Users don’t often start there, but they very frequently click on these pages. Of course, this is pretty intuitive. With a services industry like the legal field, people are more concerned about who they’re working with than the overall brand that they represent.
While this has been true for some time, this is another of those “over-the-top” strategies that could really help your firm – and, more importantly, the attorneys who work at your firm – make a connection with users and push you over the competition.
Three quick tips for improving your firm’s bio pages
Humanize your bio. I wish I didn’t have to say it, but I do: Your website’s bio page is not where your resume goes. While there’s nothing wrong with including your education, awards, recognitions, etc. (in fact, we think you should include these things) it’s not the primary reason that the majority of your prospects are visiting these pages on your site. They want to evaluate whether or not you’re someone they want to work with. Sure, a part of that has to do with your credentials, particularly if you have a technical practice area where you’re servicing other professionals, but it shouldn’t be the focus. Instead, be authentic on your bio page, focusing on who you are, why you do what you do, and how you can help clients. Include a video, or at least real pictures. By “real” I mean the non-mugshot variety. Too many attorneys rely on old, grainy, and generally awful photos for their bio pages, and that just doesn’t cut it. Find interesting, engaging photos that show you in real contexts, working in the office, interacting with your community, or even spending time with your family if you’re looking for a personal touch. Of course, you can never go wrong with video (well, not entirely true ), which gives you a greater opportunity to showcase how wickedly charming you are. After all, the majority of communication is nonverbal, which is impossible to work with using only text. Get creative. There are a lot of different things you can do with bio pages. Regardless of which direction you go, or what exactly you choose to include, you should make these pages a primary focus, getting creative with new ways to help clients engage with your content and see the human side of your firm’s attorneys.
Take a look at how we made our own bio page more personal and friendly:
16) Lawyers Will Be Able to Tell You Their Website’s ROI off the Tops of Their Heads
One of the biggest roadblocks we’ve experienced over the years when trying to take an honest account of the ROI we produce for clients has always been the fact that very few law firms take their side of things very seriously. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that it can be a lot of work.
Now you can track, compile, and analyze so much data related to your law firm’s leads and intakes that you’ll really never run out of possibilities for improving, even incrementally, upon your marketing success. Of course, it does require some know-how and work, but, if handled with care and patience, getting serious about your ROI can help ensure that your marketing efforts aren’t wasted on self-sabotage.
Download our supplemental worksheet to help calculate your website’s ROI Click Here to Download
Three quick tips for getting a handle on your ROI
Figure out how clients are finding you. While setting up proper analytics is imperative to understanding your ROI, having checks on the physical end of things – that is, when leads are actually signing on with you as clients – can make things 100% clear. We recommend asking each and every intake how they found you and why they decided to choose you over your competition. Create estimates for lifetime value. Depending on your area of law, a client might be worth more than just a single case, if you can expect more of their business over time. Do the math! At the end of the day, it’s really just about knowing which numbers to gather, how to gather them, and then what to do with them. Check out our post Mission Impossible: How to Calculate Your Website’s ROI for a thorough rundown on calculating your firm’s website’s ROI.
17) More Firms Will Get Real with Brand Development
As mentioned in the introduction, some of these trends have to do with the simple fact that the internet marketing space is becoming crowded for law firms, urging many to ask what more they can do to stay on top. We’ve been getting that question a lot lately.
And while we urge law firms to be cautious when it comes to developing a brand – since it can quickly move away from the practical – we still believe that it’s useful to have a fleshed out brand identity and message, since it typically leads to more targeted and consistent marketing across the board.
Find out how Black Fin can help with your free consultation now.
Three quick tips for developing your firm’s brand
Think it through. Google has said for years that “brands are how you sort out the cesspool” (referring to the enormous number of websites trying to compete online). Thinking about what your brand represents is so important to the future success of your firm. A brand is more than just a logo or a color scheme, it’s the essence of who you are and how you are presented to others. Create a brand book. When it comes to creating marketing messaging, it’s important to document as much as you can. Especially if you have a staff working under you, you want everyone to be on the same page with your marketing efforts. Of course, you don’t need to worry about rivaling Cisco’ s brand book, but if you include some basic stuff, such as your USP, your logo, your firm’s color pallette, and information about your target audience, you’ll be thanking yourself later. Trust us. We made one for Black Fin earlier in 2016, and it’s been a huge help. Think about how people think about your services. Above and beyond what you think separates you from your competitors, it’s important to consider if your prospects would see it this way. Sure, maybe there aren’t any other attorneys out there who juggle chainsaws on the weekend… but that doesn’t make you a better attorney. On the other hand, leaving a career as an insurance adjuster because you wanted to fight for the everyman could be a really interesting point that signals your devotion to your work – and, more importantly, to your clients.
Will 2017 Be Your Year?
We hope that this has brought some clarity to your 2017 marketing plans, and that you will achieve a greater ROI, higher conversion rates, and a more successful marketing campaign altogether. If you’d like some help, don’t hesitate to get in touch (or get in touch with Internet Marketing Geeks if you’re looking into a DIY or in-house option). We’d love to give you the assistance you need to get your internet marketing efforts up to par for a brilliant 2017.
Sincerely, Black Fin’s Law Firm Digital Marketing Experts https://goblackfin.comAs the Leafs prepare to scrap for a playoff spot, the front office has to be simultaneously pleased with the team so far and conscious that the rebuild is entering its crucial second stage.
Rebuilding is a complicated thing, but you can divide it into three rough parts:
Stage One: Tanking and foundational picks
Stage Two: Internal development and secondary additions
Stage Three: Cup contention and complementary pieces
The Leafs are not tanking and they have no realistic hope of drafting in the top five. They have the central parts of their forward group—Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, Nazem Kadri, possibly James van Riemsdyk—and three key pieces on defence—Morgan Rielly, Jake Gardiner, and Nikita Zaitsev. They also have their starting goalie in Frederik Andersen. All of these players are 27 or younger.
The goal, then, is putting these players in a position to keep growing while surrounding them with additional talent, primarily through trades and free agency—while the Leafs are obviously looking to continue drafting well, they’re unlikely to pick anyone who will provide immediate help. Thus, they have some critical moves to make as they try to rise from fringe playoff team to the league’s elite.
In the next eight months, they will have multiple opportunities to make those moves. This is a look at the four timespans where those opportunities will arise.
January 6th to February 28th: The Trade Deadline
Lou Lamoriello and friends did excellent work in this period last year, executing the masterful Dion Phaneuf trade, the Winnik-for-Laich-and-Carrick deal with Washington, and the transactions with San Jose where we picked up a pair of seconds. The Leafs successfully leveraged their cap space for the 2016-17 season in order to get assets from teams more tightly pressed.
The Leafs still have the cap space to make those kind of deals again, though they’re going to be very leery of taking on any deal with term past 2017-18. Teams may also be less desperate to make cap-dumping trades due to the looming expansion draft—teams can use bad contracts to fill an exposure slot, and maybe even lose them to the Vegas franchise. Still, there’s likely dealing to be done here, if the Leafs want to do it.
Transactions in this period
Deadline sales
The Leafs have three players on their NHL roster who are on expiring UFA deals, and they’re probably the three most derided on the team: fourth-line centre Ben Smith and third-pair defenders Matt Hunwick and Roman Polak. Leaf fans will remember Polak was worth (approximately) a second-round pick from San Jose last trade deadline. Maybe a front office that isn’t inclined towards Corsi and wants to shore up its penalty kill would be interested in one of the three.
A more interesting question: would the Leafs want to deal them? I’m not all that attached to this trio, but Mike Babcock clearly is. Considering Ben Smith was on waivers earlier this year and Polak didn’t have the greatest playoff run with the Sharks, it’s possible the return for any of these three would be too low to tempt the Leafs FO into a deal. The Leafs might even seek to upgrade their third pair for a stretch run towards a playoff spot, but the expansion draft makes that difficult (they would be likely to lose whoever they acquired.)
A team might well want a player like Tyler Bozak to shore up its centre depth, but the Leafs are probably too weak at that position to deal him. That leaves a bunch of spare parts like Josh Leivo and Frank Corrado, as well as veteran NHLers-turned-AHLers like Jhonas Enroth, Milan Michalek, Colin Greening, and Brooks Laich. It’s hard to see much of a market for any of these players, and if one exists it’ll be in the Peter Holland range—a conditional late pick.
In short: the Leafs may not want to be sellers, and they probably don’t have much they’re willing to sell.
Cap dumps
As mentioned above, the expansion draft gets in the way of salary dumps of the Brooks Laich variety. Nonetheless, you can point to several capped-out teams whom the Leafs might do business with—Anaheim would love to be rid of Clayton Stoner’s salary I’m sure, and Chicago is paying an awful lot to a defensively solid, but offensively feeble depth C in Marcus Kruger.
In fact, if you squint a little, you can craft some very plausible speculative deals with a lot of teams. In the interest of not being HF Boards, I’ll spare you my elaborate plan where we acquire Kruger and Ville Pokka; the art of this sort of transaction depends on knowing how desperate the opposing GM is. Luckily for us, this has historically been one of Lou’s strong suits, and I would not be surprised to see the Leafs swing a deal of this nature.
April 9th to June 17th: The Expansion Draft
NHL teams will have been maneuvering for the expansion draft during the first period, but once they wrap up their seasons, we can expect a few final transactions. With no more games to play, teams will have nothing else to do but try to minimize their expansion exposure. To take one example, Twitter person you should follow Carolyn Wilke (@Classlicity) has suggested this would be the ideal time for a trade of Marc-Andre Fleury to the Dallas Stars, should Fleury be willing to waive his NMC for it.
What about the Leafs?
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Acquiring exposed players for exempt ones
As currently positioned, the Leafs have more forward protection slots than they need, and if you can envision a team that’s likely to have more forwards than it’s able to protect—for example, Anaheim looks positioned to lose Jakob Silfverberg, and Nashville has too many depth forwards—there might be a deal to be made there. The Leafs also have several expansion-exempt wing prospects, headed by Kasperi Kapanen, who could be appealing to a team caught in this kind of position.
As I’ve written elsewhere, the expansion draft exposes defenders more so than forwards, and here the Leafs have a bit more of a bind—acquiring another expansion-available defender would likely force them to expose Connor Carrick, so it would have to be a definitive upgrade. (Brief reminder—the Leafs are likely to be able to protect three defencemen. Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly are obvious choices, and Nikita Zaitsev is exempt. If the Leafs get another d-man, they’ll probably want to protect the guy they acquired with their final protection slot, which means they can no longer use it to shield Carrick.)
Still, if the Leafs see a player they covet at right defence, that they prefer to Carrick, this could be a great opportunity to do it. You can see my look at different defence options here.
June 22 to June 24: The Entry Draft
There’s a short gap between the end of the expansion draft (June 21) and the entry draft (June 23-24). This has the effect of compressing the window for certain trades (the Frederik Andersen trade, for example, happened four days before the entry draft last year.) If you’re trying to build for the future, the draft is where you do most of your work, and the Leafs will have some interesting decisions to make as they work at what’s going to put this team in a position to win.
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Picks for players
The Leafs have two second-round picks this year and two next year. It may seem crazy for a team to transition so quickly from finishing 30th to dealing out of the second round, and the Leafs had better be—and I’m sure will be—very sure before they make that kind of move. But if the Leafs conclude their contention window is poised to open by the end of the decade, they may well decide it’s time to convert one or more of those second-rounders—as they did in the Andersen deal.
Trade-downs
Modern analytics has suggested draft picks decline rapidly in value throughout the first round and level off at a low value thereafter. The rule of thumb is that trading down is usually beneficial to the team trading down after the 24th overall pick or so.
The Leafs have shown a willingness to trade down in the past, although they may be a little more hesitant to do so again after famously trading down from the 24th overall pick in 2015—the pick was used by Philadelphia to draft impressive rookie RW Travis Konecny, while the Leafs return from the deal is encouraging but still tentative at this point. Still, the Leafs have a strong analytics contingent in this FO, and they may conclude that the best move is to maximize the number of lottery tickets. This is a future-oriented move, rather than a present-oriented one, but it may still be the smart strategy.
June 25th to September 10th: Free Agency
While free agency proper begins on July 1st, it’s preceded by a six-day “interview” period where teams allegedly meet, but do not negotiate contracts. Regardless of this bizarre fiction (to judge by the number of deals signed within minutes of free agency opening on Canada Day), the process starts the day after the entry draft, and the Leafs will probably be involved.
Toronto is poised to have a spectacular amount of cap space this summer, as the deals of Stephane Robidas, Brooks Laich, Milan Michalek, Colin Greening, Hunwick, Polak, and Enroth come off the books. With Joffrey Lupul and Nathan Horton ready to be LTIR’d as needed, the Leafs have will likely have $20M or more in cap space, which means they can bid on anyone they want.
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Big-ticket free agent signings
There’s really one major UFA who seems to check all of the Leafs’ boxes, and it’s St. Louis Blues right defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk. I looked at Shattenkirk in great detail in my article on defence signings; suffice to say I want the Leafs to write him a very nice cheque.
The free agent market thins rapidly after that, with most of the big names being very old (for example, Joe Thornton, who is a Hall of Fame centre, but is also 37.) If you look too far past that, you start getting into the dangerous, mushy middle where you pay a spectacular price for a secondary player; this is the the place where the Isles wound up signing Andrew Ladd. Unless Joe Thornton astonishingly wants a one-year deal to be a middle-six C for us, I think the Leafs should be very leery of most of the name FAs.
Small-ticket free agent signings
...but once you get down the list a little, you start finding value again. There are valuable deals to be had towards the low end of FA. The Leafs could use an upgrade at 4C; will Brian Boyle take a two-year deal? The Leafs’ third pair has been a disappointment; maybe Cody Franson or Dmitry Kulikov is worth a look?
It takes a keen eye to sign well out of this market, and the best deals are often signed after the first week—because the prices aren’t driven up by bidding wars. For example, the Columbus Blue Jackets signed Sam Gagner to an absolutely fantastic $650,000 contract on August 1st. It may seem that these are peripheral moves, and they are. But as noted above, the Leafs have many of their key pieces in place; intelligent moves to build depth in July and August may be among the most significant moves the Leafs make for next season.
Major trades
Did you think I’d have mentioned James van Riemsdyk before now? JVR has been in trade rumours for months, as a valuable, but slightly older, star player. A blockbuster trade centering around JVR could happen conceivably at any time, but as we saw last year, the off-season is an ideal time for big moves. Teams have more cap space, they’re restructuring for the future, and they can conduct the trade negotiations before bidding big in free agency. Further, by this point, the expansion draft will no longer be a concern, and whichever team acquires JVR could extent him as early as July 1st.
The Shanahan front office will have to think very carefully about a JVR trade, because JVR is either the Leafs’ most valuable trade chip or a very useful core piece. The Leafs are not especially stacked at left wing—the depth chart beyond JVR runs through puck-retriever Zach Hyman, defensive winger Leo Komarov, physical basher Matt Martin, and AHL agitator Brendan Leipsic—so the loss of JVR’s top-drawer offence would definitely be felt. At the same time, you have to give talent to get talent in trades, and the Leafs definitely want to improve on defence.
Whatever the Leafs do, they’re in a key development phase for the franchise. If Lou is to add a Cup-winning Leafs team to his already proud legacy, the moves he makes in 2017 will be crucial.CHANDIGARH: Both Punjab and Haryana have asked the Army to be on standby ahead of the CBI court's verdict in a rape case against head of Dera Sacha Sauda, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. This is in addition to central paramilitary forces and state police being deployed in various districts of Punjab and Haryana which have a large presence of dera followers.Some 1.5 lakh dera 'premis', as the followers are known, have left their homes in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan and descended on Panchkula where the CBI court is situated. Not wanting any violence at key installations, Chandigarh police has sealed all entry points of the city till Friday evening.Punjab DGP (law and order) H S Dhillon told TOI, “The Centre allotted 10 BSF companies on Wednesday. We have asked the Army to be on standby. Deputy commissioners in sensitive districts have imposed restrictions on the number of people gathering at one place.“Administrative officials and police personnel in Bathinda (PTI Photo)Punjab DGP Suresh Arora on Wednesday interacted with paramilitary and district police forces in Ferozepur, Muktsar, Sangrur, Patiala and Ludhiana which have a large presence of dera premis. A petition was filed before the Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday to ensure adequate security arrangements, especially in Panchkula and surrounding areas, in view of the pronouncement of court order in a rape case involving Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.The petition, filed by Panchkula resident Ravinder Singh Dhull, seeks directions for monitoring the security arrangements by the high court as despite prohibitory orders under Section 144 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), more than 1.5 lakh people had already entered Panchkula district by Wednesday.The petitioner has also attached the photographs of dera followers squatting on the roads of Panchkula city and several circulars issued by Punjab and Haryana government highlighting the volatile situation.The circulars include the conversion of several places as jail and presence of offensive items inside the dera. The petition was mentioned for hearing before the division bench of Justice AK Mittal, which adjourned it for Thursday. The matter would now heard by a division bench of Justice SS Saron on Thursday. Seeking urgent judicial intervention in the matter of grave public importance, the petitioner submitted that Haryana and Punjab were facing immense and acute security threat due to expected pronouncement in the criminal trial of Gurmeet Singh on August 25.The dera head has been asked to appear in person before special CBI judge Jagdeep Singh at the time of pronouncement of the order. “It has escalated the security concerns at the extreme level and Union home ministry is in direct touch with the home secretaries, DGPs of the states of Haryana and Punjab. The dera head claimed to have more than 60 lakh followers in both states. Earlier also during several controversies of the dera, law and order situation had derailed and large scale property damage cases was reported,“ the petitioner has stated.He further stated that this time the threat was imminent, as a large number of dera followers have started coming and camping in the Nam Charcha Ghar (place for congregation) situated in Sector 23, Panchkula, which was just around 2-3km away from the court complex.If you want to avoid certain A Dance with Dragons spoilers in pre-AFFC scenarios install the following sub-mod: DOWNLOAD
[+] Spoiler Version 0.9.3
===============
- Updated mod for patch 2.3.3
Events, jobs, plots and decisions:
- Added events where young landless characters can go on a foreign tour, with the possiblity of finding a foreign marriage
- Revised culture/religion conversion decisions/events so they are more consistent
- Rhllor battle protection now protects in duels
- Added Winterfell crypt event
- Added Mad Aerys inspired option to stillborn event
- Rulers may now sometimes offer wardship of their children to their friends
- If Blackfyre already exists a Targaryen can find Dark Sister
- Added a cruel hunter event
- Removed the gavelkind faction
- Added an 'Overthrow Monarchy' faction, where the factions aim is to establish a republic
- Added in a misc flavour event, more to be added
- Optimised the wedding events. Characters can now also object to their female relatives sleeping around at weddings
- Regents now take the decision on whether to accept legitimisation requests
- WoL Seduction now counts towards making the eight
- Replaced show friends-rivals decision with a decision to show all the blood feuds in the world
- Families with blood feuds can now reconcile with each other for money
- Blood feuds can now be ended by marriage
- Female characters may now use the reaving decision
- Important landless courtiers will now get married
- Improved vanilla incest rumours events
- Optimised trial by combat events
- Emperor tier characters can now receive rebel leader resolution events after defeating another empire tier character
- Optimised universal on_death event (made a new event for ruler only effects)
- Added a player-only workaround for vanilla problem where designated regent has no effect on death
World of Ice and Fire (WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD):
- Jaehaerys II/Aerys II chapter:
- Added Edgar Sloane, Hand of the King
- Made Denys Darklyn younger
- Updated Aerys' birth date and traits
- Added Aerys' early friendships with Tywin/Steffon
- Tywin is now Hand of the King in King's Landing before he becomes Lord of the West, instead of being Lord of Castamere
- Added Rossart, Aerys' pyromancer
- Added Aerys' children who died in infancy
- The Year of the False Spring Chapter:
- Added Qarlton Chelsted, Symond Staunton and Lucerys Velaryon, Aerys' loyalist councillors
- Rhaegar is now friends with Richard Lonmouth and Myles Mooton
- Updated House Whent, Added Lord Walter Whent who was married to his cousin Shella Whent
- North Chapter:
- Updated House Stark family tree
- Added some extinct northern dynasties to the database
- Renamed non-canon House Garrew to Fisher
- Added the First King of the First Men, and the Dustin's claimed descent from him
- The King of the Barrowlands is now titled 'Barrow King'
- Added the last Marsh King and his daughter who married Rickard Stark
- Added the known Bolton Red Kings
- Added Crowl Lord Commander of the Night's Watch
- Renamed the Blue Hills province to Blackpool
- Renamed Flint Keep to Breakstone Hill
- Added Jaehaerys I/Septon Barth friendship
- Made Dragonknight and Naerys lovers
- A new ambition for the Hykrooni to have a worthy heir
- A special decision for the Hykrooni to take a concubine
- Hyrkooni can only use agantic succession
- Hykrooni can no longer give out the court enuch title
- Bone Mountain religion is no longer feminist and have increased numbers of concubines
- Updated Samyriana/Bayasabhadi history to reflect patriarchal society
- Hykrooni can sacrifice prisoners to their Gods
- Fixed Kayakayanaya succession to match the others
- Added the line of Mooton petty kings
- Added Tytos Lannister's nickname and mistress
- Updated Alequo Goldentongue's nickname to Silvertongue
- The lords of the Dornish Marshes are sworn directly to the Stormlands
Other Character/Database setup (WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD):
- Added leadership traits to many canon characters
- Added in Stark-Lannister blood feud during AFFC
- All historical Lannisters now have blonde hair
- Added in House Forrester and their courtiers, renamed county to Ironrath
- Made Whitehills fit to Telltale name canon
- Swapped Burleys and Whitehills so Whitehills are a Bolton vassal
- Added a historical rivalry between Forresters and Whitehills
- Updated Forrester ruler in AFFC in line with Episode 2 of the Telltale game
- Added in more children for Ludd Whitehill
- Gave Rodrik Forrester his nickname
- Added a special Ironwood Forest building to Ironrath
- Added Alyn Cockshaw/Daemon II Blackfyre friendship
- Added Jaime/Addam Marbrand friendship
- Fixed Young Griff and Rolly's friendship
- Boosted Lomas/Andrew Estermont's opinion of Stannis
- All Blackfyres should now correctly be in the Golden Company's court
- Fixed last Tarbeck marriage
- Added in High Sparrow nickname
- Added William Wells and Cletus yronwood's death and friendships with Quentyn
- Added Orbert Caswells 'Black Centaur' nickname
- Added Lorent Caswell's sisters
Balance:
- Lower Lords can no longer switch sides in a mega war if their capital is occupied
- Daemon can no longer buy slaves in the Rogue Prince bookmark
- The Form Empire decision conditions are now less stringent
- Peasants attacking steward is now far less likely and less dangerous
- Nationalist revolts are now more common but less powerful
- Eunuchs can no longer ask for titles
- Relatives of an exiled character may now get upset with the exiler
- Made it more likely for a certain Stark to become LC during elections...
- Characters must now be adults to be funded by the Iron Bank against defaulters
- Characters who are honourable or like their liege will no longer accept offers to usurp their liege from the Iron Bank
- Starks/Nightswatch are now more likely to call war for dawn if the others stall/make little progress
- Altered vanilla 'Plot Uncovered' spymaster job event so it now makes more sense (far less deadly for spymaster)
- When a character is banished to the night's watch they now pass on claims to their children
- When a character agrees to end a war against another vassal, they now cannot attack them again for 3 years
- Having higher martial is now more beneficial for determining reaving outcomes
- Finger dance event is now less dangerous
- Made Formidable Warrior trait harder to obtain (must be at least age 13 to be trained upto this level)
- Reduced the chance of lunatic dragons
Graphics and portraits:
- Added Sothoryos flags
- Added Summer Islands flags by Midnighty
- Added some Basilisk island flags
- Replaced old Free Cities flags based on WOIAF.
- Baelish gets the Mockingbird coat of arms upon gettin the riverlands in AFFC
- Added misc Sarnor and Trader Town flags
- Added remaining Ifeqevron flagset
- Added Lhazar flagset + Baked Shore & Velos
Map:
- Fixed Howling Bogs port location
- Renamed some Basilisk islands locations to canon names
Misc:
- King/Emperor tier female rulers now get the high level councillor names (e.g. Hand of the Queen, Master of Laws etc)
- Titles that somehow become gavelkind after a war are now corrected
- Qartheen and Ghiscari provinces now have access to camel cavalry
- Dany now uses a duke tier title in ACOK so it is properly destoryed
- Vaes Tolorro has its history cleared of Dany in ACOK
- When a character becomes a liberator any slaves they may own are now properly freed
- Added an event to force the AI to declare an invasion if they successfully call a Great Council
- Randomly generated Lengi characters can now get the tall trait at the start of the game
- Reynes of Castamere feast |
,000 people work for the county. The five-member board oversees the largest local government body in the nation.
Such restrictions have sprouted up more frequently this year, most notably in connection with North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” a measure that required transgender people to use bathrooms that aligned with the gender on their birth certificate. Sports teams and California lawmakers were among those that enacted such travel restrictions to North Carolina and states that were deemed unfriendly toward the LGBTQ rights.
But the county’s travel restriction proposal may not make the same economic dent as those initiated by sports leagues or large corporations, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.
Still, such a statement could send a message, he noted.
“I think it is a somewhat effective measure,” Sonenshein said. “It’s probably more symbolic than having a major impact on these states. It’s an interesting moral statement.”
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the lone Republican on the five-member board, noted last week after the motion was introduced that DACA was part of an executive order signed by President Obama as a stop-gap measure, because Congress hadn’t taken any action on immigration reform.
“What I think is being said today is Congress needs to get to work and do its job,” Barger said. “I think it’s time to get together and pass a comprehensive immigration bill, and especially DACA. Young people who came before the age 16 came in at a young age. This is the only country they know. I always vote my conscience. On the issue of DACA, to me, it is my conscience. I believe we have to do the right thing. I’m hoping our congressional leaders will do what they were voted into office to do.”
Tuesday’s vote will come a day after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, joined by the attorneys general of several other states, filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its decision to end DACA.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas will introduce a motion Tuesday as well, asking Los Angeles County’s legal counsel to file amicus briefs in support of Baccera’s litigation.
Ridley-Thomas said DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, have known no other country except for the United States.
“Ending DACA will result in uncertainty and turmoil, not only for the nation’s 800,000 Dreamers but also for our entire community, of which they are an integral part,” Ridley-Thomas said in a statement Monday. “It’s important that Los Angeles County express support for our Dreamers.”A cyclist in Australia was left in absolute agony after his iPhone 6 exploded in his pocket following a fall.
Gareth Clear took a minor tumble while mountain biking through the Manly Dam reserve near Sydney on Sunday afternoon.
But although the fall wasn’t serious, he says the force of the impact with the ground caused his device’s battery to blow up — causing third degree burns on his thigh, which required a skin graft, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Gareth Clear is a man who likes adrenaline… but on Sunday a routine ride took a turn. #9ACA https://t.co/rQ77gjAStf — A Current Affair (@ACurrentAffair9) August 2, 2016
“I suddenly saw this incredible plume of smoke,” said Clear, who likened the “surging pain” to someone pushing a huge block of ice against his leg. “It was pretty freaking painful,” the 36-year-old management consultant, who moved to nearby Bondi from England six years ago, added.
After burning his fingers while trying to peel the smoldering gadget from his leg, Clear managed to knock it off using his fist.
Fearing chemicals from his iPhone’s lithium-ion battery would seep into his bloodstream, he tried cleaning his wound with water from his sports bottle before pushing his bike back down the trail for more than one mile.
Clear made it to the nearby Manly General Hospital, and from there was transferred to the specialist Royal North Shore Burns Hospital for the skin graft. He’ll continue receiving treatment until at least Friday, when he hopes he’ll be discharged with a care plan.
He posted a graphic photograph of his wound to Twitter, in which he tagged the iPhone’s manufacturer Apple, on Sunday. But he said the response from the California-based tech company had so far been “underwhelming.”
“No one’s asked me how are you? How’s your body? How’s the hole in your leg that’s just exploded, how’s that?” he told 9News. “It was a very technical-driven response, which surprised me. But look, I bear no grudges against Apple.”In W. Mitt Romney’s convention speech he spoke of workers who make $22.50 with benefits only to lose their job and take two jobs at $9 an hour.
His attempt was to describe America’s resolve in the face of the Republican Great Recession.
He was also, quite accurately, describing what his company, Bain Capital, did to American workers. They acquired companies, loaded them with debt, shipped jobs overseas and put them out of business while making billions in profits and leaving others to settle the tab.
Mitt Romney and Bain Capital also directly profited from companies that shipped jobs overseas.
How?
Because Mitt Romney and Bain Capital purchased a factory in China that took on the demand from outsourcing from other US companies.
So they profited by increasing profits from companies they owned by shipping jobs overseas and they profited from other companies shipping jobs overseas by doing the work that used to be done in cities and towns across America.
Recently a video has surfaced of Romney discussing his trip to China to purchase this factory. During the event that was closed to reporters Mitt Romney said the following:
“When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married.
“And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room.
“Three bunk beds on top of each other. You’ve seen, you’ve seen them? (Audience: Oh…yeah, yes) And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in…
So Mitt Romney walked through this factory, with 20,000 young women working many hours for a “pittance”, sleeping in rooms where they were stacked like cords of wood and his conclusion was: gosh, we’ll take it!
Most Americans would be disgusted.
But not Mitt Romney.
The job of the president should not be to abuse workers and to find locking them in under armed guards acceptable.
What happens, for example, if there is a fire?
The fact is that the job of the president is to be the polar opposite of Mitt Romney.
The job of the president is to help create an environment that leads to job creation in the US.
The job of the president is to encourage US companies to keep jobs here and to shine a bright spotlight that exposes human rights abuses.
We do not know what the conditions in the factory were. How their employers treated the young women. What the security was like. What happened if women wanted to leave the factory. What the hours of work were or the pittance they were paid.
But the description offered by Romney is jarring in the golly-gee-wiz description of what sounds like a nightmare existence.
Options for employment in China, especially for women, are not great. But that is not the point of this story.
The point is that someone that holds the world view of the global economy that Romney does is antithetical to the office of the President of the United States.
You can imagine some part of Romney marveling at the spreadsheet like efficiency of stacking workers like cords of wood. Making them work long shifts for little money.
His total dismissal that the women could be mistreated under these conditions is almost as shocking as his unquestioning acceptance of his Chinese counterparts explanation for the guard towers – another piece of evidence that Romney is not ready for primetime when it comes to foreign policy.
About Bill Buck
Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist, President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC, and Managing Director of the online ad firm Influence DSP. He has over twenty years of international and national communications experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.I got yanked from a game recently. It was brutal. The worst part was that it was in my own home.
My son Nolan is five years old, and he loves to play mini sticks with me. He’d play every day if he had it his way. We have a routine. Before we start each game, we have to pick our teams. He has these little magnets with all the NHL logos, and he sticks the matchup on the board.
He always gets to pick first. Usually, he picks the Dallas Stars. He really likes the Stars for some reason. But this time, he picked daddy’s team.
“I’m the Hurricanes!” he says.
I’m like, “O.K., bud. Who’s starting in goal tonight?”
“Hmmm … Cam Ward.”
Daddy gets the start. Nice. The game is first-to-five, and he does a running commentary the whole time like he’s the play-by-play announcer. Video replays are a must.
“Skinner has the puck … shoots … scooooooores!”
He’s up on me 4–1, when all of a sudden I score one to limit the damage and make it 4–2. He calls a timeout!
“Uh-oh,” he says, “The Hurricanes are making a goalie change.”
I’m like, “What?”
“Yeah, we’re making a change. Eddie Lack is going in.”
“But, buddy … you’re winning 4–2. I don’t understand. Why are you pulling Cam Ward?”
“Sorry, coach wants to make a change.”
“But, Daddy was —“
“Lack is in.”
He starts doing stretches like he’s Eddie, warming up after coming off the bench.
Daddy got yanked. With a lead. So what do I do?
Let’s just say daddy made a little comeback to win 5–4. Sorry, Eddie.
For a lot of dads, this kind of moment is almost routine. A lot of kids love to play mini sticks. A lot of kids grow up doing their own play-by-play. But for me, the fact that I can hear my son calling out goals is something I will never take for granted.
*
One of the happiest days of my life was the day my son was born. Thanksgiving 2010. I was on such a high. But I had no idea about the emotional roller coaster that we were about to embark on.
My wife, Cody, called me from the hospital the day after Nolan was born. We were in Boston on a road trip. I could tell right away from the tone of her voice that something wasn’t right. She explained to me that Nolan had failed the newborn screening hearing test at the hospital, but the doctor said that it happens all the time.
“Could be fluid,” he said.
When a newborn fails their initial hearing test, they are automatically set up to have a follow-up appointment.
My wife took Nolan to the pediatric audiologist’s office, and tried to remain positive. They put Nolan through a bunch of tests, and the doctor seemed optimistic. They actually told her after it was over, “Everything looks pretty good. Go on home and we’ll call you if anything comes up.”
But as soon as she got home, their office called. My wife is the only one who can describe what happened next.
Cody
“Hi, Mrs. Ward. Can you please bring Nolan back in. We want to run a few more tests.”
Even at that point, I still thought everything was going to be fine.
When I brought him back, the audiologist stopped in the middle of one of the tests and gave me a look. She said the words I’ll never forget.
“Do you want to call your husband?”
I said, “Um, he’s in the middle of hockey practice.”
“I see. But maybe it’s best if he’s here.”
“He’s … he’s at hockey practice. He can’t just …”
I almost fell apart.
I knew. I knew the second she said that to me.
Cam
Practice is over, I get the phone call.
My wife was saying something that I couldn’t really comprehend. She was telling me that Nolan had failed another screening.
Our son was deaf.
I was numb. Kind of in disbelief. I wasn’t accepting it.
We took Nolan to the UNC Medical Center for some additional tests and they confirmed that he was “profoundly deaf.” He wasn’t hearing anything at all.
I just couldn’t understand how that was possible. The pregnancy had been smooth. The delivery had been perfect. No history of hearing impairment in either of our families. Cody and I both got genetic testing done and it all came back negative. They told us it was a spontaneous genetic mutation.
Even after the diagnosis, I still questioned it. There were times when Nolan would be sleeping in his crib, and I would stand behind him and clap my hands right next to his ear. Nothing. I’d clap as hard as I could, just hoping that I would see some kind of reaction — hoping that he could hear me somewhere deep down. But he would just keep sleeping.
Eventually, after more appointments and tests than I can count, the specialist at UNC told us that we should consider cochlear implants for Nolan.
Cochlear implants? I had never heard the term before. The doctor explained that it’s an electronic medical device that provides sound signals to the brain. It would be implanted in Nolan’s inner ear. On the outside, a “processor” would be attached to the side of his head with a magnet. Think of it like a microphone that picks up all the outside sounds, and then transmits a signal to the electrodes in the cochlea, which stimulate the auditory nerve.
All the terminology kind of made my head spin. Still does.
But we were willing to try any technology that could help our child hear us tell him that we loved him. However hard it might be.
Nolan was 9½ months old when he underwent surgery for his right-side implant. Nothing can prepare you to see your baby boy go through a major surgery. But everything went smoothly, and we brought him home from the hospital the same day.
The question was, where should we set our expectations?
There was so much uncertainty. Keep in mind, Nolan hadn’t heard a sound for the first 9½ months of life. My wife … I can’t say enough about what she has done for Nolan. I’d be away playing hockey and she’d be working with him every single day. She would sit with him and repetitively go over every sound. I never knew there was so much that goes into teaching speech. There’s so much in a baby’s development that you take for granted.
You have to make the fluctuations in your voice so he gets the different pitches and different sounds. Every sound was “ba-ba-ba, boo-boo-boo, bee-bee-bee.” We had to bring everything down to the most basic level to build it back up.
But Nolan kept on working, and then one day, after he had just turned two years old, I got the best text message ever. We were on a road trip (of course), and I was in the hotel when my wife sent me a video of Nolan sitting in his highchair. I could hear her offscreen, extremely excited.
“What did you say, Nolan? What did you say?”
“I wuv you.”
Whoa. Just, whoa.
“Say it again! What did you say, Nolan?”
“I wuv you.”
When I got that video, I was so emotional. As a hockey player, you’re away from your family so much, and unfortunately you sometimes miss out on the big moments like this. To be able to experience that moment, even through the phone in my hotel room, was indescribable. Barely a year prior, Nolan couldn’t hear us tell him that we loved him. Now, he was saying it back.
I could not wait to get home and see it for myself.
Soon enough, he was adding even more words, and I was getting videos like this one all the time.
Still, it took some time to get used to seeing Nolan with his processor on. As a father, I worried for him. Would he get picked on? Would he be able to wear a helmet without his processor falling off? Could he jump in a pool with it on?
The thing is, those were only my own insecurities. Nolan has no idea that he’s different from anyone else, because he’s not. He’s now five years old and excelling at school. He’s reading and speaking at his age level. He’s got a bunch of awesome friends. There are the questions like, “What’s that on your head?” And he simply replies, “That’s my processor. It helps me hear.”
Last season, Nolan and my wife were watching our game on TV, snuggled up on the couch. Out of the blue, Nolan turned and said to her, “I’m going to be just like dad when I grow up.”
She said, “Oh yeah? You’re going to be a goalie?”
“Yeah, I’m going to play goalie for the Hurricanes. But I’m not going to have my processor. Because dad doesn’t have one. So I won’t have one.”
As tough as it is, it’s these moments when you have to remind him – he’s always going to have his processor. My wife did a great job of explaining it.
“Well, you know how Mommy has to wear glasses to see? You have to wear your processor to hear. It’s no big deal. We just need them.”
He paused to take it all in for a second.
Then he’d say, “Oh, O.K.”
And he went back to watching the game.
Our emotions may be churning deep down, but he simply moves on, just like that. In reality, he is much better at moving past his obstacles than I am. I still get mad at times, and think, “Why Nolan?”
It hurts me inside any time I see him struggle.
The day we went to get his first hockey helmet was one filled with anticipation — it was a day that should have been a big, happy moment for us. But that excitement turned into tears when we couldn’t get his processor to fit under his helmet.
In the end, we cut some foam out of the helmet and made it work. Though it pains me to see him upset, I bottle those feelings inside. He believes he can try to do anything, and so do I.
Hockey is his happiness. He loves it.
His favorite thing in the world is going into the locker room with me after a practice or a game. It’s my favorite, too. He talks to the players and thinks he’s so cool. Then he goes into the weight room and does his ninja routine.
“Bud, it’s time to go.”
“But dad, I need to work out.”
Priceless.
During our home games, Nolan will be in the corner by the glass during the warmups. He loves that, because he always gets the fist pump from his hero, Jeff Skinner. (He wears his Skinner jersey to most games. Either that or his Justin Faulk jersey. He sneaks Dad’s jersey into the rotation every so often. But I’m definitely his No. 3.)
For a little while there, Nolan thought that the higher your jersey number, the better you were. Like the team gave out the highest numbers to the best players. If we were playing the Capitals, he’d be like, “Dad, how are you gonna win tonight? Their goalie is a number 70. You’re 30. He’s really good.”
It’s hilarious. I’d come home after a game and Nolan would tell me, “Daddy, you really need to try harder to stop the puck.”
Thanks, bud. Noted.
For the last game of the season this year, Nolan surprised me by making a sign. I looked over to his normal spot in the corner, and I see this big sign that says, GO DAD GO. SAVE THE PUCK ALL THE TIME.
Watching Nolan and seeing his love for the game brings me back to when I was his age. I absolutely loved hanging out with my dad in the locker room, even if it was just a men’s rec hockey league. I thought it was the coolest. Growing up, my dad always said to me, “The more fun you have, the better you do.”
He called it his golden rule.
To be honest, it can be a hard rule to follow sometimes if you get caught up in the stress of your job. But Nolan, at just five years old, is now my biggest role model for my dad’s rule. Kids are resilient. They live life in the moment. They just have fun. Nolan reminds me of that every time I look at him.
Just last month, he gave me another reminder of how strong he is.
With Nolan about to go into kindergarten this fall, we decided it was the right time for him to get a second implant in his left ear.
See, the one thing that can be tough for Nolan is big rooms or crowds of people. Because his processor was only on his right ear, he could hear you, but he couldn’t always tell where the sound was coming from. A second processor would hopefully make it easier for him to locate sounds. But, of course, that meant another surgery.
This time it was different. He wasn’t a baby anymore. At five years old, he had a better understanding about what was about to happen.
He was just about to go in for surgery when, all of a sudden, he panicked. In the spur of the moment, my wife had to go into the O.R. and help restrain him while they put him under anesthesia. I can’t even imagine seeing that.
We thought, Is he going to resent us for this? Is he in pain?
After a few hours, the surgeon came out and told us that everything went great.
When I went in to see Nolan, he woke up, and you know what he did?
He asked for his iPad. He wanted to play his Team Canada Table Hockey game.
Incredible.
He was back to his hockey games, back to his happiness. If that was me, I would have been moaning and complaining for weeks. I’d be milking it as best I could.
When you first get the news that your son is deaf, you worry that he’s not going to be a “normal kid.” But what’s been so amazing about this roller coaster we’ve been on the past five years is that Nolan isn’t just a normal kid. He’s way more than that. He never complains. He doesn’t see himself as different. He’s the bravest guy I know.
When I re-signed with the Carolina Hurricanes last month, Cody and I were so happy. To be honest, the thought of going into free agency and moving to another city was pretty scary. To me, it’s so much more than just signing with a team. Raleigh has become home, and I want to be here, to win here — and right now, Nolan needs to be here.
The doctors at UNC gave me the ability to talk to my son and have him hear me — to tuck him in at night and talk about how his day was. I can’t express how much we owe to those doctors and his speech therapist, and to have them right in our backyard for Nolan is so important. Thankfully, the Hurricanes were confident in my abilities and wanted to bring me back.
So after the deal was official, I was putting Nolan to bed, and I decided to tell him the news. When Eric Staal was traded last season, it was a big deal, because Nolan had become really good friends with Eric’s sons. We had to tell him that they were moving to New York. So Nolan is already a little bit familiar with the business side of hockey.
I sat on his bed and said, “Guess what, bud? Daddy had a talk with the team today, and we got some good news.”
He said, “We’re staying in Carolina?”
“Yeah buddy, we’re staying.”
“Cool.”
Dramatic pause. Then he says…
“But after we’re done playing in Carolina, can we go play for the Stars?”Mike Grant, who wants to spread the Gospel through his “Philly Jesus Ministry” (in which he dresses up like Jesus and walks the streets of Philadelphia), has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise the money he needs.
He’s only asking for $70 million. So I’m sure he’ll have no problem at all.
What will the money be used for?
– expenses for food..travel..etc for our creative group that will be the PhillyJesusMinistry team. –a building/stadium for the PhillyJesusMinistry.. –a helicopter/jet for the PhillyJesusMinistry to transport the ministry from and to future speaking engagements across the WORLD to share my testimony how JESUS saved me from the dark hole of addiction and despair..AND TO SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRiST TO EVERY CREATURE iN EXiSTENCE
In the two weeks since the campaign began, he’s almost up to $100. Which won’t buy him a stadium, but could probably pay for a couple of remedial writing and grammar classes.
Maybe it’s a sign from God to go back to his day job.
That said, I think he’s lowballing it. When Pastor Creflo Dollar asked his congregation for a jet, he said he needed $65 million. When you throw in a stadium and Taco Bell, Grant should have upped his fundraising amount to a few hundred million more.
(Image via YouTube. Thanks to Zack for the link)Huggies Coupons March 2012 – $10 in Huggies coupons
I have found a total of $10 in Huggies coupons for March 2012, these coupons are for Huggies pull-ups, Huggies overnites, Huggies snug and dry, Huggies little snuglers, and the newest Huggies slip-on diapers. If you haven’t tried the new Huggies slip-on diapers yet then I definitely recommend the slip-on coupons.
Huggies Diaper Coupons Links
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$2 Huggies little Snugglers coupon – Get coupon here (discount applied at checkout)
$2 Huggies slip-on diapers coupon – Get coupon here (discount applied at checkout)
These coupons are for Amazon.com, the great thing about getting Huggies coupons on Amazon is that they already have very low price, and offer free shipping on most orders so when you add the $2 coupon on top of those great advantages you can end up saving a lot of money. You can also shop for baby wipes and buy in bulk to save a lot more money
Don’t forget to like diaper coupons on facebookTongue gently in cheek I am predicting the wheels come off the fake rally on October 7. My reasoning is presented below, but of course the exact date is unknown; October 7 is as good a guess as any other, but October seems to be the right month.
Correspondent azvitt first alerted me to the possible significance of 10/7/08 by sending me this link: urbansurvival.com. Regardless of the day, there are plenty of fundamental reasons to expect the wheels to fall off shortly after the quarter closes on Sept. 30, as fund managers will be desperate to manipulate the market upwards so they can avoid reporting huges losses to their stunned customers/clients. But events may have moved even beyond "big money's" ability to foment their usual close-of-the-quarter rally.
Also, the Great Crash of 1929 occurred on a Monday and Tuesday, with Tuesday's climax earning the moniker "Black Tuesday." That is also one reason I have selected Oct. 7 as the Black Tuesday of the Great Crash of 2008--but it could be Monday, October 13, or Sept. 29. Only time will tell.
Please read the HUGE GIANT BIG FAT DISCLAIMER below. This is not investment advice, it is informed guesswork, a dart tossed in the darkness that is the future, etc.
The The Big Picture ran a chart of the October 1929 crash, but I'd asked frequent contributor Harun for a similar chart even earlier. Let's start with that chart:
I've marked the chart up a bit. Please note the following:
1. Depending on how much rosy fantasy you're willing to swallow, there are two possible analogous points in this chart of the DJIA 1929 and the present: the right shoulder which preceded the Crash, or the first bounce off the Crash.
2. A clear head-and-shoulders top was in place on the DJIA before the Crash.
3. Just for discussion, let's assume 10,460 was not the final low of this Bear Market. In that case, then it is unlikely we've just experienced the "blowout low." But even if you think we have, note how the market bounced and then promptly fell to a much lower low.
In other words, whatever analog point you pick, the results are still the same: a huge drop to a catastrophically lower low. Now it could be argued that Sept. 2008 is in no way analogous to Sept. 1929, but there are fewer and fewer "buyers" of that complacent Fantasyland view.
Note that though the DJIA seemed to "recover" nicely in the aftermath of the Crash, the "real economy" entered a devastating Depression which was only ended by the unprecedented fiscal stimulus of World War II, 12 years hence.
Harun made these exceedingly incisive comments when he forwarded the chart:
The market did recover to levels above the that of the 28th but the economic malaise caused by government intervention lasted until WW II. Part of Paulson's grand new scheme of the government purchasing all the bad debt is lauded as having precedence in the 1930 and the S&L debacle. But buying all the bad paper didn't end the depression and the S&L situation was marginally successful because of a secular bull market that enable that property to be sold over time at a profit or break even. So the market recovered in 1929 rather quickly but not because of sound economic fundamental but because that is the way markets work. Short covering and those sensing a bottom fueled the "rally". But in the end we face the same problem as then: no velocity. Nothing worked, not the make work projects or purchasing of bad debt; all the schemes failed to lift us out of the depression. And there is no telling how long it would have lasted had it not been for the outbreak of WW II. The headwinds are different this time. We are not energy dependent nor are we a industrial juggernaut. But without at least re-industrialization, which will have to be done in the face of peak oil, it's back to fraudulent accounting and counterfeiting money (credit expansion) type expansion. I overheard on CNN that all this is about confidence and therefore largely psychological. Funny, I thought insolvency is a state of being, But I guess if you are broke but confident you can still buy a McMansion, have 2 luxury SUV's and eat steak at Ruth Chris every night.
Given all the uncertainties and complete lack of confidence that "everything's fixed now," then it sure looks possible that the Paulson-Bernanke "save the bankers" rally was nothing more than another right shoulder in a downtrend.
Let's consider a 3-year chart of the DJIA 2006-08 for more data:
1. What slaps us upside the head first is the painfully obvious head-and-shoulders formation and the equally obvious overhead resistance now posed by the 200-day moving average.
2. When a major moving average crosses beneath a longer-term moving average, it's called "the cross of death" because it confirms a major downtrend. Here we have the 20-day MA absolutely crashing through the 200-day MA, with the 50-day MA dropping not far behind.
All three of these basic technical factors pose huge headwinds to any sustainable rally. Recall that stock market valuations are supposedly based on future profits. Exactly where will future robust profits flow from in a wrenching consumer and credit recession? What fundamental expansion in spending and profits will drive a Bull Market from here? To even posit such a rally is ludicrous in the extreme and virtually meritless on every fact-based market driver.
3. Eerily, the DJIA finally surpassed its dot-com-era bubble high of 11,722 (posted January 14, 2000) almost exactly two years ago. On top of the cross of death, the 200-day MA and the head-and-shoulders formation, this previous high now poses huge resistance--resistance that the DJIA has failed to breach multiple times:
July 23: 11,623
July 30: 11,583
Aug. 6: 11,656
Aug. 11: 11,782 (broke thru but didn't hold)
Aug. 22: 11,628
Aug. 28: 11,715 (close but no cigar)
Six attempts and every one failed. The current "rally" may well run up and bounce off the 11,722 level one more time.
Once again: exactly what fundamental, sustainable uptrend in future profits would justify a new Bull Market? Hint: Banks being able to borrow from other banks does not mean profits will suddenly leap.
4. When we look at other indicators, we do not see the extremes which usually mark real bottoms. Stochastic readings are far from oversold, and DMI- is well below its recent highs (DMI- is a measure of negative trend, DMI+ a measure of positive trend). The MACD divergence is also at neutral, meaning it is also far from marking a bottom.
The last time the 20-day MA crossed the 200-day MA was October 2001--the beginning of a Bear market which took the DJIA from over 10,000 down to 7,200. The 20-day MA did not cross above the 200-day until late 2003--over two years hence.
And the hangover from the Y2K/dot-com party was child's play compared to the credit crisis/housing bust/global recession we face now.
5. Virtually all sustainable rallies run from a solid double-bottom. The very best Bull case still requires at the very minimum a retest of 10,460, and the sooner the better.
Question: what if Paulson and Bernanke hold a Credit Fix party and nobody comes? What if there is still great reluctance to lend to other institutions come next week? Since Paulson and Bernanke have already pulled the last rabbit out of their magic hats, then what's left to stem the next crisis of faith/credit crunch? Answer: nothing.
Do ya reckon market players are keenly aware of this? If credit begins tightening once again after the champagne euphoria of the "rally" fades into hangover, then what will every responsible player do? SELL SELL SELL, exiting long positions as fast as possible, especially in financials.
Why? Because there is no way now to hedge the long positions with a corresponding short position. Having banned evil shorts, there won't be any "short covering rally" to stem the cascading sells. It's called "unintended consequences of hastily made, ill-planned financial rescues."
Skeptics of a Crash, please review the following charts for the context of what awaits us. Here are five charts without which the present crisis cannot be properly understood/contextualized:
1. total credit as a % of GDP
2. the housing bubble
3. plummeting housing values
4. financial profits as % of GDP
5. U.S. national debt (just toss another trillion on there, wouldya, Hank? Oh, heck, make it two.)
Add these up and what do you get? Asset deflation, credit deleveraging, consumer recession, corporate profits crash and thus stock market crash. There really is no alternative result of the sum.
For more context, here is a summary of Wall Street Crash of 1929 (Wikipedia)
After an amazing five-year run when the world saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) increase in value fivefold, prices peaked at 381.17 on September 3, 1929. The market then fell sharply for a month, losing 17% of its value on the initial leg down. Prices then recovered more than half of the losses over the next week, only to turn back down immediately afterwards. CHS NOTE: Hmm, sound familiar? The decline then accelerated into the so-called "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929. A record number of 12.9 million shares were traded on that day. At 1 p.m. on Friday, October 25, several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor. With the bankers' financial resources behind him, Whitney placed a bid to purchase a large block of shares in U.S. Steel at a price well above the current market. As amazed traders watched, Whitney then placed similar bids on other "blue chip" stocks. This tactic was similar to a tactic that ended the Panic of 1907, and succeeded in halting the slide that day. In this case, however, the respite was only temporary. CHS NOTE: Check the action around Sept. 29, 2008. Over the weekend, the events were covered by the newspapers across the United States. On Monday, October 28, more investors decided to get out of the market, and the slide continued with a record loss in the Dow for the day of 13%. The next day, "Black Tuesday", October 29, 1929, 16.4 million shares were traded, a number that broke the record set five days earlier and that was not exceeded until 1969. William C. Durant joined with members of the Rockefeller family and other financial giants to buy large quantities of stocks in order to demonstrate to |
US2.63 million, and a $US9.87 million deferred compensation pot built up over several years.
Ms Drew, who spent more than 30 years at the bank, is not expected to be the only executive to depart in the wake of a loss that has damaged JP Morgan's reputation for risk management. Achilles Macris, who ran the London division of JP Morgan's chief investment office (CIO), and Javier-Martin-Artajo, a trader who worked in the unit, are also reported to be leaving.
"Despite our recent losses, Ina's vast contributions to the company should not be overshadowed by these events," said Jamie Dimon, the bank's chairman and chief executive.
The pressure on Mr Dimon will be increased on Tuesday at the bank's annual meeting in Tampa, Florida, where shareholders will want to hear a fuller account of what went wrong. The losses, disclosed on Thursday, have already wiped more than $15bn from the bank's market value.Women in their early 40s are getting pregnant more often.
A government report released on Wednesday shows pregnancy rates among women in their early 20s falling nearly 18 percent from 1990 to 2008. But pregnancies among older women rose far more dramatically: rates for women ages 40 to 44 went up nearly 65 percent. There were just 11.4 pregnancies per 1,000 women in that age group in 1990, compared with 18.8 in 2008.
Women in their 20s may be delaying pregnancy, but older women seem to be picking up the slack. Rates for women ages 35 to 39 rose, too, to 78.5 births per 1,000 women in 2008 from 67.5 in 2000, and a similar increase (from 2000 to 2008) can be seen among women 30 to 34.
These numbers come as little surprise to anyone following the question of when (and if) women have children. Young women in career mode are putting off marriage and children to the point where some are having conversations with their parents about freezing their eggs. More educated women are looking for options to protect their fertility as they invest in their professional futures.
But alongside that tale of delayed pregnancy and an attempt to fit parenthood into a life that includes marriage and career is another story: that of women under 30 who aren’t delaying having children, but are delaying marriage, and for whom career is uncertain at best. Pregnancy rates may be lower among women in their 20s, but among those same women, more than half of births occur outside marriage.
The more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to have children later in life, and the more likely she is to be married before she has a child. This small set of demographics doesn’t just reflect changes in the age at which women become pregnant. It’s a tiny snapshot of a growing socioeconomic divide among parents: one that has an impact on our priorities and our politics as well as our culture as a whole. What changes in a country where a growing number of women are becoming mothers as others in their cohort become grandmothers? We’re going to find out.Hello my loves, and thanks for stopping by!I spent this week finishing up theintegration, which was infinitely easier thanks to SrGatonegro's, DrMonops', and UnmeiX'smegapatch.
Without these resources, integrating Hunterborn would've taken significantly more time -- and it already took quite a lot of time to begin with. ;)
I'm tremendously excited for all the new features and gameplay options Hunterborn brings to the table. I've spoken at length about some of these features in previous posts, so today I'd like to focus on an area I feel is particularly improved: Food.
The usefulness of Food is perhaps one of Skyrim's biggest shortcomings. I think Bethesda wanted food to be important -- there's a million food items and a cooking subsystem to boot -- but cooked recipes are barely more useful than simple ingredients, which are pretty useless themselves.
Requiem tries to address this by adding powerful buffs to certain foods, but since there are only a handful of recipes with these buffs, the problem persists. Most ingredients are useless, and only a few are worth grabbing.
I tried to address this problem myself with iNeed, which makes food an important part of staying alive, but even with that addition, Food as a system still lacks a certain panache. It's functional, but not fun.
This is where Hunterborn comes in. HB introduces many new cooking recipes alongside its new foods and animal parts, which I felt was a perfect opportunity to address the Food problem once and for all.
These recipes are fairly useless by default -- they are balanced for vanilla, after all -- but with the help of the mods I listed above, I've overhauled the food systems for the entire game.
Here's a quick list explaining how food will work in Ultimate Skyrim 4.0:
There is now a huge variety of recipes with useful character bonuses, all visible at a cookpot. Most of these recipes are geared towards stamina management, but many of them confer other bonuses as well.
variety of recipes with, all visible at a cookpot. Most of these recipes are geared towards, but many of them confer other bonuses as well. These recipes utilize a wide range of ingredients, including animal meats, herbs, spices, and more. Put simply: if an item might be used for cooking IRL, you can probably use it in a recipe -- and that recipe will probably confer a useful bonus.
, including animal meats, herbs, spices, and more. Put simply: if an item might be used for cooking IRL, you can probably use it in a recipe -- and that recipe will probably confer a useful bonus. iNeed divides its foods into three satiation categories: Light, Medium, and Heavy. To encourage cooking, almost all cooked foods have at least Medium satiation, with many falling into the Heavy category as well. (Exceptions include small baked items like Tarts, etc.)
(Exceptions include small baked items like Tarts, etc.) Most raw foods have Light or Medium satiation, but there are far more raw foods to consume. Can't forget about our lovely beast races, after all.
Here's a quick list explaining compatibility edits between various mod systems:
All SkyTEST creatures now operate using Hunterborn mechanics. You can find all of HB's proprietary items on SkyTEST creatures, including hunting tokens, meats, ingredients, and other animal parts. SkyTEST meats can also be frozen, just like HB/vanilla meats, and I've added many useful recipes for SkyTEST ingredients.
creatures now operate using mechanics. You can find all of HB's proprietary items on SkyTEST creatures, including hunting tokens, meats, ingredients, and other animal parts. SkyTEST meats can also be frozen, just like HB/vanilla meats, and I've added many useful recipes for SkyTEST ingredients. All Hunterborn recipes and foods have been fully integrated with other mods, including iNeed, Frostfall, Campfire, and more.
recipes and foods have been fully integrated with other mods, including and more. Inns will have much greater food variety, since these new foods have been properly distributed among appropriate Leveled Lists.
since these new foods have been properly distributed among appropriate Leveled Lists. Many Hunterborn descriptions/effects/spells/etc. have been re-written to better fit Ultimate Skyrim's writing and copy philosophies. (No one will care about this as much as me, but I spent a lot of time on this, so I wanted to mention it. :D)
have been re-written to better fit Ultimate Skyrim's writing and copy philosophies. (No one will care about this as much as me, but I spent a lot of time on this, so I wanted to mention it. :D) Many other small edits for compatibility, etc.
That about wraps it up for this week, I'd say! Hopefully you guys are as excited about these changes as I am, and I'll see you next week with more progress.
All of my love, as always,
BBWe Americans measure things our own way. Our yardsticks are marked in feet and inches, measures that are unfathomable to foreigners, nearly all of whom have been brought up in a decimals-only environment.
It was supposed to have been different. My generation of schoolkids was told a switch to the metric system was imminent. The popular narrative holds that this 1970s conversion movement failed, and that Americans have never gone metric because we are too obstinate or patriotic or just plain stupid to do so. This tale is wrong.
The United States is metric, or at least more metric than most of us realize. American manufacturers have put out all-metric cars, and the wine and spirits industry abandoned fifths for 75-milliliter bottles. The metric system is, quietly and behind the scenes, now the standard in most industries, with a few notable exceptions like construction. Its use in public life is also on the uptick, as anyone who has run a “5K” can tell you.
Why is it that America hasn’t gone full-on metric? The simple answer is that the overwhelming majority of Americans have never wanted to. The gains have always seemed too little, and the goal too purist.
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The measurement debate actually goes back to our nation’s very beginning. The original metric system was developed in France during its revolution, and was so radically decimal that it divided the day into 10 hours. As our first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson was charged with deciding which set of measures would be best for the country. He had been instrumental in creating the dollar—the first fully decimal measure any nation ever used. Jefferson rejected the metric system, however, because in origin he found it to be too French—which was saying something coming from the nation’s foremost Francophile. His beef was that the meter was conceived as a portion of a survey of France, which could only be measured in French territory. John Quincy Adams, for his part, couldn’t recommend that the United States adopt a measurement system that nearly vanished after the demise of the French Empire.
The meter’s fortunes would soon rebound, however. A new wave of revolutions in the 1830s would see France and Belgium re-adopt the system, while the second half of the 19th century would see it become a truly international system. The reasons for its adoption were various. Italy and Germany were unified out of dozens of statelets, duchies, and principalities, and a neutral system of measurement helped soothe parochial jealousies. Decolonization in Eastern Europe and South America created new nations keen to adopt modernity and standards that would align them with Western Europe. In all these cases, however, conversion was dictated by democratically deficient governments bucking the will of the people. The 1880s imposition of the metric system in Brazil led to a full-scale uprising that lasted months.
The strongest push in the U.S. actually came at the start of the 20th century, Alexander Graham Bell, and other notables testified at congressional hearings on metric conversion. The head of the new Bureau of Standards put forth the metric system as a vital national interest. But charges of elitism and wasting money came from a public that increasingly believed the U.S. should be the leader in global affairs and not just another follower.
Politics and economics have been the real incentives to go metric. The world’s most anti-metric nation—Great Britain—grudgingly began to ditch its Imperial system in the 1970s because it was the only way to gain access to the markets of continental Europe. Most of the rest of the world adopted the measures in order not to fall behind in the global economy.
There is no question that a uniform global system of measurement helps cross-border trade and investment. For this reason, labor unions were among the strongest opponents of 1970s-era metrication, fearing that the switch would make it easier to ship jobs off-shore. (Which it did.)
Is global uniformity a good thing? Not when it comes to cultural issues, and customary measures are certainly a part of our national culture. But to have brains trained in the thirds, quarters, sixths, eighths, and twelfths of our inches and ounces, as well as the relentless decimals of the metric system can only be beneficial, in the same way that learning a second language is better than knowing only one. That ours is a dual-measurement country is part of our great diversity.
Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. John Bemelmans Marciano is the author of Whatever Happened to the Metric System? He wrote this for What It Means to Be American, a partnership of the Smithsonian and Zocalo Public Square.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Council bans parents from play areas
Score one for Britain in its contest with the United States to create the stupidest fear-based society. The Watford Borough Council took the lead by banning parents from supervising their own kids in public playgrounds, "because they have not undergone criminal record checks."
The only adults allowed to monitor the kids are idiocracy-vetted "play rangers." The children's parents must "watch from outside a perimeter fence."
A council notice to parents explains that: "Safeguarding the children and young people who use the site is one of our top priorities. "Due to Ofsted regulations we have a responsibility to ensure that every authorised adult who enters our site is properly vetted and given a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check by Watford Borough Council." Council Mayor Dorothy Thornhill argued they are merely enforcing government policy at the play areas, in Vicarage Road and Leggatts Way. She said: "Sadly, in today's climate, you can't have adults walking around unchecked in a children's playground and the adventure playground is not a meeting place for adults.
Right pillocks at Watford Borough Council ban parents from hanging out with kids at park (Thanks, Fee!)President Donald Trump sent a video message to members of Congress participating in the annual Congressional Baseball Game after a gunman targeted Republicans at practice on Wednesday.
“As you all know tonight’s game has taken on a much deeper level of meaning, beyond anything that we would have thought,” Trump said in the video. “By playing tonight, you are showing the world that we will not be intimidated by threats, acts of violence, or assaults on our democracy.”
Trump hailed the game as a time to celebrate friendships and the national pastime of baseball. All proceeds from the game go to charity.
He paid special tribute to wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was shot by the gunman and remains in the hospital in critical condition.
“I know you all will be playing extra hard tonight for Steve,” he said.
He also recognized the other four people wounded in the attack — two capitol police officers, a congressional staffer, and a lobbyist.
Trump also made a plea for unity in Washington despite a year fraught with disagreement between the two parties.
He concluded with a tribute to the game of baseball.
“I leave you with three great American words that for generations have torn down barriers, built bridges of unity and defied those who have sought to pull us apart,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s play ball!”WASHINGTON – Congressman Jason Smith has been named to the prestigious Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over all taxation, tariffs, and other revenue-raising measures, as well as Social Security, Medicare, and a number of other programs.
Smith was elected in a special election in 2013 upon the resignation of Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson. He was elected to his first full term weeks ago and his appointment to the committee marks one of the quickest rises in history to the committee.
Sources say Sen. Roy Blunt was influential in the appointment.
Former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, who represented the St. Louis area for over 25 years, served on the committee. Gephardt ran for president twice.
Congressman Paul Ryan was announced to be serving as the chairman of the committee this morning. Ryan was the vice presidential nominee under Mitt Romney in 2012.
Smith represent’s the 8th District of Missouri, which encompasses southeast Missouri from Rolla to Sikeston.Abstract
Objective To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic.
Design Literature review.
Setting Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling.
Participants Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs.
Interventions Limited.
Main outcome measures Family and twin studies, magical ability, and specific magical skills.
Results Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable.
Conclusions A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist, controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature. Magical enhancers regulating gene expressionmay be involved, combined with mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2 and MCR1.Baton Rouge Code of Ordinances § 13:95.3 provides,
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to have in his possession a firearm, or other instrumentality customarily used or intended for probable use as a dangerous weapon, in any premises where alcoholic beverages are sold and/or consumed on the premises except the owner or lessee of the premises, or their employees [or law enforcement officials]…. (b) … Any person who enters a place where alcoholic beverages are sold and/or consumed on the premises does, by the mere fact of entering, consent to a search of his person for any firearm or other instrumentality customarily used or intended for probable use as a dangerous weapon while on said premises, by any [law enforcement official], without a warrant. (c) The phrase, “… premises where alcoholic beverages are sold and/or consumed on the premises” shall include all of the licensed premises, including the parking lot.
Monday’s Taylor v. City of Baton Rouge (M.D. La. Aug. 25, 2014) grants plaintiffs a declaratory judgment that “§ 13:95.3 unlawfully infringes upon the right of Plaintiff and other citizens to keep and bear firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment.”
Oddly, the defendants apparently failed to properly answer the complaint, so the court entered default judgment against them. In the process, though, it did have to “review the pleadings to determine whether Taylor has established a viable claim for relief,” and concluded that Taylor was indeed entitled to prevail:Bloomberg via Getty Images The logo of Carrier Transicold, a unit of United Technologies Ltd., is displayed outside the company's production plant in Singapore, on Friday, May 10, 2013.
Over the next two years, 1,400 Carrier air conditioner workers will see their decent paying jobs migrate to Mexico. This highly profitable Indiana facility, represented by the United Steel Workers, will make even more money south of the border where workers earn less in one day than the Indiana employees make in one hour, according the New York Times. (A YouTube video of the heartbreaking plant closing announcement has nearly 4 million views.)
While Hillary Clinton remained silent on this impending catastrophe, Donald Trump turned this facility into the poster child for what’s wrong with U.S. trade policy. He pledged that if the plant moved, he would place a 35 percent tariff on all Carrier products imported from Mexico as well as a similar duty on the Mexican products of its parent company, United Technologies.
Trump boasted he would make the company cry uncle: “I’ll get a call from the head of Carrier and he’ll say, ‘Mr. President, we’ve decided to stay in the United States. That’s what’s going to happen ― 100 percent.”
Carrier became the 100 percent battering ram with which to pound Hillary Clinton and her embrace of NAFTA and other trade deals. In doing so, Trump snatched the plant closing issue away from the Democrats, something the party apparatchiks didn’t recognize until the Trump votes poured in from the Rust Belt.
The Carrier case, however, was not just the usual media meme about Trump backing the less educated, white working class. In fact, the threatened Indianapolis plant is 50 percent African-American. Women make up half the workforce on the assembly lines and the facility also employs dozens of recent Burmese immigrants, well regarded by their co-workers. So making this facility great again actually means coming to the aid of America’s increasingly diverse labor force.
But Trump is stumbling into something far more problematic than trade deals. At the heart of this story is the financial strip-mining of America organized and led by Wall Street.
Why does United Technology want to move to Mexico?
Let’s round up the usual suspects:
They can’t turn a decent profit using unionized American workers? No. Carrier is the most profitable division of United Technologies.
NAFTA caused this proposed move? Not likely. NAFTA is 22 years old, so unless United Technologies is the corporate Rip Van Winkle, they could have moved long ago.
New technologies make the destruction of decent paying manufacturing jobs inevitable? Not at all. In this factory transplant, they are redeploying the same technologies already in use, machine by machine.
So if profits, trade and automation are not the driving forces, what is?
The major pressure to shift jobs abroad comes from the big hedge funds and private equity investors who have one goal only ― to siphon as much wealth as possible out of companies like United Technologies.
High profits, low profits, or no profits, they pressure company after company to squeeze their costs as much as possible so that there is more money available for the company to buy back its own shares.
Why? Because stock buybacks immediately raise the share price and give the big hedge funds an instant windfall.
Before a 1982 SEC rule change ― a major turning point in the disastrous deregulation of finance ― massive stock buybacks were illegal because they were considered stock manipulation, and a major cause of the 1929 crash. Now, Wall Street extracts billions from this destructive activity. It’s what drives runaway inequality. (For the definitive account see Professor William Lazonick, “Profits Without Prosperity” Harvard Business Review)
CEOs cherish this process because they now derive the majority of their compensation through stock incentives. So by acting as Wall Street shills, they drive up the price of stock and become richer and richer themselves.
In 1970, before stock buybacks became the norm, the pay gap between the top CEOs and the average worker was $45 to $1. Today it is an incomprehensible $844 to $1. (See Runaway Inequality) So there’s a co-dependency between the big hedge fund investors and the United Technologies CEO to move the Carrier facility, obtain more cash flow, and use it all to buy back more stock.
What proof do we have? Since 2006, United Technologies has spent over $25 billion on stock buybacks, amounting to over fifty percent of its net income. Last year, just before it announced the move to Mexico, the parent company instituted a $10 billion stock buyback and the stock price immediately jumped 5 percent. This means United Technologies used 131.4 percent of its net income to move money from the company to its major investors and top officers.
Gregory Hayes, United Technologies CEO, gets his share of the booty. Since 2012, he received $44,100,000 in total compensation, about half of which derives from stock incentives. Fifty-six top hedge funds have taken a stock position in the company to reap the bounty from these stock buybacks. (Many thanks to Matt Hopkins for this data.)
And so Trump bluffed his way into the soulless heart of an economy dominated by Wall Street. Does he have the guts to take on the fundamental evil of stock buybacks? Not unless he is forced to. It’s so much easier to blame Mexico and China.
Is Carrier a major opening for the Democratic Party?
Hillary Clinton’s benign neglect of these workers is symptomatic of the party’s ongoing romance with Wall Street elites ― the source of so much of the party’s funding. These political leaders, their high level campaign officials and the party’s financial backers have never had it so good. They won’t suffer one iota from the loss of those 1,400 Carrier jobs. They won’t have to contemplate finding a replacement job at Walmart for $13 an hour. They won’t have to worry about how to pay off their kids’ student loans. Instead, they will continue to enjoy the fruits of America’s wealth that is rapidly flowing to the top 1 percent.
Unless the party is captured by the Sanders forces, there will be little concerted action to outlaw stock buybacks. The establishment Democrats will do next to nothing about the never ending rip-off of the American people by Wall Street elites.
What Should Progressives Do?
Right now we are in the streets bearing witness to the threats posed by Trump to immigrants, people of color, Roe v. Wade, LBGTQ rights, and the environment. These protests build a protective sense of community, a public space to share pain and anger, a place to shield each other against deportation and Trump vigilantes.
But to date, these emotive and reactive responses provide no alternative path or program. Love trumps hate is no match for what will soon be jammed through Congress.
Moving from Trump, the person, to the Wall Street horrors that give us Trump.
The Carrier relocation offers new possibilities. It allows us to protest en mass about what Trump either does or does not do on behalf of working people.
If progressives were well organized ― a very big if to be sure ― we should join with these workers (represented by the United Steelworkers) to build mass demonstrations at United Technologies headquarters, hedge fund offices and the White House. Such a series of protests would keep the Carrier shutdown on the front burner and provoke Trump to live up to his job promises.
Imagine if Black Lives Matter, the Sierra Club, 350.org, the Moral Monday movement, the Sanders supporters, and other unions and church groups rallied around these at-risk workers. That would send a loud, clear message that the progressive movement for economic, environmental and social justice cares deeply about the plight of working people ― black, white, Hispanic and immigrant alike.
Not only would it challenge Trump’s bluster, but it would create a litmus test for the Democratic Party. If we took to the streets for this kind of working class cause, the Democrats would finally be forced to decide whether they are, as economist James Galbraith put it, “the party of the predators or the prey.”
The Democrats lost this election because they tried to be both. That’s why Hillary didn’t think twice about taking all that Wall Street cash for her inane private speeches. That’s why she could talk so glibly about “the deplorables” to a closed-door donor meeting. The Democratic elites were confident that they could build a new winning coalition of women, people of color, immigrants and upper income voters. They thought they didn’t really need the working people left behind by Wall Street’s financial strip-mining. They do now.
There are other critical political realities to consider. By not acting on behalf of these workers, we continue to cede the jobs terrain to Trump. If for some reason Carrier does not move, Trump will get all the credit ― and justifiably so. But if our movement sustained the demand in a systematic way, the victory would be for all working people, not just Trump. We would become the movement for jobs and justice.
But wait, why fight to save these manufacturing jobs when the planet is heating up, black men are being slaughtered by the police, and millions of immigrants are about to be deported?
This is a time of reckoning for progressives. It is time to face up to the fact that we will win very little unless we recognize that working people of all shades must become a vital part of a common progressive movement.
Their inclusion, however, requires that we climb out of our issue silos. We need to build a state, local and national progressive alliance that unites our specific issues. Bernie Sanders proved that such a common effort has enormous potential. He successfully made the case that the actions of the rapacious billionaire class unites us all as we struggle to reverse runaway inequality, eliminate discrimination, provide universal health care and free higher education, while also protecting the planet. We came together then around a broad social democratic platform. We need to do it again.
For starters, Sanders should deploy his prodigious list of small donors to raise substantial funds to build a national movement infrastructure. An opening campaign could focus on Carrier and highlight the evils of stock manipulation. Working people all over the country would take notice.
Yes, we are hurting. Yes, we are fearful. Yes, we are incredulous that the country we love could turn to a demagogue. But, we have just entered one of those rare historical moments when the poignant words of Joe Hill, the labor troubadour, again ring true. In a telegram written to the radical labor leader Bill Haywood, just before Hill was executed on trumped up charges 101 years ago, he wrote:
“Don’t waste anytime mourning: Organize!”
(This post originally published on Alternet.org)It’s not always easy to kick-start a brand new diet plan, even when you have the list of relevant menu items before you. Lack of Paleo-friendly meal options can force you to plummet off the Paleo bandwagon, a bag of chips in your hand, wondering what happened.Learn what it’s like to live the Paleo lifestyle, each and every day. Fuel yourself with proper foods, prepared in a delicious manner via the following awesome, nutritive recipes.Remember that the Paleo diet holds no bearing in the “three meals a day” mentality. Because, generally speaking, modern day humans eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the following seven-day plan is orchestrated in this manner. However, remember that you can skip meals whenever you see fit. If you don’t feel like eating breakfast, don’t eat breakfast. If you want to fast for a complete twenty-four hours, pushing yourself to experience the aforementioned intermittent fasting benefits, you should!Good luck on the following seven-day meal plan!Breakfast: Paleo-Friendly Homemade GranolaYour carb-heavy, processed granola days are at an end. However, fueling yourself with the following Paleo-friendly “granola” in the morning provides the same texture and great taste of your past varieties. It’s perfect for hiking, as well! Serve it up in the morning with some coconut or almond milk.Recipe Makes 6 Servings.Ingredients:1 ¼ cups almond flour½ cup coconut oil2 tsp. nutmeg1 ½ tsp. cinnamon2 ½ tsp. vanilla extract1/3 cup hemp hearts¼ cup walnuts½ up coconut flakessalt to tasteDirections:Begin by preheating your oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit.Next, mix all the above listed ingredients in a large bowl. Stir well. Note: make sure the coconut oil is at room temperature and a bit “liquid-y” prior to mixing.Spread this granola mixture overtop a baking sheet, and bake the granola for fifty minutes. Every ten minutes, while it’s baking, stir the granola around to get an even-coated baking.Remove the granola from the oven and allow it to cool. Store the granola in a plastic container in order to utilize it for a later snack.Lunch: Autumnal Butternut Squash SoupThis creamy, delicious butternut squash soup fits into the essential qualities of the Paleo diet. Ingredients:5 pounds chopped butternut squash1 sliced apple2 diced carrots1 diced onion2 tsp. cinnamon4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil½ tsp. cumin2 tbsp. ghee1 ½ tsp. chili powder3 cups vegetable brothDirections:Begin by preheating the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.To the side, mix together the olive oil, 1 tsp. of the cinnamon, the squash, some salt, and the cumin. Stir this well, and spread it over a baking sheet.Next, bring together the slices of apple, the carrots, and the onion in the same butternut squash bowl. Stir well, coating it with the leftover ingredients of the former mixture. Spread this mixture over an additional baking sheet. Place each of the baking sheets in the oven, and allow them to cook for fort minutes.Next, allow the ghee to melt in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add both of the roasted baking sheet’s ingredients, and then add in the vegetable broth. Add a pinch of salt, another tsp. of cinnamon, and the chili powder, and stir. Bring the soup to a boil, and then place the heat on low. Cover the pot, and allow it to cook for twenty minutes.Afterwards, utilize a blender to make the ingredients completely smooth. Serve the soup warm, and enjoy.Dinner: Petit MeatloavesThis awesome meatloaf recipe doesn’t contain an ounce of powdered soup mix or bread crumbs. Instead, these mini meatloaves bring all the deliciousness of your past meatloaves and all the essential nutrients of the Paleo diet.Ingredients:2 pounds ground grass fed beef8 ounces chopped and frozen spinach1 ½ tsp. olive oil5 ounces diced mushrooms1 diced onion2 diced carrots3 beaten eggs1/3 cup coconut flour2 tsp. onion powder2 tsp. garlic powder1 ½ tsp. thyme¼ tsp. nutmegsalt and pepperDirections:Begin by preheating your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, thaw out your spinach and begin to squeeze it to remove all the excess water. Set the spinach to the side.Heat the onions and the mushrooms in the olive oil in a skillet. Set this mixture to the side.Bring the ground grass fed beef into a large bowl and add the carrots, the spinach, the onions, and the mushrooms to the mixture. Stir. Next, add the eggs, the spices, and the coconut flour. Utilize your fingers to mash the mixture, making sure not to overmix.Place the meatloaf in muffin tins, filling each tin all the way to the top. Cook the meatloaves for twenty-five minutes. Allow them to cool and utilize a knife to pull them out of their tins. Enjoy!PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WVEC) -- Mission K9 Rescue brought in reinforcement to search for Darja, the 4-year-old missing Belgian Malinois retired explosive detection dog from Portsmouth.
Darja's brother, Kilo, has now joined the search for his sister, according to Mission K9 Rescue's Facebook page.
Darja went missing on Dec. 2 around 6 p.m.
Frankie Rivas, Darja's owner, left her with a friend when she had to leave town.
Rivas said she believes the dog missed her and went looking for her when she jumped the fence.
Darja, last seen wearing a red collar, went missing from the Shae Terrace neighborhood.
The dog is described as "super sweet, but she may be timid."
Darja spent most of her life in a working contract kennel in Kuwait. After issues with the kennel went viral, Darja was brought back to the U.S. along with nine other dogs. Rivas adopted Darja in September and the two have been close ever since.
If you see Darja, you are asked to call Frankie at 763-257-9367.
Mission K9 Rescue is now offering $2,000 in exchange for finding Darja. The reward previously was $500.Muslim wives of Michigan: US network creates 'All American Muslim' reality TV show
TV network TLC is making a reality series following the lives of Muslims living in America.
The programme - called 'All American Muslim' - will follow five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan hoping to expose the'misconceptions and conflicts' they face 'outside and within' their own community'.
Dearborn has one of America's largest Muslim populations and has the largest mosque in North America.
Reality? TLC has announced it will début a new reality show in the fall, taking viewers inside the homes of five different Muslim-American families
In a statement TLC's general manager Amy Winter said: 'Inviting viewers into a world they might not otherwise experience.
'Through these families and their diverse experiences, we will explore how they blend their values and traditions with everyday life in America.
She added the programme would provide: 'Insight into their culture with care and compassion.'
The series - which will be released in November - is set to feature a range of characters including a set of sisters one of whom wears a headscarf while the other sports piercings and tattoos and is married to an Irish Catholic Islamic convert.
Other characters include: 'Recently married, Nadar and Nawal,' who are, 'having their first baby and trying to find the balance between their traditional Muslim roots and American culture.
'Mike, Deputy Chief for the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, works tirelessly to educate the department about the Muslim religion in an effort to reduce discrimination and ignorance while his wife, an executive who works as a consultant to a major auto manufacturer, struggles to find the balance between work and raising a modern Muslim family.'
Controversial: All-American Muslim will give the audience an intimate look at their customs
According to the network's statement: 'The families featured in the series share the same religion, but lead very distinct lives that oftentimes challenge the Muslim stereotype.'
The announcement comes as positive attitudes in America towards Muslims appear to be on the rise.
Earlier this year a CNN found that 46 per cent Americans have a positive view of American Muslims, while 26 per cent have an negative view.The remains of living matter have been found in interstellar dust clouds New evidence from astrobiology "overwhelmingly" supports the view that life was seeded from outside Earth, a scientist has claimed. Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University says the first microbes were deposited on Earth 3,800m years ago. The astrobiologist has helped developed the panspermia theory which suggests an extra-terrestrial origin for life. He argues for a cycle of life as microbes find their way into comets and "multiply and seed other planets". In the article, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Monday, he argues humans and indeed all life on Earth is of alien origin, brought onto the planet by comets hitting the planet. Prof Wickramasinghe, of Cardiff University's centre for astrobiology, says there is a cyclical transfer process of life from planet to planet. He believes comets hit planets and push living organic matter out into space, some of which survives and in turn gets transferred to developing planetary systems over a timescale of millions and millions of years, seeding life on the newly formed planets. Interstellar clouds appear to be the graveyard of life not its cradle
Professor Chandra Wickramasinge He accepts this model still does not explain how life actually began in the first place, but says there is no hard evidence to support the theory that life only began in a "primordial soup" on Earth, or other places. Over the past three decades research has shown that large swathes of the Milky Way are strewn with gigantic dust clouds full of organic molecules, which some people have argued shows life emerging independently from new in these clouds. In his paper, he says recent interpretation of spectra |
But the consumption bomb is still primed and ever more dangerous.’ A new debate on population
Professor Cafaro says its time to have a more honest and open debate on population as part of trying to achieve sustainability, the ultimate goal of environmentalists and the Rio+20 conference. ‘Cutting consumption is proving a tall order, with a global economy designed to provide ever more. Even amongst environmentalists we largely live like our fellow citizens. I don’t know what the answer is there? The goal always seems to be to accommodate more people and more economic activity with fewer carbon emissions.’
He also suggests population decline may be as necessary as a decline in consumption in rich countries. ‘Who’s to say that 60 or 65 million is the optimum population of the UK, or 315 million is best for the US? It seems to me we have good evidence that those numbers are ecologically unsustainable.’ For Professor Cafaro these limits may even one day mean constraints on population and consumption.
‘For many people telling them what kind of car to drive or how many children to have will seem an intolerable infringement of their rights. But then we should move expeditiously to put noncoercive or less coercive incentives in place that achieve the desired ends. If these prove insufficient, then we may have to accept stricter limits on our freedom to consume or to have children.’
With a major study by the Royal Society on population and human wellbeing due to be published in April, the debate looks certain to continue.
Source>>
About Started in year 2010, ‘Climate Himalaya’ initiative has been working on Mountains and Climate linked issues in the Himalayan region of South Asia. In the last five years this knowledge sharing portal has become one of the important references for the governments, research institutions, civil society groups and international agencies, those have work and interest in the Himalayas. The Climate Himalaya team innovates on knowledge sharing, capacity building and climatic adaptation aspects in its focus countries like Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Climate Himalaya’s thematic areas of work are mountain ecosystem, water, forest and livelihood. Read>>Get the biggest football 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
Streaming site FirstRow Sports has been handed a High Court injunction to stop it providing web access to live streams of football matches for free.
According to a judge, the orders were justified as the operators of the "very popular" website were making millions of pounds from copyright infringement.
The application for an injunction came from the Football Association Premier League Ltd (FAPL), which owns the copyright in broadcast recordings of all Premier League matches.
Allowing the FAPL application, the judge said FirstRow was "profiting from infringement on a large scale" by making match broadcasts available "to persons who are not entitled to view them either because they have not subscribed to the broadcaster's service, or because the broadcaster has only been licensed by FAPL for a different territory".
The injunction is against the UK's six main retail internet service providers (ISPs) - British Sky Broadcasting, BT, Everything Eveywhere, TalkTalk, Telefonica UK and Virgin Media.
(Image: Getty)
Chancery Division judge Mr Justice Arnold said his orders require the ISPs to take measures "to block or at least impede" access by their customers to the FirstRow website.
The judge said the ISPs did not oppose the making of the orders and had agreed to their terms. But the court still had to decide whether the orders were justified.
The FirstRow ban has been obtained before the start of the next Premier League season, which kicks off on Saturday August 17.
The judge said the FAPL application was supported by eight other organisations including rightholders for golf, darts, snooker and rugby, as well as other football bodies.
All had provided witness statements confirming that FirstRow was not licensed by them to exploit their copyright in matches.
FirstRow was a website operating for some time through a number of domain names, some of which had been seized by the US department of homeland security, said the judge.
(Image: Getty)
The streams indexed on FirstRow were provided by third-party streamers using one of a number of user-generated websites (UGCs).
In April this year, FirstRow received 9.98 million unique user hits worldwide and had made considerable sums in advertising and affiliation revenues, said the judge.
FAPL's expert witness Dr David Price estimated it was likely to be generating between £5million and £9million in annual revenue, with many of the UGC streamers also motivated by financial reward as they were able to add their own adverts to the streams.
It was not used merely to watch coverage of sporting events in users' homes but also by some public houses in the UK, said the judge.
FAPL had been unable to establish who were FirstRow's operators and where they could be contacted. It had been registered under many different domain names "using a mixture of what appear to be false name and address details and registrations via proxy registration firms".
Current host of the site was Portlane in Sweden, described by one FAPL witness as "a well-known haven for pirate sites".
The judge said that, although FirstRow had stated it would accept takedown notices, "the address given turns out to be fictitious".As of July 4, 2008, google news reports 581 articles on the Hopkins/CSP psilocybin findings [search performed at 11:33:00 PDT].
2006 Media Coverage
The July 2006 publication of the first Hopkins/CSP psilocybin study drew media attention around the globe (including some 300 print articles according to Google, plus magazine, radio, and TV coverage). Here's a sampling:
From The Economist, 13 July 2006:
The God Pill: Hallucinogens induce lasting spiritual highs in the religious
ONE June night in Mexico in 1955, Gordon Wasson, a vice-president of J.P. Morgan, became one of the first outsiders to eat what the Aztecs called teonanacatl, the flesh of the gods. Actually, it is the flesh of a fungus, and it soon became known to hippies as the magic mushroom. But, whereas the flower children of the 1960s and their descendants gobbled the hallucinogenic fungi in search of a good time, the Aztecs had a deeper purpose. They used the mushrooms in religious ceremonies for healing, divination and communing with the spirit world.
Now a study led by Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University, and published this week in Psychopharmacology, has shown that psilocybin – the active component in magic mushrooms – does indeed induce mental states akin to the highest religious experiences. Moreover, it has lasting positive effects on those who take it.
Experiments involving drugs of any kind need to have a control – that is, an otherwise identical experiment in which something other than the drug is administered – to check that any effects are caused by the drug and not something else. Ideally, neither experimental subjects nor researchers should know who is in the control group, but for experiments involving psychedelic drugs this is difficult, because it quickly becomes apparent who is high and who is not.
For his control, Dr Griffiths decided to use methylphenidate hydrochloride, otherwise known as Ritalin, a drug that calms hyperactive children. On one of two occasions, he gave 36 volunteers who had never taken hallucinogenic drugs either psilocybin or Ritalin, swapping the drugs on the second occasion. The choice of Ritalin was inspired. Neither the volunteers nor the experimenters could say reliably which drug was being administered on which occasion.
A close eye was kept on the volunteers for eight hours after the drugs were given, to check all was well. They were then asked about their experience. Two-thirds of the participants, who were mostly middle-aged college graduates, ranked being given psilocybin as either the best or in the top five best experiences of their lives – on a par with the birth of a first child. They described feeling peace, intense happiness and a sense of the unity of all things.
The participants were no strangers to spiritual highs. Almost all engaged at least monthly in religious or spiritual activities such as prayer or attending religious services, and were selected for participation in the trial on this basis. Yet two months after the trial, 79% of them reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or satisfaction. Their positive changes in attitudes and behaviour were confirmed by independent assessments made by friends and family.
Why this should be is not yet well understood. Psilocybin is thought to work by mimicking serotonin. This is one of the messenger molecules that carry signals between nerve cells in the brain, and it is known to influence mood. But there has been little research of late. Clinical studies using psilocybin and other hallucinogens were halted when recreational use of the drugs took off. They have only just resumed after a four-decade hiatus.
Dr Griffiths and his colleagues argue that the mood-lifting effects of hallucinogens might be used to treat drug and alcohol addiction. Psilocybin itself is not addictive, although they recommend that its availability should continue to be limited. Psychedelic drugs could even be used to probe the basis of consciousness, according to Solomon Snyder, one of Dr Griffith's colleagues. Dr Snyder believes that investigation of such drugs could help scientists understand the molecular changes in the brain that underlie religious experiences.
Back in the 1950s, Gordon Wasson spent years gaining the trust of Amerindians who had continued the religious traditions of their pre-Columbian ancestors. Eventually he was allowed to partake of the mushroom. His experience, from which he said he emerged awestruck, started a short period of study that ended prematurely because of the mushroom's widespread recreational use. By showing it is possible to conduct such research responsibly, Dr Griffiths has opened the door for further work to be done on the properties of psychedelic drugs.The Qur'anic Manuscripts
There has been a polemic going on that the Qur'an does not have manuscripts from the first century of hijra. However, this is not true. Many fragments of early Qur'anic manuscripts were shown by Orientalists notably Nabia Abbott in her work The Rise of the North Arabic script and its Kur'anic development, with a full description of the Kur'an manuscripts in the Oriental Institute (1939, University of Chicago Press). There she discusses some of the Quranic manuscripts, dated from second half of the first century hijra onwards, at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. The aim of this page is to highlight some of the early Qur'anic manuscripts to refute the claim that the Qur'an lacks manuscripts from the first century of hijra.
The dig at the Great Mosque in Ṣanʿāʾ, Yemen, had found a large number of manuscripts of the Qur'an dating from first century of hijra. The date of building the Great Mosque in Ṣanʿāʾ goes back to 6th year of hijra when the Prophet Muhammad entrusted one of his companions to build a mosque. The mosque was extended and enlarged by Islamic rulers from time to time. In 1385 H/1965 CE heavy rains fell on Ṣanʿāʾ. The Great Mosque was affected and the ceiling in the north west corner was damaged. During the survey, the workers discovered a large vault full of parchment and paper manuscripts of both the Qur'an and non-Qur'anic material.
The UNESCO, an arm of the United Nations, had compiled a CD containing some of the dated Ṣanʿāʾ manuscripts as a part of "Memory of the World" programme. In this CD there are many Qur'anic manuscripts written in the hijazi script which are dated from 1st century of hijra, one of them belonging to early 1st century. Many more manuscripts have been dated from the period 1st / 2nd century of hijra. We will be showing only a few examples below.
A few more examples of the 1st and 1st / 2nd century hijra Qur'anic manuscripts can be found in the book Maṣāḥif Ṣanʿāʾ (1985, Dār al-Athar al-Islāmiyyah). This book is a catalogue of an exhibition at the Kuwait National Museum, with articles by Hussa Sabah Salim al-Sabah, G. R. Puin, M. Jenkins, U. Dreibholz in both Arabic and English. It is expected that the Ṣanʿāʾ manuscripts will throw a great deal of light on the early Islamic history of calligraphy and illumination and even the various ahruf (they were seven) in which the Qur'an was revealed.
A few words of caution concerning the dating of the Qur'anic manuscripts need to be mentioned. It is to be remembered that assigning a date to an undated early Qur'anic manuscript is rarely simple especially in the absence of wakf marking. There is a tendency to assume that those in large scripts and without vowels are of the earliest date. This assumption, true to some extent, is nevertheless misleading in two respects. It ignores that fact that small as well as large maṣāḥif of the Qur'an were among the earliest written and that both types continued to be written thereafter. Though the assumption that manuscripts with the vowels must be considered later than those without is true in some cases, it is not always so, for some very early manuscripts of the Qur'an, originally written without vowels, may well have been voweled later. Furthermore, the first vowel system came into use shortly after the first maṣāḥif were written. There are also examples of later maṣāḥif which were unvoweled even after 3 centuries after hijra!
As a matter of caution, we stress the fact that we are only showing a single leaf of the manuscripts in the cases below. A manuscript may contain additional sūrahs. The reader is advised to go through the references for additional information.
Looking for something similar? Try
The Arabic Papyri | Arabic & Islamic Inscriptions | The Islamic Coins
The Dotting Of A Script And The Dating Of An Era: The Strange Neglect Of PERF 558, A. Jones, Islamic Culture, 1998, Volume LXXII, No. 4, pp. 95-103. It is usually assumed that the dotting of the Arabic script began with the advent of dotting of Qur'anic manuscripts. However, recent observation on a 70 year old Arabic papyri has shown conclusively that dotting was available as early as 22 AH, perhaps even earlier. From Alphonse Mingana To Christoph Luxenberg: Arabic Script & The Alleged Syriac Origins Of The Qur'an A path-breaking discourse or is it yet another headline grabbing exercise? You decide! Concise List Of Arabic Manuscripts Of The Qur'ān Attributable To The First Century Hijra. The study of ancient manuscripts of the Qur'an is steadily gathering pace. In decades past, a few scholars have compiled lists of Qur'anic manuscripts attributable to the 1st century hijra. Although helpful, these lists contain only the barest details, usually only the name of the manuscript concerned or sometimes even less. With this in mind, we have constructed this document that contains additional details providing further insights into these valuable manuscripts, accompanied by full bibliographic references. A discussion of how scholars date early Qur'anic manuscripts and an assessment of the value of these manuscripts is also provided along with some detailed mathematical calculations. Should one ponder over this list, they will come to the appreciation scholars involved in this field of study suffer from an embarrassment of riches. Quite simply, there is no other work from the Late Antiquity that comes close to the Qur'an in terms of the number of their earliest manuscripts including textual content. Radiocarbon (Carbon-14) Dating And The Qur'ānic Manuscripts. Radiocarbon dating of ancient Qur'anic manuscripts in the literature is very rare. Can radiocarbon dating provide more accurate results than traditional palaeographic techniques and associated methods? A discussion of the scientific principles underpinning this radiometric dating technique, together with some practical examples from actual Qur'anic manuscripts, highlights the strengths and weaknesses of this procedure as compared to more traditional palaeographic based methods. Dated Texts Containing The Qur’an From 1-100 AH / 622-719 CE. The corpus of dated texts containing the Qur'an from 1-100 AH / 622-719 CE proving the early codification of the Qur'an in Arabic.
2. Examples Of The Qur'anic Manuscripts
THE ʿUTHMĀNIC MANUSCRIPTS
THE QUR'ANIC MANUSCRIPTS ATTRIBUTED TO ʿALI B. ABI ṬALIB
The third and fourth caliphs, i.e., ʿUthmān and ʿAlī, share a very interesting aspect – attribution of ‘authorship’ of numerous manuscripts of the Qur'an. In this section, we will present the manuscripts attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. The “Qur'ān Of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib” (The Ṣanʿāʾ Muṣḥaf) From 1st / 2nd Century Hijra. This manuscript was written in kufic script and contains 275 folios. The extant folios contain about 86% of the text of the Qur'an. The script is slightly sloping backwards and is reminiscent of the type of well-executed kufic script exhibited during the Umayyad period. Single dots were placed above, beside or below the letters. Two dots were placed to indicate the nunation known as tanwīn. Diacritical marks are represented by dashes. The ending of verses is indicated by a series of 5 or 6 dashes. The sūrahs are separated by wide horizontal bands in the form of rectangles. The inside of the band is decorated differently for every sūrah separator. The sequence of the sūrahs is just like what is seen in modern day copies of the Qur'an. The codex is contains large ornamentaled circles to indicate every 10 verses. Ornamented rectangular shaped signs are used to indicate every 100 verses.
FIRST CENTURY HIJRA
FIRST / SECOND CENTURY HIJRA
SECOND CENTURY HIJRA
SECOND / THIRD CENTURY HIJRA
SOME UNIQUE MANUSCRIPTS
EXTERNAL LINKS TO THE QUR'ANIC MANUSCRIPTS
Professor Brannon Wheeler's Qur'an Manuscripts Page It contains a healthy collection of Qur'anic manuscripts dated from 1st century of hijra onwards till 14th century of hijra in various scripts such as ma'il, kufic, thuluth, bihari, diwani, andalusi, maghribi and nastaliq. The Schøyen Collection, National Library Of Norway It has some good collection of Qur'anic manuscripts dating from as early as 2nd century of hijra.
Early Qur'anic manuscripts, unlike the modern printed editions, rarely contain information of the Qira'at in which they were written. Deciphering the Qira'at in the Qur'anic manuscripts is a recent endeavour and a very tedious task. Scholars like Nabia Abbott had only mentioned about Qira'at in the manuscripts in a very cursory way. Recently, in-depth studies have been undertaken to decipher the Qira'at in the Qur'anic manuscripts by Dr. Yasin Dutton of University of Edinburgh. He has been looking into various Qur'anic manuscripts to understand the purpose of using various coloured dots in the writing of the Qur'an and studying the consonantal structure (where dotting is nearly absent as in early Qur'ans written in ḥijāzī or ma'il script) to find out the Qira'at in which the Qur'an manuscript was written. Here are a few examples of the manuscripts in which the Qira'at has been identified.
We will also mention Dr. Dutton's publications and provide a brief overview. This section is primarily for those who have access to journals in their libraries.Decipher the zodiac cryptogram
Instructions
Reorder the astrological signs
and decode the zodiac cipher.
The Tarot menu (left) correctly sequences the universal principles that describe the creation of physical form. Using this as a "genetic code" guide, resequence the zodiac signs by determining which of these universal principles is best expressed by each sign. Then sequentially select the corresponding zodiac signs to register your choice. You will get feedback on your selection after having entered four choices.
If you decipher the Riddle successfuly, you will receive as a gift a free copy of Paul LaViolette's 41 page systems theory analysis document wich explains the riddle and uncovers the ancient knowledge hidden inside the zodiac.
If you don't want to decipher the Riddle by yourself you can always buy and download Paul LaViolette's 41 page systems theory analysis document which contains the Riddle's solution.
Instructions and hintsTens of thousands of Colombians took to the streets of Bucaramanga, the country's sixth-largest city, last month to defend their water supply from a Canadian-owned gold-mining project.
The chief target of their protest was Vancouver-based Eco Oro Minerals Corp.
The company is exploring for gold and silver in a high-altitude, environmentally sensitive area that is the main source of water for Bucaramanga's one million inhabitants.
About the author Santiago Ortega Arango is an assistant professor at the Civil, Environmental and Industrial Engineering Department of the Escuela de Ingeniería de Antioquia in Envigado, Colombia. He is currently a Fellow in Global Journalism at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He can be followed on Twitter @sortegarango
This was the fourth anti-gold-mining demonstration in the area since 2010, and one of the biggest.
But Eco Oro shouldn't feel singled out. It is only one in a string of Canadian mining and exploration companies that have drawn the ire of local communities around the world.
On March 12, for example, more than 10,000 Greeks protested in Thessaloniki against several gold mining projects owned by Vancouver-based Eldorado Gold.
Then on March 21, Catholic priests marched with 5,000 locals in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, against a project owned by Vancouver-based B2Gold Corp.
Canadian companies have also been targeted in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Israel.
"Canada is very well represented in global mining conflicts because, in large part, Canada is the home of most of the junior mining companies of the world," says Ramsey Hart, the Canada program co-ordinator at Mining Watch, an Ottawa-based advocacy group.
The reason for this, he says, is that Canada has a favourable environment for high-risk, speculative investments, the kind that drives international mineral exploration.
Unlike the U.S. Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign citizens to bring American companies to U.S. courts for abuses committed in a foreign country, there are no mechanisms to hold Canadian companies overseas accountable for their social and environmental policies. "We've just completely dropped that ball," Ramsey says.
The last attempt to impose minimum standards on Canadian companies was a bill sponsored by the opposition Liberals that would have set international standards for human rights and the environment for oil, gas and mining companies operating abroad, and would have made government political and financial support contingent on compliance.
Bill C-300, however, was defeated by six votes in a minority parliament two and a half years ago.
High-altitude grasslands
The people of Bucaramanga see the issue on their doorstep as a choice between water and gold.
They are worried that Eco Oro and two other multinational companies, AUX Colombia (part of the Brazilian EMX Group) and Leyhat (owned by Vancouver-based CB Gold Inc), will cause irreparable damage to the local ecosystem.
Other large-scale protests targeting Canadian miners recently. From top: Greece, in November 2012; Romania in September 2011; Argentina in in January 2012. (Associated Press / Reuters / Reuters)
The high-altitude grasslands around Bucaramanga, known as paramos, lie above 3,000 metres in the tropical Andes, and Colombians are very protective of these ecosystems.
The paramos and Andean forests act as buffers that capture water during the rainy season, and then release it during the dry months.
Florentino Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Movimiento Cívico Conciencia Ciudadana (MCCC), a grassroots movement in Bucaramanga, says he recognizes the need for foreign mining investment in Colombia. But he also wants to see it conducted in a more disciplined way.
The main problem, he says, is that many mining titles in Colombia "overlap with strategic ecosystems, water sources, and important basins that supply municipal aqueducts" — Eco Oro being a case in point.
It's involvement in the Santurbán region around Bucaramanga goes back to the mid-1990s, when its predecessor, Greystar Resources, acquired numerous mining titles.
In 2010, the company proposed an open-pit project called Angostura, which sparked a backlash in the local community.
Faced by a rising tide of public opposition to the project, Eco Oro decided in 2011 to abandon the open-pit approach, not long before the Colombian environment ministry denied the company an environmental licence.
Eco Oro then shifted to an underground project, with the potential to extract an estimated 2.7 million ounces of gold.
A national park
For its part, Eco Oro says it has been a victim of misunderstandings and misinformation.
"We believe the people marching must take the steps to educate themselves about the impacts of mining in the region," says Fiona Grant Leydier, a Vancouver-based company spokeswoman.
The company insists that it wants to properly educate the people of Bucaramanga about the benefits that mining could bring to the region, and that it is working to the highest international standards to ensure long-term sustainability.
One of the obstacles is that the Santurbán paramo was declared a national park in late 2012.
In a statement in January, the company said: "The Angostura deposit, Eco Oro's principal asset, covers a total area of 215 hectares of which 193 hectares or 90 per cent falls outside of the surface boundaries of the (Santurbán) Park."
However, activists take the view that other nearby ecosystems, which are important for water retention, such as the lower-altitude sub-paramo and the high-Andean forest should also be included in the boundaries of the national park.
For now, Eco Oro still does not have an environmental permit for mineral extraction. However, it can continue with large-scale exploration activities, which do not require a licence.
That exploration is also raising concerns as the MCCC feels large exploration tunnels can reduce surface water.
Visits from the environmental authorities in 2012 found evidence of pollution and erosion caused by the exploration activities, according to a technical document from Colombia's National Environmental Licence Agency.
Environmental rules expected
It was the concern around the exploration that sparked this month's protest in Bucaramanga.
MCCC has also sent a letter to the Colombian Congress demanding that lawmakers take action against the exploration activities. Signatories included the former manager of the metropolitan aqueduct, engineers and academics from the most important universities of the region, a former mayor of Bucaramanga, and a former governor.
Gold mining in the region is not without its supporters, though.
The same day of the march in Bucaramanga, the local community near Santurbán, about 70 kilometres away, organized a counter-march.
An estimated 1,200 people from the region of Soto Norte took to the streets to defend mining operations for their contribution to the local economy.
Eco Oro, and its Canadian predecessor, had been operating in the area for more than 10 years. It expects that a new mine would employ around 1,000 people.
The Colombian government is currently preparing terms of reference for environmental licensing of large-scale underground mining.
Once these new rules are ready, Eco Oro will submit an environmental impact assessment for the Angostura project.
To further complicate the situation, the Colombian mining sector is in a legal void. In 2010 the government tried to replace the old, more environmentally permissive, mining code, which was the subject of controversy as it was developed abroad, in this case with the guidance of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in 2001.
But the new successor code was not created in consultation with indigenous populations so the constitutional court declared it invalid and gave Colombia's congress a two-year period to make a new one.
The deadline is May 11, and missing it will mean that the country will have to go back to the old code.
In the meantime exploration will continue, and so, likely, will the activists' struggle to protect their water.A new study based on 1,000 years of temperature records suggests global warming is not progressing as fast as it would under the most severe emissions scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"Based on our analysis, a middle-of-the-road warming scenario is more likely, at least for now," said Patrick T. Brown, a doctoral student in climatology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. "But this could change."
The Duke-led study shows that natural variability in surface temperatures -- caused by interactions between the ocean and atmosphere, and other natural factors -- can account for observed changes in the recent rates of warming from decade to decade.
The researchers say these "climate wiggles" can slow or speed the rate of warming from decade to decade, and accentuate or offset the effects of increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. If not properly explained and accounted for, they may skew the reliability of climate models and lead to over-interpretation of short-term temperature trends.
The research, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, uses empirical data, rather than the more commonly used climate models, to estimate decade-to-decade variability.
"At any given time, we could start warming at a faster rate if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere increase without any offsetting changes in aerosol concentrations or natural variability," said Wenhong Li, assistant professor of climate at Duke, who conducted the study with Brown.
The team examined whether climate models, such as those used by the IPCC, accurately account for natural chaotic variability that can occur in the rate of global warming as a result of interactions between the ocean and atmosphere, and other natural factors.
To test how accurate climate models are at accounting for variations in the rate of warming, Brown and Li, along with colleagues from San Jose State University and the USDA, created a new statistical model based on reconstructed empirical records of surface temperatures over the last 1,000 years.
"By comparing our model against theirs, we found that climate models largely get the 'big picture' right but seem to underestimate the magnitude of natural decade-to-decade climate wiggles," Brown said. "Our model shows these wiggles can be big enough that they could have accounted for a reasonable portion of the accelerated warming we experienced from 1975 to 2000, as well as the reduced rate in warming that occurred from 2002 to 2013."
Further comparative analysis of the models revealed another intriguing insight.
"Statistically, it's pretty unlikely that an 11-year hiatus in warming, like the one we saw at the start of this century, would occur if the underlying human-caused warming was progressing at a rate as fast as the most severe IPCC projections," Brown said. "Hiatus periods of 11 years or longer are more likely to occur under a middle-of-the-road scenario."
Under the IPCC's middle-of-the-road scenario, there was a 70 percent likelihood that at least one hiatus lasting 11 years or longer would occur between 1993 and 2050, Brown said. "That matches up well with what we're seeing."
There's no guarantee, however, that this rate of warming will remain steady in coming years, Li stressed. "Our analysis clearly shows that we shouldn't expect the observed rates of warming to be constant. They can and do change."
Eugene C. Cordero of San Jose State University and Steven A. Mauget of the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Lubbock, Texas, co-authored the new study with Brown and Li.Limerick United Trades and Labour Council, 1919
"Airgead" ag an am
Ollstailc agus agóidí i Luimneach a bhí ar siúl idir an 14 Aibreán agus an 27 Aibreán 1919, nuair a d'eagraigh muintir Luimnigh (cathair agus contae) an Sóivéid Luimnigh (‘Limerick Soviet’), mar a tugadh air i 1919[1]. Bhí a hairgead féin ag an gcathair nuair a ghabh ceardchumannaigh agus Óglaigh seilbh ar shaol Eacnamaíochta na cathrach. Tharraing an ainm "Sóivéid" achrann ach ní raibh ann ach stailc ghinearálta; ní raibh réabhlóid iomlán ar siúl.
Ag tús Chogadh na Saoirse, bhí teannas láidir sa cheantar. Dúirt Arm na Breataine go mbeadh Luimneach ina ‘Limistéar Míleata Speisialta’ fén, acht dar teideal DORA (Defence of the Realm Act). Chuimsigh an tAcht Míleata sin an chuid is mó de chathair Luimnigh agus cuid den chontae leis.
Eagraíodh stailc ghinearálta i Luimneach ar an 13 Aibreán 1919. Rinne lucht ceirde Chomhairle Luimnigh agóid i gcoinne dhearbhú Arm na Breataine go mbeadh an chathair ina ‘Limistéar Míleata Speisialta’.
Ar an 14 Aibreán, thosaigh ollstailc na Sóivéide Luimnigh, le forógra na saoirse sóivéadach. Ba iad cosmhuintir na cathrach a chinntigh astu féin go mbeadh airgead agus bia ag na daoine ar feadh thréimhse na hagóidíochta.
Constáblacht Ríoga na hÉireann (RIC) agus saighdiúirí i Luimneach.
Ar an 27 Aibreán, chríochnaigh ollstailc na Sóivéide Luimnigh, nuair a ghlaoigh ard-mhéara Luimnigh (Alphonsus O'Mara) agus an eaglais (easpag Denis Hallinan) ar na hoibrithe chun stop a chur leis an agóid.
Le linn Chogadh na Saoirse (1919-1921), bhí dhá údarás i gcomhrac lena chéile i Luimneach le linn Cogadh na Saoirse, Rialtas na Breataine agus Rialtas na Poblachta a bhunaigh Dáil Éireann, lena gcúirteanna, póilíní agus airm féin ag an mbeirt araon. Cuireadh cuid mhór cathanna i Luimneach agus sa cheantar máguaird, bhí teannas láidir sa cheantar.
Is é is ciall leis an bhfocal Rúisise úd Совет [sɐˈvʲɛt]/Sovet ná "comhairle". Bhain na Boilséivigh a leas féin as na sóivéidí, agus d'éiligh Léinín "an chumhacht iomlán a bhaint amach do na sóivéidí". Tharraing an ainm "Sóivéid" in Éirinn achrann mar sin, mar bhí eagla ar na fórsaí imchoimeádach.
Threisigh cáil an radacachais ar Luimneach ar fud an domhain. Bhí go leor iriseoirí idirnáisiúnta sa chathair ag an am, mar bhí rás trasatlantach ar siúl.For life as we know it to develop on other planets, those planets would need liquid water, or oceans. Geologic evidence suggests that Earth’s oceans have existed for nearly the entire history of our world. But would that be true of other planets, particularly super-Earths? New research suggests that the answer is yes, and that, once established, oceans on super-Earths can last for billions of years.
“When people consider whether a planet is in the habitable zone, they think about its distance from the star and its temperature. However, they should also think about oceans, and look at super-Earths to find a good sailing or surfing destination,” says lead author Laura Schaefer of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
Schaefer presented her findings Monday in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Even though water covers 70 percent of Earth’s surface, it makes up a very small fraction of the planet’s overall bulk. Earth is mostly rock and iron; only about a tenth of a percent is water.
“Earth’s oceans are a very thin film, like fog on a bathroom mirror,” explains study co-author Dimitar Sasselov of the CfA.
However, Earth’s water isn’t just on the surface. Studies have shown that the planet’s mantle holds several oceans’ worth of water that was dragged underground by plate tectonics and subduction of the ocean seafloor. Earth’s oceans would disappear due to this process, if it weren’t for water returning to the surface via volcanism (mainly at mid-ocean ridges). Earth maintains its oceans through this planet-wide recycling.
Schaefer used computer simulations to see if this recycling process would take place on super-Earths, which are planets up to five times the mass, or 1.5 times the size, of our Earth. She also examined the question of how long it would take oceans to form after the planet cooled enough for its crust to solidify.
She found that planets two to four times the mass of Earth are even better at establishing and maintaining oceans than our Earth. The oceans of super-Earths would persist for at least 10 billion years (unless boiled away by |
to a media still focused on the two-party system, but at least there might be someone decent to vote for in November.Water is supposed to fill many needs for many people, but to do that adequately, it needs to have three simple qualities: clean, clear and unconditionally available.
For those living in wealthy nations, that's largely expected. But in many developing countries, access to safe water is a rarity. And it's a human rights issue in dire need of attention — and solutions.
SEE ALSO: How you can help improve water quality and access around the globe
March 22 is World Water Day, an international day-long observance calling attention to the global water crisis. According to a new report from international nonprofit WaterAid, called Water: At What Cost? The State of the World's Water 2016, an estimated 650 million of the world’s poorest people still lack access to water that is safe to consume. And they’re sometimes paying more than half their salaries for any access at all.
The lack of access to water is one of the most dire global health concerns.
This lack of access is one of the most dire global health concerns, and it's because of the massive impact water has on our livelihoods. Around the world, lack of access to proper sanitation and clean drinking water is the second-largest killer of children only after pneumonia, with about 315,000 children dying each year due to unsafe water conditions.
It’s also estimated half of all child malnutrition cases stem from consumption of unsafe water.
Image: WaterAid
The World Health Organization recommends that, at the very least, a single person needs access to 50 liters of clean water per day for basic hygiene and hydration. Meanwhile, optimal access is more than double that amount. Worldwide, however, low-income regions struggle to keep up with even the most basic requirements.
Those who lack access to safe water are often paying more for inadequate access than wealthy populations are paying for modernized access.
Though there are misconceptions that these populations lack access to clean drinking water because individuals cannot afford the cost associated with proper access, the new WaterAid report suggests that’s far from the truth.
In fact, those who lack access to safe water are often paying more for inadequate access than wealthy populations are paying for modernized access. That often stems from financially unstable governments that cannot properly support people living under them, with individuals having to grapple with the real cost — both in terms of finances and health.
For any access at all, people living in impoverished communities often have to collect water they know is unsafe from wells or natural sources. Collecting this water, sometimes from isolated areas, is a task that often falls on women — it's time-consuming, physically demanding and often dangerous.
For faster access to cleaner water, if alternatives even exist in a region, some families are forced to pay more than half their family’s daily income to water vendors.
Elizabeth Ila draws water from her well in Papua New Guinea. In a recent drought, the well ran dry for two months. Image: WaterAid/Tom Greenwood
The U.N. recommends that access to 50 liters of water per day should not cost more than 3% of a family's household income.
But in Papua New Guinea, the region with the largest population of people lacking clean water access (60%), the cost of obtaining 50 liters of clean water is $2.61. For low wage earners in the region, that cost is about 54% of what they make in a day.
In contrast, in the UK, a region that has piped water access to all residents, the cost of 50 liters of water is $0.10 — about 0.1% of a low wage worker's daily salary.
For developing nations, warming global temperatures associated with climate change are only exacerbating the problem. Open wells can become contaminated during flooding, further damaging an already unstable supply of water. Shallow wells, often straining to serve communities, can dry out due to rising temperatures.
And black market water vendors are taking note of this shift, WaterAid research has found, raising their already high prices when access is low and demand is high.
While unconditional access to safe water is a human right, it is not yet a global reality. The following chart, created by statistics portal Statista and compiled from the State of the World's Water 2016 data, shows just how much water cost and access vary throughout the world.
Image: Statista
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.Standard LR thread rules apply. No caster bashing, no insulting the interviewers, no player bashing, no balance whining. Bans will be doled out to violators so don't shit up this thread with immature garbage.
Olinim Profile Joined March 2011 3982 Posts #2 Poor Hero. MC, PuMa, and ThorZain on his side of the bracket. He's doomed. Anyways MC fighting! Tough run but if he wins he will reclaim his glory.
GreyKnight Profile Joined August 2010 United States 4631 Posts #3 Sucks for TeamLiquid....
Cel.erity Profile Blog Joined September 2010 United States 4468 Posts #4 I'm confused. In the other thread, it says the Pool C games were delayed until today, but it looks like they already got seeded? So did IPL just decide to skip those games? We found Dove in a soapless place.
zerglingrodeo Profile Joined September 2010 United States 910 Posts #5 Oh god this bracket is so stacked. This tournament is going to be amazing. "This is how philosophers should salute one another: 'Take your time!'' - Wittgenstein
Elem Profile Joined April 2011 Sweden 4501 Posts #6 Nuuuuuuuh, Kawaiirice getting HuK T_T
Really good matches put up though!
PuMa vs HerO, Stephano vs Kiwi, DeMusliM vs Ret, Sheth vs MMA seem so good. And a ton of nice potential Ro16's such as Stephano vs MMA (ZvT specialist vs TvZ specialist is always good fun), SeleCT vs Ryung, MC vs PuMa/HerO and ThorZaIN vs Ret/DeMusliM.
Sooooo hyped, and with GSTL finals this morning this looks like a good day! #freeshauni
ChuCky.Ca Profile Joined July 2011 Canada 2489 Posts #7 On October 08 2011 14:21 Cel.erity wrote:
I'm confused. In the other thread, it says the Pool C games were delayed until today, but it looks like they already got seeded? So did IPL just decide to skip those games?
The group just got randomed The group just got randomed Most Skilled Current esport Games Scbw>Sc2>Cs1.6>Dota2>Hon>Loopin Louie The Drinking Game>LoL
BlackGosu Profile Blog Joined March 2011 Canada 841 Posts #8 can anyone tell me if this tournament is online or LAN? i havent been tuning in to the previous days Jar Jar Binks
parazice Profile Joined March 2011 Thailand 3723 Posts #9 WTF MC vs Inori Puma vs Hero ->.<-
Probe1 Profile Blog Joined August 2010 United States 17912 Posts #10 On October 08 2011 14:27 BlackGosu wrote:
can anyone tell me if this tournament is online or LAN? i havent been tuning in to the previous days
SC2 =/= LAN SC2 =/= LAN 우정호 KT_VIOLET 1988 - 2012 While we are postponing, life speeds by
Raisauce Profile Blog Joined May 2010 Canada 827 Posts #11 Oh my God, the bottom half of the bracket should not be allowed. This is going to be insane. Puma and MC meeting in the 2nd round would be so awesome.
BlackGosu Profile Blog Joined March 2011 Canada 841 Posts #12 On October 08 2011 14:28 Probe1 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 08 2011 14:27 BlackGosu wrote:
can anyone tell me if this tournament is online or LAN? i havent been tuning in to the previous days
SC2 =/= LAN SC2 =/= LAN
that doesn't answer my question. that doesn't answer my question. Jar Jar Binks
homer001 Profile Joined October 2010 486 Posts #13 how do they form the brackets?
lol
puma fight his way thru open bracket and his reward is to potentially face MC(3-0 his group) in round of 16?
tat makes no sense
MisterTea Profile Joined September 2010 United Kingdom 1045 Posts Last Edited: 2011-10-08 05:36:55 #14 On October 08 2011 14:27 BlackGosu wrote:
can anyone tell me if this tournament is online or LAN? i havent been tuning in to the previous days
how have you missed every single commercial thats been going on teh past 2 months for atlantic city IPL 3?
it's a live tourny how have you missed every single commercial thats been going on teh past 2 months for atlantic city IPL 3?it's a live tourny
Olinim Profile Joined March 2011 3982 Posts #15 So is Inori good? Judging by tlpd MC will stomp his face in.
backtoback Profile Joined March 2010 Canada 1253 Posts #16 sorry for my bad timezone knowledge but 07:00 PDT (-07:00) is 6 am PST? (-08:00) seattle washington timezone
parazice Profile Joined March 2011 Thailand 3723 Posts #17 why not use MLG format >.<
Elem Profile Joined April 2011 Sweden 4501 Posts Last Edited: 2011-10-08 05:45:03 #18 On October 08 2011 14:34 BlackGosu wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 08 2011 14:28 Probe1 wrote:
On October 08 2011 14:27 BlackGosu wrote:
can anyone tell me if this tournament is online or LAN? i havent been tuning in to the previous days
SC2 =/= LAN SC2 =/= LAN
that doesn't answer my question. that doesn't answer my question.
Edit:
Edit: On October 08 2011 14:44 parazice wrote:
why not use MLG format >.<
Because MLG format sucks?
Because MLG format sucks? #freeshauni
CaptainCharisma Profile Joined February 2011 New Zealand 808 Posts #19 12 Terrans, 12 Zerg, 8 Protoss. Very nice spread of races EG.DeMuslim --- EG.ThorZain --- TSL.Polt --- LGIMMvp --- Mill.fOrGG --- EG.Stephano --- EGiNcontroL --- EG.IdrA --- MarineKing.Prime --- SlayerS_MMA --- Liquid'Hero
red4ce Profile Blog Joined January 2011 United States 7302 Posts #20 Hero vs Puma in the first round? Too bad. The winner of that one probably has to play MC next lol. Socke vs Ryung and Demuslim vs Ret look pretty good too. Poor Spanishiwa. Finally qualifies for something big and has to play the best foreign terran in the first round. Then again there aren't any easy opponents from pool play anyways.
1 2 3 4 5 732 733 734 NextBuried last winter in an arctic blast, Minetta Street and adjoining Minetta Lane were a sorry, frozen, mostly deserted wasteland. Snow plows seemed to have forgotten to chug through the one-lane passages of this out-of-the way, oddly dog-legged corner of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, and compacted ice made the sidewalks treacherous. A pair of professional dog-walkers nonetheless took refuge from nearby traffic, walking up and down the quiet lanes.
Though few passers-by seem to know it, the Minettas were once home (in 1830) to more than 14,000 freed African-Americans, enough to earn the area the moniker of “Little Africa.” There’s no visible sign of it today, but it’s part of the rich, still largely hidden-from-view history of involuntary immigrants — slaves — from Africa. “These people built our country,” says Nina, a teacher who asked not to use her last name as she led a class of fourth-graders on an annual pilgrimage through the visitors center at the African Burial Ground National Monument, just over a mile to the south of Minetta Lane. “It’s important to recognize that.”
It’s now enshrined as part of the city’s regular education circuit, but only recently so. After African slaves were barred from burying their dead on the grounds of Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan in 1697, they found an undeveloped site to the north — yes, it’s hard to imagine any part of Manhattan undeveloped — just uptown from current-day City Hall. Over the course of the 18th century, until 1794, many thousands of black New Yorkers, slaves and free alike, were interred at the 6.6-acre site, most buried in simple wooden coffins.
The memorial has resurrected these early New York laborers as real people, with history, families and culture.
There they rested for almost exactly 200 years, forgotten, and presumed lost amid the intensive building in the area. Then, in 1991, construction workers excavating for a government building at 290 Broadway began to uncover gravesites. The government’s General Services Administration, of course, wanted to push on. But New York’s African-American community would not have it. “This is our Ellis Island,” said then-mayor David Dinkins, referring to the national park celebrating the entry point for 12 million mainly European and Middle Eastern immigrants. After protests and fierce debate, the office tower was built subsequent to a redesign that preserved space for a memorial with more than 400 remains re-interred.
Excavated were not just the remains of the men and women who helped to build and operate the early city of New York, but also telling remnants of religions and cultures transported to and preserved in the New World. Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford and Emilyn L. Brown, a community activist, described the remains of a woman, designated as Burial 340, whose “waist beads and hourglass-shaped, filed incisors that had adorned her in life remained to define her culturally more than two centuries after death.” And then, in Burial 25, a young woman with her “face shattered, wrist fractured, and rib cage penetrated by a still-present musket ball — provided evidence of the violence that pervaded colonial New York.”
The memorial has resurrected these early New York laborers as real people — with history, families and culture.
Slavery was abolished in New York City in 1827, just a few years after the streams that gave the Minettas their name were put underground, to make way for the expanding population of free African-Americans. But by 1896, author Stephen Crane wrote, “The Italians have begun to dispute the possession of the lane with the negroes.” And with bars spreading around the corner of nearby McDougal Street, the character of the neighborhood had changed. “It was a street set apart, a refuge for criminals,” wrote Crane.
Ultimately, African-Americans abandoned the Minettas and it became a center of prostitution before it was redeveloped in the 1930s by Vincent Pepe. These days the street is dominated by the backs or sides of buildings that front on busier streets. Outside the side door of the Café Wha?, huge piles of trash await collection. For years, Panchito’s Mexican Restaurant, which backs onto Minetta Street, maintained the painted sign of the Fat Cat Pussycat theater, where Richie Havens, Cass Elliott and Bob Dylan once performed. Now it’s painted over in a solid red. Next door, Pepe’s renovated townhouse recently sold for $5.7 million. And across the way, a woman with a two-wheeled shopping cart descends to the street from her home. “I don’t know anything about the street,” she says. “I just moved in.”Terminal developer
on Wednesday dropped its
to export coal to Asia from a Columbia River port near Clatskanie.
The company's decision means three of the six coal export terminals originally proposed in Oregon and Washington have gone by the wayside. It also significantly reduces the potential for coal train traffic through Portland.
Together, the three abandoned projects represent up to $550 million in investment, 305 permanent jobs -- and nearly 50 million tons of Montana and Wyoming coal destined for Asian ports.
Kinder Morgan spokesman Allen Fore blamed site logistics for stopping the project, not the intense controversy over exporting coal from the green Northwest.
"We looked at multiple options and different footprints, but we couldn't find one compatible with the facility we wanted to construct," Fore said.
The Houston-based company, a terminal and pipeline operator, explored alternatives at the Port of St. Helens' Port Westward industrial park near Clatskanie for 16 months but hadn't applied for permits.
The logistics were complicated by Portland General Electric, which declined to allow coal storage piles near its Port Westward natural-gas-fired power plants for fear that coal dust would foul operations.
Kinder Morgan's terminal would have likely generated the most coal train traffic through the Portland area among the six proposals, raising concerns about coal dust, diesel pollution and congestion. It would have sent up to 12 mile-plus trains a day through North Portland and along U.S. 30 to and from the terminal near Clatskanie.
Another export proposal at the Port of Coos Bay, which would have also brought trains through Portland, recently fell through. A proposed terminal in Longview, Wash., could run trains through Portland on Union Pacific tracks, though industry sources say the coal is more likely to travel on BNSF Railway's Washington tracks.
More
Environmental groups cheered the news. Coal export would encourage China and other Asian countries to burn more coal for power, they say, even as U.S. utilities are cutting back in favor of cleaner natural gas and renewables.
Brett VandenHeuvel, executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper, said he thinks the vehement opposition played a role in Kinder Morgan's decision.
On Monday, Scappoose's City Council passed a resolution of concern on coal trains, he noted. And a Port of St. Helens proposal to expand Port Westward by 957 acres drew roughly 100 opponents to a hearing, with many concerned the expansion could be used to facilitate coal export.
Kinder Morgan's decision "is a huge victory for the state of Oregon," VandenHeuvel said. "We've proven over and over that coal export is not viable in the Northwest."
John Mohlis, executive secretary of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council, called the decision a disappointment.
Union leaders, coal companies and terminal developers say much of the coal is likely to be exported through Canada if Pacific Northwest terminals aren't approved, generating train traffic but no jobs.
Kinder Morgan's terminal "would have been built in an environmentally responsible way that would have provided good jobs for our members," Mohlis said.
Kinder Morgan said the terminal would cost up to $200 million, providing construction jobs plus 80 permanent jobs. In March, Columbia County's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 8.9 percent.
Patrick Trapp, Port of St. Helens' executive director, said working with Kinder Morgan cost staff time, but wasn't a loss.
The publicity over the coal proposal tripled inquiries about Port Westward opportunities, he said. Kinder Morgan also didn't rule out pursuing other projects at the site.
With Kinder Morgan's coal terminal off the table, three terminals are still under consideration, two in Washington and one in Oregon.
The pending projects: Gateway Pacific near Bellingham, Wash., at up to 52.9 million tons a year; Millennium Bulk Terminals in Longview, up to 48.5 million tons; and Ambre Energy's Morrow Pacific Project in Boardman, up to 8.8 million tons.
The Bellingham and Longview terminals are in lengthy permit reviews. Morrow Pacific's permit review has been delayed, but Ambre is still hoping the project will begin shipping next year.
It would receive coal by train at a Port of Morrow terminal, then ship it via covered barges to an existing dock at Port Westward for transfer to ocean-going ships.
Fore said Kinder Morgan is still looking for other coal export sites in the Northwest on behalf of coal mine customers, though he declined to name specific ports.
"We're a customer-driven company," he said, "and our customers are still looking at options in the Pacific Northwest."
VandenHeuvel of Columbia Riverkeeper said he doesn't expect more Northwest coal export proposals anytime soon.
"I think coal export is so toxic right now that we're going to see existing proposals dropped before we see new sites added," he said.
-- Scott LearnAnonymous wrote: she should be paying any man she comes near danger money: – $500 an hour risk liability fee for false accusations
– $1,000 an hour attention fee for the pleasure of enjoying male company
– $300 an hour for loss of opportunity of the time that could be spent on something more productive than her
– $2,000 an hour bitching, nagging and moaning tax
– $5,000 an hour fraud protection insurance fee
Prefect. That’s what I always thought and sometimes spoke out loud…
Whenever the shaming language “for being single” got too close, too intimidating – just too uncomfortable and especially when others were around and I had to defend me to restore RESPECT…
I often said:
“Pay me 80 euros an hour to endure the average women and then I will marry.”
“I will take her bitching, nagging, yelling and her destroying my valuables for a few years and then retreat to some distant island will all that money”
“I won’t do it for less”…
Shaming me in public stopped years ago because “the perpetrator” always needed comforting form his or her friends after that. As a public person and entrepreneur I had to keep up respect or get beaten down.
… Lessons learned from school days. Kick back or get kicked to hell. Rather make a few enemies than get f~~~ed with all the time and wherever you go.
The opposite of ghosting. Forced upon me from women who think they are “God’s gift to men” but are nothing but loud, ugly, useless and drunk old sluts. (The village hive in the place where my shop was located in) (All part of a “wine drinking club” you saw it in their red faces…)
I guess at 80 Euros an hour, I would have been cheap. But I meant to get paid 24/7…
And “net” plus VAT.
And that was in the early 2000’s. Now the “false accusation insurance” would have to come on top of that…
But looking at that BBC interview I think it is fantastic how modern media EXPOSES what women really want, and reveals their REAL expectations…
TODAY, every man can plainly see that women are not in it for love and that they ALL LIE.
20 to 30 years ago, shaming a single man still worked but now you can point your finger and say: “Oh, you mean like that Gold Digger on TV?”… And the discussion is likely to be over.
…
“No, and it’s not “a single case”… We have 50 free-to-air commercial TV channels and they are full of women like that… No, that’s not a single case. Women get schooled to behave like that, and that does no longer have anything to do with love. Women today get hypnotized into being open and up-font gold diggers…
And I won’t play that game, no matter what you think of me…”
… Yes they needed comforting. Women can’t stand to hear the truth about them…Stephanie Lee, 36, Mississippi, 2013. Widowed by war at 28, she was told she had terminal cancer earlier this year. Adam Amengual
On May 7 of this year, I received a Facebook message from a woman named Stephanie Lee:Hey Mark, I found that I have colon cancer today. I go for surgery Thursday morning. Please keep me in your prayers.
At the time, Stephanie was thirty-six and lived on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, in the town of Ocean Springs. I had met her eight years before, when I worked with Tom Junod on a story for Esquire ("Mississippi Goddamn," November 2005) about how Hurricane Katrina had affected military families already enduring the calamities of the war in Iraq—the families whose suffering had been doubled by the wind and the rain and the floods. Junod and I met Stephanie at her grandmother's house in Lucedale, Mississippi, where she told her story. She was a small woman who worked as a pipe fitter at the Northrop Grumman shipyard, a fine-boned beauty with an intimidating reserve of tensile strength, a single mother whose face settled easily into stoicism and whose eyes lit up with challenge and dare. She'd spent most of her life bedeviled by inconstant men until she met Terrance Lee where she worked. He was a welder. He was younger than Stephanie, and quiet, but she thought he was like her in that he had a plan for making something of himself. Like her, he'd joined the Mississippi National Guard. They married and she e-mailed with him every night after he was called to Iraq in January 2005. She was seven months pregnant when his Humvee went over an IED. She was nine months pregnant when Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, and she got in her truck with her husband's.45 and drove nearly eight hours on snarled roads to Shreveport to find a generator so that her baby—Terrance's baby—wouldn't have to be born in darkness. Three days later, she gave birth to Marchelle, who never stopped reminding Stephanie both of her life with Terrance and of the impossibility of life without him.
A few years after her story ran in the magazine, I was surprised to receive a Facebook message from Stephanie that read, Remember me? Over a couple years we swapped the casual and fitful messages typical of Facebook. Then came her message of May 7.
A week later came another. I am well. The surgery went great, just waiting for the biopsy to find out if the cancer spread to my lymphoid. I'm sore and tired and feel so helpless right now, but I know it will get better.
A week after that: I have to have chemo, Mark. Keep me in your prayers.
"Am I gonna die?" Stephanie asked.
Stephanie was not alone. She had her seventeen-year-old daughter, Kamri, a student at the local high school, and she had Marchelle. She had friends and an aunt with whom she was close. Thanks to Terrance, she also had health insurance. Thanks to Terrance, she was able to walk into the Keesler Air Force Base Medical Center in Biloxi and receive treatment for a cost no greater than the utterance of a number. It was the last four digits of Terrance's Social Security number, and now it was her number, for her war. She had stage-three colon cancer. Following the surgery to remove the tumor from her colon, her oncologist wanted to treat her as aggressively as possible—six months of a combination of toxic chemicals known as FOLFOX6, administered every two weeks through a port installed between her left breast and her collarbone. The port was implanted under her skin on June 10, a week before her chemotherapy was set to start. It was supposed to be minor surgery, but two days later Stephanie woke up in such agony that there was fear that perhaps the surgeon who had installed the port had accidentally perforated her chest wall. He hadn't, but the news was even worse. She went to Keesler for a CT scan, and after she was done, she was waiting in the ER and an attending physician walked into the room. She said, "You know it's in your liver, right?"
Just like that.
The doctor held her, and together they wept. But a part of her just wanted someone—her own doctor—to tell her what it meant, so she would know what she had to do. The next Monday, June 17, her oncologist, Major Owen Roberts, entered the treatment room where she was waiting to begin her chemotherapy. Kneeling beside her, he apologized for the way she found out that her cancer had metastasized. He assumed, he said, that the surgeon, having been the first to review the CT scan, had told her.
"Am I gonna die?" Stephanie asked.
"I can't answer that," Dr. Roberts said. He then proceeded to tell Stephanie that she no longer had stage-three colon cancer. She had stage four. She might have twenty-eight months to live if she could tolerate the chemotherapy, six months if she couldn't. She was terminal.
So she was alone, after all.
Mark, the cancer has spread to my liver.
"Am I gonna die?" Stephanie asked.
"I can't answer that," Dr. Roberts said. He then proceeded to tell Stephanie that she no longer had stage-three colon cancer. She had stage four. She was terminal.I had begun talking with Stephanie regularly, and I was on the phone with her the day she was told she was going to die. I could hear her smacking her palm on the countertop in her kitchen in Mississippi. "I will go back to school, I will finish my degree in supply-chain management," she said, her voice raised and defiant. "I will get a job and become a success in my profession—I am good, Mark!—I will remarry, I will see my girls grow to become women, I will be a grandmother to my grandbabies!"
And then she came to tears. "It's not fair! Marchelle can't lose both parents before she's ten. It's not fair! My God!"
Though he insists on change, Eric Schadt never changes. No matter the season, he still shows up at both work and most social functions in a uniform of white polo shirt and hiking shorts. He still drives fast enough to terrify his colleagues, though instead of going to work in California on a motorcycle at a hundred miles per hour, he now runs two miles to catch a train to New York City, where he then runs another mile and a half to his office. He is still squat and powerful, his imposingly lumpy brow a phrenologist's dream and his nose the size of a crab apple. He still smiles all the time and sounds like a self-amused surfer. He still writes almost as fast as he breathes and speaks in torrents of scientific jargon that bear only an approximate relation to the English language. He still has a unique capacity for both collaboration and pissing people off. He still gets into public arguments with men of settled eminence—two years ago, he took on James Watson—by telling them they're clinging to failed paradigms that he is trying to displace. When he's asked the difference between what they do and what he does, he still says, "the difference between medieval alchemy and chemistry."
Eric Schadt, 48, New York Adam Amengual
"That's exactly the kind of patient we take," Schadt said upon first hearing of Stephanie. "But it's a real long shot. I'd say one in a thousand.
What has changed—what he has changed—is his situation and his surroundings. When he was profiled in Esquire two years ago ("Adventures in Extreme Science," April 2011), he was an outsider enduring a kind of prestigious exile. It suited him. He had grown up in a small town in Michigan. He was the child of Christian fundamentalists and for much of his life a fundamentalist himself who still believes, more or less, in intelligent design. When he graduated high school, he joined the Air Force with the idea of subjecting himself to the rigors of Special Forces training. Instead, he blew out his shoulder on a climb, and the Air Force tried to salvage its investment by putting him through a battery of tests. He took them; when the scores came back, he was asked by stunned superiors if math had always come easily to him. Then he was sent to college and undertook the task of complete intellectual self-transformation. He received an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics and computer science at Cal Poly and his master's in pure mathematics at UC Davis. Pure math was, to him, the Special Forces of the mind—he took it because it was so hard, and he wanted to find out just how smart he was. He was pretty smart, as it turned out, but he despaired of working on problems that existed on the level of pure abstraction and had no bearing on the problems of the world. It seemed like, well, a sin. He went to UCLA to get a Ph.D. in the emerging field of biomathematics. The one problem was that the degree required a Ph.D.-level mastery of molecular biology, and the last biology course he'd taken was in high school. So he taught himself by reading textbooks. It wasn't hard. Pure math was hard. Molecular biology, after pure math, struck him as ridiculously easy.
Related Articles
An Update:
PATIENT ZERO, ONE MONTH LATER
AND STEPHANIE'S FUND: PLEASE DONATE HERE
Schadt got a job at the pharmaceutical giant Merck and, availing himself of the Merck supercomputer, became one of the leading exponents of the medical use of what became known as Big Data. He also had amazing success coming up with new drugs for Merck, to the extent that at one point half the drugs in development started in Schadt's lab. Then he told Merck that they wouldn't work. What data had taught him was that the underlying faith of molecular biology—of all biology, since Watson and Crick had elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule—was false. Untold billions had been spent in the hope that we could understand disease one gene at a time, or one genetic pathway at a time; by targeting the gene or the pathway "for" Alzheimer's disease, say, we could target Alzheimer's disease itself. Schadt told Merck that this was a strategy doomed to fail, because disease arose not from single genes or pathways but rather out of vast networks of genes and pathways whose interactions could be understood only by supercomputers guided by abstruse algorithms. Evangelical still, though now evangelical on behalf of irreducible complexity, he asked Merck to remake itself in the image of the network model he was determined to pioneer. Merck declined and Schadt headed to Silicon Valley, to the land of data.
He wound up at a company that made advanced gene sequencers, Pacific Biosciences. There he tested his network model by resolving to become the "hub" of networks of collaborators. He did his supercomputing with Amazon; he put forth an idea of mapping pathogens in public places that attracted the attention of Google; he worked with researchers at Harvard to identify the strain of cholera ravaging Haiti and traced it to South Asian relief workers. But he still wanted what he wanted at Merck: the resources to prove he was either right or wrong. He thought he was going to get enough venture-capital money to start his own lab at UC San Francisco, but the problem with venture capitalists is that they don't want to give money—they want to make it. Schadt didn't want to make that kind of bet. He wanted someone to bet on him.
In the spring of 2011, he finally heard from a gambler. Well, not really—he heard from Mount Sinai, a century-and-a-half-old hospital and medical school on the East Side of Manhattan. He had always thought that he would stay on the West Coast, where, he says, "people are really good at making things." He had always looked askance at New York, where "they're only good at making money." But now, in hearing from Sinai, he was hearing from money itself. He was hearing, in particular, from a man who had done nothing but make money for the better part of his life, Carl Icahn. Sinai was an institution seeking to remake itself; Icahn was a man looking to put his name on a vision of the future. Schadt wound up meeting Icahn and afterward wrote in an e-mail, I think he liked that I had a rougher life growing up, where I guess he did as well. In July 2011, Schadt drove his family from Palo Alto to New York. In September, Mount Sinai announced that he would be head of the newly created Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology. A little more than a year later, Sinai announced that Schadt's operation would be renamed the Icahn Institute, just as the entire medical school would be renamed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For the privilege, Carl Icahn had given Eric Schadt $150 million to claim the future of biology.
In some ways, everything had changed, for Schadt now had four hundred people working for him, along with nine gene sequencers at his disposal and a supercomputer named Minerva in the basement. In other ways, however, he remained a guy in shorts, a guy whose face was always agleam in the light of his laptop, a guy whose office walls were decorated with a palimpsest of indecipherable equations. Most important, he remained a guy who never said no—who never rejected anything as impossible—and when he learned that a woman from Mississippi whom Esquire had written about eight years earlier had been told she had terminal colon cancer, Schadt looked up and said:
"That's exactly the kind of patient we take."
It was, in the end, the reason he had come to New York. He probably didn't really need nine gene sequencers. He probably didn't even really need Minerva, because he could do supercomputing with Google and Amazon. But as both a lapsed molecular biologist and a lapsed Christian looking to establish a new faith, he needed something he had never had before. He needed patients. He needed someone like Stephanie Lee.
Stephanie Lee, in her home. Adam Amengual
It was June 29, and Stephanie weighed ninety-nine pounds. She was not down to ninety-nine pounds, because she had not even really started losing weight yet. I had flown to Mississippi to be with her as she underwent her second round of chemotherapy (the first of three trips I would make over the summer), and in the two days before the chemo, we had eaten eight meals, trying in vain to get her to a hundred pounds. Cancer reduces people, but Stephanie Lee had always struck me as irreducible.
In the |
YES > /etc/rc.conf.d
I do all of this on a VM (two in fact, I build desktop packages separate from server packages), and each vm has a dedicated virtual disk for poudriere buils:
zpool create data ada1
Install
Install ports-mgmt/poudriere through whatever mechanisms you want to (but I bet after this, you’ll start using pkg :) )
portinstall ports-mgmt/poudriere
cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/poudriere
pkg install poudriere
Configuration
A.sample file will get installed, and that has a few more options, but we’ll keep it basic:
ZPOOL = data FTPHOST = ftp4.us.freebsd.org RESOLV_CONF = /etc/resolv.conf POUDRIERE_DATA = /data/poudriere_data BASEFS = /data/poudriere USE_PORTLINT = no USE_TMPFS = yes DISTFILES_CACHE = /usr/ports/distfiles CRONDIR = ${ BASEFS } /cron SVN_HOST = svn0.us-west.FreeBSD.org NO_PACKAGE_BUILDING = no PKG_REPO_SIGNING_KEY = /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/pkgng.key
The ZPOOL value should be the name of the zfs pool created above. I like to use the name data, its just a preference of mine. The PKG_REPO_SIGNING_KEY is your key, and I just placed it in the.d directory.
Also, you may want to pick an ftp and svn host that is geographically close to you, but thats optional.
Once that is done, you’re all ready to create jails and a ports tree
Jails
Poudriere needs to build packages from a FreeBSD jail, and this is really cool. You can have a 9.1, 8.2, 10 (aka, CURRENT) and mix between i386 and amd64 platforms.
I myself only build 9.1-RELEASE amd64 packages. Our older 9.x systems are still using Puppet and Portmaster. When I upgrade them, I’ll switch them to Salt and pkgng.
First, create a ports tree for your jail(s) to use:
$ poudriere ports -c $ poudriere ports -l PORTSTREE METHOD PATH default portsnap /data/poudriere/ports/default
The default update method is to use portsnap, but you can also use svn:
$ poudriere ports -c -m svn
Next, we create a jail. I’ll create a 9.1-RELEASE AMD64 jails:
$ poudriere jail -c -j 91amd64 -a amd64 -v 9.1-RELEASE $ poudriere jail -l JAILNAME VERSION ARCH METHOD SUCCESS FAILED IGNORED SKIPPED QUEUED STATUS 91amd64 9.1-RELEASE amd64 ftp 0 0 0 0 0 idle:
Building a Port
The command you’ll be working with is poudriere bulk. I use the -f flag to pass it a file, and I’ll show that later, but to test everything out go ahead and build a single port:
poudriere bulk -j 91amd64 sysutils/sysrc
Here is the output:
==== >> Mounting system devices for 91amd64 /etc/resolv.conf -> /data/poudriere/jails/91amd64/etc/resolv.conf ==== >> Starting jail 91amd64 ==== >> Mounting ports from: /data/poudriere/ports/default ==== >> Mounting packages from: /data/poudriere_data/packages/91amd64-default ==== >> Mounting /var/db/ports from: /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/91amd64-options ==== >> Appending to /etc/make.conf: /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/91amd64-make.conf ==== >> Populating LOCALBASE ==== >> Calculating ports order and dependencies ==== >> Sanity checking the repository ==== >> Deleting stale symlinks ==== >> Cleaning the build queue ==== >> Building 1 packages using 1 builders ==== >> [ 01 ] Starting build of sysutils/sysrc ==== >> [ 01 ] Finished build of sysutils/sysrc: Success ==== >> Stopping 1 builders ==== >> Creating pkgng repository tar: Removing leading '/' from member names Generating repo.sqlite in /usr/ports/packages/: done! ==== >> Cleaning up ==== >> Umounting file systems ==== >> Built ports: sysutils/sysrc ==== >> [ 91amd64 ] 1 packages built, 0 failures, 0 ignored, 0 skipped
We can now see that package in /data/poudriere_data/packages/91amd64-default/sysutils/sysrc-5.1.txz, and if you want to install if manually, just use pkg add:
$ pkg info -l -F /data/poudriere_data/packages/91amd64-default/sysutils/sysrc-5.1.txz sysrc-5.1 owns the following files: /usr/local/libexec/sysrc/include/messages.subr /usr/local/man/man8/sysrc.8.gz /usr/local/sbin/sysrc /usr/local/share/licenses/sysrc-5.1/BSD /usr/local/share/licenses/sysrc-5.1/LICENSE /usr/local/share/licenses/sysrc-5.1/catalog.mk /usr/local/share/sysrc/common.subr /usr/local/share/sysrc/sysrc.subr $ pkg add /data/poudriere_data/packages/91amd64-default/sysutils/sysrc-5.1.txz Installing sysrc-5.1... done
Otherwise, you can point a system to the generated repo file and use pkg install
Build-time options
Before we get into the entire automation process, did you notice this line at the begining of the build?
==== >> Mounting /var/db/ports from: /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/91amd64-options ==== >> Appending to /etc/make.conf: /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/91amd64-make.conf
Poudriere will first look in /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/${JAIL_NAME}-options for the build time options for a port (make options).
For the most part, I take the default options except for a few very important builds like Samba, Nginx, Apache, etc…
To set those build time options, just run poudriere options -j 91amd64 net/samba36
The other thing poudriere does is look at your local /etc/make.conf and appends it to /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/${JAIL_NAME}-make.conf
My make.conf looks like this:
WITH_PKGNG = yes WITHOUT_X11 = yes.if empty (.CURDIR:M/usr/ports/databases/mongodb* ) CC = gcc CXX = g++ CPP = cpp.endif CC = clang CXX = clang++ CPP = clang-cpp
And, my make.conf for the vm that builds desktop pacakges looks like this:
WITH_PKGNG = yes CC = clang CXX = clang++ CPP = clang-cpp WITHOUT_NOUVEAU = yes WITH_NEW_XORG = yes
As you can see, I make our server packages without X11 support, but the desktop packages get X11.
I try to build with clang, but there are a few cases when it just doesn’t work so I’ve attempted to use a little if statement (I’m not sure if it works thought…)
Managing with Salt
I have a fairly simple salt state to help the build process, and I only recently discovered that salt has a poudriere module to help manage everything I just wrote above.
Pillar Data
{% gist 5348213 %}
State
{% gist 5348166 %}
ZPOOL = data FTPHOST = ftp4.us.freebsd.org RESOLV_CONF = /etc/resolv.conf POUDRIERE_DATA = /data/poudriere_data BASEFS = /data/poudriere USE_PORTLINT = no USE_TMPFS = yes DISTFILES_CACHE = /usr/ports/distfiles CRONDIR = ${ BASEFS } /cron SVN_HOST = svn0.us-west.FreeBSD.org NO_PACKAGE_BUILDING = no PKG_REPO_SIGNING_KEY = /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d/pkgng.key
converters/p5-JSON-PP databases/couchdb databases/rubygem-couchrest databases/mongodb databases/memcached databases/mysql55-client databases/mysql55-server databases/pecl-memcache databases/postgresql92-client databases/postgresql92-server,,,
accessibility/atk accessibility/atkmm archivers/gtar archivers/p7zip archivers/rpm archivers/rpm2cpio archivers/squeeze archivers/unzip archivers/zip audio/alsa-lib...
Jenkins
Setup
I based most of what I have off of this great three part article Continuous package building with poudriere and Jenkins under FreeBSD
I eventually re-worked it and did it my own way, which I just found simpler to grok and manage.
You’ll need to enable two Jenkin’s plugins:
Jenkins PostBuildScript Plugin
Jenkins Publish Over SSH Plugin
Once those are installed, you need to setup a ssh host under Jenkins -> Manage Jenkins -> Configure System -> Publish Over SSH
PkgNg Job
Create a new Jenkins job. I titled mine FreeBSD-9.1-amd64-server, and the job type is Build a free-style software project
The job has 5 simple steps:
Update the ports tree poudriere ports -u
Build the packages from the /root/plist file poudriere bulk -J 8 -j 91amd64 -f /root/plist
Show the jail information poudriere jails -i -j 91amd64
Rsync packages to separate web server: rsync -ave “ssh -i /home/jenkins-ci/.ssh/id_rsa” –force /data/poudriere_data/packages/91amd64-default/ jenkins-ci@pkgng:/data/www/pkgng/data/9.1-freebsd-amd64/server/
Rebuild the repo index pkg repo /data/www/pkgng/data/9.1-freebsd-amd64/server /data/www/pkgng/pkgng.key
To set that up in Jenkins, add these Build Steps:
Build Send files or execute commands over SSH SSH Publisher name: pkg-server Credentials: Username: jenkins-ci Passphrase/Password: ************* Path to key: /home/jenkins-ci/id_rsa.publish Transfers: Source files: /bin/sh Remote Prefix: Remote Directory: Exec command: sudo poudriere ports -u sudo poudriere bulk -J 8 -j 91amd64 -f /root/plist sudo poudriere jails -i -j 91amd64 Exec timeout: 0 (ms)
Post-build actions [PostBuildScript] - Execute a set of scripts Build steps SSH Publisher name: pkg-server Credentials: Username: jenkins-ci Passphrase/Password: ************* Path to key: /home/jenkins-ci/id_rsa.publish Transfers: Source files: /bin/sh Remote Prefix: Remote Directory: /root Exec command: /root/pkg-rsync.sh Exec timeout: 0 (ms) SSH Publisher name: pkgng Transfers: Source files: /bin/sh Remote Prefix: Remote Directory: /data/www/pkgng/data/9.1-freebsd-amd64/server/ Exec command: pkg repo. /data/www/pkgng/pkgng.key
Clients
Now that the packages are built, and then rsync’d over to a web server (I’m using nginx), your clients will need to have a usable pkg.conf, as well as the public key for the signed packages
Salt
In our basepkgs state, we manage the pkg.conf file, and push out the public certificate:
{% gist 5348798 %}
{% gist 5348827 %}
The pillar data for host.role is used to differentiate if a client will use the Desktop package repo (built with X11 support and CUPS), or the Server repo (trimmed down options and almost no support for X11, GTK+, CUPS, etc…)
The final file that ends up on the system will look like this:
PUBKEY: /usr/local/etc/pkg/ssl/pkgng.pub PACKAGESITE: https://pkgng.bayphoto.com/9.1-freebsd-amd64/server/
Now, we can finally update our repo index, and upgrade packages:
root@pkg-server:/root # pkg update Updating repository catalogue repo.txz 100% 275KB 275.2KB/s 275.2KB/s 00:01 root@pkg-server:/root # pkg upgrade Updating repository catalogue Repository catalogue is up-to-date, no need to fetch fresh copy New version of pkg detected; it needs to be installed first. After this upgrade it is recommended that you do a full upgrade using: 'pkg upgrade' The following packages will be upgraded: Upgrading pkg: 1.0.9_2 -> 1.0.11 The installation will require 6 kB more space 1 MB to be downloaded Proceed with upgrading packages [ y/N ] : y pkg-1.0.11.txz 100% 1524KB 1.5MB/s 1.5MB/s 00:01 Checking integrity... done Upgrading pkg from 1.0.9_2 to 1.0.11... done root@pkg-server:/root # pkg upgrade Updating repository catalogue Repository catalogue is up-to-date, no need to fetch fresh copy The following packages will be upgraded: Upgrading gamin: 0.1.10_4 -> 0.1.10_5 Reinstalling cairo-1.10.2_5,2 Reinstalling pango-1.30.1 Upgrading libxml2: 2.7.8_5 -> 2.8.0_1 Upgrading vim: 7.3.669 -> 7.3.669_1 Upgrading subversion: 1.7.8 -> 1.7.9 Upgrading gdk-pixbuf2: 2.26.5 -> 2.26.5_3 Upgrading portmaster: 3.14_9 -> 3.16 The installation will free 5 MB 12 MB to be downloaded Proceed with upgrading packages [ y/N ] : y gamin-0.1.10_5.txz 100% 70KB 69.6KB/s 69.6KB/s 00:00 cairo-1.10.2_5,2.txz 100% 524KB 523.8KB/s 523.8KB/s 00:00 pango-1.30.1.txz 100% 553KB 553.0KB/s 553.0KB/s 00:01 libxml2-2.8.0_1.txz 100% 774KB 774.1KB/s 774.1KB/s 00:00 vim-7.3.669_1.txz 100% 5253KB 5.1MB/s 2.3MB/s 00:01 subversion-1.7.9.txz 100% 4485KB 4.4MB/s 4.4MB/s 00:01 gdk-pixbuf2-2.26.5_3.txz 100% 518KB 518.0KB/s 518.0KB/s 00:00 portmaster-3.16.txz 100% 43KB 43.0KB/s 43.0KB/s 00:00 Checking integrity... done Upgrading gamin from 0.1.10_4 to 0.1.10_5... done Reinstalling cairo-1.10.2_5,2 done Reinstalling pango-1.30.1 done Upgrading libxml2 from 2.7.8_5 to 2.8.0_1... done Upgrading vim from 7.3.669 to 7.3.669_1... done Upgrading subversion from 1.7.8 to 1.7.9... done Upgrading gdk-pixbuf2 from 2.26.5 to 2.26.5_3... done Upgrading portmaster from 3.14_9 to 3.16... done root@pkg-server:/root #
Ta Da!
As a FreeBSD and general SysAdmin, this process has been pretty cool. I’ve discovered a few hiccups, so hopefully with the above information, you will not have to deal with those.If you're under the impression the cameras in city housing projects don't work, you should take Darryl Walker's story to heart.
They show him following a woman onto the elevator at the Governor Morris Houses in the Bronx.
She was holding her pet parrot in a cage and got off on her floor.
That's where cops say Walker pulled a gun and grabbed the cage.
When next we see him, he's running off with her bird.
"I'm sick I have high blood pressure. He pointed a gun, I tried to grab him but then he ran down the stairs," said Ana Marte, robbery victim.
Through a translator, Ana Marte said she doesn't understand why Walker didn't take her jewelry or cash, just her pet bird Cuca.
But Walker didn't get far. Cops used their viper camera system to track him as he walked in broad daylight to another building, where they watched him and the bird go up the elevator.
Within 24 hours, they had him in custody.
Barbara Holmes has lived in the Morris Houses for half a century.
Now she's president of the tenants' association and says the cameras have helped solve dozens of crimes.
"If you're going to do a crime, go to a project or a neighborhood that don't have cameras. Because if you come here you're going to get caught," Holmes said.
Walker learned that lesson the hard way and cops recovered Cuca and runited him with his owners on Friday.
When the 53-year-old allegedly confessed to the crime, he told them he had sold it.
Before this happened, Darryl Walker was already on parole for robbery.
Now cops hope he's learned his lesson after they caught him red handed stealing that green bird.Length, Dimensions and Deadlines
In terms of length I think between 4-6 pages would be best, short stories that have enough time to make an impact, but have to be fairly efficient with it’s length.
(( After a few inquires, I want to clarify that the page length is a pretty important requirement, while there can be some wiggle room, say 8 pages if those two pages are super necessary, but I can't be making exceptions for every entry and submitting something double the length of the page requirement is bordering on cheeky. ))
Now the important stuff, you own what you create, and can use it as you please outside this anthology. Put I’d appreciate a little mention of the anthology if you decide to publish it elsewhere.
For your comics, a strict adherence to a 240x157mm page size (otherwise known as UK Standard Size) which is just a tiny bit smaller than US Comic size. For final page submissions I’d want flattened Tiff files at a minimum of 300 dpi, CYMK colours. Should also mention it can be black and white if that’s something you want to do.
You can find helpful page templates from ComicPrintingUK if you want to be absolutely sure.
I’m using this size as a tiny money saving plan for if and when Starship Anthology goes into print. For now I’ll just be collecting them together on a website and a free PDF, but I’m following the methodology of “Video Games For Good” ( An anthology I was part of) and will be going to kickstarter with everyone who submits permission if anyone submits work at all haha.
For submissions, you can write and draw it all yourself or submit as a team it’s up to you. I will not however be teaming up artists and writers, that’s up to you. I Will certainly signal boost people who looking though.
(( As a second amendment, please don't include things you don't have permission to use, or if you want to do a clear parody of something, don't outright mention or use designs from the thing you're parodying, just to cover your backs and mine ))
If you are looking for any criticism or help with your submission, the friendly folks involved in the #Comicbookhour community on twitter or comicbookhour.com will be happy to help if you ask nicely.
In terms of deadline, submissions will be open as of posting ( February 27, 2017 ) this and close roughly 6 months from now on August 27, 2017
Send your completed comic submissions to r_rudge@hotmail.com and find me on twitter @RLRudge if you have any questions.Map: Where (And How) The Government Can Execute People
The Nebraska state Legislature voted Wednesday to repeal the death penalty in the state. The 30-19 vote overrides Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of a law the Legislature passed last week getting rid of the policy.
This makes Nebraska the 19th state in the nation (along with the District of Columbia) to outlaw the death penalty, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that studies the policy. And as the New York Times reports, it's also now the first conservative state to ban the death penalty since North Dakota in 1973.
In the 31 states that still have the death penalty, lethal injection is by far the most common method allowed. Still, a few states have more antiquated methods on the books as well: Washington, New Hampshire and Delaware still allow hanging and Utah and Oklahoma can use firing squads, for example. Utah authorized the use of the firing squad just this year for times when lethal-injection drugs aren't available.
Below, here's where — and how — states can execute convicts.Werit
The 1.6.2 patch was released today for SWTOR. As per usual, I ran my tools against it to see what was new. You can see the results below, there were about 242 new entries added, most of the were addressed in the patch notes.
New Armor Sets. We see that Smugglers and Imperial Agents get new armor sets, which appear in the store. Consulars and Inquisitors also seem to get a new set ( Sanctified Caretaker and Malevolent Interrogator respectively). They might be found in the now available Skip Tracer pack?
New Mount. There is mention of a new mount, the Firebolt.
Most everything else seems to be already in the store or having to do with balance changes as mentioned in the patch notes. I may have missed something though.
abl.mtx.consumable.credit_boom/6/0
abl.mtx.consumable.credit_boom/6/1
abl.mtx.pack.bundle.generic
abl.mtx.pack.bundle.generic/2/0
abl.mtx.pack.bundle.generic/2/1
abl.mtx.pack.generic
abl.mtx.pack.generic/2/0
abl.mtx.pack.generic/2/1
abl.mtx.toy.carbonite_chamber/9/0
abl.mtx.toy.carbonite_chamber/9/1
abl.mtx.toy.holiday_2012.life_day_orb/8/0
abl.mtx.toy.holiday_2012.life_day_orb/8/1
abl.mtx.toy.holiday_2012.tinsel_bomb/11/0
abl.mtx.toy.holiday_2012.tinsel_bomb/11/1
abl.mtx.toy.holiday_2012.tinsel_bomb/11/2
abl.mtx.toy.malgus_holo/11/0
abl.mtx.toy.malgus_holo/11/1
abl.mtx.toy.remote_control_starship/5/0
abl.mtx.toy.remote_control_starship/5/1
abl.mtx.toy.satele_holo/11/0
abl.mtx.toy.satele_holo/11/1
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.pvp.seline.gather_energy/7/0
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.pvp.seline.gather_energy/7/1
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/0
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/1
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/2
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/3
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/4
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/5
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/6
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/7
abl.placeables.qtr.1x4.raid.asation.enemy.boss.kephess.activate_control_tower/13/8
abl.player.mount.mtx.firebolt
abl.player.mount.mtx.firebolt/2/0
abl.player.mount.mtx.firebolt/2/1
abl.player.mount.mtx.firebolt/2/2
abl.qtr.1x1.flashpoint.kaon.enemy.trash.infected_sleeper.infected_sleeper_bash/23/0
abl.qtr.1x1.flashpoint.kaon.enemy.trash.infected_sleeper.infected_sleeper_bash/23/1
abl.qtr.1x1.flashpoint.kaon.enemy.trash.infected_sleeper.infected_sleeper_bash/23/2
abl.qtr.1x1.flashpoint.kaon.enemy.trash.infected_sleeper.infected_sleeper_bash/23/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_3.enrage/4/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_3.enrage/4/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_3.enrage/4/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_3.enrage/4/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_4.enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_4.enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_4.enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_2_bh.shared.difficulty_4.enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_3.enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_3.enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_3.enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_3.enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_4.enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_4.enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_4.enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_3_kintan.boss.difficulty_4.enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/4
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/5
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/6
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_4_hanoi.difficulty_1.spawn_bootup/19/7
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_3.enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_3.enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_3.enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_3.enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_4.enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_4.enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_4.enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x1.raid.karaggas_palace.enemy.boss.boss_5_karagga.karagga.difficulty_4.enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.kephess_enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.kephess_enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.kephess_enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.kephess_enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.walker_enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.walker_enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.walker_enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_3.walker_enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.kephess_enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.kephess_enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.kephess_enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.kephess_enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.walker_enrage/3/0
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.walker_enrage/3/1
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.walker_enrage/3/2
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.kephess.difficulty_4.walker_enrage/3/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_3.enrage/4/0
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_3.enrage/4/1
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_3.enrage/4/2
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_3.enrage/4/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_4.enrage/4/0
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_4.enrage/4/1
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_4.enrage/4/2
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.tanks.difficulty_4.enrage/4/3
abl.qtr.1x2.raid.denova.enemy.boss.troll.difficulty_3.troll_2_enrage/6/0
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. She hopes to be able to decipher more of the text using the images taken by the Smithsonian that provide finer details. Unfortunately only a portion of the text survived; parts of letters and some words are missing.
Wolfe explained that the practice of using erasable slates for drafting music and teaching the alphabet and spelling goes back to the 16th and 17th centuries, but they were so fragile, they usually broke.
Finding a largely intact slate like this one is "very rare," Wolfe said. "The slate provides a unique window into a practice that we've known about, but that we haven't seen before."
Algonquian Pronunciation Symbols
Historic Jamestowne's Kelso said the enhanced images also revealed two symbols that are similar to characters in a phonetic Algonquian alphabet invented in 1585 by Thomas Hariot.
The English scientist participated in the expedition to establish an ill-fated colony on Roanoke Island—in what is now North Carolina—for his patron, Sir Walter Raleigh, that same year. (Related: "Search for America's 'Lost Colony' Gets New Boost.")
It wasn't until after archaeologists had discovered the slate that Kelso was made aware of the 36-character alphabet by a researcher attending one of Kelso's lectures. The alphabet survives as a manuscript in the library of the Westminster School in London.
Kelso said there are also documented references to a dictionary of the Algonquian language, which some scholars think Hariot developed, since he had had the opportunity to learn the language from Native Americans who returned to England with the explorers. Fire destroyed the dictionary in 1666, and there are no surviving copies, he said.
"When I found out about it," Kelso said, "the probability that the European explorers likely showed up at Jamestown with bilingual dictionaries, ready to communicate with the Indians, made perfect sense," he said.
Other details revealed through the enhanced images will help researchers determine the sequence of the inscriptions.
"In a way, it's a mini-archaeology site. If one groove cuts across another groove, you can tell which one was the most recent," Kelso said.
Smithsonian curators also used x-ray fluorescence to identify the chemical composition of the slate and create a geological profile. The results will be compared to slate samples from different locations in Europe to learn the origin of the slate.
Found in John Smith's Well
Archaeologists discovered the slate in the center of James Fort in a well most likely built in 1609 under the direction of Capt. John Smith, a founding leader of Jamestown, which was established in 1607.
When the water in the well went bad, colonists used the well as a trash pit. They discarded the tablet and thousands of other artifacts during the winter of 1609-10, called the Starving Time.
Near the slate, archaeologists found butchered bones from horses and dogs, which may date to the same period, when the fort was under siege and colonists resorted to eating their domestic animals. Only about 60 of 200 people survived the winter.
Archaeologists reached the bottom of the 14-foot-deep (4.2-meter-deep) barrel-lined well in December. They are currently analyzing, conserving and restoring the rest of the enormous and unprecedented collection of artifacts. The analysis is expected to lead to a better understanding of the colony's difficult early years.
Whose Slate Was It?
Kelso speculates that the slate belonged to William Strachey, the first secretary of the Jamestown colony.
Strachey had legal training, so he would have known how to write using secretary hand. He was also among the 140 castaways from the Sea Venture, an English ship that sailed for Jamestown in 1609 with supplies and more settlers to reinforce the colony.
The ship was wrecked in a storm and its passengers were stranded in Bermuda for ten months. After building two new ships, they arrived at Jamestown in the spring of 1610, in time to help those who had survived the winter.
Previously identified drawings on the slate may indicate that the owner traveled through Bermuda. These include a palmetto tree and possibly a cahow—a rare seabird that nests only in Bermuda.
Drawings of rampant lions, used in the English coat of arms during the 1603-25 reign of King James I, were also identified earlier and suggest that the owner was involved with government and armorial drawings—evidence that Kelso believes also may point to Strachey.
In the months to come, the Jamestown slate will continue to undergo a variety of nondestructive analytical tests.
"We have only begun to bleed the secrets out of this extraordinary object," Kelso said.MH17 A Malaysian journalist has been slammed after being filmed disturbing suspected human remains with a stick at the MH17 crash site.
“A Malaysia Gazette visit has found that there are still fragments believed to be skin at the MH17 crash site,” said the news portal’s chief reporter Khairuddin Mohd Amin in the video.
As Khairuddin finishes his sentence, the camera pans towards the ground, zooming in on him flicking a long, burnt object on the ground with a stick.
The video was uploaded on Malaysia Gazette ’s official YouTube channel on July 23 and was accompanied by a blurb mentioning that the skin was of human origin. The video lasted for two minutes and 29 seconds.
“Malaysia can now boast of yet another international achievement: membership in the MH17 Journalism Hall of Shame, for a disgusting violation of privacy in death,” said senior journalist Gobind Rudra on his blog Uppercaise yesterday in response to the video.
Twitter as well carried condemnations since yesterday, as netizens began to take notice of the video.
“Dear Malaysia Gazette, is this indeed your chief reporter? Shameful!” said Twitter user @klubbkiddkl.
“Who let Malaysia Gazette enter the MH17 crash site for their reporter to disturb pieces of the victims’ skin and flesh? What is this?” asked another user @ibnukhusairy.
“If what was being flicked around is the remains of a Malaysian onboard MH17, how are you going to explain to the families? My God, it’s like an insult,” he continued.
The gaffe is the latest in a series of missteps involving journalists at the MH17 crash site, which is in separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine and reportedly remained unsecured for days since the crash.
The Boeing 777-200ER aircraft was shot down while flying over the area on July 17, killing all 298 persons on board.
Previously, SkyNews reporter Colin Brazier apologised after he rummaged through a victim’s luggage on live television, while Dutch current affairs show EenVandaag apologised after its reporter picked up a victim’s diary at the crash site and read it on camera.
Video removed
The Malaysia Gazette video could still be viewed last night but has since been removed without explanation. However, several YouTube users have uploaded copies of the video to the online video service.
Malaysiakini has contacted Malaysia Gazette for a response yesterday and has yet to receive a reply.
Separately, Ukrainian pro-Russia separatist Ekaterina Parkhomenko ( right ) deleted her Instagram account after being criticised for uploadeding a photo of mascara purportedly looted from the crash site.
“Mascara from Amsterdam; to be precise, from the field. Well, you understand,” she said in the photo’s caption, according to the UK newspaper The Telegraph’s report.
She reportedly said the Catrice-branded mascara came from a “looter acquaintance” and defended her actions before shutting down her account, saying, “I’m a separatist and after the recent events everything Ukrainian makes me feel sick and really infuriated.”HTC wants you to accessorize the Vive. At the beginning of the month the company kicked off a new competition over on Viveport, asking fans to design new additions for its VR headset, no matter how silly of infeasible. Over the past week there have been a flood of submissions that the community will vote on. The top three will each earn an HTC Vive, and the overall winner will have their design 3D printed (though not actually functioning).
As you might expect, there are already a lot of gun controllers and a lot of hooks to hang wires from. We’ve looked for some of the most unusual submissions we could actually see using ourselves. In our quest, we also found some of the strangest, funniest designs out there that we had to share with you.
We’ve got everything from haptic feedback controller covers to, uh, cup and ball accessories. Who knows, maybe the next big VR innovation is on this list? See anything that inspires you to make your own design? There’s still just under three weeks to submit a design.
Vive Hoverboard, from GabeMan
Back to the Future may have been a bit ambitious about the future of the hoverboard, but we can still use VR to step into the role of Marty McFly. GabeMan’s sleek board has a rubber balance disc in the middle that raises you off the ground, while built-in sensors mean you can actually direct and drive in-game. Tony Hawks’ RIDE board was “full of technology” and still failed, but with accurate lighthouse tracking we could see this being a pretty heavy addition to the Vive line-up.
Rating: Wonderful
Vive Pet Collar, from katie_tripixels
In concept, putting a collar on your cat so that you can track it in VR, and not the real world where you might actually need to find it sometimes, sounds silly. Still, it’s a very valid point that Mittens doesn’t know you’re experiencing room-scale VR and can’t actually see her when you’ve got a clump of plastic over your face. We certainly wouldn’t forgive ourselves if anything painful were to happen, so maybe this one’s a good idea after all.
Rating: Weird and Wonderful
Haptic Feedback Case for Controller, from MaxieGast
Vive’s vibration feedback goes a long way to adding immersion to certain actions like batting a ball, but it only gets you so far. Until a second or third generation of controller implements better haptics, we really like the idea of this add-on cover that you slide your wands into. It would enhance the feedback you get from your games to make every shot feel more realistic or every button give you resistance.
Rating: Wonderful
Player Tracking Camera Robot, from BOLL
Want to make your VR livestreams a little more cinematic? This awesome user-tracking robot will keep you in the center of the action as you run around your room-scale play area. The designer has other ideas to get the camera on a moving track too. Imagine making mixed reality videos that actually moved with this setup.
Rating: Wonderful
Lighthouse mounting on a Lampster body, from notadecoy
We’re more pointing this one out because of just how adorable it makes the Lighthouse sensor, rather than actually being that practical. As the name suggests, Lampster bodies are actually designed for lights, not high-tech pieces of tracking hardware. Look at the little dude though! If only he was several feet taller, so he could efficiently track where you were moving to, and not just look cute.
Rating: Werid
Immersive Floor, from Sander_Cohen
Have you ever walked over the virtual cracks in a dry desert floor or perhaps the flaky bridge boards in EVEREST VR and wondered “Why can’t I feel that?” Immersive Floor wants to bring you that bit further into your experience with electrically-charged modular mats that will change shape based on the surface you’re walking on. It’s a pretty interesting idea, though it adds to all the setup you’re already going through to get room-scale support.
Rating: Weird and Wonderful
Analogous Cup-and-Ball for HTC Vive Controllers, from Kaibear
Who needs VR when you’ve got cup-and-ball? Spend $799 on the high-tech Vive and start using it straight away with this addictive game that’s fun for all the family. No expensive PC required!
Rating: Best invention ever
Tagged with: Accessories, Competition, design, htc viveBradley Wiggins is the first Brit and the 99th rider to win the Tour de France - completing the 3,497km (2,173 mile) race over 20 stages.
The race itself provides a lot of data - so how does Wiggins compare?
Thanks to this data from Le Tour, which we have updated with the latest result, we can get a picture of how riders are getting faster since the race began in 1903. Then Italian-born French contestant Maurice Garin won the then 2,428km race in 94 hours, 33 minutes. Wiggins - albeit with modern technology and training (and better roads) - won in 87 hours, 34 minutes and 47 seconds on a route that was 44% longer.
In that first race of 1903, only 21 riders out of 60 finished - a dropout rate of 65%, In 2012, 153 of 198 riders finished, a dropout rate of 23%. That's oscillated a lot. The route was a mighty 5,745km (3,570 miles) in 1926, and 85 of the 126 riders dropped out, a rate of 67%. In the 1919 race, in the aftermath of the first war, 84% of the 69 competitors dropped out, the highest rate ever.
Here's some of the key data:
• Of the 99 races, 36 were won by French contestants, 18 Belgian, 12 Spanish, 9 Italian and 10 from the US
• A French rider hasn't won since 1985, when Bernard Hinault took the yellow jersey for the third time
• Lance Armstrong has won more Tours than anyone else ever - seven in total
• The average winning speed is 36.8km/h (22.9mph). The top two record speeds are held by Lance Armstrong, with 41.65km/hour in 2005 and 40.94km/h in 2003. He's followed by Spain's Óscar Pereiro in 2006 with 40.78km/h
• The average age of winners is 27.7 - the oldest to win was Belgian Firmin Lambot who won aged 36 in 1922. The youngest was Frenchman Henri Cornet in the second race of 1904 at 20
The full data is below. What can you do with it?
Data summary
Tour de France winners Click heading to sort table. Download this data Year Stg Start Dropout % Course, km Time Avg km/h Winner Age Country 1903 6 60 65 2,428 94h 33m 0s 25.68 M. Garin 32 France 1904 6 88 69 2,428 96h 5m 56s 25.26 H. Cornet 20 France 1905 11 60 60 2,994 110h 26m 58s 27.11 L. Trousselier 24 France 1906 13 82 83 4,637 189h 34m 0s 24.46 R. Pottier 27 France 1907 14 93 65 4,488 158h 45m 5s 28.47 L. Petit-Breton 24 France 1908 14 112 68 4,488 156h 53m 29s 28.74 L. Petit-Breton 25 France 1909 14 150 63 4,497 157h 1m 22s 28.66 F. Faber 22 Lux. 1910 15 110 63 4,734 162h 41m 30s 29.10 O. Lapize 21 France 1911 15 84 67 5,343 195h 37m 0s 27.32 G. Garrigou 27 France 1912 15 131 69 5,289 190h 30m 28s 27.76 O. Defraye 24 Bel 1913 15 140 82 5,287 197h 54m 0s 26.72 P. Thys 23 Bel 1914 15 145 63 5,380 200h 28m 48s 26.84 P. Thys 24 Bel 1919 15 69 84 5,560 231h 7m 15s 24.06 F. Lambot 33 Bel 1920 15 113 81 5,503 228h 36m 13s 24.07 P. Thys 30 Bel 1921 15 123 69 5,485 221h 50m 26s 24.72 L. Scieur 33 Bel 1922 15 121 69 5,375 222h 8m 6s 24.20 F. Lambot 36 Bel 1923 15 139 65 5,386 222h 15m 30s 24.23 H. Pélissier 33 France 1924 15 157 62 5,425 226h 18m 21s 24.25 O. Bottecchia 30 Italy 1925 18 130 62 5,440 219h 10m 18s 24.82 O. Bottecchia 31 Italy 1926 17 126 67 5,745 238h 44m 25s 24.27 L. Buysse 34 Bel 1927 24 142 73 5,398 198h 16m 42s 27.22 N. Frantz 28 Lux. 1928 22 162 75 5,476 192h 48m 58s 28.40 N. Frantz 29 Lux. 1929 22 155 61 5,286 186h 39m 16s 28.32 M. Dewaele 33 Bel 1930 21 100 41 4,822 172h 12m 16s 28.00 A. Leducq 26 France 1931 24 81 57 5,091 177h 10m 3s 28.74 A. Magne 27 France 1932 21 80 29 4,479 154h 12m 59s 29.05 A. Leducq 28 France 1933 23 80 50 4,395 147h 51m 37s 29.82 G. Speicher 26 France 1934 23 60 35 4,470 147h 13m 58s 30.36 A. Magne 30 France 1935 21 93 51 4,338 141h 23m 0s 30.65 R. Maes 22 Bel 1936 21 90 52 4,442 142h 47m 32s 31.11 S. Maes 27 Bel 1937 20 98 53 4,415 138h 58m 31s 31.77 R. Lapébie 26 France 1938 21 96 43 4,694 148h 29m 12s 31.56 G. Bartali 24 Italy 1939 18 79 38 4,224 132h 3m 17s 31.99 S. Maes 30 Bel 1947 21 100 47 4,642 148h 11m 25s 31.41 J. Robic 26 France 1948 21 120 63 4,922 147h 10m 36s 33.44 G. Bartali 34 Italy 1949 21 120 54 4,808 149h 40m 49s 32.12 F. Coppi 30 Italy 1950 22 116 56 4,773 145h 36m 46s 32.78 F. Kübler 31 Switz 1951 24 123 46 4,690 142h 20m 14s 32.95 H. Koblet 26 Switz 1952 23 122 36 4,898 151h 57m 20s 32.23 F. Coppi 33 Italy 1953 22 119 36 4,476 129h 23m 25s 34.59 L. Bobet 28 France 1954 23 110 37 4,656 140h 6m 5s 33.23 L. Bobet 29 France 1955 22 130 47 4,495 130h 29m 26s 34.45 L. Bobet 30 France 1956 22 120 27 4,498 124h 1m 16s 36.27 R. Walkowiak 29 France 1957 22 120 53 4,669 135h 44m 42s 34.52 J. Anquetil 23 France 1958 24 120 35 4,319 116h 59m 5s 36.92 C. Gaul 26 Lux. 1959 22 120 46 4,358 123h 46m 45s 35.47 F. Bahamontes 31 Spain 1960 22 128 37 4,173 112h 8m 42s 37.21 G. Nencini 30 Italy 1961 21 132 45 4,397 122h 1m 33s 36.03 J. Anquetil 27 France 1962 22 149 37 4,274 114h 31m 45s 37.32 J. Anquetil 28 France 1963 21 130 42 4,138 113h 30m 5s 37.09 J. Anquetil 29 France 1964 22 132 39 4,504 127h 9m 44s 35.42 J. Anquetil 30 France 1965 22 130 26 4,188 116h 42m 6s 35.89 F. Gimondi 23 Italy 1966 22 130 37 4,329 117h 34m 21s 36.76 L. Aimar 25 France 1967 22 130 32 4,779 136h 53m 50s 34.76 R. Pingeon 27 France 1968 22 110 43 4,492 133h 49m 32s 33.56 J. Janssen 28 Neth 1969 22 130 34 4,117 116h 16m 2s 35.41 E. Merckx 24 Bel 1970 23 150 33 4,254 119h 31m 49s 35.59 E. Merckx 25 Bel 1971 20 130 28 3,608 96h 45m 14s 38.08 E. Merckx 26 Bel 1972 20 132 33 3,846 108h 17m 18s 35.51 E. Merckx 27 Bel 1973 20 132 34 4,090 122h 25m 34s 33.41 L.Ocana 28 Spain 1974 22 130 19 4,098 116h 16m 58s 35.24 E. Merckx 29 Bel 1975 22 140 39 4,000 114h 35m 31s 34.91 B. Thévenet 27 France 1976 22 130 33 4,017 116h 22m 23s 34.52 L. Van Impe 30 Bel 1977 22 100 47 4,096 115h 38m 30s 35.42 B. Thévenet 29 France 1978 22 110 29 3,908 108h 18m 0s 36.08 B. Hinault 24 France 1979 24 150 40 3,765 103h 6m 50s 36.51 B. Hinault 25 France 1980 22 130 35 3,842 109h 19m 14s 35.14 J. Zoetemelk 34 Neth 1981 24 150 19 3,753 96h 19m 38s 38.96 B. Hinault 27 France 1982 21 169 26 3,507 92h 8m 46s 38.06 B. Hinault 28 France 1983 22 140 37 3,809 105h 7m 52s 36.23 L. Fignon 23 France 1984 23 170 27 4,021 112h 3m 40s 35.88 L. Fignon 24 France 1985 22 180 20 4,109 113h 24m 23s 36.23 B. Hinault 31 France 1986 23 210 37 4,094 110h 35m 19s 37.02 G. LeMond 25 US 1987 25 207 35 4,231 115h 27m 42s 36.64 S. Roche 28 Irel 1988 22 198 24 3,286 84h 27m 53s 38.91 P. Delgado 28 Spain 1989 21 198 30 3,285 87h 38m 35s 37.49 G. LeMond 28 US 1990 21 198 21 3,504 90h 43m 20s 38.62 G. LeMond 29 US 1991 22 198 20 3,914 101h 1m 20s 38.75 M. Indurain 27 Spain 1992 21 198 34 3,983 100h 49m 30s 39.50 M. Indurain 28 Spain 1993 20 180 24 3,714 95h 57m 9s 38.71 M. Indurain 29 Spain 1994 21 189 38 3,978 103h 38m 38s 38.38 M. Indurain 30 Spain 1995 20 189 39 3,635 92h 44m 59s 39.19 M. Indurain 31 Spain 1996 21 198 35 3,765 95h 57m 16s 39.23 B. Riis 32 Denmark 1997 21 198 30 3,950 100h 30m 35s 39.24 J. Ullrich 24 Ger 1998 21 189 49 3,875 92h 49m 46s 39.98 M. Pantani 28 Italy 1999 20 180 22 3,870 91h 32m 16s 40.28 L. Armstrong 28 US 2000 21 177 28 3,662 92h 33m 8s 39.57 L. Armstrong 29 US 2001 20 189 24 3,458 86h 17m 28s 40.07 L. Armstrong 30 US 2002 20 189 19 3,278 82h 5m 12s 39.92 L. Armstrong 31 US 2003 20 198 26 3,427 83h 41m 12s 40.94 L. Armstrong 32 US 2004 20 188 22 3,391 83h 36m 2s 40.55 L. Armstrong 33 US 2005 21 189 18 3,593 86h 15m 2s 41.65 L. Armstrong 34 US 2006 21 176 21 3,657 89h 39m 30s 40.78 O. Pereiro 30 Spain 2007 21 189 25 3,570 91h 0m 26s 39.23 A. Contador 24 Spain 2008 21 180 19 3,559 87h 52m 52s 40.49 C. Sastre 33 Spain 2009 21 180 13 3,460 85h 48m 35s 40.32 A. Contador 26 Spain 2010 20 198 14 3,642 91h 58m 48s 39.59 A. Schleck 25 Lux. 2011 21 198 16 3,630 86h 12m 22s 39.79 C. Evans 34 Aus 2012 20 198 23 3,497 87h 34m 47s 39.83 B. Wiggins 32 UK AVER- AGE 21.4 175 28 3,748 38.3 28.7
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• Like us on FacebookWith the latest Star Wars film due out in just a few weeks, a Fredericton man has created a piece of that far away galaxy that is out of this world.
Cory Pacione has built his own fully operational version of a little orange-and-white droid called BB-8 that's featured in the new movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
A self-proclaimed "forever" fan, Pacione had previously built a replica of the beloved robot character R2-D2 from the original movies and even a WALL-E, the robot from the 2008 film of the same name, for his daughter.
Cory Pacione saw the BB-8 droid in the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars film and thought he could build it...so he did. And it works! 9:01
Then he saw BB-8 in one of the upcoming Star Wars trailers a year ago.
"I was like, 'I need to build this," Pacione told CBC Radio New Brunswick's Shift.
Four magnets in each the head and body sections work together with hidden wheels to make the BB-roll around.
The BB-8 model is a hit with kids and adults alike, says creator Cory Pacione. (Lauren Bird/CBC) A graphic designer by trade, Pacione says he's not into robotics so much as the creativity.
"But I love the finished look, like the weathering, making it look old and beat up and distressed — the more art side of it, I guess," he said.
"It's definitely nice to see him come to life."
Pacione says the Fredericton Makerspace, a non-profit group that provides space and resources for creative projects, was a "huge help." BB-8's dome body was made using their 3D printer.
Others are interested in the robot replica too. The Canadian science show Daily Planet filmed a segment last week on Pacione's creation that's due to air in the next few weeks.
He said he would like to take BB-8 to a Star Wars convention in the future and even to make hospital visits.
In the meantime, Pacione is looking forward to seeing the franchise's new movie, which will be released Dec. 18.
"I have high expectations," he said.Dutch Princess Bikes To First Day Of Public School
Enlarge this image toggle caption Netherlands Government Information Service/Getty Images Netherlands Government Information Service/Getty Images
Princesses have first days of school, too.
In one of those so-normal-it's-newsworthy moments, Princess Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands posed for a first day of school picture in her driveway, wearing jeans and pink sneakers.
Before the 11-year-old queen-to-be set off for school on her bicycle, a popular mode of transportation for the Dutch, her father, King Willem-Alexander, filmed his daughter riding down the driveway. He posted it to Facebook along with a message asking that his daughter's privacy be respected.
The heir to throne won't take on official state duties until she is 18. In the meantime she will attend a public school in The Hague called Christian Gymnasium Sorghvliet.Poverty Rate in Egypt Rises to 27.8%, Says Planning Minister
Minister of Planning and Administrative Development Ashraf El-Araby announced that the poverty rate in Egypt has risen from 26 to 27.8 percent, saying that in absence of reform procedures, the rate would have reached 33 percent.
In a press conference held on Wednesday, El-Araby said that the reform measures the government has undertaken are necessary and indispensable, privately owned Al Masry Al Youm reported.
El-Araby further pointed out that inflation rates in Egypt had reached over 10 percent in absence of any reforms, saying that the inflationary effect occurs only once.
The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced in July that Egypt’s annual headline inflation stood at 14.8 percent – unchanged from June but up 6.5 percent from July 2015, when the rate stood at 8.3 percent.
Privately-owned Daily News Egypt reported that the inflation rate is also expected to rise in upcoming weeks, when the effect of higher electricity prices will be felt and the new value-added tax (VAT) will be implemented.
Nothing that high inflation falls back on the lack of adequate control over the markets, the Minister of Planning stressed the importance of activating the regulatory system in parallel with the reform measures.
The state is also working on a special program dedicated to the social safety of poorer classes, El-Araby announced, indicating a plan to provide this class with housing and to eliminate slum areas.
Subscribe to our newsletterThe Ebola virus can be found across the animal kingdom, from bats and birds to pigs and porcupines. But there is a difference between having a disease and transmitting it to another animal—or another species. That’s at the heart of a controversial move by Spanish health authorities, who have obtained a court order to euthanize the dog belonging to a nurse who contracted the Ebola virus in Madrid, saying that available scientific knowledge suggests dogs can transmit the virus to humans. But how much do we know about which animals can catch and transmit the deadly virus?
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a news conference on Tuesday that “we know in rural areas of Africa, Ebola can infect mammals. In fact, that’s how it spreads, from probably bats to animals living in the forest, people hunting the animals.” Ebola has to date been found in many bush animals, including bush pigs, rodents, porcupines and forest-dwelling antelope. Any infected carcasses could spread the virus to hunters or to anyone who eats bush meat.
Dogs
To date, there is no documented case of Ebola spreading to people from dogs or dogs to people, and only one study, carried out by the CDC, looks at whether dogs can get Ebola at all. This research into the prevalence of Ebola-virus antibodies in dogs from regions of Gabon affected by the 2001–2002 outbreak showed that “dogs can be infected by Ebola virus” but exhibit no symptoms and the infection eventually clears.
The researchers concluded that “dogs could be a potential source of human Ebola outbreaks and of virus spread during human outbreaks,” but they did not test their hypothesis that human infection could occur through licking, biting or grooming. Instead, the study assumed dogs would transmit the infection in the same way as other animals observed in experiments; those animals excreted viral particles (in saliva, urine, feces) for a short period before the virus was cleared. David Moore, an expert in infectious diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that since no dogs showed symptoms of the Ebola virus “there is absolutely no evidence to support a role for dogs in transmission.”
The study also suggests that differences in behavior and diet of pet dogs may alter risks in Ebola transmission. Whereas most dogs in Western Europe are fed dog food, many of the dogs studied in Gabon scavenged for their food, eating small dead animals that could have exposed them to the virus.
Bats
Both the World Health Organization and recent reports have suggested that the 2014 outbreak of Ebola can be traced to fruit bats in the West Africa region. Guinea, where bat soup is a local delicacy, has reportedly banned the sale and consumption of bat meat since the start of the outbreak.
Primates
Non-human primates, like monkeys, are also suspected carriers of the disease and, as in humans, the Ebola virus can kill them. Research has shown gorillas and chimpanzees suffer massive population declines during Ebola outbreaks, with the virus killing an estimated 5,000 gorillas in Gabon and the Republic of the Congo from 2002—2003.
Birds
There is limited data about the prevalence of Ebola in birds but a 2002 study from Purdue University found that the Ebola virus |
engaged in what you called “good old-fashioned ass-grabbery”—actually had success that way.
I have no doubt that men who spend their dates flirting with women instead of demanding that the answer for something Andrea Dworkin wrote 35 years ago do, in fact, get laid more. What’s interesting is Aaronson doesn’t seem to grasp that some of that ass-grabbery might be, you know, consensual. Because that would be admitting that women have sexual desires like he does, as opposed to being sex-dispensing machines who have been broken by feminism and their own inherent female wrongness.
The same girls who I was terrified would pepper-spray me and call the police if I looked in their direction, often responded to the crudest advances of the most Neanderthal of men by accepting those advances.
Translation: I’ve completely absorbed the idea that dating nerds hurts your social status, so I only pay attention to women I have nothing in common with while turning my nose up to women who share my interests. When those women inevitably reject me, I refuse to accept that it might be because they don’t share my interests, but instead choose to believe that it’s because they are fundamentally broken and therefore must be attracted to men who are bad for them. I categorically refuse to accept that any of my romantic rivals might actually be okay guys. I also categorically refuse to accept that women have a right to have sex with who they want instead of dole pussy out like it’s gold stars for getting good grades.
Yet it was I, the nerd, and not the Neanderthals, who needed to check his privilege and examine his hidden entitlement!
I wouldn’t call it hidden. And it’s entirely possible that said “Neanderthals” are not acting entitled but are flirting and trying to impress women they’re interested in, which suggests that they understand that they aren’t owed but that women should have to want it, too.
So what happened to break me out of this death-spiral? Did I have an epiphany, where I realized that despite all appearances, it was I, the terrified nerd, who was wallowing in unearned male privilege, while those Neaderthal ass-grabbers were actually, on some deeper level, the compassionate feminists—and therefore, that both of us deserved everything we got?
Clearly not.
No, there was no such revelation. All that happened was that I got older, and after years of hard work, I achieved some success in science, and that success boosted my self-confidence (at least now I had something worth living for), and the newfound confidence, besides making me more attractive, also made me able to (for example) ask a woman out, despite not being totally certain that my doing so would pass muster with a committee of radfems chaired by Andrea Dworkin—a prospect that was previously unthinkable to me.
In other words, his problem was not feminism or women, but his crippling unwillingness to put himself out there. When he got over that a little and actually started to interact with women, he discovered that they were not actually the man-hating hell beasts he believed.
This, to my mind, “defiance” of feminism is the main reason why I was able to enjoy a few years of a normal, active dating life, which then led to meeting the woman who I married.
However, he continues to be unwilling to believe that he was the one with a problem, and prefers to believe that it’s women and feminists in particular that are out to get him. He is utterly unwilling to accept that what happened was he overcame a personal problem and instead imagines that he defeated a cabal of man-hating feminists that exist only in his mind.
Now, the whole time I was struggling with this, I was also fighting a second battle: to maintain the liberal, enlightened, feminist ideals that I had held since childhood, against a powerful current pulling me away from them.
The eternal struggle of the sexist: Objective reality suggests that women are people, but the heart wants to believe they are a robot army put here for sexual service and housework.
I reminded myself, every day, that no, there’s no conspiracy to make the world a hell for shy male nerds.
While continuing to build your social and sexual identity around this specific conspiracy theory.
There are only individual women and men trying to play the cards they’re dealt, and the confluence of their interests sometimes leads to crappy outcomes. No woman “owes” male nerds anything; no woman deserves blame if she prefers the Neanderthals; everyone’s free choice demands respect.
I say that women aren’t to blame, but look at them! They fuck men who aren’t me. Clearly they are screwing up.
That I managed to climb out of the pit with my feminist beliefs mostly intact, you might call a triumph of abstract reason over experience.
Translation: I reluctantly claim to believe women are equal, but clearly I believe they are a bunch of bitches who have denied me. Denied me.
But I hope you now understand why I might feel “only” 97% on board with the program of feminism.
You can have the vote, I guess. But you are failures for not fucking me.
From my perspective, it serves only to shift blame from the Neanderthals and ass-grabbers onto some of society’s leastprivileged males, the ones who were themselves victims of bullying and derision, and who acquired enough toxic shame that way for appealing to their shame to be an effective way to manipulate their behavior.
The notion that women respond with enthusiasm to having someone sexually assault them will not be moved by any number of Hollaback videos. He needs to believe that women did not fuck him not because of anything he did, but because women are fundamentally broken, as a gender. No evidence otherwise will penetrate.
As I see it, whenever these nerdy males pull themselves out of the ditch the world has tossed them into, while still maintaining enlightened liberal beliefs, including in the inviolable rights of every woman and man, they don’t deserve blame for whatever feminist shortcomings they might still have. They deserve medals at the White House.
Translation: We deserve all the pussy cookies and you women, being broken, keep failing to provide the pity fucks we have earned by pretending, badly, not to hate you.
And no, I’m not even suggesting to equate the ~15 years of crippling, life-destroying anxiety I went through with the trauma of a sexual assault victim. The two are incomparable; they’re horrible in different ways. But let me draw your attention to one difference: the number of academics who study problems like the one I had is approximately zero. There are no task forces devoted to it, no campus rallies in support of the sufferers, no therapists or activists to tell you that you’re not alone or it isn’t your fault. There are only therapists and activists to deliver the opposite message: that you are alone and it is your privileged, entitled, male fault.
He’s not equating them. He’s definitely suggesting that having to learn to speak to women instead of having naked women show up in your bed by magic is worse than being raped. You know, because people pity you if you’ve been raped. They may even pity fuck you, which is clearly all he ever wanted.
You could respond to this, I guess, by treating me as just another agent of the Patriarchy trying at length to “mansplain away” his privilege.
He really has a problem with women reacting normally to objective facts about the world, doesn’t he?
If you do that, then I’ll consider this discussion closed, as neither of us will have anything more to learn from the other.
I am not buying the argument that his mind was ever actually open to hearing from women about their experiences, lest that disturb his belief that we never suffer rejection, anxiety, or fear.
But you seem like an interesting, reasonable person, so I hold out some hope for a human response.
Translation: Despite my claim to be afraid of women, I feel powerful enough around women to decree whether or not a woman’s response is acceptable or not, based strictly on how much it flatters me.Amir Khan (right) has won 31 of his 35 professional fights
Former world light-welterweight champion Amir Khan says he hopes to return to the ring in November.
The 30-year-old last fought in May 2016 when he jumped weight divisions to face Mexico's Saul Alvarez for the WBC middleweight title, but was knocked out in the sixth round.
A fight against Manny Pacquiao was set for April but was called off.
"I've decided to take a big fight at the end of the year and for a title hopefully," Khan said.
"I was thinking of fighting at the end of this month but what I've thought of doing instead is fighting after Ramadan - I want to be back in the ring in November."
'It was like a Rocky movie'
Anthony Joshua knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in the 11th round
Khan also spoke about world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua's win over Wladimir Klitschko at Wembley and believes it will give the whole of boxing a boost.
Joshua's stunning victory on Saturday took place in front of a post-war British record 90,000 fans as he became WBA and IBF world champion.
"What a fight - it was like a Rocky movie, it was a crazy. I think that is what boxing needed," Bolton-born Khan told BBC Radio Manchester.
"Boxing is definitely one of the biggest sports in Britain and to see a 90,000 stadium full, that is somewhere I would love to be.
"Maybe I could see my career off having a big fight like that and then calling it a day as I've not got many fights left in me now."Scientists have finally solved the mystery of a milky rain that coated cars and raised eyebrows across a wide swathe of the Pacific Northwest this February, researchers said on Tuesday.
A multi-disciplinary Washington State University team said they had determined that dust from the dry bed of a shallow lake some 480 miles (772 km) from where the rain fell was to blame for the unusual precipitation.
The rain left a trail of powdery residue across a nearly 200-mile (322-km) stretch of eastern parts of Oregon andWashington state earlier this year, leaving scientists and residents perplexed about its origins.
Some scientists initially speculated that an erupting Japanese volcano was the source of the powdery white substance. Others blamed wildfires, and some thought that a Nevada dust storm was the cause.
All three theories were proven wrong when a Washington State University hydrochemist teamed up with a meteorologist and two geologists at the school to test the chemical composition of rainwater samples and analyze February wind pattern data.
"The wind trajectory analyzes didn't add up," said Brian Lamb, who runs the university's Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, which determined that air was flowing from the south before the milky rain fell.
Sodium levels in water samples offered another clue, WSU hydrochemist Kent Keller said in a statement issued on Tuesday. "The chemistry is consistent with a saline source from a dry lake bed," he said.
That led researchers to consider Oregon's Summer Lake, which is shallow and often largely dries up during droughts. A storm with winds reaching 60 miles per hour (96.5 kph) struck Summer Lake the night before the milky rain.
"That would have been powerful enough to lift a good-size dust plume," said Nic Loyd, a meteorologist at the university. Additional analysis confirmed Summer Lake to be the rain's origin point, the scientists said.
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Seven years ago, a similar milky rain mystery in New Mexico was also ultimately traced to a dry lake bed, they said.
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Sandra Maler)Close
Communities of microorganisms have been thriving in the Gulf of Mexico despite the presence of naturally-occurring oil seeps in the water surface, a new study says.
Some areas of the ocean floor are known to have deposits of natural oil and gas, which sometimes make their way to the surface in the form of seeps. When these substances accumulate in the water surface, they begin to form nutrient-rich bubbles.
In a study featured in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers from Columbia University have discovered that algae-like organisms called phytoplankton tend to congregate near areas of the Gulf of Mexico where seeps of natural oil and gas can be found.
While the oil and gas does not appear to be particularly beneficial to the microorganisms, the researchers believe the nutrients in the bubbles are what draw them to the seep formations. The phenomenon can be compared to how the upwelling of currents brings nutrients from the ocean floor to the surface.
Phytoplankton communities gather in areas of the Gulf where these bubbles form to feed on the nutrients they bring.
"This is the beginning of evidence that some microbes in the Gulf may be preconditioned to survive with oil, at least at lower concentrations," oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam from Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said.
He explained that the phytoplankton communities that they were able to observe did not suffer from low concentrations of oil, suggesting that the microorganisms may have a process that allows them to thrive in this environment.
However, Subramaniam said that this does not mean that long term exposure to oil at any concentration is beneficial to the phytoplankton.
Impact Of Natural Oil On Phytoplankton
Following a series of laboratory experiments, the researchers found that phytoplankton do not receive any benefit from any amount of oil, though the microorganisms seem capable of tolerating the presence of the substance at low concentrations in a marine setting.
Aquatic ecologist and study co-author Andy Juhl said that the direct impact of oil is often negative. However, there are cases where small amounts of the substance can be offset by the positive effect of the nutrients that oil often brings with it.
By using satellite radar data, the researchers were able to get a detailed picture of where the oil and gas seeps are formed across the Gulf of Mexico. This allowed them to produce a reading of how these substances impact the ocean surface.
The team discovered that parts of the Gulf where natural oil seeps can be found had microbial communities that were twice as dense as those in other areas.
The highest phytoplankton concentration was located several hundred feet below the water surface, where the microorganisms could thrive on the amount of rising nutrients and sunlight that penetrates from the above.
Subramaniam and his colleagues are now planning to explore how marine life in the Gulf interacts with the oil and gas seeps in the surface.
They wish to determine which specific phytoplankton types benefit most from the natural oil bubbles, as well as how exactly oil and gas are able to make their way from the ocean floor to the surface.
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Ivanka Trump, a top figure in Donald Trump’s campaign, finally addressed the lewd-tape scandal that kicked off the wave of controversy engulfing her father’s campaign.
In a statement to Fast Company published Monday night, the businesswoman called her father’s comments — which included boasts of groping and forcibly kissing women — “clearly inappropriate and offensive.”
“I’m glad that he acknowledged this fact with an immediate apology to my family and the American people,” she said.
Ivanka Trump had been relatively silent since earlier this month, when the Washington Post published a 2005 video tape of her father making shockingly vulgar comments on “Access Hollywood.” Though Trump denied ever actually groping women, an increasing number of women have since spoken out with allegations of sexual misconduct, including assault, against the GOP nominee.
Ivanka Trump’s statement came as a last-minute addition to a Fast Company feature on the Republican presidential nominee’s daughter, who is executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization and runs her own clothing company. The feature addressed how she’s managed to weather the “surreal experience” of her father’s presidential campaign.
“I mean, it’s been a year and a half of enormous scrutiny, of my family, every business, every movement, action,” she told the magazine. “I think that, you know, that sort of comes with the territory. And I think I’ve probably learned a lot through it and I’ve probably grown a bit tougher in terms of my resilience toward what is thrown our way because, you know, I’ve read some very negative stuff.”
The 34-year-old former model, who helped her father craft his maternity-leave policy, also dismissed the idea that she would serve in his administration.
“I don’t intend to be part of the government,” she told Fast Company, insisting that her role in Trump’s campaign is simply that of “a daughter and an executive who has worked alongside him.”
Donald Trump greets his daughter Ivanka as he arrives to speak during the final session at the Republican National Convention. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters) More
Asked how she’s able to withstand some of the more disturbing controversies surrounding her father in recent months — such as the allegation that he once sexually assaulted a 13-year-old— she replied: “The greatest comfort I have is the fact that I know my father. Most of the people who write about him don’t. I do.”
That, she continued, “gives me an ability to shrug off the things that I read about him that are wrong.”
Ivanka Trump also made clear during the interview that she wants nothing to do with white nationalists and other members of the far-right fringe who’ve rallied around Trump’s campaign, and insisted that her father feels the same way.
“I categorically reject any people within a community that espouses hatred toward anyone, and my father does and has as well, so this is not support that I would be comfortable with,” she said. “ And I couldn’t be comfortable with my father as president of this country if I thought that he could be comfortable with that type of support, and I know that he is not, that’s why he’s denounced it.”
Despite her best efforts to keep business and politics separate, both Ivanka Trump the person and the brand have been the subjects of backlash thanks to Trump’s unconventional and controversy-filled campaign. Glossier CEO Emily Weiss, for example, recently expressed regret for participating in an interview featured on IvankaTrump.com, and many Twitter users have called for a boycott of Ivanka’s products.
According to Fast Company, however, “major retail partners, including Bloomingdale’s, Zappos, Amazon, Dillard’s, Nieman Marcus, Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, and Nordstrom show no signs of discontinuing their affiliation” with her brand. Writer Anjali Mullany concluded that “one thing that’s become clear is that the Ivanka Trump collection has benefited from all the attention.”
Read the full Fast Company profile of Trump’s eldest daughter >>Over at the Washington Times, Jim McElhatton has written a story about the exorbitant prices the federal government pays to memorialize cabinet members and other bureaucrats who do the people's work by commissioning paintings of themselves.
Read the whole thing here.
You got that: $22,500 for a portrait of Tom Vilsack! Somewhere on this post is a picture of Vilsack and a rendering of the same photo done using a free online image editor to "portraitize" said picture into an "oil painting." Total cost to taxpayers: $0.00. And even at that price, we overpaid a bit, I think.
Cafe Press, the online retailer of cheap, personalized t-shirts, coffee mugs, and so much more, has written an open letter to the government with a plan for reducing official portrait costs by as much as 99 percent. Read it here. And if you want to buy a Vilsack-emblazoned work jersey - designed par moi! - go here.
For a government that spends nearly $4 trillion a year, of course, even spending $30,000 on paintings of former Bush admin USDA administrators is chump change. But these sorts of ludicrously overpriced - and unnecessary - bagatelles are of a piece with a government that has increased by nearly 50 percent real, per-capita outlays over the past decade with no sign of slowing up.A protester against the United States' acceptance of Syrian refugees uses a U.S. flag to block a counter-protester's sign that read "Refugees Welcome" during a demonstration at the Washington State capitol in Olympia, Washington, November 20, 2015. REUTERS/David Ryder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has taken in 8,000 Syrian refugees since October and is on track to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of resettling 10,000 by the end of the fiscal year, a U.S. State Department official told reporters on Friday.
Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Anne Richard said additional U.S. personnel had been deployed to vet refugees overseas and that many other refugees had already been vetted and were awaiting resettlement.
The total number of Syrian refugees in the United States may even exceed the 10,000 goal by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, Richard and other administration officials said on a call with reporters.
Obama set a goal of welcoming 10,000 Syrian refugees from Syria’s civil war to the United States, drawing criticism from Republicans in the U.S. Congress worried about admitting Syrians who pose a security threat.
Human rights advocates raised concerns over whether the administration would be able to meet its goal when less than 5,000 Syrians had been admitted halfway through the fiscal year.
“Monthly totals have climbed from low numbers of refugees submitted in the first half of the year to higher numbers recently. In May, June and July the impact of our investments in and enhancements to the process began to be realized,” Richard said.In Brief Approximately 2.7 billion people worldwide continue to use firewood for their energy and cooking needs leading to negative climate change, health, and ecological impacts. Efforts to replace the highly inefficient three-stone hearth stoves used in the majority of these homes with high efficiency cookstoves that cut wood use by half have met with mixed success; in India such efforts have by-and-large failed. Our team has been working on various solutions in the Mewar region of Rajasthan in western India. A resulting design for a simple, inexpensive (USD $1) device that may be simply placed in existing three-stone hearths has proven to cut wood use and diminish smoke to levels comparable to those achieved by the more expensive high efficiency cookstoves. In field tests in several households as well as in controlled laboratory experiments, it was demonstrated that this simple, unobtrusive, and inexpensive insert has the potential to significantly reduce smoke emissions and related respiratory discomfort and disease in the developing world.
Key Concepts Firewood burning by the world’s poor for cooking is a major source of black carbon emissions, respiratory illness, and forest degradation.
Efforts to replace three-stone hearths with high efficiency cookstoves have met with only mixed success; the problem of firewood use for cooking persists.
In fieldwork in Rajasthan, India, we encountered reluctance among villagers to use high efficiency cookstoves due to design shortcomings and cost.
To remedy this, an inexpensive insert that can be placed in the three-stone hearth itself was designed and tested. This insert, called Mewar Angithi (MA), cut down smoke production and improved the hearth efficiency to the levels comparable to high efficiency cookstoves.
The insert is now being distributed in villages in Rajasthan as well as in locations in Kenya and Ghana.
Firewood burning is the second most significant cause of deforestation worldwide, behind only livestock production.1 Loss of biodiversity, habitat niches, and carbon stocks caused by deforestation are all major global concerns. The emissions from incomplete combustion of firewood also present a major source of atmospheric pollution and global warming.2,3 In particular, when deposited on the ice in the Arctic through wind currents in the northern hemisphere, soot or black carbon from firewood burning absorbs solar energy, whereas the original ice would have reflected it. This affects the “albedo,” or the fraction of solar energy reflected from the Earth back into space, contributing to accelerated warming and further ice loss.4 Firewood smoke has also become a potent human health hazard, contributing to a loss of as many as eight years in lifespan for the women who cook with firewood due to the constant inhalation of particulate matter as well as carcinogens such as benzopyrene.5,6
Much effort has been expended to mitigate the effects of firewood use among the three billion people in the Global South who still rely on biomass for their energy needs (mostly for cooking), but almost all of these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC) has an ambitious plan to deploy 100 million High Efficiency Cookstoves (HECs) by the year 2020,7 but the plan has not yet been put into action due to technological and implementation hurdles. The Government of India has been trying to deploy HECs in rural India for the past two decades, but this intervention has been largely unsuccessful as well.8
H. S. Udaykumar
The present group of authors has been working on issues related to forest degradation and firewood use in collaboration with the non-governmental organization (NGO) Foundation for Ecological Security in the areas around the Kumbalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary along the Aravali hill range in the semi-arid Mewar region of Rajasthan in India.9 In this location, despite previous efforts, the use of firewood is widespread and persistent (the authors were unable to find HECs in the local markets in the region). In the Bhil communities that reside on the hillsides along the forest preserve, women engage in the quotidian activity of firewood harvesting from the forest edge, which may take several hours each day depending on proximity to the forest. This harvested wood is burned in a three-stone hearth to prepare two meals each day.
Climate Healers, an NGO based in Phoenix, Arizona tried deploying solar cookstoves in the villages of Rajasthan in 2010, but that effort was unsuccessful for a variety of socio-cultural reasons. Since then, Climate Healers, along with the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), has been working with researchers at the University of Iowa on a stored-energy solar cook stove that can address the primary reasons for the unsuccessful deployment in 2010. However, progress on this project has been slow due to the difficulties of storing heat under the low-cost constraint. Meanwhile, the carbon offset mechanisms that Climate Healers planned to use to fund the deployment of these stored energy solar cookstoves have become mired in controversy and are largely defunct. Therefore, as of late 2014, the NGOs involved were considering a new course to get over these considerable procedural and technological hurdles. A simpler solution to the firewood use problem in Rajasthan that appeared worthy of exploration was the introduction of so-called HECs.
The High Efficiency Cookstove Solution
When compared to the traditional three-stone hearths that villagers in Rajasthan use, HECs pack several desirable features, including cutting down on fuel use, decreasing emissions, and improving portability and durability.10 Indeed, the higher efficiency of the HECs arises due to specific engineering improvements, primarily by ensuring more complete combustion of the wood by improving air supply, removal of ash and embers that may clog the air flow path, better direction of the flame (in the “rocket” stove concept for example) by directing the rising hot air through a channeled space that contacts the bottom of the cooking vessel,11 insulation of the sides of the stove to prevent heat loss, and a smaller opening at the front of the stove that prevents over-feeding of fuel while simultaneously restricting the loss of heat from the flame. All of these performance improvements derive from application of fluid mechanics and combustion principles in many research laboratories around the world, support from governments and international organizations (e.g. the World Health Organization (WHO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) etc.), and the participation of individuals and communities. In recent times computer simulations have been used to design optimal wood-burning cookstoves.12 The upshot is that the best HECs are quite robust in their delivery of the promised efficiency increase of up to 100 percent over the three-stone hearths (TSH). The HECs on the market offer efficiency in the 20 to 30 percent range.13 However, in India the uptake of HECs has been low. Currently, only four percent of wood-burning stoves are HECs, while the rest remain the highly inefficient TSHs.7,8 Similar situations prevail in other countries as well.14-17
H. S. Udaykumar
During winter 2014–2015, members of a multidisciplinary research team from the University of Iowa, including students and NGO workers from FES and Climate Healers, conducted studies in the tribal villages in the Aravali hill region of Rajasthan in an effort to better understand the poor uptake of HECs. The team conducted careful observations of the cooking process as the women in the villages of Karech and Gogunda used two of the top-selling HECs globally (here labelled as A and B to preserve the anonymity of brand names) to cook their normal meals. Through the gracious assistance of the women in the villages and the interpreters who helped us communicate with them, the main reasons for the poor uptake of these stoves in the villages of Rajasthan became quite clear. They are the following:
The commercial HECs do not accommodate well the wide variety of wood-fuel types that are available in Rajasthan. For instance, the HECs cannot accept large pieces of wood without having them split lengthwise, which is very difficult for the women to do. Women tend to abandon these HECs since their traditional chulhas (mud and brick stoves) have no such size limitation.
HEC Stove A heated the clay tawa (a vessel for cooking rotis) too much in the center and not enough at the edges, with the result that the women had to constantly rotate the rotis (flatbreads), particularly the corn rotis, in order to cook their meal. Stove A was not nearly as efficient in its use of firewood for cooking as advertised.
The mouth of HEC Stove B was too large to fit the clay tawas used in Rajasthan, and the team had to jerry-rig a grill to hold the clay tawa in place. Perhaps as a result, much of the advertised efficiency of HEC Stove B could not be obtained as well.
H. S. Udaykumar
In addition to the above performance-related deficiencies of the HECs, the users also identified potential safety issues. The HECs are made of metal, and the sides of the stoves became very hot as cooking progressed. The women expressed concern that children could make contact with the sides of the HECs and burn themselves.
The durability of the HECs were another issue of concern. In the three-week period of testing in the village, due to the rough handling and high temperatures, the HECs appeared to already exhibit some deterioration. The women expressed concern that the stoves may not last as long as the traditional chulhas and will need to be replaced as opposed to rebuilt (as in the case of chulhas).
The women typically used a large, slow-burning log in the chulha in the cold season as a source of heat for their homes. The HECs cannot accommodate large logs and thus cannot provide this ancillary role of home heating.
Though there were some savings in firewood use with the HECs, the women estimated the stoves were worth as little as one-fifth their actual retail prices. Even then, it appeared doubtful that the women would commit even to a reduced amount to cost HEC stoves.
Mewar Angithi: An In Situ Modification of the TSH as a Solution to the Problem
Traditional TSHs or chulhas vary in size and shape to accommodate the different types of cooking vessels and foods cooked in them across the world. Our experience in Rajasthan showed that a single HEC stove cannot possibly replace all of these traditional stoves. Rather, significant fuelwood reductions can only be achieved with locally customizable solutions in different parts of the world. Tests with the HECs in the field did confirm however that they can cut wood use significantly (see Table 1) when compared to traditional chulhas. The low smoke effluence and main reductions in firewood use is due to the engineered airflow from below the fuel source in the HECs. Because it lacks such engineered airflow, the traditional chulha tends to accumulate embers that pile up and emit soot as they burn efficiently due to a lack of oxygen.
To address the air flow shortcomings of the three-stone hearth, the Mewar Angithi (MA), a simple metal device, was engineered to be placed in a traditional chulha in order to provide the same airflow mechanism in the traditional chulha as occurs in the HEC stoves. A traditional stove burns with good thermal efficiency at the start of the cooking session, but the efficiency deteriorates over time as the embers break off the fuelwood and pile up on the surface of the stove, impeding the airflow. Typically, this efficiency ranges from five to 15 percent. With the MA, airflow is directed from below the fuelwood through holes, as shown in Figure 1, thus improving efficiency even at the start of the cooking session. Since the MA provides the means to separate and drain the ash from the fuel, it maintains this engineered airflow throughout the cooking session, burning up the falling embers cleanly as well. Consequently, the MA facilitates the traditional chulha to maintain this improved thermal efficiency throughout the cooking session.
Authors
For the chulhas found in the Mewar region of Rajasthan, this metal device can be constructed using a trapezoidal bottom metal plate, which can then be welded onto a bent-top metal plate with air holes in it. The top metal plate can be engineered by bending a square piece of porous metal into a trapezoidal shape with trapezoidal sides (see Figure 1). The resulting insert has a sloped bottom plate so that any ash collected on it can slide down to the exterior. The fuelwood is placed on the top porous plate, and as a result of the airflow from below the fuel source, any embers that break off from the wood would also burn up completely. In the engineering prototype, we used a square bottom metal plate that we also bent into a trapezoidal shape and punched holes in the side of the bent bottom plate so that the top and bottom plates can be held together with metal wires instead of being welded together. We found a porous mild steel metal sheet in the local market in Udaipur, Rajasthan as scrap metal from the metal washer industry. Such scrap metal sheets are ideal for constructing the MA and can be purchased in local markets at one-fourth the cost of solid metal sheets. We estimate the MA can be fabricated locally at a cost of less than US$1 each. Our initial MA pictured in Figure 1 cost about US$1. In addition, the MA can be easily reshaped and customized in different regions of the world to fit the sizes and shapes of the traditional stoves used in these regions. In recent field work in Rajasthan, we have found the need to customize the MA to the dimensions of the chulhas. Because of the simple, bent plate design of the MA, it is easily customized to individual chulha units.
Cook Stove Testing Results
Field Test
In preliminary tests involving the cooking of corn rotis and vegetable sabzi (curry), the MA achieved low smoke effluence (as estimated qualitatively by the users) comparable to both the commercial HECs, while providing around 60 percent reduction in firewood use (as measured quantitatively by the research team), which matches the advertised maximum savings of typical HECs. We investigated the users’ perception of HECs (two models: A and B) and compared it to the traditional chulha for cooking their typical meal of corn (makki), flatbreads (rotis), and a side dish of vegetables for families of different sizes.
Three households (labeled Houses 1, 2, and 3) were selected, and in each household, the feedback of the users (women) was sought on HEC-A and HEC-B compared to the chulha. In each household, the amount of wood procured for each meal was measured before cooking the meal, and the wood left over after cooking was measured, thereby obtaining the weight of wood used per meal. Unfortunately, results from House 3 were often unreliable due to operational difficulties that caused large variations in meal size, type, and preparation. Since the meal sizes varied over household, and even day-by-day for any given household, the performances of these stoves were normalized by the meal size and are shown in Table 1 in terms of wood use per meal unit (taken to be one roti).
Authors
The MA (Figure 1a) was placed in the chulha in the homes tested and the amount of wood used was measured. The results indicated that significant gains in efficiency were made even in the TSH using this simple low cost device (see rows labeled TSH+MA in Table 1; for TSH+MA two tests—on different days—were performed in House 1 due to operational difficulties in House 3 as noted above), resulting in approximately 60 percent reduction in wood use relative to TSH alone. During the course of cooking, it was also observed by the research team as well as the users that there was a significant reduction of smoke with the HECs as well as with the TSH+MA case relative to that produced with the TSH alone, though no measurements of emissions were taken in the field. This limited initial field test was promising for the TSH+MA, but the sample size was small and there remained concern over the day-to-day variability of cooking and the lack of quantification of emissions.
Laboratory Tests
To ascertain whether the results for the MA would hold under more controlled and rigorous tests, the Government of India approved the creation of the Cook Stove Testing Center at the Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, which conducted standardized tests by boiling 9.4 liters of water in a traditional stove, with and without the MA. The tests showed that the MA reduced wood use by 63 percent and eliminated 89 percent of soot. One kilogram of fuelwood was used without the MA as per standard testing protocols, with wood moisture content of 0.4. The results of the lab tests are summarized in Figure 2.
The MA device in the test was constructed using a refined version of the design that we reported earlier (Figure 1b). It was built using just one square foot of a scrap metal sheet and can be assembled with simple 90 degree bends, with no need for welding. The resulting device has a simple rectangular cuboidal shape, with dimensions of 6″ × 8″ × 1.5″ and therefore, maintains the surface slope of the traditional stove. The bends |
else in the city, it’s the tallest tower in the world and double the size of Tokyo Tower. Covered in LED lights, it generally alternates between the sky blue Iki and the purple Miyabi. As with Tokyo Tower, the Sky Tree is only lit up for about five hours at night. The various LED colors require different amounts of energy, but on average it uses 17,700 kWh in a month for a cost of $4,425.
What this means is that pachinko parlors are not only boring (in our opinion), but they’re also consuming a ridiculous amount of energy! Maybe someone can develop a way to make energy from all that knob twisting…
Source: Spotlight
Top image: Flickr/ZengameLightyear, the brainchild of Stellar co-founder and CTO Jed McCaleb along with ex-Palantir executive Brit Yonge, launched out of stealth on May 11th. Part of the Stellar network open financial protocol, Lightyear aims to revolutionize the world of cross-border, cross-currency and cross-asset transactions by creating a universal global payment network.
The pair is hoping to play a disruptive role in the global payments space with Lightyear by aggressively pursuing a global mission of creating an open and public financial infrastructure, enabling greater access for individuals, lowering costs for banks and increasing revenue for businesses.
According to a research study by McKinsey & Company, the global payments industry will generate an estimated $2.2 trillion in revenue by 2020. This represents a $400 billion increase over 2015 ($1.8 trillion) with an average growth rate of 5 percent.
The fuel behind Lightyear, Stellar, is backed by Stripe, the Bitcoin API that powers commerce for businesses of all sizes. Stellar counts some of the biggest names in fintech, such as Keith Rabois, previously EVP of Paypal and COO of Square, and Greg Brockman, previously CTO of Stripe, as board members.
Stellar's open financial protocol allows for the settlement of transactions almost in real-time (3-5 seconds), for fractions of a cent, all in a secure and safe network. Stellar's network has been integrated by startups, tech companies and financial institutions in more than 55 countries.
Over the past year, there's been a surge of interest from partners in the Asia-Pacific region - including remittance companies such as Coin.ph, the Chinese tech giant LeEco and major banks, such as the Indian multinational bank and financial services company ICICI - to integrate with the Stellar network for support of cross-border payments. Given this demand, it became evident that a new organizational model for the seamless exchange between currencies was required for Stellar's global partner activities.
The creation of Lightyear now will allow Stellar.org to keep its efforts targeted at its primary mission of managing the open source project and overseeing the foundation's lumen distribution program. Lightyear will focus on a wider swath of activities, including supporting global partner integrations, as well as marketing and distribution activities on the Stellar network. In the coming months, Lightyear.io will unveil its service and product offerings.
Prior to his work in creating Stellar, McCaleb previously launched eDonkey2000, which became one of the largest file-sharing networks of its time. He later created the first digital currency exchange, Mt. Gox, followed by Ripple.
In a phone interview with Bitcoin Magazine, he expressed excitement about the opportunity to collaborate with his friend and colleague Brit Yonge in launching Lightyear.
A driving inspiration behind their work, he says, is the broken nature of the world's financial infrastructure: one that leaves all too many people without resources to live freely.
While payments work OK in the U.S. and Europe, there is a lot more friction in places like Nigeria where more than half the people don't have bank accounts and have to pay outrageous fees for moving their money around. It just makes sense to want start in places like that.
His partner, Yonge, echoed that sentiment. "We want to see the world of payments and sending money become as easy and free as sending an email. Jed has already basically created a way to drastically reduce the price of payments through Stellar," Yonge told Bitcoin Magazine. "Think about the potential implications of this when the poorest people in the world are getting the worst end of the stick in terms of monetary transactions."
McCaleb was optimistic about overcoming regulatory hurdles tied to Stellar and Lightyear: "We've been quite surprised that the regulators have been fairly positive. In some ways that's not surprising because for many of the players in this space, the regulatory story doesn't really change."
He says that because Stellar is simply connecting existing financial institutions to each other, it actually makes compliance easier for the institutions because everything is tracked and is very obvious on the blockchain. "It doesn't circumvent these regulatory controls. So they are pretty much OK with it."
McCaleb notes that correspondence banks are often a bottleneck in terms of the flow of money from institutions to end users. Stellar and Lightyear simply want to makes the system better and more efficient.
"Today when you want to send money from, say, Uruguay to Brazil, it has to actually go through the U.S. first because of the way the correspondence banking system is set up. This inefficiency creates a lot of frustration for people because it makes the process more expensive and slower. So we continue to forge forward in our efforts to change how all of that is done, so that money and assets can go from country A to country B without having to go through some sort of intermediary."
Prior to joining Lightyear, Brit Yonge was head of Asia for Palantir Technologies. There, he oversaw the company's engagements within the financial sector where his team delivered solutions for anti-money laundering, trade finance and cybersecurity.
In his brief time with Lightyear thus far, Yonge has participated in talks with some central bankers who, he says, are still getting comfortable with the new technological approaches being proposed.
"This is a very new idea, maybe not in computing where we have a lot of technologies that are distributed," said Yonge. "But it certainly is a new idea in finance in terms of the use of a distributed ledger. A lot of these conversations, therefore, involve a great deal of education, and the tone - given the potentially disruptive nature of this change - has not been adversarial at all. In fact to the contrary, the parties that we've talked to have been very positive, respectful and eager to learn about what we're doing."
"For us it's all about the creation of a universal payment network. I think would be really good for the world because we all make payments." - Jed McCalebChapman says Port's revival influenced the decision. Credit:Mal Fairclough "I've said it often, Brenton is a good coach, strategically, tactically, game-day he's very, very sound," Chapman said. "But there are a lot of things that go into making a good coach. "He's very good in the media, his external communication was good; I think [his lack of internal communication] was feedback he's received. "That was something he needed to improve on … I think he would acknowledge that."
As the fall-out from Sanderson's shock axing after three years continues, the club has remained steadfast that the decision was based purely on a disappointing end-of-season review that led the board to believe the Crows were headed down the wrong path. In a frank admission, Chapman said Port Adelaide's outstanding revival had contributed to the decision. "With Port's resurgent, it has made us step up to the plate even harder," Chapman said. "We have got to continue to be rigorous and have higher expectations. It's been good for us, it's been good for South Australia and good luck to them." The sacking has also been strongly linked to club great and recently appointed board member Mark Ricciuto, but Chapman took exception to that view, and to the suggestion Ricciuto had become a "king-maker" at the club. "Mark has been a board member three months," Chapman said. "He is learning the ropes. Don't attribute this decision to Mark; he is one of four people who were involved in the review and seven people on our board and equally we are all accountable for that decision."
Chapman said had Adelaide made the finals, it probably would not have saved Sanderson's job. "I don't want to go into the hypotheticals," Chapman said. "But the questions (in the review) would not have changed and therefore the answers wouldn't have changed and the conclusions we reached probably wouldn't have changed." Sanderson took Adelaide to within a kick of making the 2012 grand final, but then felt the brunt of the club's draft penalties in the Kurt Tippett saga, lost assistant Dean Bailey in 2013 when he was suspended for 16 matches following an investigation into Melbourne's alleged tanking and, sadly, when Bailey died earlier this year. "I have acknowledged those things… he (Sanderson) has been dealt some poor hands with those things, things that were outside of his control," Chapman said. "There are things that coaches can control, and we've made a decision that we are going to look for a new coach who, hopefully, can help us achieve what we have set out to all along."
Loading Chapman said it had not ben easy breaking the news to Sanderson. "I genuinely feel for Brenton," he said. "This is never easy. You have to do it with all the empathy you can muster." He said the club was yet to finalise a shortlist of candidates for the job.The American dream has never really been about 48,000 square foot homes and private jets and conspicuous consumption. The American dream, truly, is about opportunity. About the middle class that created the backbone of this great nation…the dream to have a good home and family and friends and to be able to sleep at night. As Norman Rockwell’s poster tribute to FDR’s Four Freedoms aptly capture it, the opportunity to go to bed at night knowing your children are safe and sound. It’s that simple. Greed isn’t the American Dream. Greed isn’t good. It’s a cancer on our society, and it’s fast destroying our once mighty middle class. Let’s reverse it. Merry Christmas to all, Waylon Lewis, ed.
~
George Bailey: Just a minute… just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You’re right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I’ll never know…
But neither you nor anyone else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was…why, in the 25 years since he and his brother, Uncle Billy, started this thing, he never once thought of himself int’d that right, Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harry away to college, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter.
And what’s wrong with that?
Why… here, you’re all businessmen here. Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers?
You… you said… what’d you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home.
Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken down that they…
Do you know how long it takes a working man to save $5,000? Just remember this, Mr. Potter—that this rabble you’re talking about…they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?
Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle.
Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be.
~In the wake of every terrorist act, there is the same argument. The voices-in-the-wilderness on the right will say, insofar as they’re not muzzled by hate-speech laws, that Islam is the problem. In contrast, a leftist drumbeat of media and mainstream politicos will assert that the Muslim terrorists aren’t really “Muslim” terrorists, that they’ve perverted the faith. As to the truth, it’s as with any other debate over a thing’s true meaning (e.g., the Constitution): it only makes sense to look for answers in original sources.
It’s a rhetorical question, of course. As Islam’s founder — the religion was born of revelations he supposedly had in the early seventh century — Mohammed was the very first Muslim. Moreover, since Muslims view him as “The Perfect Man,” the ultimate role model, he’s not just the truest Muslim but the yardstick by which other Muslims may measure themselves.
So what was Mohammed’s “perfection”? He was a warlord who launched approximately 30 military campaigns, many of which he led himself. He was a caravan raider (a bandit) and captured, traded in and owned slaves (by the way, will liberals suggest slave-owning Mohammed be diminished, as they’ve done with our founders?). He ordered massacres, used torture and had dissidents assassinated. In 627 AD, he beheaded more than 600 men and boys of the Qurayza tribe in Medina, Arabia, thus wiping it off the map. He also was a polygamist and made it lawful for masters to have sexual relations with their female captives.
So, clearly, if today’s Islamic jihadists aren’t true Muslims, neither was Mohammed. But since we know the Perfect Man was the truest of Muslims, then…well, you can finish the sentence.
Yet when analyzing Muslim motivations, the influence of Mohammed’s character is generally subordinated to that of Islamic teachings (most of which come from Mohammed). And even here, people generally make the mistake of focusing only on the Koran, unaware that it’s a mere 16 percent of the Islamic canon. The majority of it comprises the Hadiths and Sira.
This is noteworthy because while 9 percent of the Koran is devoted to jihad and political violence, 21 percent of the Hadiths is and a whopping 67 percent of the Sira is devoted to it, according to Bill Warner, Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. This is why Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut wrote in 2015 that “violence and domination” are “deeply rooted...and sanctioned with promises of rewards” in Islam, and, consequently, “fundamentalists will always find people to excite and people to persecute.”
The distribution of violent injunctions in these books helps explain something else. A German study involving 45,000 teens found that while increasing religiosity made Christian youth less violent, increasing religiosity made Muslim youth more violent.
This makes sense. A nominal Catholic may know a few verses from the Bible, but only a devout one scours it and, in addition, will read his catechism. Likewise, a casual Muslim might know a little bit from the Koran.
A serious one will soak it all in and delve into the Hadiths and Sira as well — and be exposed to all the violent injunctions therein.
Even more to the point here, however, these two sets of works together comprise the majority of the Sunnah, which is, as Islaamnet.com explains, “The legal way or ways, orders, acts of worship and statements of the Prophet, that are ideals and models to be followed by Muslims” (emphasis added). It is all about Mohammed’s words and deeds.
The significance of this cannot be overemphasized. Virtues (and vices) are caught more than they’re taught; actions speak louder than words. Thus are Christians more likely to ask “What would Jesus do?” than “What does the Bible say?” Thus are they more likely to counsel “Reflect Christ” than “Reflect Matthew 22:37.” Oh, the Bible is wonderful, and Matthew 22:37 is one of its most memorable parts. But examples are more powerful than instructions.
Muslims’ role model, their “Perfect Man,” is very different from Jesus in type of influence but not in degree of influence. As Warner points out, “The Koran says 91 different times that Mohammed's is the perfect pattern of life. It is much more important to know Mohammed than the Koran.” Thus is “Mohammed” (and its spelling variants) the world’s most common male name, belonging to approximately 150 million men and boys. And there’s a reason why pious Muslims write “PBUH” (“Peace be unto him”) after his name and why they’ll riot if he’s portrayed in a cartoon. He is, in a sense, the human face of Allah.
Islaamnet.com makes this clear, writing that “when Allaah says: ‘Whosoever obeys the Messenger [Mohammed], has indeed obeyed Allaah’ (Surah An-Nisa 4:80), it should be clear that one has obeyed Allaah by obeying the Messenger.”
Islaamnet also informs that Allah commanded, “‘It is not fitting for a believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decreed by Allah and His Messenger to have any choice in the matter. If anyone disobeys Allah and His Messenger he is clearly astray’ (Surah Al-Ahzab 33:36).”
This Messenger is, again, that warlord, bandit, mass murderer, employer of torture, polygamist and slaver trader and master. Worse still, it’s not that Muslims always rationalize away or attempt to whitewash this history. The truly devout ones may consider these actions — when directed toward non-Muslims — to be “good” because the actions have been sanctioned by their perceived author of right and wrong, Allah, and his messenger.
So people sometimes talk about “reforming” Islam, but this would require reforming Mohammed himself. How? You cannot resurrect him and have him live his life over.
Among the founders of extant major or quasi-major religions/philosophical systems — Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, etc. — Mohammed stands alone, being a tyrant-cum-teacher. Of course, he doesn’t stand alone in history; Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and many others paved similar bloody paths. As with them, he was largely a man of his time and place. But to more than a billion people, he’s also the perfect man even in our time and place.
And that’s the point. After all, if someone told you Attila the Hun was the perfect man and his role model, would you turn your back on that person?
Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.comA A
RENTON, Wash. (AP) - Drawn out to nearly the last moment before a deadline that was not just for show, Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks discovered a compromise in contract talks.
Those worries about Wilson hitting free agency or Seattle having to use a franchise tag are now tabled for another five seasons. Wilson is locked up in Seattle for the prime of his career after signing an $87.6 million, four-year extension on Friday that includes a $31 million signing bonus.
It's one of the richest contracts in football history, slotting Wilson slightly behind Aaron Rodgers and just ahead of Ben Roethlisberger in the hierarchy of quarterback contracts on per-year average. It'll likely get passed when Andrew Luck signs his next deal, but for now it pays Wilson at an elite level for helping lead the franchise to consecutive Super Bowl appearances.
"For me I just want to be paid based on what I'm worth, what I've produced, whatever that means. For me, I just let the play speak for itself," Wilson said. "That's not my job to kind of do all that. That's why I hire (agent) Mark Rodgers and that's why I trust him to figure everything out for me, work everything out and sure enough it did and I get to play here for another four more years. Couldn't be much better."
Wilson's extension keeps him with the franchise that took him in the third round of the 2012 draft and watched him become one of the most successful young quarterbacks in NFL history. He's locked up in Seattle through the 2019 season - the year he turns 31 - giving him the opportunity at another big paycheck down the road.
Settling on a four-year deal was a big emphasis for Wilson's agent to give the quarterback a chance to capitalize on what will be an evolving quarterback market over the next five seasons.
"I think it's just a sense this is the right deal. It's the right deal at the right time," Rodgers said.
Wilson has led Seattle to the playoffs all three of his seasons, beating Denver in the Super Bowl in his second season before losing to New England in the title game last February.
He's also been a bargain for Seattle. The 2015 season was the first time Wilson was scheduled to make more than $1 million. That's now just $700,000 in base salary for 2015 with a $31 million signing bonus - $20 million now and the other $11 million next April - more than making up for the shortfall.
Wilson's contract status was the biggest story in Seattle, and the more time passed without an agreement the more conjecture grew about his long-term status. There was growing concern that Wilson would play out the final season of his rookie contract and then test free agency. The Seahawks likely would have used the franchise tag to keep Wilson for the 2016 season but at a cost that would significantly hamper their salary cap situation.
Rodgers said a number of times during the offseason that the quarterback had financially planned to be playing for $1.54 million. Wilson took out an insurance policy to protect against injury just in case no extension was reached.
"He's really competitive. No surprise, right? He's really competitive like the rest of us," Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. "So it was emotional to some extent, but I think in his heart he knew that we wanted this to happen, we were going to get it done, we were going to find a way and he handled himself beautifully throughout the process."
Last season, Wilson threw for 3,475 yards and 20 touchdowns against just seven interceptions in the regular season. He added another 849 yards rushing and six scores, and saved some of his most memorable moments for the playoffs.
He had the Seahawks on the cusp of a second straight title. Wilson got Seattle to the New England 1-yard line in the final seconds of the Super Bowl, only to be intercepted by Malcolm Butler, clinching the Patriots' 28-24 victory.
Wilson holds the NFL record for most wins in his first three seasons and was the third-youngest quarterback in league history to win a Super Bowl title.
He's been a difficult quarterback to categorize outside of leading Seattle to the type of success it's never before enjoyed as a franchise.
"I think his performance on the field builds the case for him," Rodgers said.
The Seahawks now have Wilson, Marshawn Lynch, Jimmy Graham, Cliff Avril, K.J. Wright, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Doug Baldwin and Kam Chancellor all under contract through 2016.An American blogger has launched a scathing attack on New Zealand in response to a Kiwi comedian's comments.
Cassidy Boon posted a YouTube video expressing her distaste for New Zealand after Kiwi comedian and blogger, Jimi Jackson, called her "the biggest troll ever" earlier this week.
Everything I’ve heard about NZ, the haka is the worst thing you’ve ever given the world - Cassidy Boon
In her video, Ms Boon said she had never heard of New Zealand and decided to do some "research on this new country" after her experience with Mr Jackson.
While the seriousness of her video is questionable, it appears Ms Boon intended to ruffle some Kiwi feathers with comments made about the haka.
"These people will literally stick their tongue out and make exaggerated masculine movements that totally hint at domestic violence and rape," she tells YouTube followers.
"It's obvious the haka isn't really meant to scare off the opposing team, it's to assert dominance over women and scare us into submission."One of the things that’s always bugged me when using Windows UI libraries like WinForms and WPF is the sheer number of members that pop up in intellisense for a control. The Button type in WPF has around 300 members and a total of 9 levels of inheritance making it hard to find the useful members. Or to put it another way the inherited members occlude the useful members:
The picture above shows what you actually see in the code completion box in the editor, however for a button you’re probably more interested in the Click event, but that’s several pages away.
Disinherit Type Provider
As a thought experiment I’ve implemented an F# Type Provider that hides type members after a specified level of inheritance:
In the picture above the members now almost fit in a single page. The last property, not visible here, is an extra property added by the type provider that provides all the hidden members for the instance:
Type Provider Implementation
Underneath the covers the type provider takes an assembly name as a static parameter and optionally the level of inheritance to expose.
[<Literal>] let name = @"PresentationFramework, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" type WPF = Disinherited< name, level=1 > let button = WPF.Button()
The provider then reflects over the types in the assembly and creates a proxy type as a provided type and exposes members that are declared within the specified inheritance level.
To provide the member we simply create a corresponding provided member with an expression that evaluates to the underlying type’s member:
let addMember (def:ProvidedTypeDefinition) ty (mem:MemberInfo) = match mem.MemberType with | MemberTypes.Constructor -> let ci = mem :?> ConstructorInfo let c = ProvidedConstructor(toParams ci) c.InvokeCode <- fun args -> Expr.Coerce(Expr.NewObject(ci,args), typeof<obj>) def.AddMember(c) | MemberTypes.Field -> let fi = mem :?> FieldInfo let field = ProvidedField(mem.Name, fi.FieldType) def.AddMember(field) | MemberTypes.Property -> let pi = mem :?> PropertyInfo let prop = ProvidedProperty(mem.Name, pi.PropertyType) prop.GetterCode <- fun args -> Expr.PropertyGet(Expr.Coerce(args.[0],ty), pi) def.AddMember(prop) | MemberTypes.Event -> let ei = mem :?> EventInfo let ev = ProvidedEvent(mem.Name, ei.EventHandlerType) ev.AdderCode <- fun args -> Expr.Call(Expr.Coerce(args.Head,ty),ei.GetAddMethod(), args.Tail) ev.RemoverCode <- fun args -> Expr.Call(Expr.Coerce(args.Head,ty), ei.GetRemoveMethod(), args.Tail) def.AddMember(ev) | MemberTypes.Method -> let mi = mem :?> MethodInfo if not mi.IsSpecialName then let m = ProvidedMethod(mi.Name, toParams mi, mi.ReturnType) m.InvokeCode <- fun args -> Expr.Call(Expr.Coerce(args.Head,ty), mi, args.Tail) def.AddMember(m) | _ -> ()
The entire provider is implemented in around 100 lines of code, I’d be interested to hear if anybody else finds it useful :)
Source code
The source is available on GitHub: https://github.com/ptrelford/DisinheritClick here to download an mp3 audio version of this documentary.
Click here to download an mp4 video version of this documentary.
Click here to watch this documentary on Bitchute.
Click here to download a color information pamphlet on The Federal Reserve (right-click and “Save Link As” to download).
Click here to download a black and white information pamphlet on The Federal Reserve (right-click and “Save Link As” to download).
TRANSCRIPT:
Part One: The Origins of the Fed
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” — FDR letter to Colonel Edward House, Nov. 21, 1933
All our lives we’ve been told that economics is boring. It’s dull. It’s not worth the time it takes to understand it. And all our lives, we’ve been lied to.
War. Poverty. Revolution. They all hinge on economics. And economics all rests on one key concept: money.
Money. It is the economic water in which we live our lives. We even call it “currency”; it flows around us, carries us in its wake. Drowns those who are not careful.
We use it every day in nearly every transaction we conduct. We spend our lives working for it, worrying about it, saving it, spending it, pinching it. It defines our social status. It compromises our morals. People are willing to fight, die, and kill for it.
But what is it? Where does it come from? How is it created? Who controls it? It is a remarkable fact that, given its central importance in our lives, not one person in a hundred could answer such basic questions about money as these.
Interviewer: So if you were planning a family, you’d want to know where babies come from. And this is a lot about banking. So let me ask you: Where does money come from? Interviewee 1: Where does the money come from? The government prints it. It’s printed off. Interviewer: How is new money created? Interviewee 2: By labor. People work and produce wealth, and the money is supposed to match that wealth. Interviewee: Where does money come from? Interviewee 3: Well, I have a pretty different outlook on money. It actually comes from, like, trees, right? SOURCE: Occupy Vancouver answers “Where does money come from?”
But why is this? How could we be so ignorant about a topic of such importance? “Where does money come from?” is a basic, childlike question. So why is our only response the childlike answer, meant as a joke: “It grows on trees”?
Such a profound state of ignorance could not come about naturally. From the time we are children, we are curious about the world and eager to learn about the way it works. And what could lead to a better understanding of the way the world works than a knowledge of money, its creation and destruction? Yet discussion of this topic is fastidiously avoided in our school years and ignored in our daily life. Our monetary ignorance is artificial, a smokescreen that has been erected on purpose and perpetrated with the help of complicated systems and insufferable economic jargon.
But it doesn’t take an economist to understand the importance of money. Deep down we all know that the wars, the poverty, the violence we see around us hinges on this question of money. It seems like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle just waiting to be solved. And it is.
The puzzle pieces, taken together, create an image of the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank and the heart of the country’s banking system. Despite its central importance to the economy, relatively few have heard of it, and fewer still know what it is, despite the bank’s attempts at self-description:
Our economy runs on a complex system of exchange of goods and services in which money plays a key part. Coin, currency, savings, and checking accounts; the overall supply of money is managed by the Federal Reserve. Money is the medium through which economic exchanges take place, and money as a standard of value helps us to set prices for goods and services. The job of managing money—monetary policy—is to preserve the purchasing power of the dollar while ensuring that a sufficient amount of money is available to promote economic growth. The Federal Reserve also promotes the safety and soundness of the institutions where we do our banking. It ensures that the mechanisms by which we make payments, whether by cash, cheque, or electronic means, operate smoothly and efficiently. And in its fiscal role acts as the banker for the United States government. Now these duties comprise the major responsibilities of our central bank. SOURCE: The Fed: Our Nation’s Central Bank
But in order to understand the Federal Reserve, we must first understand its origins and context. We must deconstruct the puzzle.
The first piece of that puzzle lies here, in the White House. This is where the Federal Reserve Act, then known as the Currency Bill, was signed into law after passing the House and Senate in late December 1913.
The New York Times of Christmas Eve 1913, described the festive scene:
“The Christmas spirit pervaded the gathering. While the ceremony was a little less impressive than that of the signing of the Tarriff act on Oct. 3 last in the same room, the spectators were much more enthusiastic and seized every occasion to applaud.”
There in the White House that fateful December evening, President Wilson signed away the last veneer of control over the American money supply to a cartel—a well-organized gang of crooks so successful, so cunning, so well-hidden that even now, a century later, few know of its existence, let alone the details of its operations. But those details have been openly admitted for decades.
Of course, just as we have been taught to find economics boring, we have been taught that this story is boring. This is the way the Federal Reserve itself tells it:
The United States was facing severe financial problems. At the turn of the century, most banks were issuing their own currency, called “bank notes.” The trouble was, currency that was good in one state was sometimes worthless in another. People began to lose confidence in their money, since it was only as sound as the bank that issued it. Fearful that their bank might go out of business, they rushed to exchange their bank notes for gold or silver. By attempting to do so, they created the Panic of 1907. SOURCE: Where The Bankers Bank During the panic, people streamed to the banks and demanded their deposits. The banks could not meet the demand; they simply did not have enough gold and silver coin available. Many banks went under. People lost millions of dollars, businesses suffered, unemployment rose, and the stability of our economic system was again threatened. Well, this couldn’t go on. If the country was going to grow and prosper, some means would have to be found to achieve financial and economic stability. To prevent financial panics like the one in 1907, President Woodrow Wilson signed The Federal Reserve Act into law in 1913. SOURCE: Too Much, Too Little
But this is history as told by the victors: a revisionist vision in which the creation of a central bank to control the nation’s money supply is merely a boring historical footnote, about as important as the invention of the zipper or an early 20th century hula-hoop craze. The truth is that the story of the secret banking conclave that gave birth to that Federal Reserve Act is as exciting and dramatic as any Hollywood screenplay or detective novel yarn, and all the more remarkable for the fact that it is all true.
We pick up the story, appropriately enough, under cover of darkness. It was the night of November 22, 1910, and a group of the richest and most powerful men in America were boarding a private rail car at an unassuming railroad station in Hoboken, New Jersey. The car, waiting with shades drawn to keep onlookers from seeing inside, belonged to Senator Nelson Aldrich, the father-in-law of billionaire heir to the Rockefeller dynasty, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. A central figure on the influential Senate Finance Committee, where he oversaw the nation’s monetary policy, Aldrich was referred to in the press as the “General Manager of the Nation.” Joining him that evening was his private secretary, Shelton, and a who’s who of the nation’s banking and financial elite: A. Piatt Andrew, the Assistant Treasury Secretary; Frank Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Davison, a senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company; Benjamin Strong, Jr., an associate of J.P. Morgan and President of Bankers Trust Co., and Paul Warburg, heir of the Warburg banking family and son-in-law of Solomon Loeb of the famed New York investment firm, Kuhn, Loeb & Company.
The men had been told to arrive one by one after sunset to attract as little attention as possible. Indeed, secrecy was so important to their mission that the group did not use anything but their first names throughout the journey so as to keep their true identities secret even from their own servants and wait staff. The movements of any one of them would have been reason enough to attract the attention of New York’s voracious press, especially in an era where banking and monetary reform was seen as a key issue for the future of the nation; a meeting of all of them, now that would surely have been the story of the century. And it was.
Their destination? The secluded Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia, home to the prestigious Jekyll Island Club, whose members included the Morgans, Rockefellers, Warburgs, and Rothschilds. Their purpose? Davison told intrepid local newspaper reporters who had caught wind of the meeting that they were going duck hunting. But in reality, they were going to draft a reform of the nation’s banking industry in complete secrecy.
G. Edward Griffin, the author of the best-selling The Creature from Jekyll Island and a long-time Federal Reserve researcher, explains:
G. Edward Griffin: What happened is the banks decided that since there was going to be legislation anyway to control their industry, that they wouldn’t just sit back and wait and see what happened and cross their fingers that it would be OK. They decided to do what so many cartels do today: they decided to take the lead. And they would be the ones calling for regulations and reform. They like the word “reform.” The American people are suckers for the word “reform.” You just put that into any corrupt piece of legislation, call it “reform” and people say “Oh, I’m all for ‘reform,'” and so they vote for it or accept it. So that’s what they were doing. They decided, “We will ‘reform’ our own industry.” In other words, “We will create a cartel and we will give the cartel the power of government. We’ll take our cartel agreement so we can self-regulate to our advantage and we’ll call it ‘The Federal Reserve Act.’ And then we’ll take this cartel agreement to Washington and convince those idiots there to pass it into law.” And that basically was the strategy. It was a brilliant strategy. Of course we see it happening all the time, certainly in our own day today we see the same thing happened in other cartelized industries. Right now we’re watching it unfold in the field of healthcare, but at that time it was banking, alright? And so the banking cartel wrote their own rules and regulations, called it “The Federal Reserve Act,” got it passed into law, and it |
ughter] Questioner: Hello, my name is Deborah Lubov. I’m a Vatican correspondent for Zenit news agency, for their English edition. I have some experience working in New York — I was working for PricewaterhouseCoopers auditing investment banks, one of which was Goldman Sachs. And considering this conference is on poverty, I’m curious — from your point of view especially, your experience in the investment banking world — what concrete measures do you think they should be doing to combat, prevent this phenomenon? We know that various sums of money are used in all sorts of ways and they do have different initiatives, but in order to concretely counter this epidemic now, what are your thoughts?
"For Christians, and particularly for those who believe in the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian West, I don’t believe that we should have a [financial] bailout."
Bannon: That’s a great question. The 2008 crisis, I think the financial crisis — which, by the way, I don’t think we’ve come through — is really driven I believe by the greed, much of it driven by the greed of the investment banks. My old firm, Goldman Sachs — traditionally the best banks are leveraged 8:1. When we had the financial crisis in 2008, the investment banks were leveraged 35:1. Those rules had specifically been changed by a guy named Hank Paulson. He was secretary of Treasury. As chairman of Goldman Sachs, he had gone to Washington years before and asked for those changes. That made the banks not really investment banks, but made them hedge funds — and highly susceptible to changes in liquidity. And so the crisis of 2008 was, quite frankly, really never recovered from in the United States. It’s one of the reasons last quarter you saw 2.9% negative growth in a quarter. So the United States economy is in very, very tough shape. And one of the reasons is that we’ve never really gone and dug down and sorted through the problems of 2008. Particularly the fact — think about it — not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis. And in fact, it gets worse. No bonuses and none of their equity was taken. So part of the prime drivers of the wealth that they took in the 15 years leading up to the crisis was not hit at all, and I think that’s one of the fuels of this populist revolt that we’re seeing as the tea party. So I think there are many, many measures, particularly about getting the banks on better footing, making them address all the liquid assets they have. I think you need a real clean-up of the banks' balance sheets. In addition, I think you really need to go back and make banks do what they do: Commercial banks lend money, and investment banks invest in entrepreneurs and to get away from this trading — you know, the hedge fund securitization, which they’ve all become basically trading operations and securitizations and not put capital back and really grow businesses and to grow the economy. So I think it’s a whole area that just — and I will tell you, the underpinning of this populist revolt is the financial crisis of 2008. That revolt, the way that it was dealt with, the way that the people who ran the banks and ran the hedge funds have never really been held accountable for what they did, has fueled much of the anger in the tea party movement in the United States.
Questioner: Thank you. Bannon: Great question. Questioner: Hello, Mr. Bannon. I’m Mario Fantini, a Vermonter living in Vienna, Austria. You began describing some of the trends you’re seeing worldwide, very dangerous trends, worry trends. Another movement that I’ve been seeing grow and spread in Europe, unfortunately, is what can only be described as tribalist or neo-nativist movement — they call themselves Identitarians. These are mostly young, working-class, populist groups, and they’re teaching self-defense classes, but also they are arguing against — and quite effectively, I might add — against capitalism and global financial institutions, etc. How do we counteract this stuff? Because they’re appealing to a lot of young people at a very visceral level, especially with the ethnic and racial stuff. Bannon: I didn’t hear the whole question, about the tribalist?
"One of the committees in Congress said to the Justice Department, 35 [bank] executives, I believe, that they should have criminal indictments against — not one of those has ever been followed up on."
Questioner: Very simply put, there’s a growing movement among young people here in Europe, in France and in Austria and elsewhere, and they’re arguing very effectively against Wall Street institutions and they’re also appealing to people on an ethnic and racial level. And I was just wondering what you would recommend to counteract these movements, which are growing. Bannon: One of the reasons that you can understand how they’re being fueled is that they’re not seeing the benefits of capitalism. I mean particularly — and I think it’s particularly more advanced in Europe than it is in the United States, but in the United States it’s getting pretty advanced — is that when you have this kind of crony capitalism, you have a different set of rules for the people that make the rules. It’s this partnership of big government and corporatists. I think it starts to fuel, particularly as you start to see negative job creation. If you go back, in fact, and look at the United States’ GDP, you look at a bunch of Europe. If you take out government spending, you know, we’ve had negative growth on a real basis for over a decade. And that all trickles down to the man in the street. If you look at people’s lives, and particularly millennials, look at people under 30 — people under 30, there’s 50% really underemployment of people in the United States, which is probably the most advanced economy in the West, and it gets worse in Europe. I think in Spain it’s something like 50 or 60% of the youth under 30 are underemployed. And that means the decade of their twenties, which is where you have to learn a skill, where you have to learn a craft, where you really start to get comfortable in your profession, you’re taking that away from the entire generation. That’s only going to fuel tribalism, that’s only going to fuel [unintelligible]… That’s why to me, it’s incumbent upon freedom-loving people to make sure that we sort out these governments and make sure that we sort out particularly this crony capitalism so that the benefits become more of this entrepreneurial spirit and that can flow back to working-class and middle-class people. Because if not, we’re going to pay a huge price for this. You can already start to see it. Questioner: I have a question, because you worked on Wall Street. What is the opinion there on whether they think bank bailouts are justified? Is there a Christian-centered [unintelligible] that they think should be bailed out? The crisis starts earlier than 2008. What was the precedent then? What was the feeling on Wall Street when they bailed out the banks? How should Christians feel about advocating or being against that? Bannon: I think one is about responsibility. For Christians, and particularly for those who believe in the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian West, I don’t believe that we should have a bailout. I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong. And I think, you look in hindsight, it was a lot of misinformation that was presented about the bailouts of the banks in the West. And look at the [unintelligible] it. Middle-class taxpayers, people that are working-class people, right, people making incomes under $50,000 and $60,000, it was the burden of those taxpayers, right, that bailed out the elites. And let’s think about it for a second. Here’s how capitalism metastasized, is that all the burdens put on the working-class people who get none of the upside. All of the upside goes to the crony capitalists. The bailouts were absolutely outrageous, and here’s why: It bailed out a group of shareholders and executives who were specifically accountable. The shareholders were accountable for one simple reason: They allowed this to go wrong without changing management. And the management team of this. And we know this now from congressional investigations, we know it from independent investigations, this is not some secret conspiracy. This is kind of in plain sight. In fact, one of the committees in Congress said to the Justice Department 35 executives, I believe, that they should have criminal indictments against — not one of those has ever been followed up on. Because even with the Democrats, right, in power, there’s a sense between the law firms, and the accounting firms, and the investment banks, and their stooges on Capitol Hill, they looked the other way. So you can understand why middle-class people having a tough go of it making $50 or $60 thousand a year and see their taxes go up, and they see that their taxes are going to pay for government sponsored bailouts, what you’ve created is really a free option. You say to this investment banking, create a free option for bad behavior. In otherwise all the upside goes to the hedge funds and the investment bank, and to the crony capitalist with stock increases and bonus increases. And their downside is limited, because middle-class people are going to come and bail them out with tax dollars. And that’s what I think is fueling this populist revolt. Whether that revolt is in the Midlands of England, or whether it’s in Middle America. And I think people are fed up with it. And I think that’s why you’re seeing — when you read the media says, “tea party is losing, losing elections,” that is all BS. The elections we don’t win, we’re forcing those crony capitalists to come and admit that they’re not going to do this again. The whole narrative in Washington has been changed by this populist revolt that we call the grassroots of the tea party movement. And it’s specifically because those bailouts were completely and totally unfair. It didn’t make those financial institutions any stronger, and it bailed out a bunch of people — by the way, and these are people that have all gone to Yale, and Harvard, they went to the finest institutions in the West. They should have known better. And by the way: It’s all the institutions of the accounting firms, the law firms, the investment banks, the consulting firms, the elite of the elite, the educated elite, they understood what they were getting into, forcibly took all the benefits from it and then look to the government, went hat in hand to the government to be bailed out. And they’ve never been held accountable today. Trust me — they are going to be held accountable. You’re seeing this populist movement called the tea party in the United States. Harnwell: Okay, I think we’ve got time for just one or two more questions for Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of Breitbart Media, third-largest news organization in the States. I know you’re a very, very busy man, so we’re very grateful for the time that you’ve agreed to put aside for this, to close this conference.
"I certainly think secularism has sapped the strength of the Judeo-Christian West to defend its ideals, right?"
Bannon: I’m never too busy to share with a group that can do as much good as you guys can.
Questioner: What do you think is the major threat today, to the Judeo-Christian Civilization? Secularism, or the Muslim world? In my humble opinion, they’re just trying to defend themselves from our cultural invasion. Thank you. [Question restated by Harnwell] Bannon: It’s a great question. I certainly think secularism has sapped the strength of the Judeo-Christian West to defend its ideals, right? If you go back to your home countries and your proponent of the defense of the Judeo-Christian West and its tenets, oftentimes, particularly when you deal with the elites, you’re looked at as someone who is quite odd. So it has kind of sapped the strength. But I strongly believe that whatever the causes of the current drive to the caliphate was — and we can debate them, and people can try to deconstruct them — we have to face a very unpleasant fact. And that unpleasant fact is that there is a major war brewing, a war that’s already global. It’s going global in scale, and today’s technology, today’s media, today’s access to weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today. Every day that we refuse to look at this as what it is, and the scale of it, and really the viciousness of it, will be a day where you will rue that we didn’t act [unintelligible].
"The way that the people who ran the banks and ran the hedge funds have never really been held accountable for what they did has fueled much of the anger in the tea party movement in the United States."
Questioner: Thank you very much. I’m [unintelligible]. I come from Slovakia. This is actually the source of my two very quick questions. Thank you very much for the work that you do to promote the Judeo-Christian values in the world. I really appreciate it, and I also feel that the danger is very high. I have two minor questions, because you have mentioned, in terms of UKIP and Front National [unintelligible]. From the European perspective, listening to the language which has become more and more radical from these two parties, especially before the European Parliament elections, I’m just wondering what are your plans on how to help these partners from Europe to maybe focus on the value issues and not with populist? And also it goes in terms — you have mentioned the involvement of state in capitalism as one of the big dangers. But these two parties you’ve mentioned, they actually have close ties with Putin, who is the promoter of this big danger, so I’d like to know your thoughts about this and how you’re going to deal with it.
Bannon: Could you summarize that for me? Harnwell: The first question was, you’d reference the Front National and UKIP as having elements that are tinged with the racial aspect amidst their voter profile, and the questioner was asking how you intend to deal with that aspect. Bannon: I don’t believe I said UKIP in that. I was really talking about the parties on the continent, Front National and other European parties. I’m not an expert in this, but it seems that they have had some aspects that may be anti-Semitic or racial. By the way, even in the tea party, we have a broad movement like this, and we’ve been criticized, and they try to make the tea party as being racist, etc., which it’s not. But there’s always elements who turn up at these things, whether it’s militia guys or whatever. Some that are fringe organizations. My point is that over time it all gets kind of washed out, right? People understand what pulls them together, and the people on the margins I think get marginalized more and more. I believe that you’ll see this in the center-right populist movement in continental Europe. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with UKIP, and I can say to you that I’ve never seen anything at all with UKIP that even comes close to that. I think they’ve done a very good job of policing themselves to really make sure that people including the British National Front and others were not included in the party, and I think you’ve seen that also with tea party groups, where some people would show up and were kind of marginal members of the tea party, and the tea party did a great job of policing themselves early on. And I think that’s why when you hear charges of racism against the tea party, it doesn’t stick with the American people, because they really understand. I think when you look at any kind of revolution — and this is a revolution — you always have some groups that are disparate. I think that will all burn away over time and you’ll see more of a mainstream center-right populist movement.
"Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand."
Question: Obviously, before the European elections the two parties had a clear link to Putin. If one of the representatives of the dangers of capitalism is the state involvement in capitalism, so, I see there, also Marine Le Pen campaigning in Moscow with Putin, and also UKIP strongly defending Russian positions in geopolitical terms.
[Harnwell restates, but unintelligible] Harnwell: These two parties have both been cultivating President Putin [unintelligible]. Bannon: I think it’s a little bit more complicated. When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he's got an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what's called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that. One of the reasons is that they believe that at least Putin is standing up for traditional institutions, and he's trying to do it in a form of nationalism — and I think that people, particularly in certain countries, want to see the sovereignty for their country, they want to see nationalism for their country. They don't believe in this kind of pan-European Union or they don't believe in the centralized government in the United States. They'd rather see more of a states-based entity that the founders originally set up where freedoms were controlled at the local level.
"You're seeing a global reaction to centralized government, whether that government is in Beijing or that government is in Washington, DC, or that government is in Brussels. So we are the platform for the voice of that."
I'm not justifying Vladimir Putin and the kleptocracy that he represents, because he eventually is the state capitalist of kleptocracy. However, we the Judeo-Christian West really have to look at what he's talking about as far as traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism — and I happen to think that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing and a strong thing. I think strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States, and I think it's what can see us forward.
You know, Putin’s been quite an interesting character. He’s also very, very, very intelligent. I can see this in the United States where he's playing very strongly to social conservatives about his message about more traditional values, so I think it's something that we have to be very much on guard of. Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand. However, I really believe that in this current environment, where you're facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive that is really a situation — I'm not saying we can put it on a back burner — but I think we have to deal with first things first. Questioner: One of my questions has to do with how the West should be responding to radical Islam. How, specifically, should we as the West respond to jihadism without losing our own soul? Because we can win the war and lose ourselves at the same time. How should the West respond to radical Islam and not lose itself in the process? Bannon: From a perspective — this may be a little more militant than others. I think definitely you’re going to need an aspect that is [unintelligible]. I believe you should take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam. And I realize there are other aspects that are not as militant and not as aggressive and that’s fine. If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers kept their stance, and I think they did the right thing. I think they kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places... It bequeathed to use the great institution that is the church of the West.
And I would ask everybody in the audience today, because you really are the movers and drivers and shakers and thought leaders in the Catholic Church today, is to think, when people 500 years from now are going to think about today, think about the actions you've taken — and I believe everyone associated with the church and associated with the Judeo-Christian West that believes in the underpinnings of that and believes in the precepts of that and want to see that bequeathed to other generations down the road as it was bequeathed to us, particularly as you’re in a city like Rome, and in a place like the Vatican, see what’s been bequeathed to us — ask yourself, 500 years from today, what are they going to say about me? What are they going to say about what I did at the beginning stages of this crisis? Because it is a crisis, and it's not going away. You don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the news every day, see what’s coming up, see what they’re putting on Twitter, what they’re putting on Facebook, see what’s on CNN, what’s on BBC. See what’s happening, and you will see we’re in a war of immense proportions. It’s very easy to play to our baser instincts, and we can’t do that. But our forefathers didn’t do it either. And they were able to stave this off, and they were able to defeat it, and they were able to bequeath to us a church and a civilization that really is the flower of mankind, so I think it’s incumbent on all of us to do what I call a gut check, to really think about what our role is in this battle that’s before us.Simon Posford & Benji Vaughan
By Paul Nagle
Younger Brother brings together two of the Twisted label's biggest names. We visited Simon Posford's studio in a bid to uncover the secrets of psytrance...
The names Simon Posford and Benji Vaughan may be unfamiliar to some Sound On Sound readers. After all, their background is the hazy world of psychedelic trance, a musical byproduct of the LSD and ecstasyfuelled parties and raves of the '90s. With its roots deeply entwined in Goa trance and, to a lesser extent, acid house, Psytrance remained an underground scene even at its zenith. Despite this, Posford's first album reached number 27 in the French album charts, and over the next decade his Twisted record label established a reputation as a source of highquality dance and electronic music. Foremost amongst its artists was Shpongle, the collaboration between Posford and legendary innovator Raja Ram that straddles so many boundaries there's surely a UN charter about it.
Benji Vaughan is best known for his footstomping trance identity Prometheus, although his long list of credits includes performing remix work for EMI and Jive, scoring an advert for Sony and producing electronic funk band The Egg. Benji and Simon work together as Younger Brother, a partnership characterised by high production values, lush melodies and intricate arrangements. As their second album, The Last Days Of Gravity, was released in October 2007, we thought it high time we floated on down to see them.
Simon Posford's musical career began as a teenager, when he had the choice of either going to Oxford to study botany, or going to work at Virgin recording studios. The decision to go to Virgin as tapeop was a nobrainer, especially as it offered an opportunity to learn the ropes alongside such luminaries as Spike Stent. For a while, Posford rotated round the various Virgin studios — the Town House, Olympic, Town House 2 and the Manor — but the life of making tea and dealing with fevered egos couldn't go on indefinitely. Things came to a head with the band James, who had recently finished touring but had not yet abandoned 'tour mentality'. It was, Posford recalls, an absolute nightmare.
Seeing his unhappiness, Stent took him aside and told him that the producer Martin 'Youth' Glover was looking for someone to work for him at his Butterfly Studios. The offer was sweetened further as it offered the opportunity to work on some of Posford's own musical ideas. "The urge to make my own music was just too strong and so, wondering who this mad hippy Youth was, I went to work for him in 1991 or maybe '92. Prior to that I'd learnt a lot from watching these top engineers like Spike, Dave Bascombe, people like that, but now I had hands on — I was the engineer.
"Apart from sessions with the KLF, I hadn't really seen much electronic music at Virgin, it was all bands. But now I was starting to go to acid parties and it was from there I got into electronic music. I remember getting my hands on a sampler for the first time — an Akai S950. The very first sample I took was this 30second chunk of Ozric Tentacles. I simply tuned it down two semitones, slotted it into a tune I was working on and it fit perfectly. If only all samples fitted in so well!"
In contrast, Benji Vaughan found he preferred the otherworldly tones of Aphex Twin and the Orb to the music he was hearing at acid parties. It was only after a trip to Goa that he threw himself fully into trance. Those early experiments were with basic equipment — an Alesis SR16 drum machine and an Akai S01 sampler — but they paved the way for his first release, the trance classic 'Clarity From Deep Fog' with Sean Williams. More collaborations followed, including Process (with Williams), Citizen Kaned with Nick Doof and Cyber Babas with Raja Ram. He met Simon Posford while delivering essential'studio supplies' and has been associated with the Twisted Label (formed in 1996 by Posford and exDragonfly manager Simon Holton), ever since.
An hour out of London, tucked away in quiet woodland, is Posford's unassuming home studio. Here, Speak & Spell machines are strewn casually amongst topclass outboard gear, and it's immediately apparent that comfort and a relaxed working environment rate higher than controlroom acoustics or laboratory conditions. From the first Hallucinogen album to the latest Younger Brother release, all of Posford's output has been recorded on a Mackie 32:8 analogue desk. "I've had one since they first came out," he says. "I must admit I don't really like it but I can't complain too much — people do say our production is very good. I'd love a big desk — not digital — something like the TL Audio valve desk. I really like the SSL thing, the halfcontroller, halfdesk SSL AWS900. Maybe there aren't enough physical aux sends, though, and they only do a 24channel version.
"I haven't mastered this mixinginthebox thing. I love mixing desks, I love the feel of them, the touch of them, feeling the faders. When something needs a bit more top, you reach over and the knob's there and it's done quicker than I can say it. On the computer you've got to find the right page, you've got to select the thing, you do it with the mouse or even a controller, and by the time you've actually done it, I could have done 10 other things on a mixing desk."
Ergonomics aside, though, Posford has no objection to the sound of software processors. "In the last two years, plugins have really started to come on. I mean the SSL stuff in Waves would take some beating in the analogue domain — you'd need a pretty serious desk. And a lot of stuff coming out on the UAD card, the Neve stuff, is absolutely fantastic. So in the end we use both plugins and hardware. Even though on this mix we EQ stuff with SSL plugins, it comes through the Mackie, where I might EQ it again. The desk is still a tool — and a valuable tool."
Benji Vaughan, by contrast, has been thinking of getting rid of his desk. "The thing that gets me most is when I'm working on a few things at the same time. I hate that feeling when I've committed to the desk. There's 32 outputs and all these outboard effects and you have to pull it all out to work on something else. For the last few months we've been editing this band, so I've been bringing it down here without committing to any outboard because I want to pass the files over to Si. I'm doing it all inside my laptop with the Waves stuff. The trouble is it never comes up right, to be honest. We both use Logic, we have the same plugins and still it doesn't come back correctly. Who knows why but it just doesn't copy plugin settings; all the SSL EQs come up but they aren't set to anything."
If mixing via DAW is subject to ongoing debate, there is at least agreement on the sequencer of choice. Both use Logic, although they contend that even this isn't perfect.
Simon Posford: "Logic is our main workhorse. The main feature we still want, and we hear people bang on about it all the time in Sound On Sound, is 'bounce in place'. So many times we've set up edits of audio on a track with loads of plugins and we want to bounce it to an audio file and use that in our arrangement. I counted the amount of clicks you have to do to achieve that in Logic and it's over 30 or something — utterly ridiculous! You bounce it, then import it into your audio window, then drag it out of the audio window back into the arrange, make a track for it, delete all your plugins, delete the old track that was there, take the parts off, you know... I'm falling asleep just talking about it.
"Every time a new version comes out it's got new graphics, which I really don't care about. I'd love it if, instead, they spent their time updating the timestretch algorithms. In each version there's all this stuff that seems to have been there for 10 years but now has a new interface.
"You'd think that by now they'd incorporate some way of quantising audio that wasn't a complete disaster. Ideally you'd click on an audio part in Logic and it'd bring up a matrix like a MIDI part and you could move it around. It's key to music to be able to take audio and put it in time efficiently without cracks and clicks everywhere. If Melodyne can do it, if Ableton can do it..."
The second Younger Brother release is an assured and diverse collection of tracks with, it seems to me, a decidedly bandlike feel. I ask Simon if this was intentional.
"The first album was more centred around making a sound, then basing the song on that. When it was complete we found we wanted to do a proper album, without worrying about whether it was trance or whatever. We had a vibe and a direction and created sounds to fit in with that. We went back to our band roots — something we could do because the technology had changed so much. It's extraordinary to think that when we started Younger Brother, we were still using Akai samplers, which made putting on big chunks of guitar much more complicated. Now, years later, the whole process has changed and the dividing line between an electronic album and a band album has completely broken down. We now can be a band, just two people."
In his band days, it was always Posford who wanted to have a go on the others' instruments. "That's how I learnt everything. Back when we started, if you put in a slightly dodgy guitar part then it remained a dodgy guitar part. Yes, you could edit it, but it took hours. Whereas now you can get ideas and emotions down from an instrument and then fix it up a bit with audio quantise, without killing it.
"One of the rules for this album was, where possible, we wanted to do it all ourselves. We got in Gerry Hogan to play slide guitar and Ruu Campbell the singer, but otherwise we played the drums, the bass, the guitar, the keyboards."
From its wistful opening track, 'Happy Pills', with its lush pads, driving percussion and swirling synths, to the New Orderesque guitars and deeply processed vocals of 'Psychic Gibbon', The Last Days Of Gravity is varied beyond my ability to categorise. Its unusual time signatures and shifts of perspective suggest progressive rock at its most imaginative, and I reckon there's a spacedout indie band tucked away in there too. Most surprising is the lack of any obvious dance tracks, perhaps because the drumming — although tight and effective — never loses its natural, human feel. And, as ever, the synthesizers are splendid throughout.
"On the album we used [Native Instruments'] Reaktor, the Roland VSynth, the Korg MS20, Roland SH101, a Mellotron, Macbeth M3X and the OSCAR — there's OSCar all over it!" says Vaughan. "And the M3X — Ken MacBeth makes crazy stuff. The sound of it is just gorgeous, so warm and silky and creamy, plus it's got that heritage; you want to buy it because you know he's some crazy guy up in Scotland knocking it together.
"Whenever fans get in touch they always ask if we use a Virus, as they say their dream is to have one. I've had two of them and neither worked. The potential is very good; as a synthesis engine it is quite powerful, but the TC Powercore one didn't work and the Virus Indigo crashed, which is the last thing you need in a keyboard."
By contrast, Posford's enthusiasm for the M3X nicely sums up Younger Brother's approach to music creation. "What we're after, and what musicians should strive for, is uniqueness," says Posford. "That's where hardware scores. You're getting a bit of uniqueness, a bit of character that software can't give you. Look for those weird old effects, guitar pedals, old synths, things that don't work properly. Or circuitbent stuff. We've sent quite a bit of gear to CircuitBenders.co.uk for modification. Take the Alesis drum machine: it is quite uncontrollable, unpredictable and has these unlabelled sockets that you patch together so it glitches up in different ways. Some of the options decrease the bit rate or mix the samples so it gets really crunchy. Sometimes it totally crashes the machine and you have to power off and start again. We used it on the tracks 'Psychic Gibbon' and 'Elephant Machine' for that really dirty, lofi sound."
Noticing both a real Korg MS20 and the Legacy software version, I couldn't help asking Simon for his firsthand comparison. "The little thingy I never use. I was really hoping for an easy replacement for the MS20; it didn't even have to sound as good, but I wanted something that was easier, as I use its filter a lot. But it was no fun, no joy; it all sounds the same. Put stuff through the real MS20 and you never know quite what you're going to get; the way the filter distorts is always changing and very different from the plugin. We used it a lot on the CD, often just for the filter and modulation side.
"As much as software is brilliant and clever and can do fantastic things, I just find hardware so much more inspiring. It's like when you sit at a piano, it makes you want to play and write songs. I never think of sitting down at a controller, loading up a soft synth patch and playing. You don't feel like reaching for the mouse to select a new sound when you can reach over and grab a knob instead. Hardware is more fun but you get the uniqueness too.
"In the early days of software instruments you could say hardware always sounded better. I don't know if that really applies any more, but hardware certainly sounds more unique and characterful. With software generally it's good that you can get so much — a compressor on every channel or whatever — but with synths it's best when they stop trying to emulate. Something like Reaktor is absolutely fantastic, but when you go through magazines and see what's coming out, it's page after page of emulations, even of gear that's already been emulated by somebody else. Another Minimoog, another Odyssey."
Warped and often outrageously timestretched vocals are a Simon Posford trademark, and I confess one of my ulterior motives for nabbing this interview was my desire to uncover these secrets. As is so often the case, it turns out that these effects are not attributable to any one, easily lifted process, but are the result of painstaking work with accumulated plugins.
"Sorry, but there's no secret formula. You might use something to get it in tune, then something else to fuck it up; then you might change the formant or something like that, then chop it up to get it in time. It's really all about editing and graft. We often employ lofi solutions such as putting it into the [Korg] MS20, which has a frequencytopitch converter, so you can add some analogue into the equation and mix it together."
Ultimately, one theme that Simon Posford keeps returning to is the fact that technical wizardry can't make up for a paucity of musical ideas. "I think that more people are now coming to music from computer or DJ backgrounds and less musical ones. It's a bit like photography, where in the old days if you wanted a photograph, you'd hire a specialist and he'd come round with this thing that looked like an accordion, put a towel over his head, set the equipment up and take an amazing photograph. Nowadays everyone has got a camera — but that doesn't mean I want to see everybody's pictures. There's still a market for goodquality photographs, and it's the same with music. The specialists will always stand out."
Younger Brother Live The night before my visit, Simon and Benji had taken Younger Brother out to play in Soho, aided and abetted by some top session musicians. Simon explains: "The gig was fairly chaotic. The stage was tiny and we didn't have the bass player, so that came from computer along with some of the synths and backing tracks, all in separate channels to the mixing desk manned by Benji. I took a guitar and a controller keyboard and played the ImpOSCar rather than the real one. I also played a Roland SH101, which is such a great synth live |
is.
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 11/30/2009 @ 5:28 pm PT...
Is the "no such thing as Global Warming", before or after: Obama isn't a U.S. citizen, Obama pals around with terrorists, ACORN is worse than KBR and all other govt contractors, Obama is the anti-Christ, the Bush administration didn't torture, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Oscar the Grouch is biased, everyone has health care, Graeme Frost is rich, Sadaam mailed anthrax, Joe the Plumber, keep the govt out of medicare, the NFL is run by "liberals", there were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration (9/11, anthrax, etc...), and what's next after there's no global warming btw...??? We have to start keeping track. What was right before there's no global warming...that Obama wasn't a U.S. citizen? Or was there something in between that? Oh! Oscar the Grouch stole NY-23 for ACORN! Right!
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 11/30/2009 @ 5:35 pm PT...
Death panels.
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... lottakatz said on 11/30/2009 @ 5:40 pm PT...
You know Brad, making light of this guys statement that you should be subject to capital punishment for the crime of disagreement is all well and good as a civilized recognition of the value of his ideas but, but, these crazy guys ginning up their followers with increasingly violent language being treated dismissively no matter what their rhetoric, is not necessarily the best way to go in the long run. Breitbart and his ilk speak directly to a particular brand of wing-nut extremist that has already shown a capability to translate their philosophy into action. If someone like this put it out that I needed killing I'd make a police report over it. Seriously. People just roll their eyes and dismiss this kind of thing but at some point a critical mass will be reached and someone is going to get killed. I'd make the report just so that when the likely suspects are interviewed the list of them will be comprehensive; when the history is written the list of provocateurs will be complete. If enough people on the receiving end of this kind of thing filed reports it might actually give these crazies pause. Just say'n.
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
... BlueHawk said on 11/30/2009 @ 5:44 pm PT...
Why would someone need a "fair trial" for an idea that right wingers don't like...? Hell when trials for unaccepted ideas start happening...they won't need to kill me...I'll friggin' commit suicide. it's not the murder that bothers me...it's the trial dammit.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
... The Leak said on 11/30/2009 @ 10:01 pm PT...
Somehow I find this off the point and a distraction. The harping of whether his behavior was over-board. Was it? Yes. But, I also find reaction from those promoting GW to be over-reaction also, in that these emails do indeed cast a measure of doubt on a subject where policy decisions steaming from it would effect every life on this planet. And as one that was involved in starting one of the first ecology institutes way back in the 60's, I can tell you this, I'm not convinced GW is a valid study. Yes we pollute, but as far as having an effect on Earth's temperature? No. Certainly not enough to warrant forming a One World Government, that would be funded by a global carbon tax, to be handled by the same bankers/corporations that have brought us our current mess.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
... Grizzly Bear Dancer said on 11/30/2009 @ 11:22 pm PT...
I got another approach. Something I wanted to do with the bushit administeration and blogged on more than 1 4th of July during there stolen elections x2. Went something like this.. Get in the ring you treasonous lying murderers with me so I can beat your heads in. U like inflicting death on others, doing enviro damage to line the pockets of you and your greedy rich friends and I would like to put an immediate end to you reign. Get in ring MF. Get in the ring.
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 11/30/2009 @ 11:55 pm PT...
Breitbart is a Moonie wanna-be, that's all
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 3:32 am PT...
Does anyone else think it's weird that no one's talking about the actual hackers of the Global Warming emails? I've read many things about this, and I haven't seen anything about the actual hackers. Hacking emails is illegal, right? They seem to get email hackers very quickly all the time. Did they get these guys yet? Why not? It seems easy to get them based on the past. They seem to get them right away. Did they get them, and I just don't know about it? Also, isn't it weird that Breitbart was connected to the ACORN/pimp thing. Can he possibly be connected to these email hackers? It seems like a similar thing. Why is Breitbart at the forefront of the ACORN thing, and now the email hacker thing?
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 12/1/2009 @ 4:23 am PT...
Krugman pretty much tore that email shit apart Danno on Sunday IMO. http://videocafe.crooksa...-will-task-over-hacked-s
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
... BlueHawk said on 12/1/2009 @ 5:47 am PT...
Big Dan @24 Good point...If I'm not mistaken email hacking carries the same penalty as breaking Postal laws, it's a felony. Why hasn't anyone focused on the actual crime committed here?...Why is the mainstream media focused on the nefarious lies that have been concocted from committing a felony? hmmmm
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
... BlueHawk said on 12/1/2009 @ 6:25 am PT...
To go with Big Dan's comment @24 http://www.scholarsandro.../climategate-not-likely/
Third and probably most importantly, no matter how much the deniers scream, these emails aren’t likely to reveal any evidence of scientific malfeasance. And even if they do, there’s an entire globe of researchers whose independent research has bolstered the case that climate disruption is real and that it’s predominantly caused by human civilization. It will take more than even a couple of thousand emails to knock the massive, reinforced scientific foundation that underlies anthropogenic climate disruption. And let’s not forget – the emails and documents were obtained illegally. If there is truly damning information (such as a critical scientist or three overtly saying stuff along the lines of “I fudged my data and nobody caught me. You lost the bet – pay up.”), then the illegality of the release will fade somewhat in the face of other data. But if not, this hack will be a major problem for not only the hackers who released it but also for all the people who are republishing the emails. Hacking is illegal, but in some states and countries, releasing private email correspondence is considered breach of privacy and is thus also a crime. Finally, let’s point out that some of the people here screaming the loudest from their soapboxes are hypocrites (such as Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey). If the hackers had got into military computers and released private communications, they’d be screaming for the hackers’ blood and demanding that any site republishing the emails be brought up on federal charges. But here they’re screaming for the victim’s blood. If hacking and leaking emails is wrong, then it’s wrong. Claiming that it’s wrong when a leak targets your friends but OK when it targets your enemy makes you a hypocrite and a political hack worthy of nothing but disdain.
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
... aview999 said on 12/1/2009 @ 6:50 am PT...
lottakatz @ #19:
totally agree. If more filed complaints on these muther f*ckers, maybe we'd hear less "spoutin of the mouth". (oh right. when hell freezes over) OT
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COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
... Brad Friedman said on 12/1/2009 @ 7:39 am PT...
"The Leak" at @ 21 said: these emails do indeed cast a measure of doubt on a subject [global warming] Really? Which email? What doubt? Feel free to be specific. Thanks. as one that was involved in starting one of the first ecology institutes way back in the 60's Really? Which one? What role did you play in it? I can tell you this, I'm not convinced GW is a valid study. Really? Which study? There are hundreds, if not thousands of them by, by hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists. Which one is not "valid"? Again, I'll look forward to your specifics. Yes we pollute, but as far as having an effect on Earth's temperature? No. Okay. And your evidence for that is based on, your opinion? Science? Feel free to share. Certainly not enough to warrant forming a One World Government, that would be funded by a global carbon tax, to be handled by the same bankers/corporations that have brought us our current mess. Well, on that I'd agree. But since nobody is discusing "forming a One World Government, that would be funded by a global carbon tax", except for loons and disinformation agents, I don't think you need to much worry about that. But where you say you're concerned that "GW is [not] a valid study", perhaps you ought to be more worried about your news sources not being valid news sources --- unless you are either a loon or a disinformation agent yourself. You'll feel free to demonstrate otherwise by answering the questions I've offered above. Or, we'll never hear from you again as so often happens with "concern troll" phonies.
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
... Konstantin said on 12/1/2009 @ 10:16 am PT...
About a "one world government" you really need to do better research on it. It isn't a secret really. If you do some research on economics you'll get a better idea of the drive for a one world global government. There is an interview with Norman Dodd, who worked on the controversial Reece Committee:
The interview,in all 5 parts, can be viewed here: The Hidden Agenda with G. Edward Griffin & Norman Dodd Some books you may want to read concerning it are:
by Carroll Quigley, Professor of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
"The Anglo American Establishment"
"Tragedy And Hope" I really haven't looked into it much at all.
I don't think you should spend too much time on it unless you really want to but you're wrong. See the European Union's website: http://www.europa-eu-un....s/en/article_9245_en.htm "2009 is also the first year of global governance, with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis." About Climategate, when a group of scientists hijack the peer review process it's a serious matter. Also science should never be done in secret like the CRU had been doing.
COMMENT #31 [Permalink]
... Konstantin said on 12/1/2009 @ 10:31 am PT...
COMMENT #32 [Permalink]
... Konstantin said on 12/1/2009 @ 10:59 am PT...
Of course there are more immediate problems to worry about.
COMMENT #33 [Permalink]
... BlueHawk said on 12/1/2009 @ 11:04 am PT...
Cap and Trade leads to "One World Government"? You mean that Central Banking and it's private manipulation of a nation's currency isn't a one world government meaure? Cap and Trade may, or may not be a money grab...but to attach it to "One World Government" is truly silly.
I guess sales taxes are "One World Government" too That's another loony tunes tactic used by the corporatists...find a policy they don't like and attach a loaded word like "One World Government" to it. That's sure to inflame the patrioctic, yet ill-informed zealots. It's simply marching orders for the unconscious...
COMMENT #34 [Permalink]
... Lola said on 12/1/2009 @ 11:55 am PT...
Bluehawk asks if Breitbart is 12 years old.... He must be as his behavior is certainly childish. When Ellen at Newshounds.us did a post questioning the discrepancies within his ACORN sting, he twitted insinuations that she must be a commie. Looks like Breitbart doesn't understand mature professionalism as he always seems to be operating on a Junior High level.
COMMENT #35 [Permalink]
... Robert said on 12/1/2009 @ 12:24 pm PT...
Dear Brad, Climate Charge Reports from the IPCC have as much integrity as a Diebold Voting System. Brad, you damage your own credibility by standing by those who, at first hid their source data from any and all independent confirmation, then were caught red-handed manipulating that same source data as well as ginning up climate model results. They have also refused FOIA requests, then deleted their pertinent source data, making any independent confirmation or refutation of their conclusions impossible. The emails also detail strategies to manipulate the peer review process and silence legitimate scientific dissent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYxk7pnmMFw http://www.youtube.com/w...X-_8&feature=related We could act as if this unethical behavior never happened. But we would still know, much the same as we know now. We should not need "Global Warming" or "Climate Change" to motivate us to liver cleaner and smarter. Attention to co2 guides legitimate environmental concern away from from real pollution and more importantly, real polluters. Cap and Trade is no cap at all, not for those corporations that can afford additional credits (or control the issuance of the credits to begin with). For them the pollution is beyond regulation. After all, they paid for the priviledge, right? Our planet is toxic. Our air and water is poisoned more and more each day. Chronic illnesses are exploding. Our children are ill in great numbers. The culprit is not co2, and the solution is not a tax hustle enforced on Americans from overseas. Dr. Tim Ball of the University of Winnipeg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac UK astrophysicist Piers Corbyn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdwCSS8hPNg
(this one also has solid links to more info)
COMMENT #36 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 12:54 pm PT...
I can't wait until they find out the email hackers are connected to the right. Remember the ACORN pimp story? When it first broke, everyone was saying: "Wow! Look at this fine, young man! He did a sting operation! What a patriot!" Then you find out he's somehow connected to the right and Breitbart (or whoever financed him was on the right). It's like an infomercial, just like the ACORN thing: they do the "setup", and the rightwing freaks then do the second part of the infomercial, the media push part. Just like a friggin' Ron Poppeil veg-o-matic infomercial! Can't anyone see this? How many times does it have to happen? Shill audiences and everything! "Just set it...AND FORGET IT!!!!!!!"
COMMENT #37 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 12:54 pm PT...
One more thing: everyone keeps saying "GW" in this thread. I thought you meant "George Bush". Sorry!
COMMENT #38 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 12:58 pm PT...
...and I think you should ALWAYS show Breitbart with Oscar the Grouch, like they do with Michael Steele: http://17.media.tumblr.c...0u0gyqQa8xHjCxo1_500.jpg Wasn't it Breitbart who pushed the story that Oscar the Grouch was biased? So, you should always show him with Oscar the Grouch, like Jon Stewart does with Michael Steele. He's got to be forever ribbed for saying Oscar the Grouch was biased! You can't let that go! Go with it!
COMMENT #39 [Permalink]
... Konstantin said on 12/1/2009 @ 1:02 pm PT...
Big Dan read what one of the scientists whose research they tried to suppress says. You can't justify doing scince in secret like the CRU did. Look at http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com
COMMENT #40 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 1:34 pm PT...
I'm for getting off oil, anyway. Plus, if the rightwing is pushing something, I question it. See: Obama isn't a citizen, Joe the Plumber, Oscar the Grouch, pallin' around with terrorists, Bill Ayers, etc...etc...one after another. This is just the latest one. btw, Konstantin, who are the hackers and why isn't anyone talking about them and why aren't they caught yet and why does it seem they're not even trying to catch them? And how about the timing of the hack right before Obama's at the GW summit? And how about for decades the right has been discrediting it? And discrediting evolution?
COMMENT #41 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 1:35 pm PT...
Media matters' rightwing GW disinformation page: http://mediamatters.org/research/200911300039 On Special Report, host Bret Baier falsely suggested that a series of emails reportedly stolen from the UK's Climate Research Unit (CRU) creates a "basis for disputing global warming." In fact, the validity of climate science is not hinged on the contents of these emails, some of which conservative media have taken out of context; reports from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific body for assessing climate change research, are the product of thousands of scientists worldwide.
COMMENT #42 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 1:37 pm PT...
Mark my words: this is going NOWHERE!
COMMENT #43 [Permalink]
... cann4ing said on 12/1/2009 @ 1:53 pm PT...
BlueHawk said Andrew Breibart seems like he's about 12 years old ____________________ Please! Let's not insult the intelligence, not to mention, integrity of the average 12 year old, both of which are sorely lacking in a dissembling propagandist like Andrew Breitbart.
COMMENT #44 [Permalink]
... bughunter said on 12/1/2009 @ 2:33 pm PT...
Over at S,N! Breitbart's rantings are invariably summarized as "Blart Blart Blart Blart!" Do what you will with that knowledge.
COMMENT #45 [Permalink]
... opit said on 12/1/2009 @ 2:39 pm PT...
I will never accuse those who use psyops with regularity to spread disinformation and distraction of stupidity...no more than when I became aware that the so-called 'Chimperator' was noted by his brother to have a favourite trick of acting stupid as a way of escaping punishment for assorted nastiness as a boy.
And the amount of progressive/Ron Paul/Fed/Bilderberger/Council of Foreign Relations material on YouTube is almost as notable as the lack of attention to UNESCO,Monsanto,worldwide dams and water infrastructure,buildup of coal tipple threatening water, strip mining mountains while taking away rules to keep streams from being fouled, and on and on.
But Global Warming is a bit of a special case in that those same YouTube videos are warning that Cap and Trade and Carbon Taxes will become part of international levies. I have tracked the notes on disappearing glaciers, erratic flow rate of deep ocean currents, likely loss of the base of the ocean foodchain to acidification, oxygen loss and algae - and jellyfish - buildups and coral reef death.
It really is quite overwelming. The YouTube video infomercial "Home-by the Home Project" is a shocking reality check.
I didn't miss on the strange behaviour towards Iran and North Korea : who signed on to use nuclear power responsibly - in the main,. or at first - so as not to attract unwelcome reprisals from their neighbours. Iran is still not at odds with Turkey or Pakistan, for instance : and relations with Chavez are especially resented in the U.S.
Why? I did not believe for a microsecond that Russia - which escalated matters by reflecting U.S. acts right back - having participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis and lambasting missile installations in Eastern Europe...were suddenly so brain dead so as to facilitate a nuclear threat in their back yard...and energetically protect their business client who they supplied tech and fuel designed so as to not constitute a threat according to an article I read in Russia Today some time past.
Say What?
Also buying from the wrong supplier - unlike India?
It ties in...but takes a minute. Humour me.
1 Dec - Following the Trail : Organized Destruction http://my.opera.com/oldephartte/blog/
COMMENT #46 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 4:52 pm PT...
Follow the money: who benefits by the email/hackers thing? Big Oil? Also, who could have the entire media amazingly focusing ZERO on "the hackers"? Hacking emails is illegal. Every time they hack into something this big, they're caught. In all article, they're referred to as "the hackers", "Hackers hacked into emails", etc...NOWHERE did I see anything about "the hackers" beyond just the words "the hackers" in a sentence like "the hackers who hacked into the emails". Amazing! Nothing about what they face, if caught. Nothing whatsoever about "the hackers". Of all the things to set your mind to hack into: trying to discredit Global Warming! Getting us off oil! I thought "the terrorists" win, if we keep using oil! Right? "The hackers" never hacked into Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld emails while they were lying us into war. Funny, huh? All these years, and there's actually millions of emails MISSING! Let alone hacked into!!! Who benefits from this? Someone who doesn't want us to get off Big Oil.
COMMENT #47 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 4:54 pm PT...
WHO ARE "THE HACKERS"?????????????????
COMMENT #48 [Permalink]
... BlueHawk said on 12/1/2009 @ 5:13 pm PT...
Opit @45... I went to the link to posted... In the first paragraph that site associates global warming/cap and trade with global genocide and population control. The site then goes on to associate by clever word play Margaret mead with this supposed global genocide and population control...The site also calls Mead's seminal work, the book she wrote in 1928 on Pacific Islanders and their sex life "a fraud". The site offers no proof or reference for that allegation. Just as your comment @45...that site is a hodge podge or ramblings. Irresponsible ramblings.
COMMENT #49 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 5:28 pm PT...
The rightwing "War on Science" continues: Hannity says 2009 is one of the coldest years on record...FACTS & scientists say that it was one of the warmest years on record: http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010040 Now, who should I believe? Sean Hannity or the scientific facts? I know what a lot of FOX "news" fans will believe. What do you suppose a FOX "news" viewer does, when they find out Sean Hannity is lying? Probably some of them shut off FOX "news", others ignore that he's lying and keep watching. Those are the teabaggers.
COMMENT #50 [Permalink]
... Konstantin said on 12/1/2009 @ 5:52 pm PT...
One question whether you believe or don't in anthropogenic global warming: Everyone both for and against quotes and reports on what Glenn Beck says or Hannity or.. Seriously? Who the fuck cares what they think?! Do you mean to tell me you actually waste your time listening to those idiots?? Now I realize why there so much left/right/conservative/democrat/republican/... in the media. It creates so much noise in the signal of information that people are so distracted and don't get to see the real news and important issues. If you're reporting on those idiots I think you may be partly to blame for distracting people form real issues.
COMMENT #51 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 8:52 pm PT...
Who the fuck cares what they think?! Do you mean to tell me you actually waste your time listening to those idiots?? Several million teabaggers listen to and believe them. It's not a distraction that should be ignored. Ignore it at your own peril. You won't ignore it, when we have president/VP Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann.
COMMENT #52 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 8:58 pm PT...
More accurately, we wish their followers would ignore them. But they don't. They worship and believe everything they say, facts out the window. If you ignore these so-called "distractions", it will effect you when a fetus has full rights, contraception is outlawed, creationism is taught in school, and things like that. Ignore it? It's dangerous to ignore it. Very dangerous. Maybe your wife will get thrown in jail as a murderer for taking contraception. You want to ignore that?
COMMENT #53 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/1/2009 @ 9:02 pm PT...
Go ahead, ignore this: Alaska Proposes “Fetal Personhood” http://alaskacommons.wor...l-rights-for-the-unborn/ It seeks to make abortion criminal, and would seek to prosecute women who terminate pregnancies for murder or manslaughter. And the implications could be a lot further reaching. Despite the Lt. Governor’s explanation that finds the proposal acceptable; that it does not seek to “amend or repeal existing state law regulating abortion,” it would have to, if written into law. If constitutional rights are afforded at the point of conception, which is the specific aim of Mr. Kurka’s efforts, then we could very easily be looking at the abolition of choice, contraception being made criminal, rape and incest resulting in children born into horrendous and often violent living conditions, among countless other concerns. And we would be forced to try in a court of law those who performed and/or underwent abortions as murderers. It's a "distraction"...until your wife gets thrown in jail because of a 22 year old religious zealot in Alaska, Sarah Palin country.
COMMENT #54 [Permalink]
... opit said on 12/1/2009 @ 9:39 pm PT...
Big Dan
I didn't try to convey ideas that a nonsense scenario has an alternate explanation based on one piece of evidence and one simple idea. Rather I tried to get a working theory that explained the facts in such a way that they could ationally coexist : which I don't see in 'conventional wisdom.'
I do believe I shot that all to Hell.
COMMENT #55 [Permalink]
... Idiotland said on 12/2/2009 @ 1:10 am PT...
How old is this guy? 10? God, are these wingnut sociopaths pathetic. And these morons actually influence people? No wonder this county is circling the drain.
COMMENT #56 [Permalink]
... Ivo said on 12/2/2009 @ 8:41 am PT...
Capital punishment after a fair trial by your peers isn't murder!' Call it what you want. Killing is killing. Murder is murder. I think the holy Jebus the wingnuts worship so vehemently would agree. Capital punishment is murder, state sanctioned murder but murder nonetheless. If there is one power the government should never have it is the power to kill its citizens.
COMMENT #57 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/2/2009 @ 9:14 am PT...
What does it tell everyone, that these people are pushing the Global Warming emails thing: Breitbart, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, FOX "news", Mike Savage? Do you really think they're trying to help you? Who do they always speak for? The wealthiest few, corporations, the military industrial complex, and politicians who are against the people, and 100% of the Republican Party.
COMMENT #58 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 12/2/2009 @ 9:15 am PT...
And nothing "their guys" EVER do is "high treason". What does that tell you? Think about it. NOTHING "their guys" ever do, is high treason.
COMMENT #59 [Permalink]
... billy bob said on 12/4/2009 @ 7:55 am PT...
"Climaquiddick"? Really?
Jesus Christ.
COMMENT #60 [Permalink]
... Juice said on 12/4/2009 @ 11:05 am PT...The Legends of Owlia
12 enemy types and 5 fierce bosses!
7 full scrolling overworld maps!
5 screen by screen dungeons filled with puzzles!
8 cool techniques for your Owl Tyto to perform!
Slash enemies with your trusty sword!
Password system to save your progress!
Cartridge made with all new parts using our INL-ROM boards and cases.
All copies equipped with a multi-region CIC by Jim's Cool "JCIC".
region switchable by pressing reset on your console, saving last known good region.
$35 LOOSE CART purchase includes:
Grey regular edition cartridge fully labeled front and back
Black plastic dust sleeve
24 page full color manual
$47 COMPLETE IN BOX purchase includes:
Grey regular edition cartridge fully labeled front and back.
24 page full color manual.
Bitbox case with high resolution full color cover insert
Beautiful, functional, and durable protection for storing and displaying your game.
Dust Sleeve NOT INCLUDED with CIB, can be purchased separately here
The Legends of Owlia is Gradual Games' second release for the NES. It is an action-adventure game inspired by StarTropics, Crystalis, and the Legend of Zelda.Once upon a time. On a world far beyond imagining. Six great owls brought forth a land called Owlia. Together, they reigned in peace and wisdom for eighty thousand years. However, their pride in the beautiful land and sky of Owlia led them to forget the vast vast seas... Mermon, King of the Mermen, oft rose to the surface to view the Land of Owlia. His desire for sunlight, sky, and green forests grew until he decided the seas were not enough for him. He endeavored to summon the six great owls one by one. He began sapping their powers of flight, empowering his minions to float towards the Land of Owlia to claim it for his own. However, one great owl eluded him.. Silmaran, the White King. Soaring high above the Land of Owlia, as Mermon's forces grew in power, he searched for one who might heed his call to rescue the great owls and restore the Land of Owlia.Guide heroine Adlanniel and her owl friend Tyto to free the great owls and defeat Mermon king of the Mermen!!Please visit the creator's website Gradual Games for more details about the game, developer, and their other work.About the game cartridge:New York (CNN) -- An airport security supervisor accused of stealing from passengers and accepting stolen money was granted $100,000 bail Wednesday by a U.S. magistrate judge in federal court in Newark, New Jersey.
Michael Arato, 41, is seen on surveillance video at Newark Liberty International Airport, according to a federal criminal complaint. The video has not been released.
Arato, of Ewing, New Jersey, is charged with one count of accepting bribes, one count of conspiring to commit theft and three counts of theft by a government employee. He was brought into court handcuffed and with shackles on his feet.
Arato was the supervisory transportation security officer for the Transportation Security Administration at Terminal B of the airport, and worked with a colleague to steal from passengers, according to the complaint. He and the colleague -- who has been cooperating with authorities -- frequently worked together at "the B-3 checkpoint." The checkpoint is typically the security checkpoint for international airlines including AirIndia, the complaint said.
Beginning in August 2009, TSA and the Port Authority Police Department of New York and New Jersey "received numerous complaints from passengers scheduled to depart the airport on the 6:20 p.m. AirIndia flight that money and other valuables in passengers' carry-on baggage were missing after their baggage was hand searched by TSA employees at the B-3 checkpoint," the complaint said.
The complaining passengers were predominantly non-English-speaking women of Indian descent and nationality who were returning to India after visiting the United States, according to the complaint. Authorities launched an investigation, including video surveillance of the checkpoint.
Arato told authorities Tuesday that "he had considered harming himself," assistant U.S. attorney Eric Kanefsy told Magistrate Judge Michael A. Shipp.
Arato's public defender, John Yauch, said his client would not harm himself and was not a flight risk. "He has too much to live for."
Arato's colleague, identified in the complaint as the "co-schemer," began cooperating with authorities in September 2010 and told police he has been stealing from passengers at the checkpoint since about October 2009. The colleague said that he and Arato had agreed that when he stole from passengers, he would "kick up" half the money to Arato. Arato also regularly stole from passengers himself, sometimes giving his colleague some of that money, according to the complaint.
Between September 13 and October 5, Arato accepted a total of $3,100 from the colleague, the complaint said. In an audiotaped conversation, Arato told the colleague he did not feel bad stealing from foreigners, as they were "leaving this country with our money," according to the complaint.
The colleague told police he would steal, on average, $400 to $700 a day from passengers and gave Arato $200 to $400, the complaint said. Meanwhile, he said Arato usually stole $400 to $700 a day, sharing some of it at times.
On August 31, Arato stole $400 from a female passenger of Indian descent by conducting a search of her bag, according to the complaint. The woman noticed the money missing after passing through the checkpoint, and approached a senior special agent with the Office of the Inspector General to report it, the documents said. The agent left the woman to investigate, but saw Arato approach the woman, along with a police officer. Arato told the woman someone else had found the money on the floor and gave it to him, and returned it.
However, the complaint said, an AirIndia representative had told Arato's colleague that the woman had reported the theft and that a police officer was taking a report from her. "The co-schemer knew that he had not committed that particular theft and therefore believed Arato must have done it, so the co-schemer immediately called Arato on his cell phone to alert him," the complaint said.
Both Arato and the colleague are shown stealing money from passengers on video surveillance, according to the complaint, and video surveillance showed Arato accepting $100 bills on numerous occasions from the colleague.
Surveillance from September 29 shows the colleague pulling about $1,000 from an envelope and giving Arato $500, "which Arato accepted while laughing and then put into his front shirt pocket," the complaint said. "Arato then gave the middle finger to a visible security camera in the [transportation security officers'] office."
In audio recordings made October 5, the colleague told Arato that he took a "full envelope" from a passenger and put it in the security office next to the checkpoint, according to the complaint.
"Arato instructed the co-schemer to go to the airport gate where the passenger was scheduled to depart to make sure that the passenger departed the airport without noticing that their money was missing," the complaint said. "After the co-schemer told Arato that the passenger had departed, Arato accepted $900 from the co-schemer."
Authorities executed a search warrant to search Arato that same day, and found $1,300 in his pants pocket. "The serial numbers on $1,100 of the money recovered from Arato matched the serial numbers on the money that was provided to the co-schemer by law enforcement to give to Arato earlier that day," the complaint said. An additional $100 matched the serial number of a bill police gave the colleague the day earlier, and Arato told authorities he had used another $100 to buy groceries, according to the documents.
Between 2003, and Wednesday, 162 TSA employees were terminated or removed from duty for theft from passengers or luggage at checkpoints, according to the agency. The TSA said that number is a small fraction of those who were employed during that time.
"TSA holds its security |
illness.Amount Ingredient $ / day Source 345 g Wet Dog Chow, Complete & Balanced (Chicken) $0.00 Alibaba 150 g Fly Pupae & Mopane Caterpillar Mix $0.01 Alibaba 4.1 g Phosphate Rich Elephant Brand Dung $0.01 Alibaba 45 g Filter Drain Gutter Oil (Import from China) $0.01 Alibaba 3.855 g AminoSweet Aspartame (Sugar-Free!) $0.00 Alibaba 0 g Haribo Sugarless Gummy Bears (Texture) $0.00 Amazon Amounts for: 1 day 2 days 3 days 4 days 5 days 6 days 1 week 2 weeks 3 weeks 4 weeks Total Daily Cost: $0.03 Add Ingredients
to Amazon Cart
##Updates
Please stop being unreasonable. Human beings and all other living things are complex chemical reactions. There is nothing magical about food. You need certain chemicals to live, nothing more and nothing less. A calorie is a calorie and an element is still an element. Also, gutter oil and insects are commonly ingested by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world (mostly developing countries or the most expensive restaurants in Europe though). Alternative of Nutrasweet Aspartame has been added (if you would rather eat that than sugarless gummy bears) to mask minor flavor discrepancies without affecting daily calorie intake or chemically reacting with emulsifiers. It doesn't taste half-bad if you add the highest amount possible, and it is budget friendly. For proportions, The FDA's Acceptable Daily Intake is 50 mg per kilogram of body weight (http://www.livestrong.com/article/499264-the-fda-side-effects-of-aspartame/) As for the concerns that everything artificial is bad, the evidence for the safety and usefulness of aspartame is overwhelming. A google search will yield equal parts pseudoscientific fearmongering, and reams of scientific data overwhelmingly showing it to be completely safe for consumption, even given a safety factor of 100. Even if not ideal, aspartame is certainly superior to a comparable quantity of sugar. Fixed hyperlinks for Alibabi bulk purchases Sugarless gummy bear concentrations have been adjusted for better gelatin texture. This stuff is amazing. In the right quantities, an artificial sugar can mask even the most rotten ingredient.
About
Of all the recipes I've developed this is by FAR the best! I found with a healthy mixture of Soylent and Aspartame, it's got a sweet, crunchy texture with a hint of chicken, and every time I finish a glass I feel compelled to never eat ever again (probably because I'm full)! I think we've finally nailed this recipe and I want to thank the community for all their valuable input in making Junk Food 1.x so darn awesome!
Also: Check out that daily cost! Cheapest complete formula out there!
Description
The Complete Nutrition Healthy Weight Formula is a simple, easy to make (only 5 ingredients!) formula made with wholesome and nutritious ingredients with lesser calories. This food recipe provides smart calorie nutrition with six different pieces. The moist and chewy chunks are made with chicken, soybean hulls, whole wheat flour, ground yellow corn and other nutritious ingredients.
Features:
Complete and balanced
Inexpensive Diet
Keeps you full for hours
23 vitamins and minerals including antioxidants
100% of the essential nutrients to support a healthy, active life
High-quality protein for strong muscles
Highly digestible to help you be your best
Packed with whole grains
Great taste, texture, and variety
Keeps you satisfied, bowl after bowl
Total care nutrition for your well-being
Keep plenty on hand at home and while on the go
Ingredients
Whole Grain Corn, Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Animal Fat Preserved with Mixed-Tocopherols (Form of Vitamin E), Meat and Bone Meal, Soybean Meal, Egg and Chicken Flavor, Whole Grain Wheat, Animal Digest, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, L-Lysine Monohydrochloride, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Source of Vitamin C), Zinc Sulfate, Vitamin E Supplement, Ferrous Sulfate, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Manganese Sulfate, Niacin, Red 40, Vitamin A Supplement, Blue 2, Copper Sulfate, Calcium Pantothenate, Garlic Oil, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin B-12 Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Calcium Iodate, Menadione Sodium B-Sulfate Complex (Source of Vitamin K Activity), Folic Acid, Biotin, Sodium Selenite
##If You Still Don't Get It It is painful seeing people misinformed about nutrition and health making "healthy" Soylent formulas. Just be wary of the long term consequences of ingesting certain foods directly in ~75 days.
Unless you are a food chemist or have a solid understanding of nutrition, just stick with the official Soylent for now, please.
#Filler Text Below Just for Note Length
Love Your Work by the way, QuidNYC. Respect.
##Amazon Subscribe & Save: The ingredients designated "Amazon (S)" are eligible for Amazon's Subscribe & Save program. I have sought to configure the rate of consumption for each of these ingredients to be consistent with periodic ordering of either one or two units per two-month period. Taken together, these ingredients meet or exceed Amazon's five-item threshold for a 15% discount (all Subscribe & Save items should be arranged to ship in the same bimonthly cycle).
##Taste: With the addition of cocoa powder to the latest version of the mix (thanks, BrinDeezy!), the flavor profile has significantly improved (without the cocoa it is best described as "neutral"). With its high polyphenol and flavonoid content, cocoa powder is a superfood in its own right (see, e.g., http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/809158 ).
That said, the recipe could be made without cocoa if so desired (just be sure to adjust the macronutrients accordingly to compensate for what is taken out).
Note that I have selected a raw cacao powder in order to avoid potentially very high chronic exposures to acrylamide. Acrylamide content in roasted (i.e., any non-raw) cocoa powders can approach 1,000 ppb (this compares to 5-10 ppb in brewed coffee or several hundred ppb in instant coffee) -- which is a worrisome amount of a known carcinogen to be consuming on a regular basis. The acrylamide content of raw cacao is zero.
At the risk of making the recipe slightly less "super" (and if you're not persuaded about the risks posed by acrylamide), some may prefer to substitute Dutch process cocoa for the raw cacao (the flavor would be more "chocolaty").
Note also that some people may prefer the flavor profile of the more fragrant Saigon cinnamon over the Ceylon variety (see my "Female Blend" recipe linked above for an example of this).
##Emulsion: The addition of chia seeds and soy lecithin has resulted in a pretty dramatic improvement in the emulsive qualities of the final mixture. After preparing a pitcher and leaving it in the refrigerator overnight, there is less separation (and likewise less need to swirl your glass around to address the heavier bits settling at the bottom).
If desired, you can also use a blender to produce a mixture with very smooth consistency and greater homogeneity. Once thoroughly blended (such that the chia seeds are pulverized), the mixture should have the consistency of thick chocolate milk, and should not separate at all.
##Preparation Notes: Please note that the flaxseeds need to be ground before consuming (otherwise they will pass through undigested). Purchasing whole seeds is preferable to buying flaxseed meal in bulk, because the PUFA / omega-3 content is unstable and prone to oxidation once exposed to the air. I'd recommend keeping your supply of seeds in the freezer and using a coffee grinder to prepare the amount you need for the day (or perhaps for the week).
Chia seeds do not require the same treatment (they can be stored at room temperature and do not need to be ground up). You could potentially make them even more "super" by sprouting them -- but I haven't experimented with this yet myself.
I generally prepare a week's worth of the dry mix ahead of time and keep it refrigerated in separate containers (wide-mouth quart mason jars work nicely).
I recommend mixing up the next day's pitcher the night before (i.e., add the liquids to the dry mix), which allows time for all the components to get cold in the refrigerator and blend together a little better. If you're blending, it's best to do that in the morning after the mixture has "soaked."
A stainless steel vacuum bottle works great for lunch on the go.
"How much water should I use?"
The short answer is, "it's up to you." Some people may prefer more water or less water, so you can experiment.
My standard for preparation is to combine the dry ingredients with the oil in a 2-quart Takeya pitcher, and then fill with enough water to bring the mixture up to its capacity (i.e., something like 1.5 liters of water). As noted above, it's probably best to do this the night before.
Then I take the two quarts of soylent and divide it into three roughly equal portions that I consume as meals through the course of the day.
And, to be clear, you can and should drink water in addition to what you're getting out of your soylent mixture.
The IOM recommendation is 3.7L per day for adult men, and 2.7L for women: http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2004/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-Water-Potassium-Sodium-Chloride-and-Sulfate.aspx
##Blue / Purple Corn and Nixtamalization Benefits: Obtaining organic / non-GMO corn (in any form) is very difficult in the U.S. There is frequent cross-contamination of crops with common GMO strains, and relatively few products on the market can be labeled "organic" for this reason.
Gold Mine Natural Food Co. one of the few suppliers of organic masa flour in the country. They sell in bulk, and also provide a blue (purple) corn masa variety.
As a reminder, masa harina is a special type of corn meal made from dried maize that has been soaked in limewater, and then dried again and finely ground into flour. The resulting product is more nutritious and more digestible than fresh corn (or ordinary corn meal).
The soaking process is called nixtamalization (the Aztecs and Mayans used this process), the primary benefit of which is increased bioavailability of the corn's niacin / vitamin B3 content. Secondary benefits of nixtamalization can arise from the grain's absorption of minerals from the alkali used or from the vessels used in preparation. These effects can increase calcium (by 750%, with 85% available for absorption), iron, copper and zinc. It also increases the pH of the grain (reducing its acidity). Lastly, nixtamalization eliminates mycotoxins produced by Fusarium verticillioides and Fusarium proliferatum, molds that commonly infect maize (and the toxins of which are potential carcinogens).
It's worth noting here that the nixtamalization process should not result in any significant quantity of acrylamide (a carcinogen produced by exposing carbohydrates to very high temperatures), since it involves cooking maize at temperatures below 100°C (public health authorities have documented acrylamide content in foods subjected to temperatures above 120°C).
The blue / purple corn version of masa harina is traditionally known as "harinilla" (or harina azul).
One advantage of blue corn (a.k.a. purple corn, Hopi maize, or maiz morado) is that one can be reasonably confident of its biological composition -- even when obtained from sources not otherwise labeled "organic" -- as it doesn't cross with varieties of GM corn that are currently being grown.
In addition to its sharply different color, blue / purple corn has several nutritional advantages over standard yellow or white corn varieties. It contains 20% more protein, lower starch content, and has a lower glycemic index than white corn. It has a sweeter, nuttier taste than yellow or white corn, and is a more complete protein source.
Blue corn is also rich in the antioxidant anthocyanin. Richly concentrated as pigments in berries, anthocyanins were the topics of research presented at a 2007 symposium on health benefits that may result from berry consumption.
"A growing body of evidence suggests that anthocyanins and anthocyanidins may possess analgesic properties in addition to neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory activities." http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jmf.2008.0243
In vitro, anthocyanins possess MAO inhibitory activity for both MAO-A and MAO-B; MAO function is connected to neurodegenerative diseases, depression, and anxiety. The relevance to humans of anthocyanins and MAO activity requires further research, however.
##Regarding Phytic Acid: Phytic acid is a substance found in many whole grains which can interfere with the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals. This formula addresses the issue of phytic acid in the following ways:
Organic corn should have significantly less phytic acid content than conventionally grown crops (which tend to use large amounts of phosphorus-based fertilizer).
The nixtamalization of cornmeal to produce masa flour also reduces the amount of phytic acid present in the grain.
Probiotic lactobacilli have also been shown to produce phytase (which breaks down phytic acid), so that may also be worth considering if you are having issues with digestion or have concerns about nutrient availability.
##On "Vegetable" Oils and Oxidative Stress: My primary concerns about soybean oil and canola oil have to do with the role of oxidative stress, which may be particularly acute in circumstances where degraded polyunsaturated fats represent a large proportion of one's total lipid intake: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215974/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3126710/
I have chosen to substitute olive oil in particular in my own recipes since there is evidence that it actually has a protective role in terms of oxidative stress: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22236145
Oxidative stress is not a concern for MCT oil, since saturated fats have no double bonds between the individual carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain (i.e., the chain of carbon atoms is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms). The inclusion of MCT oil allows for a higher overall ratio of saturated fat, reducing the relative risk of oxidative stress from the polyunsaturated portion.
If I had to sum up the basic organizing principle of my "Superfood" recipe, it is to ensure that all sources of polyunsaturated fat have been degraded as little as possible -- i.e., that they are fresh, minimally processed, and carefully stored. I believe industrially processed seed oils like soybean and canola are highly suspect in that regard.
I see a number of red flags when it comes to the production of canola oil (and of other seed / "vegetable" oils). The GMO seeds are heated and crushed to extract the oil, a process which immediately turns it rancid (due to oxidative damage to the polyunsaturated fats). The oil is then "refined" with hexane, bleached, and deodorized. Then, bon appétit. It's unclear to me how much that process is truly mitigating the oxidative damage that is done to the lipids, or how much it is simply covering it up. Either way, it seems prudent to get your lipids from a source where none of that is even part of the equation.
In the end, it's your call. Maybe canola isn't that bad. But personally, I'd rather consume something that has been demonstrated as safe -- and even beneficial in terms of human health -- over a period of thousands of years (i.e., extra-virgin olive oil).
##Modified DRI profile: Reference: http://www.iom.edu/Activities/Nutrition/SummaryDRIs/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRIs/5_Summary%20Table%20Tables%201-4.pdf
The ratio of carbs / protein / fat has been modified to reflect a lower carb, higher protein balance suitable for healthy weight loss in my individual case; you should likewise adjust to fit your own dietary needs.
Dietary fiber intake is based on the IOM recommendation of 14g / 1,000kcal total energy.
The target ratio of ω-6 to ω-3 PUFA is between 2.3:1 and 1:1 (the standard American diet tends to be much higher). In addition, the ω-6 DRI is significantly reduced based on adequate ω-3 intake. For reference, studies have shown that ω-6 deficiencies are eliminated by 1-2% of calories as LA if the diet has no ω-3 (http://pmid.us/20102846), and by just 0.3% of calories as LA if the diet has over 1% ω-3 (http://pmid.us/14559071). Thus, a little ω-3 in the diet reduces the requirement for ω-6. The upper boundary is based on 10% of total energy from PUFA in all forms, which serves to limit the potential for oxidative stress from excessive PUFA intake (which remains a concern even when taken in carefully protected forms near the ideal ratio of ω-6 to ω-3).
The figure for dietary sulfur is derived from the sulfur amino acid (SAA) requirement recommended by WHO: 13 mg/kg per 24 h in healthy adults.
##Amazon Subscribe & Save: The ingredients designated "Amazon (S)" are eligible for Amazon's Subscribe & Save program. I have sought to configure the rate of consumption for each of these ingredients to be consistent with periodic ordering of either one or two units per two-month period. Taken together, these ingredients meet or exceed Amazon's five-item threshold for a 15% discount (all Subscribe & Save items should be arranged to ship in the same bimonthly cycle).
##Taste: With the addition of cocoa powder to the latest version of the mix (thanks, BrinDeezy!), the flavor profile has significantly improved (without the cocoa it is best described as "neutral"). With its high polyphenol and flavonoid content, cocoa powder is a superfood in its own right (see, e.g., http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/809158 ).
That said, the recipe could be made without cocoa if so desired (just be sure to adjust the macronutrients accordingly to compensate for what is taken out).
Note that I have selected a raw cacao powder in order to avoid potentially very high chronic exposures to acrylamide. Acrylamide content in roasted (i.e., any non-raw) cocoa powders can approach 1,000 ppb (this compares to 5-10 ppb in brewed coffee or several hundred ppb in instant coffee) -- which is a worrisome amount of a known carcinogen to be consuming on a regular basis. The acrylamide content of raw cacao is zero.
At the risk of making the recipe slightly less "super" (and if you're not persuaded about the risks posed by acrylamide), some may prefer to substitute Dutch process cocoa for the raw cacao (the flavor would be more "chocolaty").
Note also that some people may prefer the flavor profile of the more fragrant Saigon cinnamon over the Ceylon variety (see my "Female Blend" recipe linked above for an example of this).
##Emulsion: The addition of chia seeds and soy lecithin has resulted in a pretty dramatic improvement in the emulsive qualities of the final mixture. After preparing a pitcher and leaving it in the refrigerator overnight, there is less separation (and likewise less need to swirl your glass around to address the heavier bits settling at the bottom).
If desired, you can also use a blender to produce a mixture with very smooth consistency and greater homogeneity. Once thoroughly blended (such that the chia seeds are pulverized), the mixture should have the consistency of thick chocolate milk, and should not separate at all.
##Preparation Notes: Please note that the flaxseeds need to be ground before consuming (otherwise they will pass through undigested). Purchasing whole seeds is preferable to buying flaxseed meal in bulk, because the PUFA / omega-3 content is unstable and prone to oxidation once exposed to the air. I'd recommend keeping your supply of seeds in the freezer and using a coffee grinder to prepare the amount you need for the day (or perhaps for the week).
Chia seeds do not require the same treatment (they can be stored at room temperature and do not need to be ground up). You could potentially make them even more "super" by sprouting them -- but I haven't experimented with this yet myself.
I generally prepare a week's worth of the dry mix ahead of time and keep it refrigerated in separate containers (wide-mouth quart mason jars work nicely).
I recommend mixing up the next day's pitcher the night before (i.e., add the liquids to the dry mix), which allows time for all the components to get cold in the refrigerator and blend together a little better. If you're blending, it's best to do that in the morning after the mixture has "soaked."
A stainless steel vacuum bottle works great for lunch on the go.
"How much water should I use?"
The short answer is, "it's up to you." Some people may prefer more water or less water, so you can experiment.
My standard for preparation is to combine the dry ingredients with the oil in a 2-quart Takeya pitcher, and then fill with enough water to bring the mixture up to its capacity (i.e., something like 1.5 liters of water). As noted above, it's probably best to do this the night before.
Then I take the two quarts of soylent and divide it into three roughly equal portions that I consume as meals through the course of the day.
And, to be clear, you can and should drink water in addition to what you're getting out of your soylent mixture.
The IOM recommendation is 3.7L per day for adult men, and 2.7L for women: http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2004/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-Water-Potassium-Sodium-Chloride-and-Sulfate.aspx
##Blue / Purple Corn and Nixtamalization Benefits: Obtaining organic / non-GMO corn (in any form) is very difficult in the U.S. There is frequent cross-contamination of crops with common GMO strains, and relatively few products on the market can be labeled "organic" for this reason.
Gold Mine Natural Food Co. one of the few suppliers of organic masa flour in the country. They sell in bulk, and also provide a blue (purple) corn masa variety.
As a reminder, masa harina is a special type of corn meal made from dried maize that has been soaked in limewater, and then dried again and finely ground into flour. The resulting product is more nutritious and more digestible than fresh corn (or ordinary corn meal).
The soaking process is called nixtamalization (the Aztecs and Mayans used this process), the primary benefit of which is increased bioavailability of the corn's niacin / vitamin B3 content. Secondary benefits of nixtamalization can arise from the grain's absorption of minerals from the alkali used or from the vessels used in preparation. These effects can increase calcium (by 750%, with 85% available for absorption), iron, copper and zinc. It also increases the pH of the grain (reducing its acidity). Lastly, nixtamalization eliminates mycotoxins produced by Fusarium verticillioides and Fusarium proliferatum, molds that commonly infect maize (and the toxins of which are potential carcinogens).
It's worth noting here that the nixtamalization process should not result in any significant quantity of acrylamide (a carcinogen produced by exposing carbohydrates to very high temperatures), since it involves cooking maize at temperatures below 100°C (public health authorities have documented acrylamide content in foods subjected to temperatures above 120°C).
The blue / purple corn version of masa harina is traditionally known as "harinilla" (or harina azul).
One advantage of blue corn (a.k.a. purple corn, Hopi maize, or maiz morado) is that one can be reasonably confident of its biological composition -- even when obtained from sources not otherwise labeled "organic" -- as it doesn't cross with varieties of GM corn that are currently being grown.
In addition to its sharply different color, blue / purple corn has several nutritional advantages over standard yellow or white corn varieties. It contains 20% more protein, lower starch content, and has a lower glycemic index than white corn. It has a sweeter, nuttier taste than yellow or white corn, and is a more complete protein source.
Blue corn is also rich in the antioxidant anthocyanin. Richly concentrated as pigments in berries, anthocyanins were the topics of research presented at a 2007 symposium on health benefits that may result from berry consumption.
"A growing body of evidence suggests that anthocyanins and anthocyanidins may possess analgesic properties in addition to neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory activities." http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jmf.2008.0243
In vitro, anthocyanins possess MAO inhibitory activity for both MAO-A and MAO-B; MAO function is connected to neurodegenerative diseases, depression, and anxiety. The relevance to humans of anthocyanins and MAO activity requires further research, however.
##Regarding Phytic Acid: Phytic acid is a substance found in many whole grains which can interfere with the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals. This formula addresses the issue of phytic acid in the following ways:
Organic corn should have significantly less phytic acid content than conventionally grown crops (which tend to use large amounts of phosphorus-based fertilizer).
The nixtamalization of cornmeal to produce masa flour also reduces the amount of phytic acid present in the grain.
Probiotic lactobacilli have also been shown to produce phytase (which breaks down phytic acid), so that may also be worth considering if you are having issues with digestion or have concerns about nutrient availability.
##On "Vegetable" Oils and Oxidative Stress: My primary concerns about soybean oil and canola oil have to do with the role of oxidative stress, which may be particularly acute in circumstances where degraded polyunsaturated fats represent a large proportion of one's total lipid intake: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215974/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3126710/
I have chosen to substitute olive oil in particular in my own recipes since there is evidence that it actually has a protective role in terms of oxidative stress: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22236145
Oxidative stress is not a concern for MCT oil, since saturated fats have no double bonds between the individual carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain (i.e., the chain of carbon atoms is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms). The inclusion of MCT oil allows for a higher overall ratio of saturated fat, reducing the relative risk of oxidative stress from the polyunsaturated portion.
If I had to sum up the basic organizing principle of my "Superfood" recipe, it is to ensure that all sources of polyunsaturated fat have been degraded as little as possible -- i.e., that they are fresh, minimally processed, and carefully stored. I believe industrially processed seed oils like soybean and canola are highly suspect in that regard.
I see a number of red flags when it comes to the production of canola oil (and of other seed / "vegetable" oils). The GMO seeds are heated and crushed to extract the oil, a process which immediately turns it rancid (due to oxidative damage to the polyunsaturated fats). The oil is then "refined" with hexane, bleached, and deodorized. Then, bon appétit. It's unclear to me how much that process is truly mitigating the oxidative damage that is done to the lipids, or how much it is simply covering it up. Either way, it seems prudent to get your lipids from a source where none of that is even part of the equation.
In the end, it's your call. Maybe canola isn't that bad. But personally, I'd rather consume something that has been demonstrated as safe -- and even beneficial in terms of human health -- over a period of thousands of years (i.e., extra-virgin olive oil).
##Modified DRI profile: Reference: http://www.iom.edu/Activities/Nutrition/SummaryDRIs/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRIs/5_Summary%20Table%20Tables%201-4.pdf
The ratio of carbs / protein / fat has been modified to reflect a lower carb, higher protein balance suitable for healthy weight loss in my individual case; you should likewise adjust to fit your own dietary needs.
Dietary fiber intake is based on the IOM recommendation of 14g / 1,000kcal total energy.
The target ratio of ω-6 to ω-3 PUFA is between 2.3:1 and 1:1 (the standard American diet tends to be much higher). In addition, the ω-6 DRI is significantly reduced based on adequate ω-3 intake. For reference, studies have shown that ω-6 deficiencies are eliminated by 1-2% of calories as LA if the diet has no ω-3 (http://pmid.us/20102846), and by just 0.3% of calories as LA if the diet has over 1% ω-3 (http://pmid.us/14559071). Thus, a little ω-3 in the diet reduces the requirement for ω-6. The upper boundary is based on 10% of total energy from PUFA in all forms, which serves to limit the potential for oxidative stress from excessive PUFA intake (which remains a concern even when taken in carefully protected forms near the ideal ratio of ω-6 to ω-3).
The figure for dietary sulfur is derived from the sulfur amino acid (SAA) requirement recommended by WHO: 13 mg/kg per 24 h in healthy adults.
##Amazon Subscribe & Save: The ingredients designated "Amazon (S)" are eligible for Amazon's Subscribe & Save program. I have sought to configure the rate of consumption for each of these ingredients to be consistent with periodic ordering of either one or two units per two-month period. Taken together, these ingredients meet or exceed Amazon's five-item threshold for a 15% discount (all Subscribe & Save items should be arranged to ship in the same bimonthly cycle).
##Taste: With the addition of cocoa powder to the latest version of the mix (thanks, BrinDeezy!), the flavor profile has significantly improved (without the cocoa it is best described as "neutral"). With its high polyphenol and flavonoid content, cocoa powder is a superfood in its own right (see, e.g., http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/809158 ).
That said, the recipe could be made without cocoa if so desired (just be sure to adjust the macronutrients accordingly to compensate for what is taken out).
Note that I have selected a raw cacao powder in order to avoid potentially very high chronic exposures to acrylamide. Acrylamide content in roasted (i.e., any non-raw) cocoa powders can approach 1,000 ppb (this compares to 5-10 ppb in brewed coffee or several hundred ppb in instant coffee) -- which is a worrisome amount of a known carcinogen to be consuming on a regular basis. The acrylamide content of raw cacao is zero.
At the risk of making the recipe slightly less "super" (and if you're not persuaded about the risks posed by acrylamide), some may prefer to substitute Dutch process cocoa for the raw cacao (the flavor would be more "chocolaty").
Note also that some people may prefer the flavor profile of the more fragrant Saigon cinnamon over the Ceylon variety (see my "Female Blend" recipe linked above for an example of this).
##Emulsion: The addition of chia seeds and soy lecithin has resulted in a pretty dramatic improvement in the emulsive qualities of the final mixture. After preparing a pitcher and leaving it in the refrigerator overnight, there is less separation (and likewise less need to swirl your glass around to address the heavier bits settling at the bottom).
If desired, you can also use a blender to produce a mixture with very smooth consistency and greater homogeneity. Once thoroughly blended (such that the chia seeds are pulverized), the mixture should have the consistency of thick chocolate milk, and should not separate at all.
##Preparation Notes: Please note that the flaxseeds need to be ground before consuming (otherwise they will pass through undigested). Purchasing whole seeds is preferable to buying flaxseed meal in bulk, because the PUFA / omega-3 content is unstable and prone to oxidation once exposed to the air. I'd recommend keeping your supply of seeds in the freezer and using a coffee grinder to prepare the amount you need for the day (or perhaps for the week).
Chia seeds do not require the same treatment (they can be stored at room temperature and do not need to be ground up). You could potentially make them even more "super" by sprouting them -- but I haven't experimented with this yet myself.
I generally prepare a week's worth of the dry mix ahead of time and keep it refrigerated in separate containers (wide-mouth quart mason jars work nicely).
I recommend mixing up the next day's pitcher the night before (i.e., add the liquids to the dry mix), which allows time for all the components to get cold in the refrigerator and blend together a little better. If you're blending, it's best to do that in the morning after the mixture has "soaked."
A stainless steel vacuum bottle works great for lunch on the go.
"How much water should I use?"
The short answer is, "it's up to you." Some people may prefer more water or less water, so you can experiment.
My standard for preparation is to combine the dry ingredients with the oil in a 2-quart Takeya pitcher, and then fill with enough water to bring the mixture up to its capacity (i.e., something like 1.5 liters of water). As noted above, it's probably best to do this the night before.
Then I take the two quarts of soylent and divide it into three roughly equal portions that I consume as meals through the course of the day.
And, to be clear, you can and should drink water in addition to what you're getting out of your soylent mixture.
The IOM recommendation is 3.7L per day for adult men, and 2.7L for women: http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2004/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-Water-Potassium-Sodium-Chloride-and-Sulfate.aspx
##Blue / Purple Corn and Nixtamalization Benefits: Obtaining organic / non-GMO corn (in any form) is very difficult in the U.S. There is frequent cross-contamination of crops with common GMO strains, and relatively few products on the market can be labeled "organic" for this reason.
Gold Mine Natural Food Co. one of the few suppliers of organic masa flour in the country. They sell in bulk, and also provide a blue (purple) corn masa variety.
As a reminder, masa harina is a special type of corn meal made from dried maize that has been soaked in limewater, and then dried again and finely ground into flour. The resulting product is more nutritious and more digestible than fresh corn (or ordinary corn meal).
The soaking process is called nixtamalization (the Aztecs and Mayans used this process), the primary benefit of which is increased bioavailability of the corn's niacin / vitamin B3 content. Secondary benefits of nixtamalization can arise from the grain's absorption of minerals from the alkali used or from the vessels used in preparation. These effects can increase calcium (by 750%, with 85% available for absorption), iron, copper and zinc. It also increases the pH of the grain (reducing its acidity). Lastly, nixtamalization eliminates mycotoxins produced by Fusarium verticillioides and Fusarium proliferatum, molds that commonly infect maize (and the toxins of which are potential carcinogens).
It's worth noting here that the nixtamalization process should not result in any significant quantity of acrylamide (a carcinogen produced by exposing carbohydrates to very high temperatures), since it involves cooking maize at temperatures below 100°C (public health authorities have documented acrylamide content in foods subjected to temperatures above 120°C).
The blue / purple corn version of masa harina is traditionally known as "harinilla" (or harina azul).
One advantage of blue corn (a.k.a. purple corn, Hopi maize, or maiz morado) is that one can be reasonably confident of its biological composition -- even when obtained from sources not otherwise labeled "organic" -- as it doesn't cross with varieties of GM corn that are currently being grown.
In addition to its sharply different color, blue / purple corn has several nutritional advantages over standard yellow or white corn varieties. It contains 20% more protein, lower starch content, and has a lower glycemic index than white corn. It has a sweeter, nuttier taste than yellow or white corn, and is a more complete protein source.
Blue corn is also rich in the antioxidant anthocyanin. Richly concentrated as pigments in berries, anthocyanins were the topics of research presented at a 2007 symposium on health benefits that may result from berry consumption.
"A growing body of evidence suggests that anthocyanins and anthocyanidins may possess analgesic properties in addition to neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory activities." http:// |
2 to 2005 'Be On Edge' (BENSON & HEDGES). It was in the sponsor's first year that the team coloured their cars in the gold of their cigarette packet and then switched to yellow after that.
For 2002, title sponsorship went to delivery company DHL, before reverting to Benson & Hedges.
EJ-10 was an energy drink marketed by the Jordan Formula One team. The energy drink was heavily advertised as free of caffeine and taurine to avoid a sugar crash, and as having a fruity flavor and providing energy for up to 90 minutes. It was sold in bright yellow 250 mL and 380 mL bottles, decorated to evoke the image of Jordan's Formula One cars.[10] Jordan Grand Prix used the Sutherland Hawes design agency to create and market the energy drink.[11] At the height of its popularity EJ-10 was available around the world, including Ireland, Germany, Colombia, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico.[12][13]
In 2002, the 380 ml bottles of EJ-10 were recalled in Ireland after it was discovered it contained unacceptable levels of benzene.[14]
V-10 is a spinoff of EJ-10; it retains the basic formula but adds vodka.[15]
Books [ edit ]
A number of books have been published that gave an insight into Jordan Grand Prix. The most in-depth was the 1994 book "Race Without End". Written by F1 veteran Maurice Hamilton, it tells the story of Jordan Grand Prix's 1993 season.[16]
Racing record [ edit ]
(Bold indicates championships won.)BitTorrent is used by many to download missed TV shows Bill Thompson believes Virgin Media has decided it likes record companies more than its customers. The chances are that I'll be getting a letter from my internet service provider (ISP) in the next few weeks telling me that they've been watching my network activity closely and think I've been breaking the law. Virgin Media, who used to be called NTL before they acquired Virgin Mobile and turned themselves into a "four-play" media company, has announced that it is working with record industry lobby group, the British Phonographic Industry, to write to customers whose network connection seems to have been used to download unlicensed content. Like almost every technically-competent internet user of my acquaintance I've used BitTorrent to get my hands on a copy of a TV show that I missed, taking advantage of the kindness of strangers who bothered to record and upload the shows for fans because the companies that make and broadcast them choose not to. However I also go out and buy the DVD box sets as soon as I can. And I don't feel like a criminal, because I don't see why downloading a copy of a show that someone else has recorded should be seen as a breach of copyright while recording it myself onto a DVD is not. According to the BPI's press release the letters are part of a "new education campaign to help Virgin Media's broadband customers safely download music from the internet and avoid the risk of legal action". At the moment it's hard to use BitTorrent anonymously, although since the service itself is entirely legal and legitimate there should be no need to do so
Bill Thompson But from the outside it seems more like a softening up move to get Virgin customers used to the fact that they are being observed by their ISP. And I predict Virgin will be happy to help the BPI identify individual account holders so that they can be threatened with prosecution over their downloading activities later on. The move follows a campaign by the BPI to persuade UK ISPs to adopt a "three strikes and you're out" approach to downloaders, where they would have their network connection terminated if they were found to be downloading unlicensed material after two warnings. This hasn't happened, not least because the two sides can't agree who would pay the costs of monitoring or sending letters, or who would be liable for the inevitable lawsuits when innocent users decided that arbitrary disconnection without due process was likely to prove unpopular in the courts. They should be careful who they sue. Researchers at the University of Washington recently announced that they had managed to fool US film industry body the MPAA into sending formal legal notices to three laser printers, claiming that they had been downloading copies of Iron Man and Indiana Jones. Fake IP addresses They had set up their network to fake the relevant internet addresses and the software used by the MPAA was unable to spot this. Virgin will be on slightly firmer ground because it's their network, and although some users may claim that they have open wireless networks that could have been used by anyone the buck will stop with the account holder. There continues to be concerted pressure from established content providers in film, television and music, hoping that aggressive enforcement of copyright law will ensure that their 20th Century business models survive against the onslaught of the network society. I believe it's a doomed enterprise, as the growth of a fast internet coupled with the ability to make perfect copies of digital content means that all of the assumptions that underpin film studios, TV broadcasters and record companies have been stripped away, leaving them flailing around, threatening and suing the people who should be their best customers and hoping to persuade politicians to pass new laws to give them special privileges online. As more licensed download services become available, many offering songs without usage restrictions enforced by digital rights management technologies, the wholesale copying of unlicensed copies becomes a lot less defensible. But the habits that grew up when the music industry was simply unwilling to accept that downloading was the way forward - and the technologies that support those habits - will be hard to break. Heavy downloaders Evidence that heavy downloaders are also heavy music purchasers doesn't seem to have made any difference to the BPI's approach either, and instead of finding new business models they hold on to the old ways of working. It gets more complicated because the larger ISPs in the UK, Virgin, Sky and BT, are also content providers with their own interests in shoring up the current copyright regime. Virgin don't want programmes they have paid to distribute ending up on the internet for people like me to download, but by acting in concert with trade bodies they can appear socially responsible rather than simply serving their own broader interests. The spaces within which we can live unobserved are constantly diminishing, as both public and private sector agencies link their databases together or co-operate to ensure that nothing we do goes unremarked. We need a space for experimentation, where we can test the limits of old laws and explore how they might be altered in future, but once ISPs decide that they are no longer neutral carriers of bits and choose to ally themselves with the content industry then we lose another sliver of freedom. At the moment it's hard to use BitTorrent anonymously, although since the service itself is entirely legal and legitimate there should be no need to do so. The moves by Virgin and other ISPs will simply spur the development of new ways of sharing files, just as the clampdown on Napster lead directly to the development of the current generation of peer to peer networks. Virgin has just given its thousands of users an incentive to explore these new tools in order to confuse their administrators. After all, we pay them to move my bits around, not to go running to the record company if they suspect us of downloading unlicensed music.
Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionA group of attendees at the Outside Lands music festival said they buried this bottle of whiskey in Golden Gate Park several days before the event. (CBS) A group of attendees at the Outside Lands music festival said they buried this bottle of whiskey in Golden Gate Park several days before the event. (CBS)
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – Big names in music and huge crowds are on tap this weekend at Golden Gate Park for Outside Lands. While people are not supposed to bring outside alcohol, a group of attendees said they made some unorthodox plans to get around that rule.
Josh, who did not give his last name, told KPIX 5 that the venue’s size helps hide hard alcohol.
“I’ve got about four or five friends who buried their Maker’s Mark about three days ago,” he said.
Read More:
Josh said they buried the whiskey with a GPS tracker on it. On Friday, they waited for a large crowd to show up at Outside Lands. Then they used an app on their phone to find the tracker and start digging.
“I’m ready to go drink that Maker’s Mark right now, I’m telling you,” Josh said.
The event’s organizers said they have never heard of such a thing, and didn’t give it much thought.
“That’s a new one,” Gregg Perloff of Another Planet Entertainment. “That one I haven’t heard before… I’m not going to spend a lot of time worrying about that.”
Josh said he and his friends have been doing this for a couple of years.AdSense Player. This player has full sharing enabled: social, email, embed, etc. It has the ability to go fullscreen. It will display a list of suggested videos when the video has played to the end. The Obama administration is reportedly considering airstrikes on Sunni militants who have trapped tens of thousands of people on a desolate mountaintop in Iraq.
The refugees, who are mostly members of religious minority groups in Iraq, are running out of water, and officials have warned of a possible humanitarian crisis that could cost thousands of lives.
ADVERTISEMENT The Pentagon has already been working with Baghdad in an effort to bring in water and other supplies to the refugees, but The New York Times reported that military action is being considered. Press secretary Josh Earnest, however, would not confirm or deny that air strikes were under consideration when he spoke with reporters on Thursday. “I'm not in a position to shed light on the president's thinking right now,” Earnest said, adding that he could not “rule things on the table or off the table.” Earnest said the White House was “gravely concerned” for the health and safety of the refugees, and that the United States was “working intensively with the government of Iraq” to address the crisis. But while Earnest said the situation was “nearing a humanitarian catastrophe” and “deeply disturbing” he declined to say if addressing the situation ranked as a core U.S. interest — and thus deserving of military intervention. “That is something we evaluate on a case by case basis,” Earnest said.
The administration has come under pressure from many lawmakers in Congress to avoid aggressive military action in Iraq despite the onslaught by the Islamie State of Iraq and Syria. Many lawmakers fear getting pulled back into Iraq so soon after the end of the Iraq war, and their reticence is matched by the public.
Most of the people trapped are Yazidis, a community whose religious beliefs mix parts of Zoroastrianism with Islam and Christianity. ISIS is known for its brutality toward followers of other religions.
“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told The Washington Post.
“There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by [ISIS]. It’s a disaster, a total disaster," Babille said.
An official with the Pentagon on Thursday did not say exactly what types of supplies were being delivered by the U.S., but confirmed the administration is working with Iraq.
"We have been working urgently and directly with officials in Baghdad and Erbil to coordinate Iraqi airdrops to people in need," a Defense official told The Hill.
"The Government of Iraq has initiated air drops in the region and we are in constant communication with them on how we can help coordinate additional relief, enhance their efforts, and provide direct assistance wherever possible," the official said.
—This story was updated at 1:34 p.m.At $349, Nvidia's Shield portable game console has a lot to prove, but one celebrity is already making the leap: Luke from Modern Family. In this week's episode, it looks like the youngster's Nintendo 3DS has been at least temporarily displaced by the Android-based Tegra 4 handheld. But the significance isn't what gadgets a character on a popular TV sitcom might play with, it's that Nvidia managed to get the device onto the show.
Modern Family is no stranger to product placement — executive producer Steven Levitan told Advertising Age that the show constantly turns down offers — but Nvidia certainly is. The Shield is arguably the first consumer product ever built and branded by the chipmaker, and cost a reported $10 million in R&D. With a product placement on Modern Family, it looks like Nvidia's not leaving the success of that product to chance, paying extra to ensure that the handheld finds at least a momentary place in popular culture. Of course, ABC's now producing another show that Nvidia might want to check out: the Shield could have a fitting home on S.H.I.E.L.D. as well.
Update: Nvidia just reached out to tell us that it didn't have to pay to put the Shield in Modern Family at all — the producers saw it at CES and asked them for one! "They ended up approaching us," a Nvidia rep said. "Phil and Luke are big gadget geeks... the folks we met are always looking for cool new things to feature." According to Nvidia, no money changed hands. "They wanted it on the show, and we just needed to get them a unit," our contact said.As Bruce Arena lamented under heavy breath during yesterday’s post-game presser, the regular season is one long year.
The MLS Cup playoffs are no different. Taking home the cup is another grueling adventure, and yet the winning formula isn’t rocket science: As a team, you need to be in form, you need circumstances to go your way, and a little bit of luck.
Despite the last few results, LA arguably have momentum heading into Wednesday’s knockout round vs. Real Salt Lake at the StubHub Center.
“I think the last three weeks have been really good.”- Landon Donovan
They have.
Inserting AJ DeLaGarza into the lineup alongside Jelle Van Damme has stabilized the Galaxy defense: LA have only conceded once in the last three matches. (Bruce was coy about whether DeLaGarza or Daniel Steres would get the nod on Wednesday, but AJ simply matches up better against the likes of Burrito Martinez and the 5’ 3” Joao Plata.)
Though the news on Sunday was focused on Bruce resting Designated Players Giovani dos Santos, Robbie Keane and Steven Gerrard, the real X-factor for LA could potentially be Sebastian Lletget. Before the FC Dallas debacle, the former West Ham academy product bagged four assists in five games starting in central midfield, and the Galaxy were more dangerous in the attack, putting away 13 goals.
With the ability to win the ball as well as provide quality service, Da’ Boy adds bite and purpose to the offense. He’s also unpredictable: Lletget is new to the position in MLS and has been deployed in both 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2 formations, so teams are unable to fully game plan against the young attacker. Stick Lletget in the center of midfield and anything can happen.
It also needs to be said: Although it is well-documented Keane and dos Santos have struggled playing together, do not underestimate the motivation of a pissed-off Robbie Keane who is basically playing for a new contract.
Losing Gyasi Zardes was obviously a huge blow for LA, but the return of Landon Donovan has reinvigorated the club. On the field, Donovan’s soccer IQ has come in handy, breathing life into an attack adrift of ideas in the final third. Off-the-field, Donovan’s veteran presence has brought a renewed focus to the locker room. The first player to speak with the media post-game, the 34-year-old is still a leader and eager to get things right.
If the Galaxy can manage to get past a struggling Real Salt Lake on Wednesday, who’s to stop them from making a run? The Sounders’ impressive comeback to make the playoffs should be applauded, but Seattle are relying on two players in Nicolas Lodeiro and Jordan Morris to provide goals. Sporting Kansas City is aging and banged up. You’d have to be a fool to not respect the Rapids after they nearly captured the Supporters’ Shield, but I doubt LA fear Colorado.
And the one team the Galaxy probably do fear just lost their star playmaker in Mauro Diaz. FC Dallas can get by switching to a 4-4-2, but they aren’t the same.
Get to MLS Cup, and anything can happen.THE sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress. Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution, and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty, which was signed by President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia last spring but awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn’t weaken our national defense.
The treaty’s supporters are likely to try to rush it through the Senate before Congress adjourns. They worry that since the Republicans have gained six seats, New Start will fail to get the required two-thirds majority when the new Senate convenes in January.
Senators should be in no hurry. The Obama administration’s main strategy in this two-minute drill is likely to emphasize a “resolution of ratification” that the Foreign Relations Committee approved along with the treaty in September. But that resolution, which supposedly addresses concerns about missile defense and modernization of the nuclear arsenal, is a Trojan horse. Any senators who fall for this ploy will not only imperil our safety, they will also undermine the Senate’s formidable powers in the treaty-making process.
New Start’s faults are legion. The low limits it would place on nuclear warheads ignore the enormous disparities between American and Russian global responsibilities and the importance of America’s “nuclear umbrella” in maintaining international security. The treaty’s constraints on launching platforms would impede Washington’s ability to use conventional warheads even in conflicts far from any Russian interest or responsibility. There are plenty of other deficiencies, from inadequate verification provisions to leaving Moscow’s extensive tactical nuclear weapons capabilities unlimited.
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New Start also reflects the Obama administration’s lack of seriousness about national missile defense. Its preamble accepts an unspecified “interrelationship” between nuclear weapons and defensive systems. Politically, even if not in treaty language, the Russians get what they want: no significant United States efforts on missile defense.
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The Obama administration hopes to sell this dangerous bargain with a package of paper promises. The Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution contains various “conditions,” “understandings” and “declarations” holding that New Start doesn’t “impose any limitations on the deployment of missile defenses” or dilute Congress’s aspiration to defend the nation from missile attack. A second understanding exempts conventional weapons systems with a global reach. A third affirms Congress’s commitment to the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.IT swooped from the sky and it was the size of an RAF fighter jet - and it's become the latest breed of dinosaur discovered by researchers at Hampshire universities.
The 70 million year old fossil is that of a Hatzegopteryx, part of a family of pterosaurs, a breed of reptile thought to swoop its prey from the sky which lived during the dinosaurs during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
The research has shown that it is had a short, massive neck, a wingspan of 10 to 12 metres and may have eaten shellfish.
Despite this its jaws were half a metre wide - big enough to swallow a human child.
A total of five fossil eggs which are still intact and over 40 adult bones which varied in size.
Researchers originally thought that the dinosaurs were the size of small rats, until the discovery of the fossil now showed the large pterosaurs are much significantly much bigger prey which included some large pterosaurs ate much bigger prey such as dinosaurs as large as a horse.
The T-rex dinosaur bird fossils were found on a former island called Hateg, now in the Transylvanian region of Romania.
A century of constant research found no teeth from giant predatory dinosaurs, a clue researcher’s say that pterosaurs were the biggest and most aggressive predators on the island and the first ever animals after insects to evolve powered flight.
Dr Darren Naish, Professor of Zoology at the University of Southampton and Dr Mark Witton, a Research Associate in Palaeobiology from the University of Portsmouth are both leading the study.
Dr Witton said the discovery was significantly much more important than first thought.
He said: "These bones we are taking out of Romania show that we are looking at a more robust, structure, and massive animal than we previously imagined.
"We assume the whole pterosaur is stocky and powerful, because there weren't many other large predators on the island, Hatzegopteryx may have been one of the dominant predators."
The discovery is part of a worldwide research platform into looking at these species after one was rumoured to be discovered in Idaho in the United States.That job listing was correct. City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios is working on a Star Trek MMO, and its got the screenshots to prove it. Dubbed Star Trek Online, the game will be based on the Star Trek franchise. Says Cryptic chief creative officer Jack Emmert:
Star Trek was never about a single character, ship or even planet; Star Trek was always about an entire universe. And MMORPGs are uniquely suited to create such a thing and allow players to explore every inch.
First gameplay footage as well as more details about the game will be unveiled at the annual Star Trek convention in Las Vegas on Sunday, August 10th. Those unable to attend can check out the live webcast at the game's homepage.
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How many times have you found yourself in this situation?
“I don’t know why he has to be so hateful. I only called him so I could tell him…”
No judgement here. I did this all the time before I realized what I was dealing with. Nonetheless, according to a forum on allaboutcounseling.com,
“the opinions of society are brutal when a target states she’s been abused and then she contacts her abuser, I can honestly tell you that such behavior is viewed as utterly dangerous, counterproductive, and silly to the outside world. It’s glaring bad judgment. The courts see mutual pathology and friends and other people just roll their eyes, turn away in droves muttering ‘she’s as crazy as he is,’ they’ll assume she lied about his abuse in the first place. It’s a huge factor in how they win.“
The Dirty Low-Down
If you think there’s a chance you might end up in court with the narcissist, that’s all the more reason to stick to No Contact or Modified Contact. Furthermore, if you believe they might harm you physically, breaking No Contact will work against you. If it comes to the point where you are considering a restraining order, the fact that you called and/or texted may prevent you from obtaining lawful protection, depending on your locality.
Alternately, if the narcissist keeps hoovering and you give in, you’re doing just as much to damage your rights as if you contacted them first. While you may feel like you’re being mean by maintaining NC, and want to prove to your Narcissistic partner that you’re not as horrible as they say you are, know that they don’t care about you the same way. In fact, they know what they’re doing and your chances at protection would be greatly reduced if you find the need to call the police. Narcissists are tricky that way.
Need another reason to block his or her phone number? Two words: remote spyware. Yep. It’s a sneaky way for them to access your phone so they can turn it into a microphone and listen to your conversations, read all your text messages (and email if it feeds to your phone), and track your location. Ask me how I know!
Many targets describe their strong need to “rescue” their abusive partner. This is a natural, human instinct, but don’t let it ruin your future in exchange for a psychopath who would throw you under the bus in a skinny minute. Don’t focus on the short-term. Realize that every action made while under the influence of a Narcopath could have far-reaching effects on your future.
When you’ve made your intentions clear and your abuser is laying on the charm thick and heavy, assume the worst. There’s a high likelihood that they’re trying to trick you and/or trap you, whether it’s for legal matters or simply to keep you their prisoner.
Don’t confide in them anything after you’ve broken No Contact during a moment of epic weakness. This often happens when they come to you after having a so-called “epiphany” and have made promises all over themselves and consequently realized the “error of their ways”. Boloney. They WILL use your confession against you later.
Assume that at some point you will be monitored, stalked and/or under surveillance. Leave nothing to chance.
If you have modified contact because of custody, only allow them to talk to the kids when they call. When the kids are finished, simply hang up the phone. Don’t ask if there’s anything else they need. If they try schmoozing you about something to “do with the kids”, tell them to either tell your lawyer or send you a letter via USPS. Let a friend open the letter for you to see if it involves the kids. If not, have your friend hang on to the letter for possible evidence.
Repeatedly breaking No Contact (regardless of whether or not you contacted him first) or allowing him into your home could land you in handcuffs. It happens all the time. Victims of narcissistic abuse do occasionally snap and become aggressive with their abuser or become involved in a physical assault with the narcissist’s other lover. The risk of these types of incidents becomes higher when drugs and/or alcohol are involved.
For each moment you give the Narcissist the benefit of the doubt, they are plotting ways to deceive and manipulate you. None of your forgiveness or second chances will be acknowledged or appreciated.
If you once shared a residence with the narcissist and one of you have moved out, do not let them into your dwelling. If they still have a key, change your locks. I’ve read countless stories of targets whose homes were invaded while they were gone. Property and heirlooms were stolen, microphones planted, even drugs. There’s no limit to what they might do.
Stop protecting your Ex. They’d never dream of doing that for you.
If your Ex is using your children as a means of continuing their abuse and tyranny over your life, check out Our Family Wizard. This monitored email program and shared custody tool is so effective, it is ordered by courts in over thirty-five states. It also keeps your children OUT of the middle!
Finally Break the Narcissistic Spell Join 30,000 others who have signed up for the 10-Day Email Recovery Series and Healing Toolkit. Includes a 10-day email series for encouragement and support. * Seating in my seminar: 7 Proven Steps to Defeat Narcissistic Abuse * A 30-day New Life calendar * 16 Empowering Beliefs to Live By + more! Yes! Now check your email to confirm your spot in the mini-course and get your Beginner's Healing Toolkit now! IMPORTANT!! Adobe Reader is required as this is a PDF document. Check the bottom of your screen for an instant download or your downloads folder!Rain and high tides in the southeastern US have led to the unearthing of some long-buried marine fossils, specifically massive shark teeth that once belonged to an 18-metre-long megalodon.
"Oh my God, like I said, I felt like I was a lottery winner or something," Denny Bland, who found a massive fossilised tooth on a beach in North Carolina, told a local news station.
Several large Megalodon teeth have been found along the beaches of North Carolina in recent months. Credit:Holly Ridge - Surf City Online Gazette
"It's like I'm the first one to touch that since it fell out of his mouth back in the day."
Cynthia Crane, director of the nearby Aurora Fossils Museum, identified the find as belonging to the colossal prehistoric fish, an ancestor of the modern-day great white shark.Hide Transcript Show Transcript
WEBVTT AJ?REPORTER REPRESENTATIVE CHARLIECOLLINS SAYS THERE IS A PROCESSINVOLVED IN SEEING THIS BILLTHROUGH.AND HE'S BEEN INVOLVED IN THATPROCESS FROM START TO FINISH.AND HE STRONGLY BELIEVES IT WILLTURN WHAT HE CALLS RAMPAGEKILLERS.MUCH LIKE THE ONES THAT KILL 12STUDENTS AND A TEACHER 18 YEARSAGO ON THIS VERY DAY ATCOLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL.>> THE BASIC LICENSE AND THISENHANCED LICENSE.YOU HAVE TO SUCCESSFULLYCOMPLETE THAT ADDITIONAL EIGHTHOURS OF TRAINING.THEY SAY IT WILL BE AN ACTIVESHOOTER SITUATION.>> IT IS NOT COVERED IN DEEPTRAINING FOR A TRADITIONAL CCLLICENSE.REPORTER: THE LIST OF PLACES YOUCAN CARRY YOUR GUN CREW -- GROWS.>> A GIVES YOU AUTHORITY ANDPUBLIC BUILDINGS, AIRPORTS,BARS.REPORTER: AND THE LIST OF PLACESYOU CAN'T CARRY SHRINKS.>> IT ONLY AS A HANDFUL OFPROHIBITIONS.K-12, PRE-K, DAY CARE, PRISON,COURTROOM.REPORTER: ANOTHER IS FIRESENSITIVE AREAS LIKE A COLLEGESPORTING EVENTS WHERE THOUSANDSOF PEOPLE ARE PACKED INTO ASMALL SPACE.BUT FOR THOSE PLACES TO PROHIBITCARRIERS FROM BRINGING IN THEIRGUN, THEY HAVE TO SUBMIT THEIROWN SECURITY PLAN TO THEARKANSAS STATE POLICE.>> AND IF THE POLICE APPROVETHAT PLAN, THEY HAVE THEAUTHORITY AS THE COLLEGIATEATHLETIC EVENT TO PREVENTCONCEAL CARRY AND EVEN FOR THOSETHAT HAVE THE ENHANCED PERMIT.CRACKS WHILE THIS LAW GOES INTOEFFECT SEPTEMBER 1, IT IS UP TO120 DAYS TO FINISH BEFORE THEYCAN WRING THEIR GUN ON CAMPUS.I ALSO TALKED TO THE UNIVERSITYTODAY.SO THAT WHEN ASP DROPS THEPARAMETERS THAT THEY HAVE TO
Advertisement Arkansas Enhanced Carry License may not be "actionable" until January, 2018 Share Shares Copy Link Copy
While the Arkansas law allowing gun owners to carry on college campuses goes into effect September 1st, it may not be until January guns will actually be on campus. In order to get an Enhanced Carry License (ECL), which will appear as an annotation on a concealed carry license, the gun owner must complete up to an eight hour training course put together by the Arkansas State Police. "They'll be two licenses," said Representative Charlie Collins of Fayetteville. "The basic license and this enhanced license."ASP has up to 120 days after the law goes into effect, to create that training course making it possible that it may take as long as January of 2018 for guns to actually be allowed on campus. Collins says the course will be focused on what to do in an active shooter situation. "If you think about an active shooter situation," said Collins. "That is really not covered in deep training for the traditional CCL license. That license training is really more about the law, where you're allowed to carry where you're not. Yes, there is some shooting, but it really doesn't talk as much about how one might behave in those situations." With an ECL you can carry on campus as well as public buildings, bars, and airports. You still can't carry in K-12 and pre-K schools, daycares, prisons or courtrooms. Another prohibition is fire-sensitive areas, college sporting events fall into this category. Universities who wish to prohibit ECL carriers from entering their sporting events must submit their own security plans to ASP. "If the Arkansas State Police approve that plan," said Collins. "Then they can have the authority, as a collegiate athletic event to prevent concealed carry, even for those who have the enhanced permit."California and Colorado, move over. Higher learning is coming to the American Northeast.
The New England School of Alternative Horticultural Studies, a Rhode Island-based medical marijuana training center, announced on Thursday the September launch of its basic medical marijuana training class in Warwick, R.I., which it said is the first professional medical marijuana training class in the northeastern United States.
Rhode Island state law allows registered patients or their caregivers to legally set up an indoor marijuana grow for medical purposes.
“Traditionally, someone who lives in the New England area and wants to take this type of MMJ training would have to travel to California or Colorado at their own expense,” said school founder Luis Hernandez. “This is in addition to the tuition costs which make the total cost for these classes quite steep for folks in the northeast United States.”
“Now, everyone here in the Northeast has access to professional marijuana training right in their own back yard,” Hernandez said.
The school will be distinguished by its strong sense of social responsibility, according to Hernandez.
No less than 20 percent of all class proceeds will be donated directly to causes such as AIDS and cancer research, cannabis law reform, and other worthwhile patient advocacy programs, according to school officials.
“Environmental and social responsibility are core values which we take very seriously around here,” Hernandez said.
The school also extends special discounts to low-income patients who can’t afford the full class tuition.
Incorporated into the curriculum will be state law, fire and electrical safety, ethics, confidentiality and professional conduct, in addition to the horticultural aspect of medical marijuana cultivation.WASHINGTON— As reported yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly outmaneuvered Barrack Obama in a cosmic chess match with global — As reported yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly outmaneuvered Barrack Obama in a cosmic chess match with global repercussions. For decades, the White House used the threat of nuclear war as leverage to forestall Russia’s plan to warn the world about Nibiru. According to our sources, Russian leaders from Gorbachev to Putin had buckled under pressure and ceded to Washington’s demands, because, unlike their American counterparts, Russian leaders disdained the notion of nuclear war and believed that Russia and the United States–along with other major world powers–could work together to preserve the human race.
On Monday, Washington’s house of cards collapsed; Putin learned that Washington’s threat had been a thirty-year-long bluff. He retaliated by turning the table on President Obama, insisting that if Obama did not provide the world with full disclosure about Nibiru within two weeks, he would take center stage and make the announcement himself.
Washington insiders report that Putin’s unexpected defiance has caused a whirlwind of panic at the Oval Office. Allegedly, Obama’s closest advisers are split over how best to handle the crisis, with dissenting factions distancing themselves from the president’s position; Obama, our source reveals, aims to play the waiting game and allow Putin to make the next move. He believes that Putin is now bluffing and has no intention on confirming Nibiru’s existence.
“The White House is all about gamesmanship,” our Washington source said. “Obama wholeheartedly feels that Putin, angry because his government fell for a thirty year bluff, is now performing a retaliatory bluff. Look at it this way: If Nibiru never happens, would you want to be known as the president who panicked the world?”
White House dispute over Nibiru disclosure and its NASA co-conspirators have struggled to maintain a thirty year veil of secrecy for fear of social and economic collapse. Ever since Ronald Reagan signed secret executive order prohibiting discussion of Nibiru, American leaders feared that disclosure would almost immediately result in a worldwide breakdown of social services, with anarchy sweeping across the globe. With less than six months remaining in office, and with Nibiru not expected to arrive until mid-to-end 2017, President Obama has the luxury of playing the waiting game; Vladimir Putin does not.
Nevertheless, Putin’s shocking announcement sent ripples of fear through the halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Discord between Obama and his most trusted political allies threatens to blow the door open on the Nibiru cover-up. Following Obama’s decision to “wait and see what Putin does,” Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Advisor Susan Rice held a “closed-door” meeting with General Mark Milley, Commanding General, United States Forces Army Command and long time opponent of Obama’s military strategies. Although the precise nature of that meeting remains a tightly guarded secret, our Washington source mentions a “coup” to seize initiative and launch a surgical strike against Kremlin leadership before it has an opportunity to publicly divulge scientific knowledge of Nibiru.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter held a chilling meeting with Chief of Staff Mark Welsh. Together, they discussed the possibility of launching a full scale nuclear strike against the Russian Federation. Carter was quoted as saying, “If Nibiru is going to wipe out most of the world, won’t what’s left of it be a better place without Russia in it. Maybe we shouldn’t have been bluffing all these years.”
Elsewhere in Washington, Dr. John Holdren, the president’s scientific adviser, admonished Department of Homeland Security Czar Jeh Johnson and Vise President Biden for suggesting the United States launch its entire nuclear arsenal against the Nibiru system to destroy it or divert its trajectory, a proven impossibility according to renowned astronomer Paul Cox and discredited NASA scientist Dr. Ronald Shimschuck.
These absurd scenarios prove the White House is a tumultuous mess. Its leaders are grasping at straws, clamoring for solutions.
Right now, the ball, as they say, is truly in Putin’s court.
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F’s West Africa Ebola response started in March 2014 and counts activities in Guinea, Liberia, Mali and Sierra Leone. MSF currently employs 306 international and around 3,078 locally hired staff in the region. The organisation operates seven Ebola case management centres (CMCs), providing approximately 600 beds in isolation, and two transit centres. Since the beginning of the outbreak, MSF has admitted more than 7,000 patients, among whom around 4,400 were confirmed as having Ebola. Nearly 1,900 patients have survived.
More than 1,305 tonnes of supplies have been shipped to the affected countries since March.
Guinea
The overall situation in Guinea remains concerning. Patient numbers remain high and the number of new cases continues to rise.
Conakry
Donka Ebola Management Centre in Conakry has reached its full capacity. Admissions have therefore temporarily stopped. New patients are being transferred by WHO to the Forecariah transit centre (50km south-east of Conakry). This is the second time the Donka Ebola Management Centre has reached full capacity. MSF is currently looking for an appropriate site to setup a bigger Ebola Management Centre that will serve the Conakry area.
Macenta
The technical support that MSF was offering to the local authorities in Kérouané and to the French Red cross in Macenta ended. The whole Macenta team left Macenta on the 10 December after handed over to FRC.
Guéckédou
The number of admissions remained stable on the low side, with a bed occupancy rate between 24% and 33%. The number of recovered patient is high (29 this week) and in the last 4 weeks there have been more recoveries than deaths.
The preparation for the INSERM study (FAVIPIRAVIR) is well underway. Trials will start the week of December 15th.
Kankan
A new 20 beds CMC is being built in Kankan and Infection control has started in the Kankan General Hospital. The outbreak seems to have changed dynamic and is moving from Guinée Forestière to Haute Guinée (where Kankan is).
Liberia
Monrovia - Elwa 3
The number of patients in ELWA 3 has remained stable over the past few weeks with around 20 new admissions every week. As a result, we are working to downsize ELWA 3 to a 60 bed centre. Of course, should there again be a sharp increase in cases; we will be ready to scale up in order to accommodate them. We are also focusing on increasing the standard of care to patients, bringing in a laboratory technician to supervise the construction of a new laboratory within the ELWA 3 compound to help facilitate this.
Monrovia/Outreach
Ambulance service have been set up with a dedicated hotline that the community can call if they have Ebola suspected cases. The first teams are operational and refer Ebola patients from Gardnersville, New Georgia, Barnesville and Paynesville in Monrovia, to EMCs.
Monrovia / Support to non-Ebola health facilities
An MSF team is supporting five health centres in Monrovia with expertise in infection prevention and control; A team is also supporting the James Davis Junior Memorial Hospital (JDJ Hospital) in Monrovia providing expertise in paediatrics,, infection control and triage. Rehabilitation of the premises has started to set upstringent infection control measures.
Monrovia/Transit Unit (Redemption Hospital)
Since the opening of the Ebola Transit Unit at the Redemption hospital site in New Kru Town on 19 November, MSF has triaged more than 35 patients and admitted 16 to its Transit Unit, 7 of which tested positive. Patients who are admitted and test positive for Ebola and those who are clinically unstable upon arrival, are transferred to ELWA3 immediately. Patients are followed up by the staff of the Redemption Unit throughout their time in treatment. Their families are offered psycho social support, including transport to visit patients at ELWA 3, which can be up to an hour journey in traffic. Those who recover continue to receive support from MSF in the weeks following discharge.
In addition to running the ten-bed transit unit, MSF also supports the triage at Redemption Hospital's OPD. This is an extremely important step in the rebuilding of non-ebola health services in Monrovia as Redemption Hospital has, been unable to run its normal operations since it was used as a holding centre for Ebola patients in August.
Monrovia/ Health Promotion activities
The outbreak is at a critical stage in Monrovia, with cases remaining stable but vigilance across the city decreasing. As such, health promotion efforts are being streamlined and focused on preventing new infections. Health promotion teams are out in the community engaging in dialogue with interested community members about Ebola as well as running “training for trainers” for community based organisations and other actors, with the aim of continuing to spread correct messaging on Ebola through communities across Monrovia.
Monrovia / Treatment and prevention of malaria
The first round of malaria drug distribution was completed on November 21. In total, more than 500 000 people have received their drugs in four neighbourhoods. The second and last round of the distribution is ongoing and due to be completed on December 19. A distribution of mosquito nets will take place early January.
Rapid response teams / River Cess
There have been no new cases of Ebola in our River Cess intervention for more than the 21 day incubation period and as such, MSF has been handed over the 7 triage centres, set up at local health centres, as well as health promotion activities in the area. Health staff in the area have been trained by MSF to recognise the symptoms of Ebola and to react accordingly. The project has been successfully handed over to Partners in Health this week.
Rapid response teams / Grand Bassa
On the 29th of November, MSF was informed of a single confirmed case and several suspicious deaths in Quewein village, in a remote area of Grand Bassa. Our team reached the area on the 2nd of December and began home care for suspected and probably patients, whilst the set-up of a 12 bed EMC was finalised. In the following days, 31 suspected patients who were well enough to walk the 1.5 hours to waiting ambulances were transferred to ETCs in neighbouring counties.
Of those not well enough to walk out, 18 were tested 14 of which were confirmed). On the 7th of December, all confirmed patients were transferred from home care to the Quewein ETC. The team has ensured the safe burial of 8 people from both the ETU and the community. As of the 17 th of December, there are currently 2 suspect patients undergoing treatment at the centre. There are currently 3 expat staff as well as 15 national staff on the ground in Quewein. Since the team arrived they have referred 39 patients and treated 10 on site.
Foya
After not having had any Ebola patients since October 30th and with new actors arriving in the area to support, MSF’s Ebola Management Center in Foya, Lofa County, has been closed on December 10th. In the lead up to handing the structure back to the NGO Samaritan Purse, MSF invested strongly in health promotion activities and in the training of health staff in the districts of Foya, Kolahun and Vahun. This will ensure a robust response should cases reappear in the area.
Between 2 August and 10 December, 695 patients were admitted to the centre, 384 of whom were confirmed Ebola cases, 154 recovered from the virus and were discharged home.
Sierra Leone
President Koroma launched the ‘Western area surge’ on Dec 16th, an intensified effort to mobilize communities to identify potential Ebola cases and link them with care. The surge focuses on door-to-door social mobilization as well as engagement with community leaders, including government, religious, and tribal groups, as well as youth leaders and women.
The NERC (National Ebola Response Committee), a Presidential task force on Ebola, has initiated a coordination centre to improve communication and collaboration of country-wide and district-level responses.
New Ebola Management Centers (EMC) have been opening and increasing bed capacity to meet the anticipated demand for space as a result of the Western area surge. MSF has opened a new EMC in Freetown on December 9th and another in Magbaruka on Dec 15th.
A wide range of needs are being seen in different areas of the country. While bed capacity was identified as a critical issue in the Western Area, some treatment centres in the rest of Sierra Leone are seeing empty beds, despite having around 40 new positive cases per day nationwide. Moreover, MSF is concerned that access and the coordination of care remains a challenge as patients are being turned away from holding centers or unable to reach or receive a response from the 117 alert operator, when we know there is bed capacity in the EMCs.
For months, MSF teams in Bo and Kailahun have offered knowledge-transfer opportunities through “shadowing” and other engagements. MSF has recently launched a new project to offer more specific, structured, and targeted training opportunities for other organisations needing support in operating case management centres (CMCs) safely.
UNICEF’s Community Care Center (CCC) model was officially launched Dec 16th, and is being rolled out across the country. It provides isolation units in patients’ communities.
Kailahun
The MSF EMC continues to see a decrease in the number of patients, with only three patients currently in isolation (two suspects and one confirmed). It had been expected that Kailahun could receive more patients from Kono District (a hotspot) but road conditions make other EMCs more accessible - including Kenema and Bo which currently have capacity to assist.
Bo
The MSF EMC in Bo has seen a slow decrease of cases, with an average 46 patients in the ETC and no new admissions for two consecutive days (14-15/12). MSF has started to systematically visit quarantined houses in Bo and in hotspots in the rest of the district, and is working to increase the coordination of the response to alerts.
Magburaka
The EMC opened on Monday (December 15th). The first two patients were admitted on the opening day. During the first stage centre will start with 20 to 30 beds, until eventually scaling up as the needs arise. The Winnipeg Lab is installed in Magburaka and with a turnaround time on lab samples of 4 hours.
Freetown/antimalarial distribution
In Freetown MSF completed the first round of house-to-house distributions of antimalarial medication. This initiative reached over 1.5 million people. The second round is scheduled to begin in mid-January.
Freetown/ Prince of Wales secondary school
The new EMC, which has been set up at the centrally located Prince of Wales secondary school, was able to treat its first patients on December 9 – just two weeks after the start of construction. It has a current capacity of 44 beds, more than 50 percent of which are already filled. The plan is to gradually expand to 100 beds in the next 10 days. The center has a mobile lab on premises which currently tests 30 samples per day, and can scale to 50 samples tested per day. Outreach activities are also being set up.
Nigeria
WHO declared 20 October as the official end of the epidemic after 42 days without a case. The MSF intervention has been closed.
Senegal
WHO declared 17 October as the official end of the epidemic after 42 days without a case. The MSF intervention has been closed. MSF’s West Africa Unit (Dakar) will keep in contact with the government for follow up as part of their routine activities.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
The outbreak in DRC’s Equateur province, which was unrelated to the one in West Africa, was declared over on November 21. Around 60 MSF staff worked on this outbreak and two casemanagement centres were established. The MSF teams have activated an exit plan.
Uganda
On September 29, a case of Marburg fever was declared in Uganda. MSF has helped reinforce local capacities for treating confirmed cases and for infection control. No new cases of the disease have been declared since.
Mali
Mali confirmed its first case of Ebola on 23 October. So far there have been seven reported deaths in the country (five confirmed and two probable). Among the 7 confirmed cases, 5 died and 2 recovered once treated at the EMC. To date, there are only 13 contacts in surveillance as a large number of contacts identified had already finished the 21 days.
In Bamako, MSF is running a case management centre (CMC) in collaboration with CNAM, Mali’s national disease centre. Currently there no patient in the centre, as on the 11th December last patient was discharged. The contacts from this case will finish their observation period of 21 days on 15 December.
MSF has a team in Bamako to help stop the disease spreading further. Even though the current chain of transmission is not likely to continue, there is always a risk of new cases coming from other countries. MSF is making sure that the surveillance / alert system is in place, and is training Malian staff from CNAM to manage Ebola cases, while overseeing the organisation of the intervention teams, ambulance system and safe burials.Connecting to free Wi-Fi can be extremely frustrating. But WeFi, a three-year old start up, says it has solved the problem.
Ten million Wi-Fi access points have been recognized and classified so far onto a map says the Fairfax, Virginia-based company.
About one million users are currently using the company's service, it claims.
Most Wi-Fi enabled devices show users a set of available connections and allow them to choose. But the process can be a bit of a hit-or-miss as users have to try on different connections to see what works best.
WeFi claims its software will automatically connect users to the best available free wireless connection. After the first user discovers and successfully connects to a previously unknown hotspot, the software maps the spot and uses the connectivity data to make it easier for future users to log on.
The network is user-generated, which means as more users join in more access points are discovered and added to the community.
To get started users have to download the free software from WeFi, which is available in PC, Symbian and Windows Mobile versions.
The WeFi directory is the largest virtual global Wi-Fi network claims the company.
Members can also map and rank open hotspots in any location. They can locate each other on the WeFi global map, send messages and share content.
Anyone tried this? What did you think?
Photo: (herzogbr/Flickr)As the world’s cities expand at faster and faster speeds, so does its use of cement. One oft-quoted statistic shows that China alone used as much cement in the last three years as the US used in the last 100. Just one problem: Cement is responsible for pushing a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide into the world.
The process of making cement is resource-intensive and heat-intensive—that’s why it creates so much CO2. And that’s why researchers are interested in finding ways to trap or sequester that CO2, and why the research project of a University of Arizona student in the early 2000s is garnering so much interest. A recent PBS report introduced us to Stone—now Ph.D—whose product was made in a lab by accident, while he was experimenting with iron:
It was bubbling and spitting. And I thought, well, that — that didn’t work. The next day, when I came in and I found it and rescued it from the garbage, I realized, this just didn’t get hard. It got very hard, glassy hard.
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For the past 13 years, he’s built a business around the glassy stuff he calls Ferrock. It’s made from the waste of steel mills (steel dust) and doesn’t use the same heat-intensive production process of cement. It’s also more durable and stronger than cement.
But that’s not actually biggest selling point. That would be the fact that this mixture of chemicals actually sucks up CO2 and traps it, as University of Arizona explains:
Conversely Ferrock™ only hardens when exposed to high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which is absorbed and trapped, making it a carbon negative material. This greenhouse gas diffuses into the wet mixture and reacts with the iron, creating iron carbonate and becoming part of the material’s mineral matrix.
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Sounds great, right? What’s stopping the world from adopting Ferrock to replace cement? Well, making a massive paradigm shift in one of the biggest industries on Earth isn’t as easy as demonstrating a breakthrough. We’re talking about an industry that accounts for as much as $250 billion in profits a year. Check out the full PBS mini-doc above for more.My cider has been in its growlers for not half an hour, and already it’s misbehaving. Specifically, it’s trying to crawl out of one of the airlocks as the fermentation gas leaks out. I get that Chinese-water-torture feeling where you see exactly what is about to happen but are powerless to stop it.
In case you missed it, I set about my first ever homebrew experiment a few weeks ago. Things were going well then, and I thought the rest of the experiment would go smoothly. Exactly when I started to relax, the cider started to get up to tricks.
Disaster strikes
I suspect the cider was creeping out of the jug because it was too warm in my apartment—as I stated in part one, cider optimally ferments at 60-75 degrees, and warmer temperatures will put the yeast in overdrive. I conveniently picked the first week of 80-degree weather in a solid month of moderate-to-crisp autumn temperatures to start this project. Woe.
Typically, more experienced and better-equipped homebrewers solve this by installing a “blowoff valve” over the mouth of their fermentation jugs, which is basically a large version of an airlock that feeds fermentation gases and gunk into a cup of water via tubing. I still have yet to buy my tubing, so I take some random Internet forum advice suggesting that if I remove the valve and leave the stopper opening covered with tin-foil, it’s off-gassing enough that fresh air sneaking in isn’t so much of a concern. I leave the cider like this overnight.
By the next morning it appears to have stopped overreacting, so I re-sanitize and replace the valves. For a while, they’re bubbling along fine, but as the temperature rises, the cider starts to creep into the valves again. A couple of times I flush, re-sanitize, and replace them, while covering the stopper openings with tinfoil. The cider keeps creeping in, so I decide to just let them overflow for a while.
So much for this project being not much work; it’s like babysitting an endlessly gurgling infant. Let this be a warning: if you do have cooler parts to your house, like a basement or garage, having your cider somewhere relatively cool is not a trivial matter. Otherwise your yeast will do its terrible impression of a volcano all over whatever surface you’re storing the jugs on.
Furthermore, the need for repeated santizings is a vote for having some dedicated sanitizing solution on hand that doesn’t require this onerous soak-in-bleach, rinse-in-boiled-water workflow. But since blow-off gunk started collecting within the airlocks and in the bungs, they did kind of need a soak anyway. It’s also a vote for more easily disassembled airlocks, as the continuous tube ones are difficult to clean once they’ve been violated by cider-creep.
Eventually, the blow-off dies down, and my cider settles into a gentle bubbling. I actually find myself mesmerized by the gurgle when I sit down to check it. It's hypnotic.
More disaster strikes, but this is all my fault
After about a week, the airlocks have nearly ceased bubbling—at less than a bubble a minute, the yeast inside has more or less chewed all of the sugar it can into alcohol. There are many directions you can go from this point, including adding more sugar to increase the alcohol content, flavors, carbonation, and so forth, but I’m trying to keep this simple.
The next step is to transfer the cider to a secondary fermentation vessel. At this point, much of the yeast has settled out to the bottom of the growlers, and moving the cider to new growlers before bottling it will help separate it better. It’s not absolutely essential, but if you have the time and the extra vessel for it, it’s worth getting as much yeast out as you can.
But here is also where problems start with the lo-fi methods I’ve chosen. I’ve read that it is possible to strain cider, rather than trying to siphon it away from the dregs, but that recommendation was… unusual, to say the least. Hence, I’m using the tubing I mentioned in the last installment to siphon the cider into new growlers. Siphoning turns out to be both the niftiest and the simplest thing I’ve seen in terms of physics principles at work, and it's the thing most likely to turn on you before you even understand what’s going on.
Siphoning can be done with an auto-siphon, which, like much homebrew equipment, is kind of expensive for being a somewhat complex piece of plastic, but it gives you some control over the forces at work. I instead opt to risk spilling cider all over my floor.
Siphoning is a lot of physics. I could explain it, or I could just tell you to try to get a sense of it by playing around with some water first. Basically, you’re going to create an uneven pressure situation in your tubing using water, suck cider into the tube behind the water, dump the water, and then work the uneven pressure to your advantage to pull cider out of one growler and into another.
You “prime” the tubing by filling it with some water. If you stick one end in the growler full of cider and stick another end into a bowl at a slightly lower elevation, the cider will travel from the growler to the bowl. Practice first with some bottles or bowls and water to get a sense of how it works.
Because I have no auto-siphoning tool, I have to start and stop the flow by holding the low end of the tube up, stopping one end with my finger, or some combination thereof. It’s tricky, and unless you are many times more dextrous and coordinated than I, you’re going to spill some (or a lot) of cider.
So I prime my (sanitized) hose, stick one end in a growler full of cider, and point the other end into a large bowl to draw in the cider and let the priming water out. Once the cider is drawn through, I plug it, move it to the new (sanitized) growler, and let the cider flow.
Of course, gravity works against me, and there’s not enough of a pressure difference between the two ends to get the cider moving, so I pick the end-growler up and move it closer to the floor. This gets the flow going again. I try to pluck the end of the hose in the starting growler away when the level gets too close to the dregs, but I’m sure some made the transfer. I have to leave behind a painful amount of cider.
Originally I thought I was going to get about 10 bottles out of this equation, but with the quantity of cider I’m going to have to leave behind for filtration purposes (twice, now), it will be less. Naturally, I also spill some cider on the floor during this process, when it starts coming too fast into the priming water bowl, and I jerk the hose around in panic spasms. Like I said, practice. Since I only had three growlers, I had to play a bit of musical chairs, siphoning out of the first into the third, then washing and re-sanitizing the first to siphon the second’s cider into it.
After the brew sits for another week in its new vessels, yet more yeast has settled out of it, and it’s time to bottle. I’ve saved a bunch of cider and beer bottles, picked up some caps for $4, and bought one of those clunky, expensive bottle cappers.
Bottling, or more accurately, flooring
As I said in part one, you can technically “bottle” into a growler as long as you still have the cap for it. Since this is still cider we’re making, you wouldn’t even have to drink it all in one sitting, technically. So that process is easy—re-siphon again into new growlers, cap, and store.
Bottling with the old-fashioned siphon method proved to be extremely cumbersome, as I had to stop and start the flow between every 12 ounces of beer. If you watch the video above, you can see that I do the first two bottles perfectly. Things go downhill from there.
I have two main problems: Usually I can get the priming water out OK and start flow into a bottle. But if I don’t time ending the flow right, the bottle overflows, cider goes everywhere. Even if that doesn’t happen, I tend to lose the siphon balance in my hose and have to re-prime it with new water. Just go into this expecting to lose and to re-do several steps—there are no winners, except the cider that wanted to be on your floor. Or cheat and just get an auto-siphon tool.
By the end, there is cider on my floor, on my table, on my socks, surprisingly none on my person, but a good amount of it in the bottles. There are eight bottles in total, which I capped and put in the refrigerator.
There are few benefits to tiny-batch homebrewing—ask the hours I’ve spent ferrying cider between glass vessels to net eight measly bottles—but one is that you can stash it all in your fridge, where you know that any residual yeast will be too cold to rouse itself to action, so none of your bottles will burst. Yes, that is a danger, so you could bottle in plastic soda bottles, which will at least give you some warning by swelling into weird shapes before popping.
Here’s to doing things we might regret
The last thing I do is taste the cider, so I can find out whether to give up now and dump everything into the gutter. I pour off a little into a tiny glass and… hesitantly… sip.
Shockingly, it’s not revolting. The flavor is not terribly off, and it still does taste like apples. I’d read not to expect that. It’s pretty sour—makes sense, since the yeast would have eaten all the sugar—but it doesn’t taste funky, or like bleach, which I’d feared after many warnings about using bleach as a sanitizer. It’s not super-alcoholic, either; in fact it's pretty drinkable, on the whole. The last sip or two are pretty yeasty, which means there is probably yet more spent yeast I’ll have to avoid at the bottom of the bottles. But yes, I think I could stomach this knowing it will lead to inebriation. Small victories.
In part three, I’m going to taste the cider again, extensively (too extensively, probably) to see if the flavor improves at all. Supposedly, aging can help a lot. I’ll also cover flavor alteration methods, triumphs, regrets, and what advice you, the readers, have to offer to those of us who are new to homebrewing. Until then, here’s a toast to making things far more difficult than they need to be.
Listing image by Casey johnstonWhile other free agents that joined the Pittsburgh Steelers this offseason have intrigued fans and analysts, Brice McCain has been one player that hasn't drawn much attention.
As a former sixth round draft pick from the Houston Texans, McCain has not produced a consistent year, and is going into his sixth season in the NFL. His best of his five seasons so far was 2011, when he had 13 passes defensed and two interceptions. He also returned one of those two interceptions for his only touchdown in his NFL career. McCain caught a tipped pass and zig-zagged his way to the end-zone on the tail-end of a blowout of the Tennessee Titans making the score 41-7.
Since 2011, McCain has not had as productive a season. He started primarily as a slot cornerback and temporarily would replace a starter whom fell to injury. Though such an opportunity presented itself in 2012 when Jonathan Joseph became injured, McCain would suffer a broken foot in late November that would sideline him for 4 games and has been a nagging injury since.
Recently however, McCain has claimed he has finally taken the time to make a full recovery and feels ready for his new season with the Steelers. " The last two years weren't what I wanted them to be but I’m fully healthy for the first time in two years," McCain said. "I can’t wait to get going."
McCain clocked in a 4.33 40 yard dash time coming into the NFL, which fits the new "speed" focus of the Steelers' defense. Though his 5'9'' frame doesn't favor the team allowing him to assign him to cover large tight-ends, it does fit the mold of a nickel corner replacement for William Gay and/or a dime corner to cover speedy backup receivers from other teams.
If you're looking for any highlights on Brice McCain in the NFL, there's not much to look at. Just search youtube for "Brice McCain highlights" and you'll see that three of his first five videos are of him being taken advantage of by opposing offenses. And of the other two, both are interceptions from his rookie season, one in the preseason.
In addition, Pro Football Focus went from calling McCain a "secret superstar" in 2012, to the league's worst cornerback after 2013.
McCain claims it was tackling and his love for the game of football that has gotten him this far. Hopefully his tackling and his speed can make an impact on special teams for the Steelers and he can fit the mold of a solid Steelers' backup. The good news is that he is excited about being in Pittsburgh and that he has an understanding of what the Steelers' organization is about.
"Tradition, hard work, an organization that knows how to win. I smell tradition."
Hopefully he can sniff out a turnover or two in 2014.One Armona, Calif. student was so angered over a bag of potato chips that she stabbed another student for them.
The girl, 13, stabbed the boy, also 13, after he stole a bag of potato chips from her lunch.
She has been charged with assault.
Authorities said she claimed she was only trying to “poke” him when he stole part of her lunch.
Dave Putnam, an assistant to the sheriff’s department, was sent to investigate the incident. The wound, he said, “connected to his back, near his rib cage area.”
According to police, there are many “inconsistencies” with the girl’s story.
The situation caused many Parkview Middle School parents to be upset after not being informed about the incident.
Superintendent Steve Bogan was shocked by the event, saying he had never seen anything like it in his fourteen years working there.
“We’ve never had an incident like this,” he said.
The girl said the knife was not hers, and that she was holding it for another student.
ABCLocal
undefinedThe open-world game is the new frontier for developers pushing hardware, but it’s rarely the breeding grounds for memorable storytelling. Maybe I’m old-fashioned — I cut my teeth on Deus Ex and Final Fantasy VII — but Bethesda’s celebrated open-world RPGs (Skyrim, Fallout 3) left me high and dry when compared to more guided experiences.
When I heard the next Zelda would take place in a large open world, I imagined Twilight Princess‘ large, lifeless plains but even bigger and got shivers. The same thing happened when I heard CD Projekt Red’s plans for Witcher 3. The first successfully threaded impactful player decisions around a captivating and mostly linear world. I worried focusing on increasing world space and side-activities would detract from the main story and pacing.
To my surprise, Witcher 3 grabbed me in a way no open-world game has before and sold me on this open-world future. If Bethesda (and Nintendo) pay attention to what CD Projekt Red did right, their games will be stronger for it. Here are just five examples of innovation and improvement within the open-world sub-genre that Witcher 3 confidently displays.
Recognize player choice in small moments, not just big ones
Being scolded by your boss for walking into the women’s restroom minutes prior may not be a great moment in anyone’s work life, but it was one of the most memorable early instances of world interaction in the first Deus Ex. Open world games tempt us to see where we can go and what we can we get away with, but for all our silly crimes and antics it seems these virtual worlds rarely recognize our curiosity.
Deus Ex is one of my favorite games of all time and it’s because of the incredible amount of dialog, areas, and items that will go missed even after multiple playthroughs. I figured this would never be replicated again, as Deus Ex was lightning in a bottle caused by less demanding technology and less demanding publishers when it comes to putting in optional content. Yet, Witcher 3 — a title by a relatively small Polish studio and featuring state-of-the-art graphics — brings this back to the open world game.
I’m not talking about characters mentioning whether you sided with the elf or human in Witcher 2. We see major story moments recognized by characters in Mass Effect and Skyrim. It’s expected at this point. What’s unexpected is a character sending me on a mission to an area and my character commenting I previously went there — even though I did this out of my own curiosity with no attached mission. The game noticed my curiosity and included it in the dialog. Another memorable moment early on came when I returned to the herbalist in the first town (long after completing her quests) to buy some herbs and found new dialog options that discussed the findings I came across on another unconnected, optional quest.
We are not immersed in our reality because of major decisions we made years ago. We are binded to reality by all the tiny threads that remind us of who and what we are connected to on a daily basis. It’s near impossible to replicate that in-game, but doing this in small, selective moments is a neat trick that Witcher 3 does repeatedly. In doing so, it makes so many other things in the game feel player-specific, even if they may not be.
Give enemies a variety of strengths and tactics
Bethesda has come a long way from the stiff combat of Arena, but the developer still struggles to provide combat that remains engaging from a game’s beginning to end. Witcher 3’s combat is not perfect. Movement and controls are clunky, leaving improvement for the Dark Souls open-world RPG dream to still be realized. What Witcher 3 does well, however, is provide enemies that force the player to change approach, equipment and item management throughout the adventure.
After 20 hours in Skyrim, I was on autopilot. I figured the exact way to win every battle on hard and was never pushed to change my approach. I’d freeze, wail on an enemy, heal and repeat. It became dull. New equipment and upgrades didn’t matter and enemies didn’t mind either.
In Witcher 3, you’ll be forced to face enemies that will demand you use of spells you might not regularly use or play in a defensive style that doesn’t suit the aggressive one you used on ghouls early on. Players who only care about story can breeze through the game on easy, but for those who want to be challenged by combat and continually surprised by encounters, Witcher 3 provides a satisfying difficulty curve that isn’t eager to fade away.
Pace the journey; don’t frontload the most exciting moments
Bethesda has a habit of providing the most memorable moment of its games within the first 3 hours and never having an equal moment again. Whether its blowing up Megaton or escaping/battling a dragon, Bethesda seems more interested in bringing in players via a press-conference-friendly opening than giving a narrative with an ebb-and-flow.
Witcher 2 is guilty of this itself with its explosive castle siege opening. In contrast, Witcher 3’s opening is quiet, subtle and true to the focus of the game: letting the player explore the countryside at a leisurely place and make discoveries off the beaten path. When major events happen in Witcher 3, they are preceded and followed by quieter moments that allow the game to slip back into a smooth pace.
Not only are the big moments more impactful because they come after quiet ones, but they are spread throughout a lengthy campaign. Whether it’s a budget or writing issue, Bethesda needs to get away from front-loading its most cinematic, exciting moments and offer a campaign that peppers them in for increased impact, variety and surprise.
Give romance sub-plots nuance and depth
Witcher 3 is one of the best acted and written RPGs I’ve played. It seems unfair to tell Bethesda: “Hey dummies, why don’t you write better?” So, I rather focus on a specific example of where Bethesda can improve. That’s right: I’m talking sexy time romance!
The Witcher series has come a long way from the controversial collectible sex cards in the original that limited romance to a crude novelty. Despite what occurred in past games, the Keira Metz subplot in Witcher 3 is one of the most charming, complicated romances I’ve seen in a game. It starts simple enough with a witch doing a favor for Geralt the Witcher and her asking for favors in return. Each character wants something from the other, while suspicion of ulterior motives and sexual tension linger below the surface.
Once Geralt does favors for the witch, it becomes clear that she wants to use him and — depending on the player — Geralt is okay with being used if it means a good time by the lake. In the end, there is never a clear sense of whether Keira has good intentions or whether Geralt wishes for the relationship to be more than “mages with benefits.” The entire subplot is a messy journey that involves witnessing a man french kiss a wraith and fighting a healthy amount of drowners. In the end, Geralt and Keira’s feelings and motives toward each other remain murky and complicated — as these things often are in life. Keria is neither Geralt’s sexual conquest nor is he her boy toy. They continue to want each other’s friendship while suspecting what hidden agenda may one day conflict.
It’s a nice contrast to the dark, gory subplots found elsewhere in the game and a definite improvement over |
or any DNC official,” Lynch’s spokesman countered. In testimony before a House committee last year, Lynch stated she had not spoken to any members of the campaign or anyone affiliated with the campaign during the investigation. Lynch is expected to be called before the Senate panel to testify on the matter.
Paul Sperry of the New York Post reports:
The committee also wants to know if Lynch or any of her aides were in contact with former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz regarding the Clinton email investigation, according to a three-page list of questions that Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein recently sent to Lynch at her New York apartment. Senate investigators have combed through a transcript of Lynch’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2016. In retrospect, several of her statements strain credulity. But one in particular stands out, and could present legal problems for Lynch. The committee, however, now knows of a document obtained by the FBI reportedly showing a Democratic operative’s claim that Lynch had privately assured Renteria that the Justice Department “would not push too deeply” into the investigation of Clinton’s private email server, which contained top secret information from the State Department.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.comEngland seal series after more Anderson magic
England fast bowler James Anderson is the new No.1 ranked Test bowler in the latest update of the International Cricket Council’s rankings.
Anderson took his 500th wicket in England’s nine-wicket win over West Indies at Lord’s, claiming career-best figures of 7-42 in the second innings and nine for the match.
QUICK SINGLE England thrash Windies to seal series
The 35-year-old’s performances were enough to see him overtake India left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja at the top of the rankings table, sitting 12 points clear on top.
Anderson was last ranked No.1 in August 2016 and is the oldest bowler to sit on top of the Test bowling table since Sri Lanka spinner Muthiah Muralidaran in 2009, and the oldest quick since Australia great Glenn McGrath in 2006.
Anderson joins 500 club in style
Meanwhile, England allrounder Ben Stokes was another big mover in the rankings after his successful outing at Lord’s.
His first-innings 60 saw him move to No.20 on the batting charts, while his first-innings 6-22 saw him become the 21st-ranked bowler.
He overtook teammate Moeen Ali in the allrounder charts and now sits in fourth spot.
Wickets tumble on see-sawing day one at Lord's
For West Indies, second-Test hero Shai Hope surged 11 spots to a career-best 30th in the batting rankings.
There was no change to the Test team rankings, with England remaining third and West Indies eight.
Top 10 Test batsmen // ICC
Top 10 Test bowlers // ICCImage copyright shironosov/ thinkstock
Men are narrowing the gap on women when it comes to life expectancy in England and Wales, research in the Lancet indicates.
It predicts by 2030 men will be living 85.7 years on average - just two fewer than women.
In 1981 men lagged behind women by six years.
Though life expectancy is improving for both sexes, it comes at the cost of widening inequalities between deprived and affluent areas, researchers say.
The researchers, from Imperial College London, predict by 2030 men will be living 2.4 years longer than official estimates from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) suggest. And women gain an extra year.
Unlike ONS calculations, their methods put greater focus on improvements in lifespan over the past few years and make less pessimistic assumptions about the future.
'Wealthy gains'
And while the ONS takes a more national approach, they collated death rates from 375 local authorities across England and Wales.
This is key as local authorities now take greater responsibility for planning health and social care services, they say.
Their main findings suggest many regional variations, including:
In 2012 figures are lowest in Blackpool. Men there could expect to live to 75.3 years - eight years fewer than men in the City of London
Women in Manchester fared worst, at 80.2 years - three years fewer than those living in the City of London - which has the highest 2012 figures overall
Looking ahead to 2030, life expectancy will reach or go beyond 81.4 years for men and 84.5 years for women in all areas
But men in Blackpool will still have the lowest predictions - 81.4 years, compared with 90.7 in the City of London, which again tops the list
The new analysis did not cover Scotland, but government data suggests 76.8 years for males and 80.9 years for females.
If their predictions prove correct, they say pension pots would have larger payouts than currently planned.
Greater investments would also be needed in health and social care, they warn.
Prof Majid Ezzati, lead researcher said: "We forecast rising inequalities, with bigger increases in lifespan for people in affluent areas than those in disadvantaged areas.
"This means wealthy people will benefit more from health and social services than poor people."
Brian Beach, at the International Longevity Centre think tank, said: "The methods used look very solid and innovative.
"It has been known for some time that life expectancy can be influenced by social factors and where people live."
Healthy ageing
But he suggested other research went against assumptions that rising life expectancy lead to greater dependence on public services.
"Some would argue years of healthy life are increasing," he said.
"A 60-year-old living 100 years ago would have been considered a very frail person.
"But nowadays they might be viewed as middle-aged, living healthy and happy lives."
The ONS said figures would differ depending on the methods and assumptions used.
A representative added: "There is no clear consensus among academics around the likely speed of future mortality improvements among men and women.
"All future projections are uncertain, hence ONS publishes variant projections to illustrate some of this uncertainty and help those planning public services."
And Prof Sir Michael Marmot, an expert at population health at University College London, said: "Prediction is just that: prediction.
"Changes in social policy, for example, could mean that actual life expectancy in 2030 could be bigger or smaller than these predicted gains."The Santa Clarita, Calif., ranch that hosted the Fox reality competition Utopia and the ABC series Wipeout, among many other film and television productions, was destroyed by wildfire in late July.
Utopia’s set, which was also used by Alton Brown’s Food Network spin-off Camp Cutthroat, is gone. (See a photo.) The Los Angeles Times reports:
“[Ranch manager Kevin] Whitney pulled up to what was once the set of the Fox reality series ‘Utopia,’ where contestants tried to live off the land, with no electricity and no plumbing. There used to be a roughly 3,000-square-foot building where the contestants stayed — but on Wednesday, all that was left were nails poking through the ash on the ground. Whitney heard the whole thing burned down in about eight minutes.”
However, the set of Netflix’s first competition series, Ultimate Beastmaster, survived. The LA Times has a photo of its massive obstacle course structure which has gotten attention post-fire. The paper reports:
“And the set for Netflix’s new competition series ‘Ultimate Beastmaster’ — featuring a gigantic metal beast showing its teeth — survived. Even the flames, Hunt joked, couldn’t kill the beast, and curious sheriff’s deputies and firefighters have stopped in all week to pose for pictures with it. “
Other shows filmed at Sable Ranch include The A-Team, Sons of Anarchy, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, and Jackass 3D.The man behind Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has a knack for spectacle, an eye toward making money and a proven willingness to defy the Republican Party.
In other words, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is a lot like his new boss.
Story Continued Below
Lewandowski, who has been advising Trump since January and managing his improbable — and, for many Republicans, headache-inducing — run to the top of the GOP primary field in national polls has spent the past decade and a half drifting away from the party establishment.
He left a short stint at the Republican National Committee in 2001 to manage the failed reelection campaign of a rogue senator before landing eventually at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity, where he primaried New Hampshire Republicans and mocked the state’s Democrats until joining up with Trump.
In that time, Lewandowski cemented a reputation in New Hampshire political circles for getting things done, even if it means ruffling feathers. “He’s a good guy personally, [but] he’s a bomb thrower,” said one longtime New Hampshire Republican political operative.
“Corey was a pretty aggressive guy on issues. He was a go-getter … and he was not afraid to air out an issue,” said Bruce Berke, a Granite State lobbyist and an adviser to the Republican primary field’s latest entrant, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
He’s also drawn attention for his new Trump-sized paychecks, which would add up to close to a quarter of a million dollars annually.
“Corey has mouths to feed, and a business opportunity to go and make $20,000 a month doesn’t come around every day,” said former state party chairman Fergus Cullen, pointing out that Lewandowski, 40, supports a family of six and lives in a spacious home in Windham, on the Massachusetts border, valued at over $800,000 (that’s a lot for New Hampshire).
The Trump campaign and Lewandowski declined to comment for this story. “Only one guy on the campaign that matters!” texted a spokeswoman.
“He certainly wouldn’t be supporting Donald Trump if he didn’t believe in him,” said Jerry DeLemus, a Republican activist in New Hampshire best known for his support of rogue Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who officially became a Trump supporter over the weekend and called Lewandowski a “really decent man.”
The grandson of a union printer, Lewandowski grew up poor in the 1980s in the hardscrabble mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts, playing pond hockey in the winters and going on to graduate from the city’s branch of the University of Massachusetts.
Drawn to Ronald Reagan’s unabashed work-hard, get-rich version of the American dream, Lewandowski became an active Republican and moved to Washington after graduating. There, he worked on Capitol Hill while earning a master’s degree in political science at American University.
Lewandowski worked briefly for the RNC in 2001, as the legislative political director for the Northeast, before leaving the establishment behind.
His rift with “the country club Republicans,” as he’s known to call them, can be traced to another presidential campaign that ticked off the party.
In February 1999, New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith launched a long-shot bid for the Republican nomination, irking the local GOP, which worried he could catch on in his home state and make the first-in-the-nation primary irrelevant by discouraging other candidates from campaigning there.
As it turned out, Smith didn’t catch on anywhere, so he left the party in July to seek the nomination of the Taxpayers’ Party, before disavowing that party, too, and running as an independent. That lasted until Rhode Island Sen. John Chafee died in October, when Smith dropped out of the race and repledged his fealty to the Republican Party so that he could inherit Chafee’s chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
The Republican Party was ready for Smith to retire at the end of his term, but he sought reelection in 2002, recruiting Lewandowski from the RNC to manage his campaign. Several of Smith’s GOP Senate colleagues took the unusual step of endorsing his primary opponent, then-Rep. John E. Sununu, the son of the state’s former governor, who won the primary and the seat, putting it safely back in the hands of the country club Republicans.
By his association with the ousted senator, Lewandowski had burned bridges with the party, said Cullen.
He spent five years as a lobbyist, starting at the New England Seafood Producers Association, before landing with the deep-pocketed Americans for Prosperity in 2008. AFP’s ability to outspend candidates in small, local races made it a factor in New Hampshire Republican primaries, and Lewandowski again became a thorn in the state party’s side.
Most notably, in 2012, AFP backed computer-repair magnate Josh Youssef over a more moderate Republican in a state Senate primary, despite reports that Youssef owed $50,000 to the IRS and allegations that he was hiding assets to avoid making child-support payments to his ex-wife, because Youssef’s views aligned more closely with the group’s anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda.
Days after Youssef won the primary with Lewandowski’s support, the Republican leadership publicly called on their nominee to answer for allegations that he violated campaign laws by misusing the identities of local Republicans to make it look like they supported his candidacy.
Youssef lost in the general election, contributing to a narrowing of the Republican majority from 14 seats to two in the Senate and hard feelings in the party. “That’s a seat that Republicans should hold,” said Berke. Youssef is now a county chairman for Trump in New Hampshire.
At AFP, Lewandowski also showed an ability to draw crowds to events and pull off attention-grabbing gimmicks. At the group’s Tax Day rally in 2010, he pulled a cardboard cutout of Democratic Gov. John Lynch onto the steps of the Capitol building in Concord and began debating it, to the crowd’s delight.
In April 2014, AFP and Citizens United held a “Freedom Summit” in New Hampshire, the first Republican cattle call of the 2016 presidential cycle, where Trump and Lewandowski met. They kept in touch over the intervening months, and Trump evidently decided he had found a kindred spirit.
One Trump insider joked the two had found each other on Match.com.
They even dress alike. “He wears a suit a lot, which for New Hampshire is odd,” the longtime Granite State political operative said of Lewandowski. “You don’t really wear suits in New Hampshire.”
The operative, who did not want to speak negatively about a fellow Republican on the record, had another theory of Lewandowski’s and Trump’s decision to partner up: They both had few other options. “Any serious person in Washington could never work for [Trump], because it would just destroy your career and you’ll never be respected by anyone around here.”
Since the two joined forces in January, Trump has taken care of the bombast, while Lewandowski has been executing on the logistics, which so far consists largely of getting Trump in front of cameras and crowds.
Despite all the bridges burned, an ability to execute may save Lewandowski from political career exile should Trump’s campaign fizzle, as many Republican leaders say they expect it to, when the cameras and the crowds move on.
Greg Moore, who replaced him as AFP’s New Hampshire director, said his old boss excels at the “blocking and tackling” of political agitation.
“He always made sure the ‘i’s are dotted and ‘t’s are crossed,” said Moore. “I assure you the trains will run on time.”
Follow @politicoSkyramps is the combined efforts of Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never – loved here recently) and Mark McGuire (Emeralds), spinning electric gold through a tight 33 minute set. If you’re picturing the homespun sci-fi synthesizer burblings of the former soaking in the ethereal guitar ambience of the latter project, you’re on the right path. This is basically mana from heaven for those of us who happen to be fans of both.
Click the artwork to download the album as a zip file.
When I heard about this release, I practically shat myself. 2009 saw the rise of a more user-friendly, nearly pop natured breed of drone music the likes of which had never yet crossed radars. Drone for the masses? Not quite. But this is, for instance, far more palatable to your radio listener friends than a Final or Scorn, or even latter day Seefeel album. There’s more dynamic movement than the Gas discography and an airy, inviting tone accompanying the head-nodding foundation. Intertwining lush guitar melodies with Lopatin’s signature synth histrionics, the album soars and soothes in all the right places. The first two tracks feel almost like personal intros for the artists, opening with the prominent sounds of one and slowly adding a dose or two of the other until a fine balance arrives at the end. The second half of the album is where the alchemy truly shines with a blend unique to this recording, and is the gut-level satiating reward for those venturing into this eerie place.
The two obviously know their audience and the images these sounds tend to conjure: warm memories of genre films on tattered VHS (or better- Betamax!) tapes, doodling pictures of Spinners and Darkness, and the unshakable knowledge that anything electronic and/or spacey was the definitive way of the future. These four tracks evoke the optimistic pulse of accelerating full-bore into a strange land of colored light and skyscraping wonder. Maybe it’s not utopia but it’s different than here. More interesting. Lopatin and McGuire also seem to be acutely aware of how this earnestly nostalgic sensibility lends itself to parody and have pre-empted the inevitable jokes with a wonderfully tongue in cheek title: Days of Thunder. There aren’t many more emphatically day-glo versions of 1980s Western hubris than the eponymous Nascar thriller and another certain flick by director Tony Scott. Thankfully the album’s palette hews closer to brother Ridley‘s then-unparalleled visions of alternate realities.
Folks of a certain age, eat this up. You’ll be digging through dusty childhood crates and pre-ordering tickets for that new Tron movie in no time.
[although printed in a limited run of 75 cdr copies, there are a couple available via discogs for reasonable price, and of course, *elsewhere* in digital form]
*And seriously, watch that Tron trailer. It looks quite a bit more than alright!Startup of the week:
Who they are: Twindom
What they do: 3D imaging. The company is working on transforming online shopping by letting customers virtually “try on” clothes before they buy.
Why it’s cool: If years of online shopping have taught us anything, it’s this: just because an outfit looks amazing on the model, doesn’t mean it will look anywhere near as good when we get it home and try it on in front of a mirror. And we’ve learned to live with that problem. We return the items that just don’t fit quite right, or, for those hard-to-buy articles, we suck it up and venture into a physical mall — braving crowds of shoppers, long lines and unforgiving flourescent lights in search of the perfect fit.
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This surveillance startup wants to put cameras in your neighborhood But Berkeley-based startup Twindom is working on a solution, which it calls Drapr. The company is using its 3D imaging technology to create a virtual fitting room experience capable of showing you how your own body would look in any article of clothing — all from the comfort of your home.
“The final result looks like you wearing clothing that you’ve never worn before,” said co-founder and CEO David Pastewka. “And it is as accurate as if you had actually worn it.”
He says the result will resemble that scene from the movie “Clueless” where Cher uses a computer program to “try on” outfits from her massive closet before school.
The idea is made possible using Twindom’s proprietary full body scanners — the $27,000 devices look like small, portable cages that can be set up anywhere in less than an hour. The subject stands in the middle, cameras on all sides snap pictures, and that data is sent to a computer that converts it into a 3D image.
Pastewka is working on forming partnerships with major clothing retailers, who will set the scanners up in their stores and invite customers to have their bodies scanned. The next step is for the retailers to photographer their clothing — which is when it gets a bit weirder. Retailers will put the clothes on a Twindom robotic mannequin, which changes shape to represent different body types and sizes. The retailer takes 3D pictures of each clothing item in several standard sizes, and uploads them to a computer.
Twindom’s software then combines the clothing images with the images of the customer’s body, using its simulation technology to fill in the gaps between the robotic mannequin and the real person. The result is a 3D image that captures everything accurately from how a piece of clothing fits, to the way it hangs, to where the fabric bunches, Pastewka said.
Where they stand: Twindom is beta testing its virtual fitting room concept with customers now, and hopes to roll it out at major retailers within the next year. The startup is also working on technology that would let customers do the 3D body scan at home using their smartphone. Pastewka says users can expect that new feature next year.
In the meantime, Twindom is using its technology to create 3D-printed, action-figured-sized models of people. They work with local retailers like PocketMe in Berkeley and Fisherman’s Wharf to bring family photos to life.
To learn more about Twindom’s virtual fitting room technology, or sign up to be part of the company’s beta test, visit drapr.com.
What will they think of next?
No one likes waiting in line. But how much are you willing to pay to avoid it? That’s the question asked by a new app called Lines…Why Wait? The app lets you crowdsource wait times, scrolling around a map to see how long the line is at your favorite spot, or to update the estimated wait time when you arrive at a venue — whether it’s Starbucks or a concert where your favorite band is playing. But the main draw seems to be the option that lets you sell your spot in line to the highest bidder, or pay for a place in line so you don’t have to wait.
It’s not the first line-avoidance app on the market. SpotTakers offers a similar service, promising “never again wait in line at your favorite place.”
Run the numbers:
The robots are coming, and Americans are worried. When considering a future where robots and computer can do many human jobs, 72 percent of Americans said the prospect worries them, while just 33 percent said they are enthusiastic about the idea, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. And 67 percent of Americans said they’re worried about the development of algorithms that can evaluate and hire job candidates, while 22 percent said they are enthusiastic. Driverless cars scare us a little less — 54 percent of Americans said they are worried about robot vehicles, and 40 percent said they are enthusiastic. And robot caregivers for older adults seem to be the least threatening form of artificial intelligence — worrying 47 percent of Americans, and exciting 44 percent.
The survey looked at answers from 4,135 U.S. adults in May.CLOSE Colts linebacker Jerrell Freeman joins IndyStar columnist Bob Kravitz and Fox59's Chris Hagan on Colts Camp Live. Video provided by Fox59
Buy Photo Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay talks to reporters following the second day of Training Camp Friday July 25, 2014, afternoon at Anderson University. Matt Kryger / The Star (Photo: Matt Kryger / The Star)Buy Photo
If Ray Rice got a two-game suspension for allegedly striking and knocking out his then fiancee, what's commissioner Roger Goodell got in store for Jim Irsay?
A 10-minute suspension?
And a $100 fine, payable in $20 bills?
Once upon a time, Goodell was seen as a heavy-handed, draconian disciplinarian. But in the Rice case, he comes off as shockingly lenient and tone-deaf to one of the most serious issues in our society — violence against women. The league that makes such a big deal about going pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month just slapped all its female fans right in the face, just as Rice was alleged to have done to the woman who is now his wife.
As I was coming up to Anderson Monday morning, I made a point of listening to Adolpho Birch, the NFL's vice president of labor policy and government affairs, speak to ESPN's "Mike and Mike." It was one of the most embarrassingly inept responses to questions I've ever heard, an endless loop of specious blatherings. Birch tried to make the case not only that the Rice suspension was fair, but that it sent a strong message to NFL players that violence against women will not be tolerated.
Seriously, he said that.
A strong message.
Excuse me?
To their credit, both Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic called Birch on his statement, then opened the floodgates to callers who were outraged by the Goodell decision and the Birch mock-explanation. (Next time, Roger, go on the radio yourself rather than sending out a lieutenant).
Which brings us to the next item on the commissioner's disciplinary to-do list: Make the call on Irsay.
A conspiracy theorist would suggest that the Rice suspension was laughably soft so that the bar would be set absurdly low for a potential Irsay suspension, which, you would think, would have to come down within the next few weeks. If Rice gets just two games for allegedly hitting his fiancee — the TMZ video only showed him dragging her around unconscious, but the NFL is said to have elevator video that shows far worse — then how does that bode for Irsay, who was charged with driving while under the influence of drugs?
"In the NFL, I don't think they take domestic abuse against women seriously enough; I want to see the commissioner come down fierce on (the Rice case)," former NFL linebacker Scott Fujita told Jim Rome before Rice's sentence was handed down. "And also driving under the influence. We don't take that issue seriously enough. Those are two issues now, and that's where the commissioner has to do the right thing …"
Until this point, Goodell had been largely reasonable and consistent. He'd been tough, a relentless hammer when it comes to arbitrating these cases, but he'd been consistent.
This time, though, he went off the rails. The NFL, and specifically Birch, talked about precedent in this case, but Ben Roethlisberger was suspended six games — eventually it was reduced to four games — for his involvement in a sexual assault case.
In that case, it never went to court, but the NFL maintained its own standard of conduct and hit Roethlisberger with a reasonably tough suspension.
In this case, Rice was put into a diversionary program in order to forego a trial, and the commissioner went soft on him.
This is a league that's run by smart people, which makes me wonder: How could several NFL executives come together in a meeting room and reach the conclusion, "You know, this seems fair"? How tone deaf are they? How could they fail to know there would be incredible blowback, not only from the media but from fans outside of Baltimore. (And, I'm guessing, inside Baltimore, too.)
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Granted, drug suspensions are collectively bargained, written in stone, while issues like the Rice case are left to Goodell to arbitrate. But you wonder what kind of message is sent when pot smokers get longer suspensions than people who engage in domestic violence. You wonder what kind of message is sent when Robert Mathis takes a fertility drug (also a steroid masking agent) and gets four games, yet Rice gets just two games.
The NFL is still seen, sometimes accurately, as a boys-will-be-boys culture where disrespect of women remains a major problem. Goodell could have shown this wasn't the case. He could have ascended the soapbox, got behind his bully pulpit and issued a declaration that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated in any area of the sport.
If there's something the public doesn't know, or hasn't seen, then Goodell should be fully transparent here. It's not enough to send Birch out there to be consumed by wolves. Goodell needs to step out and share with fans how he reached such a befuddling conclusion here.
Rice is the one who should be paying the price in this case.
Instead, it's the NFL.
Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Call him at (317) 444-6643 or email bob.kravitz@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter: @BKravitz.I added the ability to call methods inside structs.
a call to a function inside a struct will pass the struct as first parameter implicitly.
with this we get a behaviour similar to python where methods are just functions that receive an object as first parameter (normally called self).
here are some examples:
@public present = fn (Self) io.format("Hi!, I'm ~s ~s, my email is ~s~n", [@Self.firstname, @Self.lastname, @Self.email]) @public new = fn (Firstname, Lastname, Email) New = { firstname: Firstname, lastname: Lastname, email: Email, show: fn struct.print:1, present: fn present:1} New @public run = fn () P = new("mariano", "guerra", "foo@bar.com") @P.show() @P.present()
as you can see, the instantiation of the new struct is similar to javascript.
running the program displays:
<struct firstname="mariano" lastname="guerra" email="foo@bar.com"/> Hi!, I'm mariano guerra, my email is foo@bar.com
I also added pretty printing of structs in the erlang shell and some more functions to the struct module
>>> P = person.new("mariano", "guerra", "foo@bar.com") <struct firstname="mariano" lastname="guerra" email="foo@bar.com"/> >>> @P.firstname "mariano" >>> struct.print(P) <struct firstname="mariano" lastname="guerra" email="foo@bar.com"/> ok >>> S = {foo: 1, bar: "asd", baz: true, show: fn struct.print:1} <struct foo=1 bar="asd" baz=true/> >>> @S.show() <struct foo=1 bar="asd" baz=true/> ok >>> struct.print(S, true) <struct foo=1 bar="asd" baz=true show=#Fun<struct.print.1>/> okO2 shares your mobile phone number with every website you visit
If you're reading this news article using your O2 mobile phone, you'll be pleased to know that O2 have already sent us your mobile phone number within the HTTP headers which normally contain information about how content can be displayed on your device. These headers are not normally seen by users, and usually not logged by most websites, but the flaw allows malicious sites to get more personal information about you than you may be willing to share.
For example, if you open an e-mail which includes references to external images, the mere action of opening the e-mail would divulge your phone number. This could be used by anyone undertaking a phishing attack or other scam to get more information from you. The opportunity to abuse this is potentially endless.
This issue was uncovered by @lewispeckover and has been confirmed by thinkbroadband as being correct, although by the time we took this photo, the issue seems to have stopped affecting the phone we tested:
This screenshot from an iPhone still shows the problem:
(click to view full screenshot) (click to view full screenshot)
We understand from other sources that it is still affecting some individuals, however we suspect O2 has been quick to start fixing the issue. Our suspicion is that the feature is used by internal O2 websites to identify the user trying to make changes to the account, but that one or more of O2's proxy servers have been misconfigured.
We have tested this on Vodafone ourselves and have found no trace of a similar problem
O2 users may be able to confirm if they are still affected by visiting Lewis Peckover's website here (external link), noting that by visiting the site, you're probably giving him your phone number (although we very much suspect he would be more careful with it).
Comments
Post a commentYour browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
California needs rain, and they need it bad. How bad? Just have a look at the GIF above. The first image shows Folsom Lake near Sacramento on July 20, 2011. The second image shows Folsom Lake on January 16, 2014. Notice a difference?
That's what a drought of historic proportions looks like. In fact, 2013 was the driest year California has seen in 119 years, and that's causing some obvious problems. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency last month, and farmers are scrambling to figure out clever ways to save their crops. California's municipal water system has even announced that it can't get water to farmers, which is particularly bad news in the state that supplies over half of America's fruits and vegetables (and almonds). Even the president's now involved. This month, Obama pledged $183 million in federal funds for drought relief programs.
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NASA is also on the case. The space agency recently helped the world visualize the problem with a striking set of satellite images showing the withering effect the drought has had on California. NASA also supplied the images of Folsom Lake, explaining how the reservoir was at 97 percent capacity two-and-a-half years ago and just 17 percent capacity in January! NASA will continue to monitor the situation by measuring how much water is in snowpack and how much light that snow absorbs. That should help them estimate how much water the state will get from snowmelt.
Aside from figuring out ways to deal with the consequences, there's unfortunately not too much anybody can do about this drought in the near term. Of course, we'll want to keep having that endless conversation about the causes and effects of global warming. We can also just continue staring at that photo of the reservoir. It looks like somebody just pulled out the stopper and let all the water run out. [NASA via Atlantic Cities]This publication has been updated. Please see here for the latest version.
Teen pregnancies have declined dramatically in the United States since their peak in the early 1990s, as have the births and abortions that result; in 2008, teen pregnancies reached their lowest level in nearly 40 years, according to “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity,” by Kathryn Kost and Stanley Henshaw of the Guttmacher Institute. In 2008, the teen pregnancy rate was 67.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19, which means that about 7% of U.S. teens became pregnant that year. This rate represents a 42% decline from the peak in 1990 (116.9 per 1,000). Similarly, the birthrate declined 35% between 1991 and 2008, from 61.8 to 40.2 births per 1,000 teens; the abortion rate declined 59% from its 1988 peak of 43.5 abortions per 1,000 teens to its 2008 level of 17.8 per 1,000.
Even with dramatic reductions in pregnancy, birth and abortion rates among all racial and ethnic groups, disparities between black, white and Hispanic teens persist. After peaking in the early 1990s, the teen pregnancy rate dropped by 37% among Hispanics, 48% among blacks and 50% among non-Hispanic whites; yet the rates among black and Hispanic teens remain 2–3 times as high as that of non-Hispanic white teens. There were also considerable disparities in birth and abortion rates. The birthrates in 2008 among black and Hispanic teens, as well as Hispanic teens’ abortion rate, were twice the rates among whites; the abortion rate for black teens was four times that of whites.
“The recent declines in teen pregnancy rates are great news.” says lead author Kathryn Kost. “However, the continued inequities among racial and ethnic minorities are cause for concern. It is time to redouble our efforts to ensure that all teens have access to the information and contraceptive services they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies.”
A large body of research has shown that the long-term decline in teen pregnancy, birth and abortion rates was driven primarily by improved use of contraception among teens. And while there was also a decrease during the 1990s in the overall proportion of females aged 15–19 who were sexually experienced, there has been almost no change in the proportion in recent years. Continuing decreases in teen pregnancy more recently may be driven by increased use of the most effective contraceptive methods as well as dual method use. In sum, teens appear to be making the decision to be more effective contraceptive users, and their actions are paying off in lower pregnancy, birth and abortion rates.
“U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity” by Kathryn Kost and Stanley Henshaw is currently available online.K-Pop is known for trying out various concepts and then going above and beyond with it. From sexy concepts to the cute and bubbly, K-Pop groups have mastered any concept imaginable, with retro being no exception!
With extravagant outfits, quirky beats, among other influences, these 15 artists/groups pulled off the retro concept perfectly. Check and see if your favorite group/artist made the list.
�
�15. Laboum - "Aalow Aalow"�
Bright and lively, Laboum's "Aalow Aalow" offers a nice retro vibe through its 1950s inspired dresses, vibrant colors, and poppy sound. The song is fun and the concept keeps to the original retro fashion |
Tom Daykin / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
A 140-unit high-end apartment development is being proposed for a Milwaukee site a block south of E. Brady St.
The $40 million project is being proposed by developer Mike Klein and real estate broker Jeno Cataldo for a 1-acre lot at 1632-1648 N. Franklin Place. That site was cleared this summer when a former church and Boys Club building was demolished.
The development would have four stories at either end of the project site on N. Franklin Place and N. Arlington Place, with the middle portion of the building rising to 10 stories, Cataldo said Monday.
It would include enclosed and underground parking totaling around 180 stalls, he said.
The developers hope to begin construction by either the end of the year, or by spring 2017, if the Common Council approves the plans, Klein said. It would be completed by spring or summer of 2018, he said.
The building would have one- and two-bedroom units, said Klein, who operates Klein Development Inc. The apartments would be larger, and there would be no studio units. The prospective rents are still being determined.
Cataldo said the developers have revised their plans to "meet the concerns of the neighborhood."
"I think we're really excited about presenting something that not only maximizes the potential of the site," Cataldo said, "but also would fit in with the neighborhood over there."
Ald. Nik Kovac, whose district includes the site, said Klein and Cataldo initially proposed a taller, wider building. That drew opposition, he said.
"Most people want to see something that appears to fit in," Kovac said.
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Other taller buildings in the neighborhood include the neighboring Arlington Court, a high-rise operated by the city Housing Authority. But there also are several smaller buildings in the neighborhood.
Klein said the site's closeness to Brady St.'s restaurants and night life help make it a good location for apartments.
Other nearby apartment developments include the 23-unit Keystone on Brady, which is under construction at the northwest corner of E. Brady St. and N. Humboldt Ave.
KC Franklin Partners LLC, led by Klein and Cataldo, bought the property last year.
A neighborhood meeting on the proposal is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sept. 26 at Arlington Court, 1633 N. Arlington Place.
Read or Share this story: http://on.jsonl.in/2cypVKc[Mike will be on MSNBC this afternoon, at approximately 3:30pm EDT, to discuss his great Republican Birther hunt. –Ed.]
Brett Vaughn (Brave New Film’s extraordinary documentarian) and I happened upon a Republican press conference. When we approached, Representative Mike Rogers (Michigan) was expounding at length about death rates for cancer patients under "socialized medicine" vs. death rates here in the United States. Seems there is a long list of cancers in which US patients survive longer than their peers in France.
I ignored the fact that I don’t believe for one second that doctors, nurses or other direct health care providers (I’m not talking about the bureaucrats at insurance companies that are paid to deny claims) base a single treatment decision on who is paying them. I also ignored the fact that anyone can cherry-pick statistics to make whatever specious case their little hearts desire. We all know that the truth is that we in America pay much more for much less when it comes to health care.
Besides, the country with the best breast cancer survival rate is…Cuba.
Instead I decided to ask about something that really bugs me about Republicans: for so-called patriots, these guys really think the United States sucks. I mean, if we can engineer a ridiculously effective war machine – and spend whatever it takes to do it – why can’t we figure health care out? Surely they don’t believe killing people is more worthy than keeping Americans alive?
The Republicans still haven’t offered their health care bill.The veteran guitarist on his new album of protest songs, Election Special, and how the Republican party is out to destroy America and Barack Obama's presidency Listen to Ry Cooder's new album below this article!
Hello, Ry. Where are you?
I'm in my house in Santa Monica. (1)
Have you been watching the Olympics? I'm in London where we've all been going crazy for the Games.
We see them late at night here, so we watch 'em a little.
Are you a sports fan?
Not really.
Did you see the opening ceremony? This will lead somewhere, this question, I hope...
Oh, sure. Absolutely.
And what did you make of it?
Well, the whole thing with the beds and the National Health was interesting from over here, as you might well imagine.
Well, that's what I want to ask you about because we read here that there was some criticism of that segment of the ceremony in the US.
Well, I didn't know there was any criticism of it at all. I hadn't heard that. First of all, you can't believe the media. You know that. I know it and you know it. So the propaganda against that concept... I would take it on the same level as I would take the gun lobby on any notion that following some slaughter like out in Colorado that anybody who says assault rifles should be banned is going to be roundly criticised and called a bad American. So naturally, in this particular year, we can look and see that the leading edge of Republican interference with our way of life is what they call Obamacare. And this is their flag that they hoist. So anyone that comes along with another idea, let alone anything as explicit as this piece in the opening ceremony, the first thing they have to do in the US media, which is pretty much controlled by the corporations, is to discredit it as fast and as hard as they possibly can. And any time you see anybody saying: "Oh, the American people didn't like this, they resented it, etc"... they're lying.
It's not for your benefit, it's for our benefit. So our population here learns, once again, that anything that's done for the people is wrong.
I don't know if you're familiar with the mayor of London, a character called Boris Johnson...
Never heard of him.
He's a Conservative buffoon. He's so ridiculous that there's a point at which some people start to find him funny. Is there an element of that with the Sarah Palins of this world? Or are they too dangerous to ever find them funny?
They're too insanely dangerous. Look, what did Gore Vidal say recently? The interviewer asked him what he thought of the Republican party and he said it's not a party any more, it's a Hitler Youth mindset and they're out to destroy the country, and he was 110% right. So in case anybody thinks Michele Bachman or Sarah Palin are clowns because they misspeak or don't know their history or they say silly things: that's just an act, and it's a useful act. Everything is a distraction from the core truths which are, first of all, that corporations have taken over the country.
This right now is the time of decision in this country. There's no other way to look at it. This is it. This is the most critical time in the history of the country, for chrissakes.
Is Mitt Romney the least worst candidate to have emerged from the Republican ranks? (2)
I don't agree with that. Romney is as bad as anyone can be. He's a dangerous man. He's a cruel man. He's a perfect creation for what the Republican party is all about. And that is to say, a rapacious capitalist. Anyone who ran Bain Capital is not your friend. All they're going to do is rape and pillage the land. That's what he did at Bain Capital and that's what he's going to continue to do. Plus he can go around and in this guise of being a good buisnessman, which he's not.... and this face – with the big grin and everything – is jovial, but hollow. And it's outrageous if you analyse what he's saying, because he'll say one thing and do the opposite. And the media gives him a lot of attention. You know the story of the Olympics at Salt Lake City? Then he goes over to Great Britain and bad mouths the Olympics over there... But he's carrying an entourage of donors and he's putting on a dog and pony show for them. It takes a bit of study. People are so desperate over here now. They don't have the time to research and go back over the history of this guy. And everybody knows that. So what I'm trying to do with these little songs I write is say: let's look at this a different way. I don't write books and give speeches but with a four-minute song you can use allegory and other means to suggest a different point of view.
It's like looking around the corner, and that's what songs are good at sometimes. They hit you with a new thought – assuming that people will listen. For instance, I like that idea that the Koch brothers made a deal with Satan down at the crossroads. And that's useful because everyone understands what crossroads are all about – some of these songs call up and quote other songs. You've heard some of this material before, some of these lyric ideas, little inserts.
It's a bit different to the protest songs of the 60s. Is that because you think those songs were never really effective or because the times have changed?
Well, I don't know how to write soldier music. They were soldiers' songs so people could go out and hit the frontline. We shall overcome and so forth. And you need those types of songs. Especially in the Occupy movement. I think they're going to want to have songs like that, it'll be helpful. But I don't know how to do that really. That's a different kind of musical brain up there. So what I look at is these bleak stories: they're narratives and they introduce you to a character and the character says something.
Irish songs function that way. They tell a little story. Or old time country music did that. It's not as direct. It's a little different.
But do you still find something inspiring in the idea of Woody Guthrie with his guitar and the slogan on it saying: "This machine kills fascists"?
Sure. He was a great storyteller in music. He was perfect. He had a good visual sense, so those tunes... you can see them, I always thought. He had a gift for making songs out of things. He went and saw [the 1940 film] The Grapes of Wrath, I was told, and wrote Tom Joad in one night, this whole epic song with umpteen verses. Because he'd seen it, he knew how to do it, I think.
He lived through the depression and the dustbowl and so he turned his mind there. It's always good to listen to his thing. Now we're listening to him again on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Is that something which has been lost from songwriting? I'm reminded of something I think Bob Dylan said about the sinking of the Titanic: within months, there were dozens of songs telling the story from a different perspective. Nowadays, people don't expect that from music, they turn to TV.
I know. The whole idea of lifestyle has corrupted everything. So if you're going to be a musician you have to present yourself as some sort of demonstration of some sort of lifestyle that's useful to people who have to demonstrate lifestyles: to sell clothes, liquor, or something. Disney started this. So the vocabulary of the music has changed a lot from, let's say, 1970 onwards. It's more about the person and what they seem to be, rather than what they think or what they've experienced.
Once the record companies grew to being corporations it was obvious that those corporate managers would say: "Hey, let's stop talking about unions, let's stop talking about bank fraud. We'd rather talk about sales. What can we sell here?" Then we put it up on TV and the advertisers get happy because it sells their product. You know it's useful that way.
Now, beneath the corporate level and beneath the lifestyle element, you're going to start to see more folks on the ground doing this again: playing instruments for that reason, expressing something. They have to find this again, young people, right? They might even want to do it again. I'm starting to see this, I think.
Does social media have a role in this?
I don't trust social media – I think it's all a bunch of bullshit. I think it's a manoeuvre. It's Orwellian. This small screen is going to hypnotise you. You're going to do what it wants you to do. What does it want you to do? It wants you to text your friend. What are you saying to your friend? You're going to say: "I'm on the corner!" – and your friend says: "I'm on the other corner!" Is that what you're saying... is that what you're thinking? Wait a minute.You don't even know what you think and what you feel if that's what you're doing all day and night.
Besides, all this social media – they're hooked to transactions in some way and they're delivering this massive audience – to whom? So I don't like it and I don't trust it.
They say: "Oh, the Arab Spring!" Well, the goddamn military took over Egypt anyway in the end. Who says they got a revolution? What revolution? The fucking military went in there like they always have done.
To me, the point is you turn the screen off and listen to yourself and maybe you'll have an idea. Maybe it might be a good idea, something you can do to help out.
I hate to say it, but it's almost like California's gift to the world – both with music in the 70s and with people like Steve Jobs – they both appear to be about empowerment and choice but actually it's the opposite.
I agree.
Do you feel that's true of the the generation that you were part of? They pretended to be this great thing but you look back … and what did they really change? (3)
The idea of change is overrated. Change in what way? A big change was Lyndon Johnson passing the Voting Rights Act. They didn't want to do it. The Democrats didn't want to do it and the Republicans damn sure didn't want to do it. Eisenhower didn't want to do it and Kennedy didn't want to do it – but they had to do it. That's a whole story in itself. But now you have new Jim Crow laws – the stand-your-ground law is already responsible for about 80 shooting deaths of African Americans. That's bringing lynching back. That's bringing Jim Crow back. Can you imagine? Could this be true? Well, it is true, if you see it that way. I do. I keep trying to say it with these songs till I'm blue in the face. But it's a fact. That's what going on in this country right now. That's why Vidal called it a Hitler Youth mindset. This is real shocking stuff.
On the new album, the song Cold Cold Feeling pictures President Obama pacing the Oval Office on his own in the dark. Is he a good man trapped in an impossible situation?
Yes, 110%. He's set upon by dogs. He's prevented from doing anything because the Republicans ensured that no president and no Democrat president can ever do good again. That's what Bush was sent in there to do: destroy the presidency, and that's what I think he did. How do you come back from that? How do you make the presidency good again? They talk about bi-partisanship but that's an empty word, doesn't mean a thing. So what is Obama supposed to do? How can he operate? This healthcare thing is really quite something, if it lives. They're going to go after it and try to destroy it, that's the leading end of the Republican effort right now, that's going to sink the Titanic, you know?
I mean, I think he's a good man. He's a smart man. He understands the constitution, therefore he must respect it. They don't. I believe that he does.
Was this record born of a sense of duty – because someone needs to stand up and say something – or therapy to work out your anger?
It's a bit of both. I want to say something because I think you should if you can. It's challenging, but it's fun. I like to write these songs. I mean, yeah, otherwise what are you going to do, pound your fist on the table? That's no good. Then they win big time because they got you cornered. Music is the way that I know. It's the thing I have.
Do you sometimes feel like you've had enough – isn't there the temptation to flee somewhere else, and do something like make another record with the Buena Vista crew? (4)
First of all, the old-timers are gone, or they are in places where I can't find 'em, or wouldn't know where to look. It's 2012 right now, so who's left?
The thing about music is you never know when the next impulse is coming from. So since we're surrounded with issues, in this very unstable time... there's that sense of "let's do this now... let's write something here".
Do you listen to much new music? Any hip-hop?
No, I don't. It's better to listen to something I like. There's always something there that's helpful or interesting – that's how I get myself moving. Plus, I sit and play the instruments. That doesn't change so much. I get better at it, but it's the same music.
Is it important that people realise that music is something you can make – you don't just consume it?
That's right.
Do you worry that the world's cultures are disappearing?
Of course. Like with any species. You worry about birds, you worry about insects. you worry about plants … the Earth. Yes, what a struggle. Culture is fragile. Look at Mali right now. That's the death of music there. That's gone now...
In the face of all this, what do you do? What do you take pleasure in apart from music?
I'm a big fan of trees. I like to go see where they grow. California is beautiful – apart from the freeways and the malls and the prisons. You can still go out into nature. I'm a big fan of light. I'm a big fan of the way the sun is in the air here.
We have a very nice life here. Our little house where little Susie and me are... and Joachim is great. Playing music with him, just the two of us, we have a great time. (5) I'm having the best time of life I've had in 65 years.
Footnotes
(1). Santa Monica, California. Ry grew up there, going to Santa Monica High School. Three of his most recent albums – Chavez Ravine, My Name Is Buddy and I, Flathead – are seen as his "California trilogy". Back to article
(2). If you're wondering why we're on this subject, Ry's forthcoming new album, Election Special, is a deeply political record, timed to pre-empt the US presidential election. Its first track is called Mutt Romney Blues. Back to article
(3). It may be relevant to learn that Ry taught Keith Richards the five-string open-G blues tuning in 1968, which the Rolling Stones guitarist used to write some of his greatest riffs. The pair fell out. Ry doesn't like to talk about the Stones. Back to article
(4). In the 1990s, following solo success with albums such as Chicken Skin Music and the soundtrack to the film Paris, Texas, Ry recorded with the late Ali Farka Toure and the Buena Vista Social Club. Back to article
(5). Ry's wife Susan Titelman is a photographer; their son, Joachim, is a drummer who has played on several records with his father. Back to article
This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.
The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information.VLF Woodside
Woodside Omega Transmitter (station G, now Woodside VLF transmitter) near Woodside, Victoria, Australia, was a transmission tower that was completed in 1982 and demolished in 2015.
History [ edit ]
In 1977, The United States and Australian governments agreed to establish an OMEGA navigation system in south-eastern Australia.[1] [2] The agreement was extended in 1995, to 30 September 1997.[3]
Station G was an Omega transmitter that used an umbrella antenna carried by a 432 metres (1,417 ft) tall grounded lattice steel guyed mast. Unlike many of the other Omega Transmitters, Woodside was not a "hot tower," that is, one which is insulated from a ground connection by large ceramic insulators that support the entire weight of the structure. Rather, the tower was electrically insulated from the topmost guys which served as the radiators, similar to the metal radials of an umbrella without cloth covering. The mast simply supported the downward sloping guy wires which are the active elements. The guy wires were also used to hold the tower itself in place.[4] This mast was the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere.[5] Construction of this station was originally planned to be built in New Zealand but after protests from anti-war protestors it was built in Australia,[6] although not without controversy.[7] The tower was officially opened in October 1982,[8] but had been operating for 3 months prior to that, with the first broadcast at 10am on the 16th of August, having taken 3.5 years to construct,[9] however the tower itself having taken only 30 days to be constructed.[10]
After the shutdown of the OMEGA navigation system on 30 September 1997, the station was used as a transmitter for uni-directional communications to submarines on 13 kHz under the callsign VL3DEF until 2004. Until December 2008, it had been transmitting a 100 baud MSK modulated signal on 18.6 kHz.[11]
Current status [ edit ]
The station was decommissioned in November 2008. Aircraft warning lights continued to operate on each of the 10 43m platforms, however some of these lights had stopped working. Transmission equipment from the Omega navigation system is now on display at the Port Albert Maritime Museum.[12][13]
On 25 January 2014 a BASE jumper was killed during an attempt to parachute from the tower.[14]
The station was demolished by explosives on 22 April 2015.[15]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Coordinates:RAJNANDGAON: A top Maoist cadre, leading the outlawed movement in Rajnandgaon-Kanker border region of Chhattisgarh and wanted in several murder cases and attacks on policemen, today surrendered along with his wife before police.
The Naxalite couple - Bhagat Jade (27) and Vanoja alias Tijo Netam (21) - active in Rajnandgaon-Kanker border region that connects Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district to North Bastar, surrendered before the police in Rajnandgaon district, Additional Director General of Police (Naxal Operation) R K Vij told reporters.
He was wanted in several cases of murder, attacks on police, loot, arson, attempt to murder and other crimes, police said.
Differences broke out between Bhagat and other senior cadres after his brother Budhram Jade, a police jawan, was allegedly kidnapped and killed by them, following which he decided to part ways with the movement along with his wife, the ADG said.
Based on the couple's instance, three IEDs of 5 kgs each and a 10 kg unidirectional mine placed on a road in Adjaad-Kamkasur hills under Khadgaon police station limits were recovered by a joint squad of Indo-Tibetan Border Police and district force, he said.
Bhagat, whose father was a village sarpanch, played a vital role since his joining the movement in 2005. He had earlier acted as a key Naxal courier in the area, besides accompanying top Maoist leaders during their travel from cities to forest and vice versa.
A native of Sahpal village in Rajnandgaon, Jade was inducted as a Madanwada local operation squad (LOS) member in 2007 and elevated as Pallemadi area committee secretary in 2011.
Later, he was inducted in Manpur Division Committee from where he took charge of a vast restive region of Manpur, Khadgaon, Madanwada of Rajnandgaon district and Mahamaya, Daundi of Balod and Lohattar of Kanker and expanded the organisation by recruiting a large number of youths, he said.
His wife, who was member of Aundhi LOS and in-charge of Chetna Natya Mandli (CNM) in the region, had joined the movement in 2006, he said.
They will be rehabilitated as per the policies of the state government, Vij added.DALLAS -- The sixth-leading scorer in NBA history would have no problem accepting a sixth-man role if it could help the Dallas Mavericks salvage their season.
Dirk Nowitzki starting at center, as Dallas has done recently with coach Rick Carlisle opting to bring Andrew Bogut off the bench, has not proved to be a solution for the Mavs. That starting five has the worst plus-minus of any Dallas lineup this season, getting outscored by 49 points in 48 minutes. The Mavs' lineup with the best plus-minus features Bogut with the other four starters (plus-27 in 54 minutes).
Without hesitation, Nowitzki said he would be on board with coming off the bench while Bogut started when asked about the situation following Thursday's 102-95 home loss to the Phoenix Suns that dropped Dallas (11-25) to last place in the Western Conference standings.
"Obviously, I've said that we want to compete and we want to make the playoffs," Nowitzki told ESPN. "If that means I'm the 10th man, so be it. We've got to try to figure out what we've got and win some games and make a run. If that's what this team needs to win some games....
"Boges is smart out there, he's a very good rim protector for that smaller team. I think the coaches always look at every possibility for us to compete and win some games. Throw whatever lineup we need to throw out there to be successful."
"Obviously, I've said that we want to compete and we want to make the playoffs," Dirk Nowitzki told ESPN. "If that means I'm the 10th man, so be it. We've got to try to figure out what we've got and win some games and make a run." Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Carlisle had no interest in publicly discussing the possibility of a reserve role for Nowitzki, who has sacrificed by taking steep hometown discounts on contracts in the past to try to help the Mavs build a roster capable of contending.
"I'll pass," Carlisle said before the game.
Carlisle chose to scrap the starting lineup the Mavs planned to use entering the season due to poor results in the limited time that Nowitzki and Bogut played together. They have played less than two minutes together since Bogut came back Dec. 27 after missing 11 games due to a bone bruise in his knee.
Dallas has been outscored by 62 points in 53 minutes with the two veteran 7-footers playing next two each other, in part because of the 38-year-old Nowitzki's problems guarding the athletic, perimeter-oriented power forwards who are prevalent in the NBA now. However, those numbers are skewed by blowout losses to the Los Angeles Clippers and Cleveland Cavaliers when a hobbled Nowitzki returned from a strained right Achilles tendon in late November before being shut down for another month.
Editor's Picks Mavs' Bogut: Don't want trade, won't beg to stay Mavs center Andrew Bogut said he's "just waiting to see what happens" regarding a trade but "highly doubts" he'll be back with the team next season.
Nowitzki, who has struggled to find his rhythm while dealing with a minutes restriction as he attempts to rebuild his endurance, has repeatedly stated that it's premature for the Mavs to abandon the plan of playing him alongside Bogut. He mentioned that many teams start games with a more traditional lineup before going small.
"I'm not ready to give up on that starting lineup yet," said Nowitzki, who is averaging 11.7 points on 37.6 percent shooting this season. "We haven't really spent a lot of time out there healthy. It didn't look great preseason, but that's preseason. Everything else after that, I was hurt basically.
"It might be a lineup where we play slower, give the ball to [Harrison Barnes] on the block some, have Deron [Williams] post up some. That lineup sometimes has been challenged scoring, and then once you don't score, teams can run on you. So I think that lineup looked a lot worse when we're not scoring. If we score, we can get back and set our defense and have Boges be a factor there, have our length on the perimeter be a factor. But I don't think we necessarily got a great look at that lineup yet, everybody healthy."
Nowitzki, a 13-time All-Star who has won an MVP and Finals MVP, has consistently been among the league's plus-minus leaders throughout the course of his surefire Hall of Fame career. That has not been the case this season for the 19-year veteran. Nowitzki's net rating is minus-21.3 points per 100 possessions, which ranks sixth worst among the 392 players who have appeared in at least 10 games this season.
"I think it's too early to judge any of that stuff," Carlisle said. "Last year there was all that talk about [Chandler] Parsons struggling [coming off an injury], and I said, 'Hey, don't judge it until after the All-Star break.' And that may be what we're looking at with [Nowitzki].
"This has been a long road, so the good thing is he's moving better. He's obviously feeling good or else we wouldn't have him out there. We're a team that's still trying to put things together. So I don't know if pinning it on him is the way to go. I don't think it is."Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is known for her singular brand of oral-history collage, which the Swedish Academy called “a history of emotions … a history of the soul.” Now, her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, originally published in 1985, has been translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, who were interviewed for our Writers at Work series in 2015. We’re pleased to present an excerpt below.
*
A CONVERSATION WITH A HISTORIAN
—At what time in history did women first appear in the army?
—Already in the fourth century B.C. women fought in the Greek armies of Athens and Sparta. Later they took part in the campaigns of Alexander the Great. The Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote about our ancestors: “Slavic women occasionally went to war with their fathers and husbands, not fearing death: thus during the siege of Constantinople in 626 the Greeks found many female bodies among the dead Slavs. A mother, raising her children, prepared them to be warriors.”
—And in modern times?
—For the first time in England, where from 1560 to 1650 they began to staff hospitals with women soldiers.
—What happened in the twentieth century?
—The beginning of the century … In England during World War I, women were already being taken into the Royal Air Force. A Royal Auxiliary Corps was also formed and the Women’s Legion of Motor Transport, which numbered 100,000 persons.
In Russia, Germany, and France many women went to serve in military hospitals and ambulance trains.
During World War II the world was witness to a women’s phenomenon. Women served in all branches of the military in many countries of the world: 225,000 in the British army, 450,000 to 500,000 in the American, 500,000 in the German …
About a million women fought in the Soviet army. They mastered all military specialties, including the most “masculine” ones. A linguistic problem even emerged: no feminine gender had existed till then for the words tank driver, infantryman, machine gunner, because women had never done that work. The feminine forms were born there, in the war …
*
Maria Ivanovna Morozova (Ivanushkina)
CORPORAL, SNIPER
This will be a simple story … The story of an ordinary Russian girl, of whom there were many then …
The place where my native village, Diakovskoe, stood is now the Proletarian District of Moscow. When the war began, I was not quite eighteen. Long, long braids, down to my knees … Nobody believed the war would last, everybody expected it to end any moment. We would drive out the enemy. I worked on a kolkhoz, then finished accounting school and began to work. The war went on … My girlfriends … They tell me: “We should go to the front.” It was already in the air. We all signed up and took classes at the local recruitment office. Maybe some did it just to keep one another company, I don’t know. They taught us to shoot a combat rifle, to throw hand grenades. At first … I’ll confess, I was afraid to hold a rifle, it was unpleasant. I couldn’t imagine that I’d go and kill somebody, I just wanted to go to the front. We had forty people in our group. Four girls from our village, so we were all friends; five from our neighbors’; in short—some from each village. All of them girls … The men had all gone to the war already, the ones who could. Sometimes a messenger came in the middle of the night, gave them two hours to get ready, and they’d be carted off. They could even be taken right from the fields. (Silence.) I don’t remember now—whether we had dances; if we did, the girls danced with girls, there were no boys left. Our villages became quiet.
Soon an appeal came from the central committee of Komsomol for the young people to go and defend the Motherland, since the Germans were already near Moscow. Hitler take Moscow? We won’t allow it! I wasn’t the only one … All our girls expressed the wish to go to the front. My father was already fighting. We thought we were the only ones like that … Special ones … But we came to the recruitment office and there were lots of girls there. I just gasped! My heart was on fire, so intensely. The selection was very strict. First of all, of course, you had to have robust health. I was afraid they wouldn’t take me, because as a child I was often sick, and my frame was weak, as my mother used to say. Other children insulted me because of it when I was little. And then, if there were no other children in a household except the girl who wanted to go to the front, they also refused: a mother should not be left by herself. Ah, our darling mothers! Their tears never dried … They scolded us, they begged … But in our family there were two sisters and two brothers left—true, they were all much younger than me, but it counted anyway. There was one more thing: everybody from our kolkhoz was gone, there was nobody to work in the fields, and the chairman didn’t want to let us go. In short, they refused us. We went to the district committee of Komsomol, and there—refusal. Then we went as a delegation from our district to the regional Komsomol. There was great inspiration in all of us; our hearts were on fire. Again we were sent home. We decided, since we were in Moscow, to go to the central committee of Komsomol, to the top, to the first secretary. To carry through to the end … Who would be our spokesman? Who was brave enough? We thought we would surely be the only ones there, but it was impossible even to get into the corridor, let alone to reach the secretary. There were young people from all over the country, many of whom had been under occupation, spoiling to be revenged for the death of their near ones. From all over the Soviet Union. Yes, yes … In short, we were even taken aback for a while …
By evening we got to the secretary after all. They asked us: “So, how can you go to the front if you don’t know how to shoot?” And we said in a chorus that we had already learned to shoot … “Where? … How? … And can you apply bandages?” You know, in that group at the recruiting office our local doctor taught us to apply bandages. That shut them up, and they began to look at us more seriously. Well, we had another trump card in our hands, that we weren’t alone, there were forty of us, and we could all shoot and give first aid. They told us: “Go and wait. Your question will be decided in the affirmative.” How happy we were as we left! I’ll never forget it … Yes, yes …
And literally in a couple of days we received our call-up papers …
We came to the recruiting office; we went in one door at once and were let out another. I had such a beautiful braid, and I came out without it … Without my braid … They gave me a soldier’s haircut … They |
to provide evidence to support their arguments that the rules are or are not needed."
Congress is also weighing whether to settle the net neutrality debate through legislation, as The Washington Post reports : Congress is also weighing whether to settle the net neutrality debate through legislation, asThe Washington Post
"Republican lawmakers have proposed converting the FCC regulation into a bill of some form, but Democrats — concerned that the results could be much weaker than the current rules — appear unmoved. They are currently gearing up for a grassroots battle similar to the kind that defeated the House Republican health care plan."
Groups representing the telecom and cable industries have voiced support of Pai's push to repeal the 2015 regulations, though they assert support for an open Internet. The Internet Association, whose members include major web companies such as Amazon and Netflix, said it opposes "any changes to FCC regulations governing net neutrality."It must be hard being the lesser-known sibling of one of the world’s greatest painters, or authors, or minds. On a larger scale, I bet it’s like going through high school as the younger sibling of a brother who was the star quarterback. “Van Gogh? Are you related to Vincent? Oh, man, Starry Night was just amazing.” OK, maybe not. But at any rate, there are often supportive siblings behind the successes of great people – here are just a few of them.
Branwell Bronte
Branwell was the only boy out of all of the Bronte siblings, and was by all accounts extremely talented in his own right. But what I think is most interesting is that he may have been the inspiration behind The Graduate. In 1843, he was hired as the tutor for the family of a local reverend, Edmund Robinson. It’s well documented that he fell in love with Lydia Robinson, Edmund’s wife, so it’s no surprised that Branwell was “mysteriously” dismissed from his position in 1845 - It’s thought that Rev. Robinson found out that the two were having an affair. Heartbroken by the loss of Mrs. Robinson, he began drinking a lot and was likely addicted to opium. He ended up dying of tuberculosis, as did his sisters Emily and Anne. Charles Richard Webb, the author of The Graduate, is also rumored to have based the novel on his own affair with an older, rich socialite, but I would say he had at least heard of the Branwell Bronte story just based on the similarity of the names of the main characters.
Cassandra Austen
Like a lot of little sisters, Jane adored her older sibling and emulated everything Cassandra did. Their mother once said, “If Cassandra’s head had been going to be cut off, Jane would have hers cut off too.” Jane wrote numerous letters to her sister, but only about 100 have survived. Cassandra supposedly destroyed most of the letters after Jane died in 1817. Like her famous sister, Cassandra never married.
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus was five years older than his famous brother, Charles. He went to the Shrewsbury Boarding School and developed in interest in chemistry, so he and Charles set up an amateur lab in the garden shed at their house. By 1822, he decided to study medicine, but by 1829, he had given up the career at his father’s advice. Dr. Robert Waring Darwin felt that Erasmus was too frail and delicate of a man to handle such a stressful career and talked him into retirement at the age of 26. He and Charles were very close and visited often, even after Charles got sick and started to become reclusive. Charles’ children loved Erasmus and called him Uncle Ras. He died in September 1881, more than 50 years after his father told him he was too sickly to do much with his life.
Theo van Gogh
As the younger brother of Vincent, Theo was instrumental in Vincent’s success – he provided materials and financial support and introduced him to Gaugain, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rousseau, Pissaro and Seurat (Theo was an art dealer and had excellent connections). Vincent even lived with Theo for a while. When they didn’t live together, they were constantly writing to one another. These letters have been compiled in a book, but you won’t find many of Theo’s letters – Vincent apparently destroyed most of Theo’s correspondence, while Theo avidly saved everything from Vincent. Some of Vincent's responses, though, indicate that Theo was aware of Vincent's mental health issues and was concerned about his brother.
Marianne Mozart
Maria Anna (she didn't go by Marianne until she was an adult) was Wolfgang’s older sister, and his only sibling who didn’t die in infancy. She was part of the Mozart family Grand Tour from 1763-1766, and was even the big draw in the early years – she showed a natural talent for the harpsichord and piano. Eventually, when she got old enough to marry, she was no longer allowed to tour or show off her musical talents. She apparently was a good composer, because letters from Mozart have survived that praise her artistry, but none of her pieces have ever been found. She and Wolfgang were quite close as children but apparently drifted apart as adults – no correspondence between the two exists after 1788.
Bartholomew Columbus
Bartholomew was just one of Christopher's brothers - he had two others, Giacomo and Giovanni. Bartholomew was, fittingly, a mapmaker. Apparently world exploration ran in the family. This map is from the workshop of Bartholomew and Christopher; it’s been documented that they worked closely together. In 1494, he helped Christopher in his campaigns to conquer Hispaniola and governed it for a while. He was also a member of Christopher’s last transatlantic expedition.Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay has been told by owner Vincent Tan to resign or he will be sacked.
In a letter emailed to Mackay on Monday, it is understood Tan listed in depth his grievances with the Scot.
Analysis "The tension between Malky Mackay and Vincent Tan has been simmering for some time. This week it boiled over and there will only be one outcome. "Mackay's two-and-a-half-year reign as Cardiff manager is drawing to a close - it's not a matter of if but when. "The man who guided Cardiff to the Premier League will not see out their maiden season in that competition. "Other staff are known to be keen on following Mackay through the exit door, and more still if Tan takes personal control over the recruitment of his successor. "The Malaysian businessman is scheduled to arrive in the UK on Friday night ahead of Cardiff's trip to Liverpool the next day. "If Tan follows his words with actions, it is likely to be Mackay's final game as manager."
Tan criticised 41-year-old Mackay at length in a range of areas, such as signings, transfer budgets, results on the pitch and style of play.
The Malaysian businessman also questioned the former Watford manager's record as a boss.
Mackay has previously said he will not resign.
A Cardiff spokesman told BBC Sport: "The club is not party to any letter sent from one person to another."
The correspondence came on the same day the Malaysian businessman issued a statement through Cardiff chief executive Simon Lim criticising Mackay.
Tan said he was "extremely upset" after Mackay revealed he was hoping to recruit three new players in the January transfer window.
The ex-Scotland international, who was named Cardiff boss in June 2011, led the Welsh club to promotion from the Championship seven months ago, but his future became uncertain when head of recruitment, Iain Moody, was removed from his position in October.
One of Tan's concerns surround a perceived overspend of the transfer budget agreed between Mackay, Lim and Moody.
Cardiff broke their transfer record three times over the summer, signing striker Andreas Cornelius for £7.5m, defender Steven Caulker for £8m and then midfielder Gary Medel for £11m.
The owner claims the total budget was £35m and that £50m was spent including add-ons.
Tan's controversies at Cardiff Changed the shirt colours from blue to red and added a red dragon to the club's crest
Removed head of recruitment Iain Moody, and hired 23-year-old Alisher Apsalyamov, who was on work experience at the club and is a friend of his son
Tried to influence the tactics of the first team during matches, reports BBC Radio 5 live's Pat Murphy
Mackay and Moody have denied those claims, insisting the £35m was solely for transfer fees and that Lim and Tan had no complaints about that rising with add-ons.
Former England manager Graham Taylor, who worked with Mackay when he was chairman of Watford, believes the Scot should stand his ground.
"Malky has an inner strength and I see no reason why he would resign," Taylor told BBC Radio 5 live.
"'Let them sack you, Malky', is what I would say to him. He has a contract and if one party pulls out of it they should be made to pay up the remainder of that contract."
He added: "Who is Tan to know these things? Yes, from an ownership point of view and financial point of view, of course he has some knowledge.
"But in terms of situations from a football point of view, what does he know about the game? What does he know about professional football?"
Former Cardiff City captain Jason Perry believes should Tan allow Mackay to depart, it would damage the club's Premier League survival hopes.
"It's the pantomime season and Vincent Tan wants to play the villain. He's doing a very good job of that in South Wales," he said.
"Nothing is guaranteed but what you do have at the moment is a manager capable of keeping the team in the Premier League.
"Of course we all want a little bit better - that's football fans - but sometimes you've got to be careful what you wish for."
The Bluebirds, who are 15th in the Premier League, are away to Liverpool on Saturday.The Riverview
It's a 21st-Century thriller, rife with suspense, terror, and political edge, told in a voice that is both genuine and Gen-Y. It's a story born in the Surveillance State of America, nurtured in the shadow of the War on Terror, and raised on class struggle. Standing atop the hunched shoulders of the paranoid neo-noir classics of the 60's and 70's, this film will portray the conflict of two women -- one disenfranchised, and one powerful -- as they fight, respectively, for freedom and control.
The Laventure Brothers
My brother Cameron and I make movies. We've been writing scripts together since we were kids, and now he directs and I produce. We've made two shorts, a music video, and one feature-length film. If you'd like, you can watch our most recent short: a comedic thriller called Frank the Assassin Goes On A Date.
Every film we make is an enormous investment of our time, attention, and spirit. The deeper we get into this life, the more we know that it's what we intend to keep doing for a long time, and that we need to find a way to do it professionally. For us, this means making a movie on a large enough scale that it gets seen by a wide audience. In this way, we can fulfill our dream: a life sustained by the telling of stories through cinema.
The Plan
Cameron and I have been writing The Riverview for over two years. While a script is never really complete until the end of post-production, this one has reached a certain maturity, and we're very proud of it. We won't share the entire thing right now, although a chance to read it is one of our rewards. For now, hopefully this page can give you a little taste for it.
Page 34 of The Riverview
With our friends and collaborators Matthew Riggs and Maria Palmö, we've begun to develop a rich aesthetic to support the story. You can hear this in Matt's score for our pitch video, and in Cameron's concept art.
Concept art by director Cameron Laventure. Click to see more.
This tone poem by Matthew Riggs is designed to evoke, in six parts, the themes and basic story of The Riverview. Please listen and enjoy.
Part 1: Eulogy for Gemütlichkeit (0:00 - 0:40)
- Fading memories of a middle-class life, without fear or worry.
Part 2: Enter Mercedes (0:40 - 1:16)
- Introduction of an evil force, sweeping in its power of control.
Part 3: Surveillance and Control (1:16 - 1:45)
- Lack of privacy takes its toll when paranoia is completely justified.
Part 4: Learning to Resist (1:45 - 2:27)
- Hope returns as Vivian discovers the power within her, to plan, to scheme.
Part 5: Real Terror (2:27 - 3:04)
- Mercedes tightens her grip.
Part 6: Revolution (3:04 - 4:10)
- A dam can only hold a river for so long.
The Airship Cinema Development Team. Left to right: Matthew Riggs, Cameron Laventure, Maria Palmö, and Brandon Laventure
We want to make The Riverview into a movie that will be available to many people, with a certain budget and a certain caliber of actor that will attract an audience.
At this point you may be wondering, "Do these guys really think they can sign famous talent, create surreal dreamscapes, and stage thrilling stunts with just six thousand dollars?" Well, no. We'll need a lot more, but the first six grand is critical.
Without any money at all, it's extremely difficult to approach star talent, or even to raise money from investors. The $6,000 we hope to raise here is what's called "development money." With this, we can take the necessary steps to move the project forward.
In a nutshell, it's money to raise more money. You could also call it the business foundation of the movie. Without it, we're stuck. If we reach our goal, then we have a shot. At this moment, it all depends on your support.Netflix’s “Dear White People” has been described as a strong modern-day take on race that is both clever and dynamic in its approach.
Netflix’s “Dear White People” has been described as astrong modern-day take on race that is both clever and dynamic in its approach.
The show, directed by Justin Simien, was adapted from his 2014 film of the same name, and is set on the fictional and predominantly white campus of Winchester University. Simien crafted a season filled with diverse portrayals of the black experience ― told through the lens of several students on campus ― that speak to the varied ways people of color are impacted by race.
The show touches themes like interracial relationships, police brutality, the complexities of the n-word and what it can be like to speak out against racism in the face of opposition ― something that feels especially timely. Simien and the show’s star, Logan Browning, stopped by HuffPost Black Voices to discuss myths that often come up in conversations about race and racism.
In the video above, watch as Simien and Browning explain why double standards around racism simply don’t exist, like: Why a show titled “Dear Black People” would be offensive, why the n-word is off-limits to white but not black people; Why minority-focused spaces like HuffPost Black Voices exist but HuffPost White Voices does not; and why there’s simply no such thing as reverse racism.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Related:
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ABcann Global Provides Construction and Expansion Update
OTTAWA, July 26, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ABcann Global Corporation (TSXV: ABCN) (Frankfurt: 23Q) (OTCQB: ABCCF) (the “Company”) is pleased to provide an update on the Company’s construction and expansion timelines for its Vanluven and Kimmett facilities, both located in Napanee, Ontario.
ABcann confirms that plans to commence construction at the Company’s Kimmett facility in Q3 2017 remain on track, and the previously announced plans for a 71,000 square foot Phase 1 plan have been expanded to 100,000 square feet. In addition to the Kimmet construction plans, ABcann has initiated immediate expansion and construction at its current production facility at Vanluven to double production capacity and service the Company’s growing patient base on an expedited timeline.
ABcann’s current cash position is approximately $43 million, which the Company expects will be sufficient to complete both the Phase 1 100,000 square foot construction at Kimmett and the expansion at Vanluven.
Aaron Keay, ABcann CEO and Director
ABcann’s strong cash position from its go public transaction, subsequent warrant exercises and recently announced equity financing for $2.25 per share has positioned the Company to aggressively expand our production capacity at both Vanluven and Kimmett.
The imminent expansion plans and decision to expand our Phase 1 construction plans at Kimmett are in line with ABcann’s corporate strategy to take advantage of the current domestic demand for a high quality standardized pesticide free product, in addition to becoming a strong competitor in a number of the emerging markets internationally.
The Kimmett facility will be constructed on a 65 acre property (http://www.abcannglobal.com/Kimmet-Facility.php) that is wholly-owned by the Company and located very close to ABcann’s existing Vanluven production facility in Napanee. Our existing acreage provides ABcann the opportunity to continue expansion post Phase 1 construction of up to 1,200,000 square feet of production space. Additional updates and timelines with respect to the Kimmett and Vanluven development plans are as follows:
First cultivation from the Kimmett facility is expected in Q4 2018.
Kimmett reaching full production capacity is expected in Q1 2019.
First cultivation from the expansion areas at Vanluven is expected in Q1 2018.
Bird Construction Inc. will act as the General Contractor for both the Kimmett and Vanluven projects (see “About Bird”, below).
NORR Engineering has been engaged to act as project engineer (see “About NORR”, below).
ABcann has moved methodically through each stage of our growth since first obtaining our license in 2014. Providing a high quality standardized pesticide free product to our patients remains our number one priority as we initiate our largest expansion plans to date. With a proprietary growing technique that is repeatable and consistent, we are in a great position to deploy our capital and production knowledge on a massive scale.
Ken Clement, ABcann Founder and Director
Since commencing trading on May 4, 2017, ABcann has received approximately $7.0 million additional dollars through the exercise of warrants.
About Bird:
Bird Construction Inc. (“Bird”) is a national general contractor with deep roots in Eastern Canada. Its national reach provides its Eastern Canadian team an unprecedented experience base while still remaining competitive in local markets.
At Bird, the values of Safety, Teamwork, Integrity, People, Professionalism, and Stewardship are the underpinnings of success. With more than 96 years of experience in the construction industry, Bird’s unwavering commitment to service delivery, planning and cost-efficient construction strategies has led to many loyal partnerships. As a leading general contractor in Canada, Bird turns ideas into reality through exceptional client service and value creation. Bird’s resumé includes pre-construction and construction services with a long list of new and repeat clients.
Bird has also become a key design-build and equity member of many public-private partnership projects. With its broad market reach, Bird’s clients include leading firms in the commercial, institutional, retail, high-rise residential, industrial, mining, energy, defense construction and civil sectors. Since opening its doors in 1920, Bird has undergone substantial growth, with its employee base nearing 2,000 staff across the country. Bird’s success covers most delivery models including Alternative Finance Projects (AFP), design-build, construction management and conventional fixed price contracts. For more information about Bird, see its website at: www.bird.ca.
Visit our web site at: www.bird.ca
About NORR:
NORR was founded in Toronto in 1938 by John B. Parkin who had a design vision of timeless clarity and honesty of expression in architecture. Today, in its 80th year, it continues to pursue that vision with 700 staff in 21 global offices in Canada, USA, UAE, UK and India. NORR is a Canadian, privately held company owned by its employees.
With over 200 staff members, NORR’s Toronto office provides fully integrated Functional Programming, Planning, Architecture, Interior Design, Structural, Mechanical, Electrical Engineering as well as Project Management. NORR has received countless industry awards for its work across 20 different client sectors.
Similarly, NORR’s integrated A/E Ottawa office – which is becoming one of the largest in the city – is entrusted with some of the most important local assignments. This is because of its complement of over forty, highly experienced, locally based staff.
NORR’s strengths lie within its people. As a privately held, integrated multi-disciplinary consulting firm with a long history of working together, NORR exceeds expectations for all of its clients. Its staff takes pride in this record. Part of its success is due to its approach to projects. NORR ensures the best of its people are dedicated. It leads all of its projects with senior staff, and has a large pool of resources to ensure it can deliver to its clients’ expectations.
About ABcann Global Corporation (TSX.V: ABCN):
ABcann was one of the first companies to obtain a production license under the Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations, which it received on March 21, 2014. It obtained a sales license on December 31, 2015. ABcann’s flagship facility, in Napanee, Ontario, contains proprietary plant-growing technology, including environmentally-controlled chambers capable of monitoring and regulating all variables in the growing process. This approach and the systems in place allow ABcann to produce organically grown and pesticide-free, high-yielding plants, which, in turn, can generate high-quality products that are consistent from batch to batch. ABcann is able to control environmental and nutrient demands, tailor-made for a particular strain of cannabis, without the variation that is typical when producing large quantities in less-controlled, larger rooms and greenhouse-type structures. ABcann’s modular approach to systems technology eliminates scale-up risk and allows ABcann to locate anywhere in the world and maintain consistency and quality of product. ABcann is pursuing opportunities in Germany, Australia and other jurisdictions as well as exploring the development of multiple delivery vehicles.
Original press release: https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/07/26/1062744/0/en/ABcann-Global-Provides-Construction-and-Expansion-Update.html
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Published by NCV Newswire The NCV Newswire by New Cannabis Ventures aims to curate high quality content and information about leading cannabis companies to help our readers filter out the noise and to stay on top of the most important cannabis business news. The NCV Newswire is hand-curated by an editor and not automated in anyway. Have a confidential news tip? Get in touchThe silly season for European teams may be over but for Major League Soccer clubs it is just getting started. Reports from South America today suggest that FC Dallas could be landing a new striker here soon. Andres "Manga" Escobar is rumored to be the player that could be Oscar Pareja's first signing as manager of FC Dallas.
En la operación, cerrada en la madrugada del miércoles, se acordó que el atacante de 22 años llegue al equipo de Texas con una opción de compra. Sus derechos siguen perteneciendo al Dínamo de Ucrania.
From the sound of it, FCD will get Esocbar on loan from Ukrainian club Dynamo Kyiv, who still own his rights.
The 22-year old has been on loan from Dynamo Kyiv for the last two seasons with the most recent loan to French first division club Evian. He originally played for Colombian side Deportivo Cali.
Escobar has been linked with MLS clubs in the past, back in 2011 he linked to both the Philadelphia Union and the Portland Timbers. He opted to stay with Deportivo Cali instead.Princess Zelda turns into Sheik in the Temple of Time (looks more like Ganon's Castle at this point but whatev) to hide from Ganondorf and secretly aid Link on his quest.
Decided to have some fun and draw my favorite character in all of gaming. I took a lot of artistic liberties with the character and location so don't look too hard for inaccuracies. Why the Temple of Time looks like it's entirely made out of steel pipes is beyond me, all the textures in this piece were hand drawn and I had no idea how to draw stone or bricks so this is how it turned out. I blame my obsession with ridiculously high contrasts. I don't usually do backgrounds either so this will have to do for now.
Gaming needs more classy and pretty badass leading ladies like Princess Zelda.
Drawn mostly in Paint Tool SAI, final touches and adjustments done in Photoshop CS3.Like a broken clock, the public has been told that, for this election season, the only hope for Americans is an embrace of socialism as progress.
Bemoaning the transformation of the United States into an oligarchy and citing “radical European parties,” The Nation urged Americans to socialism as a way out of the current American malaise.
“The United States is now, in effect, an oligarchy,” Sarah Leonard and Bhaskar Sunkara write. “Beyond this sad reckoning lies an even more fundamental problem: There is no better alternative on offer. We need a vision of a better future, one that turns our modern capacity for abundant food, shelter, and health into a guarantee that no one will suffer for their lack.”
Socialism has had a prominent, and positive, platform in the 2016 election under Bernie Sanders. Sanders has gained support against Hillary Clinton and won over young voters as an authentic candidate with a different vision from Clinton’s moderate Democratic beliefs.
Leonard and Sunkara note “glimmers of such radical potential” in the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements for economic equality and racial justice. The youth have turned from a moderate consensus to something more radical. The first inkling of it was in President Obama’s 2008 campaign where he promised “hope” and “change,” a new, more positive brand of politics.
The socialist label has boosted Sanders among millennials, even if he hasn’t fleshed out details. The ideology has grabbed the youth quicker than the practicality of his platform, and what that implies about the reality of a Sanders presidency. The political ground has shifted.
“The openness of young people to socialism may indicate two things: They are fed up with being repeatedly let down by capitalism; and people who came to political consciousness after 1989 do not have a vision of socialism heavily influenced by the Cold War,” Leonard and Sunkara write.
The more persuasive indication would be the latter. Socialism to millennials isn’t the gulag or the totalitarian control over the individual and society. It’s not the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. It’s not even the socialist implosion of Venezuela. Millennials don’t understand socialism and define it in terms of public services.
Now, socialism has a countercultural edge to it, an alternative for the future. That speaks to a failure of the political status quo in satisfying or persuading the public, and it’s not limited to the left. The rise of Donald Trump on the right has been based in a large swath of the electorate the the GOP has ignored.
Socialism has been recast as something that “prizes democracy” and “makes individual human flourishing possible” that “produces more freedom than we could ever hope for under our current system.”
The swing toward socialism isn’t necessarily permanent, and the realities of a socialist system would become much less popular if they were action instead of theory. For long-term individual rights, human freedom, and economic growth, however, the appeal is concerning. Some millennials might see socialism as the “best chance” they have for the future, but until the political status quo recognizes the threat, the youth could be marching for their own destruction.
Latest VideosPowering the truth in the electricity debate
Posted
The beautiful thing about the politics of electricity prices is that everything is true.
It's true that the carbon price is increasing the price of electricity (that's the idea of it). It's true that state governments have been price gouging to some extent, playing the arbitrage between their real cost of capital and what the regulator allows them.
It's true that regulators and suppliers have not done well in meeting the peak demand from air conditioners on hot days. It's also true that power distributors have been putting off necessary upgrades and now have to do them in a rush.
It's true that regulators have been increasing reliability requirements, but it's also true that power companies have been investing more on this than perhaps they need to.
Oh, pure joy.
Politicians can make virtually any claim they like about electricity and it's true!
Yesterday the Prime Minister got stuck into the states for over-investing.
"For too long, some state governments have been increasing their revenue at the expense of the family electricity bill - that has to stop."
Too right!
They then got stuck back into her, along with the federal Coalition, over the carbon tax because it will increase prices 10 per cent this year and beyond. True enough.
Power company CEOs wisely kept their heads down, but were no doubt kicking the furniture in the solitude of their offices and declaring a pox on both of them.
My colleague at Business Spectator Robert Gottliebsen has long argued that the Labor Government was stupid to introduce a carbon tax at same time as electricity prices were rising rapidly for other reasons, because they would be blamed for the lot.
This message has finally got through to the Prime Minister, even though Ross Garnaut said the same thing more ponderously a year ago, so she apparently replaced Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson on the ticket at the Energy Policy Institute function yesterday and belatedly produced a wooden spoon and muddied the water.
If everyone is confused about what's causing power prices to go up, then maybe they won't blame her quite so much. And anyway, at least she can say that her bit of the increase is being compensated for (that's true!).
A dinner companion the other night told me how he had recently got out his electricity bills from two years ago and was shocked to discover that the per kilowatt hour price has increased 44 per cent in that time. He seems to have done pretty well, actually, because he lives in Victoria; 48 per cent it said to be the national average.
In fact last Monday's inflation gauge from TD Securities reveals that electricity prices have gone up more than 80 per cent in five years.
This has happened mainly because, as Australian Energy Regulator has revealed, $42 billion is being spent on infrastructure over the five years from 2009. That's mainly because the big post-war installations have reached the end of their life, and also because most households now have air conditioners and everyone expects to turn them on all at once on hot days.
And it's also because the state governments have an incentive to over-invest because pricing is based on a higher cost of capital than they actually pay, so investment produces a dividend windfall.
But here's the thing: the TD Securities inflation gauge also showed that inflation was 1.5 per cent in the past 12 months, which is the lowest in three years.
That's because the increase in power prices has been almost entirely offset by the high Australian dollar, which has produced tradable goods deflation of 1.4 per cent over the past year. In other words, thanks to the high Australian dollar we are getting a big improvement in energy infrastructure without an overall drop in living standards.
And thank goodness for fast rising power prices - without that, we'd have deflation. It's true!
Alan Kohler is Editor in Chief of Business Spectator and Eureka Report, as well as host of Inside Business and finance presenter on ABC News. View his full profile here.
Topics: electricity-energy-and-utilities, government-and-politics, federal-government, gillard-juliaThe Vulcan VNE-98431 Motorcycle Jacket is made of premium cowhide leather. It features advanced design with perforated leather panels and ventilation vents that drop heat and reduce sweat. Featuring THERMOMIX Insulation liner that is removable; it's warmer, thinner and less bulkier for cold weather riding and Keprotec with Kevlar fabric under the arm, for reinforcement abrasion resistance and moisture wicking in key impact area to maximize mobility. Along with its many other features; removable CE approved armor, high-visibility reflective piping for night-time riding and YKK zippers.
Vulcan jackets have been tested and certified for consistent comfort, durability, and protection.
Vulcan motorcycle gear is the next generation in riding comfort, protection, and quality. Vulcan means King of Fire in Greek Mythology. Vulcan is motorcycle gear fit for Kings.
Item Details
Premium cowhide leather
Mandarin style collar with Velcro tab neck closure
CE approved removable armor on shoulders, elbows, and back: ergonomic design, higher impact absorption, free movement
Keprotec with Kevlar fabric under the arm; for abrasion resistance and moisture wicking in key impact area to maximize mobility
Reflective, high-visibility piping on shoulders for night-time riding
Pre-curved arms for extra riding comfort with perforated-leather inner arm panels for extra ventilation
YKK zippers: Front zipper closure with bottom Velcro tab closure
THERMOMIX Insulation liner: Full sleeve polyester quilted zip-out liner. THERMOMIX Insulation is warmer, thinner and less bulk
High-quality non-removable polyester mesh lining (attached to the jacket)
4 zipper pockets: 2 front zipper hand pockets and 2 small zipper chest pockets
Ventilation vents: 2 zipper chest vents and 1 upper back zipper vent
Elastic ribbed-leather panels on the upper back for comfortable free movement
Zipper wrist cuffs with Velcro tab closure
Adjustable waist Velcro straps with elastic ribbed-leather panels
Interior pockets: 1 right cel phone pocket and 1 left pocket attached to removable liner and 1 left zipper pocket on jacket
Double kidney belt (one full waist and one 8 inch)CLOSE Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended President Donald Trump in the growing controvery over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem saying, "it's a big mistake to protest in that fashion." (Sept. 26) AP
Attorney General Jeff Sessions departs after speaking during a vigil ceremony marking the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. (Photo11: Zach Gibson, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Embroiled in a debate about the right to free expression among professional athletes, President Trump got the backing of his chief law enforcement officer at an unusual venue Tuesday.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, while offering strong support for free expression on college campuses during an address at Georgetown University's Center for the Constitution, joined Trump in excoriating National Football League players for recent demonstrations during the national anthem aimed at supporting social justice causes.
"I would condemn their actions,” Sessions said during question and answer period after his speech. The NFL demonstrations – in which players sat or knelt during the national anthem – wrongly "denigrated our political symbols."
“The president has free speech rights, too,” he said. "He sends soldiers out every day under the flag to defend their rights."
Yet Sessions's strong defense of Trump's NFL criticism appeared to conflict with his other positions in Tuesday's address that lauded such figures as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Jefferson who vowed to battle "every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
"The right to freely examine the moral and immoral, the prudent and the foolish, the practical and the inefficient, and the right to argue for their merits or demerits remain indispensable for a healthy republic,'' Sessions told the university gathering. "This has been known since the beginning our nation."
Ticking off recent free speech controversies that have engulfed campuses from Clemson, S.C., to Berkeley, Calif., Sessions said that “freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack.”
"The American university was once the center of academic freedom — a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas," Sessions said. “But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.”
Referring to a survey of 450 colleges and universities by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Sessions said that 40% "maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected speech."
"But who decides what is offensive and what is acceptable?" Sessions said. “The university is about the search for truth, not the imposition of truth by a government censor. In this great land, the government does not get to tell you what to think or what to say."
Sessions' speech struck popular chords, even among some First Amendment lawyers who have made a living battling the government. But Sessions' support for the president's rebuke of NFL players did not appear track some of the powerful language the attorney general incorporated in his own speech.
"I think it’s a fine speech and that the attorney general is also quite right to say that the president has First Amendment rights, too,'' said attorney Floyd Abrams.
"But while the president has every right to differ with the message of the protesting players, it is unacceptable for him to demean them, let alone to curse them, because he disagrees with them."
Abrams, whose work on a catalog of high-profile First Amendment cases has cast him as a familiar advocate at the Supreme Court, said the attorney general "would serve us all well if he recalled for the president the eloquent words of (former) Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson that he read aloud today: 'If there is one fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.' "
Sessions’ speech here comes just days after Trump unexpectedly called out professional football players in a Friday night speech, urging owners to fire the "sons of b-----" who participated in on-field protests |
Miss Schnee." He greeted the heiress, quite surprised to see her, "How unexpected for you to arrive here, I thought you were at Beacon. What brings you here?"
"I'm only making a quick stop here to find some upgrades for my dust rapier. I figured that it would be best to just come here myself, see to it personally" The girl replied with an informal smile.
"Miss Schnee, have you visited your father? I'm sure he'd like to you at home."
"Yes, I did." She said this quickly "May I enter the lab? I would like to see what my family's been working on."
"Miss Schnee, this room is off limits to you at the moment," He responded, "We wouldn't want anyone to mess around inside."
Of course, the heiress was not going to let herself be defeated by that statement, "Sir, I only want to get my weapon upgraded, I'm not asking for anything else. I'll make a quick look around and gather some equipment, and be back here in no less than eight minutes."
The man sighed, "Well, eight minutes wouldn't be a bad thing. Just be sure to get what you need. And only that." He checked his watch and set the timer to eight minutes, giving the go ahead for the heiress to walk in the lab.
Blue lights shined down the room as the heiress walked inside, looking for the ingredients for her rapier, half of which were inside a miniature case. After unlocking it and taking the dust samples, her blue eyes noticed a caution sign painted on an unlocked door.
'How careless of that guy to just leave a door open for anyone to just enter.' Weiss thought to herself, however something about the room beyond the door felt intriguing to the girl. She stuffed the case in her pocket and approached it. Looking inside cautiously, she saw that there was a glass box in the center of the room.
The box contained a dozen spiders, the eight-legged arachnids walked around the box with no possible way to escape. Weiss was quite amazed at the sight of the arachnids, not because of their nature but because of the glowing colors on their backs. White, red, yellow, all sorts of colors were flashing on and off.
"Wow…" She kept her eyes on the sight of the arachnids, unaware of one of them slowly prying out of the small breathing holes. This one was blue and white, and once it was out of the glass box it began to walk to the hand of the heiress.
The eight legged creature was gone unnoticed as Weiss backed up from the box with no intention of harming one of them. Before she can leave, the spider crawled onto the back of her hand and started to sink its fangs right into the skin. The bite had caused a great dose of pain, but she suppressed her scream and backed away from the glass box, falling onto the floor. The spider had fallen off the wrist in a weakened state, leaving a bite mark behind. She stood on her feet and headed to the door very slowly.
The spider bite was proving very effective, but she hid away the pain as best as she could while snatching another case of vials for the rapier and stuffing them in the case. Leaving hastily out of the door she nearly fell but thanked the walls for being able to support her movements.
"Miss Schnee, are you alright?" The scientist asked, looking up from the watch and approaching the girl with great concern.
Weiss only looked at him for a second before trying to walk. "I'm doing fine...just feeling a bit...unwell." She fell on her knees but tried to stand back up.
"Do you wish to be taken to the Schnee manor-"
"No, it's alright. Please take me to Beacon Academy."
"But miss Schnee, don't-"
"Please just bring me there!" She shouted before holding her hand as the pain was slowly increasing.
Her orders were accepted as she was being taken back to the academy in an Atlas aerial vehicle, however the longer it took to reach their destination, the more sick Weiss got. After sending a message to a Team RWBY about her condition but was a bit cryptic about it, she was already thinking that it was her fault for being curious about the spiders, but yet was wondering why they were even under the watchful eye of Atlas.
She didn't had time to figure out the reason as the door opened up and she did her best to walk out, noticing the three figures that were her friends and teammates.
"Weiss!" Ruby used her semblance to reach the heiress and gave her a soft hug, "Are you okay?"
"Y-Yeah…I'm okay." She said, but nearly fell on a Ruby's shoulder.
"Are you sure, because you look a lot less than okay." Yang walked towards her, also showing concern over Weiss. Even in her agony, the heiress was able to notice Blake walking towards her.
She was a bit surprised given as to the previous event with Blake being revealed as a Faunus caused a great argument between themselves, now that they were in the clear she wasn't really expecting something like this.
"Don't worry, we'll get you to the infirmary. Just keep walking, you'll be fine." She told the heiress, who nodded a little in response. Both Blake and Ruby started to move their teammate while Yang went ahead to inform the medical staff of Weiss' state.
As she was carried by her teammates, she could only feel the pain increasing in waves. Whatever the spider did to her, however, was about to change her life.A homeless man who never expected anything in return for an act of kindness now may have a roof over his head by Christmas.
Alan Dent has been panhandling in Manchester, England, for the past five years and recently came across a purse filled with £70 and credit cards, the Lancashire Evening Post reports. Dent took the pocketbook to a Barclays bank, and the branch reunited the purse with its distraught owner. Dent's good deed has brought media attention and inspired a charity to help him out.
“It has all moved me incredibly,” Sandy Sharples, 43, the owner of the purse, told the paper. “A person who clearly needs money handed in money. I want to thank Alan and he deserves a wonderful Christmas. He is my Mr. Kringle and sums up the spirit of the season.”
Dent may just have his “wonderful Christmas” now that a nonprofit has stepped forward to help him find a home.
According to the Manchester Evening News, a local charity was so moved by Dent's story that it offered to find him a place to live in time for the holidays.
"I was very pleased to be offered a house,” Dent told the news outlet. “It would really take the pressure off if it all comes together. At this time of year, a warm house and a decent bath can really make all the difference, and it would help with my rheumatics and arthritis.”
Dent, who earns money by playing a recorder on the street, said his newfound fame has also motivated passersby to give him more change, food and hot drinks.Erbil – Iran and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have hammered out the technical details of a plan to build a pipeline that could transfer as much as 250,000 barrels a day of Kurdish oil to Iran, but signing off the deal has yet to happen, according to Kurdish officials.
"We [the KRG and Iran] have an understanding on how to do this [exporting KRG oil and gas to Iran]. The technical aspects have been talked about and are clear to both sides. What remains is the political and commercial side of it," Taha Zangana, the KRG's deputy minister of natural resources, who led the talks from the KRG side, told Al Jazeera.
Zangana added that a high-level Kurdish delegation is expected to visit Tehran - after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan - to finalise and sign the deal. He, however, declined to say whether or not a specific date had been set.
If a formal deal eventually emerges, observers say, it could have long-term geopolitical ramifications by possibly bringing Tehran and the KRG closer together.
READ MORE: Iraqi-Kurdish oil deal is slipping away
Since 2014, discussions about building a pipeline between Iran and the Kurdish region had been continuing between senior Kurdish and Iranian officials. However, serious talks kicked off in March this year, according to Kurdish official sources.
If finalised, the energy export scheme will include both oil and natural gas since - according to KRG data - Iraqi Kurdistan is believed to have some of the world's largest gas reserves amounting to as much as 5.6 trillion cubic metres.
Exclusive dependence on Turkey, given the imbalance of size and power, is a tremendous risk for the KRG. Bilal Wahab, American University of Iraq, Sulaimaniya
The KRG already exports around half a million barrels of oil a day to world markets through its sole pipeline that ends in the Turkish port of Ceyhan, on the Mediterranean. "It's important for us to have an alternative route for exporting oil by building [another] physical oil pipeline to transport Kurdistan oil to international market," Zanagana said.
On April 4, Kurdish and Iranian officials reached an understanding on the technical aspects of the energy export project, but the KRG has yet to convey "its readiness" to its Iranian counterparts regarding a date to sign the deal, Nazim Dabagh, the KRG's permanent representative to Tehran, told Al Jazeera.
Dabagh said some disagreements still persist as to the price and volume of the KRG oil delivered to Iran. However, the agreement so far is to pump a maximum of 250,000 barrels a day.
Another possible challenge to signing a final deal is whether Iraq's federal government would support such a plan.The government in Baghdad has cut off the KRG's share of the Iraqi national budget since early 2014 after the Kurds exported oil directly via neighbouring Turkey.
"There is no agreement between Baghdad and Tehran over this issue [exporting KRG oil to Iran]," said a high-ranking official within the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) parliamentary bloc, who spoke on condition of anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the subject.
The source, however, added that Iranian officials had briefed the Iraqi authorities about such a scheme as early as 2014 and that Baghdad had not made official objections to the matter.
The INA is the major Shia parliamentary bloc and many of its members are viewed as supportive of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Zangana of the KRG says that although official approval from Iraqi authorities has yet to come, they have privately "expressed their happiness over it".
However, an Iranian diplomat in the Kurdish capital, Erbil, told Al Jazeera that his country would not sign an energy export deal with the KRG without Baghdad's approval.
"Within the framework of the larger package of disputes between Erbil and Baghdad, if these issues are settled, then this [KRG-Iran energy deal] will be resolved too," said Mohsen Bavafa, Iran's deputy general consul in Erbil.
According to the current understanding between Iranian and Kurdish officials, the KRG will export oil to refineries near the Iraqi border such as the western province of Kermanshah or the northwestern province of Tabriz and possibly Arak as well as Tehran, two KRG officials told Al Jazeera.
In return, the KRG will receive crude oil from the Iranian ports in the Gulf to sell it in international markets.
The Kurdish oil will probably be pumped to Iran from fields in Sulaimaniya and possibly Kirkuk regions, according to Dabagh. But given that Kirkuk is a disputed zone between the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, it's not clear whether Kirkuk's oil will flow to Iran.
Kirkuk's governor Najmaldin Karim had told the Kurdish Rudaw network that he didn't think exporting Kirkuk's oil to Iran was "practical". While the KRG had set a target of producing one million barrels a day by 2105, it is far short of reaching that goal. Kurdistan's natural gas production is also at an early stage, mostly covering domestic consumption.
Experts believe building a second pipeline to export energy resources to Iran will probably generate a mix of results. "Exclusive dependence on Turkey, given the imbalance of size and power, is a tremendous risk for the KRG," said Bilal Wahab, director of the centre for development and natural resources at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimaniya.
Wahab says that if Tehran benefited from its oil deal with Kurdistan, this may help in improving the relationship between Baghdad and Erbil given Iran's close relations with Baghdad. "But such leverage goes both ways. Iran's leverage would also increase, of course, akin to Turkey's growing political and economic clout in Kurdistan since the [launch of] Ceyhan pipeline [in 2014]," added Wahab.
READ MORE: The Kurds take Kirkuk, now what?
In recent months, there have been growing doubts in Kurdistan about the extent of Turkey's reliability as the main energy export corridor. The pipeline transporting KRG oil to Turkey has experienced periodical outages either owing to the ongoing conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the southern part of the country or acts of theft and sabotage by unknown assailants.
The energy talks with Iran come amid deep domestic divisions among Iraqi Kurdish parties. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - one of the two major Kurdish ruling parties with its popular base in Sulaimaniya and Kirkuk provinces - appears to be enthusiastic about the deal.
Doubts had even emerged in recent months that PUK's rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which dominates the KRG, might stand against an energy deal with Iran. But KRG spokesman Safin Dizayee had denied those accusations in a statement.
Given regional rivalries between Turkey and Iran and the tense relations between Ankara and Baghdad over what Baghdad perceives as Turkey's meddling in Iraqi affairs, there were questions as to how Turkey might react to another pipeline route exporting KRG's oil to Iran.
Turkey has been KRG's major energy partner - so far - and there are plans for the KRG to export as much as 20 billion cubic metres of natural gas a day to Turkey by the early 2020s. The former Turkish consul general in Erbil said that Turkey does not necessarily view an Iranian-Kurdish energy deal through the lens of regional rivalries. "Ankara sees the choice between Erbil and Baghdad as a false dichotomy," said Aydin Selcen, who currently has no affiliation with the Turkish government, adding that Ankara also refuses to have Iran's role, as a balancing factor in the region, imposed on it.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, KRG spokesman Dizayee said that Turkey has not had any negative reaction to the ongoing energy talks between his government and Iran.
"The oil and gas that goes to Turkey has its own market and goes to Europe but the one that goes to Iran is for Asia," he said.MobsterMania
Joined: 03/07/2010 03:04:35
Messages: 6231
Location: Spacefaring SporelingJoined: 03/07/2010 03:04:35Messages: 6231Location: Wasting his life. Youth is sure wasted on the young.
Offline
Intergalactic Security Agency wrote: Greetings Captain. This is the Intergalactic Security Agency. I'm sure you have been noticing strange disappearances of entire empires; we think we know what's happening. This is perhaps the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced. Even more so than the most devilish of Grox plots, ancient evils, dictatorial regimes: anything that you have encountered before.
Intergalactic Security Agency wrote: We have not received any other Captains...and we fear that they are the only ones capable of addressing this threat that may end all life in the galaxy.
Playthrough
Reviews:
See what others had to say about this phenomenal adventure!
erexx12 wrote: Wow! That was amazing! I sense by the ending that this may be a series... But if not, it was great!
Dark-Sajuuk wrote: Well because I didn't say it before I shall now. I rather liked this adventure, it really is well made and the note it ends on an intresting note, but I already know my empires would hold onto hope and fight on until their last man in standing.
Monckat wrote: Another truly amazing storyline, I don't think any adventure has made my captain feel so alone. Fantastic job on the simulations, the cavernous interiors of the ISA base, the massive excavators, the soundtrack, everything was masterfully done!
STUPIDOO wrote: Great adventure. A lot different than what I expected which was a nice surprise. Uprated.
Miikkaa64 wrote: This was one of the best adventures I have ever played...
GLORIURSO wrote: Honestly, not much I can say. You know how to make a dark, depressing and horror-feel attitude.
Infinite-Emperor wrote:...This is a well-crafted adventure that depicts Spore rather well. Buddied you, by the way..."us creators got to stick together in this age of darkness."...This is a well-crafted adventure that depicts Spore rather well. Buddied you, by the way..."us creators got to stick together in this age of darkness."
RandomguyfromDK wrote: You are now on my list of the 10 best creators on spore. Seriously.
Harlequin2 wrote: Wow this was amazing! I've always loved your stuff, but I really dug this dark epic. Some nice cameos by older adventures too. It's just a shame that Spore is indeed slowly fizzling out, but I'd be happy to play your stuff until the servers close Wow this was amazing! I've always loved your stuff, but I really dug this dark epic. Some nice cameos by older adventures too. It's just a shame that Spore is indeed slowly fizzling out, but I'd be happy to play your stuff until the servers close
PlasmaFire wrote: A very well done and enjoyable adventure, like all the others I've played by you. I liked the concept and the reference to your other adventures which are all extremely good, downloaded and rated up the moment I saw this the other day!
Poobeetoober wrote: Well, I opened this up in editor mode, and I managed to finish (it turns out that I was just trying the wrong things at the wrong time). I have to say, this is a dark, yet still somewhat hopeful and well executed story.Hundreds of talented and inspired creators have spent years innovating, creating, finding ways around the faulty and badly designed basis they were given, and some have done amazing things with it. I think that it deserves to be remembered and celebrated.
Randomnater wrote: R on this thought-provoking adventure.
USGCommander wrote:
Fantastic! It was really awesome... I guessed which end to pick. And it was pretty obvious...
MasterSpyro wrote:
A very well done adventure you've put up there A very well done adventure you've put up there
Dogger wrote:
A dark and fantastic story that reflects the state of Spore in 2014.
Demagol wrote:
Glad to see some part of the community is pumping out quality content, kudos to you m8.
Homer-dude2 wrote:
Interesting story line. I like it for the fact that it is not a dictated hard storyline as in most adventures where you mindlessly slaughter waves of enemies but this here rather gives room for interpretation. I can clearly see allusions to current topics
dounttron wrote:
That was a really deep adventure. The story was great and the atmopshere you set was incredible. It puts an interesting perspective on what's happened to Spore and how the community sees it.
MultipleStriches wrote:
It was so ominous!! I loved the sense of danger/doom! I choose to live btw! Also got the top time It was so ominous!! I loved the sense of danger/doom! I choose to live btw! Also got the top time
Nutt007 wrote:
Fantastic. This is the first adventure that's acutually given me a sinking feeling. My character got stuck and instead of getting mad and restarting I began to fear that he was acutually going to vanish! lol. Great job.
ArtSamurai wrote:
Nice adventure. I see you've taken a few ideas from hk1's adventures.
sefmonsta wrote:
Played it though in 3D, which increased the scale and moody atmosphere. Those mining trucks at the end looked truly epic. Great work!
solcenter08 wrote:
I just recently finished this adventure... wow just wow those words pierced my soul and mind... so sad... and yet it reflects what spore is today... but i choosed go to right... to live on... even in this imperfections...I returned because of my beloved creations... To make them refined, new and alive... Thank you so much for this HRmatthew... i think i'll make some referrences about this... when i share my adventures soon...
Dragonman9 wrote:
I liked this quite a bit, but some of the metaphors and parallels seemed pretty heavy-handed. The Minecraft suicide in particular was kinda immersion-breaking. I did like what you were saying though, and it's gonna stick with me for a while
kazerlama365 wrote:
a well made adventure. but surly, the disaperence of that many empires doesent apply to everyone. I can't wait to see how your next project turnes out. a well made adventure. but surly, the disaperence of that many empires doesent apply to everyone. I can't wait to see how your next project turnes out.
Voltgarb wrote:
Really great adventure! It's got a huge dose of that'morality cage' that seems to be in all games nowadays... I've made my choice. I intend to move on.
Rebecca1208 wrote:
This is one of the most insane things I have seen, and managed to stutter it out into a microphone. Seriously well made and well thought, I need to play your adventures way more often
Spudorama wrote:
WOW. Just... wow. By da way, I killed my captain so he'd respawn and I could kill him again. :p
Redcross65 wrote:
This adventure is beautifully designed, with a rivetting plot that surprisingly relates to semi-real-world problems. R
Minewizar412 wrote:
I have to admit, I'm ultimately surprised. The way the ISA is built and its features are, if not near, impossible to replicate!..All I can say is... you made the right choice... to give us this almost-never-ending adventure... 'twas definitely worth the five minutes loading up.......
valera72 wrote:
So very deep and scary that i won't even talk about it, at least - now...But it's still even scarier, because of it's link to real life, which see...Well, awesome alternative ending mechanism, by the way.
xmrsmoothx wrote:
That was magnificent! In the escape sequence I was really feeling the sensory assault. I never thought spore would make me freak the **** out! Really awesome, one of the best. Nice allegory to Neth and such quitting, too.
LucMelohn wrote:
Movie class story telling! Good adventure, i like how you implemented alot of hints to the abandonment of spore. It made me feel sad that i too left spore long ago But now im back. and i see spore will never die! many good creators left! Movie class story telling! Good adventure, i like how you implemented alot of hints to the abandonment of spore. It made me feel sad that i too left spore long agoBut now im back. and i see spore will never die! many good creators left!
Garrett_363 wrote:
*clap clap clap clap* what an adventure so good
Happyboy671 wrote:
That has to be one of the most amazing adventures I've ever played! The storytelling was superb and the power it had on me made me feel so bad for not playing spore enough LONG LIVE SPORE!!!!!! Amazing! keep it up That has to be one of the most amazing adventures I've ever played! The storytelling was superb and the power it had on me made me feel so bad for not playing spore enoughLONG LIVE SPORE!!!!!! Amazing! keep it up
Mr_Angelus_Guy wrote:
This is a great adventure and it expresses the last days of Spore...
W65011 wrote:
Wow, this really is metaphorical to the end of Spore.
Arkanay wrote:
Horror sparkled with neat surprises in a wonderfully crafted world. A timeless message with it too.
Hardfang wrote:
That was THE most sobering adventure that I've ever played. Well done!
moobear20 wrote:
This was epic! Kind of graphic but great ending! This makes me not want to leave spore!
DragonGoat wrote:
I enjoyed this adventure very much. I like how you took Spore's conflict and turned it into this amazing thing before me! And BanjoKazooie23 is right! Spore must return
Waldohkiin wrote:
I played this amazing adventure, and it is true, and a bit false when people say that Spore it's dying. I mean, look at all those comments. I do say, Spore it's still alive, and will be for many more years!
tinylou734 wrote:
AWESOME ADVENTURE!!
coolyo123 wrote:
Wow. cool mission. I thought I was the only one who still played spore Wow. cool mission. I thought I was the only one who still played spore
Willie5000 wrote:
Wow... Very beautiful, well done!...
Benjami wrote:
A brilliant adventure. Playing this was a great experience. Glad I finally got around to it.
GerbilCrab475 wrote:
Absolutley heart wrenching. The story reflects what is going on in the real Spore. I always love seeing returning characters too.
junkinator wrote:
A highly admirable level. It is intriguing that you always put some philosophical aspect in your missions. This level invokes some deep thoughts, and is a truly great mission. I enjoy seeing what you can do with the adventure creator. Keep going.
cheezu3s wrote:
Having played this, I feel a strong obligation to return as a prominent member of the Spore community.
maxilos23 wrote:
Just finished this adventure. It was pretty good, you've maintained the talent I remembered.
See what others had to say about this phenomenal adventure! This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 06/07/2014 23:06:05Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has alleged US involvement in a plot to oust his government and assassinate him. The South American leader said there are hundreds of emails that prove members of the State Department were part of the conspiracy.
Venezuela has opened an investigation into a supposed plot to overthrow the government and assassinate President Maduro, reports Venezuelan state news broadcaster TeleSur. Authorities have alleged the plot was hatched by members of the Venezuelan far right with the support of the US State Department.
“We will ask the State Department for an explanation of the evidence that implicates high-level functionaries in a plan to assassinate the president of the Bolivarian Republic,” said Maduro during his weekly radio show ‘En Contacto con Maduro’.
Maduro went on to say the investigation had revealed new information about the plan to oust the Venezuelan government. He alleged that the plot not only threatened his life, but also the foundations of the Venezuelan constitution.
“The evidence shows they were trying to find a way to assassinate the head of state and other leaders of the Bolivarian Revolution,” said Maduro.
As part of the investigation, the Venezuelan authorities gathered hundreds of emails from political figures. According to Maduro the emails are irrefutable proof of the conspiracy against Venezuela by the far right with the support of the State Department.
“All of the emails were gathered legally,” said Maduro, adding that more evidence would be revealed later this week.
Anti-government demonstrations erupted in Venezuela in February of this year, with many protesters frustrated at high inflation and a lack of basic foodstuffs. The massive streets protests spiraled into violence which saw over 40 dead in the most protracted unrest in the country in over a decade.
Harvard-educated opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who spearheaded many of the street protests, handed himself in to police at the end of February and is now awaiting trial. The Venezuelan government had put out a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of homicide and terrorism.
Throughout the course of the unrest, Maduro has maintained the violence was caused by right-wing groups who hijack peaceful protests with a view to triggering a coup d’etat. He has also alleged State Department involvement, something Washington has categorically denied.
At the end of May, the Venezuelan opposition broke off talks with Maduro’s government after it refused to release 200 prisoners. Washington has threatened to impose sanctions on the Latin American nation if negotiations are not resumed soon.At Highland Health medical-marijuana dispensary in Denver, the renovations are only barely completed.
A new yoga room. A new healing area for a hypnotherapist.
The upgrades are the realization of co-owner Diane Irwin’s vision for the business. But they’re something she’s going to have to walk away from within the next month if she wants to stay out of federal prison.
Irwin owns one of 23 dispensaries statewide that received a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office warning that their proximity to a school puts them in line for federal prosecution and asset seizure if they do not close by Feb. 27.
Irwin said she feels upended.
“We’re looking for a place to move,” she said. “We don’t really know what to do. Do we stay? Do we call their bluff? Do we go to jail?”
The 23 warning letters — the most aggressive federal action yet against dispensaries in Colorado — have sent a jolt of panic through the state’s medical-marijuana industry. Dispensary owners who received them are scrambling to figure out what to do. Dispensary owners who didn’t receive a letter also are wary about what federal prosecutors might do next.
U.S. Attorney for Colorado John Walsh has said he sent the letters because he’s worried about the impact medical marijuana is having on kids and said he is serious about clearing dispensaries out from near schools. He also has hinted that more letters — over different concerns — could soon be sent to other dispensaries, as federal prosecutors define the parameters within which they will tolerate the businesses.
Judy Negley, who owns Indispensary in Colorado Springs, said she sees the letters as an unjust invasion of the federal government into state affairs. Negley’s downtown location received one of the letters, and she said she has thought about staying open just to raise the fight.
“If I could do anything I wanted to and had the resources to fund it, that is certainly tempting,” Negley said. “The most rational choice is a change of location. But it’s unclear, to my mind, from the letter what they intend to do next.”
Julie Postlethwait, a spokeswoman for the state’s Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, said dispensaries can move to new locations, as long as they comply with their cities’ rules. And medical-marijuana attorney Warren Edson said he believes dispensaries that are forced to move still have places they can go.
But if federal prosecutors announce new crackdowns — for, say, dispensaries near parks — the available real estate will disappear.
“As more waves come out, they’re going to run out of places real quick,” Edson said.
The uncertainty about what’s coming next is just another worry now for Irwin.
She said her son, who also is her business partner, is trying to find a place to move to. But she laments that it won’t be the same — or as discreet. Though Highland Health is near a school, it is on the fourth floor of a nondescript office building off of Speer Boulevard in northwest Denver. There’s no gaudy sign out front. The shop is basically invisible from the street.
“I feel like fighting,” Irwin said, “but I don’t want to go to jail, either.”
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.comMedical experts have issued a warning to voters to carefully consider the policies of the Health Australia Party, ahead of Saturday’s federal election. The HAP is in favour of natural medicines and has been branded "anti-vaccine" by the Australian Medical Association. The AMA said it was concerning the party had secured the number-one spot on the NSW Senate ballot paper.
“People may be misled by the name of the party,” AMA NSW President Brad Frankum said.
“It sounds good but when you look at their policies, it's misleading and dangerous.”
Previously known as the Natural Medicine Party, the HAP changed its name to take on what its national party spokesman Jason Woodforth called a “broader range” of policies. One of the key measures was to have natural medicine put “on an equal footing” to pharmaceutical medicine.
The party also supports animal rights, euthanasia and a different “paradigm” to manage chronic diseases. Home-schooling and home-birthing are other initiatives the party favours. Mr Woodforth told SBS the party was not “anti-vaccine” but it does object to the Commonwealth’s No Jab, No Pay legislation.
“It violates basic medical ethics of informed consent,” Mr Woodford told SBS.
“Informed consent needs to be non-coercive.”
The No Jab, No Pay legislation means that unless a child is fully vaccinated, or a plan is in place to catch up on missed vaccines, parents are ineligible for certain government payments. The AMA says the HPA’s "lukewarm" support for vaccinations makes them anti-vaccine by default.
“The simple fact is that many hundreds of thousands of lives are saved by vaccinations,” Mr Frankum said.
The HAP also opposes fluoride in public water supplies, with its policies calling the “medication of a population through the water supply a breach of accepted medical ethical codes.” Mr Woodforth, who is a former LNP member, said fluoride is a “toxic waste product,” another claim disputed by the AMA. When asked by SBS what voters would be getting if the HPA is voted in on Saturday, Mr Woodforth said they can expect “truth, openness and transparency in government.”Two women and three children aged 5 years and under have been wounded in a shooting at a town home in Indianapolis, police said Monday.
Authorities said no one has been arrested and that police are looking for three suspects in the Sunday night attack.
Police don't know the reason for the shooting on the city's northwest side about 9:25 p.m., but believe the victims knew their attackers, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Officer Christopher Wilburn said.
He identified the adult victims as 23-year-old Raychel Fitzpatrick and 49-year-old Shelly Jones. Wilburn said Fitzpatrick was shot in the stomach and leg and was in stable condition Monday afternoon. Jones was shot multiple times in the pelvic area and was in critical condition. When police arrived, 24-year-old Tyler Corbin was holding Fitzpatrick's stomach, he said.
A 2-year-old boy was shot in the hand and lower body and was in stable condition. A 4-year-old boy was in in serious condition and a 5-year-old boy was in stable condition.
Wilburn said police don't know the relationships between the victims, and investigators haven't explained the connection between Corbin and the victims.
A police statement early Monday said authorities were seeking three suspects who fled the complex in a vehicle after the attack.
Associated PressHare Court, within the Inner Temple.
The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns. It is located in the wider Temple area of the capital, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and within the City of London.
The Inn is a professional body that provides legal training, selection, and regulation for members. It is ruled by a governing council called "Parliament", made up of the Masters of the Bench (or "Benchers"), and led by the Treasurer, who is elected to serve a one-year term. The Temple takes its name from the Knights Templar, who originally leased the land to the Temple's inhabitants (Templars) until their abolition in 1312. The Inner Temple was a distinct society from at least 1388, although as with all the Inns of Court its precise date of founding is not known. After a disruptive early period (during which the Temple was almost entirely destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt) it flourished, becoming the second-largest Inn during the Elizabethan period (after Gray's Inn).
The Inner Temple expanded during the reigns of James I and Charles I, with 1,700 students admitted between 1600 and 1640. The First English Civil War's outbreak led to a complete suspension of legal education,[1] with the Inns close to being shut down for almost four years. Following the English Restoration the Inner Templars welcomed Charles II back to London personally with a lavish banquet.
After a period of slow decline in the 18th century, the following 100 years saw a restoration of the Temple's fortunes, with buildings constructed or restored, such as the Hall and the Library. Much of this work was destroyed during The Blitz, when the Hall, Temple, Temple Church, and many sets of chambers were devastated. Rebuilding was completed in 1959, and today the Temple is a flourishing and active Inn of Court, with over 8,000 members.
Role [ edit ]
The Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court,[2] along with Gray's Inn,[3] Lincoln's Inn, and the Middle Temple.[4][5] The Inns are responsible for training, regulating, and selecting barristers within England and Wales, and are the only bodies allowed to call a barrister to the Bar and allow him or her to practice.[6]
The Temple is an independent,[2] unincorporated organisation,[6] and works as a trust. It has approximately 8,000 members and around 450 apply to join per year.[6] Although the Inn was previously a disciplinary and teaching body, these functions are now shared between the four Inns, with the Bar Standards Board (a division of the General Council of the Bar) acting as a disciplinary body and the Inns of Court and Bar Educational Trust providing education.
History [ edit ]
The Knights Templar and the founding of the Inner Temple [ edit ]
The history of the Inner Temple begins in the early years of the reign of Henry II (115 |
claims made under the Foreign Claims Act, mainly in Iraq. These were the original, often hand-written records of incidents, their investigations, and the military’s ultimate decision to pay or deny the claim. Jonathan Tracy, a former judge advocate who handled thousands of claims in Iraq and then devoted years to studying the system, analyzed the entire dataset and found that the decisions often relied on over-broad or arbitrary definitions of combat situations, and that people who were denied claims were only sometimes awarded condolence payment. Yale law professor John Fabian Witt also noted that “relatively minor property awards for damages to automobiles and other personal property often rivaled the death payments in dollar value.”
“They present it as if it’s very black and white, as though there’s the circle of things we can pay for, and you decide if the incident is in or out of that circle, but that’s not the way it happens,” Tracy told The Intercept. “You’d have two different attorneys doing two different things and [civilians] who’d had much the same thing happen to them would get very different compensation.”
Last year the annual defense appropriations bill included a provision, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., which instructs the Pentagon to set up a permanent process for administering condolence payments. The measure is intended to prevent the delay and inconsistencies that marred the system in the early years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to improve record keeping, so that the Pentagon doesn’t start from scratch in each new conflict.
A defense official told The Intercept in an emailed statement that the Pentagon has not yet implemented the provision, but is “reviewing the processes related to ex-gratia payments to determine if there are areas where improvements can be made.”
Marla Keenan, managing director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, believes that “as the conflict in Iraq and Syria has escalated, they are starting to see a reason for this type of policy to exist. It’s unfortunate how a new context where this could be used is the impetus.”
Finding the Data
The United Nations only began keeping track of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009; using a conservative count that requires three sources for each incident, the U.N. now reports that more than 17,700 innocent Afghans have died in the past five years of fighting, the majority of them killed by the Taliban or other groups fighting the Afghan government and coalition forces.
Looking at compensation paid out under the Foreign Claims Act or in condolence payments is one way to get a window into the damage caused by the U.S. presence. Yet it’s difficult to draw conclusions from the military’s records, which are muddled and incomplete, by their own admission.
Every cache of documents released comes with caveats. For example, The Nation obtained thousands of pages’ worth of records for payments for condolences and other “battle damage” in 2013. Asked for total figures, a military spokesman told the magazine, “I could wade through the numbers to the best of my ability but my numbers would be a guess and most likely inaccurate.”
The Intercept received several years’ worth of recent data on condolence payments from the military through a Freedom of Information Act request. These records come from a military database keeping track of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, a special pot of spending money for “goodwill” projects.
The database entries are sparse, giving only the basics of who was killed or injured, with no detail on when or how the incident occurred. Location is given only at the province level. Nonetheless, the data represent the Pentagon’s clearest accounting of how much money it spends on condolence payments. (This data does not include “solatia,” which, just like condolence payments, are compensation for death and injury. But they are paid out of a unit’s operating funds, and the Pentagon has said previously it does not have overall figures for solatia.)
According to the data we received, in fiscal years 2011 through 2013, the military made 953 condolence payments totaling $2.7 million. $1.8 million of those were for deaths, and the average payment for a death was $3,426. Payments for injuries averaged $1,557.
Some payments are for multiple people harmed in one incident. For instance, the largest single payment, from 2012, offers $70,000 for “death of a mother and six children.” The largest payment for a single death occurred in 2011, when the father of “a local national” who was killed was given more than $15,000. Some family members received as little as $100 for the death of a relative.
Asked about records for payments made before 2011, the Pentagon directed questions to the press office for coalition forces in Afghanistan, which did not reply to repeated inquiries from The Intercept.
Also through the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept received Foreign Claims Act data from the Army, which handles Afghanistan for the entire U.S. military. As with the condolence payments, the database doesn’t include the documentation behind each claim. Rather, it shows a quick synopsis, date and amount for each claim filed.
In all, the Army released 5,766 claims marked for Afghanistan, filed between Feb. 2003 and Aug. 2011, of which 1,671 were paid, for a total of about $3.1 million. Of those claims, 753 were denied completely, and the rest are in various kinds of accounting limbo.
This is only a portion of the claims that were actually made and paid. Douglas Dribben, the attorney with the Army office, described the database as “G.I.G.O. — Garbage In, Garbage Out.”
Judge advocates in the field are supposed to regularly update the database with claims received and paid, but spotty Internet access and erratic schedules often made that impossible. Tracy, the former Army attorney, said that in Iraq, he had to enter all the claims he received weekly. In practice, “that never really happened,” he said.
A 2010 guidance for claims officers takes a pleading tone: “We know [claims] payments are not your only mission and the last thing you really want is another report but in all honesty the last thing any of us want is an unauthorized expenditure of funds.”
A more reliable estimate, Dribben said, comes from Army budget data, which reflects the amount of money transferred out to the field to pay claims. The Army Claims Service did not provide that information, but a training guide from 2009 states that for that fiscal year, the Army had paid $1.35 million in 516 claims in Afghanistan, with 202 denied.
The total for Iraq that year was over $18 million; overall, Afghanistan saw fewer and smaller claims than Iraq, because of remote geography and fewer U.S. troops deployed. Prices for replacement goods or lost wages were generally lower, Dribben said.
The claims synopses typically contain missing words, garbled grammar or obvious errors in the various entry fields. Most refer to a “claimant.” Some are entered in the first person. A few dozen have no synopsis at all. Many are completely enigmatic: what happened when “claimant feared soldiers would open fire and panicked?” The claimant was paid more than $3,200.
“Each one took maybe 30 seconds to enter,” Tracy said. “There wasn’t really room or time to put in a narrative.”
The database categorized just 18 payments as wrongful deaths between 2003 and 2011 — very likely an undercounting, Dribben said. The average of those payments was about $11,000; the highest was $50,000, paid to someone in eastern Afghanistan, because “coalition forces killed his father.”
Correction, March 4th, 2015: This article originally stated that “The United States and its allies do not tally civilian deaths in Afghanistan.” In fact, international forces have kept a database recording civilian casualties since 2008. That information has been only sporadically made public. According to Science Magazine, the military’s figures are generally lower than those of the U.N.
The Intercept’s Margot Williams and Josh Begley contributed research to this report. Eric Sagara, formerly of ProPublica, also contributed.
Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP; Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty ImagesWhen it comes to the way to make investments well in mutual funds, you should determine initially your own risk threshold be. This threshold determines numerous elements including asset allowance and what sort of account classification you select. Generating a mutual fund portfolio demands practical preparation and planning prior to leaping in to this type of endeavor.
With regards to risk intended for investment, this means volatility with the rates of the investment. Variances in value may be possibly secure or extremely unstable. Bonds possess unique risk aspects for example rising cost of living, credit rating, and rate of interest for that matter. Stocks manage market pitfalls and dividend hazards. International stocks additionally risk transforming foreign exchange and governmental unrest. Since the threats go up, the unpredictability and possible profit rises too. When the hazards decrease, do volatility and prospective profit. Essentially, having higher risk possibly occurs larger pay back.
Risk threshold is a vital notion facing mutual funds, and careful investors may usually have a reduced profit in order to lessen its risk. Intense investors tend to be ready to engage in a limb for that possibility with the greater yield and so are much more open to cost shifts in the market. Numerous investors choose which kind of investment they may create prior to figuring out its risk threshold, since this approach enables an investment method to become more accurately designed. This kind of investing is basically the alternative of fundamental asset allocation realignment investing. For instance, using basic asset allocation realignment, a trader selects their type of investment in relation to their risk threshold. If it is intense investors, they can probably select 100% stock options, a very careful investor might select 40% stock and 60% bond alternatives.
It is crucial that you’re practical within your investment method regarding risk. You can find a really prospective pitfall towards the possible profit of the risky investment. If you’re not confident with the volume of the potential losses, alter your risk threshold degree. Keep in mind and constantly go through primary concepts for variation that point out, allowance of one’s investment assets one of the varying fund types should get to a number of risk and incentive targets, thus decreasing the general risk in the portfolio. Furthermore, keep track of your investments prudently and re-evaluate your investment targets at least one time annually to make essential modifications for the certain financial predicament.
A great way to review your fund investment plans is usually to split your current methods in to life stages. In the course of your early years, through about 25 to 50, you could do this effectively using a growth-oriented tactic that literally brings about larger returns. When you get older and confront retirement age, from 51 until 65, shifting into a balance-oriented is definitely the best method to economize. When you have moved into old age between the ages of 65 and 67, your current goals now have altered once more plus it’s finally more significant to usher in extra cash and safeguard the investments towards the cost of living.Penn sidelined
The knives have been out in Hillaryland for Mark Penn for years, but today they finally cut through.
In a statement, campaign manager Maggie Williams linked the departure to Mark Penn's meeting last week with the government of Colombia, a private client, but that was just the latest in a long series of distractions triggered by his private work, and his departure also reflects Clinton's obvious dissatisfaction with elements of her strategy.
Says Williams:
After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as Chief Strategist of the Clinton Campaign; Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign. Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson will coordinate the campaign's strategic message team going forward.
See AlsoSee most any media analysis of what’s happening in the Democratic Party right now, and you’ll find that the group hacks call ‘the left’—a movement long frowned upon in American politics—is having a moment. This is how the press presents it to us: Spearheaded by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, a branch of ‘leftist’ outsiders are now looking to transform the Democratic Party from within. And it looks like they’re going to succeed, too. With the Democrats panicked and desperate, defeated by a man who in any other year would have been unelectable, a set of apparent leftie radicals now seem set to take a position of real influence in the country’s oldest political party.
This is the story we’re being told. The truth is that there is no ‘left’ or ‘right’ anymore—those descriptors have become meaningless. There aren’t wishy-washy liberals or proud American conservatives. Instead, there are progressives and there are regressives: those who wish to take us forward, and those who wish to drag us back into the past; those whose views are supported by experts, and those whose aren’t; those whose views reflect the wider world, and those whose don’t. As we head into an uncertain four years, a few things appear likely: that the new Republican America under President Donald Trump will introduce measures that increase inequality and the likelihood of economic uncertainty, decrease everyday Americans’ access to healthcare, roll back on LGBT rights, relax gun control, limit women’s reproductive rights and reject decades of climate change science as conspiracy theory.
Considering how perfectly they represent a reversion to the positions of governments past, these are what you’d call regressive policies. They are, according to the experts, unsafe policies. They’re also, nationally, unpopular policies. More than ever, the average American (64%) is concerned about climate change. More than ever, the average American (55%) supports stricter gun control laws. 63% of Americans think wealth distribution as it stands—pre-Trump—is unfair; 61% think higher earners pay too little in tax, not too much, as Trump’s tax plan assumes—a tax plan which economists say will stifle economic growth and leave many Americans worse off.
Similarly, on women’s rights (a slim majority now describe themselves as pro-choice), LGBT rights (61% support same-sex marriage) and healthcare (Obamacare is more popular than ever, while 58% want universal healthcare, a model used by every other major country on Earth), Americans oppose not just what this new government stands for, but what so-called Republican ‘moderates’ like Paul Ryan stand for as well. Ryan, the sane, acceptable face of Republicanism who has distanced himself from Trump and team for their being too ‘out there’, is for scrapping the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare, for those who still think there’s a difference), believes in criminally prosecuting women who have abortions, claims climate change is a hoax and is a strict opponent of LGBT rights. In his time, he has voted against hate crime protections, same-sex marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
We call this a moderate. For the likes of lifelong independent Bernie Sanders and former Republican Elizabeth Warren, who, like the experts, most governments of the developed world and the majority of Americans, support universal healthcare, reproductive rights, LGBT rights, progressive taxation and addressing the reality of man-made climate change—we use that dreaded moniker ‘left’. And this is a problem. Though most Americans actually tend to agree with many policies considered socialist, they balk at the label. For years now, the Republican media, led most notably by Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, has gone out of its way to demonize terms like ‘liberal’ and ‘left’. The issue for Sanders and Warren isn’t that what they stand for is widely disliked, then, but that they’re stuck with labels that American voters have been taught to instantly recoil at.
For those we traditionally call ‘the left’ in America, it might be time to rebrand. Around the world, in developed countries from left to right, gun control that prevents daily massacres, healthcare that keeps the poor healthy and out of debt, reproductive rights which allow women control over their own bodies, progressive taxation which doesn’t drive a wedge through the classes and stringent climate policy which seeks to prevent environmental catastrophe…are all very normal. America’s new President and his administration of billionaires are not normal. Not even those we now refer to as ‘moderate Republicans’ are normal.
A movement whose policies have the support of both experts and the majority of Americans, on the other hand, should not be considered ‘left,’ but the very definition of normal. Perhaps now is the time to insist that policies which would usually be referred to as of the dreaded ‘liberal left’ are in fact simple common sense. Not just because it would make support more palatable for the Fox News crowd, and not just because the American ‘right’ has now ceded all right to the term ‘common sense,’ but because it’s true. If the Warren and Sanders movement successfully transforms the Democratic Party, this will not become a party ‘of the left.’ It will be a party for everyday Americans. With the status quo about to turn absurd, this ‘fringe movement’ should use the opportunity to lose the labels and start presenting itself as America’s sane option.kashmir-bbj-deactivated20160322 asked: Hello! If you're still taking prompts I'll leave this here: Elsa is at the beach but she's not amused. She doesn't even like to swim, no wait, she can't swim! One way or another she almost drown and she woke up thinkin' "I hope I wasn't saved by that lifeguard idiot /no one does a mouth to mouth like Gaston!/" but instead in front of her there's this redhead beauty aaand now she's embarrassed.
Not currently taking prompts, but I’ll answer this anyway.
“Go to the beach,” they said.
“It’ll be fun,” they said.
“It’s not like you’ll drown,” they said.
Well too late for that, Elsa thought as she struggled for air, arms wildly flailing as she tried not to sink to the cold abyss of death that was the sea. She had been strolling along the edge, looking for seashells, when some jerk had bumped into her while trying to catch a Frisbee. She had stumbled into the shallow water at the moment that a large wave had hit. Screaming, she had been pulled further out into sea, and…well…
I’m gong to die.
The sound of a harsh whistle reached her ears amidst the roaring of the waves and the pounding of her frantic heart. A flash of red caused her to groan in spite of almost drowning.
If it’s Gaston, just take me now. I’d rather take my chances here than with–
Slim arms wrapped around her, jerking her closer to what Elsa assumed would be the shore. Black spots crowded her vision, and she was sure she had blacked out at some point, because the next thing she knew, a pair of soft lips were covering her own.
Air rushed back into her lungs, and Elsa coughed–thankfully, whoever it was had pulled away enough to give her space. She blinked a few times, trying to regain her bearings, and noticed the cute redhead kneeling beside her, lips quirked into a relieved grin.
“You’re…not Gaston,” Elsa stated lamely. Somehow, “Thanks” was lost in translation.
The lifeguard–because that standard red swimsuit and white cross couldn’t mean anything else–giggled, reaching a hand up to tuck a strand of red hair behind her ear. “No, I’m not. Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, no…I’m glad…actually,” Elsa mumbled, cheeks lighting up. “Um…thank you. For saving me.”
“No probl–”
“Anna! I heard someone was drowning!” an all-too-familiar voice suddenly shouted, “No one does mouth-to-mouth like Gaston!”
“Please kill me now,” Elsa groaned, ignoring how wet her hands were as she covered her face with them.
The lifeguard–Anna–giggled again, and Elsa peeked through her fingers to see her wink.
“Can’t have you dying on me now. Not when I haven’t taken you out for dinner yet.”
Elsa smiled.
…
“Maybe you’ll meet someone,” they said.The Dallas Stars finally graduated from exciting to actually great last season, posting excellent shot differentials and ripping through teams with scoring chances from all areas of the lineup. The only weakness that was immediately apparent was in goal, where Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi failed to inspire.
Not much has changed with the goaltending this season. Both Lehtonen and Niemi are posting identically poor.898 save percentages so far. Last season the Stars were able to regularly overcome their goaltending issues, but this year there has been significantly more struggles; just look at their even-strength play compared to last season.
The drop off in terms of play has been extreme so far this season, and while lots of blame for that can be placed on injuries, with Patrick Sharp missing all but four games so far, and Ales Hemsky and Cody Eakin missing all but one, there’s more to it than that.
Ever since he took over the Stars, general manager Jim Nill has managed to make serious roster improvement essentially every summer, but this off-season’s work was a little underwhelming by comparison.
Losing both Alex Goligoski and Jason Demers to free agency robbed the team of their second and third best play-driving defencemen, leaving John Klingberg with little support.
Dan Hamhuis was a solid addition for the Stars on defence, especially at the salary and term he was signed to, but he is older than Goligoski and Demers, and so far he hasn’t been as strong in terms of driving even-strength play as they were. Even if he was to able replace one of the two, the Stars still needed another player to either step up from within the organization, or to be brought in from elsewhere.
To make matters worse for the Stars, after looking like a franchise defenceman for two seasons, Klingberg has had a very rough start to the season, posting negative shot and scoring chance differentials so far.
Klingberg is still leading the Stars in possession-driving plays and scoring chance generation, but he has been a turnover machine, with 38.4 per cent of his plays with the puck ending up on the opposing team’s stick, the worst mark of any top-pairing defenceman so far this season.
Unfortunately, Hamhuis isn’t far behind Klingberg in the turnover category, with 38.2 per cent of his plays ending in a loss of possession as well.
The combination of the Stars’ two most important defencemen being so careless with the puck has been a critical component to the team failing to generate their usual speed through the middle.
Dallas was never a defensive juggernaut, so that hampering of its transition game cutting down its offence is a big deal. A healthy lineup would certainly help, but head coach Lindy Ruff needs to settle his team down as well, and focus on what drove its success last season.Home invaders played Russian roulette with a 5-year-old while they held his family hostage for three days
A Florida family endured three days of torture and fear as they were held hostage by a group of criminals demanding thousands of dollars in cash.
Today the father testified against one of his abductors, telling how they terrorized the family and played Russian roulette with their five-year-old son.
The scarring details came out as Victor Manuel Sanchez, the first of the four assailants, is on trial for numerous felony charges including attempted murder, home-invasion robbery, and kidnapping.
Charged: Victor Manuel Sanchez is one of the four alleged abductors who kept a Florida family hostage in their own home for three days in 2009
Sanchez and his three partners were arrested after they had held the Morais family hostage in their Winter Garden, Florida home for three days in November 2009.
The saga began when the group of three men and the female Bolivian ringleader- who remains at large and is thought to have fled the country- knocked on the Morais' home demanding that Rubens Morais, 48, give them money in order to'save his family'.
He complied and gave them $30,000 from the family safe.
That did not satisfy them, and they forced Mr Morais' wife Marcela Borges, 27, to withdraw $23,600 from an ATM.
Even after they had the money that they wanted, the captors were not finished with their mental torture.
Comfort to fear: The abductors knocked on the family's Winter Garden, Florida home and demanded cash from the father in order to'save his family'
The captors played Russian roulette with the couple's 5-year-old son Ryan, repeatedly pulling the trigger while pressing the gun up against the young boys head.
'I was absolutely sure that after I paid them, they would kill me,' Mr Morais said in Portuguese while testifying.
The horrifying episode did not end until Ms Borges escaped after climbing out of a second-floor window.
Arrested: Miguel Diaz Santiz (left) and Oscar Hernandez Diaz (right) are the other two men that have been arrested in the case. The female ringleader Bianca Dos Santos is thought to have fled to Bolivia
As she raced to a neighbour's house, one of the captors shot her in the back, and the bullet went right through her and hit her wrist on the way out.
Even after all of that, she still managed to get to the nearby house and call for help. The captors fled when she escaped, but three of the four involved were later captured by police.A week after S&P announced it was converting its European ratings to unsolicited as was reported previously, the rating agency now proceeds to do the same to the world's most insolvent banana republic: "Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today said it converted its issuer and issue credit ratings on the U.S. federal government (AAA/Stable/A-1+) to "unsolicited." Unsolicited as in nobody wants it. In other words, following Europe, the US will now lock out S&P in providing the agency with information. "We are converting our issuer credit ratings on the U.S. government to "unsolicited," as we do not have a rating agreement with the sovereign. Standard & Poor's will nonetheless continue to rate the U.S. government and classify the ratings as unsolicited, as we believe that we have access to sufficient public information of reliable quality to support our analysis and ongoing surveillance, and because we believe there is significant market interest in the U.S. government rating." It is a good thing then that by now everyone knows just how relevant S&P's ongoing AAA/Stable rating on the US is.
From S&P
* Standard & Poor's is converting its issuer and issue ratings on the U.S. government to "unsolicited."
* On May 24, 2011, we will withdraw all of our issue ratings on the U.S. government.
* The U.S. government unsolicited issuer credit rating will remain outstanding.
* This conversion follows previously announced conversions of Standard & Poor's issuer and issue credit ratings on seven sovereign issuers in Europe.
* New EU regulations require non-EU ratings, where relevant, to be labeled as unsolicited, in order for them to be considered endorsable into the EU for regulatory purposes.
NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Feb. 24, 2011--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today said it converted its issuer and issue credit ratings on the U.S. federal government (AAA/Stable/A-1+) to "unsolicited."
This conversion follows previously announced conversions of the ratings on seven sovereigns in Europe. These actions, in turn, follow new EU regulations on credit ratings (Article 10(5) of EU Regulation 1060/2009), which address matters relating to the disclosure and presentation of credit ratings, requiring, among other things, that unsolicited credit ratings be identified as such.
We are converting our issuer credit ratings on the U.S. government to "unsolicited," as we do not have a rating agreement with the sovereign. Standard & Poor's will nonetheless continue to rate the U.S. government and classify the ratings as unsolicited, as we believe that we have access to sufficient public information of reliable quality to support our analysis and ongoing surveillance, and because we believe there is significant market interest in the U.S. government rating.
Standard & Poor's has also converted its U.S. government issue ratings to "unsolicited" and intends to withdraw these ratings on May 24, 2011.
This decision does not change Standard & Poor's view of the creditworthiness of the U.S. government. Our AAA/Stable/A-1+ ratings on the U.S. government remain unchanged.
Standard & Poor's unsolicited sovereign ratings may be based solely on publicly available information and may involve the participation of government officials. Standard & Poor's has used information from sources believed to be reliable based on standards established in our Credit Ratings Information and Data Policy, but does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any information used.Confidence Mentality
This is the first article in the how to be confident series, and since we are starting to talk about something, the best place to begin is the mentality, so our complete focus today will be on the ins and outs of the confidence mentality.
This series is aimed to remove the mass confusion about confidence since everyone says “be confident“ and yet no one really explains it. For the sake of getting the best out of this article, forget what you have been told about life, at least for now.
How To Be Confident?
Here is an obvious shocker, No one knows the absolute truth, Obama, the Pope, the freaking Illuminati, no one does.
Probably because absolute truth doesn’t exist – upcoming article about that. People assume truth. Assume what is wrong and what is right, assume it, believe it and build on it.
Of course, there is some common sense about what would most likely be good and what would be bad, but nothing is a fact.
Once you really see that, once you really understand it, you won’t need more articles, Videos, or seminars to reach supreme confidence, be more successful and live life on your own terms.
You will understand how to be confident.
There are no certain facts on what is right or wrong, what you should or shouldn’t do, what is cool or not, and what is your purpose in this life. It is all relative. It is all relative to YOU.
This is your reality, shape it as you want.
The hardest part is to see the confusion, the uncertainty in life. To see what authority is, what rules are, and what idols and role models stood for. It is all man-made simplified assumptions about what is around us and what we have to do. Whoever holds the utmost certainty about his assumption, the one that can make it appeal to the general public, is the one to force his assumption as a reality. That is what we call a Supreme Man.
Humans are followers by nature, that is an observation you can see by yourself. People want/need to be told what to do and what to like by others to remove the confusion.
No one likes to be confused because if you are confused, you are afraid, and that is a big no-no for your brain. You need someone to tell you to do this or that. You need that sense of security.
First, you should understand what confidence by definition is, for you to understand how to be confident.
con·fi·dence
noun \ˈkän-fə-dən(t)s, –ˌden(t)s\
– a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something – a feeling or belief that someone or something is good or has the ability to succeed at something – the feeling of being certain that something will happen or that something is true Confidence is an assumption that you act on with certainty. people aren’t really confident, they just assume confidence. I’m re-writing what you have read 100’s of times before. I’m just trying my best to clarify what is the core principle to it… Confidence is not a skill nor a physical entity, but rather a thought, and that thought is led by an assumption. When you assume a thought to be (a certain proven reality) That is the Confidence Mentality. Take this scenario, For example, you stop a pretty girl down the street and you said “Hi”. The possible philosophical outcomes to that scenario are: 1- If you assume that she will positively reply to your “Hi”, then you are Confident “Per Se”… this assumption is certain to follow the path you wanted as you are the assumption setter, and since humans have a tendency to be followers… the girl will likely follow the path you assumed and everything will go according to the assumption. 2- If you assume that it won’t work because you have been told you are, short, ugly, fat, or whatever presented to you by society as a negative certain assumption; since this assumption is yours now, then you are confident about it, it will follow the path and go according to the assumption just like above.
You see, it all relies on your assumption and the degree of certainty you hold to it, to determine the level of your confidence. You will be confident in something on both times, the difference comes to where the underlying assumption will lead you.
… I know it might be a little confusing -way too many “assumption”- but stay with me a bit.
On all possible scenarios, confidence existed, either a positive assumption which leads to being “confident into” a positive outcome or a negative assumption which leads to being “confident into” a negative outcome.
The last case is, the assumption isn’t really 100% positive or negative, but rather “in between”, which leads to the absence of a certain assumption and in turn leads to confusion. – more on that later
… “wait John … where the fuck are you going with this?!?! “
OK OK… enough “philosophy” for now
Here is the point to take out of this
If you are short, fat, balding, World of Warcraft addict. Then that is your reality for now – I surely don’t agree with it. Fucking own it, accept it, be proud of it and ASSUME IT to be the coolest fucking thing ever… this will lead you to be more confident in the positive assumption, and what happens next, will likely follow the assumed path.
And that is how to be confident!
Do you know any ugly fat fucker surrounded by hot chicks and people would always take him seriously?
He did exactly what I illustrated so far.
“hold up John! but he is rich, tall, famous or whatever, that is why he had all that going for him!“
You are right, yet horribly mistaken. He assumed the outcome based on the popular belief of “money gets you the chicks or being tall is all you need … etc.” so what actually helped him wasn’t having money as the physical papers we use to buy stuff, but rather the certainty that he will get what he wants due to having money or looks…etc.
His belief was reinforced and rectified by current society standards and it caused him certainty in his assumption, thus having an already approved positive assumption by current society standards.
A popular belief that having X will get you Y, will be taken as a certainly approved assumption, you gain confidence in such assumptions easily, due to being approved by the masses, and everything follows accordingly.
Your assumptions about yourself shapes your reality, the certainty of that assumption shapes your confidence, and your confidence direction “either positive or negative” shapes the outcomes of these assumptions.
Certainty is the most difficult part of the equation, being certain about something means that you had proof tested it many times and all results gave the same output, that is how we are raised to think and function. We were conditioned to seek external certainty, and that is why humans have a tendency to be basic followers, because whoever is internally certain about his belief, whoever holds the strongest, most grounded assumption, will win the game. he will become “the Wolf” the supreme man, and the rest are the sheep, they just follow along.
I can’t write an article on how to be certain about any unpopular belief, no one can do that for you because that means you have just followed an external source of certainty.
For example, if I said being short will get you chicks more than being tall. You might view me as a supreme source of assumptions, you follow my assumption as a “certain positive assumption”, and you gain confidence in it. after that, you might scroll down to the comments section, and you might read a random comment saying “No!!, being short sucks”. Your certainty will be totally lost or at best will be brutally shaken. because even though you viewed me as the supreme source of validation and the guy in the comment section as just a random whining beta -which is always the case :), we are both an external source of assumptions, the guy and me will always have that in common, and we will both have some degree of influence on your assumption.
… damn!! I actually wanted this to be a short article…
Anyway, to wrap it up. You have to be clear about your situation, improve what you can.
What you can’t change, you must hold a “certain positive assumption” that it is the best thing that happened to you, and it won’t affect you negatively at all, yes.. AT ALL.
To be honest, it is much easier to adapt to a new popular assumption “i.e. douchebag with abs get the chicks” than it is to get a certain positive assumption you assumed by yourself “i.e. being fat is the coolest thing ever!“.
We will leave explaining how you can reach an “I am enough no matter what I am” mentality in a later article.
This is what confidence means in the most basic description, it is the act on the assumption you have to the degree of how certain you are about it. This is what you have to understand to be able to reach supreme confidence, hopefully in the near future.
this is the first part of my answer to the “how to be confident” question.
The assumption is the father of confidence.
Assume supremacy!
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PocketI was going to go with the "Wild trades for Penner" headline just to drive traffic, but I thought you might not find the humor in that and chickened out.
The Wild traded goalie Anton Khudobin to the Boston Bruins' forJeff Penner and Mikko Lehtonen in a minor-league move.
Not Dustin Penner and not Jeff Skinner. Defenseman Jeff Penner.
The Borat era is over. As I've indicated many times, it was over anyway this summer when he becomes a Group 6 unrestricted free agent. The Wild's turning to Matt Hackett and Darcy Kuemper, bringing over Dennis Endras and will probably sign a backup for Minnesota. The Wild also likes draft pick Johan Gustafsson.
Josh Harding's future is very uncertain.
Khudobin, 24, was a seventh-round pick by the Wild in 2004. You cannot say enough for the fill |
Mexican border. I know there is poverty and persecution but a lot of people die on this trip, it's very, very dangerous.
"Our government needs to ask questions of the countries in Central America to find out what's happening over there."
Mr Garino said conditions inside the warehouse had improved, that doctors and vaccinations were available, and separate catering areas have been set up for boys and girls. Some of the children were playing with frisbees when he visited.
He said children were being kept there for between three and five days before being sent on to one of the military bases being readied to take them in Oklahoma and California.
After arriving, the children enter a legal process in which they are either deported to their home countries, or released to the care of relatives already in the US.
Mr Benegas said he believed the vast majority had relatives with some form of legal status in the US.
Campaign groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a complaint with the US government alleging that a total of 116 of the migrant children, aged from five to 17, had suffered abuse at the hands of Customs and Border Protection agents, including sexual assault and beatings, denial of medical care, and not being given enough food and water.
A Customs and Border Protection spokesman refuted the allegations. "In the face of overwhelming numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the border in South Texas, US Border Patrol agents have taken extraordinary measures to care for these children while in custody and to maintain security in overcrowded facilities," he said.
The controversy about the influx has in recent days stretched far beyond the border – as far afield, indeed, as a small town in southern Virginia.
Desperate for extra accommodation to cope with the surge, the federal government had signed a lease to house 500 children in an empty college in Lawrenceville. But the authorities were forced to put the plan on hold after a backlash by locals in the town of 1,400
"I was just shocked," said Brian Roberts, the local sheriff. "The way this process has been handled puts more fear in our eyes, because it's been shoved down our throat.
"Five hundred kids unaccounted for – illegal alien children in my little sleepy town – I just don't think it's the right fit for this community."Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari is on track to meet its targets in preparation for next season despite recent results going awry and doesn't need to change its approach for 2016.
The former F1 World Champion believes the team has made vast improvements since he re-joined the Maranello-based squad in 2014 and has paid huge credit to the work the team has achieved both on track and at its factory.
Even though Ferrari has lost out to Mercedes in both the Constructors' and Drivers' championships once again this year, Raikkonen is optimistic for next season as he looks to generate momentum over the final three races, starting this weekend at the Mexican Grand Prix, to carry into the winter period.
"I think we've gone forward in many areas, even if the results in the last two races were pretty bad," Raikkonen said. "I think we know where we are and have to do a better job with no mistakes. I don't think we need to do anything different from what we've been doing so far as we've been doing a great job as a team so far.
"We're going in the right direction, we're going to give our maximum in this final three races, and then put all the effort over the winter to prepare for next year. Obviously we'll have a new car, it will be a different year but we just have to stick to our plans and continue going in the direction we've been heading to."
Since Maurizio Arrivabene took over as team principal and Sebastian Vettel joined the Finnish driver as his team-mate, Raikkonen says Ferrari is an enjoyable team to work with again and after a productive 2015 in which he has closed the gap to Mercedes next year will be when Ferrari launches its full assault back towards F1 domination.
"In many ways it is a changed team. It's a nice place to be, again, things have changed a lot, some people have changed too but it's a very solid team, the atmosphere is good and, obviously, the results help," Raikkonen explained. "We all know why we are here, we want to fight for championships and win races and we're happier when things are better but, as Ferrari, we're still not where we want to be and hopefully next year we can be there.
"But who knows? We will only know when we put the new cars in the circuit next year, but Ferrari is a great place to be and the team is being run in a very nice way. I think everybody appreciates in the team where we got to in a very short period of time."SANTA CLARA — A San Jose woman will receive a $6.7 million settlement from the city of Santa Clara after her leg was broken trying to prevent police officers from entering her home without a warrant to arrest her teenage daughter last year, her attorney and the city announced Wednesday.
The settlement resolves a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed on behalf of Danielle Burfine, who was injured on April 12, 2016 at her home in the Rose Garden neighborhood of San Jose. She refused entry to Santa Clara officers who identified her 15-year-old daughter as one of two suspects in the arson of a snack shack at Santa Clara High School eight days earlier that caused $350,000 in damage.
A Santa Clara police sergeant kicked in the front door and at some point Burfine, whose last name was Harmon when the lawsuit was filed last year, fell to the the ground — the sides disagree on whether she was thrown — and her leg hit a stone pillar. Her daughter was later located upstairs in the home and arrested, and later convicted in the arson.
On Wednesday, attorney Michael Haddad released body-camera footage recorded by one of the responding officers, and it depicts Burfine screaming in pain for most of the 12-minute video. Haddad added that Burfine developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic pain condition he said “is likely to be permanently disabling.”
“This shocking video shows obvious excessive force, wrongful entry without a warrant, and extreme callousness as Danielle broke her ankle and cried in pain,” Haddad said.
The Santa Clara City Council approved the settlement Tuesday.
“Although there was significant disagreement about the extent of the injury, there was no dispute that the plaintiff sustained a broken ankle in the course of the entry to the plaintiff’s home without a warrant,’’ City Attorney Brian Doyle said in a statement. “The city’s insurer determined that the most prudent course of action was for it to pay an amount that would result in settlement.”
The defendants in the federal lawsuit were the city of Santa Clara, Chief Michael Sellers, officers Mark Shimada, Mitchell Barry and Peter Stephens, Sergeant Gregory Hill and Detective Greg Deger, as well as 10 unnamed people.
The city challenged the extent of Burfine’s injuries, saying in a statement that it had “compelling evidence” to dispute her disability but that the settlement precludes it from being revealed. However, the city news release makes mention that sometime around the police encounter, Burfine’s daughter shoved her down the stairs at the home.
Sellers defended his officers’ conduct, and lamented not being able to exonerate his officers at trial.
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/27/santa-clara-pays-6-7-million-to-woman-injured-resisting-warrantless-police-entry/fund that invests in distressed assets
Not to be confused with venture capitalists, also known as "venture funds".
A vulture fund is a hedge fund, private equity fund or distressed debt fund, that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed securities.[1] Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a discounted price on a secondary market and then using numerous methods to gain a larger amount than the purchasing price. Debtors include companies, countries, and individuals.
Vulture funds have had success in bringing attachment and recovery actions against sovereign debtor governments, usually settling with them before realizing the attachments in forced sales. Settlements typically are made at a discount in hard or local currency or in the form of new debt issuance. In one instance involving Peru, such a seizure threatened payments to other creditors of the sovereign obliger.[2][3]
History [ edit ]
Sovereign debt collection was rare until the 1950s when sovereign immunity of government issuers started to become restricted.[4] This trend developed from the long history of sovereign defaulting on commercial creditors with impunity. Accordingly, sovereign debt collection actions began in the 1950s. One example was the freezing of Brazil's gold reserves held by the Federal Reserve.[5]
Investment in sovereign debt with the intent to recover was also restricted due to the laws of champerty and maintenance and by the fact that most sovereign debt was syndicated. Under the Doctrines of Champerty, it was illegal in England and the United States to purchase a debt with the sole intent of litigating it.[6] The distinction was made that if the debt was purchased to effect a recovery or facilitate investment, the doctrine was not a bar. Most jurisdictions have now eliminated the doctrine as archaic.
Similarly, sovereign debt owed to commercial creditors in the late 1980s was principally held by bank syndicates. This was the result of the petrodollar crisis of the 1970s when oil earnings were recycled into bank loans. The syndication of debt among banks made recovery impractical, as a fund intending to litigate had to buy out the entire syndicate of holders or risk having the proceeds of litigation attached pursuant to sharing clauses in the loan agreements.
As the 1980s progressed, debt rescheduling efforts in Latin America created many new and easily traded instruments such as Brady bonds that brought new players into the market, including banks and hedge funds. The original creditors then wrote down their positions and sold the debt into the secondary market, which is a market consisting of banks and investment funds focused on buying at discounts to achieve above market returns on their investment.
In this process, much debt was repurchased and converted into local currency by the sovereign country issuers in official debt conversion programs designed to attract investment, and in severely indebted countries through World Bank funded buy-backs. The result is that the old syndicates were broken up and many unreconstructed syndicate "tails" were available for purchase at discounts exceeding 80% of the principal face value. That pricing encouraged funds to invest in recovery actions, which would not otherwise make financial sense due to their length and cost.
Corporation law and theory of finance [ edit ]
Businesses that need more capital than their founders can raise by personal contacts are enabled by this legal method of attracting investors to buy a portion of the business. Owners would invest capital and obtain common stock or equity in exchange for invested cash or other property like machines, factories, warehouses, patents or other interests. Then the owners would raise additional capital by borrowing from lenders in capital markets by selling bonds. In corporation law, the owners of these bonds come first in line for repayment so that if there is not sufficient funds to repay the bondholders, the stockholders get wiped out. The bondholders step into the shoes of the former shareholders. The shareholders own nothing because they, the owners, could not fully repay all the contractual promises, or loans. So like a bank (the mortgagee) that has lent money to a home buyer (the mortgagor) takes possession of the security (the home) when mortgage payments are not made (i.e. foreclosure), the bondholders of a corporation take possession of the business from the former owners (the shareholders) when the corporation falls into bankruptcy. Thus, when shareholders cannot repay bondholders, in principle, bondholders become the new shareholders. In practice, however, it is more complicated.[7][8]
In the financial markets, the bonds of troubled public companies trade in a manner similar to common stock of solvent companies.
Viewpoints [ edit ]
Term "vulture fund" [ edit ]
The term "vulture fund" is a metaphor which is used to compare these particular hedge funds to the behaviour of vulture birds “preying” on debtors in financial distress by purchasing the now-cheap credit on a secondary market to make a large monetary gain, in many cases leaving the debtor in a worse state. The term is often used to criticize the fund for strategically profiting off of debtors that are in financial distress, and thus is frequently considered derogatory.[9][10][11] However financiers dealing with vulture funds argue that "their lawsuits force accountability for national borrowing, without which credit markets would shrivel, and that their pursuit of unpaid commercial debt uncovers public corruption."[12] A related term is "vulture investing", where certain stocks in near bankrupt companies are purchased upon anticipation of asset divestiture or successful reorganization.[13]
The term has gained wide acceptance from governments, newspapers, academics and international organizations such as the World Bank, Group of 77, Organisation of American States and Council on Foreign Relations, among others.[14][15][16][17][18]
Legislation [ edit ]
In 2009, bipartisan legislation in the US Congress was introduced aimed to prevent Vulture funds from profiting on defaulted sovereign debt by capping the amount of profit that a secondary creditor can win through litigation based on those debts. The Stop VULTURE Funds Act was introduced, but not passed, in the United States.[19] A non-profit financial reform organization, Jubilee USA Network, supported the legislation citing the impact that vulture funds have on poor countries.[20] Similar legislation was passed in the United Kingdom,[14] Belgium,[21][22] Jersey,[23] the Isle of Man,[24] Australia.[not in citation given][25] The States of Guernsey debated legislation in 2012.[26]
Financial institutions [ edit ]
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank noted that Vulture funds endanger the gains made by debt relief to poorest countries. "The Bank has already delivered more than $40 billion in debt relief to 30 of these countries...thanks to this, countries like Ghana can provide micro-credit to farmers, build classrooms for their children, and fund water and sanitation projects for the poor," wrote World Bank Vice President Danny Leipziger in 2007. "Yet the activities of vulture funds threaten to undermine such efforts... the strategies adopted by vulture funds divert much needed debt relief away from the poorest countries on earth and into the bank accounts of the wealthy."[16]
Governmental and non-governmental organisations [ edit ]
The conduct of the vulture funds blocking payments to other creditors to Argentina was denounced by the Organisation of American States, with the exception of the United States and Canada.[17] The G77+China also criticised the funds and stated: "Some recent examples of the actions by vulture funds before international courts show their highly speculative nature. These funds pose a danger for all the future process of debt swaps, for developing countries and for developed nations as well".[15]
The US-based Council on Foreign Relations questioned the US Supreme Court for rejecting Argentina's appeal in its legal dispute with the so-called vulture funds. The organization claimed that such actions make it "more difficult for countries to free themselves from the burden of over-indebtedness" and are " very bad for international capital markets", as well as being a huge blow to national sovereignty. The organization described Thomas Griesa's ruling against Argentina in favour of vulture funds as "punishing the innocent" and "turning the natural order of debt on its head".[18]
United Kingdom [ edit ]
In 2002, the British Chancellor (and later Prime Minister) Gordon Brown told the United Nations that when vulture funds purchase debt at a reduced price, and make a profit from suing the debtor country to recover the full amount owed, the outcome is "morally outrageous".[27] Legislation passed in 2010 removed the ability of vulture funds to use UK courts to enforce contested debts.[28]
United Nations [ edit ]
On 9 September 2014, the United Nations General Assembly voted to support a new bankruptcy process for sovereign nations, which would promote debt restructuring by excluding so-called "vulture funds" from the process. The vote was 124-11 in favor, with 41 abstentions. The United States voted against the measure.[29][30]
Ireland [ edit ]
In October 2016, the Irish State closed tax loopholes that U.S. distressed debt funds (labeled "vulture funds" in the Irish media),[31][32] advised by IFSC tax-law firms (e.g. Matheson),[33] had exploited to avoid Irish taxes (capital gain, withholding tax and VAT/duty)[34][35][36][37] on over €80 billion of Irish distressed assets.[38] The affair caused a national scandal in Ireland,[39][40] and led to public backlash against the activities of US distressed debt funds,[41][42] and particularly when it was discovered that they had used children's charities controlled by Irish tax-law firms to mask their Section 110 SPV tax vehicles.[43][44]
The Irish State did not prosecute the "vulture funds" for tax avoidance, and in February 2018 the Central Bank of Ireland created a new structure the L-QIAIF, which does not file public accounts, which was how the scandal was uncovered, into which the "vulture funds" transferred over €55 billion of assets (one-quarter of Irish 2018 GNI*).[45] On 28 December 2018, the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, praised the activity of "vulture funds" in Ireland to the Irish Times newspaper.[46]
See also [ edit ]A signaculum was a lead "dog tag" in a leather pouch carried by Roman soldiers around their neck. It seems to have had personal details (acting to identify a body the same way a modern dog tag does) with a seal or stamp to authenticate it.
Similar items for identifying civilian goods and equipment have been found as well. Signacula of this variety were not discs that were carried on one's person as with the Roman army equivalent, but are more like modern-day product labels, giving information on the item's manufacturer and affiliates.[1]
History [ edit ]
Although the origins of exactly when or why the Roman army decided to use the signaculum for their soldiers are not clear, there are, regardless, references to its use in some historical documents, which indicate its composition (lead), as well as the fact that it is given after it is determined a man is fit to serve the legion. In a document from 295, Maximilian of Tebessa, an early Christian martyr, is being recruited as an officer in the Roman army against his wishes:
When he was being got ready, Maximilianus replied: 'I cannot serve as a soldier. I cannot do evil. I am a Christian.' Dio the proconsul replied, 'Let him be measured.' When he had been measured, his height was read out by an equerry, 'He is five feet, ten inches.' Dio said to the equerry, 'Give him the signaculum.' Maximilianus resisted and replied, 'I do not do so. I cannot serve as a soldier. I am a Christian. I do not accept the signaculum of the secular world, and if you give me the signaculum, I will break it, because it has no validity. I cannot carry a piece of lead around my neck after the sign of my Lord. 'Dio said,'Remove his name.'[2]
Other forms [ edit ]
Labels
Signaculum also describes the stamps on some Roman Imperial goods, and are used to identify the manufacturer and/or other pertinent facts about the item.
Mark of slaves
Slaves were also known to wear dog tags on their person, typically in the form of an unremovable metal collar that would be inscribed with messages such as:
If you find this slave, he has run away. Please return him to his owner at the following address. You will be rewarded.
These, along with branding and tattooing, were common ways for Roman slaves to be separated from the rest of the Roman social system, and easily punishable should they make their escape.
Stamps
It is possible that signacula that were carried by domestic workers were used as stamps to record usage of tools, and debts from one to another.[3]
Replacement by the soldier's mark [ edit ]
There is some evidence suggesting that by the time of the late Roman army, it became common practice to instead give soldiers that were found to be fit for service in the legion, an indelible Soldier's Mark; possibly to discourage desertion by making any former or deserting soldiers clearly identifiable in the public.
In De Re Militari (AD 390), one of the few writings of Roman military writer Vegetius Renatus, it is stated that, after the initial selection process, a recruit is then placed through a four-month testing period to ensure his physical capability.
many, though promising enough in appearance, are found very unfit upon trial. These are to be rejected and replaced by better men; for it is not numbers, but bravery which carries the day. After their examination, the recruits should then receive the military mark, and be taught the use of their arms by constant and daily exercise.[4]Bank stocks were murdered today, but why shouldn't they be? They are capital impaired, still hiding questionable assets off their balance sheets. All of them hide behind postponement of mark-to-market rules that would show one thing if enforced: they are bankrupt.
Citigroup Down 17% on the Day, 42% on the Year
click on any chart for sharper image
JP Morgan Down 7% on the Day, 17% on the Year
Wells Fargo Down 7% on the Day, 23% on the Year
Bank of America Down 17% on the Day, 50% on the Year
Those are intraday snapshots, actual results on the close will vary.
It's high time the market take Fed comeuppance, analyst bullshill, and bank CEO arrogance to task, and today the market did.
For the last two years banks should have been raising capital. Instead they wanted to start or increase dividends.
Now they are going to have to raise capital while trading at 52 week lows, some down 50% or so on the year. Good luck with that.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post ListWith the Guardian’s unstoppable rise to global dominance** we at Guardian US thought we’d run a series of articles for fans wishing to improve their knowledge of the sport’s history and storylines, hopefully in a way that doesn’t patronise you to within an inch of your life. A warning: If you’re the kind of person that finds The Blizzard too populist this may not be the series for you.
** Actual dominance may not be global. Or dominant
When Arsenal won the 1990-91 league title, with Liverpool nine points behind them but a further seven ahead of third-placed Crystal Palace, it felt like a reinforcement of the modern-day order. The previous time both sides had finished outside the top two was 1981; the intervening years had bred a legend that would resonate for decades and, for supporters cutting their football teeth in the seasons either side of Italia 90, the significance of their meetings was in little doubt. Arsenal v Liverpool, Liverpool v Arsenal – it was the top flight’s hottest ticket.
It is still a pretty warm one and whatever happens when they play at the Emirates on Friday may have a lasting impact on this term’s jostle for the Champions League places. Last season’s fixture certainly did: had Liverpool not won a topsy-turvy encounter 4-3 on the opening weekend, Arsenal would have snatched fourth place ahead of them and avoided an autumn of second-string strolls against Bate Borisov. They are fighting for similar spoils now and it remains a big deal – just not as big as it used to be.
Yet the allure persists and that is because history, its remembering and its reviewing, plays as big a part as anything in making the Premier League what it is. If nothing about Arsenal v Liverpool has quite been the same since 1991 it is because, in the first instance, the Merseyside club declined rapidly after that – only occasionally finding themselves in the title mix while Arsenal, invigorated by Arsène Wenger, became the most exciting side seen in the Premier League’s first dozen years. Arsenal’s own slow drift since 2006 has, essentially, meant the two generally meet halfway – on the fringes of any battle for top spot.
They remember all too well the night when they did meet for the highest stakes of all. Simply google the date, 26 May 1989, and the most visible entry tells the tale. That is how deeply Liverpool 0-2 Arsenal, and Michael Thomas’s dramatic late decider for the Gunners, are etched into football folklore and into wider sporting culture, too. No English top-flight season has ever had an ending of remotely comparable drama. “I don’t even like watching my goal in case Ray Houghton tackles me,” Thomas said later. Millions more do, though, and the moment had huge ramifications: in a dark period for football, coming six weeks after the Hillsborough disaster and almost exactly four years after the Heysel tragedy that saw English clubs banned from European competition, here was a shaft of light for what the sport itself could be.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 26 May 1989: Liverpool’s Steve McMahon is tackled by Michael Thomas of Arsenal. Photograph: Mark Leech/Getty Images
More prosaically, it was the latest in a line of decisive meet-ups that saw Arsenal came out on top. Although Liverpool broadly had a stranglehold on English football from 1973 until that night in ’89, the London club could point to the 1971 FA Cup final, when a young Charlie George scored an extra-time winner from 20 yards. His celebration, lying flat on the Wembley turf with his arms aloft, has never left minds of a certain vintage. A little less visually profound, although the black and white footage can be located easily enough, is Arsenal’s 2-0 cup final win in 1950 – brought about by two goals from Reg Lewis. The photograph of Joe Mercer, the Arsenal captain, held aloft by team-mates has its own fond place in the club’s hearts and minds.
Arsenal, then, had the show-stopping moments in an opening century of skirmishes that began in 1893. Back then Arsenal were, of course, based in Woolwich and they were roundly beaten 5-0 at home in the first-ever encounter. That fixture took place in the old second division; there was no top-flight meeting until 1905 but neither club has spent much time away from the upper reaches since them and, as a remarkable total of 223 meetings suggests, there are few more reliable or long-standing rivalries at such a high level in the sport.
Liverpool hold the head-to-head record for victories – 86 v 78 – but the ones that resonate most for them came after the turn of the millennium. In 2001 Arsenal were 1-0 up and poised for a third FA Cup final against their adversaries when, from nowhere, Michael Owen popped up with two clinically-taken goals in the last seven minutes. It felt all the sweeter for Liverpool, and the more gutting for Arsenal, that their centre-back Stephane Henchoz had not been penalised for an earlier handball on the goal line. Arsenal had finished runners-up in the league to Manchester United, with Liverpool third, and would go one better in both competitions the following year.
There was more to come in 2008, when Liverpool scored twice at the death to settle a thrilling Champions League quarter-final at Anfield. They won 5-3 on aggregate, serving up another reminder that the one part of Liverpool’s success Arsenal cannot really touch is their far superior level of success in Europe. High-scoring affairs have become commonplace in recent years: the Andrey Arshavin-inspired 4-4 in 2009 is perhaps the most notable but Liverpool’s 5-1 win in 2014 and a 4-1 Arsenal success a year later also stand out.
Nobody would bet against the goals flowing again on Friday. The memories surely will too and, beneath it all, there will be a mutual respect between two clubs whose relationship has been friendly and sporting. What they would both give, though, to be fighting for a place at the head of the table – rather than merely a seat at it.— The past few months have been full of change at The Economist. In January, Zanny Minton Beddoes was appointed the magazine’s new editor after her predecessor, John Micklethwait, left for Bloomberg. In November, The Economist launched Espresso, a daily news digest delivered via email or a dedicated app, which has been downloaded more than 600,000 times. And it’s been reported that the magazine is looking at expanding into China and India to reach new readers. The Financial Times reported that The Economist’s paid circulation fell last year for the first time in at least 15 years — but the magazine’s digital and print circulation is still 1.5 million, a 64 percent increase over the past decade.
With these developments in mind, I spoke with Economist deputy editor Tom Standage, who oversees the magazine’s digital efforts, at his office at the newspaper’s London headquarters. Here’s a condensed and lightly edited transcript of our discussion, covering everything from The Economist’s digital efforts to the state of online media in general.
Joseph Lichterman: It seems like it’s been a busy few months for you at The Economist, especially with the launch of Espresso. How does that fit into how you’re thinking about digital?
Tom Standage: There are a number of big trends at the moment. The starting point is that we do see digital as an opportunity — because what we do, what our mission is, does not depend on the medium with which you deliver it. And I know everyone says that, but in our case it really is true, because what we actually sell is what I like to call the feeling of being informed when you get to the very end. So we sell the antidote to information overload — we sell a finite, finishable, very tightly curated bundle of content. And we did that initially as a weekly print product. Then it turns out you can take that same content and deliver it through an app. : There are a number of big trends at the moment. The starting point is that we do see digital as an opportunity — because what we do, what our mission is, does not depend on the medium with which you deliver it. And I know everyone says that, but in our case it really is true, because what we actually sell is what I like to call the feeling of being informed when you get to the very end. So we sell the antidote to information overload — we sell a finite, finishable, very tightly curated bundle of content. And we did that initially as a weekly print product. Then it turns out you can take that same content and deliver it through an app. The “you’ve got to the end and now you’ve got permission to go do something else” is something you never get. You can never finish the Internet, you can never finish Twitter, and you can never really finish The New York Times, to be honest. So at its heart is that we have this very high density of information, and the promise we make to the reader is that if you trust us to filter and distill the news, and if you give us an hour and a half of your time — which is roughly how long people spend reading The Economist each week — then we’ll tell you what matters in the world and what’s going on. And if you only read one thing, we want to be the desert-island magazine. And our readers, that’s what they say. So that’s the starting point. The word “print” and the word “digital” don’t appear in there. This is a model that works in print and you can apply it to digital. And it is working — this is a product that does just as well in a digital world. What we did with Espresso was instead of doing that in a weekly cadence, we should be doing it in a daily cadence. So Espresso is again meant to be the daily desert-island briefing. And there are a lot of these news daily briefings around, but what we wanted to be was forward-looking — to give you the feeling of being ahead of the news, “this is what’s coming up today, and look out for this.” Another aspect of it is — and I get all the morning briefings, Sentences, the FT one, and Quartz’s, and the rest of them — is that we don’t do links. The reason that we don’t do links, again, if you want to get links you can get them from other people. You can go on Twitter and get as many as you like. But the idea was everything that you need to know is distilled into this thing that you can get to the end of, and you can get to the end of it without worrying that you should’ve clicked on those links in case there was something interesting. So we’ve clicked on the links already and we’ve decided what’s interesting, and we’ve put it in Espresso. That’s the same that we do in the weekly as well — we’re not big on linking out. And it’s not because we’re luddites, or not because we don’t want to send traffic to other people. It’s that we don’t want to undermine the reassuring impression that if you want to understand Subject X, here’s an Economist article on it — read it and that’s what you need to know. And it’s not covered in links that invite you to go elsewhere. We’ll link to background, and we’ll link to things like white papers or scientific papers and stuff like that. The idea of a 600-word science story that explains a paper is that you only need to read the 600-word science story — you don’t actually have to fight your way through the paper. There is a distillation going on there. That’s a big thing that we’re focusing on. How else can we apply the same values — which is the distillation and the finishability, the trend-spotting and the advocacy — how else can we apply them to new areas? So we have various things that are on the boil. As has been reported, we’re looking at foreign-language editions. It’s not quite editions, because we’re taking a slightly different approach to it. We haven’t said exactly what we’re doing there, but that’s very much something that digital distribution allows us to do. To do The Economist in Japanese every week would be very difficult to translate quickly, and then to print and distribute it would be very expensive. But suddenly to do a foreign language edition through an app is much more feasible. So that’s something we’re looking at. Another area I’m looking at in a big way is video, and what are the new models for video. There’s going to be an answer from us shortly as well. We’ve tried lots of different models over the years, and video is a particular challenge for us because there are lots of things about it that don’t line up with our brand terribly easily — just basic things like the anonymity and so on. And you can’t scan it like you can scan text quickly. We’ll have another stab at that with a new venture that’s on the way. Ultimately, I think what’s interesting about the current environment is that there is an awful amount of froth around. There are an awful lot of news organizations that are being funded with VC money, and the VCs have persuaded themselves that because the news organizations use software, they’re a bit like tech companies and can be valued like tech companies. I don’t think it’s true, and I think an awful lot of these companies seem to have business models that are dependent on advertising, and I don’t think it’s going to work. So I think there’s going to be a shakeout. In the meantime, it’s good for us and it’s bad for us. It’s good for us because there’s lots of interesting stuff being tried that venture money is funding — so there’s a lot of innovation going on. And that’s kind of interesting, because we can say: “Oh, that’s quite interesting what they’re doing — why don’t we try it?” It’s bad because we have to compete with those organizations — which basically have infinite money and aren’t required to make profits — for talent. Relatively speaking, we were able to steal talent from other news organizations for the past decade because we were profitable and they weren’t. With a few exceptions obviously — Bloomberg and such. Our relative health was good. Now we face these big very deep pocketed venture-backed rivals, so that makes it a bit harder for us. Essentially their model — a lot of seem to be reliant on “eventually we hope AOL or Yahoo will buy us, and then it’s their problem if we don’t make any money.” So they’re doing some really good journalism, but I think there’s a problem there. The two that are different, I think, are BuzzFeed and Vice, and that’s because they have a fundamentally different model. They’re really agencies with a news organization wrapped around them. Superficially, they look like news organizations, but they’re using the news organization to establish the credibility and the reach for the agency. I have no problem with that model — I think it’s a very good one, and I think we can learn from it. To me, they really are a new beast, and maybe that is the new model. But I think the old “Let’s build a website, we’ll put a lot of ads on it, and that will pay for the journalism” — I’m not sure that’s going to work. And I think the newspapers that are trying to switch to that model aren’t going to make it work either. The amazing thing about The Guardian poll is that it tells you what the turnout is, which tells you what the overall staff level is, and it’s 964 people. That’s a very, very, very large newsroom. If they think they’re going to fund that with online advertising, I think they’re wrong. They’re going to have to increase their revenues extraordinarily and that doesn’t seem to be happening. Obviously, The Guardian is a special case — they’ve got their sort of trust fund, and so victory for them is only losing £30 million per year. But even so, that looks like a very large number of people to support with a very tenuous business model. Anyway, we don’t need to go into the survival of The Guardian, but an awful lot of these questions come back to: What are they smoking? But I suppose I was quite surprised even with Quartz — and I like Quartz very much, but to launch a new news organization in 2012 with a business model that’s predicated on advertising, I raise my eyebrows, I suppose. The Information, meanwhile, subscription based, I can kind of see that, |
, since A stands for the parameter type of Option, we have:
in the first case “make sure that Option[Int] is a subtype of Option[B] ”
is a subtype of ” in the second case “make sure that Int is a subtype of Option[B] ”
Obviously, Option[Int] can be a subtype of an Option[B], where B = Int (or B = AnyVal, or B = Any ). On the flip side, there is just no way Int can be a subtype of Option[B], whatever B might be. So the recipe works, and therefore the constraint works.
To get the hang of it, let’s look at another nice use case, toMap on Traversable :
def toMap[K, V](implicit ev: A <:< (K, V)): Map[K, V]
Translated into English: you can convert a Traversable to a Map with toMap, but only if the element type is a tuple (K, V). This makes sense, because a Map can be seen as a collection of key/value tuples. It wouldn’t make great sense to create a Map just out of a sequence of 5 Int s, for example.
Similar rationales apply to the few other uses of <:< in the standard library, which all come down to constraining methods to work with a specific contained type only.
In light of these examples, I find that applying this recipe is easy, even though the syntax is a bit funny. But I can think of a few questions:
Can’t we just use type bounds which I thought existed to enforce this kind of type constraints? If this is a pattern rather than a built-in feature, why does <:< look so much like an operator? Does the compiler have special support for it? How does this whole thing even work? Is there an easier ways to achieve the same result?
Let’s look into each of these questions in order.
Question 1: Can’t we just use type bounds?
Lower and upper bounds
Type bounds cover lower bounds and upper bounds. These are well explained in the book Programming in Scala, so I won’t cover the basics here, but I will present some perspective on how they work.
As a reminder, lower and upper bounds are expressed with builtin syntax: >: and <: (spec). You can read:
T >: U as “type T is a supertype of type U ” or “type T has type U as lower bound”
as “type is a supertype of type ” or “type has type as lower bound” T <: U as “type T is a subtype of type U ” or “type T has type U as upper bound”
A puzzler
Let’s consider the following:
scala> def tuple[T, U](t: T, u: U) = (t, u) tuple: [T, U](t: T, u: U)(T, U)
My tuple function simply returns a tuple of the two values passed, whatever their types might be. Granted, it’s not very useful!
What are T and U? They are type variables: they stand for actual types that will be decided at each call site (each use of the function in the source code). Here both T and U are abstract: we don’t know what they will be when we write the function. For example we don’t say that U is a Banana, which would be a concrete type.
If we pass String and Int parameters, we get back a tuple (String, Int) in the Scala REPL:
scala> tuple("Lincoln", 42) res1: (String, Int) = (Lincoln,42)
Now let’s consider the following modification, which is a naive attempt at enforcing type constraints with type bounds:
def tupleIfSubtype[T <: U, U](t: T, u: U) = (t, u)
I know, it’s starting to be like an alphabet (and symbol) soup! But let’s stay calm: the only change is that instead of specifying just T as type parameter, we specify T <: U, which means “ T must be a subtype of U ”.
The intent of tupleIfSubtype is to return a tuple of the two values passed, like tuple above, but fail at compile time if the first value is not a subtype of the second value.
So does the newly added constraint work? Do you think that the compiler will accept to compile this?
tupleIfSubtype("Lincoln", 42)
Before knowing better, I would have thought that the compiler:
would decide that T = String
would decide that U = Int
see the type constraint T <: U, which translates into String <: Int
, which translates into fail compilation because obviously, String is not a subtype of Int
But it turns out that this actually compiles just fine!
How can this be? Is the constraint not considered? Is it a bug in the compiler? A weird edge case? Bad language design? Or maybe, with T <: U, the U is not the same as the second U in the type parameter section? This can quickly be proven false:
scala> def tupleIfSubtype[T <: V, U](t: T, u: U) = (t, u) <console>:7: error: not found: type V def tupleIfSubtype[T <: V, U](t: T, u: U) = (t, u)
So the two U s are, as seemed to make sense intuitively, bound to each other (they refer to the same type).
The answer to this puzzler turns out to be relatively simple: it has to do with the way type inference works, namely that type inference solves a constraint system (spec).
What happens is that yes, I do pass String and Int, but it doesn’t follow that T = String and U = Int. Instead, the effective T and U are the result of the compiler working its type inference algorithm, given:
the types of the parameters we actually pass to the function,
the constraints expressed in the type parameter section,
and, in some cases, the expression’s return type.
If I write:
scala> def tuple[T, U](t: T, u: U) = (t, u) tuple: [T, U](t: T, u: U)(T, U) scala> tuple("Lincoln", 42) res3: (String, Int) = (Lincoln,42)
then yes: T = String and U = Int because there are no other constraints. But when I introduce an upper bound, there is a constraint, and therefore a constraint system. The compiler resolves it and obtains T = String and U = Any :
scala> def tupleIfSubtype[T <: U, U](t: T, u: U) = (t, u) tupleIfSubtype: [T <: U, U](t: T, u: U)(T, U) scala> tupleIfSubtype("Lincoln", 42) res4: (String, Any) = (Lincoln,42)
We can verify that the resulting types satisfy the constraints:
String is a String of course
is a of course Int is a subtype of Any
is a subtype of String is also a subtype of Any
Phew! So this makes sense. It’s “just” a matter of understanding how type inference works when type bounds are present.
In the process we have learned that <: and >:, when used with abstract type parameters, do not necessarily produce results which are very useful, because the compiler can easily infer Any (or AnyVal or AnyRef ) as solutions to the constraint system.
Question 2: Why does <:< look so much like an operator?
Lets dig a little deeper to understand how <:< works under the hood. Here is a simple type hierarchy used in the examples below:
trait Fruit class Apple extends Fruit class Banana extends Fruit
Parameter lists and type inference
Let’s start with a couple more things you need to know in Scala:
Functions can have more than one parameter list.
Type inference operates parameter list per parameter list from left to right.
In particular, an implicit parameter list can use types inferred in previous parameter lists.
So let’s write the solution, without necessarily understanding it fully yet:
def tupleIfSubtype[T, U](t: T, u: U)(implicit ev: T <:< U) = (t, u)
This function has two parameter lists:
(t: T, u: U)
(implicit ev: T <:< U)
Because type inference goes parameter list by parameter list, let’s start with the first one. You notice that there are no >: or <: type bounds! So:
T is whatever specific type t has (say T = Banana )
is whatever specific type has (say ) U is whatever specific type u has (say U = Fruit )
Infix types
Looking at the second parameter list, we have to clear a hurdle: what kind of syntax is T <:< U? This notation is called an infix type (spec). “Infix” just means that a type appears in the middle of two other types, the same way the + operator appears in the middle in 2 + 2. The type in the middle (the infix type proper) can be referred to a an infix operator. Instead of this operator being a method, as is the case in general in Scala, it is a type.
Let’s look at examples. You probably know types from the standard library such as:
Map[String, Fruit] Either[String, Boolean]
These exact same types can be written:
String Map Fruit String Either Boolean
The infix notation makes the parametrized type look like an operator, but an operator on types instead of values. Other than that, it’s just an alternate syntax, and really nothing to worry about!
So based on the above:
T <:< U
means the the same as:
<:<[T, U]
A symbolic type name
Now, what is a <:<? It’s a type: the same kind of stuff as Map or Either, in other words, typically a class or a trait. It’s just that this is a symbolic name instead of an alphabetic identifier like Map. It could as well have been called SubtypeOf, and maybe it should have been!
The implicit parameter
So once we reach the second (and implicit) parameter list:
(implicit ev: T <:< U)
we see that there is a parameter of type <:<, which itself has two type parameters, T and U. These are the same T and U we have in the first parameter list. They are bound to those, and these are known because type inference already did its magic on the first parameter list. Concretely, T is now assigned the type Banana and U the type Fruit!
What the implicit parameter list says is this: “Find me, somewhere in the implicit search path, an implicit val, def, or class of type <:< which satisfies <:<[T, U] ”. And because T and U are now known, we need to find an implicit match for <:<[Banana, Fruit].
The trick is to manage to have an implicit definition in scope which matches only if there is a subtype relationship between T and U. For example:
T U Compiler Happiness Level Banana Fruit happy Apple Fruit happy Int Anyval happy Apple Banana unhappy String Int unhappy
If we manage to create such an implicit definition, the constraint mechanism works. And we already know that the clever engineers who devised this have found a way to create such an implicit definition!
By the way, we can play with this in the REPL using the standard implicitly function, which returns an implicit value for the given type parameter if one is found:
implicitly[Banana <:< Fruit] // ok implicitly[Apple <:< Fruit] // ok implicitly[Int <:< Anyval] // ok implicitly[Apple <:< Banana] // not ok implicitly[String <:< Int] // not ok
To summarize, we now have a pretty good level of understanding and we know that:
we are talking about a library feature
which relies on an implicit parameter
with a funny symbolic type operator <:<.
And we also know that the magic that makes it all work lies in the search for a matching implicit definition: if it is found, the subtyping relationship holds, otherwise it doesn’t and the compiler reports and error.
Question 3: How does this whole thing even work?
We could stop here and be happy to use <:< like a recipe, as if it was a core language feature. But that wouldn’t be very satisfying, would it? After all, we still miss the deeper understanding of how that magic implicit is defined, and why an implicit search for it may or may not match it. So let’s keep going!
The implementation
Let’s look at the implementation of <:<, which we find in the Scala Predef object :
@implicitNotFound(msg = "Cannot prove that ${From} <:< ${To}.") sealed abstract class <:<[-From, +To] extends (From ⇒ To) with Serializable private[this] final val singleton_<:< = new <:<[Any, Any] { def apply(x: Any): Any = x } implicit def $conforms[A]: A <:< A = singleton_<:<.asInstanceOf[A <:< A]
Wow! Can we figure it out? Let’s try.
Which implicit?
Let’s think about a simpler case of implicit search:
def makeMeASandwich(implicit logger: Logger) =... implicit def findMyLogger: Logger =... val mySandwich = makeMeASandwich
The compiler, when you write makeMeASandwich without an explicit parameter, looks for an implicit in scope of type Logger. Here, the obvious matching implicit is findMyLogger, because it returns a Logger. So the compiler selects the implicit and in effect rewrites your code as:
val mySandwich = makeMeASandwich(findMyLogger)
The same mechanism is at work with implicit ev: T <:< U : the compiler must find an implicit of type T <:< U (or <:<[T, U] which is exactly the same). And there is only one implicit definition with type <:< -of-something in the whole standard library, which is:
implicit def $conforms[A]: A <:< A
Now there is a bit of a twist, because the implicit is of type <:<[A, A], with a single type parameter A, which in addition is abstract. Anyhow, this means that our function parameter ev of type <:<[T, U] must, somehow, “match” with <:<[A, A].
If we ask ourselves: what does it take for this implicit of type <:<[A, A] to be successfully selected by the compiler? The answer is that one should be able, for some type A to be determined, to pass a value of type <:<[A, A] to the parameter of type <:<[T, U]. Another way to say this is that <:<[A, A] must conform to <:<[T, U]. If we can’t do this, the implicit search will fail.
Variance
How does this conformance work? This takes us to the notion of variance, which is always a fun thing. Consider a Scala immutable Seq. It is defined as trait Seq[+A]. The little + says that if I require a Seq[Fruit], I can pass a Seq[Banana] just fine:
def takeFruits(fruits: Seq[Fruit]) =... takeFruits(Seq(new Banana))
This is called covariance (the subtyping of the type argument goes in the same direction as the enclosing type). Without the notion of covariance and contravariance (where subtyping of the type argument goes in the opposite direction as the enclosing type), you:
either can never write code like this (everything is invariant)
or you have an unsound type system
Besides collections, functions are another example where variance and contravariance matter. Say the following process function expects a single parameter, which is a function of one argument:
def process(f: Banana ⇒ Fruit)
I can of course pass to process a function with these exact same types:
def f1(f: Banana): Fruit = f process(f1)
But Scala’s support for subtyping also applies to functions: a function can be a subtype of another function. So I can pass a function with types different from Banana and Fruit without breaking expectations as long as the function:
takes a parameter which is a supertype of Banana
returns a value of a subtype of Fruit
For example:
def f2(f: Fruit): Apple = new Apple process(f2)
This is the magic of variance, and you can convince yourself that it makes sense from the point of view of the process function: expectations won’t be violated.
Functions are not a special case in Scala from this point of view: a function of one parameter is defined (in a simplified version) as a trait with the function parameter as contravariant and the result as covariant:
trait Function1[-From, +To] { def apply(from: From): To }
Putting everything together
After this detour in variance land, let’s get back to <:< and the implicit parameter. The implicit <:<[A, A] will conform to the parameter <:<[T, U] if it follows the variance rules. So what’s the variance on <:<[T, U] in Predef?
<:<[-From, +To]
This is the same as Function1[-From, +To] and in fact <:< extends Function1! So our problem comes down to the following question: if somebody requires a function:
T ⇒ U
what constraints must be satisfied so I can pass the following function:
A ⇒ A
With variance rules, we know it will work if:
A is supertype of T
is supertype of and A is subtype of U
Written in terms of bounds:
T <: A <: U
Which means of course that T <: U : T must be a subtype of U!
To summarize the reasoning: the only eligible implicit definition in scope which can possibly be selected by the compiler to pass to our function is selected if and only if T is a subtype of U! And that’s exactly what we were looking for!
You can look at this from a slightly more general angle, which is that a function A ⇒ A can only be passed to a function T ⇒ U if T is a subtype of U. You can in fact test the matching logic very simply with the built-in identity function:
val f: Banana ⇒ Fruit = identity // ok val f: Fruit ⇒ Banana = identity // not ok
The same works with $conforms, which returns an <:<, which is also an identity function:
val f: Banana ⇒ Fruit = $conforms // ok val f: Fruit ⇒ Banana = $conforms // not ok
So it is a neat trick that the library authors pulled off here, combining implicits and conformance of function types to implement constraint checking.
The nitty-gritty
The rest of the related code in Predef is about defining the actual <:< type and creating a singleton instance returned by def $conforms[A], because in case the implicit search matches, it must return a real value after all.
You could write it minimally (using <::< in these attempts so as to not clash with the standard <:< ):
sealed trait <::<[-From <: To, +To] extends (From ⇒ To) { def apply(x: From): To = x } implicit def $conforms[A]: A <::< A = new <::<[A, A] {}
But oops, the compiler complains:
scala> def tupleIfSubtype[T, U](t: T, u: U)(implicit ev: T <::< U) = (t, u) <console>:23: error: type arguments [T,U] do not conform to trait <::<'s type parameter bounds [-From <: To,+To] def tupleIfSubtype[T, U](t: T, u: U)(implicit ev: T <::< U) = (t, u)
The good news is that the following version, using an intermediate class, works:
sealed trait <::<[-From, +To] extends (From ⇒ To) final class $conformance[A] extends <::<[A, A] { def apply(x: A): A = x } implicit def $conforms[A]: A <::< A = new $conformance[A]
So this works great, with a caveat: every time you use my version of <::<, a new instance of the anonymous class is created. Since we just want an identity function, which works the same for all types and doesn’t hold state, it would be good to use a singleton so as to avoid unnecessary allocations. We could try using an object, since that’s how we do singletons in Scala, but that’s a dead-end because objects cannot take type parameters:
scala> implicit object Conforms[A] extends (A ⇒ A) { def apply(x: A): A = x } <console>:1: error: ';' expected but '[' found. implicit object Conforms[A] extends (A ⇒ A) { def apply(x: A): A = x }
So in the end the standard implementation cheats by creating an untyped singleton using Any, and casting to [A <:< A] in the implementation of $conforms. Here is my attempt, which works fine:
private[this] final object Singleton_<::< extends <::<[Any, Any] { def apply(x: Any): Any = x } implicit def $conforms[A]: A <::< A = Singleton_<::<.asInstanceOf[A <::< A]
The actual Scala implementation opts for using a val instead of an object (maybe to avoid the cost associated with an object’s lazy initialization):
private[this] final val singleton_<:< = new <:<[Any, Any] { def apply(x: Any): Any = x } implicit def $conforms[A]: A <:< A = singleton_<:<.asInstanceOf[A <:< A]
We are only missing one last bit:
@implicitNotFound(msg = "Cannot prove that ${From} <:< ${To}.") sealed abstract class <:<[-From, +To]...
This helps provide the user with a nice message when the implicit is not found. From a syntax perspective, it is a regular annotation, which applies to the abstract class <:<. The annotation is known by the compiler.
So here we are: the implementation is explained! It’s a bit trickier than it should be in order to prevent extra allocations. I confess that I am a bit disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be a way to avoid an instanceOf : even though it’s local to the implementation and therefore the lack of safety remains under control, it would be better if it could be avoided.
An implicit conversion
One thing you might wonder is what to do with the ev parameter. After all, a value must be passed to the function when the implicit is found (when it’s not found, the compiler blows up so ev doesn’t need an actual value).
A first answer is that you don’t absolutely need to use it. It’s there first so the compiler can check the constraint. That’s why it’s commonly called ev, for “evidence”: its presence stands there as a proof that something (an implicit) exists.
Nonetheless, ev must have a value. What is it? It’s the result of the $conforms[A] function, which is of course of type <:<[T, U]. And we have seen above that <:< extends T ⇒ U. So the result of $conforms[A] is a function, which takes an A and returns an A, that is, an identity function. And it not only returns a value of the same type A, but it actually returns the same value which was passed (that’s the idea of an identity function).
And you see that in the implementation:
def apply(x: Any): Any = x
It follows that ev has for value an identity function from T to U : it takes a value t of type T and returns that same value but with type U. This is possible, and makes sense, as we know that T is a subtype of U, otherwise the implicit wouldn’t have been found.
But there is more: ev is also an implicit conversion from T to U (from Banana to Fruit ). How so? Because it has the keyword implicit in front of it, that’s why!
To contrast with regular type bounds, if you write:
def tupleIfSubtype[T <: U, U](t: T, u: U) =...
the compiler knows that T is a subtype of U, thanks of the native semantic of <:. But with <:<, the compiler knows nothing of the sort based on the type parameter section.
However the presence of the implicit ev function makes it possible to use the value t of type T as a value of type U. The subtype relationship can be seen as an implicit conversion. This is much safer than using t.asInstanceOf[U]. You could also be extra-explicit and write:
ev(t)
So you can write:
def tToU[T, U](t: T, u: U)(implicit ev: T <:< U): U = t
or:
def tToU[T, U](t: T, u: U)(implicit ev: T <:< U): U = ev(t)
Without the implicit conversion, the compiler complains:
scala> def tToU[T, U](t: T, u: U): U = t <console>:10: error: type mismatch; found : t.type (with underlying type T) required: U def tToU[T, U](t: T, u: U): U = t
You can see how Option.flatten makes use of the ev() function:
def flatten[B](implicit ev: A <:< Option[B]): Option[B] = if (isEmpty) None else ev(this.get)
In summary, all these features fall together to produce something that makes a lot of sense and is useful.
Question 4: Is there an easier ways to achieve the same result?
There is at least one other way something like what <:< does can be achieved. The idea is that a method such as flatten does not need to be included on the base class or trait, in this case Option. Instead, Scala has, via implicit conversions, what in effect achieves extension methods (AKA the “extend my library” pattern).
So say that such an extension method is only available on values of type Option[Option[T]] :
implicit class OptionOption[T](val oo: Option[Option[T]]) extends AnyVal { def flattenMe: Option[T] = oo flatMap identity }
If we try to apply it to Some(Some(42)), the method is found and the flattening works:
scala> Some(Some(42)).flattenMe res0: Option[Int] = Some(42)
If we try to apply it to Some(42), the method is not found and the compiler reports an error:
scala> Some(42).flattenMe <console>:13: error: value flattenMe is not a member of Some[Int] Some(42).flattenMe
But I see a few differences with the <:< operator:
You need to create one implicit class for each type supporting a conversion. In the case of Option, for example, you need one implicit class taking an Option[Option[T] to support flatten, and another implicit class to support orNull. So this requires a bit more boilerplate than <:< per method.
, for example, you need one implicit class taking an to support, and another implicit class to support. So this requires a bit more boilerplate than per method. I am not sure whether there something similar to @implicitNotFound to report a better error in case of problem.
So why not do it this way? I think that a good case can be made that it is easier to understand in the case of the relatively simple examples we have seen so far.
UPDATE 2015–12–10: Somebody kindly pointed out that at the time generalized type constraints were implemented, Scala didn’t yet have value classes or implicit classes. Missing value classes meant boxing overhead when running extension methods, while missing implicit classes just meant more boilerplate. So using an implicit value class as I did above was not a great option at the time.
On the other hand, <:< is a more flexible library feature which you can reuse easily and even combine with other implicits, like in this example using Shapeless:
def makeJava[F, A, L, S, R](f: F)(implicit ftp: FnToProduct.Aux[F, L => S], ev: S <:< Seq[R], ffp: FnFromProduct[L => JList[R]] )
Finally, when using type bounds, the constraints expressed with <: and >: can only apply to the method type parameters (or class type parameters when they are used on a class). This is very useful, as we have seen. But when using <:<, you can constrain any two types in scope, and even impose multiple such constraints. Your imagination is the limit:
trait T[A, B] { type C type D def constrainTwoTraitParams (implicit ev: A <:< B) = () def constrainTraitParamAndTypeMember(implicit ev: A <:< C) = () def constrainTwoTypeMembers (implicit ev: C <:< D) = () def constrainMore[Y](c: Y) (implicit ev1: A <:< B, ev2: Y <:< C) = () } class C extends T[Banana, Fruit] { type U = Fruit type V = String }
You can even go further and constrain not only these types directly, but higher-order types, as in this (math- and symbol-heavy) example from Miles Sabin:
def size[T](t: T)(implicit ev: (¬¬[T] <:< (Int ∨ String))) =???
In this case, the constraint is not directly on the T type parameter, but on ¬¬[T].
This might be, after all, how the term “generalized type constraint” gets its name.
Perspectives
We have seen how regular type bounds:
behave when using abstract type parameters
but don’t work to actually enforce certain useful constraints.
We have also seen how we can use instead a generalized type constraint expressed with <:< :
to implement methods which can only be used when types are aligned in a certain way
and how <:< is not a built-in feature of the compiler, but instead a library feature implemented via a smart trick involving implicit search and type conformance.
Finally, we have considered:
how the simple use cases in the standard library could be implemented differently
but also how <:< is a more general tool.
So is <:< is worth it? Should it be part of the standard library, and should Scala developers learn it?
I think that the feature suffers from the fact that is is not properly documented, explained, and put in perspective. It also suffers from being a symbolic name with no agreed upon way to pronounce it!
The standard library uses of <:< could be replaced with “extension methods”, which would achieve the same result via Scala features which are easier to understand and familiar to most Scala programmers. I think that this argues against the presence of <:< in the standard library, especially at the level of Predef, and if this was introduced today, my inclination would be to recommend leaving it to third-party libraries such as Shapeless which actually benefit the most from this kind of advanced features.
On the plus side, when used <:< as a recipe, it is easy to understand and useful, and I can’t help but being impressed that generalized type constraints are implemented at the library level, and that they can emerge from powerful underlying language features such as type inference and implicits.
This is typical of Scala, and in line with the principle of Martin Odersky that it is better to keep the core language small when possible. So even though the explanation of how <:< works might seem a bit tricky, you can take comfort in thinking that in other languages this might be compiler code, not library code. But I also understand how some programmers might be bothered by all the machinery behind features like this.
As for me, I am keeping generalized type constraints in my toolbox, but I like seeing the feature as a gateway to a more in-depth understanding of Scala. I hope this post will help others along this path as well!
Did I get anything wrong? Please let me know!EXODUS 12:33-42
« Exodus 11 | Exodus 12 | Exodus 13 »
The Exodus
33 The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead.”
34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders.
35 The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing.
36 And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.
37 And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.
38 A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.
39 And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.
40 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.
41 At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.David Schulthise (September 16, 1956 – March 10, 2004), otherwise known as Dave Blood, was the bass guitarist for the punk band The Dead Milkmen. Schulthise was born in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. He helped form the band in 1983 along with fellow pseudonymous musicians Joe Jack Talcum, Dean Clean, and Rodney Anonymous. Prior to this he was a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Purdue University.[1]
He stopped playing music in 1995 after the band broke up as the result of developing tendinitis in both hands.[2]
Schulthise visited Yugoslavia while on tour with the Milkmen and became fascinated with Serbia, its culture and people. After the band disbanded, he enrolled at Indiana University to study Serbo-Croatian language, literature, and history. He moved to Serbia for work and study in 1998, but in the wake of the NATO bombing campaign there he was forced to return to the US.[3]
In late 2003, he told an interviewer that his favorite bassists were Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Johnny Gayden (Albert Collins Band) and Charles Mingus.[4]
Schulthise committed suicide by a drug overdose[5] on March 10, 2004, at age 47.[1]Kudos to Donald Trump for dragging the media spotlight to the flood-ravaged areas around Baton Rouge — and shaming President Obama into belatedly scheduling a visit, though not until next Tuesday.
Waters rising in the wake of record rainfalls have killed 13 Louisianians, displaced another 85,000-plus and damaged more than 40,000 homes.
It’s the worst disaster to hit the state since Hurricane Katrina — yet it garnered far less attention, from the media or the White House, until Trump announced his trip.
Trump is living up to his words in North Carolina the other night: “We are one nation. When one state hurts, we all hurt. We must all work together — to lift each other up.” Hours later, he and running mate Mike Pence were touring battered Baton Rouge.
That made the president look like a hypocrite. After all, as a presidential candidate back in 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama slammed George W. Bush as “a president who only saw people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground, trying to provide comfort and aid.”
Yet news of Louisiana’s fresh suffering wasn’t disrupting Obama’s annual golfing vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, beyond signing off on federal disaster aid.
Shades of August 2014: Soon after news broke of the ISIS beheading of American journalist James Foley, our president was spotted... playing a round of golf on his Vineyard vacation.
The White House later confessed this was “bad optics.” But the lesson clearly went unlearned until Trump and Pence went off to comfort the afflicted.
What of Hillary Clinton? She refuses to go, claiming the relief effort “can’t afford any distractions” but her “heart breaks for Louisiana.”
Of course, she was also silent until Trump announced his trip — forcing her to speak up lest anyone realize she’ll never feel the pain of any state she doesn’t expect to win in November.Handguns on display at a store in Uniondale, N.Y. (Reuters photo: Shannon Stapleton)
The Constitution may require states to recognize each other’s firearms permits.
It seems likely that Trump’s victory, coupled with the Republican majority in Congress, may soon bear fruit for many gun owners. Though the president-elect is more than a month away from taking office, reports are already circulating about legislation drafted by Representative Richard Hudson (R., N.C.) to require national reciprocity for concealed-carry permit holders — an idea Trump endorsed on the campaign trail. The bill would pave the way for concealed carriers licensed in one state to have their licenses recognized by other states that allow concealed carry. However, the Constitution may actually already require national reciprocity for the more basic right to keep a gun in the home — not because of the Second Amendment, but because of the constitutional right to travel.
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More than 40 years ago, in Shapiro v. Thompson, the Supreme Court struck down requirements that new entrants to a state establish residency for at least a year before being allowed to obtain certain welfare benefits, citing the fundamental right to travel within the country. In other words, states may not condition the right to move from state to state on the temporary surrender of certain benefits.
In today’s economy, it’s not unusual for citizens to live in multiple states over the course of their working lives. However, states often have different requirements that citizens must meet to exercise the right to keep a firearm in their home for self-defense. Some jurisdictions require them to obtain permits, which often can’t be obtained until after they have become residents. Indeed, in New York City, for example, a pistol-permit application must be submitted in person. So for citizens who become gun owners in one state but decide to move to another, the lack of reciprocity means that they must temporarily give up their ability to exercise their right to keep and bear arms in order to exercise their right to travel among the states.
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As such, viewing the Court’s recognition of an individual right to keep and bear arms in the home in D.C. v. Heller, together with its recognition of a right to travel free of undue burdens, raises an interesting question: Can states condition the exercise of the right protected in Shapiro on the temporary surrender of the right protected in Heller? If the answer is no, citizens should no longer have to sacrifice the security of their households in |
what it was for she would kill me. I wanted to tell but wisely didn’t.
She is still embarrassed but sometimes she will whisper to me that her period is a bit hard this month. I’m glad we had the party.
Anonymous
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 1970s UK Tampax magazine advert.
Afternoon tea
My period began in a music lesson, shortly after my 11th birthday. As soon as I got home that afternoon, I told my mother. “You’ll have to be very careful what you do with boys now,” she said. I puzzled silently over her words as I got to grips with safety pins, bloodied knickers and sanitary towels.
With Antonia, my own daughter, I keep the door to the bathroom and the door to conversation wide open. Two years ago, when she was nine, she said: “I want to have breasts, but I don’t want to have periods. It doesn’t look much fun, having to wear one of those eye-patch things on your fanny.”
Antonia’s first period started, like mine, in the autumn term, but a year earlier, when she was 10. On a sunny Saturday shortly afterwards, we had afternoon tea to celebrate, in a room at the back of a tiny shop crammed full of chocolate curiosities.
As we left to walk back up the hill, I thought of all the women who went before me: my mother, in a uniform serving in the second world war before she was 20. I thought of my grandmother, dead of breast cancer in her early 50s, and of my great-grandmother, who raised nine children and died at 91. Elizabeth Johnson
What about the Queen?
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 1970s UK Kotex magazine advert.
I am now nearly 72, but I remember my first period, which started when I was 10, vividly. Our house had only one lavatory, which was occupied at the time, so I had to use the chamber pot that was in the bedroom I shared with my sister. As I was about to push the chamber pot back under the bed, I noticed the dark red clots floating slowly to the bottom. There had been no previous warnings that this might happen, so I was very taken aback and knew that things were not quite right. I crouched there by the side of the bed and called for my mother. I was staggered to be told that from now on this was going to be a monthly occurrence. I remember asking her if the Queen and Mrs Michael (my Sunday school teacher at the time) had periods? On being informed that they did, I felt slightly better. Gwenda Ellis
Cosmopolitan past
Growing up in a children’s home in the 1970s meant that I was pretty naive about the facts of life. Yes – I’d watched the public education films in biology, but the images of teenage girls running through cornfields mystified me. As did the stern message that girls should not go swimming at their time of month and must change five times a day. I only discovered what a sanitary towel was when I was 12. Reading an old copy of Cosmopolitan, I was curious about an advert for sanitary towels. Feeling brave, I asked one of the younger members of staff what they were. Initially she laughed, as she thought I was joking. Then realising I was deadly serious, she gave me a huge hug, took me aside and explained in frank and honest terms that when I started my period I would bleed for days “down there”, so would have to wear protection. I gawped in disbelief then feeling hot with embarrassment at the thought of it all I skipped off to play, with a sense that I now had an enormous secret. Needless to say, when I started my period six months later I didn’t tell a single soul. I stole a packet of sanitary towels from my local chemist, as I felt too embarrassed to buy them, and forged a letter to get out of my swimming and PE lessons. It was a very lonely experience. Jan
Mum’s telepathy
My first period was a wonderful experience and in large part this is testament to my mother Shirley’s best qualities. I started age 11, when I had come home from school for lunch. My mother wasn’t in but when I phoned her she somehow knew what had happened without me having to say – a strange and comforting telepathy.
I remember feeling at once shocked, excited and warm inside – full of wonder at my body’s development and potential. Telling me that it was OK to stay at home for the rest of the day, Mum communicated that it was a significant, vulnerable and special time, and also that I would be all right.
She was a nurse before she became a mother, and her efficiency dealing with the messiness of humanity along with a very healthy body acceptance underpinned her handling of her only daughter’s burgeoning womanhood. As it turned out, my periods would cause me long-term suffering due to endometriosis but, 30 years on, my mum’s way of taking care of me that day is something I have never forgotten – it was a fantastic welcome to being a woman. Thank you, Mum. Elizabeth TurpWARREN, Maine — A 44-year-old Warren man who has been in jail since June after being accused of assaulting his wife was charged Thursday with promotion of prostitution. Police say he made hundreds of phone calls from jail to his wife encouraging her to have sex with other men and demanding half the money she earned.
After an undercover sting operation, Wendy Moody, 37, was arrested and charged Thursday with engaging in prostitution, possessing a usable amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, cultivating marijuana and violating a condition of release, according to Knox County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Tim Carroll.
She later was released on $400 cash bail.
Her husband, Curtis Moody, 44, also was charged Thursday at the jail with conspiracy relating to his wife’s alleged prostitution, the chief deputy said.
An affidavit filed by the sheriff’s office in Rockland District Court stated that the district attorney’s office became concerned that Curtis Moody was having contact with his wife. He is prohibited from contact with her after his arrest June 14 on a domestic violence assault charge. The couple used another name for her during jailhouse phone conversations.
The wife would not cooperate with investigators when they looked into his alleged violation of the no-contact provision, according to the affidavit.
The Knox County Jail then intercepted a letter on July 30 from Wendy Moody to her husband which outlined a website she was using to offer sex for money. Subsequent phone calls detailed the acts she allegedly was performing and how much money the men were paying. The payments ranged from $80 to $200. In the calls, he warned her that she had to give him half of all the money she received, according to the affidavit.
Many of the transactions occurred out of their Camden Street home, according to police.
The sheriff’s office contacted Wendy Moody by email using a fake name and set up a meeting with her. She was arrested Thursday afternoon at the Yankee Traveler Motel on Route 1 in Warren after she allegedly offered her services to an undercover deputy.
The investigation is continuing and may result in others being charged, Carroll said.
The Moodys’ residence was searched Thursday after she was arrested and marijuana was found. The drug charges were added at that point.
Evidence, mostly electronic communication devices, was seized to corroborate the alleged prostitution activity, Carroll said.
A police affidavit from Curtis Moody’s arrest in June included statements from his wife that he grabbed her by the throat and threatened to kill her because he suspected she was having sex with another man. Wendy Moody said she feared for her life and that of her children, according to the affidavit.RT: A lot of the debate has focused on Muslim immigrants rather than the Polish, Italian and Greek population in Germany. Is that fair, to highlight just them as part of the problem?
WB: We've always had immigration in our history. We have immigrants today and will always have them in the future. Three hundred years ago, every third Berliner and Brandenburger was a French protestant. A hundred years ago, Polish immigrants came to work in mining and steel industries in the Ruhr area, but in recent years and decades, people from other cultural backgrounds came, for instance from Turkey, Northern Africa and Arabic countries. And a long time ago we understood that these people have far bigger problems integrating than those who come from our neighboring European countries.
RT: So when we talk about integration – what does your party actually intend to do to help integrate people who are clearly not so at the moment?
WB: First of all it's the task of the people coming here to integrate themselves into society. One can't come to Germany, sit down and say: government, please integrate me. Instead one has to make an effort to become part of this accepting society, and the state has to make offers to make integration work, especially language courses. Hundreds of thousands have visited language courses over recent years. This is a very encouraging result.
RT: There were top politicians addressing this issue of immigration with very strong wording. Do you think that this has tapped into people’s often deep prejudices about immigration and about the Islamic religion that they are actually pretty ignorant about?
WB: I don't think that harsh words were used but rather the right words. Sensible politics begins with looking at the reality. In this reality there are millions of examples of the best kind of integration but there also too many examples of failing and refusing to integrate. And the statistics say that the rate of unemployment among immigrants is double the average among the population. The quota of those receiving welfare among immigrants is three times as high as among the population. And it makes no sense talking around this issue. One must call things as they are, in reality. One cannot say: I find the system of social benefits in Germany very good but not the rule of law. Those who come to Germany must respect the law, the constitution and our cultural traditions.
RT: Could you clarify where the lines are being drawn and what will be accepted in this country and what won’t be? And also your views on the argument that there is now on the back of it the difference between assimilation and integration?
Vladimir Kremlev for RT (click to enlarge) Vladimir Kremlev for RT (click to enlarge)
WB: I have no problem with the word "assimilation" whatsoever. It just means "to become similar" or "to become nearly similar". What is the problem with that? Assimilation is ultimately successful integration. It doesn't mean one has to cut their roots or deny their origin. But it means that one feels sheltered by this accepting society. It means it is one's new home country, one is at home here, and not half back in their native country sitting here on packed suitcases. Integration is fulfilled when one says ‘this is my new home country’, and you can also call it assimilation.
RT: The integration and assimilation are two separate things, are they not?
WB: For me assimilation is the ultimate form of integration. Assimilation doesn't mean that I forget what native country I came from, that I deny my origin. If translated word by word, assimilation means, "becoming similar to", and that means integration is fulfilled.
RT: Assimilation is asking people to play down perhaps some of their religious symbols and religious practices to fit in better in the country to which they went, whereas integration for a lot of people means tolerance on both sides, learning how to work together to get the best results. So they are two separate things. What is Germany asking of its immigrants? Is it asking from people not to have mosques, not to wear hijab and obvious religious symbols? Or it is just asking for a greater effort in learning German language and integrate in that way?
WB: I think there is a misunderstanding here. Naturally, there is freedom of religion in Germany but only within the framework of the law and constitution. One goes to church, another to the synagogue, a third to the mosque, and a fourth doesn't attend any house of God at all. What is the problem? But what is taught and what is preached mustn't contradict our law and constitution. That's why we have a special criminal law against so-called hate preachers. Especially at this point there mustn't be any false tolerance. Integration means integrating into accepting society, it means those who have come here must make themselves fit into society. It's not that society has to adopt cultural traditions and the laws of those who are coming. There can be no compromise between the German rule of law and Sharia law. Sharia has no place here in Germany – end of story.
RT: Immigration, especially with Turkish immigrants and the Arabic immigrants, has been happening for decades. Why has the issue become so important now?
WB: On the one hand it has to do with the big number of immigrants. In Germany we have four million Muslims, not only but mostly of Turkish origin. Their origin and beliefs are becoming more and more visible, for instance through the construction of huge representative mosques, which could as well be seen as a political symbol. There have been heavy clashes lately, in Cologne for example, over the construction of a huge mosque to replace a smaller mosque. It means Islam is getting more visible. On the other hand it has to do with the difference in the progress of integration between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is not necessarily to do with their origin and social state. One example, the children of Vietnamese contract workers in the former GDR, or the children of the so-called boat people, integrate very successfully. The proportion of those children attending the best high schools in Germany is 50 per cent higher than the number of German kids. Consequently it must have something to do with the origin of the parents and their enthusiasm for education. And that's why it's such a big issue now.
RT: Do you also accept that there is also the state's role and the government’s role to be providing the infrastructure to enable the integration to happen – are there any failings of the government as well?
WB: There has been a mistaken perception in German immigration policy that the second and third generations of immigrants would automatically integrate. And why? Because they grow up here, they attend school with our children. And we see more integration problems with the second and third generations now than with the first one. It has taken us a long time to start taking necessary measures, for instance there are nationwide language and integration courses.
When it comes to voluntary attendance of these courses, our expectations are surpassed. That means there is high demand. But when it comes to mandatory attendance of such language courses, due to a lack of language knowledge, the results are rather disappointing, although these people have the highest need to attend. It means there are some more tough years ahead of us.
RT: Your party has been accused by critics of using the issue of immigration to deflect attention away from failings in dealing with other economic and social issues. Is your party playing political games?
WB: This statement is clear nonsense because we like to talk about the economic and social state of the country. And Germany is doing very well. In comparison to other nations our growth rate is above average, we mastered the aftermath of the financial crisis faster and better than others; we have significantly better figures on the job market; as far as I am concerned one could talk all day about the economic and social state of Germany. We talk about immigration and integration because we have very visible problems. Other parties are feeling embarrassed that we are raising this subject. They believe if you make a problem taboo, then you can solve it this way. It reminds me of Donald Duck who used to throw his bills into the fireplace thinking he has no more debts. When politicians hush-up problems they make radical right and left parties stronger. And that's exactly what we want to prevent. We don't want to make problems taboo: we want to solve them.
RT: For decades Germany has had immigrants from Islamic countries and this issue is only now coming to the forefront in such a strong way – why?
WB: It’s because we have been noting for years that we have examples of excellent integration but too many examples of refusals to integrate, and therefore significant problems in connection with that. We experience this with the lack of the knowledge of German in school. If someone doesn't have a good knowledge of German at school they will have difficulty graduating from high school. Without graduating from high school one cannot start vocational training. Without vocational training one has fewer chances on the job market. And we want to break this vicious circle. There is no sensible reason not to talk about it. But the one who is saying there is no problem is only going towards the next point on the agenda. But we don't want to hush-up problems, we want to solve them. And we won't allow anyone to stop us from doing so. People's lives are what matter, as well as how living with each other is perceived and felt about.
There is a big difference between someone who writes a piece for a magazine and owns a penthouse in Berlin and watches the sunset with a glass of sparkling wine, and writes a nice article about multicultural living together, and the last remaining German tenant in a building complex who does not understand the language that is spoken there. And he can't talk with the neighbours any longer, and he feels like a foreigner in his own country. I can just give a piece of advice: take these people's worries seriously.
RT: Would you agree there is a growing nationalist sentiment in the country now?
WB: No.
RT: So, don’t you think there is more to do on both sides on the tolerance issue? There is a number of the population agreeing with very strong statements like Muslims are ‘doing down’ the country, why are there such quotes?
WB: I have to beg you cordially but one should not mix up nationalism and patriotism. A nationalist is somebody who thinks he is better than someone else because he belongs to a certain nation. Patriotism is love for your homeland. Loving your homeland is a good thing. Don't try to make me believe that it's nationalist to stick to your country, defend its laws and values and cultural traditions. It has nothing to do with nationalism. I'm happy for anybody who loves their home country but I want to love my home country as others do theirs, without others saying this is nationalist.
RT: Do you think your political party would be beneficial even if it is promoting extremist views?
WB: I cannot see any extremism at all here.This is the new model of nationalization: central banks control the valuation of private-sector assets without actually having to own them lock, stock and barrel.
As you no doubt know, central banks don't actually print money and toss it out of helicopters; they create a digital liability and use this new currency to buy assets such as bonds and stocks. Central banks have found that they can take control of the stock and bond markets by buying up as much as these markets as is necessary to force price and yield to do the central banks' bidding.
Central Banks Have Purchased $2 Trillion In Assets In 2017. This increases their combined asset purchases above $15 trillion. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money--especially if you add in assets purchased by sovereign wealth funds, dark pools acting on behalf of monetary authorities, etc.
Gordon Long and I discuss this stealth nationalization in our latest video program, The Results of Financialization: "Nationalization" (35 min): (35 min):
In the old model of nationalization, governments expropriated/seized privately owned assets lock, stock and barrel. When a central state nationalized an enterprise, it took total ownership of the asset.
In today's globalized financial world, such crude expropriation is avoided for two reasons:
1. The entire point of the dominant neoliberal / neofeudal /neocolonial model is to maintain private ownership as a means of transferring the wealth to the New Aristocracy, i.e. the financier class. Government ownership certainly conveys benefits to the some are more equal than others functionaries atop the state's wealth-power pyramid, but it doesn't transfer the assets' income streams to private hands.
2. It sends the wrong message: central banks want private investors to do their bidding, i.e. to go along with the transfer of wealth and income from the many to the few (the New Aristocracy). Maintaining the system of private ownership enables the central banks to control the markets for these assets at the modest cost of a few handfuls of the loot being distributed to the small-fry owners of IRAs, 401K retirement accounts, etc.
In other words, what central banks want is not outright ownership, which is costly and troublesome; what central banks want is to control the markets on the cheap, with leveraged buying. In effect, central banks have been able to manage assets worth $150 trillion with a mere $15 trillion in well-timed (and loudly announced) asset purchases.
This is the new model of nationalization: central banks control the valuation of private-sector assets without actually having to own them lock, stock and barrel. Being the buyer of last resort--the Plunge Protection Team that buys every dip in whatever size is needed to stabilize valuations and then reverse the downturn into yet another rally to new highs--has worked for nine long years.
This success has bred a complacent faith in the central bank cargo-cult that there is no limit to central bank control of yields, valuations and market sentiment.
But as I've described here many times, financialization is a box canyon. Once you start down the path to the Dark Side of phantom wealth created by commoditized debt and leverage (i.e. financialization), there's no turning back to the real world.
The central bank aircraft is flying into a canyon with walls 2,000 feet high at an altitude of 300 feet. Everything seems to be going splendidly until the central bank aircraft rounds a bend in the canyon and discovers the canyon ends in a rock face 2,000 high.
In a desperate attempt to escape the box canyon, central banks will ramp up their assets purchases of bonds to keep yields near zero, and of stocks to keep the bubble valuations high enough to support all the debt and leverage that's been piled on the underlying collateral of the stock market: non-phantom net earnings.
Needless to say, attempting to control global markets via the issuance of trillions in new currency and using that currency to buy huge chunks of the stock and bond markets is an unprecedented experiment.
To continue the box canyon analogy: central bankers and their cargo-cult faithful are confident central banks are flying an F-18 with afterburners on max; climbing 1,700 feet in a near-vertical ascent should be no problem.
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Those of us outside the cargo cult see the central bankers flying a Wright Flyer: innovative in its time, but inadequate to the task of controlling private-sector markets via stealth nationalization.
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Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Fedora and Red Hat are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. SuSE is a registered trademark of SuSE AG. Mandriva is a registered trademark of Mandriva S.A. Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Athlon is a registered trademark of Advanced Micro Devices. OpenGL is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. PCI Express is a registered trademark and/or service mark of PCI-SIG. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated.(0:01 - 13:56): To begin the episode, Jusidman looks back at the events that led him to lean into the fraught arena of painting “about” the Holocaust, the works that became the exhibition Prussian Blue. First, he reflects on visiting an exhibition by Luc Tuymans, [2] and how its understanding of representing the Holocaust (and whether one can ever succeed at doing so) differed from his own. [3] He then explores a series of discoveries he made about the pigment “Prussian Blue,” its physical presence in some death camps as a result of chemical reactions with the gases used in the extermination chambers, and his idea to utilize the pigment as a tangible way of connecting to the Holocaust itself. Jusidman also explores, more broadly, the role that art can play in representing precisely those elements of the past and present that are hardest for us capture in words.
(13:57 - 27:05): Jusidman offers a critique of pedagogies that attempt to create an experience that “feels like” being in the Holocaust. Looking in particular at a methodology of providing visitors with a passport of someone who experienced the Holocaust, to Jusidman, it feels a bit manipulative. [4] He recognizes that such approaches come from a place of positive intentions, geared toward the important goal of sparking empathy for those who were murdered, but still believes that “prosthetic experiences” are ineffective ways to relate to elements of the past. Lex compares the idea that one can never authentically represent the Holocaust in art to the religious presumption that one can never effectively represent God in artwork. [5] Jusidman gives his take on those parallel ideas and broadens the conversation to push back on the notion — held by some artists — that representational painting of any kind (not just about the Holocaust or God, but more generally) is impossible, such that attempts at it necessarily fail.
(27:06 - 41:38): The question of audience arises, and Jusidman puts forth the belief that artists always need an audience. In doing so, he pushes back on the cliché image that many people have in their heads, of artists whose only mission is to express themselves, independent of what potential viewers will experience from their work. To close the episode, Jusidman looks back on his own development, from his upbringing as a Jew in Mexico, [6] through experiences in American universities studying art and philosophy, and how all of these served to shape the person and artist that he haJs become.Toronto's integrity commissioner has found Giorgio Mammoliti violated city hall's code of conduct, and is recommending the councillor's pay be suspended for 90 days.
Integrity commissioner Janet Leiper's investigation began after CBC reported on a $5,000-a-table banquet in Woodbridge. A citizen cited that story in a complaint to Leiper about Mammoliti. Leiper said the councillor was "improperly accepting gifts, favours or benefits from the sale of tickets to an event held on May 22, 2013."
Mammoliti’s office organized the dinner along with Red Velvet Events, which produces corporate functions. More 200 people attended, including lobbyists, companies doing business with the city or in Mammoliti's ward, family members and staff from the councillor’s office.
Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti has run afoul of city hall's code of conduct, ruled the integrity commissioner. Leiper found that city staff worked on the event during business hours — sending out invitations, managing RSVPs and invoices, and co-ordinating musicians, security, florists, and a baker and with the banquet hall. City cellphones were supplied to manage the event. Some businesses declined the invite but offered to send money in the form of a donation in lieu.
Leiper claimed that in some cases, Mammoliti’s staff removed references to the event on invoices.
But the transgression that violated the code, according to Leiper, was that Red Velvet Events paid Mammoliti $80,000 as a "gift" from the profit generated by ticket sales for the event.
Leiper sent out a warning to councillors including Mammoliti weeks before the event, saying that accepting the "cash gift" could contravene the city's code of conduct.
During the investigation, the Ward 7 councillor applied to have the probe halted, arguing he wasn't being treated fairly because news of the investigation had leaked out.
In a filing at Ontario's Divisional Court, Mammoliti complains that Leiper's decision to undertake the investigation was "put into the public domain and posted on the Internet," whereas the City of Toronto Act requires her to keep her work secret until she reports her findings to city council.
"The commissioner was asked to conduct a proper investigation into this blatant breach of Councillor Mammoliti's privacy rights and her own rules requiring her to keep secret all matters that come within her knowledge in the course of her duties," Mammoliti's court filing said.
Council must vote to approve any penalty enforced on Mammoliti.By Allan Taylor in News, WVU Sports | January 24, 2013 at 3:30PM
Following Wednesday’s report by the Sports Business Daily that West Virginia University has reached a third-tier multimedia rights deal with IMG College, here’s a glimpse at the potential scope of the agreement and what it likely means to Mountaineers fans.
First, to define what this third-tier rights package entails:
• Television rights to one football game per season and a handful of men’s basketball games that are picked over by the major networks
• Complete radio broadcast rights
• Coaches’ shows produced for television, radio and web streaming
• Television rights to all other WVU sports (the ones lovingly categorized as non-revenue).
• Rights to sell advertising signage and sponsorships
• Online content.
Now, a deeper, speculative look at the agreement, which is pending as IMG and West Virginia athletics director Oliver Luck (and, no doubt, a gaggle of attorneys) attend to the final details:
Who were the other bidders?
Already partnering with more than 60 schools and three conferences, IMG College is one of the industry’s behemoths, alongside Learfield Sports (51 schools, two conferences), which also contended for the WVU rights package. Within the Big 12 Conference, IMG partners with Texas, Kansas, Baylor and TCU, while Learfield owns deals with Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Texas Tech and Iowa State.
Other companies submitting bids for the WVU package included Nelligan Sports (32 schools), CBS Collegiate Sports Properties (seven schools), Fox Sports Net, Front Row Marketing (eight schools, the NHL’s Flyers, the MLS’ Philadelphia Union and six minor-league franchises), Legends Sales and Marketing (a New York Yankees-Dallas Cowboys co-owned venture), XOS Digital and West Virginia Radio Corp. (owner of MetroNews and the company that historically has produced the radio broadcasts for WVU football and men’s and women’s basketball).
What is the deal worth?
The university has yet to disclose the terms — and with final negotiations ongoing, some inventory of rights (signage, ticketing, digital) could be retained by the school. But sources have estimated IMG will pay WVU anywhere from $75 million to a whopping $120 million over 12 years.
In 2009, IMG guaranteed Ohio State $110 million over 10 years, but in 2012 Learfield signed two deals that may prove more relevant: a 10-year contract with N.C. State worth $49 million, and a seven-year deal with Wisconsin that pays $52.5 million.
Note, however, that a superficial comparison of these deals is risky, because contracts vary from school to school based upon the depth of rights included in the package. Some agreements even include infrastructure pieces such as video boards for football, baseball or soccer stadiums.
What becomes of the on-air talent?
The most public aspect of this agreement involves who’ll emerge as the voice of WVU football and basketball. That’s a role Tony Caridi has filled the past 15 years, and he’s currently in his 27th year overall with the school-owned Mountaineer Sports Network. He hosts the weekly in-season call-in shows for Dana Holgorsen and Bob Huggins, and occasionally emcees events tied to the athletic department.
While IMG could stipulate that it brings in its own broadcasters, the company typically favors retaining longtime play-by-play announcers who have forged an identity with a school’s brand.
Why partner with a company such as IMG in the first place?
College athletic programs have been outsourcing various aspects of marketing and multimedia rights for the past two decades. In fact, West Virginia and Michigan State are the last two major-college holdouts when it comes to auctioning off these lucrative assets. Of course, it’s only lucrative if the revenue from selling these rights exceeds what the university would have derived from continuing to manage them in-house.
For years, key members of the WVU athletics department felt they could grow healthy revenue streams while serving as the best stewards of the university’s branding and marketing, and even now, there remains some risk in how an outside firm like IMG will be received within the state. Of course, once the deal is signed, it’s up to IMG to make a return on its financial investment.
“This works from a revenue standpoint at programs all over the country, so it’s not all bad,” an industry source told MetroNews.
How could IMG change the relationship between WVU and advertisers?
The source said “if anyone was going to overpay for WVU, it would be IMG because they already had the Pitt and Marshall properties,” which are believed to be underperforming (especially in Marshall’s case). That portends a touchy scenario whereby IMG could squeeze WVU sponsors to help subsidize Marshall by bundling advertising packages.
“IMG could say, ‘You want the Mountaineers? Then you’re going to have buy Marshall as well,'” the source said. “I promise you, IMG will hold some people hostage to get more money for Marshall.”
It’s hard to imagine that sales pitch playing well with business owners who are gold-and-blue through and through.
The source said most of the state’s six-figure advertisers are already aligned with WVU, meaning IMG’s sales staff will need to target more smaller companies willing to spend $20,000 and $40,000 annually. “They are going to have to hit a lot of singles and doubles to hit that number, and they’re going to have to do that in a state where there’s not a lot of business.”
Regardless of how much IMG agrees to pay WVU — recalling once more that $75 million or $120 million range mentioned by sources earlier — advertisers who want to renew their sponsorships of the Mountaineers can likely expect to pay more.
“(IMG) will assume right away that the prices WVU has been charging are too low, so they’ll jack up the rates,” the source said. “In that case you might lose some sponsors who are faced with a 15- to 18-percent increase with no new inventory.
“It’s a question of how hard-line IMG will be.”
What else will fans notice?
With IMG aggressively chasing revenue, expect more advertising signage throughout Milan Puskar Stadium and the concourses of the WVU Coliseum. The Mountaineers in-house marketing team previously sought to minimize advertising clutter, but in the coming months, with every inch of property available for sponsorship, how long before the urinals feature a Target logo?
Sponsorships also could infiltrate the radio broadcast and the public address system, with every third-down conversion leading to a “United Bank FIRST DOWN!” or every trip inside the 20 meaning the Mountaineers have entered “the Coca-Cola RED ZONE!”What we suspect According to data received at CCI, there is a reasonable doubt that, during Jan 25th to Feb 25th, money deposited by clients of Mt. Gox, was reported as transferred to Mt. Gox’s clients’ account, while in fact was routed elsewhere.
Read about our ongoing investigation Who is CCI AG CCI AG a competitive intelligence company, founded in 2008 in the Swiss Kanton of Zug. CCI specializes in intelligence research, investigation and analysis mainly for the business sector. Among CCI directors are senior retired intelligence officers, intelligence Analysts and cyber experts. CCI cyber department’s unique HUMINT methodology adjusted to online communication, allows a collection of quality intelligence information about cyber crimes.
We got a $20,000 Mt. Gox deposit refunded from our bank
CCI AG senior analyst managed to regain 20,000 USD, a sum that allegedly was already transferred to Mt. Gox’s Polish bank account prior to the insolvency procedures.
Who is leading this investigation?
Dr. Amit Steinhart Read Full Bio… Dr. Amit Steinhart, VP for research and chief intelligence analyst for CCI. Lecturer at Sofia University (the graduate program in International Relations and Security Studies). Dr. Steinhart’s academic expertise is: “controlling intelligence organizations in a democracy”. Recently, Dr. Steinhart was involved with an international research regarding the use of human intelligence within cyber security.
Participate in the Investigation
CCI has the means to help Mt. Gox victims whose money deposits were never confirmed by Mt. Gox. We are investigating the case as whole, however, at this stage we can only offer help for these individuals.
Contact us and we would be happy to help you to attempt to refund your deposit.
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Your inquiry has been received. We may contact you in case of need.Kirsten West Savali is a cultural critic and senior writer for The Root and was awarded a 2015 Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship. Her provocative commentary explores the intersections of race, social justice, religion, |
in all parties. They are just less politically active," she said.
"On the Liberal Democrats matter, you are also dealing with that historical situation where classical liberalism has diverged from feminism. "For me, I think it's a quite serious problem for a political movement to find itself wedged as broadly unrepresentative of the people. You can't make a party exactly exactly representative otherwise you would need exactly 51 per cent female candidates and three per cent Aboriginals, for example, but it is a bigger problem for the Liberal Democrats." Eva Cox the feminist and writer, who was once part of the Sydney libertarian push with Germaine Greer, said the Liberal Democrats probably didn't realise they had a gender imbalance until asked by the media. "Where you have men sitting around talking to men about things that are important to men, the likelihood of them even thinking about how to represent women is pretty low," she said. "It's a party that's aimed at getting rid of institutional structures but leaving power in the hands of men. I don't think they would have noticed [they had no female candidates] until asked."
Ms Cox said there was truth in Ms Dale's comments about the fissure between liberalism and feminism but said the latter needed to use the levers of government power to fight gender inequity because men dominate all other power structures in society. Among the Liberal Democrats Senate line up is Sam Kennard, the self-storage mogul and Adelaide businessman Roostam Sadri. Fairfax Media revealed last week a written agreement in which Mr Sadri offered the party $500,000 if he was guaranteed a place at the top of the Senate ticket in South Australia. The matter is now being investigated by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Electoral Commission over possible breaches of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Duncan Spender, the Liberal Democrat founder who dealt with Mr Sadri on the agreement, which the party insists was never signed, is standing for the Senate in Victoria.
In a statement on Thursday, a Liberal Democrat spokesman said suggestions of an all-male candidate list with no female candidates will "come as a shock" to lower house candidates Bronwyn Ablett (Griffith), Cath Buckley (Petrie) and Olya Shornikov (Macquarie). "The Liberal Democrats now have more than 5000 members of whom fewer than one in five are women – however, this may reflect a lack of engagement in the political process by women across the parties," he said. "For the record, Senator Leyonhjelm says the Liberal Democrats will never support quotas, because our policies are both colour blind and gender blind. But he would like more chicks to join us and become actively involved in the party." Follow us on TwitterAre we facing the next frontier of currency? Like bartering and banknotes before it, blockchain could revolutionise the way we distribute wealth and account for our transactions. A recent World Economic Forum survey found that most experts think blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin, will become mainstream by 2025. But for every person who thinks blockchain is the future of money, there’s another that thinks it’s all just fantasy hype. We’ll be putting these opinions head-to-head.
The FT is hosting a debate that includes you, our readers, in an integral role. On Wednesday, September 14 at 1pm UK time, Izabella Kaminska of FT Alphaville will face Simon Taylor, co-founder and blockchain director of 11FS. Izabella thinks blockchain and bitcoin are an utter waste of time; Simon believes strongly in the future of crypto-currencies. The debate will be live for one hour, moderated by Carola Hoyos, editor of the FT’s report on accounting.
We want you to join in and help us write the story. Share your questions and opinions in the comments here (under Live Reader Comments), or by emailing ask@ft.com, before and through the debate. Together they will form the front page story of the FT’s report on accountancy to be published on September 22.
Here is a terminology glossary for reference from Blockchain Technologies.Surrounded by a large crowd of NFL scouts and coaches Monday afternoon at rain-soaked Johnny Unitas Stadium, Towson star running back Terrance West cut sharply to his left and adeptly corralled an intermediate pass without breaking stride.
West displayed sound hands, quick feet and impressive balance in front of 22 NFL teams during his Pro Day workout. He didn't drop a pass and maintained his footing despite a steady downpour.
"If I had to run on fire, I'd do it, man," said West, a Northwestern graduate who measured in at 5 feet 9, 230 pounds. "Whatever the weather is, I'm going to have to adjust to it. It's football. The running back coaches said I'm real smooth running the ball in the positional drills.
"Everything was great. I caught all the passes that was thrown to me. It wasn't perfect, but I caught them. I always knew I had great hands. I just had to show the scouts what I can do and that I'm versatile and can catch the football out of the backfield."
Afterward, one AFC South coach compared West to Washington Redskins Pro Bowl running back Alfred Morris.
Oakland Raiders veteran scout Raleigh McKenzie praised West, who rushed for 2,509 yards and scored 42 touchdowns last season to lead Towson to the Football Championship Subdivision national championship game. After setting school records with 4,854 rushing yards and 86 touchdowns, West is regarded as a rising draft prospect who's graded as a third- to fourth-round draft pick by analysts.
"Terrance is definitely a talent," said McKenzie, a retired former Washington Redskins offensive lineman. "Some guys are better in shorts, some guys are better in pads. He's a pads guy. That's how he makes his money. He's a tackle-breaker. He's a natural runner. Some guys struggle to make moves, but I think he's got good vision and is a natural.
"Coming from a smaller school like him, guys are always looking for something to prove. That's a good thing. You don't want a guy to come in and think they've got it made in the shade. I'm pulling for him."
West stood on his NFL scouting combine numbers from February, which included a 4.54 time in the 40-yard dash, 16 repetitions in the 225-pound bench press and a 33.5-inch vertical leap.
West concentrated on positional drills on Monday, which were run by Jacksonville Jaguars running backs coach Terry Richardson.
New England Patriots assistant to the coaching staff Mike Lombardi, the former Cleveland Browns general manager, was inattendance, as was Houston Texans director of pro personnel Brian Gaine. Four representatives from the Buffalo Bills, three from the New Orleans Saints and two members of the Ravens' personnel department were also present.
West met privately with Cincinnati Bengals running backs coach Kyle Caskey prior to the workout Monday morning for a few hours. Following the workout, West held meetings with the Indianapolis Colts, Jaguars, Bills and Raiders.
"I appreciate it," West said. "To get all the scouts and coaches to come out, it's a blessing."
West held a formal meeting at the combine with the Ravens, who have a high opinion of West and are expected to draft a running back at some point.
"I can only control what I can control, and that's work hard," said West when asked if he hopes to be drafted by his hometown team. "I don't care what team it is, football is football. Whatever team that gets me is going to get a guy that wants to come in and compete and play immediately."
West has visited the Tennessee Titans and had private meetings with the Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins. He has six to seven more visits scheduled.
"I've been staying out of trouble, that's the main key off the field," West said. "I stay humble and just grind. If the teams fly me out, they're interested."
For the past two years, West has been advised by Ravens backup running back Bernard Pierce.
"He's been like my mentor; me and Bernard Pierce are real close," West said. "That's my big bro."
Pierce and Ravens wide receiver Gerrard Sheppard, a former Towson player, were both on the sideline Monday watching West audition for the NFL.
"I'm thinking first three rounds for Terrance, he's definitely a talent," Pierce said. "I would say he's a little bit overlooked because of the school. He's going to be a force to be reckoned with in the NFL. He definitely has got the build, the speed and the attitude. I'm trying to keep him right. He's got a good head on his shoulders."The Obama administration has announced its intention to appoint the United States’ first ever federal chief information security officer (CISO).
On Tuesday, the President is expected to roll out a budget of $19 billion for federal information security spending. That budget, which marks a 35 percent increase over last year’s allotment of $14 billion, will create a presidential commission on information security as well as the nation’s first federal CISO position.
“That’s a key role that many private-sector companies have long implemented and it’s good practice for the federal government,” Federal CIO Tony Scott said ahead of the president’s budget rollout, as quoted in Federal Times.
Danny Yadron of The Guardian observes that the creation of a federal CISO is a long-overdue move by the Obama administration. He argues that in the absence of this position, the federal government has at times struggled to respond to a number of high-profile attacks and breaches, including the hack against the Office of Personnel Management (2014), the State Department email system attack (2014), and a breach of DOJ employees’ information just recently.
The role, which the Obama administration hopes to fill within the next few months, will be housed in the Office of Management and Budget at the White House and will coordinate information security across federal agencies. Those efforts will be augmented by the forthcoming budget’s creation of an “Information Technology Modernization Fund”, a $3.1 billion allotment which can help to upgrade the systems that interconnect various federal agencies, reports The Hill.
The CISO will also be in charge of improving government workers’ overall security awareness. Such attempts at security hygiene will hopefully communicate to them the importance of regular patch implementation and the dangers of social engineering, thereby helping to prevent similar events such as the recent DOJ breach in which an employee gave the attacker a valid login token from happening again in the future.The following message was sent out this morning — I’m copying it here and attaching a cute screenshot of my desktop :)
—
Ozone is a set of C++ classes in Chromium for abstracting different window systems on Linux. It provides abstraction for the construction of accelerated surfaces underlying Aura UI framework, input devices assignment and event handling.
http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/ozone
Today we are launching publicly Ozone-Wayland, which is the implementation of Chromium’s Ozone for supporting Wayland graphics system. Different projects based on Chromium/Blink like the Chrome browser, ChromeOS, among others can be enabled now using Wayland.
https://github.com/otcshare/ozone-wayland
In particular, we have Chrome Browser and Content Shell enabled and running on Wayland. All the projects are under active development (therefore unstable) but we are hoping to cope with fixes together with the open source community.
We’ll be posting updates in the following weeks detailing the solution and our ideas. Enjoy!
AdvertisementsBedbugs Lie Down With Drug-Resistant Superbugs
Enlarge this image toggle caption Janice Haney Carr/CDC Janice Haney Carr/CDC
Bedbugs are just plain nasty.
And the tiny bloodsuckers — about the size of Abe Lincoln's head on a penny — are on the rise worldwide for reasons scientists are at a loss to fully explain.
So far, I've taken comfort in public health authorities' statements that the critters aren't a hazard to health because they don't seem to spread disease.
Now I'm a little uneasy. Two Canadian researchers have found antibiotic-resistant bacteria living on bedbugs recovered from three people hospitalized in Vancouver.
Three bedbugs taken from one patient were found to be carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureaus, or MRSA. Those bacteria, which are unfazed by many drugs, can cause skin infections, or worse.
Two other bedbugs, one each from the other two patients, were found to be carrying vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium, or VRE.
To be sure, the MRSA bacteria found are already very common in the poor part of Vancouver where the patients live. More than half of the infections of skin and soft tissue seen in patients treated at the emergency room of the hospital where the research was done test positive for MRSA.
And this tiny sample (5!) of tiny bugs doesn't prove they spread the bacteria. "It's possible," Dr. Marc Romney, one of the study's authors, told the Vancouver Sun. But, he cautioned, "We're not there yet by any means, this is just kind of a hint."
Still, as Romney and a colleague wrote, the findings suggest that bedbugs have the potential to transmit disease-causing bacteria. The idea seems at least plausible for MRSA, for instance, because the bedbugs break the skin during their blood meals, creating an entry point for the bacteria.
The results were just published online by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.DIY Cornhole Boards Share 0 0 shares Favorite 0 favorites 0 I set out to make some inexpensive cornhole boards for a party. I had a few tools already - a miter saw, jig saw, and a drill. At Home Depot, I bought 1 sheet of OSB, 4 8ft 2x4s, a box of dry wall screws and two bolts (with nuts and washers). In these interests diy Subscribe
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The cornhole board is 2'x4' and the OSB is 4'x8'. So to make life easy, at Home Depot I asked the guys to cut the OSB into 4 2'x4' sections.
The first thing I did was build the frame.
I did nothing fancy. I just used a butt joint and screws.
Then I screwed on the top. I drilled pilot holes to keep the wood from splitting.
I marked a 6" circle using a string, drilled a hole to get started, and then used the jig saw to cut out the hole.
I made sure to find cute helpers.
Once the boards were finished we painted them white (because that's the color we had).
For the legs, I wasn't extremely precise. The back end of the board should be 12" off the ground. So I cut a 2x4 11" long (taking into account the width of the OSB). One end is a right angle, and I adjusted the miter saw to cut a 12.5 degree angle for the side that touches the ground. Then I drilled a hole and fastened the legs with a bolt, one washer on each side and a nut. Clamps are very helpful in this step.
And the finished set.Abstract We use citation data of scientific articles produced by individual nations in different scientific domains to determine the structure and efficiency of national research systems. We characterize the scientific fitness of each nation—that is, the competitiveness of its research system—and the complexity of each scientific domain by means of a non-linear iterative algorithm able to assess quantitatively the advantage of scientific diversification. We find that technological leading nations, beyond having the largest production of scientific papers and the largest number of citations, do not specialize in a few scientific domains. Rather, they diversify as much as possible their research system. On the other side, less developed nations are competitive only in scientific domains where also many other nations are present. Diversification thus represents the key element that correlates with scientific and technological competitiveness. A remarkable implication of this structure of the scientific competition is that the scientific domains playing the role of “markers” of national scientific competitiveness are those not necessarily of high technological requirements, but rather addressing the most “sophisticated” needs of the society.
Citation: Cimini G, Gabrielli A, Sylos Labini F (2014) The Scientific Competitiveness of Nations. PLoS ONE 9(12): e113470. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113470 Editor: Tobias Preis, University of Warwick, United Kingdom Received: July 25, 2014; Accepted: October 23, 2014; Published: December 10, 2014 Copyright: © 2014 Cimini et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. Citation data is available from the Scimago database (www.scimagojr.comm). Data on Higher Education Expenditure on Research & Development (HERD) is available from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (www.oecd.org/). Funding: This work was supported by the European project FET-Open GROWTHCOM (grant num. 611272) and the Italian PNR project CRISIS-Lab. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction Measuring the quality of research on national scale is of great interest to stakeholders and policy-makers for deciding on, e.g., funding allocations and scientific priorities. In a seminal work, May [1] analyzed the output and outcomes from research investment over years 1981–1994, comparing scientific research outputs among several nations from a variety of viewpoints. King [2] presented a similar, more refined analysis over years 1993–2002. With the aim of determining the scientific impact of nations, King built a rank of nations ordering them according to their share of world citations. In addition to the national contribution to the world scientific production, the outputs and outcomes relative to the population and gross domestic product (GDP) were estimated. Finally, King made a comparison of five main scientific branches (medical sciences; natural sciences; agricultural sciences; engineering and technology; social sciences) across different nations. The citation share for each branch was then used as a branch-specific metric for quantifying the scientific impact of nations. This analysis showed, for instance, that Russia and Germany are relatively strong in physical science, as France is in mathematics, while United Kingdom and United States excel in medical and environmental sciences. The natural question arising from these studies is then whether nations tend to specialize or diversify their scientific research, and which choice is more efficient—in terms of scientific competitiveness. Because science is nothing but an output of the society, this issue is closely related to that of industrial production of nations, for which some of the main classical economic theories prescribe specialization [3], [4], whereas, recent studies [5]–[7] reveal that nations are extremely diversified and tend to produce anything they can, i.e., anything compatible with their capabilities (infrastructures, technology level, education system, State efficiency, etc.). Here we analyze the extensive and intensive (that is, normalized to the resources invested) research performance of nations in different research sectors. Our goals are: (i) to determine whether the most developed nations tend to maximally diversify their research system—as for industrial production—or instead to specialize in a few scientific domains where their competitiveness is sufficiently high; (ii) to detect the scientific sectors that are the best marker of the global scientific development and competitiveness of a nation. Once the importance of diversification also in scientific production is verified, in order to assess quantitatively the comparative advantage of scientific diversification we use a novel approach [6], [7] based on coupled non-linear maps, whose fixed point defines a metric for the scientific fitness of nations (i.e., the competitiveness of their research systems) and for the complexity of scientific domains. This approach allows to identify the nations having either the more productive or efficient research system, as well as the scientific domains representing the best “markers” of the development level of national scientific research system.
Materials and Methods For this analysis we use bibliometric data over years 1996–2012, collected by the Scimago website (www.scimagojr.com)—based on the Scopus database (www.scopus.com; note that previous studies [1], [2] used bibliometric data provided by Thomson Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), and are thus not directly comparable to ours). In particular, we use citation counts which indicate scientific impact better than the number of publications [1], [2]. The resulting citation statistics comprehend nations, scientific domains and scientific sub-domains (each belonging to one domain). Note that, given the large number of papers produced by a nation, we can safely assume that distortions that may affect a single paper are smoothed out [8]. Yet, we excluded from the following analysis the multidisciplinary domain (that is difficult to classify, as well as all sub-domains with poor statistics, i.e., with a total number of citations less than a threshold. The filtered database then comprises data for domains and sub-domains. Finally note that, while in the following analysis we use data on sub-domains, we have checked that results presented in this paper are not qualitatively altered by directly using data on domains. Hence in what follows we use the term “domain” to refer to sub-domains, but the discussion applies to domains as well. We represent the dataset as a binary bipartite network, in which nodes are of two kinds: nations and scientific domains. Links can exist only between nations and scientific domains, and the bipartite adjacency matrix, with elements equal to 1 if a link between nation i and domain exists, and to 0 otherwise, describes the whole pattern of connections. Denoting as the number of citations that nation has received for publications relative to domain, in order to build the adjacency matrix (and hence the network) we put if the i-th nation ranks in the top-T for number of citations in domain (i.e., ), and otherwise. This approach is purely based on the number of citations, clearly promoting “successful” nations that achieved many citations—this approach is biased towards nation size, and thus we call the adjacency matrix built in this way as extensive. As an alternative approach, we can normalize citation counts to the actual resources that a nation has invested to produce those citations, namely to its expenditure in scientific research and development (R&D). We quantify the latter through data of Higher Education expenditure on Research & Development (HERD), which we obtained from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, www.oecd.org). In order to compute (the HERD of nation i over years 1996–2012, to which citation counts refer), we use the average of the available data (the OECD database covers years 2000–2012) proportionally rescaled to properly quantify HERD values over years 1996–2012. The intensive version of the adjacency matrix is then built by putting if the i-th nation ranks in the top-T for number of citations per unit spent on HERD in domain (i.e., ), and otherwise. This alternative approach promotes “efficient” nations: those that— ceteris paribus—achieved more citations (see Figure 1). Note that since HERD data are available only for developed nations, our analysis based on the intensive matrix is restricted to this subset of nations. We remark that both approaches to build the adjacency matrix use citations to directly compare different nations, but not different scientific domains, and are thus not biased towards domains with overall high number of citations. Instead, the different domains are compared only after their complexity values are evaluated—as explained below. Finally, let us stress that other methods to build the adjacency matrix are indeed possible. For instance, we can place a link between and whenever (extensive) or (intensive). For reasonable values of p, this approach does not show qualitative differences with the top-T methodology. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 1. Relation between total number of citations and HERD (expressed in PPP $) for each nation. The green line is a power-law correlation of the type, where is a constant and is the HERD. The best fit exponent is close to one ( )—with correlation coefficient 0.97. Such relation simply implies that the output of the scientific research, measured by the number of citations, depends on the resources that a nation has invested in it. The nations above/below the fit (e.g., GBR, CHE, ISR, NZL above; JPN, CHN, MEX, TUR below) are the more/less efficient in their scientific production: a more refined analysis is then required to identify the structural reasons for these fluctuations. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113470.g001 Once the adjacency matrix of the bipartite network is built, we use the iterative algorithm proposed in Refs. [6] and [7] to compute the scientific fitness of the different nations and the complexity of the various scientific domains. This approach is motivated—and, as we will see, justified—by the approximate triangular shape or the high nestedness [9] of the adjacency matrix, which shows when nations (rows) are ordered from more to less diversified, and scientific domains (columns) from more to less ubiquitous. These features justify the highly non-linear relationship in the algorithm to define the complexity of scientific domains from the fitness of nations making research on them, so that, as explained below, the complexity of a given scientific domain is mainly determined by the fitnesses of the less scientifically developed nations that are competitive in such sector. While this idea was originally applied to the industrial production of nations [6], [7], it can be easily translated to the scientific research system. Indeed, the observation (based again on the triangularity of the matrix) that a developed nation actually produces successful research outputs in a scientific domain gives only limited information on the complexity of the domain itself, because this nation does research in almost all domains. On the other hand, when an underdeveloped nation is able to do research in a given domain, very likely this domain requires a low level of sophistication (of the discipline itself, or of the national scientific, industrial and social substrate). These observations lead to the following main argument behind the mathematical approach: while it is reasonable to measure the competitiveness of a nation through the sum of the complexities of the domains belonging to its research pool, it is not possible to adopt a similar linear approach to measure the complexity of scientific domains. A natural choice is instead to weight the fitnesses of the nations making research on them in a highly nonlinear way, so that a domain on which scarcely competitive nations make research achieves low complexity. On the other hand, the only possibility for a domain to achieve high complexity is to be part of the research system of only the highly competitive nations. The simplest way in order to translate these ideas into a quantitative measure is to employ a non-linear diffusive process on the bipartite network of nations and scientific domains. The iterative algorithm at the basis of such process works as follows [6], [7]. Denoting the fitness of nation as and the complexity of domain as, the algorithm starts from evenly distributed values and. Fitness and complexity values at iteration ( and ) are then obtained from fitness and complexity values of the previous iteration ( and ) as: (1) (2) Such values have to be normalized at the end of each iteration to obtain (3) (4) The algorithm is solved iteratively until fitness and complexity values converge to a fixed point:, with arbitrary small (here we use ). Fitness and complexity values computed in this way are used to produce a ranking of nations and of scientific domains, which will be discussed in the next section.
Results Adjacency matrices Figure 2 shows the extensive and intensive adjacency matrices, in which rows and columns are reordered according to nation fitnesses and scientific domain complexities (top nations are placed in upper rows and top domains in the far right-hand side columns). For reasonable values of T (see caption of Figure 2), in both cases we observe triangular-shaped matrices, indicating that successful nations possess an extremely diversified research system, and that such diversification decreases for less successful nations. Moreover less successful nations are competitive only in sectors in which many other nations are active. Note that this picture defies the standard economic approach of the wealthiest nations producing (making research on) only a few products (scientific domains) with high complexity, which would result in a optimal strategy only in a static situation, whereas, the strongly dynamical situation of the world market (science) suggests that flexibility and adaptability are mostly important to be competitive in a competition-driven changing system—in analogy with bio-systems evolving in a competitive dynamical environment [6], [7]. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 2. Extensive (top panel) and intensive (bottom panel) adjacency matrices. Rows and columns are ordered according to the ranking of nations and scientific sub-domains, respectively (from first to last in the direction of the arrows). The labels on the vertical axes help to identify several nations in the ranking. The matrices were obtained for T = 10. Indeed, the value of T must be chosen not too low neither too high in order to avoid having an empty or full adjacency matrix, respectively. In fact, by construction the matrices have T entries in each column (the top-T nations in that domain), and thus a total of NT entries (N is the number of nations). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113470.g002 To quantify the triangularity of the matrices, we use the concept of nestedness—in particular, we measure the nestedness based on overlap and decreasing fill (NODF) [9]. We compute the Z-score between the degree of nestedness of the observed matrices with that of random matrices from two null models: the “semi-fixed”, in which matrix fill and column sums are constrained to observed values; and the “fixed-fixed”, in which also row sums are constrained. Despite the NODF over columns for the observed matrices is necessarily zero (as every column has T entries by construction), the Z test with the “semi-fixed” model returns values of 19 and 14 for the extensive and intensive matrices, respectively, whereas, with the more constrained “fixed-fixed” model the test is more strict yet returns satisfactory Z values of 0.7 and 8 for the extensive and intensive matrices, respectively—revealing a more robust triangular structure for the intensive matrix (note that the Z-test for a matrix with no triangular structure returns values much smaller than one). Nations ranking Row labels of Figure 2 show the nations achieving the highest fitness for their scientific research system. As expected, the way of building the extensive matrix brings G8 nations like Unites States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan to the top of the ranking. A more interesting picture emerges from the approach of the intensive matrix. Compared to the previous case, now only United Kingdom remains at the top of the ranking, which is now occupied by nations like Switzerland, Israel, Australia and New Zealand which are generally considered to be “efficient” (concerning money investments in research and developments). United States suffer a slight downgrade, whereas, all major European nations and even more far east nations (China and Japan) lose a notable number of positions. This points out to the difference between having a large-scale research system and an efficient and well-designed one. We remark that the results presented above are confounded to a certain extent because a large and growing fraction of scientific work involves international collaborations [10], and because of the English language bias in the Scopus database—both in the journals included and in patterns of citation. The latter observation could explain to a certain degree why anglophone nations like United States, United Kingdom and Canada do much better than, e.g., Germany, France, Italy, Japan and China. Domains ranking Figure 3 shows the full ranking of scientific domains. For better readability of the figure, scientific domains are divided into five main branches (and represented by different symbols): earth and life sciences (yellow circles), engineering and technology (green triangles), medical sciences (red diamonds), physical and formal sciences (blue squares), and social sciences and humanities (brown crosses). For the approach of the extensive matrix, we observe that top domains belong to life sciences, immediately followed by earth sciences. Medicine and especially pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics also occupy top positions. Browsing the ranking down we find (in order): physical and formal sciences, engineering and technology, social sciences and humanities, and the other medical sciences. Some remarkable changes appear for the approach of the intensive matrix: social sciences and humanities as well as some medical sciences (nursing and health professions, in particular) now occupy top positions. This is probably influenced by the fact that these domains have overall a few number of citations and thus are more subject to noise and bias. However, this also depends on the fact that only very competitive and advanced nations develop a strong activity in these sophisticated domains. In other words, we can include them among the good indicators for the R&D level of a nation. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 3. Ranking of scientific domains from the extensive (left panel) and the intensive (right panel) matrix —from first to last in the direction of the arrows. The ranking derives from the averages of the complexity values of the constituents sub-domains obtained over a range of T values around T = 10. The different symbols represent the five main branches of scientific domains: Yellow circles for earth and life sciences (earth and planetary sciences; environmental science; agricultural and biological sciences; biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology; neuroscience; immunology and microbiology); Green triangles for engineering and technology (engineering; chemical engineering; materials science; energy); Red diamonds for medical sciences (medicine; pharmacology, toxicology, pharmaceutics; nursing; health professions; dentistry; veterinary); Blue squares for physical and formal sciences (chemistry; physics and astronomy; mathematics; computer science; decision sciences); Brown crosses for social sciences and humanities (psychology; arts and humanities; social sciences; economics, econometric and finance; business, management and accounting). Note that excluding from the analysis the domains belonging to social sciences and humanities (and the associated sub-domains) leads to a ranking of nations which remains unaltered from what is shown in Figure 2, and to a ranking of scientific domains almost identical to what would be obtained by removing all brown crosses from the above panels. In this case, the rankings derived from the extensive and intensive approaches also appears more similar to each other, as generally top domains would belong to earth and life sciences, together with medicine and pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics—with nursing and health professions being the only domains achieving a substantial upgrade for the intensive matrix approach. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113470.g003 Despite the particular differences between the extensive and intensive approaches, it is clear from the previous analysis that top domains, i.e., the ones that basically belong to the research pool of only the most competitive nations, are complex in the sense that they require a developed research system (already including all the other more fundamental domains), as well as a developed society. Underdeveloped nations instead are still at a stage of construction of their R&D system, whose fundamental bricks are obviously the “basic” sciences (physical and formal) and those that are more related to economic returns (engineering and technology), which thus achieve low complexity. Under this view, the complexity of a scientific domain is associated not necessarily to technical requirements, but to a complex social and economic substrate that allows (and requires) making research on them. We remark that it is largely debated whether Scopus or other citation databases fairly cover all scientific domains as, for instance, Scopus collects only documents written in English and published in international peer-reviewed journals. In this situation the most penalized branches appear to be the ones of social sciences and humanities, because significant parts of the scholarly production in these areas is not published in international journals, but in national journals, in book chapters or in monographs, resulting in a scarce and biased coverage of the database that penalizes particularly non-anglophone nations [11]. Nevertheless, for completeness we decided to include these domains (psychology; arts and humanities; social sciences; economics, econometric and finance; business, management and accounting) in our analysis—yet, our results are not particularly affected by the presence of such disciplines (as explained in the caption of Figure 3).
Discussion Technological leading nations have the largest production of scientific papers and collect the largest number of citations [1], [2]. They also have the highest fraction of research and development (R&D) expense with respect to their GDP [12]: indeed only nations that spend close to 3% of their GDP in R&D compete most successfully. In this study we have analyzed the scientific research system of nations, using both an extensive and an intensive (i.e., normalizing citation counts to the resources invested) approach. After building a bipartite network of nations and scientific domains, we obtained values for nation scientific fitness (that is, the competitiveness of the research system) and scientific domain complexity as the fixed-point values of an appropriate non-linear diffusion process on the same network justified by the nested nature of the bipartite network. We thus showed that the adjacency matrix of the network has a triangular shape, indicating that (as for industrial production) the most successful and technological leading nations do not specialize in a few scientific domains—rather, they diversify as much as possible their research system. Our analysis thus points diversification out as the key element for nations to achieve a successful and competitive research system, suggesting that excellence comes out as a natural side effect of a complex, very heterogeneous, diversified, and therefore healthy, system. It is interesting to note that a recent quantitative study of the distribution of grants to research groups [13] concluded that is more effective to award small grants to many researchers rather than to give large grants to a few groups of elite researchers. This conclusion is coherent with our results, namely that strategies targeting diversity, rather than excellence, are likely to be more effective. The advantage given by scientific diversification allowed us to built a ranking for the global productivity and for the efficiency of national research systems. Moreover, the ranking of scientific domains—based on the quantification of their complexity—reveals that more complex disciplines are not necessarily those of high technological requirements. Instead, they are disciplines (such as environmental conservation, medical caretaking and treatment research, and socio/economic studies) addressing needs of a more developed society that are not directly related to “basic” nor economically-driven research. In turn, these domains play the role of good “markers” for the scientific fitness of a nation: only highly competitive nations, in terms of scientific research, can have the necessary human and financial resources for the development of these disciplines.
Acknowledgments We thank A. Baccini, A. Banfi, G. De Nicolao and L. Pietronero for |
the zoo after his company was relocated to Berwickshire in Scotland at the end of the war.
He would wave to visitors who addressed him in Polish and zoo keepers regularly had to deal with visiting soldiers who clambered into his enclosure to hug him.
Mrs Orr, who as a child was regaled with stories of the bear from her grandfather who encountered him several times during the war, and who remembers visiting the bear at Edinburgh Zoo when she was eight years old, has led the campaign to commemorate him.
"When the time came for the Poles to leave (Scotland), they had to make a decision, did they shoot him or put him in Edinburgh zoo? The men cried like babies, they were so distraught when they had to leave him behind in the zoo."We’ve all heard of Florida Man. He’s America’s worst superhero. Whether he’s getting caught with James Bond gadgets, crashing his truck into a house, beating people up with golf clubs, running over everyone during a street fight, claiming to be Satan, or whatever else even Stan Lee couldn’t dream up, Florida Man is always busy.
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And this past week has been no different for our favorite worst, non-specific, state-identified superhero! Let’s look at what Florida Man has been up to lately:
Florida Man was caught smuggling 54 Xanax pills hidden up his ass into the Duval County Jail, according to Action News Jax.
Florida Man was charged for driving with a suspended license after running a stop sign on his lawn mower and hitting another car. He fled the scene, but returned on a bike, according to WSBTV.
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Earlier in February, Florida Man jammed up an ATM with a bag of cocaine, which wasn’t discovered until a technician had to be called out to troubleshoot why the dang money machine wouldn’t take any money, according to The Smoking Gun. Perhaps he was attempting to deposit some street currency.
On Sunday, Feb 26, Florida Man was arrested for shining a laser into the cockpit of a flying police helicopter, according to the Palm Beach Post. The area Florida Man was apprehended in had recently seen a spike in laser-flashing of helicopters.
Florida Man has also been on a ‘crusade’ against illegally parked police cars for the last six months, according to the Miami News Times:
Since August, [he] has sent at least 125 complaints, with photographs and details of where and when he found the illegally parked vehicles, to departments around Miami-Dade County. He’s been berated by some officers, ignored by internal affairs investigators, and, more recently, validated by the independent Civilian Investigative Panel (CIP), which ruled that 15 Miami Police Department cops had broken regulations.
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Does this make Florida Man an actual hero? Or just a bit of an ass—it is a courthouse and they are police cars, after all.
On Wednesday morning, March 1, Florida Man was arrested completely covered in mud after fleeing a fight in a Walmart parking lot with three others in a truck, according to WKMG. The truck crashed into a tree and the group tried to escape on foot. A muddy ditch, the arch nemesis of Florida Man, was his demise.
And finally, Florida Man was arrested on Tuesday for impersonating the drummer of Nickelback while attempting to purchase around $25,000 in musical equipment, according to TCPalm.com. He thought he could get away with it because he had a similar drum set. He reportedly has a history of fraud.
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Unfortunately Florida Man doesn’t have the intent or intelligence to be ranked a super-villain, so he slips down the ranking scale to just somewhere around humorously incompetent hero. And we should all be grateful.“When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember that the original aim was to drain the swamp.” — Proverb
In A Nutshell
The world’s wetlands are ecosystems in themselves, and are defined by the flora and fauna they support. Marshes are nutrient-rich wetlands that support a variety of reeds and grasses, while swamps are defined by their ability to support woody plants and trees. Bogs are characterized by their poor soil and high peat content, while fens have less peat and more plant life than a bog.
The Whole Bushel
One of the defining characteristics of a marsh is that they are consistently flooded with water from one source or another. Many marshes are freshwater, and exist in areas with poor drainage—along streambeds, lakes, and ponds. Because the soil is consistently wet from flooding, it is also extremely nutrient-rich, and can support a wide variety of plant and animal life. Marshes may also be tidal; saltwater marshes can be found along the oceans, and are saturated every time the tide comes in. While some marshes are also fed by groundwater, all receive most of their soil saturation from surface water like tides and rains. Some marshes, such as those that form when potholes and large depressions in the earth catch melting snow, can be temporary.
Most of the vegetation in marshes are along the lines of cattails and reeds, while swamps are defined by the trees which have adapted to live in standing water or constantly saturated dirt. This waterlogged dirt is high in nutrient content. Trees like the cypress and some varieties of maple and oak can survive in these wet areas that would rot the roots of other trees. Wetlands that support woody plants like the buttonbush or the swamp rose are considered shrub swamps. Mangroves are shrubby trees that thrive in this wet environment, doing so well that there is a sub-type of swamp called the mangrove swamp. Many swamps and marshes have been destroyed to turn their nutrient-rich soils into farmland.
While other types of wetlands are very nutrient-rich, bogs are clearly defined by their lack of nutrients and their relative inability to support large plant life. A bog is created over hundreds or thousands of years, formed when plant matter decays in a lake and fills it. This creates layers and layers of peat, which is often drained before being harvested and burned as a heat source or used as insulation. Bogs are freshwater, and in spite of the large amounts of decaying plant matter, they are very poor in nutrients because of the slow rate of decay. Most of the plant life around a bog is along the lines of fungi, mosses, and small shrubs. Many carnivorous plants, such as the pitcher plant and the sundew, have evolved in bogs to combat the low nutrient levels in the soil. Bogs are infinitely valuable in their ability to store carbon, removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
Fens are very similar to bogs, and can contain much of the same decaying plant matter and peat. The difference is how they are formed. Fens are created by a water table that is very close to the surface and keeps the ground saturated. The water level in a fen can rise and fall slightly with changes to the water table, but fens are characterized by having flowing water year around. They tend to have a higher nutrient content than bogs and can support a wider variety of plant life. However, if the decaying plant matter reaches too high a level, it can strangle the nutrient levels of the fen and turn it into a bog.
Show Me The Proof
EPA: Wetland Types
National Geographic: Bog
What is a fen?(Micro Publishing Media 2016)
“I THINK he’s going to go all the way.”
Scott Dikkers, best known as the founding editor of the Onion, usually traffics in satire. On this occasion, though, he isn’t kidding.
We are talking about Donald Trump’s chances of becoming our next American president — just hours before Ted Cruz will drop out of the race.
“He’s going to do it. He’s a winner.”
Dikkers, the Chicago-based writer and cartoonist has spent the past half-year studying Trump like a specimen — all in the interest of creating his new humor book, “Trump’s America: The Complete Loser’s Guide” (Micro Publishing Media/Blaffo Books).
“He’s like James Bond,” Dikkers continues about the presumptive GOP nominee. “He has this thing about him. His father noted this when [Donald] was young: Whenever you put him [in a competitive arena], he succeeds.”
Dikkers, a chief editor-author behind the Onion’s bestselling “Our Dumb Century” and “Our Dumb World,” offers no punchline. He is not being ironic. And he underscores that he is not a Trump supporter — he’s simply a long-trained Donald observer.
“Politically, I think he’s a demagogue and a potential tyrant, and he terrifies me, as a person and citizen,” Dikkers says. “But to get inside his skull, as a satirist, you have to fall in love with the person and get inside their skin. He has a lot of great qualities [for satire]. He’s inherently funny.”
But last year, several months after Trump announced his candidacy, Dikkers hadn’t yet seen a definitive comedic takedown of Trump. “I wasn’t being entertained by the Trump comedy I was seeing — I didn’t think it was rising to the level I thought was required,” the humorist says. “So I decided: This has to happen.”
[Donald Trump will win in a landslide. *The mind behind ‘Dilbert’ explains why.]
While working with a regiment of writers to create his new book of Trump humor — which includes a mashup of satiric news clippings, letters, even a mock birth certificate — Dikkers says he marveled at what the real candidate was able to get away with. One aspect that Dikkers can especially appreciate is that Trump, not unlike the Onion, has spent decades mastering the art of the verbal takedown.
“Early on in the campaign, he would [rhetorically] strike opponents and they would get slapped down. He was so effective,” says Dikkers, who is also creator of the comic strip “Jim’s Journal.” “His messaging is the most disciplined I’ve ever seen in a presidential candidate. He’s got a slogan … and he knows how to deliver it.”
It’s one thing to win the nomination, of course. How might Trump fare against, say, Hillary Clinton in the main race?
“I think Hillary Clinton is totally out of her depth,” Dikkers replies. “The conventional wisdom is totally wrong. I think he cleans the floor with her.”
[Donald Trump v. Hillary Clinton: A tale of high unfavorability, as told through cartoons]
Predictions or no, Dikkers hopes his new work is “the definitive book about the Trump presidency” — a statement he offers with a wink at its cheekiness.
“That’s the formula that I’ve used at the Onion for decades, which is sometimes we would wait, let everybody else do their jokes and let the dust settle — and then put the full force of our ‘comedy creation system’ to bear,” says Dikkers, who is no longer employed by the Onion.
[‘The Simpsons’ predicted a Trump presidency 16 years ago. The writer illuminates the reasons]
To write his previous big books of humor, Dikkers and his team would typically have a year or more. For a timely turnaround on “Trump’s America,” they had about five months. “We really churned out the material,” he says.
They also had to decide on an overarching comedic approach. “The voice of the book,” the editor says, “is the voice of an unrealistically articulate Trump supporter — this is a rah-rah Trump book.”
Many bits in “Trump’s America” are prescient, given that it was written months ago. “I have kind of a specialty at writing humor that ends up coming true,” Dikkers says. “It really is an easy trick if you understand human nature at all, because things always unfold the same way.”
One example is the introduction into the campaign of Trump’s genitalia — which gets its own “meet me” page. “We felt like we understand him and we understand where this is going … and because of his irrational fixation on the big and the huge, he has this decades-long fight that his fingers are not small,” Dikkers says. “He’s obsessed with that. And then there’s also his longstanding effort to portray himself as a sexual dynamo.”
Dikkers’s goal with “Trump’s America,” though, is not to be skewer for cruelty’s sake. Instead, he hopes it can provide “some kind of release for the intellectual — for the reader who watches this unfolding with absolute horror. You have to be able to have a good laugh about it.”
Plus, he says, it will help prepare you for “the Trump presidency.”
From “Trump’s America: The Complete Loser’s Guide,” edited by Scott Dikkers (used by permission of Micro Publishing Media 2016)
From “Trump’s America: The Complete Loser’s Guide,” edited by Scott Dikkers (used by permission of Micro Publishing Media 2016)
From “Trump’s America: The Complete Loser’s Guide,” edited by Scott Dikkers (Micro Publishing Media 2016)
From “Trump’s America: The Complete Loser’s Guide,” edited by Scott Dikkers (courtesy of Micro Publishing Media 2016)
Read more:
Here’s how the rest of the world views Trump
Video of the day: ‘The Simpsons’ lampoons Donald Trump in this hair-raising tripMonty Python's Fliegender Zirkus (Monty Python's Flying Circus) consisted of two 45-minute Monty Python German television comedy specials produced by WDR for West German television. The two episodes were first broadcast in January and December 1972 and were shot entirely on film and mostly on location in Bavaria, with the first episode recorded in German and the second recorded in English and then dubbed into German.
Production [ edit ]
While visiting the UK in the early 1970s, German entertainer and TV producer Alfred Biolek became aware of the Pythons and, excited by their innovative and absurd sketches, invited them to Germany in 1971 to write a special German episode of their Flying Circus show and to act in them. Despite mixed audience reception, a second episode was produced in 1972.
According to producer Alfred Biolek, the Pythons were initially somewhat reluctant to the idea of going to Germany to produce comedy for a German audience.[1] Biolek had only seen a few shows, but he was impressed with the concept of the Flying Circus. Specifically, it stood out to him that they were both good comedians and good actors—a combination that Biolek rarely saw in the German comedy scene at the time.[2] Biolek arranged to meet with the Pythons in the BBC's bar in London to convince them "with many arguments and even more gin tonics"[1] to come to Germany for a brief visit. Eric Idle has described the conception of the specials as "The Germans came to us and said 'Look, we haven't got a sense of humour, but we understand you do. Can we use yours?'"[3] Terry Jones recalls Biolek's inquiry as an opportunity "to do silly things in Germany".[2]
The Pythons agreed to visit Biolek in Munich in order to explore options for possible material, but did not want to commit at this point.[2] During their visit, the troupe wanted to get a better understanding of German culture and humour. In fact, the visit, and the resulting two shows “can be viewed as a considered attempt to broaden the stereotypical picture of Germans” by the Pythons.[4] Michael Palin also noted that "All I know is that it reversed all one's prejudices. Python has done very, very well in Germany, and the movies do extremely well.... Whenever anyone says, you know, the Germans have no sense of humour, say no, hang on, hang on, they got Monty Python before a lot of other countries."[2] During their visit to Germany, the Pythons attended the Oktoberfest and Olympiastadion in Munich, and also visited nearby Dachau concentration camp.[2] The Pythons' visit to Germany in 1971 coincided with the widely celebrated 500th birthday of painter Albrecht Dürer, and the group's second visit with the highly anticipated 1972 Summer Olympics. Both events had an obvious impact on the material created by the Pythons for their first episode, including the Silly Olympics skit, and the Anita Ekberg Sings Albrecht Dürer skit, thus situating their style of humour in a local cultural context.
Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus was produced by Biolek and translator Thomas Woitkewitsch in co-production with Westdeutscher Rundfunk. The first episode was written in English, and then translated by Woitkewitsch.[4] However, translating humour within this transnational production—especially when based on idioms—was a general challenge, as Michael Palin recalls.[4]
Since none of the Pythons spoke German sufficiently, Woitkewitsch needed to provide them with phonetic transcriptions of the skits, which they then needed to learn by heart. Terry Jones recalls that this posed a considerable challenge to the troupe; he also mentions that because of the rigorous repetition required in production, he is still able to recite the German version of "The Lumberjack Song".[2] Despite the coaching and re-iterative translation efforts, the Pythons' accents remained rather strong, and according to Woitkewitsch the overall pacing was off.[2] While these language issues may have contributed to the first show's weak critical reception, Woitkewitsch suggests that they also lent it a "secret charm".[2]
The second episode was recorded in English due to aforementioned issues with the German accents and timing of some of the members; only John Cleese and Michael Palin delivered their lines in German well enough to be easily understood by native speakers. The other Python performers all had very thick accents (particularly Terry Jones), making them difficult to understand. In some cases the episode was broadcast with German subtitles.[5]
Sketches [ edit ]
Some of the material was reworked from At Last the 1948 Show.
Footage from these German specials was used to fill time between live stage performances, as seen in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Also, "Ten Seconds of Sex" from episode two was shown in Series 3, Episode 9, "Nude Organist", of the TV show. The Silly Olympics skit was regularly used when the Pythons were touring [2]
Several new sketches were written specifically for this show, including "William Tell", "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Merchant of Venice" as performed by a herd of cows. Only "The Lumberjack Song" was translated from an existing BBC Monty Python episode.
Both Alfred Biolek and Thomas Woitkewitsch are featured in guest roles, while the German footballer Franz Beckenbauer makes an appearance in "The Philosophers' Football Match" skit. The first skit of the first episode also features Claudia Doren [de], then an announcer at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk.[4]
List of episodes [ edit ]
Episode 1 (produced in 1971 and originally broadcast on ARD TV on 3 January 1972 at 9 pm CET)
An Introduction to Monty Python By Frau Newsreader Claudia Doren
The Journey of The Olympic Flame
Monty Python’s Guide to Albrecht Dürer
Anita Ekberg Sings Albrecht Dürer
The Merchant of Venice as performed by a herd of cows
Doctor Breeder
Little Red Riding Hood
Silly Olympics
Stake Your Claim
The Lumberjack Song with The Austrian Border Police
The Bavarian Restaurant
Edited versions of the "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Silly Olympics" sketches were dubbed into English and included in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl; The Stake Your Claim sketch was included on the English language record Another Monty Python Record.
Episode 2 (produced in 1972 and originally broadcast on ARD on 18 December 1972 at 9 pm CET)
William Tell
Euro Sex Maniacs
The Sycophancy Show
Mouse Reserve/Fish Park
Chicken Mining
Heinrich Bonner, Fleabuster
The Philosophers' Football Match – Greeks vs Germans, First Half
Colin "Bomber" Harris vs Colin "Bomber" Harris
The Philosophers' Football Match – Greeks vs Germans, Second Half
10 Seconds of Sex
I Want A Hearing Aid
The Tale of Happy Valley (The Princess with The Wooden Teeth)
An English-language version of the philosopher's football match was included in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl. "The Tale of Happy Valley" turned up on the English language record Monty Python's Previous Record.
Reception [ edit ]
The first show received mixed reviews. Opinion surveys taken after the episode was broadcast revealed that 8% of the audience found the show to be very good, 15% found it to be very bad, and 43% found it to be good.[2] Producer Biolek recalls that "This [the first show] was an absolute flop, it cannot be stated differently, as well as in terms of viewership and especially in terms of reviews."[6] Biolek retrospectively believes that the German audience was not ready for Pythonesque humour, since it was more used to more traditional sketch comedy, by comedians such as Rudi Carrell and Heinz Erhardt.[6] In fact, the producers did expect early on that especially the older parts of the German audience would not connect with the Pythons' style of humour.[2]
Biolek attributes the production of the second show to Westdeutscher Rundfunk's general progressive stance towards entertainment production at the time, and specifically to the support of the head of the entertainment sector, Hannes Hoff.[2]
Media [ edit ]
Guerilla Films released both episodes on a single VHS tape in 1998, available in either PAL or NTSC format. The American A&E Network used this release as the basis of their DVD releases of the same material, with the first episode being included on Monty Python Live and the second episode included on The Life of Python. (This arrangement resulted in the second episode being omitted from A&E's otherwise-complete 16-DVD box set of Monty Python's Flying Circus.)
The Australian DVD company Rainbow Entertainment also released both episodes on one DVD.
The Swiss publisher Haffmans released a hardbound book containing the scripts of both episodes, with introductions and essays by the German producers, in 1998. This book has not been translated into English as of 2007.
Both episodes have been shown on the Paramount Comedy Channel in the UK and on PBS in the USA in 2007.
Lost sketches [ edit ]
Several behind-the-scenes photos from the specials' production were published in the group's autobiography,[5] some of which were from sketches cut from the specials:
A version of the "Marriage Guidance Counsellor" sketch.
A sketch involving a flute player (Graham Chapman) in front of a German sign.
A version of the "Sir Edward Ross" sketch
An alternate ending to the first special, in which two stage hands are carrying a giant sign that says ENDE off a huge field. Behind the sign is Terry Jones' singer character from the Albrecht Dürer sketch.Internet masturbators are facing a new crackdown – as the government’s new Digital Economy Act forcing viewers to register their age before viewing online filth comes into force.
Boy, 12, raped sister, 6, after watching Grand Theft Auto sex scene
That could mean that users are forced to input credit card details, mobile numbers – or even registering their age at the Post Office.
The Digital Economy Act received Royal Assent last month – and that means the age restrictions will be enforced in Britain.
Digital privacy campaigners Open Rights Group has warned that government attempts to block under-18s from porn sites could have chilling implications for privacy.
The group has warned that efforts to verify people’s age could lead to ‘lists’ of users of porn sites – and be vulnerable to ‘Ashley Madison’ style leaks.
All porn sites will soon have age verification systems to prevent people aged under 18 from accessing adult material under the Digital Economy bill – but the systems used to ‘age block’ sites could pose a privacy risk, the group warned.
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Under the new law, every porn site would have to verify the age of its users to prevent children accessing porn by accident.
But digital privacy group Open Rights Campaign has warned that leaving it up to porn companies to implement the law poses large risks.
Jim Killock of Open Rights Group says, ‘If the government wants to have Age Verification in place, it must mandate a system that increases the privacy and safety of end users, since the users will be compelled to use Age Verification tools.
‘Also, any and all Age Verification solutions must not make Britain’s cybersecurity worse overall, e.g. by building databases of the nation’s porn-surfing habits which might later appear on Wikileaks.PASADENA -- You know that horrified, twisted-up look Oregon running back LaMichael James had on his face this week,
, terrified? Well, I totally get it after looking at this Rose Bowl and seeing the way ESPN is leading it around on a leash.
The sight makes me want to hurl.
Have to give it to the self-proclaimed "worldwide leader" because just as you can buy a
or commemorative scarf in Pasadena today, you can apparently buy anything for the right price. The sports-television network has managed to buy exclusive access for a half-billion dollars.
Consider that Friday's practices for Oregon and Wisconsin were open to the media. Mandatory and customary by Bowl Championship Series standards, of course. Those who attended were treated to 15 minutes of players mostly goofing off and warming up. ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit brought his kids, who were adorable, and played a game of "keepaway" with some Ducks players, including James. And then, when the 15 minutes expired,
.
ESPN's people stayed on. And that's what $500 million buys in a bowl week.
Look. Make no mistake. Anyone paying attention to the exodus of talented, well-sourced journalists from
to other places in the last decade understands that a lot of the best talent on staff bolted long ago to places like Yahoo!, Fox Sports, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated. Places that are still interested in more than air-brush journalism. The four-letter sports network has gravitated away from great reporting, and writing, and substance, and instead is in the business of buying up events and exclusivity and passing it off to the consumer as journalism.
So mission accomplished this week.
ESPN owns the entire BCS, turns out. Beginning this season, under a four-year agreement that feels a little too much pimp and prostitute for me, the cable network gets to do as it pleases with the BCS Championship game as well as the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar bowls. And something about that isn't right.
The events' broadcast rights were previously shared by Fox and ABC. Never felt heavy-handed when they were in charge. And as part of ESPN's exclusive deal, the personalities associated with the cable network get to hang out at practice, tweeting about the Ducks' practice music selection as Erin Andrews did this week. They're buying exclusive access to players and coaches before the bowls and exclusive rights during the games. Also, Herbstreit's cute children will apparently get access that a long line of trained journalists who cover the teams for readers and viewers on a daily basis do not.
Money talks. And journalism walks, see?
Sick stuff.
Not just because ESPN gets access to footage that it will package and feed to viewers like it did with that flimsy, but wildly profitable,
two summers ago. But because the agreement between cable network and bowl series has to make you wonder where the relationship between ESPN and the football it pretends to cover begins and ends. Are they partners? Is this a legitimate subject-reporter situation? Once ESPN buys access to an event don't they then turn from journalist to promoter?
Don't answer.
Everyone already knows.
When ESPN selectively covers stories, as it does during a college football season, and attempts to dictate what is news and what is not to the public, how can any of us not be left wondering if they're really reporting the news or simply protecting their bowl-week product? After all, they're in this thing together now. When they're slow to break a story, can we be sure why?
When the agreement was announced in 2008, ESPN president George Bodenheimer declared: "The BCS will thrive on ESPN."
They're vested, see?
ESPN isn't covering the Rose Bowl. They're broadcasting what they hope is the best game ever to 98 million households. The corporate giant is packaging the thing, prettying it up, and presenting it to viewers. But not covering it like journalists. Make no mistake. That's clear after seeing the way the network handled this college football season, promoting and packaging weekly BCS-ranking specials and bowl-game run-up in a manner normally reserved for the NCAA basketball tournament's "Selection Sunday."
Any idea of whether any of it mattered? Or was ESPN just selling a product and disguising it as journalism? And if there were a real story here, would ESPN cover it or wait for someone else to break it before acknowledging it?
I know a handful of good, talented people who still work for ESPN. They'll hate this column. But it needs to be written because this is exactly what's happening. The journalists are going one way, and the entertainers another. My ESPN friends insist there is a real aim internally at continuing to chase stories and break news.
Must have been what Herbstreit's kids were after when they were playing keepaway with the Ducks.
--
Catch him on the radio on "The Bald-Faced Truth," 3-6 p.m. weekdays on KXTG (750).Donald J. Trump was declared the winner of the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday night, according to The Associated Press, gaining a third consecutive victory in an early-voting state and strengthening his position in the Republican presidential race before the wave of Super Tuesday elections on March 1.
Mr. Trump was seen as a favorite going into the contest. Even so, his victory serves as a setback for his chief competitors, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, who must now try to break Mr. Trump’s winning streak in the larger states that vote in the coming weeks.
Mr. Trump was declared the winner on Tuesday night, and final returns reported by The A.P. put him 22 points over his nearest challenger, Mr. Rubio, with Mr. Cruz trailing in third place. Turnout in Nevada was reported to be high compared with previous caucuses.
For Mr. Trump, the outcome in Nevada is another sign of his campaign’s durability and the breadth of his appeal: He has now handily won primary elections in New England and in the South, and a caucus fight in the far West. He won over independent voters in New Hampshire and evangelicals in South Carolina, and prevailed in Nevada, where Mormon voters and rural activists wield influence.Chester James Carville Jr. (born October 25, 1944) is an American political commentator and media personality who is a prominent figure in the Democratic Party. Nicknamed the Ragin' Cajun[1], Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.[2] Carville also worked as a co-host of CNN's Crossfire. After Crossfire, he appeared on CNN's news program The Situation Room. As of 2009, he hosts a weekly program on XM Radio titled 60/20 Sports with Luke Russert, son of Tim Russert who hosted NBC's Meet The Press. He is married to Libertarian political consultant Mary Matalin. In 2009, he began teaching political science at Tulane University.[3]
In 2014, Carville joined Fox News Channel as a contributor.[4]
Early life and career [ edit ]
Carville, the oldest of eight children, was born on October 25, 1944, in Carville, Louisiana,[5] the son of Lucille (née Normand), a former school teacher who sold World Book Encyclopedia door-to-door, and Chester James Carville, a postmaster as well as owner of a general store.[6][7][8] The town of Carville was named after his paternal grandfather, Louis Arthur Carville, the postmaster.[9] Carville attended Ascension Catholic High School in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.[7] Louis Arthur's mother, Octavia Dehon was of Belgian parentage and had married John Madison Carville, described in a biography as "Irish-born" and a "carpetbagger",[10] both of whom established the general store operated by the family in Carville in 1882. He was born in Ireland in 1847 and his father, Alexander Carville, in 1810.[11]
He received his undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees from Louisiana State University (LSU). Carville is a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity.[12]
Carville spent two years serving in the United States Marine Corps, achieving the rank of Corporal,[13][14] and later worked as a high school teacher. Before entering politics, Carville worked as a litigator at a Baton Rouge law firm from 1973 to 1979.
Political career [ edit ]
Early political career [ edit ]
Carville was trained in consulting by Gus Weill, who in 1958 had opened the first advertising firm which specialized in political campaigns in the state capital in Baton Rouge.[15]
Prior to the Clinton campaign, Carville and consulting partner Paul Begala gained other well-known political victories, including the gubernatorial triumphs of Robert Casey of Pennsylvania in 1986, and Zell Miller of Georgia in 1990, and Brereton Jones of Kentucky in 1991. But it was in 1991 when Carville and Begala rose to national attention, leading appointed incumbent Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania back from a 40-point poll deficit over White House hand-picked candidate Dick Thornburgh. It was during Wofford's campaign that the "it's the economy, stupid" strategy used by Bill Clinton in 1992 was first implemented.
Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign [ edit ]
In 1992, Carville helped lead Bill Clinton to a win against George H. W. Bush in the presidential election. In 1993, Carville was honored as Campaign District Manager of the Year by the American Association of Political Consultants. His role in the Clinton campaign was documented in the feature-length Academy Award-nominated film The War Room.
One of the formulations he used in that campaign has entered common usage, derived from a list he posted in the war room to help focus himself and his staff, with these three points:
Change vs. more of the same. The economy, stupid. Don't forget health care.[16]
Political and media work [ edit ]
After 1992 Carville stopped working on domestic campaigns, stating that he would bring unneeded publicity. He then worked on a number of foreign campaigns, including those of Tony Blair – then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – during the 2001 general election; Ehud Barak of Israel's Labor Party (at the suggestion of Clinton, who had grown frustrated with Benjamin Netanyahu's intransigence in the peace process) in the 1999 Knesset election; and the Liberal Party of Canada. In 2002, Carville helped Bolivian Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada win the presidency in Bolivia, while working as a Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) strategist. This was portrayed in the documentary Our Brand Is Crisis.
In 2004, he was brought in for last-minute consulting on John Kerry's presidential campaign, but he did not play a major role.
In 2005, Carville taught a semester of the course "Topics in American Politics" at Northern Virginia Community College. Among the guests he had come speak to the class were Al Hunt, Mark Halperin, Senator George Allen, George Stephanopoulos, Karl Strubel, Stan Greenberg, Tony Blankley, representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America, and James Fallows.
In 2006, Carville switched gears from politics to sports and became a host on a sports show called 60/20 Sports on XM Satellite Radio with Luke Russert, son of NBC journalist Tim Russert. The show is an in-depth look at the culture of sports based on the ages of the two hosts (60 and 20).
After the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterm election, Carville criticized Howard Dean as Democratic National Committee Chair, calling for his ouster, as he believed Dean had not spent enough money. In late November 2006, Carville proposed a truce of sorts.[17]
Carville was the executive producer of the 2006 film All the King's Men, starring Sean Penn and Anthony Hopkins, which is loosely based on the life of Louisiana Governor Huey Long.
Carville had believed that Al Gore, whom he helped put in the White House as vice president in 1992, would run for president in 2008.[18] This prediction did not come true.
On March 4, 2009, Politico reported that Carville, Paul Begala, and Rahm Emanuel were the architects of the Democratic Party's strategy to cast conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh as the face of the Republican Party.[19] Carville was particularly critical of Limbaugh for saying he wanted Barack Obama to "fail".
Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani hired Carville as a campaign advisor in July 2009. Carville said that the 2009 Afghan presidential election is "probably the most important election held in the world in a long time," and he called his new job "probably the most interesting project I have ever worked in my life."[20] Carville, who works for Ghani pro bono, when asked about similarities between politics in Afghanistan and politics in Louisiana, responded: "Yeah, I felt a little bit at home, to be honest with you."[21]
In 2010, Carville worked as senior advisor for the campaign of Colombian presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos.[22]
He is acting as advisor for Daniel Scioli (Governor of Buenos Aires) re-election campaign.
He is a regular contributor with Stan Greenberg to the weekly Carville-Greenberg Memo at The National Memo.
Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential primary campaign [ edit ]
As an advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, Carville told The New York Times on March 22, 2008, that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who had just endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, was comparable to Judas Iscariot. It was "an act of betrayal," said Carville. "Mr. Richardson |
the Hoare-Laval plan by leaking it to the French press.[47] St. Leger was by all accounts a "rather strange" character who sometimes chose to undercut policy initiatives that he disapproved of.[48] In a strange asymmetry, the Francophile Vansittart at the Foreign Office was in favor the French approach that it was worth letting Italy conquer Ethiopia in order to continue the Stresa Front, whereas the Anglophile St. Leger at the Quai d'Orsay was in favor of the British approach of upholding collective security, even at the risk of damaging the Stresa Front. When the news of the Hoare-Laval plan to essentially reward Mussolini reached Britain, it caused such an uproar that Hoare had to resign in disgrace (to be replaced by Anthony Eden) and the newly elected Baldwin government was almost toppled by a backbenchers' revolt. Baldwin lied to the House of Commons by claiming quite falsely that the cabinet was unaware of the Hoare-Laval plan, and that Hoare was a rogue minister acting on his own. In France, public opinion was just as outraged by the Hoare-Laval plan as British public opinion was. Laval's policy of internal devaluation of forcing deflation on the French economy in order to increase French exports to combat the Great Depression had already made him extremely unpopular, and the Hoare-Laval plan further damaged his reputation. The Chamber of Deputies debated the plan on 27 and 28 December, the Popular Front condemned it, with Léon Blum telling Laval: "You have tried to give and to keep. You wanted to have your cake and eat it. You cancelled your words by your deeds and your deeds by your words. You have debased everything by fixing, intrigue and slickness … Not sensitive enough to the importance of great moral issues, you have reduced everything to the level of your petty methods".[49]
Mussolini for his part rejected the Hoare-Laval plan, saying he wanted to subject all of Ethiopia, not just half. Following the fiasco of the Hoare-Laval plan, the British government resumed its previous policy of imposing sanctions against Italy in a half-hearted way, which in turn imposed serious strains on relations with both Paris and especially Rome. Given the provocative Italian attitude, Britain wanted to begin staff talks with France for a possible war with Italy.[50] On 13 December 1935, Neurath told the British ambassador Sir Eric Phipps that Berlin regarded any Anglo-French staff talks without Germany – even if directed only against Italy – as a violation of Locarno that would force Germany to remilitarize the Rhineland.[50] Through Italo-German relations were quite unfriendly in 1935, Germany had been an outspoken supporter of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and offered Mussolini a benevolent neutrality.[51] Under the banner of white supremacy and fascism, Hitler came out strongly for the Italian invasion, and he made a point of shipping the Italians various raw materials and weapons, which the League of Nations sanctions had forbidden Italy.[52] Hitler's support for the Italian aggression won him much goodwill in Rome.[52] By contrast, Laval's pro-Italian intrigues and his efforts to sabotage the British-led effort to impose sanctions on Italy created a lasting climate of distrust between the British and the French.[53]
German remilitarisation [ edit ]
Neurath and secret intelligence [ edit ]
The British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden anticipated that by 1940 Germany might be persuaded to return to the League of Nations, accept arms limitations, and renounce her territorial claims in Europe in exchange for remilitarization of the Rhineland, return of the former German African colonies and German "economic priority along the Danube"[54] The Foreign Office's Ralph Wigram advised that Germany should be permitted to remilitarise the Rhineland in exchange for an "air pact" outlawing bombing and a German promise not to use force to change their borders. However, 'Wigram did not succeed in convincing his colleagues or cabinet ministers'.[55] Eden's goal has been defined as that of a "general settlement", which sought "a return to the normality of the twenties and the creation of conditions in which Hitler could behave like Stresemann." (Gustav Stresemann German chancellor, foreign minister and democrat during the Weimar Republic)[56] On 16 January 1936, the French Premier Pierre Laval submitted the Franco-Soviet Pact to the Chamber of Deputies for ratification.[57] In January 1936, during his visit to London to attend the funeral of King George V, Neurath told Eden: "If, however, the other signatories or guarantors of the Locarno Pact should conclude bilateral agreements contrary to the spirit of Locarno Pact, we should be compelled to reconsider our attitude."[58] Eden's response to Neurath's veiled threat that Germany would remilitarize the Rhineland if the French National Assembly ratified the Franco-Soviet pact convinced Neurath that if Germany remilitarized, then Britain would take Germany's side against France.[58] There was a clause in the Locarno treaty calling for binding international arbitration if the one of the signatory powers signed a treaty that the other powers considered to be incompatible with Locarno.[59] Both Neurath and his State Secretary Prince Bernhard von Bülow professed to every foreign diplomat with whom they spoke that the Franco-Soviet Pact was a violation of Locarno, but at the same time both strongly advised Hitler not to seek international arbitration in order to determine whether the Franco-Soviet pact really was a violation of Locarno.[59] Seeking international arbitration was a "lose-lose" situation for Germany: on the one hand, if it were ruled that the Franco-Soviet pact was incompatible with Locarno, then the French would have to abandon the pact, thereby depriving Germany of an excuse to remilitarize; on the other hand, if it were ruled that Franco-Soviet pact was compatible with Locarno, Germany would likewise have no excuse for remilitarization.[59] Although Neurath indicated several times in press conferences in early 1936 that Germany was planning on using the arbitration clause in Locarno in order to help convince public opinion abroad that the Franco-Soviet pact was a violation of Locarno, the German government never invoked the arbitration clause.[59]
At the same time, Neurath received an intelligence report on 10 January 1936 from Gottfried Aschmann, the Chief of the Auswärtiges Amt's Press Division, who during a visit to Paris in early January 1936 had talked to a minor French politician named Jean Montiny who was a close friend of Premier Laval, who had frankly mentioned that France's economic problems had retarded French military modernization and that France would do nothing if Germany remilitarized the Rhineland.[60]. Neurath did not pass on Aschmann's report to Hitler, but he placed a high value upon it.[61] Neurath was seeking to improve his position within the Nazi regime; by repeatedly assuring Hitler during the Rhineland crisis that the French would do nothing without telling Hitler the source of his self-assurance, Neurath came across as a diplomat blessed with an uncanny intuition, something that improved his standing with Hitler.[62] Traditionally in Germany the conduct of foreign policy had been the work of the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), but starting in 1933 Neurath had been faced with the threat of Nazi "interlopers in diplomacy" as various NSDAP agencies started to conduct their own foreign policies independent of and often against the Auswärtiges Amt.[63] The most serious of the "interlopers in diplomacy" was the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, a sort of alternative foreign ministry loosely linked to the NSDAP headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop which aggressively sought to undercut the work of the Auswärtiges Amt at every turn.[64] Further exacerbating the rivalry between the Dienststelle Ribbentrop and the Auswärtiges Amt was the fact that Neurath and Ribbentrop utterly hated one another, with Ribbentrop making no secret of his belief that he would be a much better foreign minister than Neurath, whereas Neurath viewed Ribbentrop as a hopelessly inept amateur diplomat meddling in matters that did not concern him.[65]
Baron Konstantin von Neurath in 1939. As Foreign Minister in 1936, Neurath played a decisive role in German decision-making that led to the remilitarization.
The decision to remilitarize [ edit ]
During January 1936, the German Chancellor and Führer Adolf Hitler decided to reoccupy the Rhineland. Originally Hitler had planned to remilitarize the Rhineland in 1937, but chose in early 1936 to move re-militarization forward by a year for several reasons, namely: the ratification by the French National Assembly of the Franco-Soviet pact of 1935 allowed him to present his coup both at home and abroad as a defensive move against Franco-Soviet "encirclement"; the expectation that France would be better armed in 1937; the government in Paris had just fallen and a caretaker government was in charge; economic problems at home required a foreign policy success to restore the regime's popularity; the Italo-Ethiopian War, which had set Britain against Italy, had effectively broken up the Stresa Front; and apparently because Hitler simply did not feel like waiting an extra year.[66][67] In his biography of Hitler, the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw argued that the primary reasons for the decision to remilitarize in 1936 as opposed to 1937 were Hitler's preference for dramatic unilateral coups to obtain what could easily be achieved via quiet talks, and Hitler's need for a foreign policy triumph to distract public attention from the major economic crisis that was gripping Germany in 1935–36.[68]
The German War Minister General Werner von Blomberg.
During a meeting between Prince Bernhard von Bülow, the State Secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt (who is not to be confused with his more famous uncle Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow) and the French Ambassador André François-Poncet on 13 January 1936, where Bülow handed François-Poncet yet another note protesting against the Franco-Soviet pact, François-Poncet accused Bülow to his face of seeking any excuse, no matter how bizarre, strange or implausible to send troops back into the Rhineland.[69] On 15 January 1936, a top-secret NKVD report was sent to Joseph Stalin entitled "Summary of Military and Political Intelligence on Germany", which reported – based on statements from various diplomats in the Auswärtiges Amt – that Germany was planning on remilitarizing the Rhineland in the near-future.[70] The same summary quoted Bülow as saying that if Britain and France made any sort of agreement concerning military co-operation that did not involve Germany: "We would view this as a violation of Locarno, and if we are not dragged into participating in negotiations, we will not consider ourselves bound by Locarno obligations concerning the preservation of the Rhine demilitarized zone".[71] The Soviet report warning of German plans for remilitarization was not passed on to either the British or French governments.[71]
On 17 January 1936 Benito Mussolini – who was angry about the League of Nations sanctions applied against his country for aggression against Ethiopia – told the German Ambassador in Rome, Ulrich von Hassell, that he wanted to see an Austro-German agreement "which would in practice bring Austria into Germany's wake, so that she could pursue no other foreign policy than one parallel with Germany. If Austria, as a formally independent state, were thus in practice to become a German satellite, he would have no objection".[72][73]
By recognizing that Austria was within the German sphere of influence, Mussolini had removed the principal problem in Italo-German relations.[73] Italo-German relations had been quite bad since mid-1933, and especially since the July Putsch of 1934, so Mussolini's remarks to Hassell in early 1936 indicating that he wanted a rapprochement with Germany were considered extremely significant in Berlin.[72] In another meeting, Mussolini told Hassell that he regarded the Stresa Front of 1935 as "dead", and that Italy would do nothing to uphold Locarno should Germany violate it.[72] Initially German officials did not believe in Mussolini's desire for a rapprochement, but after Hitler sent Hans Frank on a secret visit to Rome carrying a message from the Führer about Germany's support for Italy's actions in the conquest of Ethiopia, Italo-German relations improved markedly.[72] On 24 January, the very unpopular Laval resigned as premier rather than be defeated on a motion of no-confidence in the National Assembly as the Radical Socialists decided to join the left-wing Popular Front, thereby ensuring an anti-Laval majority in the Chamber of Deputies.[74] A caretaker government was formed in Paris led by Albert Sarraut until new elections could be held. The Sarraut cabinet was a mixture of men of the right like Georges Mandel, the center like Georges Bonnet and the left like Joseph Paul-Boncour which made it almost impossible for the cabinet to make decisions.[75] Immediately, the Sarraut government came into conflict with Britain as Eden started to press the League for oil sanctions against Italy, something that the French were completely opposed to, and threatened to veto.[76]
On 11 February 1936, the new French Premier Albert Sarraut affirmed that his government would work for the ratification of the Franco-Soviet pact.[57] On February 12, 1936, Hitler met with Neurath and his Ambassador-at-Large Joachim von Ribbentrop to ask their opinion of the likely foreign reaction to remilitarization.[58] Neurath supported remiltarization, but argued that Germany should negotiate more before doing so whereas Ribbentrop argued for unilateral remilitarization at once.[77] Ribbentrop told Hitler that if France went to war in response to German remiltarization, then Britain would go to war with France, an assessment of the situation with which Neurath did not agree, but one that encouraged Hitler to proceed with remiltarization.[77]
On the 12th of February Hitler informed his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, of his intentions and asked the head of the Army, General Werner von Fritsch, how long it would take to transport a few infantry battalions and an artillery battery into the Rhineland. Fritsch answered that it would take three days organization but he was in favour of negotiation, as he believed that the German Army was in no state for armed combat with the French Army.[78] The Chief of the General Staff, General Ludwig Beck warned Hitler that the German Army would be unable to successfully defend Germany against a possible retaliatory French attack.[79] Hitler reassured Fritsch that he would withdraw his forces if there were a French countermove. Weinberg wrote that:
"German military plans provided for small German units to move into the Rhineland, joining the local militarized police (Landespolizei) and staging a fighting withdrawal if there were a military counter-action from the West. The story that the Germans had orders to withdraw if France moved against them is partially correct, but essentially misleading; the withdrawal was to be a tactical defensive move, not a return to the earlier position. The possibility of a war was thus accepted by Hitler, but he clearly did not think the contingency very likely."[80]
The operation was codenamed Winter Exercise.
Unknown to Hitler, on 14 February Eden had written to the Quai d'Orsay stating that Britain and France should "enter betimes into negotiations...for the surrender on conditions of our rights in the zone while such surrender still has got a bargaining value".[81] Eden wrote to the British cabinet that the end of the demilitarized zone would "not merely change local military values, but is likely to lead to far-reaching political repercussions of a kind which will further weaken France's influence in Central and Eastern Europe".[82] In February 1936, the Deuxième Bureau started to submit reports suggesting that Germany was planning on sending troops into the Rhineland in the very near-future.[83] Because François-Poncet's reports from Berlin indicated that the German economic situation was quite precarious, it was felt in Paris that sanctions against Germany could be quite devastating, and might even lead to the collapse of the Nazi regime.[84]
Along with Ribbentrop and Neurath, Hitler discussed the planned remilitarization in detail with War Minister General Werner von Blomberg, Chief of General Staff General Ludwig Beck, Hermann Göring, Army Commander-in-Chief General Werner von Fritsch and Ulrich von Hassell.[85] Ribbentrop and Blomberg were in favor; Beck and Fritsch were opposed and Neurath and Hassell were supportive, but argued that there was no real need to act now as quiet diplomacy would soon ensure remilitarization.[86] That Hitler was in close and regular contact with Hassell, the ambassador to Italy all through February and early March, showed how much importance Hitler attached to Italy.[86] Of the three leaders of the Stresa front, Mussolini was easily the one Hitler most respected, and so Hitler viewed Italy as the key, taking the view that if Mussolini decided to oppose the remilitarization, then Britain and France would follow.[57] Not withstanding Mussolini's remarks in January, Hitler was still not convinced of Italian support, and ordered Hassell to find out Mussolini's attitude.[87] On 22 February, Hassell wrote in his diary that the pending ratification of the Franco-Soviet pact was just a pretext, writing: "it was quite clear that he [Hitler] really wanted the ratification to use as a platform for his action".[88] That same day, Hassell held a meeting with Mussolini, where Il Duce stated if oil sanctions were applied against Italy, he would "make Locarno disappear of its own accord", and that anyhow Italy would not act if German troops were to enter the Rhineland.[89]
At the same time, Neurath started preparing elaborate documents justifying remilitarization as a response forced on Germany by the Franco-Soviet pact, and advised Hitler to keep the number of troops sent into the Rhineland very small so to allow the Germans to claim that they had not committed a "flagrant violation" of Locarno (both Britain and Italy were only committed to offering a military response to a "flagrant violation").[90] In the statement justifying remilitarization that Neurath prepared for the foreign press, the German move was portrayed as something forced on a reluctant Germany by ratification of the Franco-Soviet pact, and strongly hinted that Germany would return to the League of Nations if remilitarization was accepted.[90] After meeting with Hitler on 18 February, Baron von Neurath expressed the viewpoint "for Hitler in the first instance domestic motives were decisive".[91]
At the same time that Frank was visiting Rome, Göring had been dispatched to Warsaw to meet the Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Józef Beck and to ask the Poles to remain neutral if France decided on war in response to the remilitarization of the Rhineland.[92] Colonel Beck believed that the French would do nothing if Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, and thus could assure those in the Polish government who wished for Poland to stay close to its traditional ally France that Poland would act if France did while at the same time telling Göring that he wanted closer German-Polish relations and would do nothing in the event of remilitarization.[92]
On 13 February 1936 during a meeting with Prince Bismarck of the German Embassy in London, Ralph Wigram, the head of the Central Department of the British Foreign Office stated that the British government (whose Prime Minister from 1935 to 1937 was Stanley Baldwin) wanted a "working agreement" on an air pact that would outlaw bombing, and that Britain would consider revising Versailles and Locarno in Germany's favor for an air pact.[58] Prince Bismarck reported to Berlin that Wigram had hinted quite strongly that the "things" that Britain were willing to consider revising included remilitarization.[58] On 22 February 1936 Mussolini, who was still angry about the League of Nations sanctions applied against his country for aggression against Ethiopia, told von Hassell that Italy would not honour Locarno if Germany were to remilitarize the Rhineland.[93] Even if Mussolini had wanted to honour Locarno, practical problems would have arisen as the bulk of the Italian Army was at that time engaged in the conquest of Ethiopia, and as there is no common Italo-German frontier.
Historians debate the relation between Hitler's decision to remilitarize the Rhineland in 1936 and his broad long-term goals. Those historians who favour an "intentionist" interpretation of German foreign policy such as Klaus Hildebrand and the late Andreas Hillgruber see the Rhineland remilitarization as only one "stage" of Hitler's stufenplan (stage by stage plan) for world conquest. Those historians who take a "functionist" interpretation see the Rhineland remilitarization more as ad hoc, improvised response on the part of Hitler to the economic crisis of 1936 as a cheap and easy way of restoring the regime's popularity. The British Marxist historian Timothy Mason famously argued that Hitler's foreign policy was driven by domestic needs related to a failing economy, and that it was economic problems at home as opposed to Hitler's "will" or "intentions" that drove Nazi foreign policy from 1936 onwards, which ultimately degenerated into a “barbaric variant of social imperialism", which led to a "flight into war" in 1939.[94][95]
As Hildebrand himself has noted, these interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Hildebrand has argued that although Hitler did have a "programme" for world domination, the way in which Hitler attempted to execute his "programme" was highly improvised and much subject to structural factors both on the international stage and domestically that were often not under Hitler's control.[96] On February 26 the French National Assembly ratified the Franco-Soviet pact. On February 27, Hitler had lunch with Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels to discuss the planned remilitarization, with Goebbels writing in his diary afterwards: "Still somewhat too early".[97] On February 29 an interview Hitler had on February 21 with the French fascist and journalist Bertrand de Jouvenel was published in the newspaper Paris-Midi.[98] During his interview with a clearly admiring de Jouvenel, Hitler professed himself a man of peace who desperately wanted friendship with France and blamed all of the problems in Franco-German relations on the French who for some strange reason were trying to "encircle" Germany via the Franco-Soviet pact, despite the evident fact that the Fuhrer was not seeking to threaten France.[98] Hitler's interview with de Jouvenel was intended to influence French public opinion into believing that it was their government that was responsible for the remilitarization. Only on March 1 did Hitler finally make up his mind to proceed.[99] A further factor in Hitler's decision was that the sanctions committee of the League was due to start discussing possible oil sanctions against Italy on 2 March, something that was likely to lead the diplomats of Europe to be focused on the Abyssinia Crisis at the expense of everything else.[100]
The Wehrmacht marches [ edit ]
Not long after dawn on March 7, 1936, nineteen German infantry battalions and a handful of planes entered the Rhineland. By doing so, Germany violated Articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Versailles and Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty of Locarno.[101] They reached the river Rhine by 11:00 a.m. and then three battalions crossed to the west bank of the Rhine. At the same time, Baron von Neurath summoned the Italian ambassador Baron Bernardo Attolico, the British ambassador Sir Eric Phipps and the French ambassador André François-Poncet to the Wilhelmstrasse to hand them notes accusing France of violating Locarno by ratifying the Franco-Soviet pact, and announcing that as such Germany had decided to renounce Locarno and remilitarize the Rhineland.[102]
When German reconnaissance learned that thousands of French soldiers were congregating on the Franco-German border, General Blomberg begged Hitler to evacuate the German forces. Under Blomberg's influence, Hitler nearly ordered the German troops to withdraw, but was then persuaded by the resolutely calm Neurath to continue with Operation Winter Exercise.[103] Following Neurath's advice, Hitler inquired whether the French forces had actually crossed the border and when informed that they had not, he assured Blomberg that Germany would wait until this happened.[104] In marked contrast to Blomberg who was highly nervous during Operation Winter Exercise, Neurath stayed calm and very much urged Hitler to stay the course.[105]
The Rhineland coup is often seen as the moment when Hitler could have been stopped with very little effort; the German forces involved in the move were small, compared to the much larger, and at the time more powerful, French military. The American journalist William L. Shirer wrote if the French had marched into the Rhineland,
... in March 1936 the two Western democracies, were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact – as we have seen Hitler admitting – bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip.[106]
A German officer assigned to the Bendlerstrasse during the crisis told H. R. Knickerbocker during the Spanish Civil War: "I can tell you that for five days and five nights not one of us closed an eye. We knew that if the French marched, we were done. We had no fortifications, and no army to match the French. If the French had even mobilized, we should have been compelled to retire." The general staff, the officer said, considered Hitler's action suicidal.[107] General Heinz Guderian, a German general interviewed by French officers after the Second World War, claimed: "If you French had intervened in the Rhineland in 1936 we should have been sunk and Hitler would have fallen."[108]
That Hitler faced serious opposition gains apparent weight from the fact that Ludwig Beck and Werner von Fritsch did indeed become opponents of Hitler but according to the American historian Ernest May there is not a scrap of evidence for this at this stage.[109] May wrote that the German Army officer corps was all for remilitarizing the Rhineland, and only the question of timing of such a move divided them from Hitler.[110] May further noted that there is no evidence that the German Army was planning on overthrowing Hitler if he had been forced to order a withdraw from the Rhineland, and the fact that Mussolini utterly humiliated Hitler during the July Putsch in 1934 by forcing Germany to climb-down on Austria without leading to the slightest effort on the part of the Reichswehr to overthrow Hitler must cast further doubt on the thesis that Hitler would have been toppled if only he been forced to withdraw from the Rhineland.[110]
Writing about relations between Hitler and his generals in early 1936, the American historian J.T. Emerson declared: "In fact, at no time during the twelve-year existence of the Third Reich did Hitler enjoy more amicable relations with his generals than in 1935 and 1936. During these years, there was nothing like an organized military resistance to party politics".[111] Later on in World War II, despite the increasing desperate situation of Germany from 1942 onwards and a whole series of humiliating defeats, the overwhelming majority of the Wehrmacht stayed loyal to the Nazi regime and continued to fight hard for that regime right up to its destruction in 1945 (the only exception being the putsch of July 20, 1944, in which only a minority of the Wehrmacht rebelled while the majority remained loyal).[112] The willingness of the Wehrmacht to continue to fight and die hard for the National Socialist regime despite the fact Germany was clearly losing the war from 1943 onwards reflected the deep commitment of most of the Wehrmacht to National Socialism.[113]
Furthermore, the senior officers of the Wehrmacht were deeply corrupt men, who received huge bribes from Hitler in exchange for their loyalty.[114] In 1933, Hitler had created a slush fund known as Konto 5 run by Hans Lammers, which provided bribes to senior officers and civil servants in exchange for their loyalty to the National Socialist regime.[114] Given the intense devotion of the Wehrmacht to the National Socialist regime and its corrupt senior officers who never got quite enough in the way of bribes from Hitler, it is very unlikely that the Wehrmacht would have turned on their Fuhrer if the Wehrmacht were forced out of the Rhineland in 1936.
Reactions [ edit ]
Germany [ edit ]
On 7 March 1936 Hitler announced before the Reichstag that the Rhineland had been remilitarized, and to blunt the danger of war, Hitler offered to return to the League of Nations, to sign an air pact to outlaw bombing as a way of war, and a non-aggression pact with France if the other powers agreed to accept the remilitarization.[99] In his address to the Reichstag, Hitler began with a lengthy denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles as unfair to Germany, claimed that he was a man of peace who wanted war with no-one, and argued that he was only seeking equality for Germany by peacefully overturning the unfair Treaty of Versailles.[115] Hitler claimed that it was unfair that because of Versailles a part of Germany should be demilitarized whereas in every other nation of the world a government could order its troops to anywhere within its borders, and claimed all he wanted was "equality" for Germany.[115] Even then, Hitler claimed that he would have been willing to accept the continued demilitarization of the Rhineland as Stresemann had promised at Locarno in 1925 as the price for peace, had it not been for the Franco-Soviet Pact of 1935, which he maintained was threatening to Germany and had left him with no other choice than to remilitarize the Rhineland.[115] With his eye on public opinion abroad, Hitler made a point of stressing that the remilitarization was not intended to threaten anyone else, but was instead only a defensive measure imposed on Germany by what he claimed were the menacing actions of France and the Soviet Union.[115] At least some people abroad accepted Hitler's claim that he been forced to take this step because of the Franco-Soviet pact. Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George stated in the House of Commons that Hitler's actions in the wake of the Franco-Soviet pact were fully justified, and he would have been a traitor to Germany if he had not protected his country.[116]
When German troops marched into Cologne, a vast cheering crowd formed spontaneously to greet the soldiers, throwing flowers onto the Wehrmacht while Catholic priests offered to bless the soldiers.[117] Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte of Cologne held a Mass at Cologne Cathedral to celebrate and thank Hitler for "sending back our army".[115] In Germany, the news that the Rhineland had been remilitarized was greeted with wild celebrations all over the country; the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw wrote of March 1936 that: "People were besides themselves with delight … It was almost impossible not to be caught up in the infectious mood of joy".[118] Not until the victory over France in June 1940 was the Nazi regime to be as popular as it was in March 1936. Reports to the Sopade in the spring of 1936 mentioned that a great many erstwhile Social Democrats and opponents of the Nazis amongst the working class had nothing but approval of the remilitarization, and that many who had once been opposed to the Nazis under the Weimar Republic were now beginning to support them.[118]
To capitalize on the vast popularity of the remilitarization, Hitler called a referendum on 29 March 1936 in which the majority of German voters expressed their approval of the remilitarization.[118] During his campaign stops to ask for a yes vote, Hitler was greeted with huge crowds roaring their approval of his defiance of Versailles.[118] Kershaw wrote that the 99% ja (yes) vote in the referendum was improbably high, but it is clear that an overwhelming majority of voters did genuinely chose to vote yes when asked if they approved of the remilitarization.[119] The American journalist William L. Shirer wrote about the 1936 election:
"Nevertheless, this observer, who covered the "election" from one corner of the Reich to the other, has no doubt that the vote of approval for Hitler's coup was overwhelming. And why not? The junking of Versailles and the appearance of German soldiers marching again into what was, after all, German territory were things that almost all Germans naturally approved of. The No vote was given as 540, 211."[120]
In the aftermath of the remilitarization, the economic crisis which had so damaged the National Socialist regime's popularity was forgotten by almost all.[121] After the Rhineland triumph, Hitler's self-confidence surged to new heights, and those who knew well him stated that after March 1936 there was a real psychological change as Hitler was utterly convinced of his infallibility in a way that he not been before.[121]
France [ edit ]
General Maurice Gamelin, the French Supreme Commander, 1936
Historians writing without benefit of access to the French archives (which were not opened until the mid-1970s) such as William L. Shirer in his books The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) and The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969) have claimed that France, although possessing at this time superior armed forces compared to Germany, including after a possible mobilization 100 infantry divisions, was psychologically unprepared to use force against Germany.[122] Shirer quoted the figure of France having 100 divisions compared to Germany's 19 battalions in the Rhineland.[123] France's actions during the Rhineland crisis have often used as support of the décadence thesis that during the interwar period the supposed decadence of the French way of life caused the French people to degenerate physically and morally to the point that the French were simply unable to stand up to Hitler, and the French in some way had it coming when they were defeated in 1940.[124] Shirer wrote that the French could have easily turned back the German battalions in the Rhineland had the French people not been "sinking into defeatism" in 1936.[102] Historians such as the American historian Stephen A. Schuker who have examined the relevant French primary sources have rejected Shirer's claims, finding that a major paralyzing factor on French policy was the economic situation.[125] France's top military official, General Maurice Gamelin, informed the French government that the only way to remove the Germans from the Rhineland was to mobilize the French Army, which would not only be unpopular, it would also cost the French treasury 30 million francs per day.[126] Gamelin assumed a worst-case scenario in which a French move into the Rhineland would spark an all-out Franco-German war, a case which required full mobilization. Gamelin's analysis was supported by the War Minister, General Louis Maurin who told the Cabinet that it was inconceivable that France could reverse the German remilitarization without full mobilization.[127] This was especially the case as the Deuxième Bureau had seriously exaggerated the number of German troops in the Rhineland, sending in a report to the French cabinet estimating that there were 295,000 German troops in the Rhineland.[117] The Deuxième Bureau had come up with this estimate by counting all of the SS, SA and Landespolizei formations in the Rhineland as regular troops, and so the French believed only by full mobilization would France have enough troops to expel the alleged 295,000 German troops from the Rhineland.[117] The real number was actually 3,000 German soldiers.[103] The French historian Jean-Baptiste Duroselle accused Gamelin of distorting what the Deuxième Bureau's intelligence in his report to the cabinet by converting the SS, SA and Landespolizei units into fully trained troops to provide a reason for inaction.[128] Neurath's (truthful) statement that Germany had only sent 19 battalions into the Rhineland was dismissed by Gamelin as a ruse to allow Germans to claim that they had not committed a "flagrant violation" of Locarno in order to avoid having Locarno invoked against Germany, and that Hitler would never risk a war by sending such a small force into the Rhineland.
Albert Sarraut, the French Premier at the time of the crisis
At the same time, in late 1935-early 1936 France was gripped by a financial crisis, with the French Treasury informing the government that sufficient cash reserves to maintain the value of the franc as currently pegged by the gold standard in regard to the U.S. dollar and the British pound no longer existed, and only a huge foreign loan on the money markets of London and New York could prevent the value of the franc from experiencing a disastrous downfall.[129] Because France was on the verge of elections scheduled for the spring of 1936, devaluation of the franc, which was viewed as abhorrent by large sections of French public opinion, was rejected by the caretaker government of Premier Albert Sarraut as politically unacceptable.[129] Investor fears of a war with Germany were not conducive to raising the necessary loans to stabilize the franc: the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, by sparking fears of war, worsened the French economic crisis by causing a massive cash flow out of France as worried investors shifted their savings towards what were felt to be safer foreign markets.[130] |
.Just outside the city, Baron Zemo, accompanied by Blackout, who has the power to control the Darkforce, a dangerous form of negative, extra-dimensional energy, plunges the city into darkness and trapping the heroes.
As one can tell Secret Empire is a deeply political story and a divisive story that has fans in an uproar, especially long-time Captain America readers (which I am sure will result in a return to staus quo for the Captain). Writer Nick Spencer has demonstrated comics, can have the power to act as a mirror to real life; and in so doing, reveal something about the world in which we live.
—
I will continue to follow the Rebirth and Secret Empire storylines here on the blog as events unfold.Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, "the Day of the Festival of Patrick"), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick ( c. AD 385–461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland[4]), the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland,[3] and celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general.[5] Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, cèilidhs, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.[6] Christians who belong to liturgical denominations also attend church services[5][7] and historically the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's tradition of alcohol consumption.[5][6][8][9]
Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland,[10] Northern Ireland,[11] the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (for provincial government employees), and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora around the world, especially in the United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival. Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America. In recent years[when?], there has been criticism of Saint Patrick's Day celebrations for having become too commercialised and for fostering negative stereotypes of the Irish people.
Saint Patrick [ edit ]
Patrick was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Much of what is known about Saint Patrick comes from the Declaration, which was allegedly written by Patrick himself. It is believed that he was born in Roman Britain in the fourth century, into a wealthy Romano-British family. His father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest in the Christian church. According to the Declaration, at the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Gaelic Ireland.[13] It says that he spent six years there working as a shepherd and that during this time he "found God". The Declaration says that God told Patrick to flee to the coast, where a ship would be waiting to take him home. After making his way home, Patrick went on to become a priest.
According to tradition, Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. The Declaration says that he spent many years evangelising in the northern half of Ireland and converted "thousands". Patrick's efforts against the druids were eventually turned into an allegory in which he drove "snakes" out of Ireland (Ireland never had any snakes).
Tradition holds that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. Over the following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick and he became Ireland's foremost saint.
Celebration and traditions [ edit ]
According to legend, Saint Patrick used the three-leaved shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to Irish pagans.
Today's St Patrick's Day celebrations have been greatly influenced by those that developed among the Irish diaspora, especially in North America. Until the late 20th century, St Patrick's Day was often a bigger celebration among the diaspora than it was in Ireland.
Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, Irish traditional music sessions (céilithe), and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.[6] There are also formal gatherings such as banquets and dances, although these were more common in the past. St Patrick's Day parades began in North America in the 18th century but did not spread to Ireland until the 20th century. The participants generally include marching bands, the military, fire brigades, cultural organisations, charitable organisations, voluntary associations, youth groups, fraternities, and so on. However, over time, many of the parades have become more akin to a carnival. More effort is made to use the Irish language, especially in Ireland, where the week of St Patrick's Day is "Irish language week".
Since 2010, famous landmarks have been lit up in green on St Patrick's Day as part of Tourism Ireland's "Global Greening Initiative" or "Going Green for St Patrick´s Day".[15][16] The Sydney Opera House and the Sky Tower in Auckland were the first landmarks to participate and since then over 300 landmarks in fifty countries across the globe have gone green for St Patricks day.[17][18]
Christians may also attend church services,[5][7] and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day. Perhaps because of this, drinking alcohol – particularly Irish whiskey, beer, or cider – has become an integral part of the celebrations.[5][6][8][9] The St Patrick's Day custom of "drowning the shamrock" or "wetting the shamrock" was historically popular, especially in Ireland. At the end of the celebrations, a shamrock is put into the bottom of a cup, which is then filled with whiskey, beer, or cider. It is then drunk as a toast to St Patrick, Ireland, or those present. The shamrock would either be swallowed with the drink or taken out and tossed over the shoulder for good luck.[20][21]
Irish Government Ministers travel abroad on official visits to various countries around the globe to celebrate St Patrick's Day and promote Ireland.[22] [23] The most prominent of these is the visit of the Irish Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) with the U.S. President which happens on or around St Patrick's Day. [24][25] Traditionally the Taoiseach presents the U.S. President a Waterford Crystal bowl filled with shamrocks.[26] This tradition began when in 1952, Irish Ambassador to the U.S. John Hearne sent a box of shamrocks to President Harry S. Truman. From then on it became an annual tradition of the Irish ambassador to the U.S. to present the St Patrick's Day shamrock to an official in the U.S. President's administraion, although on some occasions the shamrock presentation was made by the Irish Taoiseach or Irish President to the U.S. President personally in Washington, such as when President Dwight D. Eisenhower met Taoiseach John A. Costello in 1956 and President Seán T. O'Kelly in 1959 or when President Ronald Reagan met Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in 1986 and Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey in 1987.[27][28] However it was only after the meeting between Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and President Bill Clinton in 1994 that the presenting of the shamrock ceremony became an annual event for the leaders of both countries for St Patrick's Day.[29][30]
Wearing green [ edit ]
Girls wearing green in London
On St Patrick's Day, it is customary to wear shamrocks, green clothing or green accessories. St Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish.[31][32] This story first appears in writing in 1726, though it may be older. In pagan Ireland, three was a significant number and the Irish had many triple deities, a fact that may have aided St Patrick in his evangelisation efforts.[33][34] Patricia Monaghan says there is no evidence that the shamrock was sacred to the pagan Irish.[33] However, Jack Santino speculates that it may have represented the regenerative powers of nature, and was recast in a Christian context—icons of St Patrick often depict the saint "with a cross in one hand and a sprig of shamrocks in the other".[35] Roger Homan writes, "We can perhaps see St Patrick drawing upon the visual concept of the triskele when he uses the shamrock to explain the Trinity".[36]
The first association of the colour green with Ireland is from the 11th century pseudo-historical book Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland), which forms part of the Mythological Cycle in Irish Mythology and describes the story of Goídel Glas who is credited as the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels and creator of the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx).[37][38] In the story Goídel Glas, who was the son of Scota and Niul, was bitten by a snake and was saved from death by Moses placing his staff on the snakebite. As a reminder of the incident he would retain a green mark that would stay with him and he would lead his people to a land that would be free of snakes.[39] This is emphasized in his name Goídel which was anglicised to the word Gaelic and Glas which is the Irish word for green.[37][38] Another story from the Lebor Gabála Érenn written after the adventures of Goídel Glas refers to Íth climbing the tower (in reference to the Tower of Hercules) his father Breogán builds in Brigantia (modern day Corunna in Galicia, Spain) on a winters day and is so captivated by the sight of a beautiful green island in the distance that he must set sail immediately. This story also introduces three national personifications of Ireland, Banba, Fódla and Ériu.[37][38][39] The colour green was further associated with Ireland from the 1640s, when the green harp flag was used by the Irish Catholic Confederation. Green ribbons and shamrocks have been worn on St Patrick's Day since at least the 1680s. The Friendly Brothers of St Patrick, an Irish fraternity founded in about 1750,[41] adopted green as its colour.[42] However, when the Order of St. Patrick—an Anglo-Irish chivalric order—was founded in 1783 it adopted blue as its colour, which led to blue being associated with St Patrick. During the 1790s, green would become associated with Irish nationalism, due to its use by the United Irishmen. This was a republican organisation—led mostly by Protestants but with many Catholic members—who launched a rebellion in 1798 against British rule. The phrase "wearing of the green" comes from a song of the same name, which laments United Irishmen supporters being persecuted for wearing green. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have seen the re-emergence of Irish cultural symbols, such as the Irish Language, Irish mythology, and the colour green, through the Gaelic Revival and the Irish Literary Revival which served to stir Irish nationalist sentiment. The influence of green was more prominently observable in the flags of the 1916 Easter Rising such as the Sunburst Flag, the Starry Plough Banner, and the Proclamation Flag of the Irish Republic which was flown over the General Post Office, Dublin together with the Irish Tricolour. Throughout these centuries, the colour green and its association with St Patrick's Day grew.[43]
The wearing of the 'St Patrick's Day Cross' was also a popular custom in Ireland until the early 20th century. These were a Celtic Christian cross made of paper that was "covered with silk or ribbon of different colours, and a bunch or rosette of green silk in the centre".
Celebrations by region [ edit ]
Ireland [ edit ]
A St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin
Saint Patrick's feast day, as a kind of national day, was already being celebrated by the Irish in Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. In later times, he became more and more widely seen as the patron of Ireland.[45] Saint Patrick's feast day was finally placed on the universal liturgical calendar in the Catholic Church due to the influence of Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding[46] in the early 1600s. Saint Patrick's Day thus became a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. It is also a feast day in the Church of Ireland, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church calendar avoids the observance of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those periods. St Patrick's Day is occasionally affected by this requirement, when 17 March falls during Holy Week. This happened in 1940, when Saint Patrick's Day was observed on 3 April to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and again in 2008, where it was officially observed on 15 March.[47] St Patrick's Day will not fall within Holy Week again until 2160.[48][49] However, the popular festivities may still be held on 17 March or on a weekend near to the feast day.
In 1903, St Patrick's Day became an official public holiday in Ireland. This was thanks to the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903, an act of the United Kingdom Parliament introduced by Irish Member of Parliament James O'Mara.[50] O'Mara later introduced the law which required that public houses be shut on 17 March after drinking got out of hand, a provision that was repealed in the 1970s.
The first St Patrick's Day parade in Ireland was held in Waterford in 1903. The week of St Patrick's Day 1903 had been declared Irish Language Week by the Gaelic League and in Waterford they opted to have a procession on Sunday 15 March. The procession comprised the Mayor and members of Waterford Corporation, the Trades Hall, the various trade unions and bands who included the 'Barrack St Band' and the 'Thomas Francis Meagher Band'.[51] The parade began at the premises of the Gaelic League in George's St and finished in the Peoples Park, where the public were addressed by the Mayor and other dignitaries.[52][53] On Tuesday 17 March, most Waterford businesses—including public houses—were closed and marching bands paraded like they had two days previously.[54] The Waterford Trades Hall had been emphatic that the National Holiday be observed.[52]
On St Patrick's Day 1916, the Irish Volunteers—an Irish nationalist paramilitary organisation—held parades throughout Ireland. The authorities recorded 38 St Patrick's Day parades, involving 6,000 marchers, almost half of whom were said to be armed. The following month, the Irish Volunteers launched the Easter Rising against British rule. This marked the beginning of the Irish revolutionary period and led to the Irish War of Independence and Civil War. During this time, St Patrick's Day celebrations in Ireland were muted, although the day was sometimes chosen to hold large political rallies. The celebrations remained low-key after the creation of the Irish Free State; the only state-organized observance was a military procession and trooping of the colours, and an Irish-language mass attended by government ministers. In 1927, the Irish Free State government banned the selling of alcohol on St Patrick's Day, although it remained legal in Northern Ireland. The ban was not repealed until 1961.
The first official, state-sponsored St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin took place in 1931.[59]
A St Patrick's Day religious procession in Downpatrick, where Saint Patrick is said to be buried
In Northern Ireland, the celebration of St Patrick's Day was affected by sectarian divisions. A majority of the population were Protestant Ulster unionists who saw themselves as British, while a substantial minority were Catholic Irish nationalists who saw themselves as Irish. Although it was a public holiday, Northern Ireland's unionist government did not officially observe St Patrick's Day. During the conflict known as the Troubles (late 1960s–late 1990s), public St Patrick's Day celebrations were rare and tended to be associated with the Catholic community. In 1976, loyalists detonated a car bomb outside a pub crowded with Catholics celebrating St Patrick's Day in Dungannon; four civilians were killed and many injured. However, some Protestant unionists attempted to're-claim' the festival, and in 1985 the Orange Order held its own St Patrick's Day parade. Since the end of the conflict in 1998 there have been cross-community St Patrick's Day parades in towns throughout Northern Ireland, which have attracted thousands of spectators.
In the mid-1990s the government of the Republic of Ireland began a campaign to use St Patrick's Day to showcase Ireland and its culture.[61] The government set up a group called St Patrick's Festival, with the aims:
To offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebrations in the world
To create energy and excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity
To provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations
To project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal.[62]
The first St Patrick's Festival was held on 17 March 1996. In 1997, it became a three-day event, and by 2000 it was a four-day event. By 2006, the festival was five days long; more than 675,000 people attended the 2009 parade. Overall 2009's five-day festival saw almost 1 million visitors, who took part in festivities that included concerts, outdoor theatre performances, and fireworks.[63] The Skyfest which ran from 2006 to 2012 formed the centrepiece of the St Patrick's festival.[64][65]
The topic of the 2004 St Patrick's Symposium was "Talking Irish", during which the nature of Irish identity, economic success, and the future were discussed. Since 1996, there has been a greater emphasis on celebrating and projecting a fluid and inclusive notion of "Irishness" rather than an identity based around traditional religious or ethnic allegiance. The week around St Patrick's Day usually involves Irish language speakers using more Irish during Seachtain na Gaeilge ("Irish Language Week").[66]
Christian leaders in Ireland have expressed concern about the secularisation of St Patrick's Day. In The Word magazine's March 2007 issue, Fr Vincent Twomey wrote, "It is time to reclaim St Patrick's Day as a church festival". He questioned the need for "mindless alcohol-fuelled revelry" and concluded that "it is time to bring the piety and the fun together".[67]
As well as Dublin, many other cities, towns, and villages in Ireland hold their own parades and festivals, including Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford.
The biggest celebrations outside the cities are in Downpatrick, County Down, where Saint Patrick is said to be buried. The shortest St. Patrick's Day parade in the world formerly took place in Dripsey, County Cork. The parade lasted just 23.4 metres and traveled between the village's two pubs. The annual event began in 1999, but ceased after five years when one of the two pubs closed.[68]
Elsewhere in Europe [ edit ]
England [ edit ]
In England, the British Royals traditionally present bowls of shamrock to members of the Irish Guards, a regiment in the British Army, following Queen Alexandra introducing the tradition in 1901.[69][70] Since 2012 the Duchess of Cambridge has presented the bowls of shamrock to the Irish Guards. While female royals are often tasked with presenting the bowls of shamrock, male royals have also undertaking the role, such as King George VI in 1950 to mark the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Irish Guards, and in 2016 the Duke of Cambridge in place of his wife.[71][72] Fresh Shamrocks are presented to the Irish Guards, regardless of where they are stationed, and are flown in from Ireland.[73]
While some St Patrick's Day celebrations could be conducted openly in Britain pre 1960s, this would change following the commencement by the IRA's bombing campaign on mainland Britain and as a consequence this resulted in a suspicion of all things Irish and those who supported them which led to people of Irish descent wearing a sprig of shamrock on St Patrick's day in private or attending specific events.[74] Today after many years following the Good Friday Agreement, people of Irish descent openly wear a sprig of shamrock to celebrate their Irishness.[75]
Christian denominations in Great Britain observing his feast day include The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.[76]
Birmingham holds the largest St Patrick's Day parade in Britain with a city centre parade[77] over a two-mile (3 km) route through the city centre. The organisers describe it as the third biggest parade in the world after Dublin and New York.[78]
London, since 2002, has had an annual St Patrick's Day parade which takes place on weekends around the 17th, usually in Trafalgar Square. In 2008 the water in the Trafalgar Square fountains was dyed green.
Liverpool has the highest proportion of residents with Irish ancestry of any English city.[79] This has led to a long-standing celebration on St Patrick's Day in terms of music, cultural events and the parade.
Manchester hosts a two-week Irish festival in the weeks prior to St Patrick's Day. The festival includes an Irish Market based at the city's town hall which flies the Irish tricolour opposite the Union Flag, a large parade as well as a large number of cultural and learning events throughout the two-week period.[80]
Malta [ edit ]
The first Saint Patrick's Day celebrations in Malta took place in the early 20th century by soldiers of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who were stationed in Floriana. Celebrations were held in the Balzunetta area of the town, which contained a number of bars and was located close to the barracks. The Irish diaspora in Malta continued to celebrate the feast annually.[81]
Today, Saint Patrick's Day is mainly celebrated in Spinola Bay and Paceville areas of St Julian's,[82] although other celebrations still occur at Floriana[81] and other locations.[83][84] Thousands of Maltese attend the celebrations, which are more associated with drinking beer than traditional Irish culture.[85][86]
Russia [ edit ]
Moscow hosts an annual Saint Patrick's Day festival.
The first St Patrick's Day parade took place in Russia in 1992.[87] Since 1999, there has been a yearly "Saint Patrick's Day" festival in Moscow and other Russian cities.[88] The official part of the Moscow parade is a military-style parade and is held in collaboration with the Moscow government and the Irish embassy in Moscow. The unofficial parade is held by volunteers and resembles a carnival. In 2014, Moscow Irish Week was celebrated from 12 to 23 March, which includes St Patrick's Day on 17 March. Over 70 events celebrating Irish culture in Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, and Volgograd were sponsored by the Irish Embassy, the Moscow City Government, and other organisations.[89]
In 2017, the Russian Orthodox Church added the feast day of Saint Patrick to its liturgical calendar, to be celebrated on 30 March [O.S. 17 March].[90]
Bosnia and Herzegovina [ edit ]
Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a large Irish expatriate community.[91][92] The community established the Sarajevo Irish Festival in 2015, which is held for three days around and including St. Patrick's Day. The festival organizes an annual a parade, hosts Irish theatre companies, screens Irish films and organizes concerts of Irish folk musicians. The festival has hosted numerous Irish artists, filmmakers, theatre directors and musicians such as Conor Horgan, Ailis Ni Riain, Dermot Dunne, Mick Moloney, Chloë Agnew and others.[93][94][95]
Scotland [ edit ]
The Scottish town of Coatbridge, where the majority of the town's population are of Irish descent,[96][97] also has a Saint Patrick's Day Festival which includes celebrations and parades in the town centre.[97][98]
Glasgow has a considerably large Irish population; due, for the most part, to the Irish immigration during the 19th century. This immigration was the main cause in raising the population of Glasgow by over 100,000 people.[99] Due to this large Irish population, there are many Irish-themed pubs and Irish interest groups who hold yearly celebrations on St Patrick's day in Glasgow. Glasgow has held a yearly St Patrick's Day parade and festival since 2007.[100]
Switzerland [ edit ]
While Saint Patrick's Day in Switzerland is commonly celebrated on 17 March with festivities similar to those in neighbouring central European countries, it is not unusual for Swiss students to organise celebrations in their own living spaces on St Patrick's Eve. Most popular are usually those in Zurich's Kreis 4. Traditionally, guests also contribute with beverages and dress in green.[101]
Asia [ edit ]
Japan [ edit ]
St Patrick's parades are now held in many locations across Japan.[102] The first parade, in Tokyo, was organised by The Irish Network Japan (INJ) in 1992.
Korea [ edit ]
The Irish Association of Korea has celebrated Saint Patrick's Day since 1976 in Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. The place of the parade and festival has been moved from Itaewon and Daehangno to Cheonggyecheon.[103]
Malaysia [ edit ]
In Malaysia, the St Patrick's Society of Selangor, founded in 1925, organises a yearly St Patrick's Ball, described as the biggest St Patrick's Day celebration in Asia. Guinness Anchor Berhad also organises 36 parties across the country in places like the Klang Valley, Penang, Johor Bahru, Malacca, Ipoh, Kuantan, Kota Kinabalu, Miri and Kuching.
Caribbean [ edit ]
Montserrat [ edit ]
The tiny island of Montserrat is known as the "Emerald Island of the Caribbean" because of its founding by Irish refugees from Saint Kitts and Nevis. Montserrat is one of three places where St Patrick's Day is a public holiday, along with Ireland and the Canadian province of Newfoundland & Labrador. The holiday in Montserrat also commemorates a failed slave uprising that occurred on 17 March 1768.[104]
International Space Station [ edit ]
Chris Hadfield wearing green in the International Space Station on St Patrick's Day, 2013
Astronauts on board the International Space Station have celebrated the festival in different ways. Irish-American Catherine Coleman played a hundred-year-old flute belonging to Matt Molloy and a tin whistle belonging to Paddy Moloney, both members of the Irish music group The Chieftains, while floating weightless in the space station on Saint Patrick's Day in 2011.[105][106][107] Her performance was later included in a track called "The Chieftains in Orbit" on the group's album, Voice of Ages.[108]
Chris Hadfield took photographs of Ireland from earth orbit, and a picture of himself wearing green clothing in the space station, and posted them online on Saint Patrick's Day in 2013. He also posted online a recording of himself singing "Danny Boy" in space.[109][110]
North America [ edit ]
Canada [ edit ]
Montreal hosts one of the longest-running and largest St Patrick's Day parades in North America.
One of the longest-running and largest St Patrick's Day parades in North America occurs each year in Montreal,[111] whose city flag includes a shamrock in its lower-right quadrant. The yearly celebration has been organised by the United Irish Societies of Montreal since 1929. The parade has been held yearly without interruption since 1824. St Patrick's Day itself, however, has been celebrated in Montreal since as far back as 1759 by Irish soldiers in the Montreal Garrison following the British conquest of New France.
In Saint John, New Brunswick St. Patrick's Day is celebrated as a week-long celebration. Shortly after the JP Collins Celtic Festival is an Irish festival celebrating Saint John's Irish heritage. The festival is named for a young Irish doctor James Patrick Collins who worked on Partridge Island (Saint John County) quarantine station tending to sick Irish immigrants before he died there himself.
In Manitoba, the Irish Association of Manitoba runs a yearly three-day festival of music and culture based around St Patrick's Day.[112]
In 2004, the CelticFest Vancouver Society organised its first yearly festival in downtown Vancouver to celebrate the Celtic Nations and their cultures. This event, which includes a parade, occurs each year during the weekend nearest St Patrick's Day.[113]
In Quebec City, there was a parade from 1837 to 1926. The Quebec City St-Patrick Parade returned in 2010 after more than 84 years. For the occasion, a portion of the New York Police Department Pipes and Drums were present as special guests.
There has been a parade held in Toronto since at least 1863.[114] There is a large parade in the city's downtown on the Sunday before 17 March which attracts over 100,000 spectators.[citation needed]
The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team was known as the Toronto St. Patricks from 1919 to 1927, and wore green jerseys. In 1999, when the Maple Leafs played on St Patrick's Day, they wore green St Patrick's retro uniforms.[citation needed]
Some groups, notably Guinness, have lobbied to make Saint Patrick's Day a national holiday.[115]
In March 2009, the Calgary Tower changed its top exterior lights to new green CFL bulbs just in time for St Patrick's Day. Part of an environmental non-profit organisation's campaign (Project Porchlight), the green represented environmental concerns. Approximately 210 lights were changed in time for Saint Patrick's Day, and resembled a Leprechaun's hat. After a week, white CFLs took their place. The change was estimated to save the Calgary Tower some $12,000 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 104 tonnes.[116]
United States [ edit ]
St Patrick's Day, while not a legal holiday in the United States, is nonetheless widely recognised and observed throughout the country as a celebration of Irish and Irish-American culture. Celebrations include prominent displays of the colour green, religious observances, numerous parades, and copious consumption of alcohol.[8] The holiday has been celebrated in North America since the late 18th century.
South America [ edit ]
Argentina [ edit ]
In Buenos Aires, a party is held in the downtown street of Reconquista, where there are several Irish pubs;[118][119] in 2006, there were 50,000 people in this street and the pubs nearby.[120] Neither the Catholic Church nor the Irish community, the fifth largest in the world outside Ireland,[121] take part in the organisation of the parties.
Criticism [ edit ]
Some argue Saint Patrick's Day has become too commercialised and tacky
St Patrick's Day celebrations have been criticised, particularly for their association with public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Some argue that the festivities have become too commercialised and tacky,[122] and have strayed from their original purpose of honouring St Patrick and Irish heritage.[123][124] Journalist Niall O'Dowd has criticised attempts to recast St Patrick's Day as a celebration of multiculturalism rather than a celebration of Irishness.[126]
St Patrick's Day celebrations have also been criticised for fostering demeaning stereotypes of Ireland and Irish people. An example is the wearing of 'leprechaun outfits',[127] which are based on derogatory 19th century caricatures of the Irish.[128] In the run up to St Patrick's Day 2014, the Ancient Order of Hibernians successfully campaigned to stop major American retailers from selling novelty merchandise that promoted negative Irish stereotypes.[129]
Some[who?] have described St Patrick's Day celebrations outside Ireland as displays of "Plastic Paddyness"; where foreigners appropriate and misrepresent Irish culture, claim Irish identity, and enact Irish stereotypes.[130]
LGBT groups in the US were banned from marching in St. Patrick's Day parades in New York City and Boston, resulting in the landmark Supreme Court decision of Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, & Bisexual Group of Boston. In New York City, the ban was lifted in 2014,[131] but LGBT groups still find that barriers to participation exist.[132] In Boston, the ban on LGBT group participation was lifted in 2015.[133]
Sports events [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Fallout 4 House Building Options Will Be Far Greater Than Skyrim’s
Fallout 4 will allow players to create and customize their houses in a way that is much more involved and creative than what was allowed in Skyrim.
Speaking with GameSpot at Quakecon, Bethesda Marketing Vice President Pete Hines explained the main differences between building a house in Fallout 4 and building a house in Skyrim, going so far as to compare Fallout 4 to Minecraft.
It’s not just, ‘Hey, here’s Breezehome [one of the houses in Skyrim],’ where we just picked a house, and you can buy it, and you can go to somebody and say, ‘Here’s this much gold, and put this thing into my house.’ [In Fallout 4] it’s, ‘Now I’m building it, I’m actually building the house, I’m building the wall, I’m placing the door, I made the table, I made the mattress.’ It’s that sense of making your own way in the world and defining, ‘Who am I and where do I live and what’s my story in this world?’ There are preset locations around the world where you can [build]. You can definitely build up… [In one demo] there’s a radio tower, and the developer that built it just kept going up and incorporating the tower into their structure. Much like a game like Minecraft, you can be a noob and just build a simple little thing. And you can also get the guys who go crazy and [can say], ‘I rebuilt the spaceship from this game… [or] I rebuilt the Tardis from Doctor Who using the lights and stuff and it looks exactly like it.’ Like, holy s**t that’s incredible.
And speaking of Skyrim, it was also just revealed that Fallout 4′s Boston setting had been picked out before Bethesda even started working on Skyrim. Also in the interview with GameSpot, Hines mentioned that “The ideas for Fallout 4 started right after Fallout 3,” and before development on Skyrim began.
Fallout 4 is due out November 10 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
[Source: GameSpot 1, 2]As you've previously seen on Gotham, the dead don't always stay that way. So, even though Theo Galavan delivered a fatal blow to Jerome, stabbing him in the neck, there's a good shot the leading candidate to be The Joker hasn't had his last laugh yet.
“It is 100% our intention to bring Jerome back,” executive producer John Stephens told Zap2it. Just don't expect Jerome to pop up anytime soon. Stephens says the show will build up to his resurrection over a period of time, setting the stage in Season 3 and saving the big reveal for Season 4.
“You’ll have these underground movements that have started to talk about Jerome and what he represented and how he’s going to come back like in the days of John the Baptist,” he explained. “Setting the stage that if there is a Season 4, hopefully we’ll bring that back in a much bigger way and you’ll see these different versions of the Joker myth.” If a Season 4 does happen and Jerome is brought back to life, Stephens teased that he wouldn't be the same maniac. “He plays into the idea of transformation. When he comes back, you want to see that new version. That next step forward.”
With Season Two’s thrilling conclusion, Detectives Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock remain at the forefront of the fight against crime in this dangerously corrupt city. Throughout the past season, Gordon’s moral compass wavered more than ever, as villains emerged from the city’s darkest places. With the help of Hugo Strange (guest star BD Wong), a brilliant psychiatrist secretly conducting horrifying experiments for Wayne Enterprises’ black-ops program, Indian Hill, familiar faces arose, including Azrael, formerly Theo Galavan (James Frain); Mr. Freeze (guest star Nathan Darrow); and Fish Mooney (guest star Jada Pinkett Smith). Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne, with the help of his trusted butler and mentor, Alfred Pennyworth, and his ally at Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox, found out there are more secrets to uncover regarding the Waynes’ murders. Heading into Season Three, GOTHAM will continue to follow the evolving stories of the city’s most malevolent villains: The Penguin; Edward Nygma/The Riddler; Selina Kyle/the future Catwoman; and Barbara Kean. GOTHAM also will dive into the origin stories of The Mad Hatter and the Tweed Brothers, and will peel back the curtain on the Court of Owls.MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and China joined diplomatic forces on Tuesday and called on North Korea, South Korea and the United States to sign up to a Chinese de-escalation plan designed to defuse tensions around Pyongyang’s missile program.
The plan would see North Korea suspend its ballistic missile program and the United States and South Korea simultaneously call a moratorium on large-scale missile exercises, both moves aimed at paving the way for multilateral talks.
The initiative was set out in a joint statement from the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries issued shortly after President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping held wide-ranging talks in the Kremlin.
“The situation in the region affects the national interests of both countries,” the joint statement said. “Russia and China will work in close coordination to advance a solution to the complex problem of the Korean Peninsula in every possible way.”
North Korea said on Tuesday it had successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile ( |
never to be heard of again.
Trim Life 24/7 365 420Netflix will release a new TV series based on Castlevania sometime later this year, the company announced today.
Unfortunately, there aren't many official details to be had at this point. As part of a series of announcements it made today, a Netflix press release listed something called Castlevania Season 1, Part 1 as launching in 2017. The team behind it includes Adi Shankar (who was responsible for the excellent 2015 Power Rangers short film) and comic veteran Warren Ellis.
"Inspired by the classic video game series, Castlevania is a dark medieval fantasy following the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself," an official description reads. "The animated series is from Frederator Studios, a Wow Unlimited Media company, written by best-selling author and comic book icon Warren Ellis and executive produced by Warren Ellis, Kevin Kolde, Fred Seibert, and Adi Shankar."
This same project was actually hinted at last year. Seibert, a producer on Adventure Time, was a guest on the Nick Animation podcast in December (via Slashfilm). During it, he mentioned that he was at work on something "based on one of the most world-famous video games of the last 30 years." Earlier in the year, Shankar actually said on Facebook that he was working on a Castlevania series with Seibert.
"I'm producing a super-violent Castlevania mini-series with my homies Fred Seibert and Kevin Klonde," Shankar wrote at the time. "It's going to be dark, satirical, and after a decade of propaganda, it will flip the vampire sub-genre on its head."
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on Xbox 360
Given how long Castlevania has been around--it originally debuted in 1986--there has been surprisingly little in the way of non-game adaptations. Konami hasn't announced any new games in the series. The most recent, Lords of Shadow 2, came out nearly three years ago. Meanwhile, Koji Igarashi--the man behind the franchise's most celebrated game, Symphony of the Night--is working on his own spiritual successor, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.It’s not often that we get good news when it comes to science education here in Kansas. Frankly, I’m still reeling from our flirtation with pre-19th century thinking on evolution. (In 2007 we dispensed with that silliness. But oof. It still stings.) However, today I can come to you with good news. Last week, the Kansas State Board of Education passed some new science standards, and they are actually pretty good.
The science standards in question – known as the Next Generation Science Standards – are a collaborative effort of 26 states, Kansas included. In a nutshell, the NGSS is designed to let students do science, not just memorize facts. It gives students the opportunity to apply facts to specific circumstances, which leads to a deeper understanding of the topic.
A particularly noteworthy topic covered by the NGSS is climate change, a scientific fact that the Kansas legislature is all-too-keen to obscure and ignore.
The standards passed 8-2, with two conservative Republicans voting against it. One of those nay votes, Republican Ken Willard, thinks that, under the new standards, evolution and human-caused climate change will be, you know, taught like the facts that they are. According to the San Fransisco Chronicle:
“Both evolution and human cause of global climate change are presented in these standards dogmatically,” Willard said. “This nonobjective, unscientific approach to education standards amounts to little more than indoctrination in political correctness.”
It’s political correctness gone mad! The science standards are incorporating actual science! Schools are no place for dogma or unscientific drivel, says the creationist.
But that’s not all! These standards also promote the worst thing in the entire world: atheism.
During a public comment session Tuesday, Rex Powell, a retired Spring Hill business and organizational consultant, said the new standards promote “an atheistic world view.” Powell is a member of Citizens for Objective Public Education, which formed last year to contest the new standards.
“They are standards for religious indoctrination rather than objective science education,” Powell said.
Listen. Science is just another way for the devil to get inside your kids’ heads so he can turn the youth against Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Unless you’re not Christian to begin with, then you’re just wrong and need to learn to be Christian. Or something. The thing about science is that it’s amoral. It doesn’t have an opinion. It’s a method of understanding the world. In fact, it’s the best method we have. It’s yielded incredible results. Like my ability to type this post from my couch while watching Doctor Who on Netflix. We know it’s right because it works. Willard misunderstands this. According to the Topeka Capitol-Journal:
“These standards are very heavy on methodology and light on science knowledge,” he said.
Knowledge of science trivia means nothing without knowledge of the methodology. It’s not hard to understand. Sigh.
Even though there were a couple of haters, the NGSS passed overwhelmingly, which hopefully signals that we’re done with science denial. In addition, a group of Kansas parents called Climate Parents presented 2,500 signatures in support of the standards. I’ll admit, as a Kansas resident and science enthusiast, I’m buoyed.
Not every state is on the right path. Louisiana, for example, failed to repeal a law earlier this year that allowed for creationism to be taught in public schools.
However, some states have tried to infuse science denial into classrooms by legislative fiat, but failed. Oklahoma came perilously close to passing its own “academic freedom” bill, which, as Mother Jones put it, would allow students to “make untestable, faith-based claims in science classes without fear of receiving a poor mark.” Colorado also failed to advance a piece of science denying legislation. Other bills bit the dust in Arizona and Indiana.
All of these defeats are certainly encouraging, but we can’t get complacent. After all, the Creation Museum has added zip lines in the hopes of snagging up all the hip and with-it kids.
Photo from ThinkstockIn 1965, when the 23 year-old Bob Dylan toured the United Kingdom, director Pennebaker was allowed behind the scenes to provide one of the most intimate glimpses of the intensely private songwriter. 2015 marks the 50th Anniversary of the film, which chronicles Dylan's concert appearances, hotel room conversations, and transportation downtime, pulling back the curtain on the artist at the end of his relationship with Joan Baez and on the cusp of his creative shift toward rock music.
A true American icon, Dylan is not simply a singer-songwriter, but an author, poet, film actor (and subject) and has been a major figure in popular music for more than five decades. During the course of his career, he has won awards for songwriting, performing and recording earning him, thus far, eleven Grammys (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), the Kennedy Center Honors and an Academy Award. He has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his “profound impact on American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”
‘Dont Look Back’ is distinguished by such famed images as the iconic Subterranean Homesick Blues “cue-card” sequence, considered to be the first contemporary music video. A.O. Scott of The New York Times, in reference to the film, has stated that it “invented the rock documentary”. It is also a selection of The National Film Registry Preservation Board.Now here's the fun part - once logged in, the app brings up all of the books you've bought through Amazon, both electronic and physical, that you haven't entered into Goodreads. From here, the app lets you rate the book out of five stars, which also marks it as read on your Goodreads profile. Strangely, you can't actually add a review from there - you're going to want to log into the site to do that. Tap on the book, and you'll get a Goodreads page with a description and community reviews. There's also, naturally, a "Search in Kindle Store" link there as well. Tap on that and you'll see search results the title. We're sure Amazon is working on more direct links to the titles to make it easier to buy them on-device through the app, but that functionality just isn't here yet.
The app also has a sidebar for quick access to your profile, your friends' updates and a quick link for adding more of those Amazon books you've bought. There's also a link that brings you to your Kindle bookshelf. There's a little "g" icon on the shelf now, which when tapped, launches the Goodreads app. The functionality isn't quite what we'd called fully-baked in at this point. Rating and reviewing has, however, been added to the reading experience. Once you've finished a title, you'll be prompted to give feedback, which is delivered to both Goodreads and Amazon's book pages.
This is all just a first step, hopefully - it's not quite the deep level of integration we've been hoping for since news of the acquisition broke. Perhaps somewhere along the line, Goodreads will begin to feel like a part of Fire OS, rather than an app that sits on the platform, baking better tailored recommendations directly into the Kindle tablet experience.Name: Wayne Yoshida
Home: Orange County, CA
Makerspace: San Bernardino Microwave Society (SBMS)
Day Job: Technical writer at Agility Fuel Solutions, a leading supplier and manufacturer of natural gas fuel systems for heavy duty vehicles: http://www. agilityfuelsolutions.com/
Youtube | Website | Bebee | Linkedin
How’d you get started making?
When I was a little kid, I remember spending a lot of time behind the TV set, looking at the glowing glass tubes through the ventilation holes and hearing the high pitched whine and enjoying the warmth and the smell coming from the TV. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I subscribed to Popular Electronics. Throughout elementary and high school, I tinkered with electrical and electronic things in electric shop. I quickly became bored with making “blinking light projects” and decided I needed to find more interesting projects – and started making ham radio gadgets.
What type of maker would you classify yourself as?
I am an electrical, electronics, radio and mechanical builder, with furniture making thrown in. My current “big project” is building a racing car (a Factory Five Racing Type 65 Coupe) from the ground up.
What’s your favorite thing you’ve made?
My 10 GHz transverter (transmitter-receiver) system. I used it to break a North American distance record for making a two-way ham radio contact on the 10 GHz microwave ham band.
What’s something you’d like to make next?
I am building a pair of low power transmitter-receivers for the ham radio “low bands” – getting back to my ham radio roots of making contacts on Morse Code.
Any advice for people reading this?
Our Maker Faire mission statement is about ham radio, and how it is much more than an “old man’s hobby.” Some of us – Makers – do much more building and experimenting with advanced and modern wireless technology.
We highlight different makers from our broad community to show you the faces and stories behind the projects. Meet all the amazing people featured in Maker Spotlight. Want to nominate someone, maybe even yourself? Send a note with your responses to the bolded prompts above to [email protected].AleSmith Double IPA Review
Dave Jensen (beer47) Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 30, 2016
AleSmith Double IPA was originally known as AleSmith Summer YuleSmith, which was a summer seasonal IPA. The new name better reflects the beer that it is. It will, however, remain as a summer seasonal, available from May to September.
As the label says, this is truly an “ale brewed with an abundance of hops.”
Date Reviewed. May 11, 2016
Serving Size. 22 oz. bottle
Aroma. AleSmith Double IPA is bursting with floral and citrus hop aromas. It has fruity overtones of grapefruit and sweet cara cara organes. In combination with the barley sugar aromas it almost has an orange candy quality to it but not quite like a creamsicle. The earthy notes are expressed by pine resin and broken meyer lemon leaves and branches.
Appearance. This double IPA has a crystal clear yellow-orange color with a thick frothy head. The head retention is fantastic leaving a thin layer of foam on top throughout the session.
Flavor. For a double IPA, AleSmith DoubleIPA is noticeably well balanced. It is malty with some sweetness but not cloying an overpowering. The bitterness has a spicy quality that increases throughout the session attacking your palette with hops, hops, and more hops. To help temper the hoppy spice-fire, this beer has hints of sweet honey-like malts but it’s not quite enough to tame this agressive West-coast double IPA.
Mouthfeel. This beer is full bodied with a smooth almsot creamy texture which helps, a little, counteract the bitter hop bite.
Overall. AleSmith Double IPA, rebranded from Summer Yulesmith, is a well crafted but aggressive with American hop aromas and bitterness. This double IPA pairs nicely with sharp cheese, crusty bread, burgers, and freak summer desert rainstorms.
Rating.
Aroma (25%): ███
Appearance (5%): ███
Flavor (40%): ███
Mouthfeel (10%): ███
Overall (20%): ███
Total: ███
Disclosure: AleSmith graciously provided a free sample of this beer.Breitbart just published an article calling out Speaker Paul Ryan on how he publicly talked against then-GOP candidate Donald Trump.
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Most of us knew how badly Speaker Ryan was trying to distance himself from GOP candidate Trump. We saw reports daily on how strained the relationship was between the two, and this audio happened around the time of the NBC audio release of a private tape which caught Trump having man talk with another guy in the back of a bus.
Republicans jumped on Trump and some unendorsed him. Ryan spoke about Trump in the audio below. What’s probably going to get people thinking about Ryan’s motives is he said he would not defend Trump then or in the future. Ryan has seemingly changed his views about Trump or has he.
Source: Breitbart
In the Oct. 10, 2016 call, from right after the Access Hollywood tape of Trump was leaked in the weeks leading up to the election, Ryan does not specify that he will never defend Trump on just the Access Hollywood tape—he says clearly he is done with Trump altogether. “I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future,” Ryan says in the audio, obtained by Breitbart News and published here for the first time ever. Now, Ryan—still the Speaker—has pushed now President Donald Trump to believe his healthcare legislation the American Health Care Act would repeal and replace Obamacare when it does not repeal Obamacare. Ryan has also, according to Trump ally Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), misled President Trump into believing that Ryan’s bill can pass Congress. Paul and others believe the bill is dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate since a number of GOP senators have come out against it and there are serious questions about whether it can pass the House. This is the first major initiative that Trump has worked on with Ryan—and the fact it is going so poorly begs the question as to whether Speaker Ryan, the GOP’s failed 2012 vice presidential nominee who barely supported Trump at all in 2016, really understands how Trump won and how to win in general.
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I am sure Ryan probably called Trump tonight to give him some explanation on this audio being leaked. Operation Smooth Things Over is probably in effect. Do you trust Speaker Ryan to help Trump with his agenda or is he the Manchurian Speaker?
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Don’t forget to follow the Wayne Dupree Show social media accounts on Facebook, Google Plus & Twitter.Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom CC, Stirling 2 Fractal Engine. This is something I've never done before, a recreation of a piece I had created in the past: Original. I was approached by a person who runs a website selling psychedelic art and clothing as to whether I'd be interested in having the original piece printed on hoodies. Unfortunately, the original was not at a high enough resolution, so I have created a new interpretation of the concept at far higher resolution. This was an interesting exercise as it gave me the opportunity to improve upon aspects of the original that I felt were less successful.The deal isn't finalised yet, but I'll put a link up for anybody interested in wearing a piece of my art once the link exists.This piece is available for print through private arrangement at up to 8000x5000pxShaker lemon pie is a very old fashioned type of pie – so old fashioned that it goes way beyond retro and isn’t likely to be found in your average diner, unlike the far more common lemon meringue pie. Shaker lemon pie has an unusual filling that is made up of lemons. Sliced paper-thin, the lemons go into the pie rind and all (minus the seeds), along with some sugar to sweeten things up and eggs to hold everything together.
I decided to try making this type of pie for a couple of reasons. First, it is pretty unique and I was very curious as to how the pith and peel of the lemons would work into the pie. Second, I had – some of you might be able to guess at this part – a bunch of meyer lemons sitting in my kitchen and was sure that the extra-sweet lemons would really work well in this type of dessert. The pith of the lemon is the white part between the flesh of the fruit and the rind. It is the most bitter part of the fruit, which is why most recipes either call for the zest or the flesh alone. Meyer lemons tend not to have as much pith as other types of lemons on average, which is another reason that they make such a good choice for this recipe.
To put the pie together, you need a double crust pie dough prepped (recipe is below) before you mix the filling. I used a very sharp chefs knife to slice up my lemons, but if you have a mandolin this would be an excellent application for it. That said, you shouldn’t worry about the thickness of the slices too much; just try to get them as thin as you can manage and pick out the seeds as you go. I used two whole lemons and one lemon with the pith and peel removed just to bulk up the fruit. My lemons were very large for meyer lemons, so you may want to use 4 average size ones (a good tip is to compare their size to that of “regular” lemons in the store and try to match the number of meyer lemons to the size of 3 regular ones).
The overall effect of the pie filling is somewhere between marmalade and lemon curd, with tender but slightly bitter pieces of rind mixed in with a sweet and gooey lemon curd-like filling. If you like marmalade, you’ll probably love it. If you don’t like either marmalade or lemon curd, this may not be your cup of tea. I really liked the way that the soft and tart filling contrasted with the tender, flaky crust and found the whole pie to be really well balanced, even if it wasn’t as sweet as a lemon meringue type of pie.
Meyer Lemon Shaker Lemon Pie
1 recipe double-crust pie dough (below)
3 large meyer lemons (or 4 medium)
4 large eggs
2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp coarse sugar, for topping
Preheat oven to 450F.
Working with a very sharp chefs knife, very thinly slice 2 of the meyer lemons, peel and all. Remove peel and pith from third lemon and thinly slice that as well. Remove all seeds as you work and try to preserve the juice as much as possible. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Stir sugar, salt and eggs into the bowl of lemon slices. Let stand for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Roll out 1/2 of chilled pie crust into a circle large enough to fill a 9 or 10 inch pie plate (I used a deep dish plate). Carefully transfer pie crust into plate and press gently into place.
Fill pie plate with lemon mixture.
Roll out top crust and lay on top of the pie filling. Crimp edges, sealing tightly. Brush the top of the pie with a bit of water or cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Cut 4 or 5 vents into the top crust with a sharp knife.
Bake at 450F for 15 minutes. Without opening the oven door, lower temperature to 375F and bake for an additional 20 minutes (if using a deep-dish pie dish, add an extra 5 minutes to the baking time). When the crust is golden brown and a knife inserted into the center of the pie – preferably through one of the vents – comes out clean, the pie is done.
Cool completely on a wire rack before serving.
Serves 10.
All Butter Double Pie Crust
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1Â cup butter, chilled and cut into several pieces
6-8 tbsp ice water
Combine dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor.
Add in butter and pulse until mixture is coarse and sandy and no chunks of butter larger than a big pea remain.
Add water and pulse several more times to wet the dough. Gather into two balls with your hands, wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.WASHINGTON — The United States Navy has denied an application from an outspoken atheist who sought to become a chaplain to the Godless in the military.
As previously reported, 38-year-old Jason Heap submitted his application last July, noting that he had earned master’s degrees from both Oxford University and Brite Divinity School, with substantial experience in human resources. He also successfully completed the necessary paperwork and all the required physical tests.
Heap told reporters at that time that a position as chaplain would be a chance for him “to give back to my country.”
“As both a humanist and a scholar of religion, I have a deep knowledge and understanding of world religions,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “My purpose and focus as a chaplain will be for holistic well-being of anyone who is in need of pastoral care.”
Many had objected to Heap’s application, calling the notion of an atheist chaplain as being absurd.
“When it comes to the idea of an atheist chaplain, which is an oxymoron—it’s self-contradictory—what you’re really doing is now saying that we’re going to replace true chaplains with non-chaplain chaplains,” Louisiana Rep. John Fleming (R) said.
“It’s just total nonsense, the idea of having a chaplain who is an atheist,” he continued. “A chaplain is a minister of the faith—someone who believes in a deity of a spiritual life who is assigned to a secular organization.”
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Nearly a year after its submission, Heap’s application was recently denied. However, it remains unclear as to whether it was rejected because of Heap’s pursuit to become an atheist chaplain, or whether others were thought to be more qualified.
“Due to the highly competitive nature of the board, less than 50 percent of the applicants could be recommended for a commission in the United States Navy,” LCDR Chris Servello told conservative commentator Todd Starnes.
Regardless, a number of chaplains are applauding the Navy’s decision.
“Chaplains, historically and by definition, are people of faith,” Chaplain (COL) Ron Crews, USAR retired and executive director of Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, said in a statement on Friday. “You can’t have an ‘atheist chaplain’ any more than you can have a ‘tiny giant’ or a ‘poor millionaire.’
“Chaplains have been serving military members since 1775 by bringing God to soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and members of the Coast Guard,” he continued. “I am grateful that, in this decision, the Navy has honored our long tradition of providing for the spiritual needs of the men and women who serve our nation in the military.”Sure, Mercedes-Benz is building all-electric vehicles for the daily grind, but none can deny the 750-horsepower SLS AMG Electric Drive is by far its most exciting EV. One lucky test-driver -- Chris Harris from YouTube channel DRIVE -- recently had the opportunity to point the overtly shiny beast round a track, and filmed it for his online passengers. He's initially unsure the car will turn petrol-heads on, and talks torque, cockpit layout, driving modes and some behind-the-scenes tech before giving in to the sheer insanity of what's happening on the track and under the hood. Then he picks the brains of a project manager at MB, discussing E-Cells, the chassis, electric motors and how they're all responsible for the silent but deadly ride he's just experienced. If you've got close to 20 minutes to spare (it is Friday, after all), we highly recommend you buckle up for the full video below.Expert marketers have led us to believe that if you upgrade to a new camera you will be good as a pro! The costs in getting the latest and greatest camera can be in excess of $2000. Then you begin to understand the different lenses and before long you are bankrupt!
Nowadays it is the pro-consumer (prosumer) that is keeping the the digital camera market afloat. Professionals are slow to upgrade and the average consumer just uses their smartphone.
What if you were to learn that it isn’t the camera that takes a the photo, it’s you! It isn’t possible to take a great photo every time you push the shutter button. But, with practice you can improve your odds.
Here are 10 tips for taking better photos:
1. What is the Subject?
There are a lot of boring pictures out there. A lot of these images are taken without an obvious subject in mind. Before clicking the shutter ask yourself “What is the Subject of this photo?” The subject can be anything from a can to your grandma or the light falling across a scene. This is the most important part of a photograph and it should be obvious.
You will start to realise that a lot of photos you have taken are just good backgrounds, without an obvious subject. If this is the case, try waiting around to see if a subject will appear. This is especially true in street photography. A person walking through your “backround photo” can make all the difference.
2. Fill That Frame!
Get close to your subject. If you can’t fill the frame then crop down afterwards to simplify the scene. The easiest way to create a more powerful image is make your subject fill the frame. Hint: walk forwards!
3. Check the Edges
This it the best price/performance piece of advice on how to improve your photography. Before taking the photo run your eye around the edges of the frame. When doing this you are checking for distracting elements. These can be random posts or the branch of a tree etc. If there is something distracting move around and try to remove it from view. Two footsteps now will save you time in photoshop later.
The shot below was ruined by the post in the background. A result of rushing and not taking the time to review the edges of the frame.
4. What About the Light?
Light is what makes photography possible! Without light we would have no photography. Come to think of it you would be (not) looking at a black screen right now! Consider the direction and quality of light that is falling onto your subject.
Daytime photos are easy to make boring. Is it possible for you to come back at a different time? The light at sunrise and sunset has a warmer quality, instantly making your images more compelling. There is also less dynamic range in the image. This means that the difference in brightness between the brightest bright and the darkest dark is less than it is at high noon. Making it easier for your camera to capture all the information that it needs.
If you can’t come back at another time or plan to take your photos in “better light”, you are going to have to work with what you’ve got. Can you position yourself or the subject to take advantage of the light? Direct noon light will create harsh shadows on a person’s face. Completely overcast days will have flat light. This means that you will have to work harder to get those compelling shots. In situations like these it is better to work in black and white. Take the time to focus on improving your composition.
5. Raise the Shutter Speed
Keep your shutter speed fast. The longer the shutter is open the more light you let in, but any movement in the frame is also captured. It you are shooting subjects that move (think: trees, grandmas, dogs, cars etc.) then this is an important consideration.
The general rule of thumb is: 1/Focal Length. So for a 50mm lens then shoot at 1/50 or above, 35mm = 1/35 and 100mm = 1/100. This avoids blur of you moving when shooting. For moving subjects try to stay above a minimum of 1/250 of a second, unless you have to lower it because of low light. This will ensure you capture a sharp image without any motion blur.
6. Check Your Focus
Don’t always rely on your autofocus to detect the face and focus on it. When using auto focus, have a quick zoom in afterwards to check that the subject is in focus. If the subject is blurry then take it again and watch the autofocus process. You can fix a lot in photoshop, but focus is something that you cannot fix (yet) in post.
7. Missing Hands
If possible then make sure that you don’t cut off any important parts of your subject. Cutting off a hand or part of a foot can usually be avoided. Take a step back (literally). Remember in point number 3: run your eye around the frame before taking the image. See this infographic from Digital Camera World for a guide to pleasing human cropping locations. The image above ia an example of where not to crop an out of focus person.
8. Points of view
Humans see everything at eye height already. When looking at your subject think what it will look like from another angle. Would getting below or above your subject create a more compelling image? The answer is almost always YES!
Why is drone photography so popular? It gives the average person the ability to take shots from a birds eye view. Gopro cameras are in the same category. These are selling so well because of the unique points of view they can offer. Only a few years ago these viewpoints were not affordable to the general public.
9. Composition
The rule of thirds is the most accessible compositional technique. Divide your frame into 9 equal squares. You will often see this grid superimposed on the back of your camera in live view mode. Put your subject on one of the 4 central intersecting points. It is as simple as that.
Perfect symmetry is a tricky composition to succeed at. Unless you know how to use it well it is best to avoid it. A quick tip is to make sure your horizons are not running through the centre of the frame. If the sky is interesting, make the frame 2/3 sky and 1/3 foreground. If the foreground is more interesting (image above), then make the frame 2/3 foreground and 1/3 sky.
10. Edit Down Before Posting
Since the “digital” photography age the cost per click is almost nothing. This means people are taking more photos than ever before. This is great. It speeds up the feedback loop and can make you a better photographer, faster. Do not show people your “outtakes”. To often people come back from holiday and dump 200 photos in an album on Facebook.
Attention spans are at an all time low. After 10 photos most people will leave. If they do stay they will likely miss your good shots. Cull down your photos to the best 5-10 from any shoot before sharing. Be hard on yourself and you will grow much faster.
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Ben Kepka – The Cultured KiwiThree months ago, I released a list of eighteen tactics that could be used to defeat the communist terror group known as Antifa. Several confrontations between Antifa and anti-communist activists have occurred since the list was published, and there are lessons to be learned from each case. Some of the suggestions in the list have been implemented to excellent effect, while others have gone unused. Predictably, those which involve private citizens tend to be in the former group while those that exclusively involve the state tend to be in the latter group. This should make clear that the deep state does not mind Antifa at best and is in league with them at worst. Ideas which were not on the list have also been responsible for success against Antifa. As any empirical hypothesis is subject to revision as a result of new theories and empirical evidence, let us do this now in order to create a second edition of strategy against Antifa.
1. Stop giving in to their demands. When a behavior is rewarded, those who engage in that behavior will do so more frequently, and other people will emulate that behavior in search of their own reward. Because public universities and other speaking venues continue to kowtow to pressure, it is necessary to take both action against them and counter-action to Antifa. The state has yet to make the funding of taxpayer-supported institutions contingent on defying efforts to silence speech in such venues, so direct action is required. Alumni of these universities and customers of other venues should announce boycotts in order to deny them funding directly. When official events are cancelled, unofficial events should be held anyway in the same place or a nearby place, which is already being done to excellent effect. Finally, if the far-left is going to attempt to silence anyone they perceive as being rightist, then the far-right should respond in kind against anyone they perceive to be leftist. After all, turnabout is fair play.
2. Fight fire with fire. When a behavior is punished, those who engage in that behavior will do so less frequently, and other people will avoid emulating that behavior for fear of being punished themselves. Where Antifa members continue to assault people and destroy property, it is because they face far too little defensive violence in response to their aggression. Fortunately, this has changed in many places. The rank-and-file police do not typically wish to stand down, but are ordered to in many cases because their commanders are sympathetic to Antifa. The bright side of this is that it has encouraged right-wing citizens to take to the streets in order to defend against Antifa themselves. The formation of the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK) is a sign of progress on this point. This will build confidence in people to be more self-reliant for their security needs rather than dependent on the state. As predicted in the first edition, Antifa members have shown themselves to be physically weak and lacking in combat experience, needing superior numbers or weapons to win a skirmish.
3. Stop discouraging defensive violence. The maintenance of liberty requires the ability to bring overwhelming defensive violence to bear against aggressors. While some people in libertarian and right-wing circles are still decrying the use of force against Antifa, the victory at Berkeley and the stalemates at Berkeley, Pikeville, Ky. and New Orleans show that defensive violence as well as the possibility thereof is an effective deterrent.
4. Hire private security. Since the sucker punch against Richard Spencer on January 20 in Washington, DC, most high-profile libertarian and right-wing personalities have hired private security to protect them at protests and other speaking engagements. Though this has not completely stopped Antifa from assaulting people, no personnel who have had bodyguards have been successfully attacked. This turn of events should continue.
5. Go after members of Antifa by going after their employers. This is a favorite tactic of Antifa in particular and social justice warriors in general. They will accuse a person of racism, sexism, or some other form of bigotry, often with no regard for merit, then contact their employers to get them in trouble. Their intention is to shame employers into firing their political rivals, or to disrupt businesses that refuse to bow to their pressure. Because they routinely do this to people, they have no right to complain when it is done to them. This could be a useful measure when Antifa members can be identified and are found to have employment rather than to be living on government handouts, though it has not had much success thus far.
6. Parody their websites and other online presences. The first edition recommended hacking Antifa’s websites and other online presences. This has been done to some extent, but a more effective measure has emerged. There are now many parody websites and accounts that falsely represent themselves as Antifa while actually mocking them. The most effective aspect of this is that it can be nearly impossible to distinguish fake Antifa from real Antifa, and this needs to be weaponized in furtherance of the next tactic.
7. Infiltrate Antifa to gather intelligence and spread misinformation within. This is standard procedure for government agencies in taking down a criminal organization. The extent to which such operations are underway, if at all, are not publicly known. This needs to be done so that Antifa’s efforts can be blunted and its key personalities arrested. Additionally, Antifa can be baited into actions which will make them look more foolish than they already are, get them arrested, or both.
8. Call them what they are: rioters and terrorists, not protesters. The establishment media frequently refers to Antifa as protesters, regardless of their conduct. As Confucius said, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names.” We must |
Church in Sweden today. Some of them are, besides Bridget, are Sigfrid of Sweden, and Helena of Skövde, but there were also local cults of for instance Catherine of Vadstena, Nils Hermansson, Ingrid of Skänninge, and Brynolf of Skara. See also: List of Swedish saints.
Protestant Reformation (16th century) [ edit ]
During the 16th century, King Gustav Vasa broke the relations with the pope, as did several Northern European monarchies. The process had its background in the reformers' criticism of Catholicism, but it was also due to a larger societal context, including attempts to foster a centralised military state under more powerful royal control.
Thus, the break with the Catholic Church and parts of its teachings, was due part to political/economical reasons, part to the theological reformation. Regarding the first, the conflict stood primarily at the Riksdag of Västerås in 1527, and the break with the pope through the abolition of the Canon law in 1536 under King Gustav Vasa.
However, these changes didn't mean that there were no more Catholics in Sweden during the 16th century. Naturally, there were plenty who during and after the Protestant Reformation didn't swap their loyalties so easy, yet didn't wish to leave the country. Throughout the modern era, immigrants arrived from Catholic countries who only reluctantly made superficial professions of Lutheranism, although some might have been described as crypto-Catholics.
Catholic authorities sent representatives illegally into the country and educated Swedes to become Catholic prelates outside of Sweden, despite that they could not legally return.
Exceptions from the Reformations occurred. The reigns of King John III and his son King Sigismund and the Swedish–Polish Union 1594-1599.
King John III attempted to ease the breach. He invited a Norwegian Jesuit, Laurentius Nicolai, who was active in Sweden 1576–1580. Later, two more Jesuits arrived who were active at the Collegium regium Stockholmense college on Riddarholmen in Stockholm. John III participated in Catholic eucharist and had extensive dialogue with the Holy See in Rome of having the Swedes returning to Catholicism, but these attempts were stranded. Nonetheless, his daughter married as Catholic.
After the Reformation, it took a long time for the Catholic Church to return to Sweden. Catholic clergy was present at some Catholic embassies, but their influence remained limited for obvious reasons; Sweden had Catholicism criminalised.
Uppsala Synod 1593 [ edit ]
After the death of King John III in 1592, Duke Charles was appointed acting regent (Swedish: riksföreståndare). At the same time, the ideas of the Reformation were recognised along with the establishment of a national church in Sweden during the Uppsala Synod in 1593. At this point, the breach with the papacy was finally ratified. At this time in Sweden, politics was religion, and religion was politics, why the decision could be perceived as a provocative stance by the throne pretendent Duke against future King Sigismund and his supporters, which would eventually result in the War against Sigismund.
King Sigismund and the Swedish–Polish Union 1592–1599 [ edit ]
Due to the throne ascention of King Sigismund and the establishment of the Swedish–Polish Union 1594-1599, the Protestant Reformation was halted, and religious freedom allowed. At this period, yet again Catholics were appointed to public offices and exiled Catholics were granted return or settlement.
Legally enforced anticatholicism 1599-1781 [ edit ]
Subsequent to Duke Charles victory in his War against Sigismund 1599, all Catholics were banned and exiled, enforced by death penalty.
Since this time, the Church of Sweden has made claims of being the historical continuation of the earlier Catholic Church in Sweden.
Later, after the death of King Charles IX in 1611, some legal suspensions were offered for ambassadors from Catholic countries and their relatives for them to live their faith, as for a few merchants and mercenaries. Now, immigrants from Catholic countries illegally partook in liturgies at the embassies. However, with the Riksdag of 1617, the rules were further restricted.
Yet, for Swedish Catholics, the death penally was still imposed. For instance, in 1624, the Mayor Zackarias Anthelius and the royal secretary Göran Bähr both received the death penalty for having converted to the Catholic faith while refusing Lutheranism.
King Gustavus Adolphus' daughter and successor Queen Christina had Catholic clergy invited to her court. She abdicated from the throne and converted to the Catholic faith.
In the 1670s, a Jesuit named Johannes Sterck was active in Sweden. He was originally a legation priest, but when the ambassador he served died, he stayed and initiated a mission instead. He was eventually sentenced to death, but was freed by mercy and exiled.
In the 1720s, Catholic textile workers arrived, primarily from the Holy Roman Empire; these were granted limited freedom of religion. Their visits to the legation chapels were accepted behind closed doors in order to celebrate mass, and in this way these chapels evolved into small parishes. From this time, Catholics were termed "foreign religious adherents".
At this time, Catholics in Sweden were formally represented by the Apostolic Vicariate of the Nordic Missions.
Apostolic Vicariate in Sweden (1783-1953) [ edit ]
In 1781, King Gustav III imposed the Tolerance Act in Sweden, which gave foreign Catholics that had moved to Sweden the right to build churches and educate their issue in the Catholic tradition. First, an Apostolic prefecture was created, and in 1783 Pope Pius VI appointed the French priest Nicolaus Oster as apostolic vicar in Sweden, through which abbé Oster was recognised episcopal mandate[clarification needed]. However, it would last some 100 years till before Swedish conversions became decriminalised.
In 1784, a Catholic parish was formally founded in Stockholm. The members lacked suitable premises, however. Therefore, until 1837, Stockholm's Catholics celebrated mass in the Freemasons hall inside the building of today's Stockholm City Museum, which they were offered to rent for the purposes.
After King Oscar I married a Catholic Princess, Josephine of Leuchtenberg, the restrictions against the Catholic Church in Sweden were further eased. The Queen brought with her a chaplain, Dr Jakobus Laurentius Studach. He was a consecrated bishop and became the new apostolic vicar for Sweden. At this time also the Chapel of Eugenia was erected at Norrmalm, which stood finished in 1837, but was demolished during the Redevelopment of Norrmalm in the 1960s.
Since 1873 it has been legal also for Sweden citizens to adhere to the Catholic Church without risking death penalty or exile. Civil rights were still restricted, however: until 1951 it was forbidden for Catholics to become Members of Parliament, teachers, physicians, or nurses.[9]
Dr Albert Bitter was appointed apostolic vicar in 1893. In 1899 only some 2,500 Catholics in Sweden were registered. Catholic church buildings existed in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Gävle. The psalm book Cecilia was published in 1902. In 1920, the first edition of the news and cultural magazine Credo was released, today known as Signum.
During and after World War II, the Catholic population increased due to refugees.
29 June 1953, Pope Pius XII established the Diocese of Stockholm. Sweden was no longer considered a missionary region, but enjoyed a more independent status. The same year, the Church of Saint Eric was granted the status of cathedral. The first diocesan bishop was the former apostolic vicar Johannes Erik Müller, born in Bavaria.[10] He was succeeded by Bishop Ansgar Nelson, a Benedictine monk, Bishop John Taylor, Oblates, and Bishop Hubertus Brandenburg, along with assistant bishop William Kenney, Passionist, who would later join Birmingham in the United Kingdom.[11]
Diocese of Stockholm (since 1953) [ edit ]
The Diocese of Stockholm, founded in 1953, covers all of Sweden's territory, has more than 100,000 members and is one of Sweden's largest religious denominations. In 1998, the Catholic Church in Sweden got its first Swedish bishop since the Protestant Reformation, Anders Arborelius. The cathedral of the diocese is the Cathedral of Saint Eric, located in Södermalm in Stockholm. Its parish has about 8,500 members.
Catholic priests are educated in Uppsala, with academic studies offered by the Newman Institute (Uppsala). A part of the studies may be pursued at the Pontifical universities in Rome. The education typically lasts 7 years in total, covering studies in philosophy, theology, pastoral practical work, as well as spiritual and liturgical instruction.
In 1934, the official youth association of the diocese was founded, Sveriges Unga Katoliker.
The central administration of the diocese maintains offices in Södermalm, in the real estate that was acquired in 1857. Furthermore, a Catholic school was founded at Nytorget in Södermalm in 1795. In 1859, the school moved to the diocese offices. In 1967 it moved to Enskede.
Membership [ edit ]
Since the second half of the 20th century, Catholic immigrants have increased. Since the 2000s, also converts have increased.[12]
Members of the Swedish Catholic Church can be divided in six main groups, in order from largest to smallest:
Poles,
Croats,
Spanish language speakers,
Arab and Syriac language speakers,
Ethnic Swedes, and
Others. (Regarding "others" it should be mentioned that even in the smallest Catholic congregations in towns with populations under 100,000 there are, percentage-wise within each congregation, quite substantial African and Asian memberships.)
The Polish members are most numerous, and in most parishes people of Polish descent can be found. In the larger towns they have their own masses, and in Stockholm one of the Protestant churches is used twice on Sunday since the Catholic churches are too small. Approximately one in three priests (42 of 150) are born in Poland, and several others are Swedish-born but of Polish descent.
Croatian believers from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina also typically have their own priests, a number that increased during the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Spanish speakers typically come from South America, mainly Chile, and most were political refugees who never fully integrated. Since most of the Chilean exiles were Marxists or secular liberals, they generally are not active church members.[citation needed] Their number has increased with immigrants from Central America.
Since the 1980s an increasing number of people of Middle Eastern descent have arrived in Sweden, and in Greater Stockholm each Sunday there are several Divine Liturgies in the Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean, Armenian and Syriac Eastern Rites. About 15% of the Catholics in Sweden are Chaldean Catholics.[13] Swedish-born priests from these groups also exist, and the first Swedish-born Maronite priest was ordained in August 2002 in Beirut. (The Armenian Catholics are primarily from Poland, and not from the older Armenian Catholic Church.) A large number are war refugees from Lebanon, Iraq, or (more recently) Syria, or their children.
Of the roughly 200,000 Catholics, few are ethnically Swedish. In fact, the current Bishop of Stockholm, Anders Arborelius, is the first ethnically Swedish Catholic bishop in Europe since the Reformation. However, ethnically Swedish Catholics, most of whom are converts from Lutheranism, do form a majority of the traditionalist Catholics in the country.[citation needed] Somewhat as in England, Catholicism is seen as an option by certain more devout ethnic Swedes who consider the Church of Sweden too liberal.[citation needed]
Swedish saints and beatified [ edit ]
Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373) is the most famous Swedish Catholic saint. She founded the Bridgettines. Her daughter, Catherine of Vadstena (1331–1381) was canonized in 1484. On 9 April 2000, the church beatified Swedish nurse Maria Elisabeth Hesselblad (1870–1957), founder of the Swedish chapter of the revived Catholic order of the Bridgettines. Pope Francis approved the second miracle attributed to her on 14 December 2015 which would allow for her future canonization; the date was decided at an ordinary consistory of cardinals on 15 March 2016 and was celebrated in Saint Peter's Square on 5 June 2016.
References [ edit ]
Media related to Roman Catholic Church in Sweden at Wikimedia CommonsFor many years now I have been one of a handful of Western astrologers who use Porphyry house cusps in client work and in chart examples for books or in classes. Early in the late 60's I used Placidus, but mostly because everyone else did and the tables were readily available. In the early 70's I studied Uranian astrology and was introduced to the Meridian House system. I think it was in 1976 that Rob Hand held Master Class "0" at his house on the Cape. (This Master Class on spherical astronomy predated the Master Class on spherical astronomy, Master Class 1, held in 1980 in Onset.) During that week I was exposed to the wonders of "house cusp mental masturbation," an activity that has fascinated the best minds in astronomy and astrology for ages. Although I could, more or less, follow the arguments for each of nearly a dozen systems, I found it hard to believe that all of these methods could work. So I decided to do an experiment.
First I computed all the intermediate house cusps in my chart in the following systems: Placidus, Koch, Campanus, Regiomontanus, Meridian, Porphyry, and Alcabitius. I eliminated Equal houses because these cusps are really only aspects to the Ascendant. I then tracked the passage over these cusps by slow moving outer planets and progressions. I had decided that if any of these systems was worthwhile, then it should deliver the appropriate kinds of events when the house cusps were contacted. In other words, I decided that for a house system to work, its cusps must be sensitive points that react to transits or progressions and they must "produce" events falling within the appropriate symbolism. A few years later I made my choice and have stayed with it ever since.
Now, before looking at my results, consider that most people use Placidus for the same reason I used to -- everyone else does. How many really understand the abstract time/space equations that go into producing these cusps? Not many, and even worse, the explanation for the system in Dalton's Table of Houses, for decades the main table of houses for every astrologer, is wrong also. So astrologers have been using a system that they can't even understand and have let a faulty explanation go on getting reprinted.
Other house systems are quite complicated also. All sorts of lines are drawn through imaginary points and translated to the ecliptic. I kept thinking to myself, all the action in Western astrology happens on the ecliptic, why do we need to relate all this other stuff to it? After a few days of Master Class "0" it became apparent to me that most house systems were just plain complicated. The simple systems like Equal and Porphyry were barely touched on in the class because they offered no mental challenge. Both of these simply divide the ecliptic up. In Equal, perhaps the oldest house system, the ecliptic is divided into 12ths from the Ascendant. Every cusp is at the same degree in each of the signs. This is a very easy system to use but it doesn't put the Midheaven on the cusp of the 10th house. In some charts it could be in the 11th or 8th houses. Somehow this didn't resonate with my feeling that the Midheaven was too important to be in a house, it is one of the four directions that make up the horoscope. In my view, the first astrology is the four directions and this survives in modern astrology as the angles. They must then be the framework on which the houses hang.
Porphyry is a house system named for the a neo-Platonist of the 3rd Century AD who wrote on Pythagorus, Plotinus and Ptolemy. In his system the arcs between the angles are simply tri-sected. It's all very simple and it's all on the ecliptic and it keeps the Midheaven as the cusp of the tenth house. How basic. But does it work?
After a year or two of observations, I decided that some of the house systems were absolutely worthless and settled in on Placidus, Porphyry, Koch and Meridian. The spread between the cusps generated by these systems was wide enough to catch individual events using an orb of about 7' of arc. I watched the movement of Pluto over the cusp of the third house and recorded what happened. Here are some results.
Placidus: 3rd cusp is 13 Libra 56.
There were five transits to this cusp in a two year period. I was in a hospital for a week, I was busy, I moved into a house, my dog was born and I worked on my car.
Meridian: 3rd cusp is 15 Libra 39.
I changed engines in my VW, I started writing a book, and I took a remarkable backpacking trip in the Adirondacks.
Porphyry: 3rd cusp is 19 Libra 13.
I drove through deep snow to an important banquet. I sold a car. I had serious parking problems for a week, I paddled down the Delaware River in a canoe, and my car engine overheated.
Koch: 3rd cusp is 19 Libra 24.
I worked in a different place for a week, my dog ran away, I took a long hike and then a vacation in the mountains.
When Jupiter crossed over my fifth house cusp I noted the following:
Meridian: 5th cusp is 15 Sagittarius 39.
It took a trip in a limo to a clients office, picked travel times for a client and took photos of my friends who had a singing telegram business at the railroad station.
Porphyry: 5th cusp is 19 Sagittarius 13.
I spoke to the Rotary Club, went to an NCGR education committee meeting, visited my old Sagittarius girlfriend in NYC and took some photos of models.
Placidus: 5th cusp is 22 Sagittarius 14.
I sold a camera, met a Sagittarian at a library to discuss megalithic boulder alignments and played with my band at a party.
Koch: 5th cusp is 26 Sagittarius.
I did a lot of astrology readings, mostly for Sagittarians, saw Return of the Jedi and held auditions for a drummer.
One more sample of my experiment might be worth considering -- Saturn transited my 6th cusp recently.
Meridian: 6th cusp is 13 Capricorn 17.
I got a headache and chipped a tooth, my parents visited me and I had to wake up in the middle of the night to pick up a Capricorn friend coming in on the train.
Porphyry: 6th cusp is 21 Capricorn 35.
I was very busy working and then smashed my car into a concrete barrier after a long, slow slide on ice. I ripped out my basement bathroom, and I got sick.
Placidus: 6th cusp is 25 Capricorn 15.
I heard Ram Dass speak, I gave a talk on astrology, I built a set of swings for the backyard and I hurt my knee.
Koch: 6th cusp is 26 Capricorn 30.
I had a relapse from a sickness that had been going on for weeks.
Well, the facts speak for themselves. All of the four systems that made the finals in my study seem to work, though Meridian and Porphyry might be a little more to the point. As I mentioned early in this article, I had been using Meridian since the early 70's and found it great to use on a 90 degree dial, but it doesn't keep the Ascendant as a house cusp and you already know that in my mind, the Midheaven and the Ascendant must be the framework to form houses. (You see, even I have caught the mind disease of house cusp creators -- an obsession with geometry and ideal form.) So it all came down to three.
Ultimately, Porphyry won in part because it was much easier to calculate than the other two. When I chose Porphyry, there were no computers, only calculators, so it made good sense to use a house system that could (1) be cranked out fast and (2) definitely worked, at least as well as a few others. I remember taking the AFA test on a broken calculator and having to do all the calculations three times. If I wasn't using Porphyry I might not have finished. One really great thing about this system is that only two intermediate cusps need be calculated. I just trisect the arc between the Midheaven and Ascendant and add this figure to the Midheaven to get the cusp of the 11th house. I then add this same figure to the 11th cusp to the 12th cusp. Because of the geometry of the circle, the cusps of the 2nd and 3rd are numerical reflections of the 12th and 11th. The numbers are the same, you just have to eyeball the sign that they should be in. No sweat.
I got to liking Porphyry houses. They have always worked for me and I still use them even though I do all my charts by computer. I like the simplicity of an all-ecliptic system. No imaginary lines creating more imaginary lines. One (the ecliptic) is enough for me, thanks. And besides this, Porphyry is the house system of choice among Indian astrologers. I guess I'm really not alone.
Back to the Astrolabe library pageA MAN ran naked through a busy toy store before picking up and abducting a six-year-old boy and assaulting his grandmother with a cricket bat, a court has heard.
Przemyslaw Kaluzny faces a total of 13 charges over an alleged series of incidents on Easter Sunday.
He is first alleged to have stolen a mobile phone and baseball bat from a neighbour’s flat before intentionally exposing his genitals to her by removing his clothing and lying on her bed.
Kaluzny is then said to have stolen a car key from the flat before taking and driving away a Renault Laguna car from outside the flat in Dundee’s Watson Street.
He is then alleged to have driven the motor from the Baxter Park area of the city to the Kingsway Retail Park without insurance and without a licence.
A further charge alleges that he had an offensive weapon with him in public.
Prosecutors say Kaluzny then went into the Toys R Us and behaved in a threatening and abusive manner by removing his clothing until he was naked, shouting, brandishing the bat, struggling violently with staff and customers and placed those staff and customers in a state of fear and alarm.
Kaluzny is further accused of an offence of public indecency by moving through the store whilst naked.
The 41-year-old is then alleged to have abducted a six-year-old boy, who cannot be named, by grabbing his arm, dragging him along the ground, picking him up and continuing to hold him and taking him from the shop against his will.
Kaluzny then allegedly assaulted the boy’s 67-year-old grandmother by striking her on the head with a cricket bat to her injury.
A final charge alleges that he wilfully destroyed property belonging to another while he was being transported from the store to Dundee’s police HQ in that he snapped the plastic casing and metal connecting bar of a pair of police handcuffs.
Kaluzny, 41, of Watson Street, Dundee, entered no plea to the charges during his first public appearance on the charges at Dundee Sheriff Court.
Nicola Brown, defending, said investigations were ongoing as to Kaluzny’s sanity at the time of the offence and his fitness to stand trial.
She said: “There is to be a psychiatric report made available by next week.”
Sheriff Elizabeth Munro continued the case until next week for a further pre-trial hearing.WASHINGTON ― Sebastian Gorka, a controversial adviser to President Donald Trump who gained notoriety for harshly criticizing Islam and dismissing the threat of white nationalists, addressed students at the Marine Corps University as recently as June 29 — months after the FBI deemed his rhetoric unsuitable for trainings and promised to stop working with him.
Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president who has pushed the idea that Islam is an inherently violent religion that requires its adherents to engage in acts of terrorism, has spoken to Marine Corps University students about “global jihad” on three separate occasions this year, said Capt. Joshua Peña, a spokesman for the university. Gorka was not paid for these appearances because he is now a U.S. government employee, Peña added.
Gorka chronicled his June speech on Facebook:
Gorka tweeted another picture of himself in April posing with several dozen Marines after he gave a talk on the Islamic State.
And then to Quantico to talk ISIS with the Senior Enlisted PME Course.
What a superb group of men and women. pic.twitter.com/uH7ImEJaTi — Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) April 14, 2017
The FBI, which underwent an internal effort to purge Islamophobic training materials, ended its contract with Gorka last year after he told attendees at the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Operations Course that all Muslims adhere to Sharia law. Gorka taught law enforcement officials that all Muslims are either radicalized or on the path to becoming radicalized, the Daily Beast reported. A senior FBI official told colleagues that Gorka would not be invited back, according to documents reviewed by the Daily Beast.
But the Marine Corps University has continued to provide a platform for Gorka to advance his view of Islam to members of the military, who are tasked with fighting several wars in predominantly Muslim countries.
“Dr. Gorka is well-received by our students for his insights into international terrorism,” Peña said. “As an academic institution of higher learning, the ability of faculty, students, and staff within the University to pursue knowledge, speak, write, and explore complex, and often controversial, subjects without interference or fear of reprisal is essential to exposing students to diverse viewpoints.”
In addition to his extreme views on Islam, Gorka has attracted scrutiny for his past ties to far-right political groups in Hungary, the country where his parents were born. He co-founded a political party in Hungary in 2007 with politicians who were former members of Jobbik, a party with a reputation as anti-immigration, homophobic and anti-Semitic, the Forward reported. Though Jobbik has tried to cultivate a more mainstream image in recent years, it has run articles on its blog in the past with titles like, “The Roots of Jewish Terrorism” and “Where Were the Jews in 1956?”, referring to Hungary’s uprising against the Soviets. During a televised interview in August 2007, Gorka expressed support for the Magyar Garda, an anti-Semitic Hungarian militia later accused by the European Court of Human Rights of working to create an “‘essentially racist’ legal order,” the Forward found.
When Gorka attended Trump’s inaugural ball in January, he wore a medal signifying membership in the Vitezi Rend, a Hungarian group that collaborated with the Nazis in World War II, LobeLog reported. Members of the Vitezi Rend told the Forward that Gorka is a member of the group, but Gorka says the medal belonged to his father and that he wears it to honor his father’s fight against Communism in Hungary.
Gorka, who did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story, has denied that he is anti-Semitic. People who have known him for years, including his critics, say they cannot recall him saying anything negative about Jewish people.
Getty Images
Before joining the Trump administration, Gorka was a little-known far-right fringe character. His published work appeared mostly on Breitbart News, a website once described by its former executive chairman Steve Bannon — now the president’s chief strategist — as “the platform for the alt-right.” But since joining the administration, Gorka appears several times a week on television as a booster of Trump’s national security agenda, which is predicated on the idea that the U.S. must take drastic steps to secure itself from Muslims who wish to harm America. The main reason people join groups like ISIS and al Qaeda is Islam itself, Gorka argues.
The U.S. national security community has long eschewed the narrative Gorka sells. Counterterrorism researchers have found that ISIS and al Qaeda are able to attract recruits because of a range of complex factors including poverty, corrupt governance, job scarcity and the negative effects of U.S.-led intervention abroad ― not just religion. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who served under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, warned in March that demonizing Islam could alienate needed allies in the fight against terrorist groups. Bush, who launched the so-called “war on terror,” repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. was not at war with Islam.
People who have worked with Gorka in the past say they don’t know whether his views hardened over the years or if he has always held extremist positions but kept them quiet. They also question his credentials and say he is prone to overstating his own expertise, pointing to his inability to speak Arabic, the limited time he has spent in the Middle East, his lack of scholarly research, and what they say are overly simplistic assertions about the relationship between Islam and violent extremism.
Born in Britain to Hungarian parents, Gorka holds a Ph.D. in political science from Corvinus University of Budapest. He insists that people refer to him as Dr. Gorka, a habit that has attracted scorn from his colleagues. Georgetown University professor Daniel Nexon, who evaluated Gorka’s dissertation, said the work was sloppy and that it was below the standards applied to Georgetown undergraduates. Corvinus University did not respond to a request for comment.
When Gorka taught at the National Defense University between 2008 and 2014, professors typically used shared syllabuses that emphasized how social, political and economic factors could make people susceptible to extremism. Classes were filled with Muslim international students from Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan.
“If he harbored Islamophobic views, he wouldn’t have been able to do his job ― and yet many of the students appreciated him,” said David Ucko, an associate professor at NDU who overlapped with Gorka at the university for three years. “I don’t know if he was, in a sense, radicalized during those years, or if he kept quiet during his six years at NDU and taught a syllabus that goes against many of the views he espouses.”
I don’t know if he was, in a sense, radicalized during those years, or if he kept quiet during his six years at NDU and taught a syllabus that goes against many of the views he espouses. David Ucko, National Defense University
But there were hints that Gorka had a dark view of Islam even then. Shortly after Ucko joined NDU, Gorka told him that because Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a warrior, devout Muslims are more inclined to celebrate violence than Christians. Ucko didn’t agree with his colleague but said he didn’t press the matter because he was new to the university.
Gorka has a mixed reputation among his former colleagues at NDU. There is widespread agreement that he is a smart and talented orator who held students’ attention with his theatrical presentation style. But some of the school’s Muslim students were uncomfortable with his rhetoric around Islam and were annoyed to hear such strong opinions from someone who didn’t speak Arabic and had spent little time in the region, recalled one person who worked with Gorka at NDU and requested anonymity to speak candidly about his former colleague.
“Put him on stage, he’s in his element … He may be frequently wrong, but he’s never in doubt. Seb, he knows what he knows, he’s convinced that what he knows is right, and he’s going to tell you about it. And he’s articulate about it, eloquent and forceful,” Gorka’s former colleague said. “He’s a bit larger than life sort of personality.”
Standing at well over 6 feet tall, with a booming voice and a fondness for red neckties, Gorka has a large physical presence as well. While at NDU, he had a hard time finding a cap large enough to fit his head at graduation ceremonies, the former colleague recalled. “I mean, his head was huge ― it was a standing joke among the faculty about how big his head was.”
He knows what he knows, he’s convinced that what he knows is right, and he’s going to tell you about it. And he’s articulate about it, eloquent, and forceful... He’s a bit larger than life sort of personality.” Gorka's former colleague at NDU
Joseph DeSutter, who headed the college at NDU where Gorka taught, says current criticism directed at Gorka is politically motivated. He heard “nothing but positive feedback” from both students and faculty during the three years he overlapped with Gorka, he said. “I think he’s terrific and I’d hire him again in a heartbeat,” said DeSutter, who has retired from NDU.
NDU has no record of complaints about Gorka filed while he worked there, Mark Phillips, an NDU spokesman, wrote in an email.
Gorka left NDU in 2014 and became the chair of military theory at the Marine Corps University Foundation, a private organization that provides funding and support to the Marine Corps University. Thomas Saunders, an investment banker and prominent Republican donor, bankrolled Gorka’s position. Because he was not employed directly by the university, a government-funded institution, Gorka had considerable freedom to express his personal opinions.
Gorka’s lectures at Marine Corps University weren’t “overtly racist,” recalled one professor who overlapped with him at Marine Corps University. “It was more subtle than that. But it was clearly anti-Islam in a broad sense.”
Around the same time he joined Marine Corps University Foundation, Gorka started writing for Breitbart News, appearing on Fox News, and writing a book about the fight against global jihad. His simplistic description of the threat facing Americans was attractive to many of the mid-career Marines he taught, the professor who overlapped with him recalled.
“It’s a combination of his Ph.D., his polished delivery style ― he certainly has a command of factoids about Islamic history,” the professor said. “When the university puts a guy in front of you and says, ‘This is Dr. So-and-so, he’s an expert,’ and his delivery style is so convincing, it certainly comes across as very credible.”
Some Marine Corps University faculty members worried about the way Gorka spoke about Islam, but they figured there were enough other opinions to counterbalance him, and they didn’t want to be accused of violating academic freedom by complaining.
Gorka’s description of the threat of radical Islam caught the attention of the Trump campaign, and he was brought on as a paid adviser in 2015. He left the Marine Corps University Foundation last fall, but has continued to appear as a guest lecturer.
Gorka followed Trump into the White House in January, but has reportedly been unable to get a security clearance. (Ties to groups like the Vitezi Rend and the far-right political organizations Gorka consorted with in Hungary could compromise his ability to get a clearance.) Without a security clearance, Gorka can’t sit in on most high-level national-security related meetings or access classified information. That has left him plenty of time to do television and radio hits, where he praises Trump and bashes perceived adversaries ― including those who are a part of the administration.
When there was talk of kicking Gorka out of the White House in May, Trump and Bannon personally intervened to save Gorka’s job, the Daily Beast reported. Gorka is now one of the last Bannon allies who has survived a purge by national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who has recently dismissed aides perceived as more loyal to his predecessor Michael Flynn.
People who have watched Gorka move from a professor at a reputable university to a talking head for a White House in disarray can’t say with certainty what is motivating him. But they agree that he seems to have finally found his calling.For the most part, I like the Django ORM because it makes it easy to write reusable code that reads and writes from the database. I’ve found that the ORM can be a double edged sword though, as it sometimes becomes too easy to read and write from the database. In hindsight, most of the following mistakes are pretty obvious once you understand how the ORM works, but I still see these all the time so I thought it’d be good to point them out. If you want a more basic guide to Django model and querying patterns, Better Django Models is a great article for that, so I won’t reiterate the points made in there.
For the following examples, I’ll be using these models:
class Book(models.Model): author = models.ForeignKey(User) class Profile(models.Model): user = models.ForeignKey(User)
1. book.author does a database query
OK, this is pretty basic, but it has a bunch of implications, such as:
book.author.id!= book.author_id
Well, the values returned will be the same, but book.author.id does an additional database query. There is pretty much never a good reason to do book.author.id unless you know for sure that you’re accessing an internally cached instance, either obtained from select_related or because you’ve already accessed book.author and created a cached instance, but even then, why chance it?
For the same reason,
this is bad
book = Book() book.author = profile.user book.save()
and this is good
book = Book() book.author_id = profile.user_id book.save()
2. Querysets are not lists
How many database queries is this?
books |
into effect dealt the deal a major blow, and we can debate all we like whether it was purposeful (as I suspect it was). Leave that aside and step back: The Pentagon did its best to jawbone the accord into oblivion, which was its intent from the first.
Everyone watched the presidential debate Monday evening. Everyone as in a lot of Russians, too. As the prospect of a Clinton II presidency draws near, the calendar is the third reason we now witness a military advance of exceptional severity in Aleppo. This is my read. Moscow wants to get as much as possible done in Syria prior to November 8.
Russia’s objectives in Syria have changed not at all: It wants to destroy the Islamic State and al-Nusra and, with no great regard for Assad, preserve the central government so that a political settlement of one or another kind can be negotiated.
Clinton, a Russophobe from way back, threatens both goals. Is it not barbaric to insist on turning a nation into nothing more than a theater of geopolitical competition?
Remember, Clinton continues to advocate a no-fly zone enforced by US bombers. “It’s important, too,” she said during the first primary debate a year ago, “that the United States make it very clear to Putin that it’s not acceptable for him to be in Syria creating more chaos, bombing people on behalf of Assad.” See the problems here? Russians act in Syria at the invitation of a sovereign government; American jets break international law every time they enter Syrian air space. Tragic as Syria is now, can Moscow plausibly argue—with causality in mind—that worse may otherwise await?
The infinitely righteous Samantha Power, Obama’s UN ambassador, calls the new Syrian-Russian campaign in Aleppo “barbarism.” It might be, although one takes the word of our hopelessly compromised press for very little. But why stop there? Is it not barbaric to insist on turning a nation into nothing more than a theater of geopolitical competition—an entire population jotted down as collateral damage?
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This is not my first piece for The Nation: That lies 40 years’ back in the archives. It is my first as a foreign affairs columnist. I am delighted and honored to join so many professional colleagues and contributors. I hope my pieces measure up to the standards evident on the website daily and in the magazine every week.
In the past couple of decades—decisively since 2001, maybe—it has become impossible to think of foreign and domestic policies as separate universes. The world is too small now, interdependence too much with us, and—far from least—American foreign policy in too severe a crisis. What we think of our conduct abroad matters ever more. This is an excellent thing, even if it makes our minds the objects of relentless, Cold War–ish campaigns of mis- and disinformation as to what we do and why when acting among others. This we must not forget and must counter at every turn.
As the columns will make clear, I welcome the just-noted crisis in policy: Americans must pass through it to arrive at a more dignified and honorable idea of ourselves and our place in the world. Good enough this point is made in a magazine called The Nation. While remaining true to its mission as declared in 1865, it has also evolved to cast its gaze far more widely. It is my privilege to be part of this, and in so important a time.The as-Soennah mosque in The Hague received a letter in which an anonymous writer seems to threaten with an attack with a truck on a mosque or school. "Don't forget that you're vulnerable too in Europe", the letter begins. The envelope also included a toy truck, RTL Nieuws reports.
"With every cowardly attack on our citizens and children, a counter-attack can follow on your innocent visitors of mosques or whatever. A truck that hits a mosque or school! Don't forget that!", the letter states. "So beware."
The board of the as-Soennah mosque confirmed the letter to Omroep West. It was received before Eid. "We kept it quiet as to not create unrest, but there was extra police supervision at the mosque", the board said.
The as-Soennah foundation is "very shocked and upset to receive this threat in the month of Ramadan, when it is very busy in and around mosques", according to RTL. The mosque management added that it can nog be ignored that the "smear campaign" against Islam and Muslims by certain politicians and media may have added to this threat.
The mosque will press charges on Monday. "Then we start investigating the origin of the letter", a police spokesperson said to RTL.Last week, Sen. Rand Paul reintroduced his “Life at Conception Act,” an attempt to ban all abortion by granting legal “personhood” to zygotes and fetuses from “the moment of fertilization,” all without needing a constitutional amendment or Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Paul has been a staunch backer of such personhood efforts despite once claiming that he didn’t support “changing any of the laws” on abortion “until the country is persuaded otherwise.”
The bill Paul introduced last week varies slightly from the one he first introduced in 2013, specifically stating that it shouldn’t be construed as “a prohibition on in vitro fertilization, or a prohibition on use of birth control or another means of preventing fertilization.”
Personhood measures have been widely criticized for vague wording that could put legal birth control at risk, a concern that Paul appears to attempt to put at rest in the new bill. But that would all depend on what counts as protected birth control under the bill. Would IUDs, which could possibly prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg, be protected? What about the morning-after pill or hormonal contraception bills, which some anti-choice groups claim, with little evidence, could do the same thing? Some anti-choice activists claim that some or all of these constitute abortion, not birth control … notably the plaintiffs in the Hobby Lobby case, whose cause Paul enthusiastically supported.
It’s especially interesting that Paul attempts to avoid the growing controversy within the anti-abortion movement about in-vitro fertilization and the rights that should be granted to the excess frozen embryos that are often a byproduct of the process. It’s unclear if Paul is saying that embryos that are the result of in-vitro fertilization should not be granted the personhood rights that his bill would grant to all other embryos or if the bill would simply require that those embryos never be destroyed.
Both Paul’s 2013 bill and his 2016 version state that they shouldn’t “be construed to require the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child,” an important exemption because under such a law, ending a pregnancy at any stage would be the legal equivalent of murder. Already, an experiment in personhood-style laws in Alabama has led to the arrests of hundreds of women for using drugs while pregnant or otherwise contributing to the “chemical endangerment” of a fetus.
All of this, of course, is purely hypothetical at this point. Paul’s bill is the product of a theory, which is controversial even within the anti-abortion movement, that there is a magic loophole in Roe v. Wade that would allow legal abortion to come tumbling down if Congress were simply to define fertilized eggs as “persons” under the law. Most likely, however, such a strategy would collapse in the courts: One prominent anti-choice attorney has called the personhood loophole an “urban legend.”
That’s not to say that Paul’s strategy doesn’t have support. His fellow Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been talking up the personhood strategy on the campaign trail, saying that he would simply issue a decree as president that there would be “no more abortion” in America. Ted Cruz has quietly pledged to support personhood measures and said late last year that a personhood strategy to avoid Roe would “absolutely” work. Marco Rubio has hinted at a personhood strategy, but not explicitly embraced it.
Paul’s bill has six Senate cosponsors and a similar bill (without the exceptions for birth control and IVF) has 132 cosponsors in the House.When you think of crafting, you might think of macaroni encrusted picture frames or homemade corkboards inspired by Pinterest. If you're Miley Cyrus, you would think of making a homemade bong that's extravagantly covered in anything from flowers to beaded bracelets, naturally. But Miley's rainbow-colored bong isn't the singer's first foray into the world of crafts. As Bustle's own Georgette Eva points out, Cyrus has been making pre-school reminiscent bracelets, scrunchies, masks, and more with an alternative and NSFW twist for quite some time now. Sure, her beads may be glittery and her crafts are often embellished with teddy bears, babies, and more, but the little square beads that you used to make friendship bracelets in kindergarten are more likely to be used to spell out profanity in the hands of the singer. And she's won over quite a few devotees with her work, even inspiring some to create their own wacky fan art.
A quick look over her Instagram account shows that the young artist has been quite busy crafting over the past five months. Although I don't think I would ever purchase the kind of art Cyrus creates, she does have a consistent style throughout her work. As such, it's easy to identify what inspires her. Not only can we see mention of her dog Floyd in her homemade bong and some of her favorite things (hello "mary jane" and "drugs"!), but we can see some hints at more personal facts about her. So what does Miley's homemade bong masterpiece say about her? Here's what we learned about the singer from her latest creation.
1. She's a Jurassic Park Fan
There are many dinosaur figurines in all sorts of colors glued onto the bong, proving they're some of Cyrus' favorite accessories. The ferocity of the creatures is reminiscent of her tour antics — no mercy.
2. She really likes the color purple
The base of the bong is a metallic purple, and a lot of the glued-on accessories wrapped around and glued on to the bong are in the royal shade.
3. She likes donuts. Or Odd Future.
Odd Future is a rap group and a clothing line. The group is famous for crazy antics and blunt messages, and the clothing line has a lot of donuts involved. Maybe Cyrus just loves sugary pastries, but she's collaborated with Odd Future member Tyler, the Creator in the past, and chances are this is an ode to her friends.
4. She's in touch with nature
The bong is wrapped in large strings of flower, making it have the appearance of the perfect festival accessory — the flower crown. From bright pinks to traditional daisies, flowers are a mainstaple of the craft.
5. She gets inspiration from her fans
Cyrus reveals on Instagram that the five-foot bong's elaborate decorations are the result of not only her creative tendencies, but those of her fan friends. As she captioned her Instagram with a blunt (no pun intended) message, "5 foot bong almost complete this one is a collab with my fucking beyond kiewl fanz." Looks like she applied some of her fan-made crafts onto her latest creation. Teamwork makes the dreamwork. Or, you know, the bong kind of pretty.
6. She hasn't really let go of her childhood
Cyrus may reject the Hannah Montana persona that followed her early in her career, insisting instead that she has grown up, but based on the crafting supplies that she uses, she's still very much in touch with her younger self. If kids could make a bong in 4th grade summer camp, this would most certainly be the result. Well, you know, probably without the weed.
7. She loves to be in the spotlight
This makes sense, considering she was basically raised center stage by her one-hit-wonder dad, Billy Ray Cyrus. But the flashing lights, crazy textures, and ridiculously bright colors is an indicator that Cyrus loves to be the flashy, complicated center of attention. And she's quite good at it. Even while using a bong.
8. She's got some hidden anger
Maybe it's over the world critiquing her new image. Maybe it's over the hardships she's faced in the past year (losing a fiancé and a beloved puppy can be devastating, even in the wake of worldwide success). Either way, the red flower bunches that top the bong and are featured throughout the craft appears to represent hidden aggression. After all, red is the color of blood. Ire. Anger. On second thought — nah, this all means that she just loves pot.
Images: dinosaurgifs/Tumblr; Giphy (8)NatWest and RBS customers may be waiting until the weekend before the payments which went "missing" following a technical glitch overnight reappear in their bank accounts.
A spokesman for the bank said: “We are working flat out to get these payments updated for our customers no later than Saturday."
Customers with accounts across the RBS, NatWest, Coutts and Ulster Bank brands were facing the prospect of empty bank accounts this morning after a technical issue resulted in a delay to payments and direct debits.
In a statement, RBS, the parent company of NatWest, said: “We are aware of an issue with our overnight process which has resulted in some of our customers not having credits or direct debits being applied to their accounts.”
The bank was keen to point out that the payments had “not gone missing”; instead they had been “delayed due to technical issues”.
A spokesperson for RBS said about 600,000 transactions had been affected by the computer glitch.
The bank has since announced the cause of the problem has been identified and “has been fixed”.
An RBS spokesperson said: “Our priority now is to get this resolved for those customers impacted."
It is the latest embarrassment for the bank which has been plagued by technical failures. Only last year, the bank was fined £56m after a software issue in 2012 left millions of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers unable to access their bank accounts.
It was then hit by another glitch the day after paying the fine.
On Tuesday, Ross McEwan, Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive, told investors and analysts he wants his company to become the number one bank in the UK for “customer service, trust and advocacy” by 2020.
The Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority are working with RBS to make sure customers receive the money they are due and do not end up out of pocket through any additional fees or interest charges they may have incurred.
Once the situation has been resolved the regulators are expected to consider enforcement action.
"The FCA is in contact with RBS regarding a recent IT issue," said a spokesperson for the authority. "We will be working closely with RBS as it resolves the problem and to ensure there are steps in place to help consumers who are affected."
This morning the NatWest Help Twitter account was keen to provide customer assistance to those affected.
Some Customer payments are missing this morning – we are investigating this issue as a matter of urgency. 1/2 — NatWest Help (@NatWest_Help) June 17, 2015
If you have been affected and need to access funds today, please contact us 03457 888444 or visit your branch 2/2 — NatWest Help (@NatWest_Help) June 17, 2015
Hundreds of customers vented their anger on social media this morning, as many found their accounts empty or had card payments declined in shops.
#Natwest an absolute disgrace. You have 'technical glitches' nearly every other week. Going to have to move elsewhere. #poorservice — Chris Pritchard (@chrisp1991) June 17, 2015
@NatWest_Help I have no money to feed my kids too. I RELY on this money!!! I am definitely switching banks!! Think money are supposed2bgood! — Danni Reason (@dannireason) June 17, 2015
@NatWest_Help is an absolute joke! I'm missing around £300 in payments and yet you talk about #fathersday? How do i cover my bills today.. — debbie o'donoghue (@3littlepiggs) June 17, 2015
@NatWest_Help I rang Natwest and they said they'd credit me within the hour. Now almost 2hrs later and still nothing!!! I have NO money!!! — Danni Reason (@dannireason) June 17, 2015
@NatWest_Help Tax credits not credited to account this morning #singleparent when will this issue be rectified please? Many parents worried — Dream Bear (@DreamBearUK) June 17, 2015
The bank has since reassured customers they will not be “left out of pocket”.
Despite the technical error, shares in Royal Bank of Scotland edged 0.4p higher this morning, trading at 350.7p.
The latest setback comes as RBS and NatWest are struggling to retain existing customers and win new ones.
The seven day current account switching scheme makes it easier for customers to leave if they are dissatisfied, and the latest figures from the Payments Council show the group is losing more customers than any other bank.
In the third quarter of 2014, RBS and NatWest together gained 14,889 customers through the switching service. But they lost 46,266 over the same period, leaving the banking group with a net loss of 31,377 customers.Jane Wood never thought of herself as political. The 45-year-old has voted precisely once in her entire life – just to celebrate turning 18. (Tory, since you ask, “because my parents did”.) But this weekend, the mother of two did something more radical than any manifesto or TV debate: she took back the east London home she’d been evicted from last month.
Needless to say, Wood looks nothing like an occupier. Her fringe is never askew, the smile’s always on, and she’s ever ready with a “brilliant!”. Yet within a few weeks, this middle-aged woman has gone from not having a roof over her head to the centre of what her council terms “an illegal occupation”. The story of how that happened tells you more about our politics than anything you’ll hear this election.
Why I’m occupying a boarded-up east London council house | Jasmin Stone Read more
It begins last October, when the Department for Work and Pensions summoned her to one of its famously unsatisfactory medical assessments. Wood has had mental health problems for more than two decades and is being treated for bipolar depression. Yet after a 15-minute tick-box exercise, she lost her benefits. Ask her what happened and even now she’s baffled. “He just asked me things like ‘How do you feel on a scale of 0 to 3?’ and at the time I was on a high.” What she didn’t tell the assessor was about the days “I feel like jumping in front of a bus”.
Just like that, the cash she relied on to pay the rent was withdrawn. Never comfortably off, Wood had had occasional trouble with making the rent, but now she and her 14-year-old were scraping by on child benefit and tax credits. Over the next few months, she missed payment after payment on the two-bed, top-floor council flat in Stratford, east London. Her depression getting worse, Wood just curled up into the foetal position and ignored everything: council letters, phone calls, visits. She didn’t even turn up for her court hearing in January.
What you’re seeing here is how quickly and easily someone in modern Britain can fall through the cracks. A Tory-led government is hellbent on cutting social security; a Labour council needs its rent. And a 45-year-old woman, too ashamed even to admit to relatives that she’s on benefits, loses her home of 20 years. By the time her parents found out, and got together the money to pay the arrears, the council refused to let her stay. (Newham denies being made a clear offer by Wood’s parents.)
When Wood and her daughter were finally turfed out in late March, they left within 10 minutes, taking three carrier bags, with Easter eggs and clothes. At our first meeting, Wood was sleeping on her elder daughter’s sofa and had just come back from a meeting with a housing officer, who advised that her options now included renting in Southend, 35 miles from home.
However sad, this story is by now a familiar one to me. I’ve written about it in these pages recently as “privatised despair”: how individuals struggle by, even as the social settlement they rely upon – welfare, a functioning jobs market – is dismantled. But here comes the twist: because Wood then reoccupied her own flat.
She did so with the help of the Focus E15 housing activists, a local group not much more than a year old. As with Wood, these were unpolitical single mothers who were suddenly forced to get political when threatened with eviction from their hostel and advised they’d have to scatter to Birmingham or Manchester.
After a series of direct actions – storming council offices, holding impromptu parties on the premises of their housing association – all 29 managed to stay in Newham. Rather than pipe down afterwards, they began campaigning more broadly for social housing and took over a flat in an otherwise empty council estate. Despite court action and the water being cut off, they left of their own accord – and wrested both an apology and concessions from Newham’s mayor, Robin Wales.
Ever since, whenever I’ve visited any housing estate facing the wrecking ball, the first people residents want to talk about aren’t Cameron or Miliband, but Focus E15. Those young mothers went through a struggle similar to theirs – and won. One of Focus E15’s leaders, Jasmin Stone, reckons her group gets hundreds of requests for help from community movements across the country.
None of us started out radical, but we have no other choice
At the same time, there has been a wave of occupations of housing estates facing redevelopment. In February, it was the Guinness Estate in Brixton; just a few days ago, protesters called off their occupation of the Aylesbury Estate near Elephant and Castle. Demonstrators are still gathered in a house in Barnet, backing on to the Sweets Way estate. And this weekend, Wood and Focus E15 took back her old flat. The local councils invariably blame these protests on “outsiders”, but in each case the occupations have the support and sometimes the involvement of residents.
These occupations represent the answer to a double failure, of both state and market. Wood’s case is a perfect example: she was mugged of her benefits by Westminster, pushed out of her home by Newham and then ejected into a London housing market that has nothing she can afford. And so, she became what Sam Middleton of Focus E15 calls a Made Activist: “None of us started out radical, but we have no other choice.”
All this is reminiscent of the Spanish reoccupations, where protesters from Madrid to Andalusia began taking over homes that had been foreclosed during the mortgage crisis. The slogans they used then – These Homes Need People – prefigure the ones deployed by London protesters. One of the motifs of this campaign is how the voters have been left behind by the political class. Miliband, Cameron and Clegg have literally left behind their voters and now appear only in empty hangars for exhaustively staged photo ops. That is not the story you find in the occupations. Here, people are way ahead of mainstream politicians in their sophistication. In Barnet this weekend, kids ran in and out while their parents compared their situation to the enclosures of the 18th century.
This is a world of politics beyond the main parties and unions, but it is getting organised. The direct action practised by Focus E15 hasn’t been focus-grouped, but my God does it resonate. It can also be shut down. As I write this, police have stormed Wood’s flat and arrested 20-year-old Jasmin Stone – on what charges it is unclear. But here’s the thing: politicians and pundits would have you believe that this election is a choice between Cameron and Miliband, between outrage and disappointment. What Jane Wood shows is that if you push even the most unpolitical person into a tight-enough corner, she’ll reject all the choices offered her.
UPDATE
Yesterday afternoon, as this piece was being completed and edited, the police and council officers stormed the occupation of Jane Wood’s flat. Their arrival was tweeted in real time by Focus E15, in a jumble of alarming images.
In the early confusion, the first report I received was that everyone in the flat had been arrested – but in fact only Focus E15’s Jasmin Stone was taken away, to Waltham Forest custody centre, where about 40 shouting supporters gathered outside.
Newham council worked with the police on forcibly entering the flat and carting off Jasmin Stone
Two things stand out here. First, Newham council worked with the police on forcibly entering the flat and carting off Jasmin Stone. The council confirms that it sent officers, although it won’t reveal how many. This crackdown was co-ordinated by police and the local authority.
Second, yesterday’s arrest is very different from what councils or developers normally do in these situations, which is: wait a bit, file a possession order and let the courts take care of it. That’s what happened in Sweets Way in Barnet. Perhaps Newham didn’t want to wait and allow Jane Wood’s flat to become a site of protest, as happened with the previous Focus E15 occupation. Perhaps Jasmin Stone was picked out as a kind of ringleader.
Perhaps I should also observe here that the woman police hauled off yesterday is 20 and the mother of a toddler. I don’t know of anything she’s done wrong – except actively protest about the way that her home city is being turned into an enclave for the rich, with the middle and working classes flung out to the far suburbs.
What’s been circulated on social media is that Stone was formally charged with squatting. That’s not quite right: her solicitors say she was interviewed on suspicion of squatting, then released. Even that mystifies lawyers I’ve spoken to, if she’d not been living at the address. She was released on police bail last night.
My initial understanding was that there could be no such police action if Wood herself had been inside the flat. Her status as a tenant reoccupying a flat that had gone empty since she moved out gave her much greater legal protection (housing lawyers, say if I’ve got this wrong). Only, as the arrests were happening yesterday afternoon, Wood was at Newham council, where she’d been invited to discuss housing options. Did the council plan things this way?
Focus E15 housing activist arrested on suspicion of squatting Read more
Spokespeople at the council yesterday said they wanted to treat Wood “compassionately” and get her temporary accommodation. Yet for the past three weeks she and her 14-year-old daughter, Raven, have been homeless. As I reported above, officers last week advised her to think about moving to Southend. One weekend’s occupation, and a bit of media interest, and she’s suddenly front of the queue.
A lot more will come out in Stone’s case, but let me draw this hasty conclusion. Housing activism does work. It means Jane Wood may soon have a roof over her head again. In Barnet activists have worked with residents to get them housed by the council. These are all partial victories: temporary contracts for people to be housed in London’s private rental sector. But they’re a hell of a lot better than kipping on someone’s couch and not knowing where you’ll be next week.
Meanwhile, up in the stratosphere, the Tories today pledged to sell off more social housing at a steep discount – while Labour yesterday reannounced its campaign pledge to get 200,000 new homes every year, with no detail on how they’ll be financed or built, or whether they’ll be social, private or even just affordable.
You tell me who’s got the better grip on this crisis: the SW1 brigade, or the people at ground level who are being criminalised for pointing out there’s a crisis.The Key deer (Odocoileus virginianus clavium) is an endangered deer that lives only in the Florida Keys. It is a subspecies of the white-tailed deer (O. virginianus). It is the smallest North American deer.
Description [ edit ]
This deer can be recognized by its characteristic size, smaller than all other white-tailed deer. Adult males (known as bucks) usually weigh 25–34 kg (55–75 lb) and stand about 76 cm (30 in) tall at the shoulder. Adult females (does) usually weigh between 20 and 29 kg (44 and 64 lb) and have an average height of 66 cm (26 in) at the shoulders. The deer is a reddish-brown to grey-brown in color. Antlers are grown by males and shed between February and March and regrown by June. When the antlers are growing, they have a white velvet coating. The species otherwise generally resembles other white-tailed deer in appearance.
Behavior [ edit ]
Key deer easily swim between islands. Living close to humans, they have little of the natural fear of man shown by most of their larger mainland relatives. The deer are often found in residents' yards and along roadsides where plants and flowers grow. This often results in car-to-deer collisions, as the deer are more active (and harder to avoid) at night. Seeing them at dusk and dawn is not unusual.
Breeding occurs all year, but peaks in October and December. Territorial activity is limited to defending a receptive doe from other bucks. Longevity records are 9 years for males and 7 years for females. Adult females form loose matriarchal groups with one or two generations of offspring, while bucks feed and bed together only outside the breeding season.[1]
Range, habitat, and diet [ edit ]
The range of the Key deer originally encompassed all of the lower Florida Keys (where standing water pools exist), but is now limited to a stretch of the Florida Keys from about Sugarloaf Key to Bahia Honda Key. Key deer use all islands during the wet season when drinking water is more generally available, retreating to islands with a perennial supply of fresh water in dry months.
Key deer inhabit nearly all habitats within their range, including pine rocklands, hardwood hammocks, mangroves, and freshwater wetlands. The species feeds on over 150 types of plants, but mangroves (red, white, and black) and thatch palm berries make up the most important parts of their diets. Pine rockland habitat is important, as well, because it is often the only reliable source of fresh drinking water (Key deer can tolerate drinking only mildly brackish water). Habitat destruction due to human encroachment causes many deer to feed on non-native ornamental plants.
History [ edit ]
The Key deer is a subspecies of white-tailed deer which migrated to the Florida Keys from the mainland over a land bridge during the Wisconsin glaciation. The earliest known written reference to Key deer comes from the writings of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a Spanish sailor shipwrecked in the Florida Keys and captured by Native Americans in the 1550s.
A male Key Deer on No Name Key in the lower Keys
A juvenile Key deer is called a fawn.
Due to proximity, most Key deer have lost their fear of humans. This, besides habitat loss, is the main reason why they have become endangered.
Endangered status [ edit ]
Key deer were hunted as a food supply by native tribes, passing sailors, and early settlers. Hunting them was banned in 1939, but widespread poaching and habitat destruction caused the subspecies to plummet to near-extinction by the 1950s. The National Key Deer Refuge, a federally administered National Wildlife Refuge operated by the Wildlife Service, was established in 1967.
Recent population estimates put the population between 700 and 800, putting it on the list of endangered species. Road kills from drivers on US 1, which traverses the deer's small range, are also a major threat, averaging between 125 and 150 kills per year, 70% of the annual mortality.
However, the population has made an encouraging rise since 1955, when population estimates ranged as low as 25, and appears to have stabilized in recent years. Still, recent human encroachment into the fragile habitat and the deer's relatively low rate of reproduction point to an uncertain future for the subspecies.
Screw worm infestation [ edit ]
In September 2016, a screw worm infestation was discovered (the first infestation of its kind in the U.S. since 1982) to be affecting the Key deer population, necessitating the euthanasia of affected animals. The screw worm is a fly larva that enters an open wound of a live animal and eats the flesh of the animal from within, leading to a gruesome death. The female fly mates once in her life, so the infestation can be battled by introducing sterile flies to the population, causing the females to die out without laying fertile eggs. Other steps to battle the outbreak included injecting deer with antiparasitic drugs, fencing off healthy sections of the population, and tracking a portion of deer with radio collars. The pest was declared as eradicated in April 2017. The outbreak killed 135 deer, roughly an eighth of the herd.[2][3][4][5]
Conservation efforts [ edit ]
Conservation efforts include the establishment of the National Key Deer Refuge, which consists of about 8,500 acres (34 km2) on Big Pine, No Name Key, and several smaller uninhabited islands. Not all of the refuge lands are protected as public lands; despite extensive efforts of the refuge to purchase these private habitat lands for protection in the refuge, about 5,000 acres (20 km2) currently remain in private ownership and can potentially be developed. About 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of this privately developable land is on Big Pine Key and No Name Key, which are the central population areas for the deer.[citation needed] In 2006, a habitat conservation plan was enacted by Monroe County and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which will limit development in primary habitat and provide for additional habitat purchases over the next 15 years. At the end of this period, however, most of the 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of privately owned habitat land on Big Pine and No Name Keys will still be open for further development. Thus, while the short term promises some cushion from extinction, the long-term prospects for the deer remain in doubt.[citation needed]
A portion of U.S. Route 1 was also elevated in 2003 to allow the deer to pass safely beneath the roadway, in an attempt to lessen the chance of road kills. However, no decrease in total traffic deaths has been seen.[6]
The National Key Deer Refuge encourages people to help keep the Key deer wild by not feeding them. Feeding acclimates them to humans and vehicles, and makes them more likely to be hit and killed by vehicles. Also, hanging around people and developed areas in higher than normal densities makes them more susceptible to diseases, dog attacks, and entanglements in human trash, all of which can lead to increased injuries or death.[7]Liverpool – Southampton 1:1
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool just fell short of their first win as Sadio Mané equalised following a Benteke header. The game was fairly balanced throughout with a particularly interesting approach from Klopp which featured a number of changes in shape.
The German started off with a 4-3-2-1 shape which he has used in his matches so far in England. Simon Mignolet was the goalkeeper behind an unchanged back four of Moreno, Sakho, Skrtel and Clyne. Lucas was the nominated central pivot whilst James Milner and Emre Can were either side of him in more ‘8’ roles. The flexible front ‘3’ consisted of Lallana and Coutinho playing behind Origi, though the trio rotated on a frequent basis.
Ronald Koeman brought his side to Anfield with a fairly 4-2-3-1 formation. Maarten Stekelenburg started with Jose Fonte, Virgil van Dijk, Cedric Soares and Ryan Bertrand making up the defensive line. Victor Wanyama and Jordi Clasie made up the double pivot with the Dutchman moving forward more than his African partner. Mané was the central player in the ‘3’ yet made many movements to wide positions where he could combine with one of Steven Davis or Dusan Tadic. Graziano Pelle was the lone striker ahead of the ex-Salzburg forward.
Klopp’s Pressing Approach
Something which will be payed close attention to in his start at Anfield will be the pressing of Liverpool. The German manager is obviously famous for it from his time at Borussia Dortmund and it is clear that he will look to carry this on in Liverpool.
Through their narrow 4-3-2-1 shape, Liverpool were shaped quite well to press diagonally and force Southampton away from the valuable central spaces. This was roughly the approach which they took against Tottenham as the Spurs initially struggled to develop possession through the middle. However in a quite unusual approach this was not always the case.
As the ball looked to be moving from the centre-back to his near full-back, the ball-near ’10’ would often arch his run to press the full-back vertically as opposed to being on a diagonal line. Meanwhile, the ball-far ’10’ would shift over slightly to semi-cover the space left. The effect this had was that the press was more focused to blocking developments down the wing as opposed to a more-threatening half-space build-up. In addition to this, the movements were understandably not fully harmonic and windows of opportunity opened for diagonal passes between the movements of Lallana and Coutinho. A particularly interesting aspect of this was that it happened much more frequently down Liverpool’s left, suggesting an adaptation to accommodate something spotted in Southampton’s right-sided build-up on the wing.
The resulting positional structure which followed these movements was another point as it formed an asymmetrical shape during Southampton’s possession in midfield. Coutinho drops towards a left-midfield position whilst Can becomes the left central-midfielder in a bank of four.
Through general inactivity, Lallana stays higher than his attacking-midfield partner to form a lopsided 4-4-2 shape as Origi blocks the return pass to the ball-near centre-back.
The structure was relatively stable as Southampton struggled at times to bring the ball back into the centre despite Liverpool’s greater focus on their wing play.With Coutinho and Origi blocking forwards and backwards passes whilst Lallana and Can occupied central spaces there was the potential for traps against the touchline, which were made occasionally.
When they pressed centrally with a more standard |
single time I go to the gym.
Spinal decompressions stretch your spine vertically using gravity. Unlike the toe-touch stretch, they don’t compress your discs – there’s no bending. So you don’t irritate a disc bulge that could cause your back pain. Instead you reduce it and create space for trapped nerves causing the pain.
If you do spinal decompressions several times a day, you’ll find your back pain will quickly relieve, without taking any painkillers. Just hang as long as you can with your feet off the floor. Relax and let gravity stretch your spine. I usually hang for a minute, but hold as long your grip can hold.
Avoid stretches where you bend over and touch your toes. They can feel good. But if your back pain is caused by a disc bulge from pulling with bad form, they’ll just increase it. You want to reduce the disc bulge instead, and the best lower back stretch for that is hanging on the pullup bar.
Also, don’t wear a belt to make up for poor Deadlift form. Wear it for extra lower back support. It helps cuing your abs to contract. But don’t wear one and then Deadlift with a bent back.
Lower Back Rounding
The most common way to hurt your lower back Deadlifting is if you pull with a bent lower back. This squeezes the front part of your spinal discs. If a nerve gets trapped, you’ll get sharp pain shooting down to your leg. Keeping pulling bent back and your spinal disc can bulge and herniate.
The solution is to Deadlift with a neutral lower back. Setup with that natural arch you have when you stand. Your lower back shouldn’t be flat but have a slight curve (aka lordosis). Maintain this arch in your lower back from the start of your Deadlift, until the lockout, and on the way back down.
Setup. Stand with the bar over your mid-foot. Bend over and grab it. Bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. Now lift your chest. If this doesn’t put your lower back neutral, arch it – pull your hips to the ceiling. Lock the position by squeezing your lats and taking a big breath.
Stand with the bar over your mid-foot. Bend over and grab it. Bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. Now lift your chest. If this doesn’t put your lower back neutral, arch it – pull your hips to the ceiling. Lock the position by squeezing your lats and taking a big breath. Way Up. Don’t let your hips rise too fast like in the top picture or you’ll round. Maintain your back angle by pushing the floor away as if you were doing a Leg Press. Keep your chest up, your lower back arched and the bar close to your legs. Keep pushing until the bar moves.
Don’t let your hips rise too fast like in the top picture or you’ll round. Maintain your back angle by pushing the floor away as if you were doing a Leg Press. Keep your chest up, your lower back arched and the bar close to your legs. Keep pushing until the bar moves. Way Down. Lower the weight by moving your hips back. Bend your legs slightly but keep your knees back so the bar doesn’t hit them on the way down. Keep your chest up and lower back neutral. Lower the bar while keeping it close, against your legs.
Reset your spine between reps. Your back will get tired and want to round. You can avoid this by setting up in a strong position every time. That means you raise your chest again, put your spine neutral again, squeeze your lats again and take a big breath again. Only then you pull.
Don’t setup with a bent back and try to get it neutral during the lift. For one, this rarely works. Two, Dr Stuart McGill Phd says this is even worse for your spine than pulling bent back.
Stretching your hamstrings rarely fixes lower back rounding on Deadlifts. The issue isn’t that your hamstrings are tight. The issue is that your lower back isn’t tight enough. It’s loose. Get it tight before your pull. If you can’t get that natural arch, raise your hips to the ceiling during your setup.
Arching Too Much
Your lower back should have a natural arch when you Deadlift. The same curve as when you stand. It shouldn’t have an excess arch or hyper-lordosis. This is unnecessary and bad for your back.
The issue with arching too much during Deadlifts is similar to pulling with a bent lower back. You’re compressing your spinal discs. The difference is that you’re doing it from the back now instead of the front. But the result is the same: trapped nerves, disc bulges, and maybe herniation.
I hurt my back a lot when I started Deadlifting because people kept saying “arch your back”. You do want a natural arch in your lower back so it doesn’t round. But you don’t want to over-arch.
Natural Arch. Setup with a natural arch in your lower back. It should have the same curve as when you stand. Don’t arch your back more than that. It should feel comfortable and not squeeze your discs. Also, don’t finish your Deadlifts by leaning back. Just stand tall.
Setup with a natural arch in your lower back. It should have the same curve as when you stand. Don’t arch your back more than that. It should feel comfortable and not squeeze your discs. Also, don’t finish your Deadlifts by leaning back. Just stand tall. Squeeze Your Abs. If you can’t keep your lower back from over-arching, squeeze your abs harder. Contract them as if someone was about to punch you in the stomach. Consider wearing a belt to cue your abs to contract when you Deadlift.
Hips Rise Too Fast
Your hips will rise faster than your chest if you Deadlift without using your legs, or if you setup with your hips too low in the first place. The former is bad because it means your back will have to work more than it should. The latter is bad because the bar will usually scrape your shins.
In the top picture you can see her hips start in the proper position. But they rise while the bar stays on the floor. This straightens her legs before they can help to Deadlift the weight. Her hips and back have to pull the weight alone, as if doing a stiff-legged Deadlift. Worse, her lower back rounds.
Setup Properly. Avoid your hips starting too low by setting up properly. Stand with the bar over your mid-foot, bend over and grab it, then bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. Raise you chest and your hips will be in the proper position – not too high or too low.
Avoid your hips starting too low by setting up properly. Stand with the bar over your mid-foot, bend over and grab it, then bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. Raise you chest and your hips will be in the proper position – not too high or too low. Get Tight. The goal is to maintain your back angle while you break the bar off the floor. You do this by getting tight. Squeeze the bar and your lats. Lock your hips into position by contracting your glutes and hamstrings. Raise your chest, take a big breath, and then pull.
The goal is to maintain your back angle while you break the bar off the floor. You do this by getting tight. Squeeze the bar and your lats. Lock your hips into position by contracting your glutes and hamstrings. Raise your chest, take a big breath, and then pull. Don’t Pull – Push. The Deadlfit is a pull. But it helps to think of it as a push so you can engage your legs instead of trying to pull it with just your back. Get the bar off the floor by pushing your feet into the floor. Imagine you’re doing a Leg Press – push the floor away.
Don’t let your hips move before the bar leaves the floor. Your hips and chest must rise at the same time. Keep your hips where you’ve put them during your Deadlift setup. Push your feet through the floor as hard as you can. Only when the bar leaves the floor can your hips rise with your chest.
Hitting The Knees
Hitting your knees on Deadlifts hurts. It’s also ineffective: the bar can’t drop in a vertical line because your knees are in the way. It must roll over them instead. So it lands over your forefoot instead of mid-foot. Pull from here and the bar will go up in a J-curve, bruising your shins in the process.
Hitting your knees is also bad for your lower back. The closer you hold the weight, the less stressful it is because it’s closer to your center of mass. But you can’t keep the bar close if your knees force it to move away from your body on the way down. So you’re hurting your back on top of your knees.
The solution is to get your knees out of the way of the bar. Keep them back on the way down. You do this by moving from the hips. Lower the bar by pushing your hips back. Bend your legs too but keep your knees back. This creates space for the bar to go down in a vertical line without hitting them.
Once the bar reaches your knees, then you can bend your legs more to lower the weight to the floor. If you do this right, the bar will land over your mid-foot without hitting your knees. It will be right where it should be to Deadlift your next rep in vertical line up.
Don’t drop your Deadlifts to avoid hitting your knees. Just learn to do it right.
Bruised Shins
Deadlifts bruise your shins and make them bleed when you pull with bad form. If you setup with your hips too low or the bar too close to your shins, you’ll hit and scrape them on the way up. It’s even easier to get bloody shins if you Deadlift in shorts using a bad bar with aggressive knurling.
Bruising your shins hurts. Keep bruising them and they’ll bleed. Wounds turn into scars that stick out of your shins. The bar will rip off those scars next time you Deadlift. They’ll hurt, bleed again and you’ll end with bigger scars. Unless you fix your Deadlift form, your shins can never heal properly.
Worst, they can infect. Happened to me once in Thailand. A bar with aggressive knurling scraped my right shin. It bled and I forgot to disinfect it. The next morning my leg hurt – the wound was black. I ended up in the hospital to clean it out and get anti-infectives plus a tetanus shot.
But more annoying was that I couldn’t Deadlift properly for two weeks. Just touching my shin hurt. I had to pull with the bar away from my legs to not hurt the wound again. This is an ineffective way to pull – I felt it more in my back, and not in a good way. And yet many people Deadlift like this.
It seems right to Deadlift with the bar away from your shins so you can’t bruise them. But it’s bad for your spine. The further the bar from your body, the more stressful on your lower back. You have to keep it close to your center of mass. The closest is when you drag the bar over your shins.
Shin scraping is therefore unavoidable. I have vertical marks on my shins from Deadlfiting. The skin has thickened to protect against the bar (just like my hands adapted by forming calluses). But my shins don’t get beat up from Deadlifts, and rarely bleed. The key is to use proper form…
Bar over Mid-Foot. Bar over forefoot is too far away. It will move back to your mid-foot when you pull because that’s your balance point. You’ll pull in a J-curve and hit your shins. But the bar can’t be too close or your shins will be in its way. Setup with the bar over your mid-foot. Your shins shouldn’t touch it yet when you stand in front of it.
Bar over forefoot is too far away. It will move back to your mid-foot when you pull because that’s your balance point. You’ll pull in a J-curve and hit your shins. But the bar can’t be too close or your shins will be in its way. Setup with the bar over your mid-foot. Your shins shouldn’t touch it yet when you stand in front of it. Hip-Width Stance. Setup with your heels hip-width apart so you shins face the smooth part of the bar. If it has none in the middle but is covered with knurling, use a better bar.
Setup with your heels hip-width apart so you shins face the smooth part of the bar. If it has none in the middle but is covered with knurling, use a better bar. Feet 15° Out. Long thighs put your shins more forward, more in the way of the bar. If you have long thighs like me, setup with your feet pointing 15° out. Push your knees out while you pull the weight. This will keep your shins back so you don’t bruise them on the way up.
Long thighs put your shins more forward, more in the way of the bar. If you have long thighs like me, setup with your feet pointing 15° out. Push your knees out while you pull the weight. This will keep your shins back so you don’t bruise them on the way up. Don’t Squat your Deadlift. The lower your hips, the more incline your shins, and the more they block the bar. Keep your shins back and out of the way by raising your hips. The exact height depends on your build. But they’ll be where they should be if you setup properly – with the bar over your mid-foot and your shoulder-blades over the bar.
Deadlift on an even floor. The bar can’t move before you pull or between reps. It should stay still over your mid-foot. If the bar rolls towards your shins, it will hit them on the way up.
Deadlifting in shorts is a bad idea. Your shins will turn red when you drag the bar over your legs to the top. This can feel uncomfortable and tempt you to pull with the bar away from your shins. But again – this is ineffective for Deadlifting heavy weights and more stressful for your lower back.
Best is to wear long pants for Deadlifting. Anything will do as long as it doesn’t restrict movement or creates bumps that get caught by the bar. Sweatpants are fine for Deadlifts.
Deadlift socks are also fine if it’s too hot for pants. They protect your shins by putting a layer between them and the bar. They’re like the socks of soccer players and skiers. I’ve never worn them.
Shin guards are overkill. They’re for Crossfitters who do high reps Deadlifts for time. It’s hard to keep proper form when you pull that fast. So your shins get beat up. But not when you do simple sets of fives on StrongLifts 5×5. You can control the weight and don’t need excess padding.
Shin guards can actually encourage bad form. Let’s say your shins are beat up because you Squat your Deadlifts. The excess padding of shin guards remove any feedback that would otherwise make you stop. There’s no pain so you can keep pulling with bad form instead of fixing it.
Knee sleeves to protect your shins against the bar also doesn’t make much sense. They create bumps on your shins. The bar will catch the knees sleeves on the way up. This slows the bar and makes it harder to Deadlift. Just lower the bar correctly and youIn a letter to Malcolm Turnbull – posted on Mr Andrews' Facebook page and Twitter account on Saturday – the Labor premier told the Prime Minister that Victoria would gladly take on the families and children rather than have them return to "a life of physical and emotional trauma" in immigration detention. Federation flub: the Prime Minister and the premiers at Friday's COAG meeting. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Mr Andrews' letter comes after the High Court upheld the legality of detaining asylum seekers indefinitely on foreign shores, clearing the way for the return of 267 asylum seekers to Nauru, including 37 babies born in Australia. "While I believe that in such clearly exceptional circumstances as these, you have a clear obligation to support these children and their families, a political argument is no benefit to them," Mr Andrews told Mr Turnbull.
"Instead, I write to inform you that Victoria will accept full responsibility for all of these children and their families, including the provision of housing, health, education and welfare services. I want these children and their families to call Victoria home." Mr Andrews' offer drew a mixed response on Saturday. Some accused the state leader of grandstanding on federal immigration matters. But many others welcomed his stance.
However, the letter puts the Premier at odds with Labor's own National Platform – backed by opposition leader Bill Shorten - which supports offshore processing. This could prove dicey for Mr Shorten, particularly given the sensitivities over asylum seeker policy within the federal caucus and the broader rank-and-file. Mr Turnbull's office said the Prime Minister had not yet directly received the letter from the Premier (Victoria insists it was sent before it was posted on social media) but would consider any options put forward once it was received.
Meanwhile, Mr Andrews infuriated some of his federal colleagues who have privately accused the Victorian premier of being "opportunistic in search of a headline". One Labor source said Mr Andrews voted in favour of offshore processing at July's ALP national conference and did not flag his weekend offer with the federal opposition. Victoria's offer to take responsibility for the asylum seekers came after than 60 writers – including Nobel laureate JM Coetzee and Booker prize winner Peter Carey – also wrote to the prime minister and immigration minister Peter Dutton condemning the government's offshore detention policies as shameful and brutal. In other developments this week, church leaders have openly defied the government by offering sanctuary to asylum seekers, while doctors risked jail to speak out about the conditions in detention, condemning them as "toxic" for children. Mr Andrews told Mr Turnbull that returning the asylum seekers would be wrong, unfair and un-Australian. Based on costings previously done in preparation for the arrival of Syrian refugees, it is estimated that, on average, each refugee would require about $10,000 a year in state-based support. "A sense of compassion is not only in the best interests of these children and their families. It is also in the best interests of our status and a fair and decent nation," the premier said.
"There are infants among this group who were born in this country. Sending them to Nauru will needlessly expose them to a life of physical and emotional trauma. "It's wrong. Medical professionals tell us this. Humanitarian agencies tell us this. Our values tell us this, too. Sending these children and their families to Nauru is not the Australian way." The Premier's stance won him support on Twitter, as well as praise from Getup, Labor for Refugees, and the Human Rights Law Centre. Victorian deputy Liberal leader David Hodgett was less impressed, saying: "We've got a VLine crisis, a deficit budget, increasing crime rates, billions wasted on tearing up the East West Link contract and Daniel Andrews is focused on cynical grandstanding on federal issues". A spokeswoman for shadow immigration minister Richard Marles said: "This is a very complicated policy area and federal Labor has been calling on the government to find a credible third country for resettlement arrangements."Frederick Jay Rubin (; born March 10, 1963) is an American record producer and former co-president of Columbia Records. Along with Russell Simmons, he is the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and also established American Recordings. With the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Geto Boys, and Run-DMC, Rubin helped popularize hip hop music.
Rubin has also worked with artists such as AC/DC, Adele, Aerosmith, At The Drive-In, Audioslave, Black Sabbath, Coheed And Cambria, Damien Rice, Danzig, Dixie Chicks, Ed Sheeran, Eminem, Frank Ocean, Gogol Bordello, Jakob Dylan, Jay Z, Jake Bugg, James Blake, Joe Strummer, Johnny Cash, Jovanotti, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Kid Rock, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, Led Zeppelin, Linkin Park, Melanie C, Metallica, Mick Jagger, Neil Diamond, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shakira, Sheryl Crow, Slayer, Slipknot, Suitors of Penelope, System of a Down, The Avett Brothers, The Black Crowes, The Cult, The Four Horsemen, The Mars Volta, The Smashing Pumpkins, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Type O Negative, Weezer, Dan Auerbach, The Black Keys and ZZ Top.
In 2007, MTV called him "the most important producer of the last 20 years",[3] and the same year Rubin appeared on Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Early life [ edit ]
Frederick Jay Rubin was born in Long Beach, New York and grew up in Lido Beach, New York. His father, Michael (Mickey) was a shoe wholesaler and his mother, Linda, a housewife. He is of Jewish descent.[4] While a student at Long Beach High School he befriended the school's audiovisual department director Steve Freeman who gave him a few lessons in guitar playing and songwriting. He then played in a band with childhood friends Marc Greenhut, Carlos Ferreiro, and Joey Ferrante doing garage and school shows for town friends until Steve, an AV teacher, helped him create a punk band called The Pricks. Their biggest claim to fame was being thrown off the stage at CBGB after two songs for brawling with the heckling audience. These hecklers were friends of the band instructed to instigate a confrontation so as to get the show shut down and create a buzz. Somewhat anecdotally, this story was confirmed in an interview with music journalist Zane Lowe.[5] Although he had no authority in New York City, Rubin's father traveled from Nassau County, New York, to Manhattan wearing his Long Beach auxiliary police uniform as he attempted to "shut down" the show.
Career [ edit ]
Def Jam years [ edit ]
During his senior year, Rubin founded Def Jam Records using the school's four-track recorder. He moved on to form Hose, influenced by San Francisco's Flipper. In 1982, a Hose track became Def Jam's first release, a 45 rpm 7" vinyl single in a brown paper bag, and no label.[6] The band played in and around the NYC punk scene, toured the Midwest and California, and played with seminal hardcore bands like Meat Puppets, Hüsker Dü, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, and Minor Threat, becoming friends with frontman and Dischord Records owner Ian MacKaye. The band broke up in 1984 as Rubin's passion moved towards the NYC hip hop scene.[6]
Having befriended Zulu Nation's DJ Jazzy Jay, Rubin began to learn about hip hop production. By 1983, the two had produced "It's Yours" for rapper T La Rock, and released it on their independent label, Def Jam Records. Producer Arthur Baker helped to distribute the record worldwide on Baker's Streetwise Records in 1984. Jazzy Jay introduced Rubin to concert promoter/artist manager Russell Simmons in a club, and Rubin explained he needed help getting Def Jam off the ground. Simmons and Rubin edged out Jazzy Jay and the official Def Jam record label was founded while Rubin was attending New York University in 1984. Their first record released was LL Cool J's "I Need a Beat". Rubin went on to find more hip-hop acts outside The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem including rappers from Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island, which eventually led to Def Jam's signing of Public Enemy. Rubin was instrumental in pointing the members of the Beastie Boys away from their punk roots and into rap, resulting in the exit of Kate Schellenbach from the group.[7] 1985's "Rock Hard"/"Party's Gettin' Rough"/"Beastie Groove" EP by the Beastie Boys came out on the success of Rubin's production work with breakthrough act Run-DMC, of which previous recordings were produced by Russell Simmons and Orange Krush's musician Larry Smith. His productions were characterized by occasionally fusing rap with heavy rock. Rubin tapped Adam Dubin and Ric Menello to co-direct the music videos for the Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" and "No Sleep till Brooklyn", effectively launching the band's mainstream hip hop careers.[8][9]
It was the idea of Rick Rubin's friend Sue Cummings, an editor at Spin magazine, to have Run–D.M.C. and Aerosmith collaborate on a cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way". This 1986 production is often credited with both introducing rap hard rock to mainstream ears, and revitalizing Aerosmith's career.[10] In 1986, he worked with Aerosmith again on demos for their forthcoming album, but their collaboration ended early and resulted in only rough studio jams. In the same year, Rubin began his long musical partnership with Slayer, producing Reign in Blood, considered a classic of the heavy metal genre. This was his first work with a metal band.
In 1987, The Cult released their pivotal third album, Electric. Produced by Rubin, the album remains one of The Cult's trademark and classic works. Rubin would later work with The Cult again for the single "The Witch", in 1992. Rubin is credited as music supervisor in the movie Less Than Zero and is the producer of its soundtrack. Rubin portrayed a character based upon himself in the 1985 hip-hop motion picture Krush Groove, which was inspired by the early days of Russell Simmons' career as an artist management and music producer. He then directed and co-wrote (with Ric Menello) a second Run–D.M.C. film, Tougher Than Leather in 1988.
In 1988, Rubin and Simmons went their different ways after Rubin had a falling out with the then Def Jam president Lyor Cohen. It was then that Rubin left for Los Angeles, California to start Def American Records, while Simmons remained at Def Jam in NY. In Los Angeles, Rubin signed a number of rock and heavy metal acts, including Danzig, Masters of Reality, The Four Horsemen, and Wolfsbane, as well as alternative rock group The Jesus and Mary Chain and stand up comedian Andrew Dice Clay. Though Rubin's work at this time focused mainly on rock and metal, he still retained a close association with rap, signing the Geto Boys and continuing to work with Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and Run–D.M.C., among others.
American Recordings years [ edit ]
Rubin originally had given his label the name "Def Jam". The word "def" in urban culture is slang for a song or musical composition that is well liked for its attractive rhythm and dance appeal. Nine years later, Rubin found that the word "def" had been accepted into the standardized dictionary; in 1993, Rubin held an actual funeral, complete with a casket and a grave, for the word "def".[4][11] Def American became American Recordings. In regard to this he stated: "When advertisers and the fashion world co-opted the image of hippies, a group of the original hippies in San Francisco literally buried the image of the hippie. When 'def' went from street lingo to mainstream, it defeated its purpose."[12]
The first major project on the renamed label was Johnny Cash's American Recordings (1994), a record including six cover songs and new material written by others for Cash at Rubin's request. The album was a critical and commercial success, and helped revive Cash's career following a fallow period. The formula was repeated for five more Cash albums: Unchained, Solitary Man, The Man Comes Around (the last album released before Cash's death), A Hundred Highways, and Ain't No Grave. The Man Comes Around earned a 2003 Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance ("Give My Love to Rose") and a nomination for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals ("Bridge over Troubled Water" with Fiona Apple). Rubin introduced Cash to Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", and the resulting cover version of it on The Man Comes Around would become a defining song of Cash's later years. Rubin also produced two of Joe Strummer's final songs, "Long Shadow", a song Strummer wrote for Cash to record although he never did, and a cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song". Both songs were released on Strummer's final album, Streetcore, which was released after his death. Rubin also produced a version of "Redemption Song" with Strummer and Cash together, which was featured in Cash's posthumous box set, Unearthed.
Rubin has also produced a number of records with other artists, which were released on labels other than American. Arguably his biggest success as producer came from working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers with whom Rubin produced six studio albums for from 1991–2011 including their debut for Warner Bros., 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which launched the band to mainstream success thanks to the hit singles "Give it Away" and "Under the Bridge" and is highly regarded as one of the most influential albums of the 90s. The six albums with the Chili Peppers also spawned twelve number one singles on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, a record the band as of 2015 still holds, and various awards including sixteen Grammy Nominations (with six wins) with a Producer of the Year Grammy award for 2006's Stadium Arcadium, which was also nominated for Album of the Year. The band has sold over 80 million albums worldwide, most of which have been through sales of the Rubin produced albums. Various members of the Chili Peppers have also been used on other projects by Rubin as well including recording by Johnny Cash. After 24 years working with the band, they announced in late 2014 that they would be working with another producer on their eleventh studio album, bringing an end to their long and successful tenure with Rubin.
He also produced Mick Jagger's 1993 Wandering Spirit album, Lords of Acid's 1994 Voodoo-U album, Tom Petty's 1994 Wildflowers, AC/DC's 1995 Ballbreaker, Donovan's 1996 Sutras, and Metallica's 2008 Death Magnetic. In 2005, Rick Rubin executive-produced Shakira's two-album project Fijacion Oral Vol. 1 and Oral Fixation Vol. 2. He was to appear on the Talib Kweli's album Eardrum,[13] Clipse's album Til the Casket Drops[14] and Lil Jon's album Crunk Rock.[15] Rick Rubin also produced the Jay-Z track "99 Problems", and was featured in the song's music video. He also worked with Eminem on the song and music video "Berzerk". During this period, he also produced "Breath of the Heart" in 2001 for kirtan singer Krishna Das (Singer) on Karuna, LLC.
Rick Rubin produced Black Sabbath's 2013 album 13[16] and Billy Corgan's comeback solo album Ogilala.
Columbia years [ edit ]
In May 2007, Rubin was named co-head of Columbia Records. Rubin co-produced Linkin Park's 2007 album, Minutes to Midnight, with Mike Shinoda. Rubin and Shinoda have since co-produced the band's 2010 album, A Thousand Suns, and their June 2012 release, Living Things.
In 2007, Rubin won the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for his work with the Dixie Chicks, Michael Kranz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Green Day, and Johnny Cash released in 2006.[17] Rubin won the award again in 2009, for production work for Metallica, Neil Diamond, Ours, Jakob Dylan and Weezer in 2008.
In 2012 Rubin won the Grammy for Album of the Year for his role as a producer on Adele's album 21.
Rubin left Columbia in 2012, and revived the American Recordings imprint through a deal with Republic Records. The first albums released under this new deal are ZZ Top's La Futura and The Avett Brothers' The Carpenter.[18]
Rubin also attempted to record a cover album with Crosby, Stills & Nash in 2012, but the sessions were brief and ultimately unsuccessful. Graham Nash went on to state that the sessions were "irritable" and "not a great experience".[19]
Other ventures [ edit ]
Rubin is a fan of professional wrestling and had lifetime subscription tickets to the World Wrestling Federation's monthly events at Madison Square Garden throughout the 1970s and 80s. Rubin has cited Roddy Piper and Ric Flair as influences in his work and promotion. Rubin has said that professional wrestling heels were hugely influential in the development of The Beastie Boys. "The idea of being bad-guy rappers, saying really outlandish things in interviews, that all came from a love of pro wrestling," said Rubin. Rubin financially backed Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling for most of its run from 1991–95.[20]
Production style [ edit ]
Rubin's biggest trademark as a producer has been a "stripped-down" sound, which involves eliminating production elements such as string sections, backup vocals, and reverb, and instead having naked vocals and bare instrumentation. However, by the 2000s, Rubin's style[21] had been known to include such elements, as noted in The Washington Post: "As the track reaches a crescendo and [Neil] Diamond's portentous baritone soars over a swelling string arrangement, Rubin leans back, as though floored by the emotional power of the song."[22]
On the subject of his production methods, Dan Charnas, a music journalist who worked as vice president of A&R and marketing at Rubin's American Recordings label in the 1990s, said, "He's fantastic with sound and arrangements, and he's tremendous with artists. They love him. He shows them how to make it better, and he gets more honest and exciting performances out of people than anyone."[22] Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks has praised his production methods, saying, "He has the ability and the patience to let music be discovered, not manufactured. Come to think of it, maybe he is a guru."[23] Producer Dr. Dre has stated that Rubin is, "hands down, the dopest producer ever that anyone would ever want to be, ever."[24]
In 2010 at the Music Producers Guild (MPG) awards, Muse aimed a potshot at Rubin as the band accepted the award for UK single of the year. Arriving onstage, Matt Bellamy thanked a number of people for teaching them how to produce, finishing off with: "And we'd like to thank Rick Rubin for teaching us how not to produce." The audience roared, as Bellamy smiled, concluding: "I thought you'd like that one."[25]
One trademark of Rubin's production is that he encourages artists to genre-bend:
Criticism [ edit ]
Not all artists who have worked with Rubin have enjoyed his production style. Although he and his bandmates had some positive things to say about Rubin, Slipknot's lead singer Corey Taylor said that he met Rubin only four times during the entire recording process of Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) and that Rubin barely came to the studio: "... we were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. I don't care who you are!"[26] He also added: "The Rick Rubin of today is a... shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He is overrated, he is overpaid, and I will never work with him again".[27]
Since at least 1999, Rubin has been criticized by listeners for contributing to a phenomenon in music known as the loudness war, in which the dynamic range of recorded music is compressed and sometimes clipped in order to increase the general loudness. Albums produced by Rubin that have been criticized for such treatment include:
Discography [ edit ]
Filmography [ edit ]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Grammy Awards [ edit ]Businesses that rely on the port are caught in the middle. Joanne Gomez, CFO of the manufacturing company West Bay Counters in San Francisco, said she's lost business waiting on supplies stuck at the port.
"We can't even get materials for the jobs that we have. So it kind of puts us at a standstill. You know, if you can't get materials, how do you manufacture things?"
The state's citrus industry is also feeling the effects of the labor dispute, which involves 29 West Coast ports.
KQED Central Valley Bureau Chief Sasha Khokha says it's the height of the harvest season in a state that annually ships some $500 million worth of oranges, lemons and other citrus to Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Some of the highest-quality fruit fetches a premium price in places like Japan and Korea.
David Roth, CEO of Cecelia Packing near Fresno, told Khokha that growers who are already struggling -- after a bad freeze last winter and the current drought -- have been extremely hard hit.
"The export markets, we derive a couple of extra dollars per box more," he said. "You sure want the most money you can get for this citrus."
Roth said his company is shipping only about 25 percent of its normal load, and is not even sure if all of that is making it across the ocean before the fruit rots. He said he’s worried that even after the dispute at the ports is resolved, it could still take weeks to address the backlog of citrus shipments. And the peak growing season lasts only another six to eight weeks.
However, that might be good news for California consumers, Khokha says. More citrus could be diverted to the domestic market, resulting in lower prices at the checkout counter.
Other crops affected by the slowdown at the ports include almonds and rice.
Meanwhile, Oakland officials are hoping the arrival of President Obama's labor secretary on Tuesday can help get contract negotiations -- and cargo -- moving again.
In addition to meeting with dockworkers and their employers, Labor Secretary Tom Perez is engaging mayors in port cities affected by the ongoing labor dispute. Over the weekend, Obama said Perez would take a more active role in ending the costly dispute.
Perez held the first of what will be |
disapprove of the Iran deal, with the Senate expected to vote first. As they wait, House leaders could have time to call a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.
While Boehner has made clear that he condemns Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue program — the target of a number of viral videos — and supports defunding the organization, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Kevin Owen McCarthySteve King says he will run again in 2020: 'I have nothing to apologize for' Steve King spins GOP punishment into political weapon Steve King asks for Congressional Record correction over white supremacist quote MORE (Calif.) has come out stronger in his push for legislation.
After the first two videos were released, McCarthy said he supported immediately voting to defund Planned Parenthood until the group can clear its name.
"Regardless of where anybody stands on the issue, knowing the doubt of what's going on here, is this a place where tax dollars should be spent? At the very least, there should be a moratorium until this investigation is done," he told reporters.
Black has kept in close touch with McCarthy, and said he promised a vote.
“Kevin McCarthy has told me that yes, he will bring up the legislation, but the sooner the better,” Black told former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on “One America News” this week. She did not say when the vote would come up.
Four congressional committees are currently investigating Planned Parenthood, which was hurled into the national spotlight after a series of secretly recorded videos that accused the group of illegally profiting from its fetal tissue donation program.
Anti-abortion activists have released eight videos against the group, including hidden camera footage from meetings with multiple Planned Parenthood administrators and partners. Planned Parenthood, as well as a team of hired experts, has said the footage was manipulated and that it proves no wrongdoing of the organization.
Boehner is treading carefully on Planned Parenthood and its fetal tissue controversy, which comes just months after weathering an earlier political storm on abortion where he was forced to cancel a vote on a late-term abortion ban because of inter-party strife.
The Senate voted last month on a measure to defund Planned Parenthood indefinitely, a bill drafted by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa.). The legislation fell short of the 60-vote majority.
Cristina Marcos contributed.Archaeologists in Greece have discovered a vast tomb that they believe is connected with the reign of the warrior-king Alexander the Great, who conquered vast swathes of the ancient world between Greece and India.
The tomb, dating to around 300 BC, may have held the body of one of Alexander's generals or a member of his family. It was found beneath a huge burial mound near the ancient site of Amphipolis in northern Greece.
Antonis Samaras, Greece's prime minister, visited the dig on Tuesday and described the discovery as "clearly extremely significant".
A broad, five-yard wide road led up to the tomb, the entrance of which was flanked by two carved sphinxes. It was encircled by a 500 yard long marble outer wall. Experts believe a 16ft tall lion sculpture previously discovered nearby once stood on top of the tomb.
They ruled out the possibility that the tomb could be that of Alexander - the emperor is believed to have been buried in Egypt after he died of a fever in Babylon in 323BC.
The tomb was found in Greece's northern Macedonia region, from where Alexander began to forge his empire.
"It is certain that we stand before an especially significant finding. The land of Macedonia continues to move and surprise us, revealing its unique treasures, which combine to form the unique mosaic of Greek history of which all Greeks are very proud," said Mr Samaras.
Archaeologists, who began excavating the site in 2012, hope to fully explore the tomb by the end of the month to determine exactly who was buried there. The site is being guarded by police while archaeologists continue their excavations.
Catherine Peristeri, the head of the ancient monuments department in northern Greece, said some of Alexander's generals and admirals had links to the area around the ancient city of Amphipolis. It was also the place where his wife, Roxana, and son, were killed in 311BC by Cassander, a Macedonian general who fought over the empire after Alexander the Great's death.
Situated about 65 miles northeast of Greece's second-biggest city, Thessaloniki, the tomb appears to be the largest ever discovered in Greece.
It probably belonged to "a prominent Macedonian of that era," a culture ministry official told Reuters.
The tomb, which consists of white marble decorations and frescoed walls, was partially destroyed during the Roman occupation of Greece.
Amphipolis was founded as an Athenian colony in 437 BC but conquered by Philip II of Macedon, Alexander's father, in 357 BC.
Alexander the Great single-handedly changed the history of the ancient world with a lightning pace of conquest. Born in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia in 356 BC, he was educated by the philosopher Aristotle. When his father was assassinated in 336 BC, Alexander set about consolidating his hold on the kingdom of Macedonia before embarking on the conquest of the powerful Persian Empire.
He led his army to victories across Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, establishing an empire that eventually stretched from the Danube to the frontiers of India.SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that the speed limit has been increased to 80 mph in several areas of the state.
Following recently completed speed studies on several rural freeway sections, UDOT crews installed new 80 mph speed limit signs this week on I-80 from the Nevada border to state Route 36; I-15 between north Leeds and Santaquin, with sections of 75 mph zones through two mountain passes and Cedar City; and I-15 and I-84 from the Brigham City north interchange to the Idaho border.
"We had to look at geometry and speed... speed-related crashes, just to see if it made sense," said John Gleason of UDOT. "And in these designated areas... 80 miles per hour is the optimal speed."
UDOT stated that the speed limit increase was the result of HB83, passed during the 2013 Legislature, which allowed the department to study and establish speed limits higher than 75 mph on interstates.
UDOT’s data from speed studies of existing 80 mph zones showed that vehicle crashes have slightly dropped over the past three years, attributed to more vehicles traveling at the same speeds and less variation in the speed of surrounding vehicles.
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Related StoriesIf you had stood near the Thames on December 11, 1688, you might have seen a most unusual sight. A smallish man in fine clothes exits a carriage and hurries down to the river bank. A servant boy scurries alongside him with a sack tucked under his arm. At the water’s edge, the servant opens the sack for the well-dressed man to reach inside and pull out a large, metallic plate. You might observe that this is not just any plate as the man pauses a moment to run his hand sorrowfully along the plate’s edge. And then, as quickly as he had pulled the plate from the sack, he flings it into the river, and waits quietly for several seconds after the splash before returning to his carriage. This is James II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and he has just tossed the Great Seal of the Realm into the Thames.
We have no way to know, of course, exactly how James dispensed with the Great Seal, or whether he dispensed with it at all. The tale could be entirely apocryphal. But as is often true with apocryphal tales, there is an idea expressed, a detailed lesson boiled down to an essential point that not even a ten-pound book of history could express half so well. The point is simple enough. James and Parliament had radically different views on what constituted legitimate rule.
James was naïve enough to believe that without the Great Seal the government would not be able to function. It was a spiteful act. It was a means to punish those who had betrayed him in favor of his Dutch son-in-law, William of Orange. There was only one legitimate seal and it was at the bottom of the Thames. It could not be recast legitimately without James’s approval. The king had not considered that the same Parliament which had betrayed him for his son-in-law could just as easily betray him again by casting a new seal. And that is precisely what it did. In fact, Parliament did not even consider this to be an act of betrayal because by this point it had come to regard itself as the sole source of the king’s legitimacy. According to the Parliamentarians, James was the traitor because he had so flagrantly acted against the will of the English people; or rather, the will of the people who were supposed to represent the will of the English people.
Parliament had decided that the king now existed to serve Parliament and conveniently forgot that it had existed originally to serve the king. And despite all precedents to the contrary, the English people were starting to agree with Parliament. The people were not yet outright democrats, but they were no longer believers in absolute monarchy.
James was unfortunately not quite clever enough to have figured out this change of opinion; he was one rusty tool in a shed of many sharp shovels and knives. James was so dull that, after throwing away the Great Seal, he could not even think of a proper disguise that would help to smuggle him out of England. The disguise he used is not known, but whatever he had chosen, it could not have been too clever because he was apprehended that same day by some Kentish fishermen. Later, when William of Orange was feeling rather generous, James was permitted to “escape” to France. Perhaps William allowed this because he could not bear to watch his father-in-law suffer imprisonment. Perhaps England’s political situation was much trickier with an imprisoned king as opposed to an escaped one. Whatever the case might be, James “escaped” due to no merit of his own.
So how had England reached this point? Why had the rightful king of England fled in the night like a fugitive and why was a Dutch invader being hailed by Englishmen as the savior of their nation? Why was the whole sordid affair dubbed the “Glorious Revolution” by contemporaries?
I shall attempt to answer these questions with a simple thesis: the Glorious Revolution marks a recognizable starting point for legislative domination in the West. I do not use the word domination lightly. A legislative body like Britain’s Parliament, or any of its many imitators in the world, is generally a much more domineering force than a king. When it comes to sheer domination, nothing can beat a bunch of beady-eyed lawyers with the ability to sign bills into laws. Even the cruelest king will die someday while a legislature is like a slow tumor that will never leave the body politic. If given enough time, the legislators end up controlling the press, the colleges, the soldiers, the treasury, the oversight committee, and the oversight committee for the oversight committee.
With this in mind, it is no surprise that the British Parliament has received a lot of good press throughout history. The Glorious Revolution has been hailed by both seventeenth-century observers and modern historians as a siren call for freedom. Many smug scholars will assure you that this revolution led to the first signs of liberty in Britain. But I shall claim something quite different: it was a shrewd power-grab by Parliament.
To begin with, let’s examine the causes that led England to betray the sorry King James. If the truth has any value at all, I must admit that James II had been an incapable king. He had no nose for politics, he hated court life, and he had about as much tact as a barrel of gunpowder. Unlike his brother Charles II, the previous king who had been a not-so-devout Catholic, James was unwilling to look the other way and allow the English state machinery to operate without him. He wanted to fiddle with the gears. He wanted to bring back legal toleration for Catholics. In the 1680s, this was a cause that not one soul in England wanted to fight for, except James.
Catholicism had long been associated with tyranny in Britain; many Protestants feared the blood-spotted racks and burning pikes of Queen Mary’s reign would be brought out again. The Protestants proved to be skillful propagandists and sowed this fear in people because they controlled most of the press. All it took were a few grisly quotes from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs to get people’s stomachs churning. A wiser man would have realized this, and would have worked subtly to sneak in Catholicism through the back door. James, unfortunately, was not a very wise man.
In 1687, James issued a Declaration of Indulgence, which extended freedom of worship to all religions in England and removed religious constraints for government service. Parliament, which was mostly Protestant, was livid. It was not the religious toleration that made them petulantly want to kick over the whole political pot, these are the precursors to universalists, after all; it was the second part of the proclamation that angered them, the part that gave the king the ability to fill his government with Catholics again. Perhaps this is because Catholicism represented the one thing that could reverse the powers that Parliament had so generously granted itself over the past century: in the minds of most Englishmen, Catholicism was tied to absolutism.
A year later, James ordered that the Church of England read his Declaration from their pulpits, to remind church-goers that they no longer had to partake in the Anglican communion. The foul effect of this proclamation cannot be underestimated. James had not only ordered the Anglican Church to sever its hand from its wrist, he then ordered that the Church itself must do the cutting. The Anglicans were done dancing to James’s tune. Seven senior bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke out against James and penned a furious petition calling for him to rescind his Declaration on the grounds that it was illegal. James in turn sued them for seditious libel. The seven bishops were acquitted in court and James looked to all the nation like a hot-headed fool.
The second cause for the coming revolution was much simpler. James had had two daughters with his first wife, Mary and Anne, both of whom were Protestants. This kept Parliament docile and content because it figured that no matter how much it despised James, once Mary became queen and brought her Protestant husband along from the Netherlands (the previously mentioned William of Orange), any damage that James had done could be easily reversed by his daughter.
The one kink in this plan was that James’s second wife, a Catholic, had become pregnant. The royal couple intended to raise the new child in the Catholic Church and they very foolishly told everyone of this intention. Parliament was tense. If James’s wife gave birth to a girl, Parliament could rest easy because according to royal inheritance laws, the crown would still pass to the eldest daughter, Mary. But fate, providence, chance, or whatever else you might call it, intervened on behalf of the Catholic cause when a baby boy was born in June, 1688. The child was christened ‘James Francis Edward’ by his father.
Parliament could stand it no more. Not only would it have to endure another Catholic king of England, it would have endure yet another Catholic king named James. Several noble families and prominent members of Parliament wrote letters to Mary and William of Orange, “inviting” them to come to England and very cordially reminded them to bring their Dutch army along with them. This was treason, of course.
William and Mary’s army came ashore in early November 1688 and seized Exeter. William, who proved to be a much cleverer man than James, was in no great haste. He suspected that if he advanced slowly on London that it would allow time for the cracks in James’s government to split wide open. He guessed correctly that time was on his side.
As it turns out, most of England was also on his side. By December, nearly all of James’s top army officers had defected and his own younger daughter, Anne, had betrayed him. Unable to mount a competent defense, James resorted to throwing the Great Seal into the Thames, as mentioned earlier, and then attempted to flee before being outfoxed by those previously mentioned fishermen.
So far this has been rip-roaring entertainment, but now you might ask, where are the lessons for the modern reactionary? The lesson is simple but it requires plenty of emphasis in a democratic era like ours: legislative bodies, without proper checks and balances, are always seeking to enhance their power. To prove this point, let us examine in some detail the actions of Parliament just after James was captured and William of Orange marched into London.
Parliament convened without James’s consent. It had no authority to do this. Parliament declared that James had abdicated. There was no statement from James to this effect, Parliament had just decided to lie because the blatant lie suited its own ends. Parliament then declared that, since there was a royal vacancy, it would hand the throne to Princess Mary and her husband, William of Orange. Parliament then tacked on numerous conditions to the throne that William and Mary would have to accept before being declared rightful sovereigns: this became the 1689 ‘Bill of Rights’.
Predictably, the foremost point of this Bill of Rights was that it was illegal for the sovereign to “dispense with or suspend” acts of Parliament. This statement alone was enough to remove the most significant check on Parliamentary power. The kings and queens had become stagehands in the English political theater: Parliament was now the leading player. But the members of Parliament, ever so generous with themselves, had not stopped there. The Bill of Rights also added that the sovereign could not maintain a standing army during peacetime (without Parliamentary consent, of course) and that the sovereign could not levy money (again without Parliamentary consent). The pattern here is quite obvious. William and Mary took the throne by bartering away the bulk of their monarchical rights.
Some might ask, why did James have no champions in Parliament? Why was there not one or two lonely voices crying out on behalf of the king? James himself had been responsible for the icy abandon of his cause.
The Tory party, which traditionally supported the monarch through any crisis, ended up having its loyalty split between the weak King James and the Anglican church it cherished. This had all begun when James forced the Church of England to read his Declaration of Indulgence from the pulpit. As it turns out, by November 1688, most Tories had decided to support their faith over their king. This led to the Whigs dominating Parliament and the Whigs were a party that had for a very long time wanted to see the powers of the king diminished. James had committed a cardinal error: he had tried to split the altar from the throne and lost both in the process.
If perhaps James had tried to refashion the Anglican Church to more closely resemble the Roman Catholic, he might have succeeded. After all, not much separates the two churches that some tact and diplomacy could not bring about a reconsideration or, at the very least, a reinterpretation. But it was not to be.
In 1689, Parliament declared James’s Declaration of Indulgence void and replaced it with an ‘Act of Toleration’. In this new law all of the same groups that had their worship protected in the Declaration were also protected in the Act of Toleration, except for one group in particular: Catholics. Parliament was making sure that an absolutist would never again sit on the English throne. The law had been subverted by the lawmakers. And so it was by Protestant hook and Parliamentary crook, England embraced a bizarre contradiction in terms and forever became a “Parliamentary Monarchy.” The era of kings had finished. The era of bankers and lawyers had begun.We are now celebrating the anniversary of Ronald Reagan, who, if the corporate press is anything to go by, came down from heaven exactly 100 years ago to save us all. They are making such a fuss about Ronnie that there is even a proposal to add his handsome features to the rogues’ gallery on Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
I have vivid memories of President Reagan, who to me was an older, earlier version of George W. Bush but without the brains. I well remember his famous trickle down theory of economics, whereby the wealth deriving from massive tax concessions to the super rich was supposed to trickle down to the rest of us below.
I did feel something trickling down on my head pretty soon after Reagan came to power, but when I checked, it turned out not to be wealth: It didn’t pass the smell test. The same is true of all the rest of Reagan’s policies, foreign and domestic: They stank. The tax cuts for the corporations and the rich were a strong factor in stimulating corporate globalization, while they undercut the social safety net for working people and the poor in the United States. The busting of the union representing air traffic controllers brought a thrill to the hearts of anti-worker reactionaries everywhere. The paeans to Reagan we are hearing right now include giving him credit for ending the Cold War and defeating communism. What he did was to help unleash a new tsunami of ravenous, imperialistic capitalism on the entire world. We have not recovered yet.
And such nice friends he had, too! There was not a right-wing dictator or fascist that he did not consider to be “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers”, a term which he first applied to the Contras, a group of U.S.-financed cutthroats who were rampaging around in Nicaragua, murdering health workers and teachers, in an effort to overthrow the Sandinista government. His “defeat” of the USSR foisted people like Al Qaeda on the world. He stood up for “freedom”, but only the freedom to exploit and oppress.
Right now, there are four faces carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore. As one faces it (I have never been there, but I am looking at a picture) George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are at the left, while Abraham Lincoln is on the right. Between Jefferson and Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt’s ugly mug is sort of thrusting forward, trying to get into the limelight, which fits his personality.
What would these four former presidents have thought of the monument? The thrusting, self promoting imperialist Teddy Roosevelt might have liked it. The two transplanted 18th century English gentleman, Washington and Jefferson, would not have cared for it artistically. And Lincoln, that enemy of all overweening pride and ridiculous pomp, would have probably found it terribly embarrassing. He would have had it covered with a giant tarpaulin.
These figures are neither great art nor appropriate for the setting. From an artistic viewpoint, they are world-historical kitsch, bad taste on a literally monumental scale. Apart from ruining a perfectly good mountain, they desecrate one of the sites most sacred to Native American people. The Black Hills were and are considered holy by the Lakota Sioux, and the crags which were eventually chiseled into the likenesses of the four presidents were particularly sacred spots, known as the “Six Grandfathers”, who appeared to the noted Lakota religious leader Black Elk in a memorable vision. The war with the Lakotas and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies which led to the death of George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn was triggered, in part, by the penetration of the Black Hills by white gold prospectors, who were protected by Custer’s forces in blatant violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. That treaty had recognized the Lakotas’ possession of the Black Hills and much other real estate “in perpetuity”. “Perpetuity” turned out to mean about 6 or 7 years. Looking up at the 60 foot heads of these four white men, anybody can see that the Fort Laramie Treaty is no longer in force. Symbolism! I am told that local indigenous people are not big fans of the Mount Rushmore sculptures. It would not be necessary to ask why.
So the Native American people, and the people of the United States in general, need another head carved onto Mt. Rushmore like we need another head sprouting from our shoulders. It could set a very bad precedent. Next we might see Sarah Palin’s face plastered onto the Statue of Liberty. Let’s stop this before it starts.I was cycling across town with a friend today, who suggested that we take the side streets instead of my usual route along the major roads. We were cycling on one of these quiet streets, when a sedan passed us too closely and hit my friend's bicycle with the side of their car.The impact was not strong enough to knock the bicycle over, but it did happen - and the driver kept going until forced to stop at a red light. We caught up to the driver, and my friend quickly took a cell-phone picture of the license plate - at which point the driver stopped the car and came out, expressing annoyance. My friend said, "You hit me with your car." The driver replied, "Well, you should have been more careful!" (More careful? We were cycling in a straight line in broad daylight!) At that point my friend took out their phone and called the police - telling the driver that they were going to file a report. Bewildered ("The police? But you're fine!") the driver got back in their car, pulled over to the side of the road, and we all waited.The officer arrived and asked whether anybody was injured and whether there was any damage to the bicycle. When we replied in the negative, the officer seemed confused: "So there is nothing to do here then." We repeated that the driver, to which the officer (politely) replied, "Well, if nobody was injured and there is no damage to your bicycle, that's not a crime. That's an accident." He then proceeded to file a report of the "accident," stressing verbally that there has been no injury or material damage. Both my friend and the driver gave testimony, and I gave testimony as a witness. We were then informed of where and when we could pick up a copy of the report, and everyone went their separate ways.And this brings me to my question. Is it correct, that unless a driver actually injures a cyclist or damages a bicycle while hitting them, then hitting a cyclist in itself is not illegal? That is basically what the officer was telling us, but it does not sound right to me. What about the "passing no closer than 3 feet" rule? If a driver hits a cyclist while passing, does that not automatically mean that they were closer than 3 feet? The driver was unapologetic about what happened, and did not deny that they saw us prior to hitting my friend's bicycle. Yet the officer did not even ask the driver why they did not pass us at a safer distance. Perhaps what the officer meant to express, was that there was no way to determine what actually happened without video cameras or tangible evidence (such as injury or damage to the bicycle) - but his words did not come across that way.Regardless of the outcome, I am glad that my friend filed a report. As I understand it, these things get entered into the DOT statistical data, and can lead to the development of safer infrastructure on that street if enough such incidents are reported. But I remain confused about what type of collision between motor vehicle and bicycle constitutes an illegal act versus what constitutes an accident. Can any of the cycling activists out there fill me in?I only had to use Apple Pay a few times before I got over the novelty of paying for stuff with my phone.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing — the future of payments shouldn’t have to constantly remind you that you’re doing something new and different, which is the feeling I’ve had when using Google Wallet and PayPal’s various mobile payment solutions. What we really need is a faster and more secure payment method than plastic cards with magnetic stripes.
After testing out Apple Pay at several stores in Manhattan today, I was struck by how seamless the entire process was. Setting up Apple Pay for the first time took about 15 seconds, as it just pulled in my default credit card from iTunes into Passbook (analysts have long discussed what Apple could do with all those credit cards it’s gathered through iTunes — expect a lot of “told ya!” commentary soon).
When checking out at participating stores, you just need to hold your phone up to the payment terminal, watch your default card pop up, and hold your finger down on the Touch ID sensor for authentication.
While that may not sound easier than just swiping your credit card, I was surprised to find that it was actually much faster. There’s no more fumbling for your credit card in your wallet; no need to swipe multiple times if your card strip is a bit dirty; and even the payment processing itself felt a bit zippier (though I’ll admit: That might have been my imagination).
After making a few payments, I felt like an Apple Pay master. And that’s key to getting average consumers on the service. It’s easy to use and the entire process quickly feels boring and familiar.
I’ve used plenty of mobile payment solutions over the years, but Apple Pay is the only one I’d consider using consistently. I used Google Wallet for a bit, but its unpredictable support across Android phones made it tough to rely on. PayPal also has some interesting payment integration in its new mobile apps, but the best features, like ordering something before you step into a store, aren’t widely supported. Apple Pay’s support across major retailers and banks gives it a huge leg up on the competition.
But given that Apple Pay just launched yesterday, there are still plenty of issues to work through. It doesn’t yet support loyalty cards, for one, even though you can store loyalty cards in Passbook. When I was checking out at Duane Reade, I still had to sift through all my other Passbook cards and have my phone scanned to take advantage of their Halloween candy sale (and boy did I). There’s no easy NFC waving for loyalty cards yet.
Also, not all NFC terminals are created equal. When I grabbed lunch at Subway, the clerk didn’t know how to activate the NFC payment option (the terminals used at Duane Reade, on the other hand, always have NFC activated at checkout).
And of course, while using your phone to pay for things is far more secure than a traditional wallet, you’ve never had to worry about your wallet running out of battery life at the end of the day.
The lack of loyalty card integration is a glaring issue for Apple, but it’s one that can be fixed easily, especially since they’re already supported by Passbook. Ideally, loyalty cards on Apple Pay should work just like its checkout function: Just hold your phone up to the terminal and have the appropriate card pop up. (Eventually, loyalty and payment transactions could even be combined into one wave of your phone, though some consumers like to make sure they’re getting their proper rewards before they pay.)
Apple Pay isn’t just about retail payments, either. App developers can also take advantage of it as a payment method, which should encourage new users who are often scared off by a credit card authentication page. (iOS 8 also lets developers use Touch ID to authenticate their apps, which has made it dangerously easy for me to make unwise late night shopping choices from Amazon.)
It’s too early to call Apple Pay a hit, but at this point it looks like it could finally be the one mobile payment solution we’ve been waiting for. And given how well it works now, I can only imagine how it will take off once the Apple Watch hits.LONDON, United Kingdom --- Already well-known for its Rolling Stones, the United Kingdom aimed a devastatingly effective projectile straight at the fragile feet of Nebuchadnezzar's statue yesterday, signaling the beginning of the end for a lot more than the already shaky European Union.
Britons unhappy with the bureaucratic mess of red tape that is Brussels (the seat of the EU) voted decisively to leave the EU yesterday in the much-discussed Brexit, sending stock markets crashing, the British pound plummeting and right-wing politicians across Europe clamoring for similar exits by their own countries.
"What we are witnessing is every bit the nightmare that Nebuchadnezzar experienced and we are about to see devastation not even doomsday prophets could have dreamed up," said Adventist Current Events Expert Doug Batchelor.
"Cold-hearted or not, it doesn't take a genius to see that very soon the Brits won't be alone in rejecting iron and clay as building materials."
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.You know the Brick Testament, Brendan Smith‘s wonderful and hilarious series of Bible stories told through carefully placed Lego pieces? The series that’s spawned several books?
Well, Catholic Kathy Schiffer just made a remarkable discovery: The Brick Testament doesn’t make you want to become a Christian!
Her article reads like someone who just found out The Onion isn’t an actual news source…
At first glance, a Lego Bible seemed an enviably good idea. The Creation Story, the Sermon on the Mount, the Last Supper — artfully recreated in Lego blocks, then photographed for a picture Bible — seemed an ideal gift for children. … But the project turned out to be not the great “faith enhancer” some had imagined. Somehow, it would appear that early fans of the world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible, The Brick Bible: A New Spin on the Old Testament by Brendan Powell Smith, missed an important detail about the author and his perspective on the scriptures. … … other scenes are so violent or so sexual in nature that it’s hard to think how anyone could have thought this was an appropriate idea for children. It’s hard to think, too, that atheist Brendan Powell Smith didn’t know, when he selected the verses to be illustrated, that many of the images would be incendiary. In all, the book — with its skewed perspective on matters of faith and its wry commentary on Old Testament stories — makes a pretty good case against faith. Since that’s not the objective of most parents, I’d suggest looking elsewhere for a good Bible storybook for your children.
What?! It’s against faith?! Can’t have anyone sharing *all* the stories in the Bible… That would make people not want anything to do with it!
Look, Smith doesn’t go out of his way to parody the Bible. He depicts it exactly as it’s written, without whitewashing or ignoring the sexual, violent, and disturbing scenes in it. If that makes you uncomfortable, too damn bad. It’s your book. You deal with it. You should be more upset about all the other books which ignore that material.
In the meantime, if Powell fools people into thinking this is a positive (rather than a fully accurate) depiction of the Bible, more power to him.
If you want to turn someone into an atheist, there’s no better way to do it than to hand them a Bible and have them read it from start to finish. The Brick Testament is just a more entertaining way to arrive at the same conclusion.Using Drush to sync databses ( drush sql-sync ) is a valuable tool, but it is not always an efficient choice when dealing with large databases (think over 1GB). SQL Sync Pipe ( drush sql-sync-pipe ) is a Drush command that provides an alternative for drush sql-sync that streams the database dump directly from the source to the destination as opposed to sql-sync saving the database dump, transferring it via rsync and then importing the dump file. As an added bonus it excludes cache tables by default.
Benchmarks
Below are examples from the command's README, syncing the same 1.05Gib database using the two different methods:
drush sql-sync
Command: drush sql-sync @alias.dev @alias.sandbox --no-cache Transfer size: 88.1MiB (compressed using rsync) Import size: 1.05GiB Total time elapsed: 46 minutes 47 seconds
drush sql-sync-pipe
Command: drush sql-sync-pipe @alias.dev @alias.sandbox --progress Transfer size: 88.1MiB (sent compressed using gzip) Import size: 1.05GiB Import & transfer time: 27 minutes 05 seconds Total time elapsed: 30 minutes 35 seconds
What are you waiting for? Download and install SQL Sync Pipe and get started!According to Bryan Strickland, both Jonathan Stewart and Dean Marlowe are expected to suit up when the Panthers welcome the 49ers to Bank of America Stadium this Sunday.
While Stewart is expected to play, it’s possible we will see second-year running back Cameron Artis-Payne on the active roster as a backup option, but that depends on the severity of Stewart’s condition. Rivera said as much to the media this week:
Running back Cameron Artis-Payne was among the healthy scratches last week. Rivera said earlier in the week that could be the case again, but his confidence level in Stewart's health could play a role. -Bryan Strickland, Panthers.com
Hopefully the team is just being cautious with Stewart, as a significant injury to him could derail the team’s hopes of winning a title this season. The Panthers have decent depth at running back, but as we’ve seen in the recent past they’re a completely different team offensively when J-Stew isn’t in the lineup.
Fortunately for the Panthers they’ve had 10 days of rest and only have two names on the official injury report heading into the home opener:
Panthers Injury Report
Player - S Dean Marlowe
Injury - Hamstring
Wed - LP | Thu - LP | Fri - FP
Game Status - Questionable
Player - RB Jonathan Stewart
Injury - Ankle
Wed - LP | Thu - LP | Fri - FP
Game Status - Questionable
Practice Status
DNP = Did not participate in practice
LP = Limited Participation in Practice - Less than 100% of a player's normal repetitions
FP = Full Participation - 100% of a player's normal repetitions
Out = Player will not play
(-) = Not Listed = No practice status available
Game Status
Out = Player will not play
Doubtful = Player unlikely to play
Questionable = Uncertain if player will play
(-) = Not Listed - No game status availableDubai : Dubai Police on Thursday announced new speed limits on certain roads in the emirate.
Colonel Saif Al Mazroui, Director of the General Directorate of Traffic at Dubai Police, said that the speed limit from the first interchange of Dubai-Al Ain Road to the Al Ain border has been set at 100km, with the radar speed limit now set at 120km.
The road’s speed limit was previously 120km and the radar speed limit was 140km.
The radar speed limit on Umm Suqeim road used to be 110km, but the new radar speed limit has been set at 100km.
Al Mazroui pointed out that the speed limit on Dubai Police Academy flyover on Shaikh Zayed road to Al Marabe’ |
. Of all of the 46 categories studied for the Brand Analysis, whole-house control is the trickiest because it encompasses so many other categories. So, when examining the top home automation brands among the CE Pro 100, readers also should look at complementary categories, including security (Honeywell and Interlogix win), HVAC controls (Control4), lighting control (Lutron) and universal remotes (URC).
Further Analysis for Home Automation Category
With mass-market home automation coming on strong last year, it’s not surprising that Control4 thrived vis-à-vis its historically higher-end competitors.
In fact, Control4’s mindshare among the CE Pro 100 has steadily climbed over the past five years as the industry in general has seen a shift to more affordable systems.
Control4’s (and Crestron’s) dip in 2014 was largely due to the establishment of URC in the whole-home automation category in 2013, after years of being known for its namesake universal remote controls.
URC’s new whole-house solution Total Control began shipping in 2011, with aggressive sales and training beginning in 2012. So 2013 would have been the year that a noticeable numbers of dealers adopted URC for home control.
URC barely missed the Top 5 in the 2015 list, coming in at 10%, tied with RTI. Like URC, RTI has a legacy as a remote-control manufacturer but is gaining traction as a whole-house automation system among the CE Pro 100. RTI could be a special case because some dealers might have included its sister company Pro Control under the RTI umbrella. Pro Control, which enjoys wider distribution than RTI, offers a less expensive solution with a more limited feature set.
So where did Elan go in 2014? Considering the 2014 figures represent 2013 brand usage, we can understand why Elan slipped during that year: Parent company Nortek (Nasdaq: NTK), and particularly the Core Brands audio/video/control group of which Elan is a part, endured some major reorganizations and suffered significant logistical setbacks.
Long-time Elan leader and brand champion Paul Starkey left the company that year, frustrating Elan’s dealer base and sales force. At the same time, Core Brands restructured its independent rep network, consolidating the force down to 28 from a high of 44 across all Core brands.
2014, the year on which the 2015 Brand Analysis is based, saw a period of relative stability for Elan, despite the departure of former Core Brands president Bill Pollock, who was replaced by former VP Joe Roberts.
After the last few years of growing momentum, Savant dipped this year among Top 100 dealers. It’s no surprise. The company was so quiet in 2014 that I speculated an IPO was in the offing. As it turns out, the company was simply hard at work building its new lower-cost home automation platform and raising capital. In September, KKR plunked down $90M for a 35% stake in the company.
It is curious that AMX still finds itself in the top 5 home automation brands among the CE Pro 100. As mentioned earlier, AMX has a long legacy in the category with a reputation for solid products, even though the company’s focus remains on the commercial market.
I suspect if we were to cross-tabulate manufacturers with the number of years dealers have been in business, we’d find a strong correlation between AMX usage and dealer longevity.
2016 Could Be Disruptive
For the past several years, Control4 has owned the mid-market category, but competitive manufacturers are catching up.
This year, all of the top home systems vendors (with the exception of AMX) shipped new systems that are less expensive and easier to program than earlier models. Crestron introduced Pyng; Elan launched g1; Savant created the Single App Home platform.
We got more of the same from runners-up in the whole-house control category: Clare Controls gave us Cliq.lite; RTI invested heavily in its Pro Control brand for the broad market; and URC launched a light version of Total Control, called ccGEN2, for sale through distribution.
This year, URC eliminated ccGEN2 but will sell Total Control through distribution, opening the flood gates to a much larger dealer network. Furthermore, URC announced this year lowest-cost home automation hub to date, the $599 MRX-8.
Meanwhile, lighting behemoth Lutron launched the low-cost, mass-market Caseta line with an IP gateway called Smart Bridge that integrates with Lutron’s own lighting controls, motorized shades (Serena) and thermostats, as well as several third-party smart devices via the cloud. Electricians and other integrators seeking a simple, low-cost solution are starting to embrace the new platform.
All of these initiatives – along with Control4’s new Composer Express platform for much faster installations – will be reflected in the 2016 CE Pro 100 Brand Analysis.
We might also see an uptick from Leviton Security & Automation (formerly HAI), which acquired BitWise in 2014. The acquisition gives Leviton everything it needs now to integrate security with home automation with audio/video control.
We also expect software-based solutions such as On Controls (iRule) and Simple Control (Roomie Remote) to break into the CE Pro 100.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
JULIE JACOBSONWe’re already hearing that uranium stocks are oversold. This is a cycle that happens every time a stock (or a market sector) gets slapped down. Pundits emerge to declare that an out-of-favor sector
has been sold down to bargain levels. It’s time to buy in again, they chirp.
Sure enough, in the wake of the Japanese nuclear disaster, it certainly hasn’t taken long for the “oversold“ voices to chime in. As one wrote, “The fire sale in uranium stocks may be providing an excellent opportunity to enter this market or to add to positions”. Really?
Perhaps we should wait until the reactor fires are extinguished before considering such a rash move.
Another author, labeled an “opinion leader” at the popular Seeking Alpha website trumpets the following headline: “CCJ: An Oversold Uranium Dividend Stock with High Options Yields.”
Well, there’s no doubt that Cameco (NYSE:CCJ), the world’s largest uranium producer has suffered a so-called “meltdown”. But is it oversold?
Cameco Stock Performance, One Year
Cameco’s CEO, Jerry Grandey, minimizes the damage to his company. He says Japan’s nuclear crisis will probably cut Cameco’s uranium sales by as little as three to five percent, and this should be offset by greater Japanese consumption during the coming rebuild.
“There are 54 reactors in Japan, 11 are currently down, and some are likely to be brought back over time,” Grandey told a conference call. “Even if 11 units remained down, it wouldn’t be all that [economically] significant to Cameco.” Grandey also pledged to continue the expansion of Cameco’s uranium operations around the world.
Optimists point out that the world is on a global reactor-building binge.
China is critical to global expansion of uranium markets during this decade. But China has suspended approvals of new nuclear reactors pending a review of industry safety. Many other countries have done the same, including India and Germany. Venezuela has shelved its plans for nuclear construction permanently.
OK, let’s discount the opinions of Hugo Chavez. What about the future of the uranium industry? Emerging markets like China and India have an urgent need for more clean energy. There seems to be little doubt that current industry “reviews” will result in stricter safety standards and the construction of existing projects will likely continue.
Cameco’s Grandey was buoyant, saying, “I don’t think you’re going to see any material reduction globally in uranium demand, and I really don’t believe that some sixty plants that are under construction, and those that are planned, are going to be delayed in any significant way, whether they’re in China or India or the United Arab Emirates, or wherever they might be.”
Good luck with that prediction.
A “Glowing” Future?
The industry’s future is “red hot” according to CBS Business News writer David Phillips. Cameco and other uranium miners are already spending heavily on the construction of new mines and processing facilities. They’re still scrambling in anticipation of the global nuclear boom which seemed so inevitable before the Japanese disaster.
As I wrote several months ago, China had long term plans called for the construction of as many as 245 reactors. In the U.S., President Obama was expected to provide loan guarantees for a renewed nuclear energy industry in the U.S. It seemed like the industry had solved its problems and boom times were coming.
But, in the wake of the Japanese crisis, I believe that the optimists touting a rebound in the nuclear industry are premature at best. At worst, they may be flogging a dead horse.
It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the situation in Japan. As I write, food supplies in Japan have been found to be contaminated with radioactivity. Zirconium shells in the Japanese nuclear storage pools may turn out to be flammable. In the U.S., iodine pills are selling out.
If you think this is just the tail end of the story, think again.
The Wall Street Journal chirps that the Japanese reactor problem can’t become another Chernobyl because of design differences. But, in fact it could be every bit as bad. If the rods in the storage pool catch fire, much more radioactivity could be released. That’s just one potential disaster scenario that still looms.
As the cleanup begins we will certainly hear more alarm over the spread of radioactive contamination. It seems most unlikely that Japan will ever build another reactor.
Japanese fear of the nuclear industry will certainly spread to the U.S. Approvals for future reactor construction will be difficult if not impossible to obtain here because of renewed public opposition. New “safer” reactor designs won’t calm fears about an energy source that will continue to reel from Japanese fallout for years to come.
Even more ominous in this new environment is the fact that storage pools for spent uranium rods are now recognized as a threat. Every reactor has one of these glowing pools, specifically because the world has not found a way to dispose of nuclear waste.
The political bickering which has derailed the Yucca mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada will come no closer to a solution in the current environment.
Without a doubt, the world needs a new source of clean energy. But, importantly, vast new deposits of natural gas have been discovered in the U.S. and gas prices are falling.
This raises the prospect of turning to natural gas instead of nuclear. Building a gas-fired electricity station is much quicker and cheaper than any nuclear installation. (Gas-powered stations produce electricity at less than one-tenth the cost of nuclear installations according to an estimate by Gerson Lehrman Group.)
The Fallout
I expect we will be hearing disturbing reports of incompetence and serious after-effects from Japan for years after the Fukushima reactors have been entombed.
No matter how good the earnings reports of uranium miners will be in years to come, stock valuations will be pummeled by negative news. Yes, the reactor construction projects already underway worldwide will likely be completed. They will consume existing supplies of uranium and a great deal of supply from future projects in emerging markets. But earnings multiples will continue to be pummeled.
I believe the developed world will eventually turn very sharply away from nuclear energy and towards cheap and abundant natural gas.
Even China has reached out to the United States for help in developing its own shale gas reserves. PetroChina has also declared its intention to acquire even more gas resources worldwide in the wake of Japan’s earthquake.
The biggest consumer of liquefied natural gas in the world is Japan. In the aftermath of the nuclear disaster it seems a certainty that gas demand will rise exponentially in Japan and the rest of the world.
The smart money will likely take a position in natural gas resources. Despite calls for a rebound in uranium stocks, I believe many investors will treat them as if they were radioactive.
Related ETFs: Market Vectors Uranium & Nuclear Energy (NYSE:NLR), PowerShares Global Nuclear Energy (NYSE:PKN), iShares S&P Global Nuclear Energy (NYSE:NUCL), Global X Uranium ETF (NYSE:URA)
Written By George Wolff From Global Profits AlertImage copyright AP Image caption Indian governments have become intolerant to criticism
Why is India so touchy about criticism by a foreigner?
The latest outburst comes from minister Ambika Soni, who is enraged by a piece by the Washington Post on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The piece, written by the newspaper's Delhi correspondent, said the prime minister, who helped set India on the path to prosperity, is now in danger of "going down in history as a failure". The paper said Mr Singh resembled a "dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat presiding over a deeply corrupt government".
Strong words, but nothing exceptional, really.
As his government lurches from one crisis to another, Mr Singh has borne the brunt of some trenchant media criticism at home and abroad in recent months.
Time magazine recently dubbed him The Underachiever, immersed in his "personal and political gloom". The Independent newspaper wondered whether the prime minister was a saviour or a "poodle" of the powerful Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. The Economist magazine called him an embattled prime minister.
All quite fair in the spirit of free speech.
What is shocking, many say, is Ms Soni's reaction to the Washington Post piece.
Ms Soni heads the rather curiously named information and broadcasting ministry - an Orwellian irony in the world's biggest democracy, many say - and was quoted as saying that the article was "unacceptable" and she would take up the issue with the government.
Ms Soni said the government had "apprehensions about a foreign daily publishing something baseless on our prime minister... This is what we call yellow journalism".
"We have done this thing earlier and they had apologised," Ms Soni said, hinting at extracting an apology from the Post. "If the Washington Post has written things like this against the prime minister, trust me I will oppose it strongly."
I don't think anybody asked her how she planned to extract an apology, especially after the Post correspondent ruled one out. Would the government move to rescind his work visa? Would it ban the publication of the newspaper in India? Nobody quite knows.
The government and the newspaper are now having a spat over attribution of some of the quotes about Mr Singh's performance in the article. Mr Singh's communications adviser Pankaj Pachauri, a former journalist of repute, has written to the Post, saying it was a "one-sided assessment" of the prime minister and added that "comment is free" in journalism.
Again, a fair remark.
But what is disturbing, many say, is the minister's outburst: it hints at a strong intolerance for criticism, especially if it comes from a foreigner. Local pundits and journalists excoriate Mr Singh and his government every night on India's TV news; and newspapers are no kinder.
Many critics say such intolerance to criticism is a dark legacy of a party, which suspended civil rights and imposed an emergency in the country in 1975. It was the darkest period in Indian democracy. Critics also suspect the democratic impulses of a party which has essentially been run by one family.
At another level, Ms Soni's discomfort raises uncomfortable questions about tolerance in India.
As analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta says, India's governments are becoming increasingly intolerant as they face more scrutiny from an exploding middle class and a vibrant and growing civil society. "When exposed, governments are still trying the idiom of old politics to respond: use state power to silence critics, personalise the issue, avoid institutional regeneration and hide behind a sense of injured virtue to defend the indefensible," he writes in the Indian Express newspaper.
Clearly, this is a battle between old politics and new realities. When will the government wake up?Anger is building as junior doctors in the UK continue to dispute proposals for changes to their contracts.
The ongoing issue, which sparked widespread strikes on Wednesday, has seen Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt struggle to come to a deal with junior doctors and the British Medical Association over updating the contracts despite lengthy negotiations.
Celebrities like Peter Capaldi, John Hurt and J K Rowling have lent their support to the striking doctors.
The controversial topic is central to fiery debate on social.
#SaveOurNHS
Thousands have taken to social media to voice their opinions on the junior doctors’ contracts and subsequent strikes. #JuniorDoctorsStrikes was mentioned hundreds of times alongside #PMQs on Wednesday despite the issue not being mentioned during Prime Minister’s Questions.
The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, which saw the host read desperate letters from the affected doctors to Mr Hunt, added fuel to the fire over the weekend.
Mentions of keywords surrounding the debate spiked significantly on Saturday as junior doctors protested in the streets of London, and peaked even more on Sunday during Jeremy Hunt’s roasting from Andrew Marr.
While Jeremy Hunt got most mentions in tweets surrounding the issue over the weekend, Vanessa Redgrave and Vivienne Westwood’s appearance at Saturday’s “masked march” also gained a lot of attention.
Fuming doctors
Over the weekend we found nearly 4,000 tweets on the issue from healthcare practitioners alone, and identified Twitter’s most influential junior doctors using Audiences to find out what they had to say on the current situation.
On Saturday the media were criticized for not covering the #SaveOurNHS protest.
Many of the doctors took to Twitter to vent their frustrations over Hunt’s performance on The Andrew Marr Show after he claimed that medics were being misled by the BMA over the new contract proposals.
#Imnotmisled and #misledmedic spread as the junior doctors made their voices heard.
I blindly followed @thebma thinking that patients should be put first. Then I heard @jeremy_hunt+realised I was a #misledmedic#imnotmisled — Dr Paul Teed (@DrPaulTeed) February 7, 2016
Meanwhile, others mocked Jeremy Hunt’s remark that his door was always open to doctors’ leaders seeking a solution by sharing tweets like this:
Sarah Marsden (@IntrepidSarah) wasn’t alone in tearing apart Hunt’s comments on a seven day NHS.
If @Jeremy_Hunt says we don’t have a 7 day NHS, how am I getting ready for an 8th consecutive day at work? #ImInWorkJeremy#juniordoctors — Sarah Marsden (@IntrepidSarah) February 8, 2016
Striking data
We found thousands of mentions on Twitter supporting, condemning or simply reporting on Wednesday’s upcoming strikes, with over 12,000 on strike day alone.
Despite concern around the effects of the latest strike, healthcare professionals make up the largest segment of the share of voice of those tweeting about. No kind of mass reaction has overshadowed their share of voice.
Politicians make up the second largest segment, just ahead of scientists and researchers on mention count.
On strike day we took a look at the top 200 influential junior doctors on Twitter and what they had to say.
We’ll continue to update our data as it comes in.An Alberta sheriff has launched a $4-million lawsuit against a woman who was convicted of assaulting him during a traffic stop two years ago.
In his statement of claim, Sgt. Robert Behiels alleges he has suffered a damaged reputation and loss of income and has been the victim of ridicule since he stopped Simona Tibu for speeding near Camrose in 2013.
Once removed from the car, Tibu struggled with the officer, screamed for help and tried to get away. The incident was captured on Behiels's dashcam.
Tibu, a dentist in Camrose, was convicted in April of assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest. Last week, she was given a one-year suspended sentence and was ordered to have no contact with Behiels or to come within 10 blocks of his home.
Simona Tibu speaks to CBC reporter Janice Johnston following her sentencing hearing Wednesday. The claims against her have not been tested in court, nor has she yet filed a statement of defence. (CBC) Behiels's lawsuit accuses Tibu of defamation, alleging she falsely accused him of physical and sexual assault both in a complaint to the Law Enforcement and Oversight Branch of Alberta's Justice Ministry and in interviews with media organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that Tibu posted on Facebook under another name, writing that the officer attacked her because she spoke with a heavy accent and he thought she was an immigrant.
The lawsuit also alleges that Tibu made numerous visits to Behiels's workplace and repeated her accusations in front of coworkers.
None of the claims in the lawsuit have been tested in court, and Tibu has not yet filed a statement of defence.
'High-handed, callous and arrogant' behaviour, lawsuit claims
According to the lawsuit, Tibu allegedly filed requests for meritless restraining orders in an attempt to harm Behiels's reputation.
The lawsuit also alleges she provided false information that led to the sheriff being charged for assault and sexual assault — charges that were terminated by a judge before the case went to trial.
Behiels claims he suffered "personal embarrassment and humiliation" and had to pay to defend himself in court. As a result of the complaints, he was placed on desk duty and lost both income and potential promotion opportunities, his lawsuit says.
The court action asks for $1 million in punitive damages, calling Tibu's behaviour "malicious, high-handed, callous and arrogant."On their first two EPs Crying utilized chaotic, dance-able chiptune to anxious and energetic ends. Last year’s one-off “Patriot” saw them moving away from that sound, drawing from prog and arena rock as inspirations and revitalizing what is often derided as a canonically cheesy genre. The Brooklyn-based trio’s new album, Beyond The Fleeting Gales, pulls them even further in that direction. It’s a collection of sharp and densely-orchestrated songs that celebrate the likes of Queen, REO Speedwagon, and Van Halen, channeling the power chords and bravado into overblown and electrifying power-pop.
Lead single “Wool In The Wash” starts with a gentle sway that builds to a twinkling and playful finish. Elaiza Santos assumes the role of aspirational motivator, addressing a third party in the hook, or maybe just psyching herself up: “If you want it, girl go and get it/ Pick the wound despite all that they say to you/ What’s there to lose in making a move?” The track takes its carpe diem advice to heart, becoming more confident and loose as it barrels along, fighting against the urge to shrink against life’s seemingly impossible odds. “I wrote this song while on tour with Real Life Buildings last summer,” Santos explains over e-mail. “There was a month of road behind me and a month of road ahead — found myself recoiling. The track questions what we see and don’t see, trying to unsee and seeking, whether or not those things will hurt us.”
The band’s Ryan Galloway adds of the track’s conception: “The verse and the synth melody there has been in my head for about four years and it’s wild that it wasn’t a Crying song before this album. It wasn’t until recently that I came up with all of the other parts and that was kind of all at once. We’re showing it off first because 1. it’s a straight up pop song, but also a straight up rock song so it gets to show off Crying’s songwriting and melodic sensibilities without asking the listener for too much and 2. it does a good job of showcasing the shinier, stadium-ier style of the new album while retaining all of the Crying energy and density from earlier releases.”
Listen below.
Tracklist:
01 “Premonitory Dream”
02 “Wool In The Wash”
03 “Patriot”
04 “Origin”
05 “Well And Spring”
06 “A Sudden Gust”
07 “There Was A Door”
08 “Revive”
09 “Children Of The Wind”
10 “The Curve”
Tour Dates:
09/24 Richmond, VA @ Strange Matter
09/25 Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
09/26 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade (Purgatory)
09/28 Denton, TX @ Purple Palace
09/29 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
10/01 Tempe, AZ @ 51 West
10/02 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo ^
10/05 San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall ^&
10/07 Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre ^&
10/09 Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile ^&
10/10 Missoula, MT @ The Badlander ^&
10/11 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court ^&
10/12 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theater ^&
10/14 Burnsville, MN @ The Garage ^&
10/15 Chicago, IL @ Metro ^&
10/16 Detroit, MI @ El Club ^&
10/18 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall Of Williamsburg ^&
10/19 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair ^&
10/20 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair ^&
10/21 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church ^&
10/22 Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church ^&
10/23 Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar ^&
10/24 Pittsburgh, PA @ Rex Theater ^&
10/25 Cleveland Heights, OH @ Grog Shop ^&
10/27 St. Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill ^&
10/28 Lawrence, KS @ The Granada Theater ^&
10/29 Oklahoma City, OK @ 89th Street Collective ^&
11/01 Nashville, TN @ The Glass Menage
11/02 Columbus, OH @ Double Happiness
11/03 Ithaca, NY @ The Loft at The Chanticleer
^ w/ the Hotelier
& w/ Joyce Manor
Beyond The Fleeting Gales is out 10/14 via Run For Cover Records. Pre-order it here.The Oregon State University has performed a first of its kind, five year study on the effects of small hydropower systems on the environment. The findings suggest that whilst hydropower is indeed a clean, renewable energy source that can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it also has an impact on habitat and biodiversity.
EcoSeed wrote that most people would assume that small hydropower systems have less of an impact on the local environment than large-scale hydroelectric dams, but that is not that case. In fact, in some cases the cumulative damage of many small dams can be far worse than the damage caused by one large dam. And if the size of the dams is directly related to the environmental impact that they have, then large-scale dams have a far smaller impact per megawatt, than small installations.
Desiree Tullos, an associate professor who worked on the study, explained that “there is damage to streams, fisheries, wildlife, threatened species and communities.
Related Article: Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam, Bad Idea?
Furthermore, the projects are often located in areas where poverty and illiteracy are high. The benefit to these local people is not always clear, as some of the small hydropower stations are connected to the national grid, indicating that the electricity is being sent outside of the local region.”
International agencies who believe that small hydroelectric plants can help to provide renewable energy to developing countries, and work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are supporting projects all around the world.
Mrs. Tullos said that, “the Kyoto Protocol, under the Clean Development Mechanism, is funding the construction of some of these small hydroelectric projects, with the goal of creating renewable energy that’s not based on fossil fuel. The energy may be renewable, but this research raises serious questions about whether or not the overall process is sustainable.”
By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.comThe video will start in 8 Cancel
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A 15-year-old girl has invented life-saving sleeping bags for the homeless that are waterproof, easy to see and practical.
Budding scientist Emily Duffy came up with the idea after fundraising for the homeless.
She spent a day living rough on the streets to raise cash for homeless shelters in her hometown of Limerick, Dublin.
The ingenious sleeping bags are lined with a thick layer of fireproof bubble wrap that not only protects from flames but also keeps the user dry.
Reflective markings give the bags high visibility, crucial for sleepers in car parks and doorways.
And velcro straps mean that the user can get in and out of the bag easily.
The teenager was praised for her invention, reported The Journal, with some saying it could'save lives on the streets of Dublin'.
And now, they are being made by former rough sleepers to encourage them back into work and help out those still living on the streets.
Nicknamed 'Duffily Bags', they are being produced and given out at an emergency accommodation centre in the middle of the city.
The workers are former street drinkers who have gone through Dublin's detox programme and are paid more than minimum wage ($10 an hour) to make the sleeping bags.
Read more: Homeless woman returned to Romania after living under duvet at bus stop for THREE months
Many of them are Eastern European men who have come to England only to be left out on the streets, with just alcohol to turn to.
Now, they are being given the chance to become part of society by working and being paid a wage.
Julian Judge from the Mendicity Institute in Dublin 8, the charity behind the project, said it was also about rebuilding the confidence of the former homeless.
He said: "The idea is you get some pride in yourself… It’s the pride in creating something."
Read more: Homeless mum offered home in Vatican after she gave birth outside St Peter'sImage caption Theresa Villiers said there was no figures for royal pardons in Northern Ireland between 1987 and 1997
More than 350 royal prerogatives of mercy have been issued in Northern Ireland over the past 35 years, it has been revealed.
Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers disclosed that 365 royal pardons had been issued between 1979 and 2002.
The figures was given in an answer to a question from MP Kate Hoey.
There are no figures for ten years between 1987 and 1997, as the records have apparently been lost.
It is not clear how many of those pardoned were members of paramilitary groups, or what proportion, if any, were members of the security forces.
The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) said the vast majority of pardons were not terrorism related.
Inquiry
A spokeswoman said: "Examples of the offences for which the RPM (royal prerogative of mercy) was used included driving offences, assault, burglary, theft and non-payment of national insurance contributions."
She added: "On the records for 1987 to 1998, we are conducting an urgent search of the historical records and correspondence relating to RPMs during this period."
The Royal Prerogative of Mercy, commonly known as a royal pardon, allows changes in sentences without the backing of, or consultation with, Parliament.
First Minister Peter Robinson has called for the issue of royal pardons to be included in the judge-led inquiry into the On The Runs controversy.
On The Runs is the term used to refer to people who are suspected of, but who have not been charged or convicted of paramilitary offences during the Troubles.
Lady Justice Hallett has been appointed to head up the inquiry into the issuing of about 200 letters to republican paramilitary suspects.
Transparency
Speaking about the disclosure of royal pardons issued in Northern Ireland, Miss Hoey said she was "astonished".
"I'm astonished first of all at the numbers involved, but also at the fact that the government seems to have lost 10 years of records for something that is a hugely important thing," she said.
"The Queen presumably signs these, so how can they lose them?
"We want to know how many more were issued and, more importantly, who they were issued to and why they were given a pardon.
"This is something the public need to know. We want transparency and honesty and this is neither honest or transparent."
Miss Hoey also questioned why the pardons were not publicly recorded, as is the practice in Great Britain.
Questions
"In England, when someone gets a royal pardon it traditionally has appeared in the London Gazette.
"There is also a Belfast Gazette, where one would have assumed the names would have appeared.
"That has not happened and when I asked those questions, the Secretary of State appears to be saying that it is not normal procedure in Northern Ireland.
"This is wrong because at that time policing and justice were not devolved to Northern Ireland so, again, there are a lot more questions to be asked."
A spokeswoman for the NIO said the RPM had been used 347 times between 1979 and 1986, at a time when "the UK government would have been responsible for all policing and criminal justice issues in Northern Ireland".
She added: "It is also important to highlight that the RPM was used much more frequently prior to the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997, which now creates a route by which potential miscarriages of justice can be considered.
"It is for those members of the previous government responsible at the time to explain how and in what circumstances they used the RPM.
"No RPM have been issued since the current government came to power in May 2010."Getty Images
On Friday night, the NFLPA announced that its board of player representatives had approved a new, comprehensive drug policy. On Saturday morning, both the league and the union have said that the new drug policy isn’t finalized yet.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello tells PFT that the policy is “not done” and that there is “some work to do.” Likewise, the NFLPA has announced that the board of player representatives authorized leadership to finalize an agreement “consistent with detailed term sheets” the players reviewed.
“We hope to have final agreements, including effective date for players with adjusted discipline, very soon,” the union said.
As a practical matter, it means that suspension of players like Broncos receiver Wes Welker won’t be lifted until the agreements are written up and signed. It also means, as a practical matter, that Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning will be giving the league office and union leadership the “Omaha! Omaha!” treatment until they get the work done.Dozens of bulldogs were found in filthy, hoarder-like conditions at a home in Westminster, and many of the dogs are in dire need of medical care.The French and English bulldogs rescued from the home of a suspected breeder Monday night are now in the care of Westminster Adoption Group and Services.Cortney Dorney said she was told about 25 dogs were going to need help after the incident, but it turned out to be 78 of them, many suffering from a number of ailments."Covered in mange, ear infections, surgical incisions that were infected. Their pads on the bottom of their feet were all burned to the skin, most likely from urine," she added. "All of the males: the testicles are all burned from just laying and having that skin."Dorney described the hoarder-like conditions the dogs appeared to be living in. Many of them were still giving off the smell of urine and feces."I did look into the garage. There were multiple wire crates stacked on top of each other," she said.The organization said it needs the public's support. They're looking for donations to continue caring for the dogs, and they said they hope to soon find them new homes.They're waiting to have full ownership of the bulldogs before they're ready for adoption.To donate to WAGS, visitLearning how to make your own clothes is a pastime that will not only save you some money, it is skill that can evolve into a hobby that you love. With some practice, patience, and some sewing know-how, you’ll be on your way to making your own clothing before you know it. Here are some helpful tips to get you going.
Getting Started
If you have never attempted to make your own clothes before, or if you have little or no sewing skills, finding some good reference materials is a great place to start. Head to your local library, fabric or craft store, or bookstore and look for a how-to book on sewing. A handy reference should have many clear pictures and easy-to-follow instructions in order to be of use to you.
Before you purchase any other materials besides a few reference books or patterns, you may want to start thinking about what kind of clothes you would like to make. That way you can watch for patterns and materials that you find appealing, and you’ll be able to focus on just a few items while you’re first starting out.
Gather Notions, Materials, and Equipment
Before you begin to learn how to sew, you’ll need to accumulate a few sewing necessities. First of all, if you don’t have a sewing machine, you may want to invest in one. Although you can sew clothing by hand, it can be very time consuming and tedious. If you’re on a limited budget and a new sewing machine is out of the question, look for a used one. You might be able to find one at a consignment shop, a sewing machine repair shop, or ask relatives or friends if they have one that you could either buy or borrow. Once you’ve secured a machine, you’ll need to put together a sewing kit. Some things you’ll want to have in your kit are fabric scissors, needles, bobbins, a pincushion, pins, a measuring tape, a seam ripper, and any other items necessary for the projects that you are interested in tackling. You’ll also want to have an iron and ironing board ready and waiting–they are very useful and in most cases essential when making clothing.
Learn How to Sew
If you already have some basic sewing skills or if you’re already a master seamstress, you can skip this part and move on. If you don’t know the first thing about sewing, you’ll need to pick up a few tricks of the trade. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can either teach yourself using how-to instruction books or DVD’s, or you can take a few lessons. Many craft and fabric stores offer Sewing 101 classes–and even if they don’t, there might be someone there who would be willing to sit down and work with you one-on-one for a small fee. If you have a family member or friend that knows how to sew, ask them if they would be willing to teach you. You can enjoy each other’s company and acquire a new skill all at the same time.
Choose a Project
You’ll want to choose a project that is suitable for your skill level when you first begin making |
Lotfi had been transferred to the remote village of Ashtian for 10 years of enforced internal exile. Lotfi, an Iran-Iraq War veteran who was exposed to chemical agents, suffers from a respiratory illness which has worsened during his confinement, the reformist news website Norooz News reported. Hossein Derakhshan, freelance Imprisoned: November 2008 On December 30, 2008, a judiciary spokesman confirmed at a press conference in Tehran that Derakhshan, a well-known Iranian-Canadian blogger, had been detained since November 2008 in connection with comments he allegedly made about a key cleric, according to local and international news reports. The exact date of Derakhshan’s arrest is unknown, but word of his detention was first reported on November 17, 2008, by Jahan News, a website close to the Iranian intelligence service. The site claimed Derakhshan had confessed to “spying for Israel” during the preliminary interrogation.
Known as the “Blogfather” for his pioneering online work, Derakhshan started blogging after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. A former writer for reformist newspapers, he also contributed opinion pieces to The Guardian of London and The New York Times. The journalist, who lived in Canada during most of the decade prior to his detention, returned to Tehran a few weeks before his detention, The Washington Post reported. In November 2009, the BBC Persian service reported that Derakhshan’s family had sought information about his whereabouts and the charges he faced, and expressed concern about having very limited contact with him.
In September 2010, the government announced that Derakhshan had been sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison, along with a five-year ban on “membership in political parties and activities in the media,” according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and other sources. Derakhshan has spent much of his imprisonment in solitary confinement at Evin Prison, according to multiple sources. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, citing a source close to the journalist’s family, said Derakhshan had been beaten and coerced into making false confessions about having ties to U.S. and Israeli intelligence services.
Ahmad Zaid-Abadi, freelance Imprisoned: June 2009 Zaid-Abadi, who wrote a weekly column for Rooz Online, a Farsi- and English-language reformist news website, was arrested in Tehran, according to news reports. Zaid-Abadi had also been a supporter of the defeated 2009 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi and had served as director of the politically active Organization of University Alumni of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On November 23, 2009, Zaid-Abadi was sentenced to six years in prison, five years of internal exile in Khorasan province, and a “lifetime deprivation of any political activity” including “interviews, speeches, and analysis of events, whether in written or oral form,” according to the Persian service of the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. An appeals court upheld the sentence on January 2, according to Advar News.
In February 2010, Zaid-Abadi and fellow journalist Massoud Bastani were transferred to Rajaee Shahr Prison, a facility known for housing people convicted of drug-related crimes. Zaid-Abadi’s wife, Mahdieh Mohammadi, said prison conditions were crowded and unsanitary, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported. She said she feared malnutrition and the spread of disease. In August 2011, Zaid-Abadi was granted a 48-hour furlough after posting bail of $500,000, the U.S. government-funded Radio Farda reported.
Kayvan Samimi, Nameh Imprisoned: June 14, 2009 Samimi, manager of the now-defunct monthly Nameh, was serving a six-year prison sentence along with a 15-year ban on “political, social, and cultural activities,” the Aftab News website reported.
Initially held at Evin Prison, Samimi was subjected to mistreatment. In February 2010, he was transferred to solitary confinement after objecting to poor prison conditions, according to Free Iranian Journalists, a website devoted to documenting cases of jailed reporters and editors. He and 14 other prisoners later went on a 16-day hunger strike to protest abuse at the prison. In November 2010, Samimi was transferred to Rajaee Shah Prison in Karaj, which houses violent criminals, according to news reports. In May 2011, he and several other political prisoners waged a hunger strike to protest mistreatment there, reformist news websites reported. In August 2011, the reformist news website JonbesAustralia's factory farming system is a perfect breeding ground for virulent, fatal disease, writes science writer Geoff Russell.
Bernard Keane did well to summarise the recent Productivity Commission "Regulation of Agriculture" report's chapter on animal welfare. It's 61 pages in an 800-page report, but there were a few more relevant chapters that are crucial to understanding how agriculture is and isn't regulated in Australia. Probably the most important is that on biosecurity, and it demonstrates how easily the Productivity Commission can be led astray.
Keane notes that the commission brings animal welfare within its remit by putting numbers on the costs and benefits to the community of changing the way factories treat animals. I use the word "factories" because well over half of the meat eaten here comes from animals you'd never see in any drive through the Australian bush, except perhaps on the back of trucks. But to economists, animal suffering is of no consequence unless consumers put a monetary value on it.While it’s critically important that the trans community remains politically active in electoral campaigns, canvassing and phone-banking can present particular challenges to trans volunteers.
At least eight new openly trans elected officials were voted into office, including Virginia state Del. Danica Roem.
MSNBC / YouTube
The trans community has a long history of activism, and in 2017 it also saw major strides in electoral politics. That was apparent in last Tuesday’s elections when at least eight new openly trans elected officials were voted into office—an impressive and unprecedented achievement headlined in part by trans woman Danica Roem’s (D) nearly eight-point win over Del. Bob Marshall (R), the author of a failed attempt at a “bathroom bill,” in Virginia.
Historically, trans people have lacked any sizable political power. With an estimated 1.4 million trans adults in the United States, the community is too small to form a strong or cohesive voting bloc on its own. But recent GOP attacks on the already precious few rights enshrined for trans people and the groundswell of support for trans candidates like Roem and Andrea Jenkins, who was elected to the Minneapolis city council, seemed to have motivated some trans people to get involved in electoral politics.
In an interview with Rewire prior to her win, Roem mentioned that trans volunteers were a part of her campaign and are symbolic of the type of inclusive community she envisions serving. “Just today, I had at least five or six trans people knocking on doors for us and you know why? Because in our campaign we welcome everyone’s support,” she said at the time.
Jay Wu, communications manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), canvassed on behalf of the organization’s action fund, which endorsed Roem. They told Rewire that even if they had not worked for the NCTE they would have “gone out [to] have canvassed for her anyway.”
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Wu explained that Roem’s progressive politics seemed to motivate volunteer turnout at least as much as her identity did. “A lot of the support for candidates like Danica came from trans people who were excited to see a trans person running for office,” they said, adding that other support came from progressives in the area that “wanted to see the Virginia House turn blue.”
After repeated conservative attacks on trans rights—from North Carolina’s discriminatory anti-trans HB 2 bill in 2016 to the Trump administration’s recent attempts to ban trans people from serving in the military—the trans community has faced major setbacks that may have inspired some to take political action.
“I think the federal government attacking trans people is a factor,” Wu said when asked why trans people may be getting more involved in politics. “A lot of trans people have gotten their chops organizing against bad legislation or ballot measures or what have you and that experience can translate well to running a campaign.”
While it’s critically important that the trans community remains politically active in electoral campaigns, canvassing and phone-banking can present particular challenges to trans volunteers.
“A pretty common thing that trans people will say [is], ‘I don’t want to go to door-to-door’ or ‘I don’t even want to do phones. Can I do data entry or something that isn’t public facing?’” Wu said, adding that there also seems to be a gendered dynamic to that reluctance. “For me personally, I have the dubious privilege of being transmasculine, which means that people, especially in the areas of northern Virginia that we’re canvassing in, just assume that I’m a gender-nonconforming woman which doesn’t feel great but doesn’t put me in danger.”
Public safety is another big concern for members of the trans community, who routinely see trans people murdered and harassed in the street. According to a recent survey, 27 percent of people in the United States wouldn’t want to be friends with a trans person. And with the GOP’s demonization of the trans community, canvassing could leave trans campaigners open to verbal or physical abuse. You can never know who is on the other side of the door and whether your mere presence will enrage them.
But that isn’t the only barrier that keeps some away from political involvement. Eve Freeman, a trans woman from Northern Virginia who chose not to get directly involved in Roem’s campaign, says that her deep voice was part of the reason for her decision. “Now my voice is uncomfortable and I get misgendered all the time on the phone,” she said. “It would be a disaster. I’m not an extrovert.” Freeman mentioned that she would be uncomfortable canvassing by herself, but may consider going out with someone else as long as she could stand in the back and not speak.
Freeman’s concerns are painfully common for many trans people and will remain barriers until society grows more comfortable with the idea that trans people are just average, everyday citizens like anyone else.
Campaigns should be actively looking for ways to make their operations more trans-friendly, including finding roles for trans people who don’t want to face the public. Whether this year’s political volunteerism is a temporary blip or a more sustained moment for the trans community remains to be seen, but after years of grassroots level activism, it certainly feels like trans people are responding to the recent anti-trans backlash in a big way.Little Devil Teemo Splash Art View All 5 Images
Hi guys! We’re technical artists Moonyoung “ANDMoonY” Oh and Jeremy “JesterCapp” Putnam. As tech artists at Riot, our main job is preparing character models for animation. To better explain this process, we’re here to share how we helped create the most diabolical creature to ever prowl the Rift: Little Devil Teemo. Rigging 101 Early in a champion’s development, his or her (or its) character model is like a doll, still and lifeless. Tech artists turn that doll into a puppet with bones, joints, and controls that animators can then use to create movement. This process is called rigging.
Technical artists at Riot use the program Maya to create rigs for champions and skins.
Rigs are made of components, which themselves are blueprints containing code for the joints and controls of common character features. Components are basically body parts; there are components for arms, legs, spines, swords, capes, and so on. Tech artists use these existing components to build new rigs for champions and skins. Basically, we tell the program to put two arms there, a head here, a spine there… and then the program uses the scripts attached to each component to create a unique rig. When necessary, we can also create new components, such as Little Devil Teemo’s tail. Because many rigs are built from the same components, they share the same base code. This means that if we make a change to the blueprint for the “bendy arm component,” then EVERY character with a “bendy arm component” will also change. We can still alter individual champion’s rigs, but the major benefit of this blueprint system is that it takes minimal manual effort to change a bunch of rigs at once—we alter the code in one place, and then the change occurs wherever that component is used. If we obtain or create new technology, such as a “bendy tail,” we can easily update all of the champion’s rigs that would benefit from that tech (such as Nidalee or Rek’sai). Recently-created rigs are built differently than ones made in League’s earlier years, because our knowledge, processes, and standards have evolved. For example, we changed the way we name components, and this is sometimes problematic when using animation tools. If a tool designed to move a champion’s arms is coded to find the elbow joint named “L_Elbow,” but that elbow joint is actually named “L_Arm,” it won’t work.
Furthermore, some outdated rigs just aren’t compatible with new technology, such as a recently-added feature that allows animators to open and close champs’ fists by moving a slider. Some really old rigs have poorly designed elements, like multiple controls sharing one name. And, once in awhile, old rigs break when adding new animation.
For these reasons, one of the first questions we ask when preparing to rig a new skin is, “Is the old rig functional, or should we make a new one from scratch?” If we decide to rework the rig, it’s as much work as rigging a brand-new champion. But if the base rig stands the test of time, we can modify existing elements or add new components. Teemo’s existing rig was armed and ready, but Little Devil Teemo had some fiendish new features that required new components. Early Ideation for Little Devil Teemo
Tale of the Tail Creating a tail for this tiny fiend was no small task. The component for a tail this length (similar to Gnar, Wukong, or jungle wolves) has six bones and joints. In order for the tail’s movement to look natural, each of these joints would need to be individually animated so they match every move Teemo makes. Creating an animation set of this size takes a lot of animator time—too much time for what would be a relatively minor element of a skin. Teemo’s tail’s rig is made of four bones and joints.
Instead, we utilized a specialized control system called a jiggle rig. This system establishes a parent/child relationship between each joint, or control, along Teemo’s tail, which then causes the controls to adjust their movement based on the point above’s motion. So if Teemo’s model jumps, then the top tailbone jumps shortly afterwards, and then so does the second one, and then the third… It’s basically follow the leader. Animators can also control exactly how each joint reacts to the movement above it. They adjust the delay between joints and can “dampen” some movements so they only react to drastic motion. Using these levers, animators fine-tuned how stiff (and bendy) Teemo’s tail should look. The resulting tail moved naturally and automatically with Teemo’s body, saving animators a ton of time.
Animating Teemo’s Tail: WIP and Final Facing the Devil With the tail sorted, we were still short one final feature, an element to fuel nightmares everywhere: Little Devil Teemo’s other face. Like most champ’s, Teemo’s “regular” face is pretty static—League’s camera is too far away to noticeably depict subtle animations like facial expressions. The exception to this rule is if a champion has a particularly large head (i.e., most Yordles) or if there’s a reason to show extra expression; Teemo fit both of those bills. To transform Teemo’s friendly face into one of malevolent lunacy, we created a second face for the Little Devil, complete with a complex facial rig. This rig allowed animators to freely contort the Yordle’s face, specifically during his recall and death animations.
Little Devil Teemo’s Facial Rig We now had two faces for only one body, and we needed a way to tell the model when to show the amicable face and when to turn up the terror. To do this, we used a system of submeshes and submesh events. Submeshes are parts of a character model that can be hidden or displayed as needed. They’re often props in champions’ emotes and recall animations, such as Bewitching Morgana’s cauldron or Santa Braum’s sleigh. Submesh events tell these items when to appear and disappear. For example, an animator sets a submesh event at the start of Bewitching Morgana’s recall that tells the cauldron submesh to appear for seven seconds. After those seconds pass, the cauldron once again vanishes.
Little Devil Teemo’s Death Animation Teemo’s devilish face, and its animations, were coded as a submesh, so it’s hidden for most of the game. Animators then designated Teemo’s recall and death animations as submesh events, which tells the model to put that friendly face away and bring out the maniacal one. Once Teemo’s recall/death animations concludes, the submesh disappears, and Teemo’s deceivingly adorable expression returns.
Which Teemo is the real Teemo? Runeterra may never know…
Scouting Ahead Being a technical artist on League often means looking for small improvements—we’ve made a lot of skins over the years, and we’re still learning how to make them better. When the team is passionate about an idea, it inspires us to push the tech envelope. Designing smarter components and new tools is important to us because it helps us deliver cooler skins more frequently.
Plus, now we sleep easily at night knowing our work finally transformed Teemo’s outside to match his insides. No more tricking us with that lovable, fluffy demeanor, Teemo. We’re onto you.Here's another one of this summer's launches from Smashbox. We've already checked out the Limitless Lip Stains which I am loving more and more (and then some more) as the weeks pass, and now this is the seasonal shadow offering. The Softbox Eye Palette is available now for €55 - and this is quite the right time of year for it, I think.
Pink and peachy, brides will go nuts for the subtle shades and pretty finishes. But lets look a little deeper. A five minute play with the one I was given by the brand got me thinking: this is Smashbox's answer to Urban Decay's Naked Palette if I'm not mistaken, and if you haven't yet sprung for that and are hmming and hawwing at handing over €36 for a rake of slightly different browns, then read on.
Nine shadow shades are on offer here. Nectar, Lucky Penny, Sugar, Stone, Truffle are all new colours in this palette, so they're not available in the main line. Stone, Sienna, Nude and Vanilla are existing shades; each shadow is about 1.26g in weight - so about.5g smaller than a shadow single. The two cream liners in Bronze and Taupe are new as well. That all gives a brand fan an enticement to buy cos you're getting lots of newbies to play with - and hey, don't they look pretty together?
Here's another shot of the shades.
That's not all you get with this palette: a large square mirror inside the lid is integrated and it comes with a mini Photo Finish Lid Primer plus a double-ended brush. The Lid Primer is grand - though if there was some way to integrate it with the packaging that would be great, as I've already misplaced it. Doh.
The same criticism goes for Urban Decay too, though. To be fair, the Softbox palette comes with an outer box and it has a well into which the primer fits. If you keep that, then you've got a place for it; I dumped the outer packaging so I guess I only have myself to blame.
The last thing you get with this offering is a little booklet with some tips on how to create a couple of looks. There's also a barcode you can scan on the back of the palette - if you've an iPhone - which will let you download an insider secrets video, which is a nice extra touch.
Right, so we've chatted about the palette, we've looked at the colours and we've seen what you get for your €55. What's it like in use?
Advertised
I trialled this for a week and found a lot of use for it. It's a very good day-to-night palette and it's a lot more versatile on first glance than you might think. You get a good mix of mattes, shimmers and a couple of glitters - so you can get a lot of looks out of this. Check Kim K-style sexy smokey bronzey browns, barely there nude washes, basic chic taupe, brightening pinks, modern matte grey (great with this season's neon pouts), nice in-the-crease definition and much more - you can pretty much do the lot around the neutral spectrum.
I also found after a few uses of my Urban Decay palette that it wasn't so hot for a cooler skintone and I could only really use three or four shades; no such worries with this. Lucky Penny's maybe the only one that's a bit too warm for me but as a wash I can still use it. Any other criticisms? Well, this is not a goer for a brights, darks or jewel-tones fan, and it'll leave you cold if subtle ain't your thing.
Lets check out some swatches.
Nectar, Vanilla, Flirt, Lucky Penny, Sugar and Stone.
Top is a lick of the eyelid primer and then from left we have Sienna, Nude and Truffle and liners in Bronze and Taupe.
One of the niggles I often see about Smashbox shadows is that they can be powdery and can kick up. So I took a shot of the palette after I'd used it for a while and you can see in the case of Flirt it's very loose. It's actually my least favourite here - the shade is great but it's got a lot of glitter and there's fallout down on my cheeks about three seconds after application, which is a pet hate of mine. Primer helps a little but hey, this is just an issue with spangles.
I've actually always liked Smashbox for eyeshadow anyway and find the brand's offerings easy to use and blend. These are no exception. If some are a little powdery, I just make sure to tap the excess off well before I apply to my eyes. Pigmentation is consistent across the set and I'd say it's good. Longevity and intensity will again be aided by use of primer, but on a daily basis I don't tend to use eyelid primers as I've dry lids.
Standout shades for me are Truffle, Stone, Sienna and surprisingly, Sugar. This is a lovely pink with tons of rose gold shimmer when swatched and applied. It's beautiful. Nectar and Vanilla are also very nice for a super-quick, brightening daytime eye. I'm not a fan of Smashbox's cream liners - they're one of the weakest things this brand does I think - and while the shades here are really nice, I think they are just too prone to smudge.
Advertised
So, to summarise - at €55, this is pricey, no doubt about it. If you haven't yet dipped your toes into the waters of Naked and would like a neutrals palette that performs, then this is a good bet. It's got more broad appeal than Naked I think, and at €19 more expensive it would want to. But the variation in shades is the clincher, and if we do some Justification Maths, then we can work out that each shade costs €5 a pop, plus a brush and primer. If that's sweetening the deal, then this is on counter now.Maybe you think it's too early to put out a Top 25 ranking for the 2013 season. Respectfully, you are the stupidest if that's your belief. With the help of this handy guide, soon you'll be ready to explain why one team you haven't seen play is definitely better than another team you haven't seen play!
1. Alabama. Look, maybe you have a perfectly strong case for some other school, but if you go off the reservation right away, the readers are going to suspect something is amiss. Stay with the pack here and, if the Tide stumble, you'll be one of many mistaken scribes, not a distinct and lonesome idiot.
2. Big 12 or Big Ten team. BOOM! Because you started comfortable, those stupid readers didn't see this knowledge roundhouse coming. Pick a team that didn't meet expectations in 2012 and talk about how they'll be "hungry" and "focused" because of it.
3. SEC team. Mention how battle tested playing in the conference will leave this team by the end of the season. Then hedge by saying SEC play could eat them alive. SPORTSNIGMA!
4. Ohio State. Emphasize how good the team looked in the first year of a new system. Ignore that they barely beat Cal, Indiana, and Purdue. Clunky suggestion that Braxton Miller could be the next Tim Tebow. Obliquely suggest Urban Meyer could quit at any week for any reason.
5. Oregon or Stanford. Shit, you meant to put one of them higher, but that much backspacing seems like a real pain in the ass. Say something here about how you're being cautious not to put too much stock into a big bowl performance.
6. Team Coming Off A Big Bowl Performance. Clemson-Louisville national championship game ahoy!
7. SEC team. Which one? Any one THAT'S JUST HOW DAMN GOOD THEY ARE MAN. (Seriously, though, not Auburn.)
8. Notre Dame. Yes, Irish fans are going to be super pissed at the perceived disrespect, but that'd be true even if you ranked ND numbers one, two, and three simultaneously. Don't fight a losing battle. Just slot them here and suggest that they could be better off without Manti Te'o.
9. Oregon or Stanford (whoever you didn't put at 5). Say something about how they've lost a lot of key pieces. Is it true? Players graduate, don't they?
10. ACC team. You'll need to construct a paper fortune teller and write the names of four plausibly successful teams twice each. Be sure you only do it twice, because if you write out "Georgia Tech" three times on the same piece of paper Paul Johnson appears out of nowhere and insists on rearranging your pantry.
11. Team that will likely have three losses before Halloween. Your obligation in preparing this ranking is not simply to come up with a sensible accounting of the top 25 teams heading into the season. It's also to provide us with teams destined to leave unreasonable expectations unfulfilled. Who will be this year's Arkansas? THE POWER IS YOURS!
12. Team with the highest ranked recruiting class that you have not yet included. I mean, all that talent wouldn't be going to a bad team, would it? And I bet half of them start right away! (note: I do not know how recruiting works)
13. This is exhausting. You really deserve a lemonade, and maybe even an oatmeal cookie. I mean, people bitch about preseason rankings, but then they lap them right up like hungry dogs. Do they not understand how market forces work? Oh, um, Michigan State. Whatever.
14. Florida. "Will Muschamp is driving a truck with a great engine and no brake pads. Will Muschamp is eating a sandwich with meat and no bread. Will Muschamp is developing a model that explains how light behaves like a particle but not as a wave." Metaphor them to death in this middle section.
15. School that was good six years ago and has stunk since. Because these things are cyclical, or something.
16. Team stocked with seniors that have mostly underachieved up to this point. They just want it more, man. That's why they're fighting in spring practice. Out of love.
17. Big 12 team with a miserably weak non conference schedule. Basically, this is between Texas Tech, West Virginia, Kansas, and Kansas State. Kansas is out for reasons of being Kansas, so just pick one of the other three and feel like a genius up to, but not beyond, Week 5.
18. Big East team. Start out by noting that the conference had a better bowl winning percentage last year than the every other AQ conference. Pretend you knew that Memphis was joining this year without looking. Realize that the team you pick could join the ACC before this gets published. Shrug, and continue trying to beat Jetpack Joyride.
19. Team that was terrible but hired a trendy coach. You've already won me over, Cal, in spite of me. (WRITER TIP: Using lyrics from popular music makes your writing resonate with younger audiences. This is why Lou Holtz only speaks in Evanescence lyrics.)
20. School from a non AQ conference. Again, this is mostly an exercise in antagonizing fans, so just find a Mountain West or MAC team that could plausibly win eight games and put them here. Then say something snide about the Big Ten.
21. Scandium. Don't think it belongs here? Check your atomic numbers, clown.
22. Team with a coach on the hot seat. If you're not sure who qualifies, just pick any coach that hasn't won a conference title in the last two years and say he's on the hot seat.
23. Almost there! Pick any team, say this is a make-or-break season for the program, and move forward.
24. Duke.
25. Team that barely made a bowl last year. "Trial by fire has made them stronger" sounds way more optimistic than "holy shit they needed a punt return touchdown to beat Sweet Valley High."
Congratulations! You have now completed a preseason ranking. Enjoy the praise and adulation that will soon be filling your inbox.Filing a patent for a new energy storage and generation system, it seems Apple may be looking at new ways to add clean energy to its manufacturing processes.
First discovered by Apple Insider, an application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in June 2011 details an alternative wind turbine design that generates electricity from converting heat energy instead of rotational energy made possible by the movement of blades.
In standard turbine design, wind energy is used to turn the unit's rotors, which then converts this type of power into electricity through powering machinery or sending it to generators. However, Apple's patent design takes this one step further, and accounts for a problem faced by any system reliant on wind energy -- the natural element's variability.
Described as the "on-demand generation of electricity from stored wind energy," the patent application details a mechanism in which rotational energy created by the turbine is used to generate heat, which is then stored in "low heat capacity" fluid. This energy is then transferred into a working fluid which creates steam, which replaces electricity in order to power mechanisms or generators.
As the energy is being stored, heat can be selectively transferred whenever there is a lull in wind activity, keeping machinery going and reducing reliance on back-up power systems.
Apple describes the benefits of the system within the patent application, where the firm says such designs could reduce costs related to wind variation:
The variable nature of wind may interfere with on-demand generation of electricity from wind energy. For example, fluctuations in wind speed may hamper the adequate production of electricity from wind power during periods of peak demand, or conversely, may produce excess electrical power during periods of low demand. In turn, such variability may limit the ability to incorporate large amounts of wind power into a grid system.
How might this kind of technology relate to iPad and iPhone maker Apple? The patent application is not a huge indicator, but as the firm is using clean energy in North Carolina -- where it plans to build a 20-megawatt solar farm covering 100 acres -- it may be that the company is keen to add additional, renewable energy sources to power its manufacturing chain.
Image credit: Apple Insider
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This post was originally published on Smartplanet.comSEOUL, April 2 (Yonhap) — More than a hundred executives at Samsung Electronics Co., South Korea’s No. 1 tech giant, left their posts between late last year and the first quarter of 2015, data showed Thursday, in what seems to be an aftereffect of the lackluster performance in 2014 smartphone sales.
The number of unregistered executives at the world’s top smartphone and memory chipmaker had stood at 1,219 in the quarter ending in September 2014, according to the company’s half-yearly report filed with the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the country’s financial regulator.
The figure, however, fell by 177 to 1,042 as of the end of last month, of which 25 percent, representing 44 C-suite members, were from the firms’ mainstay mobile division, Samsung’s latest business report submitted to the FSS showed.
The number of executives who resigned over the cited period is 70 percent higher compared with a year earlier. In the fourth quarter of 2013, a total of 104 executives vacated their posts.
Market watchers said the weaker earnings, led by a sluggish handset business, may be the cause of a drop in the number of executives at the global smartphone maker.
Samsung Electronics suffered the worst earnings in three years in 2014, with its annual net profit tumbling 23.2 percent to 23.4 trillion won (US$21.5 billion) from a year earlier.
In the fourth quarter of last year alone, the profit from the mobile business, Samsung’s cash cow, plunged 64 percent on-year to 1.96 trillion won (US$1.8 billion), as it lost its edge to archrival Apple Inc. in the premium market and up-and-up Chinese players like Xiaomi Inc. in the low-end segment.
Samsung has stepped up efforts to recoup dominance in the global smartphone battle, setting out aggressive marketing at home and abroad for the new Galaxy S6 lineup set to hit shelves April 10.
Local analysts predict Samsung will post a slight on-quarter growth in its first-quarter earnings. Samsung is expected to release the guidance for the January-March result next week.December 19, 2018
I bring to you the first of a series of patches for Interstellaria. This initial patch will allow for the basic modding and editing of the game, as well as several critical bug fixes.I set out updating interstellaria for the first year and a half after release. Sadly, the games faults were too much and it didn't perform very well. I was not generating income to continue work in game development, and I had to instead focus on my full time job. I had failed, and was considering giving up. I put together some little small demos here and there to try to get back into game development, but ultimately was not hopeful in securing funds.Surprisingly I had been contacted a few times the last update here and there by people who did love the game. I appreciated that despite its many flaws, they enjoyed the experience. Its because of you I began working on a new project (which is still very early in development) as well as "slow boating" updates on Interstellaria, much of which involved overhauls of deep outdated systems. This patch, and future patches, are for those fans who appreciate the universe I built and honestly inspired me to try again.NEW-MODDING - all items, ships, races, weapons, traits, and enemies are editable via XML. You can either directly edit them, or place an edited copy in the "mod" folder and it will automatically load. placing PNG's in the mod folder will also be loaded at run time for custom graphics.-Added a popup when you try to travel, and you don't have navigation manned or engines with energy-You can now equip items, use medpacks, etc... regardless of how close you are to the ship-Crewmen harvesting resources will now automatically return to the ship when none exist-The game will give percentage update while loading a level-Updated the tutorial text-Increased the EXP gains from crew using stations-added a slight "background" to tiles to give resources, stations, etc.. a more background appearance-Added new "frame" graphics similar to orginal UI-Did more to prevent the UI from overlapping when it shouldnt-Sped up map travel-Added some Effects with the ui-The game alerts you when you pick up items during combat-Reloading option added to crewmen controls, where a crewmen will reload, and come back to where they were-Changed some of the placement of text alerts-Text alerts will now time out on their own-Adjusted/added/removed various alerts in the game-Adjusted the cost of hiring crew-Crewmen now move quicker-NPC's with no use are darkened and places in the background-Updated the way resolutions are handled in game to prevent cutting off the UI at certain resolutions. Also supports those users who are editing the resolution manually in the settings file-Removed some stat tracking features of the game-Adjusted collision-adjusted the spawn rate and speed of enemy shipsBUGS FIXED-Fixed a bug where the game generates an infinite number of items-Fixed a bug where the "dino" kill didn't register for the mission-Fixed a bug where the oloke quest didn't trigger properly-Fixed a bug where a crewmen would arrive at a resource, animate that its harvesting, but actually do nothing and be stuck-Fixed a bug where you couldn't land on asteroids-Fixed a bug where you couldn't land on abandoned stations-Fixed a bug where Equipped guns sometimes show up blank-Fixed a bug where you can click the minimap through the trade screen-Fixed a bug where the pause button was clickable through the UI-Fixed a graphical issue on sakari windows-Fixed a bug with hot keys triggering while typing in names-Fixed a bug where closing a menu also deselects your current crewmen-Fixed a bug where the "no power" text would persist-Fixed a bug where the game would crash if it can't find the correct dialogue-Fixed a bug where station icons were visible through menus-Fixed a bug where repair sounds didn't trigger, or triggered too many times-Fixed a bug where repair plates didn't work-Fixed a |
team to survival, and his presence for the 2015/16 campaign will certainly be welcome.
With power, pedigree and presence in defence, Huth and his defensive colleagues helped the team to an impressive five clean sheets from City’s final seven Premier League fixtures, and in the process underlined his undoubted quality.
As well as being a formidable opponent in his own box, Huth also carries a threat in attack, as he proved with his first goal for the Foxes against West Brom. His powerful header on 80 minutes at the Hawthorns levelled the score at 2-2 and set the stage for Jamie Vardy’s unforgettable winner.
In a career that began at Chelsea in 2002, Huth’s considerable talents have seen him secure two Premier League titles during Jose Mourinho's first spell at Stamford Bridge, as well as representing his country on 19 occasions, including during the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Huth made his Chelsea bow at the age of 17 under Claudio Ranieri, and despite initially finding his playing time limited as he battled it out with the likes of John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho for a place in the starting XI, he did enough to earn a move to Middlesbrough for a reported fee of £6 million in 2006.
During Huth’s first two seasons at the Riverside Stadium, injuries restricted his playing time, but he bounced back with some typically commanding and impressive performances in 2008/09.
Huth earned a number of Premier League admirers and his services were secured in August 2009 by Stoke, where he went on to establish himself as an important part of the team as well as being popular on the terraces.
Huth’s partnership with Stoke skipper Ryan Shawcross at the heart of the Potters’ defence has proved to be a solid foundation for success at the Britannia Stadium in recent seasons – becoming one of the most feared defensive pairings in the league.
In total Huth has almost 250 career appearances in the Premier League to his name, and now with the Foxes, he will look to re-establish himself as one of the most formidable defenders in the division.Sportal - Senaste nyheter, live streaming & tips!
Här på Sportal.se så uppdaterar vi våra besökare med de senaste sportnyhterna. Vi har under en längre tid sett till att vår sportsida delar med sig av de senaste inom fotboll, ishockey, skidor, handboll, tennis och mycket mer.
Utöver nya sportnyheter så hjälper vi dig även speltips, och live streams inför kommande stormatcher. Vårt fokus ligger på den sport som är mest uppskattad i Sverige. Därför blandar vi nyheter från våra inhemska ligor som Allsvenskan och SHL med allt större ligor som Champions League och Premier League.
Vårt mål är att du ska kunna använda vår nyhetssida som källa det senaste inom sporten värld.
Det är inte bara sportnyheter på nätet som vi uppdaterar med. Vi har även ett brinnande intresse för att jämföra, betta och streama sport. Vilken vi själva tycker skapar en bra mix av vår rapportering.
Sportnyheter idag
Vi ser till att uppdatera vår sajt med nya sportnyheter varje dag. Därför kan du enkelt se vilka nyheter som är aktulla idag. Vårt fokus ligger främst på den sport, ligor, eller turneringar som vi tror flest svenskar är ute efter att läsa.
Vi hämtar våra nyheter inom sport på många olika håll. Vi tar exempel hjälp av andra svenska, och utländska medior. Vårt mål med nyheterna är att hålla de som oberoende och opolitiska som möjligt.
Vi bladar det senaste inom sportens värld med mer djupgående repotage och listor. Dessa sportrepotage hittar du bland vår blogg som du hittar uppe i vår meny.
Live streams
Det bästa med sättet att följa sport är självklart genom att ta del av direktsändningar. Vi känner till att många på nätet hela tiden söker efter hjälp för att t.ex. streama fotboll när det bjuds på stora matcher. Därför är det något som vi gärna täcker upp. Med vår hjälp så kan du nämligen hitta live streams till den sport som du allra helst vill se live.
Det är inte bara inom fotboll som vi hjälper dig med att hitta live streams. Det finns även gott om hjälp för dig som vill streama hockey live. Det är främst bland dessa två sporter som vi uppdaterar med vart & när du kan sända matcherna som spelas.
Är det slump att vi främst håller koll på live streams inom dessa två sporter? Nja, idag så är det just dessa två sporter som är främst intressanta för svenskar att streama på nätet.
Tips & spelförslag
Det har sedan stenåldern funnits tecken på att människor använt sig av vadslagning. Varför inte testa din förmåga att förutse resultat och händelser inom sport?
På nätet finns det en lång rad bettingsidor som du kan använda för att spela på odds. Det är en möjlighet för dig att vinna pengar på de matcher du är intresserad av att spela på.
Om du vill betta på större matcher så rekommenderas du att ta hjälp av speltips online. De kan hjälpa dig att tippa på rätt lag eller resultat.
Självklart så finns det inga garantier på att de bettingtips som finns på nätet kommer ge dig en vinst. Däremot så kommer de hjälpa dig att få information och idéer på hur du ska tippa.
I vår guide med så kan du även läsa vilka bettingsidor med olika betalningsmetoder som du kan använda.
Jämförelse av bonusar
Något som blivit väldigt populärt bland de spelare som använder sig av betting på nätet. Det är att hämta oddsbonusar. Det är en form av erbjudande som delas ut till alla de spelare som är nya på en bettingsida, eller står inför en insättning.
Nästa alla spelbolag, med undantag för fåtal, erbjuder dig minst en bonus vid registrering. Detta erbjudande är främst till för att du ska få en chans att testa på deras sportsbook, utan att själv ha risken att förlora pengar.
Är du ute efter en oddsbonus på nätet så rekommenderar vi helt klart att jämföra olika erbjudanden med varandra. Det ökar chansen att du hamnar inne på en bra sida som erbjuder bra erbjudanden för din betting.
Allt detta kommer vi på Sportal.se kunna hjälpa dig med.The company developing the block across Prairie St. from the Houston Chronicle‘s downtown ex-headquarters filed a lawsuit last week over the impending demolition of the paper’s former haunt at 801 Texas Ave. Theater Square, an entity connected to Linbeck, claimed in a Wednesday night filing that the upcoming demo interferes with its plans to build a tunnel through the former newspaper building’s basement to connect its across-the-street property into the broader downtown tunnel network.
The ex-Chronicle building (actually a collection of buildings later wrapped together behind a single facade) currently sits above a tunnel segment connecting the 717 Texas Ave. building (the office building formerly known as Calpine Center) sharing a block with the Lancaster Hotel and its new parking lots) to the Chase tower (south across Texas Ave., between Milam and Travis). Theater Square’s filing alleges that news corporation Hearst agreed back in 2007 to give the company permanent access to some underground easements for the purpose of building a new tunnel segment leading to the property across Prairie (currently a surface parking lot previously slated for the International Tower project). Theater Square also claims that the easement access agreements transferred to the next owner when Hines bought up the property last year.
***
Theater Square claims in its court filings that both Hines and Hearst have violated those agreements by trying to keep it from entering the existing basement structures at various times since the sale of the building started to firm up. The group says it has nonetheless continued to apply for and obtain some of the necessary permits for the tunnel, with building plans it claims Hearst approved as recently as February 2015.
A building permit for a utility tunnel extension at 801 Texas Ave. was issued to Linbeck back on December 9th. Meanwhile, a pre-demolition sewer disconnect permit was issued for the same building earlier this month on April 8th, around the time construction barricades appeared around the property. As of April 11th, the tunnel segment between 717 Texas and the Chase Tower was planned for closure between last Monday and the end of June. Theater Square’s suit asks for a permanent injunction on demolition of the basement structures incorporated into its tunnel plans.
As for what’s coming up next for either block: the lawsuit filing says that a parking structure with ground floor retail are planned for Theater Square’s property as phase 1 of a larger development. The former Chronicle building is slated for surface parking-lot-dom for the time being.
Photo of 801 Texas Ave.: ThaChadwick
Downtown Tunnel TussleThe emergency operations center in Frisco can monitor school cameras in case of emergency with the click of mouse. (Published Monday, Feb. 25, 2013)
In view of school shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech and, of course, Newtown, Conn., a lot of parents are concerned about how safe their children are when they send them to school while administrators re-examine how they approach safety.
Meanwhile, in North Texas, the Frisco Independent School District is in its third year under the state of the art "SAFER," or Situational Awareness For Emergency Response, program.
While the Frisco ISD openly admits they don't have all the answers, the award-winning program is certainly cutting edge.
It all starts in a state-of-the-art emergency operations center in the city of Frisco. A room that loosely resembles a military operations headquarters is filled with computers and television monitors of all shapes and sizes so authorities can view streets, city buildings and of course, schools.
Authorities have the ability, in an emergency situation, to pull up any camera at any school with the click of a mouse.
"What we'd be able to gain from seeing this if kids were running out of the building, we'd know something was going on in the school -- it wasn't a planned drill, there is something going on in that school," said Shaw Eft, Battalion Chief for the Frisco Fire Department.
In 2009, the Frisco ISD, along with the police and fire departments and the districts Information Technology team, got together to figure out how to best protect their children.
"The finished product is what you see here, we have room numbers, everything is color coordinated, we have information for the fire department, which would aid in response, we know where electrical panels are, where hose connections, things of that nature," Eft said.
There is also information on chemicals in the school's science lab, so firefighters know what they're up against before they even arrive.
What makes the system even more effective is that every fire truck and police car is equipped with a mobile data computer that can access the cameras and information available at the emergency operations center.
"We can tap into the school cameras, we can see live feeds, we have still photos, and we also have cameras that cover the exterior of the schools," said Sgt. Brad Merritt, with the Frisco Police Department.
"I don't know we have everything we need; I know we have a good start. We can't stop something bad from happening, but we can control how prepared we are under those circumstances," said Gary Nye, Hunt Middle School principal. "When parents drop their kids off, they want their kids back as good of condition or better than when they left, so safety and security is our number one priority here at hunt middle school and I know throughout the district. we can't do anything else in terms of educating if the kids don't feel safe and secure and are in a structured learning environment so each day that's our number one priority."
There is no question that the SAFER program has done that for a lot of parents in Frisco.
"This system is one of the ways that they can take action and keep the kids safe that isn't controversial; it's not adding a lot of risk... This is one thing that can be done that shouldn't be controversial at all, that everyone can do to keep their kids safe," said Belinda Marshal, whose children attend Hunt Middle School."Pupils must be protected from all forms of fundamentalism," said Education Minister Jan Björklund to Dagens Nyheter.
Some Christian schools teach biology students that the world and the organisms on it were created by a supreme being. This is often presented as another valid scientific theory alongside evolution - something most scientists reject.
Religious Education will remain on the curriculum and it will still be allowed to start the school day with prayers. But in classes teachers will be expected to stick to the curriculum.
"End-of-term services in school are great," he said, and added that religious education would remain a school subject. But all elements of religious worship would have to be completely separate from class teaching.
Most independent schools in Sweden are privately owned but funded by government grants.
Björklund also said the Swedish National Agency for Education would double the number of inspections of both council-run and independent schools. He also announced a ban on anonymous financial donations to schools and said he would make it easier to close schools that were breaking the rules.
The stricter rules will be introduced in next year's education act.Specialists are combing over the rock face at the Hopewell Rocks, knocking down anything that may have become loose over the winter to ensure the ongoing safety of tourists.
After each winter, the conglomerate rock that makes up that natural wonder has several unstable patches. Before the park can open, Stephen Woodley's team rappels down the cliffs and sea stacks.
"These are rocks that are going to fall anyway," said Woodley, noting his team of eight don't change the overall erosion of the rocks.
Woodley's crew focuses on the areas where there will be high tourist traffic.
Either rappelling down the cliff face or climbing up some sea stacks, they quickly look for the areas that could harm guests.
Katrina Cook has been scaling the Hopewell Rocks for about eight years, long enough to enjoy the views while performing the precarious work.
"You have to have your wits about you and there's lots to pay attention to," she said.
Katrina Cook said the work she does is not so much digging rocks out of the formations, but rather coaxing what will fall down eventually. (Matthew Bingley/CBC)
The work Cook does is not so much digging rocks out of the wall, but rather coaxing what will fall down.
Some of the pieces that come tumbling down can be as big as a car, but Cook said even the small pieces can create havoc below.
"I mean even a small rock, if it hits you, is a big deal," she said.
The work is so essential to safety, that Kevin Snair, the park's interpretive services supervisor, said he wouldn't want to open without it.
"We take our safety of our guests extremely seriously," he said.
While the scalers are able to increase the safety of many locations, even they can't reach everything.
Woodley said those areas are roped off to keep people away from them.
The crew of workers either rappel down the cliff face or climb up some sea stacks in search of rocks that could eventually come loose. (Matthew Bingley/CBC)
Over his eight years working at the park, Snair said it feels like the number of areas roped off seems to grow.
But every now and then, even he is surprised by what opens back up.
Last year, one of his favourite areas was deemed safe after spending years blocked off.
"What a treat it was to go through there again," said Snair.
The park appears to be having better luck with another location this year.
New-look park
The Elephant Rock sea stack suffered a collapse in March altering its famous appearance.
While one of its two passageways has been blocked by tonnes of rubble, the other has been cleared for usage by Woodley's team.
Snair said he's relieved to know guests will be able to access the other beach safely through that passageway. "It really would have negatively impacted our guest's visit," said Snair.
"We are so thrilled to know that that is going to be able to stay open."
The Elephant Rock sea stack collapsed in March altering the park's famous appearance. (Matthew Bingley/CBC)
Knocking loose trees and rubble down may take away the immediate threat of injury, but the park can't guarantee nothing else will fall. Knocking loose trees and rubble down may take away the immediate threat of injury, but the park can't guarantee nothing else will fall.
"There's always a bit of risk," said Snair,
"You can never make the place 100 per cent safe."
Snair said it makes sense to keep your distance from the rocks, if not for safety reasons, but to properly take them in.
"They're massive, they need to seen from a bit of a distance," he said.
While a big part of the scalers' duty is ensuring the safety of the park's guests, they also do a lot of observation work.
This year, the nesting peregrine falcons have taken up residence in an old raven nest away from prying eyes.
Before Woodley's work is done, his crew will check in on the nest to see if anything has hatched.The Confederate battle flag appears on a specialty license plate in Georgia. In the wake of the shootings in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday, June 17, 2015, there are calls to remove the symbol from state capitols and license plates. (Photo11: Georgia Department of Revenue via AP)
ATLANTA — In an about face, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal announced on Tuesday that he would seek a redesign of the state-issued license plate bearing the image of the Confederate battle flag. Deal initially said he wouldn't urge changes.
Public display of the Confederate flag has come under fire in the week since nine African Americans were killed attending Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The accused shooter, Dylann Roof, 21, is linked to a manifesto that professes white supremacy.
The design on Georgia's license plate from the Sons of Confederate Veterans features the group's logo prominently up front as the Confederate battle flag covers the background. It also has the words "Sons of Confederate Veterans" where the county name is usually placed on the plates.
Deal issued a statement Tuesday saying: "Georgia has faced down this controversy before, has found solutions that brought people together instead of dividing them and has come through those debates a more united people. I know we can do that again. Georgia celebrates its diversity, its commitment to equality for all and its tolerance of all viewpoints."
Earlier Tuesday, Deal told reporters he wouldn't urge lawmakers to take any action on the plate.
Deal, who expressed no concerns about the tag after the larger flag was added in February of 2014, told reporters Tuesday that his position had not changed. He said lawmakers have the authority to eliminate specialty plates.
"I'm not going to suggest to them one way or the other what they do," Deal said.
Deal's aides soon called reporters back to the governor's office where Deal said he backed a redesign. He said that can be completed without any action from lawmakers and said his office "will move immediately in that direction."
"It's an effort to not let this become an issue in Georgia," Deal said.
Asked whether he wants the flag removed from the plate, Deal said that would be part of discussion with the Sons of Confederate Veterans organization.
"I doubt that they would agree to not have some representation of the Sons of the Confederacy," he said. "They deserve to have us discuss it with them as well as with any other parties that have an interest in it."
Representatives for the group were not immediately available.
About 3,500 Georgia plates are the Sons of Confederate Veterans specialty plates, according to the governor's statement.
In South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley has called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the State Capitol grounds. On Tuesday, South Carolina lawmakers agreed to debate the fate of the Confederate battle flag.
In Mississippi on Monday, House Speaker Philip Gunn called for the Confederate emblem to be removed from the state flag. A move.org petition to remove the emblem has more than 43,600 signatures.
Also Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, moved to have the Confederate flag banished from state license plates.
On Tuesday, major retailers Amazon, eBay and Sears joined Walmart in removing rebel-flagged items from their shelves and websites.
Contributing: Matthew Diebel, William Cummings, Gregg Zoroya and Hadley Malcolm, USA TODAY; The Associated Press.
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Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1LtIUnjThe 2017 NFL Draft is stacked with talent, notably so at the tight end position. Analysts such as Todd McShay predict multiple tight ends being selected in the first round, a rarity in the modern NFL. Given the many high-level tight ends available and Jacob Tamme’s age and injury last season, it’s likely the Falcons grab a tight end in the draft.
Let’s look at some of the top TE prospects that could possibly end up in red and black:
O.J. Howard, Alabama
The acclaimed Crimson Tide tight end that seemingly appeared out of nowhere to help Alabama defeat the Clemson Tigers in the 2015 College Football Playoff National Championship seems to be the consensus best tight end in the draft.
Howard had a fantastic senior season, raking in almost 600 yards and three touchdowns. Yet, his stats aren’t what have analysts raving, it’s his natural athleticism. Howard stands 6-foot-6 and weighs around 250 pounds, making him a big target for quarterbacks. Also, Howard uses his size well as an efficient blocker that can hold his own against pass rushers. Further, Howard has a lot of speed for a player his size. He recorded a 40-yard dash time of 4.51 at the NFL Combine, showing that he is more than just a big-bodied tight end.
Unfortunately, with Atlanta picking at No. 31 in the first round of the draft and having more pressing needs, it is almost impossible that Howard will end up with the Falcons. Many draft experts have Howard going in top 25 picks, with some even saying he could go in the top ten.
David Njoku, Miami (FL)
Njoku, a sophomore out of Miami, decided to leave school early for the NFL and it looks like it might pay off with most analysts considering him the best tight end available after Howard.
Njoku was a monster in 2016, tallying just under 700 yards and eight touchdowns. Also, he impressed experts with his frame: 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, combined with a 40-yard dash time of 4.61 seconds. Njoku used his quickness to get open down the field. If his quarterback, Brad Kaaya, threw with more accuracy and consistency, it’s not hard to envision Njoku having an even better season than he did.
Unfortunately, Njoku’s youth is a double-edged sword. He has great raw athleticism, but he still has room to develop his blocking and fine-tune other aspects of his game. For example, if Njoku could further fill out his frame and become a bigger force on the field, then he would be of an more NFL-ready prospect.
The Falcons selected Austin Hooper in 2016, and he is a similar type of tight end to Njoku. They are both great receivers with natural athleticism, but neither have notable strengths in the blocking aspect of their game. Meaning that, while talented, Njoku is an unlikely prospect for Atlanta.
Evan Engram, Ole Miss
The Rebels significantly under-performed expectations in 2016, but Engram was a bright spot in a dull season. The senior tight end was the leading receiver for Ole Miss, with over 900 yards and eight touchdowns. Engram stepped up tremendously in big games, with 120+ yards against both Florida State and Alabama. His biggest advantage is his speed, as he recorded the fastest 40-yard dash among all tight ends at 4.41 seconds.
However, Engram is significantly undersized to be an NFL tight end, as he is only 6-foot-3 and weighs just 235 pounds. This means he has yet to develop as an efficient blocker and looks to be more adequate as hybrid between wide receiver and tight end. He has potential to be like a Jimmy Graham or Julius Thomas type if he can develop into a receiving threat to compensate for his comparative lack of size.
For the same reasons as Njoku, Engram is not a likely prospect for the Falcons. They are looking for a more physical tight end that has better developed their blocking to complement Hooper in his second year.
Now that we examined the potential first- and second-rounders, let’s look at tight ends Atlanta would be more likely to pick:
Adam Shaheen, Ashland
This relatively unheard of tight end out of the relatively unheard of university in Ohio is nothing short of a beast.
Shaheen stands tall at 6-foot-7 and weighs in at just under 280 pounds. This is incredible size for his position and he can still move down the field despite his large frame, as evidenced with a 4.79 second 40-yard dash time. He abused college secondaries in his junior year, with over 850 receiving yards and 16 touchdowns.
While Shaheen would dwarf most linebackers covering him in the NFL, some question his big numbers given his competition. He played in Division II, meaning he was not exposed to the best talent in college football. This leads to the question, did he use his size to dominate rather than fundamental skills?
Regardless of concerns with Shaheen’s development, you can’t teach height. His build is ideal for an NFL blocking and red zone target tight end. Most analysts and draft experts expect him to go in the third or fourth round, right where the Falcons could potentially be looking for a tight end. Atlanta’s offensive line opened gaping holes for running backs Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman in 2016. Now imagine what they could do with a guy north of 270 pounds bowling defenders over.
Related 4 late round NFL draft targets for Falcons
Keith Towbridge, Louisville
The highly explosive Cards offense turned almost everyone on the team into stars, so why was Towbridge relatively unheard of in 2016?
Well, the senior was recovering from surgery. He did play some, gathering an unimpressive 22 yards and no touchdowns. However, looking past his stats, he has the potential to serve as a good blocking tight end due to his frame and athleticism. He stands 6-foot-4 and weighs about 260 pounds, with a mediocre 4.93 second 40-yard dash. Towbridge isn’t the fastest player or the guy with all the highlights and stats, but he has the potential to be a very effective blocker as a second or third option tight end.
Unfortunately, Towbridge does have health concerns. He’s undergone surgery twice for a foot injury that could prove a problem for the remainder of his football career. This is a concern especially because of his physical and aggressive nature of play.
While not worthy of a high pick, most consider Towbridge deserving of a place in the NFL due to his passion for the game and potential as a blocker. He will likely go very late in the draft or miss the draft entirely, making him possibly an effective contributor at a very low cost. If the Falcons have the opportunity to snag him in the seventh round or pick him up as an undrafted free agent, it might be worth the relatively low risk.
Michael Roberts, Toledo
The tight end with a rough upbringing has fought hard to prove himself throughout all of his life, and he could be one of the best options for Atlanta in the 2017 NFL Draft.
Roberts was a strong blocker and more than capable red zone target in his time playing for the Rockets, tallying an impressive 533 yards and 16 touchdowns. Standing at 6-foot-4 and weighing 270 pounds, he has an NFL-ready build to be a capable blocker.
While Roberts notably exceeded at run-blocking from the right side of the line his senior year, there are still other aspects he can fine tune, such as blocking in space and a few drops. Still, he is a solid tight end and could be valuable as both a receiver and a blocker.
Roberts should be available in the third or fourth round, and given his strengths and high potential, he would be a great selection for the Falcons.I am working on a customer’s system where the requirement is to store a lot of timeseries data from different sensors.
For performance reasons we are going to use SSD, and therefore there is a list of requirements for the architecture:
Provide high insertion rate
Provide a good compression rate to store more data on expensive SSDs
Engine should be SSD friendly (less writes per timeperiod to help with SSD wear)
Provide a reasonable response time (within ~50 ms) on SELECT queries on hot recently inserted data
Looking on these requirements I actually think that TokuDB might be a good fit for this task.
There are several aspects to consider. This time I want to compare TokuDB vs InnoDB on an initial load time and space consumption.
Let’s assume the schema is following
CREATE TABLE `sensordata` ( `ts` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', `sensor_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL, `data1` double NOT NULL, `data2` double NOT NULL, `data3` double NOT NULL, `data4` double NOT NULL, `data6` double NOT NULL, `cnt` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`sensor_id`,`ts`) ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 CREATE TABLE ` sensordata ` ( ` ts ` int ( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', ` sensor_id ` int ( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL, ` data1 ` double NOT NULL, ` data2 ` double NOT NULL, ` data3 ` double NOT NULL, ` data4 ` double NOT NULL, ` data6 ` double NOT NULL, ` cnt ` int ( 10 ) unsigned NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY ( ` sensor_id `, ` ts ` ) )
where sensor_id is in a range from 1 to about 1000 and ts is monotonically increasing timestamp.
This schema exploits both TokuDB and InnoDB clustering primary key, and all inserts are “almost” sequential, which guarantee that all inserts will not require disk access and work with data in memory.
The same for SELECTS – select queries on the most recent time periods will be executed only by a memory access.
I am doing this research on the Dell PowerEdge R420 box with 48GB of memory (40GB for InnoDB buffer pool size, and default memory allocation for TokuDB, which is 24GB for tokudb cache). The storage is a very fast PCI-e Flash card.
The test export CSV file, suitable for LOAD DATA INFILE is 40GB in size and contains over 1 bln records (1.238.201.948 exactly)
MySQL Versions:
For InnoDB tests I used Percona Server 5.6-RC2
For TokuDB tests I used mariadb-5.5.30-tokudb-7.0.4 from Tokutek website
So, first, let’s load data into InnoDB, again, I am using LOAD DATA INFILE statement
InnoDB, no compression. Load time is 1 hour 26 min 25.77 sec, final table size is 90GB
, final table size is InnoDB, 8K compression. Load time 3 hours 26 min 17.06 sec, the table size is 45GB
, the table size is InnoDB, 4K compression. Load time 17 hours 23 min 43.48 sec, the table size is 26GB
Now for TokuDB:
TokuDB, default compression. Load time 33 min 1.18 sec, the table size on disk is 10GB
, the table size on disk is TokuDB, tokudb_small table format. Load time 37 min 2.34 sec, the table size is 4.6GB
So TokuDB is the obvious leader in both load time and compression. Of course just these are not enough, and now we need to see the performance of further INSERTs and SELECTs queries. This is what I am running right now and will post the results when I have them.TORONTO — Premier Kathleen Wynne promises her government will co-operate with an investigation by Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner into the deletion of computer hard drives by executives with Toronto’s Pan Am Games.
Commissioner Brian Beamish announced he would open an investigation after the province’s auditor general said Pan Am executives — including CEO Saad Rafi — had “disposed of” nine of 12 computer hard drives her office had requested.
“My office will be investigating to determine whether TO2015 followed appropriate record keeping and record retention practices,” Beamish said in a statement. “The investigation report will be made public when it is completed.”
Beamish declined to do interviews until his report is made public.
Wynne said Friday that the Toronto Pan Am organizing committee had leased the computers and worked with Archives Ontario to make sure they followed the proper procedure to transfer all the files to a storage cloud.
“We will work with the information and privacy commissioner, having to the best of our knowledge followed all of the requirements in terms of retaining that information in the cloud,” she said.
“The auditor general has made it clear that there was no indication of any wrongdoing.”
The Progressive Conservatives complained to the privacy watchdog, saying they were shocked and disturbed to learn computer hard drives for top brass with the last summer’s Pan Am Games had gone missing.
“As I’m sure you can appreciate, without the original hard drives there is no way to determine if all of those records were actually transferred,” wrote PC house leader Steve Clark.
The New Democrats asked the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate the “potential obstruction” of the auditor general and the “potential commission of mischief” in relation to the destroyed hard drives.
The NDP said it’s obvious the Liberals failed to learn their lesson when two top aides of Dalton McGuinty were charged with mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system to commit mischief after hard drives in the former premier’s office were wiped clean.
“The Liberal government does not get the benefit of the doubt on the wiping of hard drives,” New Democrat Paul Miller told the legislature.
“Apparently they’re back at their old bad habits.”
The Tories said the Liberals’ “shameful history of using the shredder and delete key to destroy public documents” is well known.
“Destroying hard drives before the auditor general sees what’s on them is evidence again of their outright contempt for transparency,” said Clark.
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk concluded that Toronto’s Pan Am and Parapan Am Games came in $342 million over budget.
Deputy premier Deb Matthews said Rafi should not be asked to step down from his new job as CEO of the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan Administration because of the investigation by the information and privacy commissioner.
“Absolutely not,” Matthew said Friday. “Saad Rafi is one of our great assets. I know him well because he was my deputy in Health (Ministry), went on to run a terrific set of Games, and is a tremendous asset to our ORPP.”This article is about Wolf's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. For the character in other contexts, see Wolf O'Donnell.
Wolf (ウルフ, Wolf) is an unlockable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. He was confirmed on the Smash Dojo website on March 31st, 2008. His is voiced by Mahito Ōba in the Japanese version, and Jay Ward in the English version.
Wolf is currently ranked 14th on the current tier list at the middle of the high-mid tier. Wolf possesses tremendous mobility, with among the best air speed, and high, fast jumps. Wolf additionally possesses great air to ground transitioning, as he possesses fast falling speed, and aerials that either have low landing lag or can be auto-cancelled in a short hop. Wolf in general has fast attacks with disproportionally far reach (his back aerial being especially notorious in this regard), which when combined with the aforementioned mobility and an effective DACUS, results in effective approaching capabilities. Wolf also has an effective transcendent projectile in his Blaster, a very quick Reflector with both intangibility and hitboxes, an all-purpose throw in his down throw, well rounded power throughout his moveset, and rather strong comboing capabilities.
Wolf has two major weaknesses, however: his extreme vulnerability to chain throws and a very poor recovery. Because of Wolf's combination of heavy weight, fast falling speed and acceleration, four characters can chain throw him to his doom, and others can perform chain throws that result in significant damage. Wolf additionally possesses a recovery that is hard to rely on. Wolf is heavily susceptible to gimps, and has a particular vulnerability to meteor smashes, as Wolf suffers a 60 frame delay when meteor cancelling, over twice as much as most other characters (even low knockback meteor smashes can send Wolf down too far to recover). His two recovery moves both have poor edge sweet spots and do not move Wolf a very far way, which forces Wolf to rely moreso on his jumps to get back to the stage. Another problem for Wolf is his atrocious vertical momentum cancelling, which causes Wolf to have a vertical endurance potential that is significantly worse than what is typical of characters with |
E contact to the same effect.
So, we will see if they restore services this weekend or early next week. I personally enjoy listening to REE’s services in English and French. I especially love their music, when they play it.
If you’re an REE fan, I suggest you contact them ASAP (ree@rtve.es) and show your support. Though services are being re-established, shortwave broadcasts may be on the chopping block again in the near future.
RelatedIf it's the $1.99 price that has been preventing you from being properly patriotic then hold back no more - until Christmas you can download the PatroitApp for free.
The application simplifies reporting suspicious activity, instantly sending photograph-supported e-mails to federal bodies who need to know whether your neighbour is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction or just enriching uranium on the side: it's your patriotic duty to report anything you don't like the look of.
It's hard to hate anything which says "Spin to choose threat level
The application was launched on September 11, but it seems Americans just aren't patriotic enough to shell out a couple of dollars for the sake of world security, and despite being available in various other territories (including the UK) foreign nationals have also proved reluctant to cough up for the facility to easily report on their comrades, despite the stirring music (if the office allows it then do crank up the volume, but try to resist the urge to stand up and salute).
So until the end of the month the iPhone app is available for free, after which those wanting to report on suspected Eurasian agents will have to fall back on e-mail, the telephone or pony up the $2 price of the app. ®Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during the Road to Majority conference on Friday in Washington, D.C. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump headlined the Road to Majority conference, the first big Republican event since he locked up the party’s nomination. Jointly organized by the Faith and Freedom Coalition (Ralph Reed’s successor to the Christian Coalition) and Concerned Women for America, the Road to Majority was meant to excite social conservatives for the upcoming election. It featured a lineup of big Republican names—Sen. Mitch McConnell, Carly Fiorina—and Christian-right activists, several of whom had previously worked to thwart Trump and who now had to fire up an audience for their perpetually off-message orange sybarite of a candidate. It was a degrading spectacle; I almost felt bad for them.
Reed made a theological case for low expectations. “Unlike a lot of our friends on the other side, we’re not looking for a political messiah, because we already have a messiah,” he said. “We understand that perfection is not the measure that should be applied. … Because in all of recorded history there has only been one perfect person, and he wasn’t a candidate, and he wasn’t a political figure. His name was Jesus Christ.”
Others avoided talking about Trump at all. Speaking before Trump, Fiorina denounced Hillary Clinton—“Mrs. Clinton, newsflash, I’m a feminist and I’m not voting for you”—but didn’t once mention the Republican candidate. She even seemed to subtly attack Trump and the Republicans who’d endorsed him. “How we win matters,” she said. “Our faith tells us that victory at all costs is no victory at all. Our faith tells us that the ends do not justify every means. It’s important for us to remember, as we wage this battle for the future of our nation, who are we. What do we stand for.” She also cited George Washington’s warnings about political parties engendering blind factionalism and referenced a friendly conversation she’d had with Rosie O’Donnell, one of Trump’s many nemeses. It was a bravura display of political passive-aggression.
Trump was supposed to speak right after, but he was late. To kill time, organizers repeated a trailer for Dinesh D’Souza’s forthcoming apocalyptic fantasia, Hillary’s America. They’d already shown it a few hours earlier; its farcical bombast, aimed at those who find Michael Bay films too restrained and artful, would have been a perfect introduction for the Republican nominee. But Trump still wasn’t there when the trailer had ended so Reed returned to the podium and filibustered about trans people in bathrooms, the Declaration of Independence, and learning as a child about the bravery of Cubans who fled Fidel Castro’s tyranny. Finally, he ran out of things to say and ducked offstage, saying, “Let me find out where Mr. Trump is.” A few minutes later, Trump arrived.
He took a sheaf of notes out of his jacket pocket and seemed to stick closely to them. His speech was a series of disconnected talking points; you could have cut up the sentences and rearranged them at random, and it wouldn’t have been any more or less coherent. Much of it was a characteristic appeal to white Christian identity politics. “We will restore respect for people of faith who dutifully raise their children, follow our laws and rules, and we have to really take care of them,” he said. Then, a few minutes later, “We will respect and defend Christian Americans. Christian Americans.”
His speech was interrupted four times by women, including Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, who stood up shouting, “Stop Trump! Stop hate! Refugees are welcome here!” before being dragged away by security. A few in the crowd tried to start a chant of “Trump! Trump!” but it soon petered out. Then someone started shouting “USA! USA!” and many more joined in.
Which isn’t to say the audience wasn’t with Trump; there were plenty of applause lines. “I’m challenging Hillary Clinton today to replace her support for increased refugee admissions, we have to do it, for a new jobs program for our inner cities,” said Trump. “We have to take care of the people that are here.” The attendees loved it. Leave aside, for a moment, the foolish idea that admitting refugees and investing in jobs is a binary choice. The spectacle of self-proclaimed Christian conservatives cheering a foul-mouthed ex-casino owner for his pledge to turn away refugees tells you pretty much everything you need to know about what the religious right has become—or maybe what it always was.The Celtics came away from Markelle Fultz’ two days in town with a greater knowledge of the 6-foot-4 guard’s game.
“I learned that his scoring average is really good against a chair,” president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said yesterday. “Good shooting percentages against a chair. High efficiency.”
Turning a tad more serious, Ainge added, “I would just say that we all got to know him a little better, just like we do with every draft pick we bring in.”
At present, it appears the University of Washington product is the leader in the clubhouse to be the No. 1 overall selection in the June 22 draft. But, of course, it’s possible the Celtics might not be holding the pick by that date.
Ainge certainly will be fielding offers for the right to choose first and for other scenarios, as well. Even if the Celts keep the pick, Ainge has acknowledged the roster doesn’t have great balance, so there are moves that need to be made.
“I’ve gotten phone calls from other teams,” Ainge said, “but nothing that I’m tempted by.”
With everything in play for a team that still is a good distance from the clubs competing now for the NBA championship, it is possible the C’s could trade down in this coming first round. That’s why Ainge still is trying hard to get a closer look at some of the other players who figure to be among those worthy of being taken in the first four or five selections.
“I’m trying to get people in for workouts,” he said. “They’re not easy. They don’t usually care too much about my schedule, so trying to schedule workouts is a challenge, and we’re still working on those daily.”
The itinerary at the team’s practice facility in Waltham could include a return visit by Fultz.
“I don’t know if it’s necessary, but we may bring him back in for a workout again,” Ainge said.
As for why they’d need to see Fultz again, Ainge said, “Because we’re limited on time with how long we can have these guys. So we may or may not bring him back again. We’re still talking that through. But I still have other players to see, and I’m headed back to the West Coast to watch some more workouts.”
A report from Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer said Fultz will not be working out for clubs other than the Celtics, but Ainge said, “They did not say that to me.”
UCLA guard Lonzo Ball still has not agreed to a private session with the Celts.
“Nope,” Ainge said. “Not as of yet, no.”
As for the report that the Lakers — Ball’s desired destination — might go in a different direction with the No. 2 overall pick, Ainge said, “I’ve read the same things you’ve probably read. I have no idea what the truth is. I’m not worried about it. I’ve got my own problems to worry about.”
It’s clear from a number of sources the Celtics would have no worry about taking Fultz with the top pick and developing him. His visit this week has seemed to be more a matter of taking a physical to check for any issues and spending time getting to know him.
On Monday night, that meant Ainge and Fultz dining at b.good.
“I had Chipotle for lunch, or I would have taken him there,” Ainge said.
The pair decided against a more formal dining experience in the city.
“Heavens no,” Ainge said. “We were tired, and both of us wanted to get home and go to sleep. He had a busy day, and so did I.”
There are, no doubt, more busy days to come for both.Earlier this week, Apple released the first public betas of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, and, knowing that would be the case, I cautioned MacStories readers against leaving negative reviews on the App Store for third-party apps that developers can't update with new features and fixes yet.
It's worth pointing out that, at this stage, third-party apps from the App Store can't be updated to take advantage of the new features in iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, which could limit the potential benefit of trying a public beta for some users. On iPad, for instance, only Apple's pre-installed apps can use the new multitasking features in iOS 9. For this reason, users interested in installing the public betas should also keep in mind that developers can't submit apps and updates with iOS 9 and El Capitan features to the App Store – therefore, it'd be best not to leave negative reviews for features missing in apps that can't be updated to take advantage of them yet.
Unfortunately, since yesterday I've already seen tweets from the developers of two excellent iOS apps – Screens and Day One – post screenshots of negative reviews they've received by users who are unsurprisingly running into problems when using their apps on the iOS 9 beta.
Gotta love 1-star reviews for iOS 9 Beta issues. https://t.co/6lrFn9cP65 — Paul Mayne (@paulmayne) July 11, 2015
What's even more unfortunate is that this happens annually for every single iOS and OS X developer seed, but I fear the problem will be exacerbated this year by the availability of public betas anyone can try. Therefore, this bears repeating.
Betas are, by definition, unfinished software, and unfinished software has bugs and works inconsistently. As Apple writes on their Beta Software Program website, "you can take part in shaping Apple software by test-driving pre-release versions and letting us know what you think". The focus on testing unfinished, inevitably bug-ridden software is further elaborated upon in the FAQ section of the website:
Please note that since the public beta software has not yet been commercially released by Apple, it may contain errors or inaccuracies and may not function as well as commercially released software.
As far as Apple is concerned, it doesn't get any more obvious than that. In spite of a newly minted "public" tagline, a beta is still a beta, and it cannot be expected to function as reliably and consistently as finished, non-beta software does.
For third-party developers – the folks who make the apps you use every day – the problem is compounded by the fact that their finished apps can be installed and run on an unfinished version of iOS/OS X and that users can leave regular, public App Store reviews for them. This is the core of an issue that presents itself every year.
Developers can't submit app updates with official support for iOS 9 and El Capitan yet. It's not that they're lazy, or they don't want to – they can't because the App Store can't accept software built with iOS 9 and El Capitan features yet. This happens every year: Apple typically opens submissions for apps with support for the latest versions of iOS and OS X a week or two before the release of the new OSes, but until that time third-party apps on the App Store are limited to the current, shipping version of iOS and OS X. This makes sense on Apple's part: because those operating systems aren't finished and millions of customers aren't running them yet, the App Store has to wait for the official release of the new iOS and OS X.
Again: it's not that your favorite app hasn't been updated with iOS 9 and El Capitan support because the developer is busy counting millions of dollars or has forgotten about you. Developers don't have the tools to submit app updates with iOS 9 and El Capitan improvements yet. There is nothing they can do at this point. It's not their fault.
The frustration of the tweets embedded above generates from the fact that some users are leaving negative App Store reviews pointing out problems with running apps on beta versions of iOS and OS X. Some of those users may not know this (and understandably so, it's not their responsibility to know), but App Store reviews are important to developers. It is widely believed that positive reviews affect the ranking and visibility of an app on the App Store, but, perhaps more importantly, reviews are, for customers, the primary way of knowing whether an app is worth downloading or not. An app with several 1-star reviews? Probably not worth installing for many.
In this day and age of high competition and over 1.5 million apps available, having negative reviews displayed on the app's product page is a problem for developers. But it gets worse when those negative reviews cite problems that developers can't fix yet. At that point, developers feel that it's not fair to receive a negative review for something that's completely out of their control. And when the livelihood of independent app markers is at stake, it's hard to argue aganst their sentiment of frustration and disappointment. There's nothing they can do to fix their app issues on betas of iOS and OS X and they can't respond directly to reviews on the App Store – and yet they're taking all the blame. This, every year, repeatedly for every beta of iOS and OS X, and it's possibly becoming more of a problem now that Apple has two public betas.
This is an incredibly tricky problem to solve. I like to think that customers who are leaving negative app reviews mentioning issues on beta software believe they're doing developers a favor in bringing up the problems in the first place. On the other hand, I understand how it may be too complex for Apple to block the ability to leave reviews for Apple IDs who are running betas of iOS and OS X. What if the same user also owns devices with a stable version of the OS and is legitimately interested in leaving a review?
I don't know what the solution is, but I've been observing this problem for six years now, and I'd like to offer a list of suggestions and ideas that will hopefully act as reminders for the future.
If you're running a beta version of iOS or OS X and a third-party app isn't working correctly on it yet, an App Store review is not the best way to provide feedback at this stage. Instead of leaving a review during the beta period, tap on the App Website link on the App Store, find a support email address on the product's website, and get in touch with the developer directly. This way, you're doing everybody a favor: the developer will love your private, personal feedback, and you'll likely make a concrete, non-disruptive contribution to future improvements of the app.
If you're a user, remember that beta versions of iOS and OS X are problematic, but third-party developers can't fix their app problems or add new features for the new OSes during the beta period. You are perfectly entitled to your positive or negative feeeback, but the App Store isn't the best place for it yet.
If you work at Apple and the App Store team, please consider finding ways to prevent or filter App Store reviews that mention problems encountered on the betas of iOS and OS X. Some ideas: hide reviews that mention keywords related to the latest OSes; prevent devices on beta seeds (public or not) from leaving app reviews; display a prompt to users running a beta version of iOS or OS X, informing them that developers can't act on their feedback yet.
If you work at Apple and the Beta Software Program team, please consider updating the FAQ section with a clear, readable explanation of how public betas relate to third-party apps and reviews.
For the iOS and OS X community, the summer is always an exciting time. Apple is finalizing new bits of software we'll end up using in September; developers are working on updates to their apps or even brand new apps; and, users are excited to get their hands on new software as soon as possible.
We all have to keep in mind, though, that developers get the short end of the stick here. When it comes to App Store reviews that point out issues on betas of iOS and OS X, there is nothing they can do. They can't respond to them, they can't release compatiblity and feature updates for public betas, and yet they're left dealing with the outcome of negative reviews. These are smart folks, and they know that their apps have issues on beta versions of iOS and OS X. Not only it's not useful to leave negative reviews for those problems now – it's not fair to developers.
It's in everyone's best interest to have developers focused on building great software this summer instead of having them worry about negative reviews for problems they can't fix yet.
But this – this can be fixed.The Best Funny Puns For Kids And Adults
Puns for kids are a type of wordplay joke that play on the fact that words can have more than one meaning. They're one of the oldest forms of jokes and also one of the funniest. They're also great for educating kids and expanding their vocabulary and thinking ability (clean puns, of course!).
Below is a huge selection of the best clean funny puns for kids and adults alike. You can also find more grown-up punny jokes here.
Enjoy these funny puns for kids...
What do you call an alligator in a vest?
An investigator.
This boy said he was going to hit me with the neck of a guitar.
I said, "Is that a fret?"
Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off?
He's all right now.
How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?
Ten tickles.
Whiteboards are remarkable.
My leaf blower doesn't work.
It sucks.
Insect puns bug me.
Would a cardboard belt be a waist of paper?
Never give your uncle an anteater.
I’m very good friends with 25 letters of the alphabet.
I don’t know why.
I woke up this morning and forgot which side the sun rises from.
Then it dawned on me.
Learning how to collect trash wasn't that hard, I just picked it up as I went along.
A golf ball is a golf ball no matter how you putt it.
If you need help building an ark, I Noah guy.
My dog can do magic tricks.
It's a labracadabrador.
Never marry a tennis player.
Love means nothing to them.
I tried to catch some fog.
I mist.
I knew a couple who met in a revolving door.
I think they're still going round together.
Did you know taller people sleep longer in bed?
I heard a funny joke about a boomerang earlier.
I'm sure it'll come back to me eventually.
I asked the lion in my wardrobe what he was doing there, he said it was "Narnia Business".
Pencils could be made with erasers at both ends, but what would be the point?
I was struggling to figure out how lightning works then it struck me.
Sue broke her finger today, but on the other hand she was completely fine.
I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday.
I'll tell you what, never again.
I often say to myself, "I can't believe that cloning machine worked!"
Some people say I'm addicted to somersaults but that's just how I roll.
What do you call Dracula with hayfever?
The pollen Count.
Never lie to an x-ray technician.
They can see right through you.
My friend made a joke about a TV controller.
It wasn't remotely funny.
I have a speed bump phobia but I'm slowly getting over it.
I'm working on a device that will read minds.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I saw an advert that read: "Television for sale, $1, volume stuck on full."
I thought to myself, I can't turn that down.
I thought about becoming a witch, so I tried it for a spell.
Those new corduroy pillows are making headlines.
When it comes to cosmetic surgery, a lot of people turn their noses up.
I went to a restaurant last night and had the Wookie steak.
It was a little Chewy.
Broken puppets for sale.
No strings attached.
Don't drink with ghosts, they can't handle their boos.
I asked my mom to make me a pair of pants.
She was happy to, or at least sew it seams.
If Satan ever lost his hair, there would be hell toupee.
I applied for a job at the local restaurant.
I'm still waiting.
I was going to look for my missing watch, but I could never find the time.
I've been learning braille.
I'm sure I'll master it once I get a feel for it.
If a judge loves the sound of his own voice, expect a long sentence.
I just walked past a shop that was giving out dead batteries free of charge.
When it came to getting even with my local bus company, I pulled out all the stops.
The best way to communicate with fish is to drop them a line.
I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now.
If you don't pay your exorcist, will you get repossessed?
It was an emotional wedding.
Even the cake was in tiers.
Once you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
The person who invented the door knock won the No-bell prize.
Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.
Singing in the shower is all fun and games until you get shampoo in your mouth.
Then it becomes a soap opera.
The other day someone left a piece of plasticine in my house.
I didn’t know what to make of it.
The other day a clown held the door open for me.
I thought it was a nice jester.
I'd tell you my construction joke but I'm still working on it.
There was a recent study that tried to pinpoint the effect that alcohol had on walking.
The result was staggering.
My Grandma is having trouble with her new stair lift.
It's driving her up the wall.
To the guy who invented Zero: Thanks for nothing!
Have you ever tried to eat a clock?
It's very time consuming.
What jumps from cake to cake and smells of almonds?
Tarzipan.
There was a big paddle sale at the boat store.
It was quite an oar deal.
I tried to finish the left-overs but... foiled again...
My sister was engaged to a man with a wooden leg but she broke it off.
I really wanted a camouflage shirt, but I couldn't find one.
I couldn't work out how to fasten my seatbelt.
Then it clicked.
Did you hear about those new reversible jackets?
I'm excited to see how they turn out.
I'm glad I know sign language, it's pretty handy.
My friend's bakery burned down last night.
Now his business is toast.
A man just assaulted me with milk, cream and butter.
How dairy.
When the cannibal showed up late for lunch, the others gave him the cold shoulder.
A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to hospital.
When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, the nurse said "No change yet".
How does Moses make his tea?
Hebrews it.
What do you call a sleeping bull?
A bull-dozer.
I used to have a fear of hurdles, but I got over it.
Inspecting mirrors is a job I could really see myself doing.
Someone just stole my mood ring.
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Yesterday I accidentally swallowed some food coloring.
The doctor says I'm OK, but I feel like I've dyed a little inside.
Never trust atoms, they make up everything.
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger.
Then it hit me.
I've accidentally swallowed some Scrabble tiles.
My next poop could spell disaster.
Two fish swim into a concrete wall.
One turns to the other and says, "Dam!"
Shout out to everyone wondering what the opposite of "in" is.
Did you hear about the guy who got hit in the head with a can of soda?
He was lucky it was a soft drink.
I don't trust these stairs.
They're always up to something.
Getting paid to sleep would be a dream job.
I can't believe I got fired from the calendar factory.
All I did was take a day off.
I was going to buy a book on phobias, but I was afraid it wouldn't help me.
I can hear music coming out of my printer.
I think the paper's jammin' again...
It's really difficult to find what you want on eBay.
I was searching for cigarette lighters and found over 15,000 matches.
When a clock is hungry, does it go back four seconds?
I had a neck brace fitted years ago and I've never looked back since.
What do you get if you cross a snake and a lego set?
A boa constructor.
The other week the cops arrived on the scene to find me upside down in my car.
They told me not to be so silly, and to sit properly.
My mom just found out that I've replaced her bed with a trampoline.
She hit the roof.
What do you get when you pour cement on a burglar?
A hardened criminal.
A pet store had a bird contest with no perches necessary.
People in Dubai don’t like the Flintstones, but the people in Abu Dhabi Doo.
My time machine and I go way back.
My fear of moving stairs is escalating.
Why are teddy bears never hungry?
They are always stuffed.
Wind turbines.
I'm a big fan.
A man ended up in hospital today, covered in wood and hay, with a horse inside him.
His condition is described as stable.
Regular visitors to the dentist are familiar with the drill.
I used to be a train driver but I got sidetracked.
I left my last girlfriend because she wouldn't stop counting.
I wonder what she's up to now.
You would think that, if you pulled a snail's shell off, then it would be able to move faster.
I tried it, but they seem to be more sluggish.
My sister bet me $100 that I couldn't build a working car out of spaghetti.
You should've seen her face as I drove pasta
Where do polar bears vote?
The North Poll.
I did a theatrical performance about puns.
Really it was just a play on words.
My girlfriend asked me to stop impersonating a flamingo.
I had to put my foot down.
When I finally worked out the secret to cloning, I was beside myself.
What does the dentist of the year get?
A little plaque.
How do you kill a circus?
Go for the juggler.
A book just fell on my head.
I've only got my shelf to blame.
I love Switzerland. I’m not sure what the best thing about it is, but their flag is a big plus.
My dad never loved me as a child.
I can't blame him really. I wasn't born until he was an adult.
Someone threw cheese at me.
Real mature!
What did the judge say when the skunk walked into the court room?
Odor in the court!
I've just written a song about tortillas.
Actually, it's more of a rap.
I shot someone with a starting gun the other day.
I've been charged with a race crime.
You can tell the sex of an ant by dropping it in a bowl of water.
If it sinks: girl ant If it floats: boy ant
Two silk worms had a race.
They ended up in a tie.
Two antennas met, fell in love and eventually got married.
The wedding ceremony wasn't much but the reception was excellent.
I used to be a baker, but I didn't make enough dough.
My Granddad got his tongue shot off in the war but he doesn't talk about it.
Why did the lion spit out the clown?
Because he tasted funny.
The first time I got a universal remote control I thought to myself "This changes everything."
What's purple and 5,000 miles long?
The Grape Wall of China.
Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
If I'm not mistaken, Tippex is pretty useless…
Two peanuts are walking down the street.
One is assaulted.
Why can't a bicycle stand up on its own?
Because it is two tired.
If a dog gave birth to puppies near the road would it be cited for littering?
Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
Someone ripped some pages out of both ends of my dictionary today.
It just goes from bad to worse!
Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants to the game?
In case he got a hole in one.
A new type of broom has come out.
It is sweeping the nation.
Don't trust people that do acupuncture, they're back stabbers.
People are choosing cremation over traditional burial.
It shows that they are thinking out of the box.
When you dream in color, is it a pigment of your imagination?
I haven't slept for ten days.
That would be far too long.
The Best Puns For Kids
If you found our collection of the best puns for kids and adults as funny as us, then check out this page of puns too, and also our stupid jokes for kids, as well as all the rest of our funny puns, such as these:The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was Speedied as a blatant and indisputable hoax (not to mention an embarrassment that it lasted this long). My thanks to those who caught it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 08:42, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Article may not assert notability and lacked sources for almost a decade. Not all of the sources on Google seem to be reliable. Snowager -Talk 20:40, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment If it can be reliably documented, it would likely pass WP:N, but my suspicion says this might be a hoax. A few thoughts:
Although numerous Google hits exist, many seem to be irrelevant, unreliable, or derived from this article. This page has existed since May 2005 and seems to have been included in several places (including a novel) since then, but not before.
The name seems to be inconsistent with naming and linguistic conventions in Australia. Significantly, the page List of Australian Aboriginal mythological figures includes this entry with the note that Jar'Edo Wens is an "Arrernte god of earthly knowledge and physical might." It appears, however, that the letters D, J, O, and S are not used in the Arrernte language. (See Omniglot and UCLA.)
This could be the longest-lived hoax on Wikipedia, perhaps derived from the actual English name Jared Owens with punctuation and spacing changed. Food for thought. Calamondin12 (talk) 21:35, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment My intuition is that this is a hoax, as suggested by Calamondin12. Like others here, I couldn't find legitimate sources, and it doesn't help it was apparently created by an IP whose not about Jar'Edo Wens was to add "Yohrmum" to an article about Aboriginal mythology. It would certainly be one of the more bizarrely successful Wikipedia hoaxes, though. Sideways713 (talk) 22:19, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Grahame (talk) 23:06, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment Unable to find any decent sources. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a hoax.Doctorhawkes (talk) 01:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
Unable to find any decent sources. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a hoax.Doctorhawkes (talk) 01:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC) Well, the French Wikipedia has the suspected hoax article as well. Snowager -Talk 04:14, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
04:14, 3 March 2015 (UTC) Delete I too think it's a hoax. Ten years of existence on Wikipedia is enough to confuse Internet search engines. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 07:40, 3 March 2015 (UTC)The Vatican confirmed Friday that Pope Francis has begun a draft of an encyclical focusing on the environment.
From the Associated Press:
"The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the document was still very much in its early stages and that no publication date has been set. He said it would be about ecology and more specifically the 'ecology of man.'"
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In November, speculation began to rise regarding an environmental encyclical, when an environmental justice coalition blogged that during a meeting of environmental activists -- famously where Francis held up anti-fracking and gold-mining shirts -- the pope "mentioned that he is preparing an encyclical about nature, humans and environmental pollution."
[Brian Roewe is an NCR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter: @BrianRoewe.]Jeff Jacoby describes himself as a conservative columnist. He has written for the Boston Globe as the house broken “conservative” since the early 1990’s. According to his Wikipedia page, he is “the region’s pre-eminent spokesman for The Conservative Nation,” and a columnist who had “quickly established himself as a must-read.” Also according to Wiki, he takes a paycheck from the radical left-wing TV station WBUR, one of the many governments run NPR affiliates in New England. He’s also been on the payroll of the Progressive cable outlet CNN.
It’s fair to say Jacoby is typical of Official Conservatism™ the last two decades, which is to say he is a neocon. There used to be a time when there was a big enough distinction between Official Conservatism™ and the Trotskyites that migrated from the Left in the 70’s, but all of them are neocons now. Jacoby was gonzo for the Bush policy of invading the world – invite the world. He continues to say the Iraq War was a success and he is endlessly going on about the Czar and how Trump is a tool of Russia.
If opposition to the Soviets defined the neocons in the Cold War, opposition to Trump is what defines them now. You see that in this Jeff Jacoby column from the other day. The gist of the piece is to remind the reader of America’s past terribleness and then to tie that history of terribleness to the rise of Trump. You’re supposed to come away with the belief that voting for Trump is the same as forming a lynch mob and hanging some coolies. Just as all good thinkers look back with disgust at America’s past, future good thinkers will be revolted by Trump voters.
Current Prices on popular forms of Gold Bullion
Logically, of course, this is nonsense. It is the fallacy of the undistributed middle. There’s nothing connecting today’s voters with the lynch mobs of 150 years ago. More important, no sane person would define America of the 19th century by these rare outbursts of violence. In every age, there are examples of people acting savagely to one another. That is the human condition. What we have here is a rather sleazy attempt to slime the people of the past, and by extension the heritage of everyone alive today, in order to disparage current Americans.
The implication is that discussing immigration is off-limits because to do so risks being just as bad as those imaginary bigots that haunt our past. We can debate how much we bomb the Muslims, but we cannot have a public debate about how many foreigners we allow to settle in our country. Incinerating half a million Arabs over the last twenty years is perfectly fine, but hurting the feelings of would-be migrants from Mexico would make us worse than Hitler. It’s as if Americans don’t have a right to define what it means to be an American.
At the same time, neocons are forever prattling on about how America is not a blood and soil country. Instead, it is a propositional nation. In other words, all you have to do is sign onto the bargain for what it means to be an American and you are an American. That sounds good until they follow that with the argument that Americans don’t get a say in what it means to be an American. The proposition, according to guys like Jacoby, is that they get to use Americans as cannon fodder for waging pointless wars of choice and they also get to replace those Americans with foreigners of their choice.
You can be forgiven for thinking that guys like Jacoby really doesn’t like Americans very much. When he is not comparing us to bloodthirsty, xenophobic murderers, he’s insisting we lack the moral authority to have a say in how the country is run. That’s what passes for conservatism these days. |
3/1,758, Freestyle/Pure Flix $7.7 million, -12%, $32.5 million.
5. The Grand Budapest Hotel, 5/1,263, Fox Searchlight, $6.3 million, -26%, $33.4 million.
6. Muppets Most Wanted, 3/3,052, Disney, $6.28 million, -44%, $42.1 million.
7. Mr. Peabody & Sherman, 5/2,931, Fox/DreamWorks Animation, $5.3 million, -42%, $102.2 million.
8. Sabotage, 2/2,486, Open Road/QED International, $1.9 million, -64%, $8.8 million.
9. Need for Speed, 4/1,779, Disney/DreamWorks, $1.84 million, -57%, $40.8 million.
10. Non-Stop, 6/1,716, Universal, $1.83 million, -54%, $88.1 million.The Greek yogurt company Chobani is suing conspiracy peddler and Infowars host Alex Jones for spreading false information about the company after Jones claimed they were involved in importing migrant rapists to Twin Falls, Idaho.
According to the Idaho Statesman, the lawsuit was filed in a Twin Falls court this Monday, the same city where the company operates the largest yogurt plant in the world.
The lawsuit said Jones, his network, and InfoWars’ Twitter feed and YouTube channel repeatedly published false information linking Chobani, owner Hamdi Ulukaya and Twin Falls to a sexual assault case involving refugee children at a Twin Falls apartment complex. Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant, has drawn threats for advocating for immigrants and refugees. The company employs more than 300 refugees at its plants in Twin Falls and upstate New York.
In June of last year, Twin Falls made headlines when three refugee boys allegedly sexually assaulted a 5-year old girl at an apartment complex in the city. Naturally, right-wing websites started pushing conspiracy theories regarding the story.
Right-wing websites, including Breitbart News, fanned flames of several conspiracies, including that a group of Syrian men had attacked the girl, that a rape had occurred, that a knife was present and that city officials attempted to cover up the crime…
The conspiracies were roundly debunked by police and prosecutors, but that didn’t stop Jones from regurgitating the conspiracy theories in his program Infowars. Repeated requests from Chobani asking Jones to remove the misleading content went ignored.
“The defendants’ conduct in this matter was extreme, outrageous and warrants punitive damages,” the lawsuit said. Chobani is seeking at least $10,000 in damages, attorney fees and punitive damages.
To follow Sky Palma on Facebook, click here.Bernie Sanders wins Elizabeth Warren's praise on Wall Street reform
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington Nov. 18, 2015. (Photo: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren appears to be feeling the Bern today, even though she’s not endorsing anyone yet for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Massachusetts Democrat and progressive darling heaped praise on Sen. Bernie Sanders following a fiery speech he gave Tuesday on the need for Wall Street reform.
I'm glad @BernieSanders is out there fighting to hold big banks accountable, make our economy safer, & stop the GOP from rigging the system. — Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) January 6, 2016
Then, walking a fine line, she tweeted later in the morning that she’s glad “ALL the Dem candidates for president…are fighting for Wall St reform.”
I'm glad that ALL the Dem candidates for president – @HillaryClinton, @BernieSanders & @MartinOMalley – are fighting for Wall St reform. — Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) January 6, 2016
Wall Street reform is a signature issue for Warren, a consumer protection advocate who proposed and helped establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
"We need to level the playing field and end too big to fail," she wrote in her series of tweets.
11 big banks are still so risky that if any one started to fail, they'd need a gov bailout or risk taking down the economy – again. — Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) January 6, 2016
But the 2016 Republicans claim they'll repeal all the new financial regulations – hoping to be chosen as Wall Street's favorite candidate. — Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) January 6, 2016
On Tuesday, Sanders called for breaking up the biggest banks and reinstating the Glass-Steagall financial law that separated commercial and investment banking activities.
Sanders has co-sponsored Warren’s Glass-Steagall legislation while his rival, Hillary Clinton, has not endorsed that approach. Clinton says her plan is tougher because it addresses risk in the shadow banking sector.
Last month, Warren shared on social media Clinton’s Op-Ed article in the New York Times about her Wall Street reform proposals and wrote in a Facebook post that Clinton was right to fight back against Republicans trying to “sneak Wall Street giveaways” into a government funding bill.
Warren, who progressives urged to run for president earlier last year, is the only female Democratic senator who hasn’t endorsed Clinton.
Warren told the Boston Herald in a December interview she doesn’t know if she'll endorse.
“It’s just not time for me to do that yet,” she said.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1RaLqSADAO-Over? $31 Million Stolen From ICOs, 19 Tokens Vulnerable
153,000 ETH (and counting) has been funneled into one address from several ICOs today, harkening back to the days of Slock.it and the DAO. The $31 million USD theft raises questions for both the security and sustainability of the ICO ecosystem, and shoulders the Ethereum Foundation with another impossible position.
Also read: WageCan Bitcoin Debit Card to Suspend Service 31 July to 2 August
Parity Multisig Wallets Are the Weak Link
The vulnerability that the as yet unidentified hacker seems to be exploiting lies with Parity multisig wallets, which allows outside attackers to drain them. The three ICOs affected in the initial attack were Aeternity Blockchain, Edgeless Casino, and Swarm City.
However, “white hat” hackers were able to drain a further 16 ICOs, bringing the total vulnerable value to over $105 million at the time of writing.
Hack Has Cratered the ICO Landscape
The list of affected tokens isn’t just on the margins of ERC20 launches. Projects as large as Golem, Gnosis, and Storj were vulnerable. One of the groups attempting to mitigate the losses described it as:
“trivial to execute, so they took the necessary action to drain every vulnerable multisig they could find as quickly as possible”
While the methods used and projects affected differ from the DAO implosion, the parallels are easy to draw. Bad security practices, immature code, and blind optimism for the ecosystem made easy pickings for bad actors as soon as the pot grew big enough. The only real question remaining is if history will repeat itself in the form of a hard fork as well.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Twitter has been on fire since the initial ICO drain. Crypto and blockchain experts were prophesying doomsday for Ethereum and the ICO space alike — even as Vitalik Buterin, principal founder of Ethereum, tried to put those fires out.
Some asked if Ethereum would fork its blockchain to “undo” the hack, like it did after the DAO incident last year:
1. Ecosystem less mature then
2. More at stake then as % of all ETH
3 [most impt]. Today's attacker can just move funds, so HF is impossible — Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) July 19, 2017
Whether or not a hard fork or similar central action is implemented to bail out those affected, a $105 million security oversight in the wake of painfully similar problems with the first wave of dApps, indicates some systemic problems with Ethereum.
In a community whose first response to criticism of its technologies is shouting down and labeling critics “Bitcoin maximalist” or “concern troll,” flaws tend to be exploited rather than fixed in a timely and low impact manner.
Did you, or anyone you know, lose money in this hack? Let us know.
Images via Tyson O’HamSen. Tom Udall Thomas (Tom) Stewart UdallHillicon Valley: House panel takes on election security | DOJ watchdog eyes employee texts | Senate Dems urge regulators to block T-Mobile, Sprint deal | 'Romance scams' cost victims 3M in 2018 Dems urge regulators to reject T-Mobile, Sprint merger Dems wary of killing off filibuster MORE (D-N.M.) is floating the idea of simultaneously confirming both Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's nominee, and Merrick Garland, former President Obama's nominee, to the Supreme Court.
The New Mexico Democrat told reporters Monday that he pitched moving the two judges during his meeting with Gorsuch, according to multiple reports.
"[Trump's] got a book that's widely acclaimed in terms of 'The Art of the Deal.' This is a deal that makes sense for the country," Udall said, according to CNN. "It's a deal that heals the real deep wounds we've had in this election."
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Under Udall's pitch, Trump would meet with justices considering retiring.
If he promised to nominate Garland — whom Republicans refused to give a hearing or a vote — a justice would submit their letter of resignation. The Senate would move both Gorsuch and Garland's nomination simultaneously.
Republicans will need at least eight Democratic senators to overcome the 60-vote procedural hurdle needed to get Gorsuch through the Senate.
GOP leadership has refused to rule out using the "nuclear option" if Democrats block Trump's pick, saying only that Gorsuch will be confirmed. The move would amount to a historic step that would lower the threshold for Supreme Court nominees to 51 votes.
It's unlikely GOP lawmakers would go along with Udall's pitch, given that Trump ran his presidential campaign pledging to appoint conservative judges.
Udall's proposal is similar to a 2004 episode of “The West Wing.”
In the TV show, the Democratic president needs to fill a Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of a GOP-appointed justice.
As part of a deal to preserve the balance of the court, the president and his staff convince the chief justice to retire and nominate a younger conservative judge to serve on the Supreme Court, as well as a judge considered too liberal to otherwise be confirmed, to be the chief justice.
But an aide for Udall told CNN that the Democratic senator's plan isn't ripped from the “West Wing” plot and that he's only seen a few episodes of the TV show.
Trump is expected to potentially be able to confirm up to three justices to the Supreme Court. Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE (R-Texas) has predicted that another justice could step down by the end of the year.
Udall demurred on whether his plan is realistic, telling reporters it was "just an idea."
"I threw it out to them," he told reporters, according to The Washington Examiner. "I throw it out to you."
Conservatives and the White House dismissed Udall's proposal, noting there is only one Supreme Court vacancy currently.FORT BLISS, Texas - A Fort Bliss soldier was killed during a training exercise while on post, officials said.
Fort Bliss officials said Capt. Jonathan F. Wynkoop, 27, of Maumee, Ohio, died around 5 a.m. Tuesday after a mine-resistant ambush-protected all-terrain vehicle allegedly backed over his cot while he slept.
"Capt. Jonathan Wynkoop was an impressive and personal leader; He could always be counted upon to accomplish any mission under any constraints," said Maj. Gregory M. Tomlin, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment executive officer. "Very few leaders in the U.S. Army are capable of matching his work ethic and potential. This tragedy has shorted the Army an excellent officer and a family of a husband and father."
Officials tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead by 6 a.m.
"It's an unfortunate tragedy that occurred," said Lt. Col. Lee Peters, a spokesman for Fort Bliss. "Our thoughts and concerns go out to the soldier's family as well as his unit. You spend enough time with the military, you sleep eat train with (your unit), they become part of your extended family."
Peters said this was the first death at Iron Focus.
"It's very important that any type of training that we do, whether you're doing simple training back on Fort Bliss or you're coming out with a culminating live fire event like we saw today, we always have safety as our forefront so much so that every commander develops a risk assessment, which identifies what risks are present and factors that you can do to mitigate those risks so you can lessen the actual impact of some type of injury, whether it's a soldier injury or worst-case scenario like a soldier fatality," Peters said.
Wynkoop was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, Division Artillery, 1st Armored Division. He attended Bowling Green State University in Ohio and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army on Feb. 10, 2011.
Wynkoop arrived to Fort Bliss in 2011 and was assigned to the 6th Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team as a fire support officer. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2013.
Wynkoop's awards and decorations include the Army Commendation Medal, Air Reserve Forces Meritorious Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terror Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terror Service Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Military Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Air Force Training Ribbon, NATO Medal, and the Combat Action Badge.
Wynkoop is survived by his wife and three children.
According to a news release, the two week training exercise began March 23 and ran through April 2, and was meant to help maintain combat readiness and prepare for an upcoming rotation to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.A Muslim man who was left with life-changing injuries following an acid attack in east London has demanded to know why the assault is not being treated as terrorism.
Jameel Muhktar had to be put in a coma for two days after a man threw acid at him and his cousin Resham Khan through a car window as they sat at traffic lights in Beckton
“If this was an Asian guy like myself, going up to an English couple in a car and acid attacking them, I know for a fact and the whole country knows that it would be classed as a terror attack,” he told Channel 4 News.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
“It's definitely a hate crime. I believe it's something to do with Islamophobia. Maybe he's got it in for Muslims because of the things that have been going on lately.
"I don't know if people are trying to retaliate. We're innocent people. We didn't deserve that. I've never seen this guy in my life.
“I don't have any problems with anybody. My cousin is 21, she's a business student. Why would anyone do that to us?”
The attack came on Ms Khan’s 21st birthday, leaving her with horrific injuries to her face and body needing skin grafts, and her cousin with wounds to his stomach, face, neck, ears, arms and back requiring extensive surgery.
Mr Muhktar, 37, said he initially thought the attacker, described as white British, was conducting a “practical joke” when he knocked on the car window on 21 June.
“He just squirted this clear liquid over us, which I thought was water until my cousin started to scream,” he added.
“I was watching her burning. Next thing I know, I’m burning, my seat’s burning, my trainers are burning, her skin’s peeling…within seconds.”
Mr Muhktar described how his clothes and shoes started “melting” to his body as he was left temporarily blinded, crashing the car into a barrier.
He desperately stripped off his clothes and tried to help his cousin while screaming for help from nearby houses.
Residents ran out with buckets of water and a hose in attempts to wash the acid off the victims.
“When I went to hospital, they had to jet wash me to get the acid off,” Mr Mukhtar said. “It was excruciating pain, I was screaming like a baby.”
He described the continued agony feeling like “someone’s ironing me 24/7”, adding: “I’m never going to be the same again, I’m always going to be scarred.”
“I haven’t done anything to anybody and nor has my cousin,” Mr Mukhtar added.
“We’re not terrorists. This guy tried to kill us, I’m lucky I’m alive.”
Two crowfunding pages set up for victims have so far raised a total of almost £41,000.
Campaigners sad Ms Khan, who is studying business management in Manchester, had recently returned from an exchange programme in Cyprus and was due to start a new job within days.
“Resham is usually a very confident young woman…but now she feels as though her identity has been stolen from her,” friends said.
“Although we have faith justice will be served once the criminal is caught, the scars Resham and Jameel will carry will last a lifetime.”
Ms Khan said police did not take a statement from her for several days after the attack, writing on Twitter that an ambulance “took too long” to arrive and they had to be given a lift to hospital by a passing driver.
The type of acid used in the attack has not been confirmed, but calls are mounting for restrictions to be imposed on sales.
More than 24,000 people have signed a petition for Parliament to consider new laws to combat “rife” acid attacks.
Sarmad Ismail, who started the petition, wrote: “It is about time that the law gets changed for the purchase of acid, as anyone can buy it easily from any hardware store.
“It is a very lethal and life damaging substance that should only be allowed to be purchased with a licence…the Government must do something about this.”
The attack came amid fears of rising anti-Muslim hate crime following the terror attack on worshippers in Finsbury Park and concerns over a potential “backlash” to attacks claimed by Isis in London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster.
Police are appealing for information on a man they want to speak to regarding the acid attack, which took place in Tollgate Road at around 9.15am on 21 June.
A spokesperson described John Tomlin, 24, as white, around 6ft tall, of stocky build and with short fair hair, saying he is known to frequent the Canning Town area.
“While enquiries into this attack remain ongoing, there is no current information to suggest that this attack was racially or religiously motivated,” he added.
A Facebook page appearing to belong to Tomlin, who has a partner and young daughter, contains posts using language linked to the far-right.
“A sleeping lion can only be provoked so much before it wakes up and attacks…and so will us British,” reads one post shared in 2015.
“We will stand and we will fight. We will reclaim what is rightfully ours. We will not surrender.”
Police warned of the public not to approach Tomlin, who has distinctive face tattoos of a dagger and tears, but dial 999 immediately if he is seen.
Det Supt Neil Matthews, said: “We will continue to progress these enquiries as quickly as humanly possible and fully understand concerns that they should be brought to justice quickly.”
Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s territorial support group raided a house in E16 hours after the attack but there have been no arrests.
Anyone with detail of Tomlin's whereabouts is asked to call the police non-emergency line on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowASSESSING Gary Ablett's trade value is only marginally easier than deciphering the meaning of Lost and, like the American TV series, will almost certainly spark wildly different theories.
Less than a day after finishing as Gold Coast's leading vote-getter in the Brownlow Medal, Ablett did what the entire football industry was expecting, requesting a trade to his former club Geelong.
The Suns will want their pound of flesh for the dual Brownlow medallist, who won their 2017 best and fairest award despite missing eight games through injury.
And, as Ablett's manager, Liam Pickering, and Geelong both noted on Tuesday afternoon, Gold Coast holds the whip hand given the midfielder is contracted for 2018.
There will be Darryl Kerrigans who think the Suns are dreamin' if they ask for more than a third-round pick. Such sceptics look at Ablett and see a 33-year-old whose battle-scarred body has restricted him to 49 of a possible 88 games over the past four seasons.
But this argument ignores a significant fact: Ablett has just completed the second year of a heavily front-ended three-season, $3million deal, and is understood to have only $500,000 owing to him in the final year.
From the Suns' perspective, Ablett has effectively received a generous advance for 2018 and would leave the club shortchanged if he departs.
Although the Suns can't get that money back, they will factor it in when framing their trade demands to Geelong.
Gold Coast is yet to finalise whether it will seek a draft pick, player or a combination of both.
But after the departures of star midfielders Jaeger O'Meara and Dion Prestia at the end of last season and the club's heavy investment in last year's NAB AFL Draft – it selected Ben Ainsworth, Jack Scrimshaw, Will Brodie and Jack Bowes in the first 10 selections – the Suns will likely request a player.
If they do, they will target a player who can come in and have an impact from round one next season. We would imagine the Suns would love to add Jake Kolodjashnij, who re-signed with Geelong for two years in August, alongside twin brother Kade, while Sam Menegola and Queenslander Wylie Buzza could also be of interest.
Gold Coast could even make a highly ambitious bid for Northern Territory product Brandan Parfitt.
The Cats will be reluctant to part with any of these players when they're looking to build on, rather than dismantle, the team that took them to a preliminary final this season.
If Geelong tries to get the trade done with draft picks, it will make its first pick, No.20 overall, off limits, a selection it will likely need in any trade with the Western Bulldogs for Jake Stringer.
It's unclear whether the Cats' second-round pick, No.33, would satisfy the Suns, while their third-round pick, No.51, certainly won't.
Anyone who thinks the Suns are being greedy should not reference Hawthorn's 2016 veteran fire sale as a precedent.
The Hawks drove the moves of Sam Mitchell (West Coast) and Jordan Lewis (Melbourne), keen to regenerate their list, but Ablett, not the Suns, has initiated his prospective move.
The Suns' bid to extract a fair price for Ablett will be helped by the fact they are dealing with Geelong.
The Cats are widely regarded as one of the competition's most reasonable traders, a club that is happy to work towards win-win deals.
But, with Ablett, Gold Coast and Geelong will have to work overtime to achieve a result that satisfies both parties.HAVANA — In brokering the historic thaw between Cuba and the United States, Pope Francis stepped squarely into the thorny realm of geopolitics, sending letters to the presidents of both nations, playing host to secret meetings in the halls of the Vatican and nudging the Cold War enemies to put a half-century of vitriol and mistrust behind them.
But as he arrived in Havana on Saturday, the first stop of a nine-day papal trip to Cuba and the United States, Francis faced a new challenge altogether: Having helped open up Cuba to the world, the first Latin American pope must now try to fully open up Cuba to the Roman Catholic Church. “It is an occasion to ask for more openness,” said the Rev. Jorge Cela, who oversaw the Jesuit religious order in Cuba from 2010 to 2012. “The relationship is not easy.”
Francis was greeted at the airport by President Raúl Castro and children who welcomed him with flowers.0 Fight breaks out between third grade football coaches during game in Bixby
BIXBY, Okla. - Quick facts:
A fight broke out between two coaches during a third grade football game in Bixby.
The fight was caught on video.
No one pressed charges, and no one was arrested.
A brawl between two youth football coaches overseeing the same team was caught on camera Saturday.
Russell Barber with Video My Life, LLC, shot the video and told FOX23 he could tell emotions were getting high on the other side of the field before one coach ended up putting another in a chokehold, all during a game between third graders from Union Silver and Bixby Blue.
"It's not like their team was losing, and they had a visible reason to be so frustrated," Barber said. "In fact, they were winning by double-digits and the game was almost over."
Video footage appears to show at least one child is in tears before the brawl begins. The coach who threw this first punch would later be seen comforting that crying child.
"There was total shock in the stands," Barber said. "I couldn't hear anything as to what lead up to the fight, but it's just a total shock that they would behave like that in front of little kids."
Barber said for the most part, the game was a normal youth sports event, and he respects adults on all side of the field for stepping up and taking an active role in shaping the lives of the children that participate.
"This was a small horrible incident, but overall, I have nothing but respect for anyone who steps up to be a leader in the eyes of a child," he said.
According to a Bixby Police Department call log, officers arrived to the scene shortly after the fight broke out, but neither coach wanted to press charges against the other. No arrests were made.
FOX23 News reached out to the Union Youth Football Association, but we did not receive a comment, despite multiple calls to multiple members of the board and administration.
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© 2019 Cox Media Group.Highly-rated Marseille defender Nicolas Nkoulou has said he will "try to respect his contract", but left the door open to a departure from the Stade Velodrome with even his club's nemesis, Paris Saint-Germain, a potential destination.
Nicolas Nkoulou's long-term future remains unclear
Nkoulou, 22, first caught the eye at Monaco before leaving the principality in 2011 to join Marseille, where he has developed into one of Europe's most accomplished centre-backs.
Although under contract until 2015, the Cameroon international told 1998 World Cup-winner-turned-radio-host Bixente Lizarazu on RTL that the current campaign may turn out to be his last at the club.
"I'm under contract with Marseille, I'm going to try and respect my contract. But you know that many things can happen, and there are offers that are simply too good to refuse. For me, the main thing is to finish the season well with Marseille and take them to new heights," he said.
While trying to digest the fact Nkoulou would not rule out leaving their club, Marseille fans will have been more alarmed to have heard the defender fail to exclude their hated rivals, PSG, as an option.
"They haven't come in for me, we're not going to talk about it, I'm at Marseille," he said, before adding: "The door isn't closed either though."
The defender's declaration comes a week after Mathieu Valbuena announced his contract, which also runs to 2015, would only be extended beyond that date if Marseille were to qualify for the Champions League.
Nkoulou said talks on extending his own contract were "not on the agenda" for the moment, and also emphasised the importance of Champions League football in determining the future direction of his career.
"It's very important. All footballers dream about it. For me, it's the biggest meeting of the best footballers in the world. If we have the chance to qualify, we're not going to deny ourselves," said Nkoulou, part of the Marseille side beaten by PSG last weekend to leave themselves in the third and final Champions League qualifying spot in the Ligue 1 table, just a point above the chasing pack.
"If we manage to qualify, we'll see about [extending my contract]. My agent will be there, I'll be there. We'll see all together what we'll do about it and my future."Questions have been raised concerning the Hialeah Police Departments initial findings in their investigation of a deadly crash involving one of their officers and the daughter of a newly-elected Miami-Dade School Board member. (Source: CBS4)
HIALEAH (CBS4) – CBS4 has obtained striking new surveillance tape of a deadly crash involving a Hialeah Police cruiser.
That crash took the life of the daughter of a Miami-Dade School Board member. Now, the attorney for the survivor of that crash has filed a lawsuit against the City of Hialeah.
“I was in a wheelchair for close to 5 months. Something must happen,” said that survivor, Marco Barrios, in an exclusive interview with CBS4’s Peter D’Oench. “It’s been 6 months now since this happened and something must be done about it.”
Barrios’s attorney, John Leighton, obtained the new surveillance tape from a car dealership across the street from where the incident happened at 9:42 p.m. on October 19, 2012 at the corner of East 9th Court and 49th Street in Hialeah.
Leighton told D’Oench that said the surveillance tape shows what happens just after a 2012 black Jeep driven by 23-year-old Marco Barrios was broadsided by a cruiser driven by Hialeah Police Officer Raul Somarriba.
The accident took the life of Barrios’s girlfriend, Andrea Castillo, 21, and left with Barrios with a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and head and internal injuries. Castillo was the daughter of Miami-Dade School Board member Susie Castillo.
The surveillance tape shows the sudden impact when the black SUV that Barrios is driving is struck. The tape shows the vehicle rolling over and hurtling into and damaging cars at the dealership.
“You can tell the police car hit the jeep with such impact it has pushed it half a block and rolled it over so there was a lot of speed and a lot of momentum,” said Leighton.
In his lawsuit that was filed Wednesday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Leighton shows a photograph of the mangled back SUV and says Somarriba “negligently,
Carelessly and recklessly” operated his vehicle on a road with a posted speed limit of 40 miles per hour.
“The evidence we have so far was that the police officer was driving without lights or siren on in excess of 85 miles per hour,” Leighton told D’Oench. “He may have been going in excess of 100 miles per hour on the road. It’s unacceptable and under any circumstances you don’t put the public in danger like this. This mistake cost one woman her life and cost Marco his health.”
“This lawsuit is going to open up the box and allow us to look inside to see what Hialeah’s been hiding so we can let everyone know what happened that night,” said Leighton. “We’re going to see what evidence the city has of the speed and this is evidence the city has refused to turn over so far. It’s been kept from the public.”
PThe lawsuit says Somarriba failed to operate his vehicle in a safe manner and obey traffic signals and failed to use proper headlights.
Leighton said it’s still not clear where Somarriba was heading and why he was driving so fast.
Leighton said Barrios had stopped a stop sign before his SUV was struck. He said evidence shows that both Barrios and Castillo were wearing their seatbelts.
Leighton said other images from the surveillance tape appear to show that Barrios came to a stop before proceeding on to 49th Street.
The lawsuit does not mention a dollar amount. “The amount will be up to the jury,” said Leighton.
Leighton also said under Florida’s Sovereign Immunity Law, damages in this case against a city are limited to $200,000.
“There is an exception to this if you can get the legislature to look a verdict in your favor and then pass a claims bill,” said Leighton. “But that has not happened very much. Marco Barrios may be in the hole financially for the rest of his life because of uncovered medical expenses. I took this case because this is important.”
Barrios has recently returned to his job as the manager of a Homestead restaurant and is walking again after being confined to a wheelchair for four and half months.
Police say Somarriba was also seriously injured and is still on a “no work status.” The city has not allowed him to comment about the accident.
Barrios had extensive medical bills and says he may never recover fully from all of his injuries.
He said of Somarriba, “He’s supposed to be a role model for our society. He’s supposed to be a police officer and anybody breaking the rules that badly, we deserve some justice. I never saw him at the time of the accident. So he had to be going at least 80 miles per hour or more.”The religious landscape is changing drastically in the United States as young adults abandon religion in record numbers.
A recent PRRI survey shows that growing religious differences between seniors, America’s oldest adults, and Millennials, America’s youngest adults, are dramatic.
The survey shows a significant religious difference separating seniors and Millennials, and the number of each who identify as religiously unaffiliated. Nearly one-third (31%) of Millennials identify as religiously unaffiliated, compared to roughly 1-in-10 (11%) seniors. Millennials (13%) are also about four times more likely than seniors (3%) to identify as atheist or agnostic.
One thing is certain, the religious landscape of the United States is becoming much more diverse, and that diversity is generational. The survey shows that more than 7-in-10 (71%) seniors identify as some type of white Christian, while less than 3-in-10 (28%) of Millennials identify as white Christian.
Good news for secular Americans. The tide is turning.
(H/T Friendly Atheist, Tony Jones)Liesel Pritzker Simmons, American heiress, studies a big blue vat of human fecal matter, pulled from Accra's septic tanks and the communal bathrooms that slum-dwellers in Ghana's capital pay to use. Floating plastic wrap, bottles and unidentifiable chunks of trash just add to the fetid stew. She then gestures to a nearby oceanside cliff with an ill-chosen name, Lavender Hill, where the scene is even worse, as an orange dump truck discharges sludge into the sea. This occurrence, repeated 150 times each day, creates a brown slime trail large enough to show up on Google's satellite maps, just beyond a fleet of fishermen in colorful wooden boats dropping their nets.
Through Pritzker Simmons' eyes, there's waste in this waste. "You've got someone that's here for two years, and they need to spend $30 million and so they'll do it," she says, her voice rising with irritation. "And then they get their new post." She's talking about a wastewater treatment facility a few hundred yards behind us that was designed by the Dutch, funded by the U.K. and Ghana and opened in 2000--only to shut about three years later when something went wrong. Goat and sheepherders now squat on the land surrounding the dormant facility, adding an ironic layer of animal waste around this failed solution.
But Pritzker Simmons hasn't come to Ghana to roll her eyes at well-intended folly. She's here to check in on the economic opportunities such aid debacles have created. Last year the 29-year-old and her husband, Ian Simmons, 38, invested $150,000 in Waste Enterprisers, a startup that dries out human fecal sludge and turns it into a burnable fuel. The little company, with seven employees, has recently gotten some traction and is negotiating a contract to provide 2% of French concretemaker Lafarge's fuel needs in Mombasa, Kenya.
With sanitation as the building block for public health, toilet talk has become popular among philanthropists and social entrepreneurs, led by the Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge and John Kluge Jr.'s Toilet Hack-a-Thons. Impact investing is even trendier, as billionaires like Pierre and Pam Omidyar and Jeff Skoll (see p. 54) direct hundreds of millions toward for-profit investments that carry the twin goal of public benefit, and do-gooders like Jacqueline Novogratz and Willy Foote run funds that act similarly.
What makes Pritzker Simmons' effort notable is the absolutism with which she's pursuing it. She has earmarked $50 million of her total fortune--which FORBES estimates at $600 million, stemming from the $500 million windfall inheritance she received a decade ago, along with assets from her husband, a blue-blooded heir to the family that built locks on the Erie Canal, cofounded department-store chain Montgomery Ward and helped take insurance broker Marsh & McLennan public--toward venture investments in for-profit social startups. These include companies like Karibu Homes, an affordable housing developer in Nairobi, and EcoPost, a nascent Kenyan company that turns plastic into fence posts. And while the rest of that stash is invested passively, |
putations take time to build, as do the relationships, social networks, connectivity and credibility on which those reputations rest.
Aim high, or you’ll never get there, but don’t beat yourself up too much if you have won best paper of the decade with your first forays into publication.
Robert MacIntosh is head of the School of Management and Languages at Heriot-Watt University. He has published widely on strategic development and management and sits on the council of the British Academy of Management. This piece originally appeared on Heriot Watt’s PhD support site, It’s Not You, It’s Your Data.(CNN) -- Air travelers already have to deal with unruly passengers, excessively talkative ones and many other types who make flying miserable.
But a new low may just have been reached for weary road warriors: The overwhelmingly smelly passenger.
A man on Jazz Air, a regional airline in Canada that also serves U.S. cities, was reportedly kicked off a plane earlier this month because of his strong body odor.
"People were just mumbling and staring at him," said a woman who sat near the man, according to The Guardian, a newspaper in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where the flight originated on February 6. It was a very uncomfortable situation, she added.
Another passenger described the smell as "brutal."
The man was an American visiting Prince Edward Island, the CBC reported.
Jazz Air spokeswoman Manon Stuart confirmed that a passenger was "deplaned" from the flight, but she could not provide specific information about the person involved or the reason why he was asked to leave because of privacy issues.
"As an airline, the safety and comfort of our passengers and crew are our top priorities. Therefore, any situation that compromises either their safety or comfort is taken seriously, and in such circumstances, the crew will act in the best interest of the majority of our passengers," Stuart said.
"It's important to understand that our crew members make every effort to resolve a situation before it becomes an issue. Unfortunately, in some circumstances, it may become necessary for our crew to remove passengers."
The airline, like most air carriers, doesn't have a specific policy covering body odor, Stuart said.ctvbc.ca
With news of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, B.C.'s First Nations people are recounting 300-year-old stories about the last giant wave to hit this side of the Pacific.
For generations, elders have told the legend of the tsunami of 1700, a wave so powerful it wiped out entire villages, and archaeologists have found canoes lodged in the tops on mountains.
Artist Bill Helin, a member of the Tsimshian Nation, told CTV News he heard the story of the wave from his grandmother.
According to legend, a chief was spoken to in a dream. The creator, a raven, warned him that there would be a cleansing of all who disrespected the earth.
"He was warned to move his people up the mountains, because this great wave was going to come and cleanse the coastline," Helin said.
They were told to build canoes and leave with whatever they could take.
Then, on the night of Jan. 26, "They watched and listened in the evening as this great creature from the sea churned up the ocean and pushed a wave all up and down the coast," Helin said.
They returned to find that their village had been spared.
"I think that really tied into what my ancestors felt was a message from the creator," he said.
After the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Southeast Asia, people reported that animals fled to higher ground before the wave hit.
According to B.C. legend, the First Nations people followed wildlife up the mountains, too.
"They were quite in tune with nature, quite in tune with what the animals were all about," Helin said.
When the Japanese earthquake hit last week, B.C. was spared any damage from the tsunami. But the quake of 1700 was a different story; it caused five-metre-high waves all the way on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
"We know this because the Japanese have meticulous records of damage from that earthquake," said John Clague, geologist at Simon Fraser University.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's St. John AlexanderAfrican Union peacekeepers who control one of Somalia’s most strategically important ports have allowed ships carrying charcoal to leave, violating a UN Security Council ban, a presidential order and Somalia’s own laws.
Local witnesses and security sources said at least three freighters and 10 dhows departed from Kismayo on Monday, most carrying charcoal, under the watch of Kenyan soldiers who are serving with the peacekeeping force AMISOM.
The Kenyan troops and fighters from Ras Kamboni - a local militia - seized Kismayo from al-Shabab fighters early in September.
Al-Shabab profited from the charcoal trade that environmentalists say has done enormous damage to the fragile ecosystem.
In February this year, the Security Council banned the trade to stop both the flow of money to al-Shabab and slow the environmental damage.
Local businessmen who smuggled charcoal out of Kismayo while it was under al-Shabab’s control have continued to build the stockpile, now said to be at least four million bags worth an estimated $20m.
Since the rebels left, the businessmen say there is no need to keep the ban in place and have lobbied hard to have it lifted.
But President Hassan Sheikh ordered the port to remain closed to all commercial shipping until the delicate question of who should control the port is resolved, and agreement is reached over what should happen to the charcoal.
Charcoal exports are also illegal under a 1969 statute.
Fierce row
An Amisom spokesman did not deny that charcoal exports had taken place despite the bans and presidential order, but he said the peacekeeper’s mandate “does not extend to stopping the charcoal trade”.
A statement from the peacekeeping mission said: "Although AMISOM is not mandated to scrutinise commercial activities in Somalia, the mission is cognizant of its responsibilities in contributing to restore peace, security and law and order in the country.
"In this regard, AMISOM reaffirms its commitment to support the Federal Government of Somalia in its efforts to stamp out this illegal trade in charcoal."
The fate of the charcoal has become the focus of a fierce row with the traders, the Kenyan military and a group of neighbouring states called IGAD who all advocate lifting the ban, and the fledgling government which is opposed to it.
Security sources say al-Shabab can still export charcoal from Baraawe port further to the north, so any lifting of the ban would help them as well as local businesses.
Environmentalists argue that it would also encourage continued burning of the region’s already denuded forests.
In an attempt to resolve the crisis, Sheikh appointed a nine-member taskforce to investigate the charcoal stockpile and report with recommendations within seven days.
But as the taskforce and a group of journalists were about to board a UN flight at the start of a three-day mission, officials said the trip had been cancelled due to “security concerns”.Follow us 101.7k
This is a quick and easy low-carb and paleo-friendly recipe for Valentine's Day! I used freeze-dried strawberry powder but you can use any freeze-dried berry powder you like. I think raspberry or cherry will also work great. As you will find out, a small amount of berry powder is enough to give the candies a beautiful colour and flavour.
If you don't have freeze-dried berry powder, simply use the same amount of unsweetened raw cacao powder or 1/ 2 - 1 tablespoon of cinnamon. Don't use fresh or frozen berries - they are not suitable for this recipe.
As it turns out, Kelly from The Spunky Coconut has a recipe that is similar to mine. I suggest you check it out, as she also explains how you can easily make berry powder from whole freeze-dried berries.
2 hours, 40 minutes
Hands-on 20 minutes Overall 2 - 3 hours
Nutritional values per candy
2.2 grams 1.9 grams 1.2 grams 9.1 grams 7.3 grams 96 calories
Total Carbs 4.1 grams Fiber 1.9 grams Net Carbs 2.2 grams Protein 1.2 grams Fat 9.1 grams of which Saturated 7.3 grams Calories 96 kcal Magnesium 16 mg (4% RDA) Potassium 81 mg (4% EMR)
Macronutrient ratio: Calories from carbs (9.1%), protein (5.1%), fat (85.8%)
Ingredients (makes 20 candies)
Note: Depending on the size of the molds, you will get 15-20 candies. When looking for ingredients, try to get them in their most natural form (organic, without unnecessary additives)
A fun way to learn about healthy low-carb eating! Take the Keto Diet Quiz
Print Recipe Download Recipe
Instructions
Bring a large pot of water (filled up to 1/ 4 ) to boil. Turn the heat off and place a small pot with the creamed coconut broken into pieces inside the large pot. Be careful not to get any water in the pot with the creamed coconut.
Let the coconut melt and keep stirring with a spatula until smooth.
Add the freeze-dried strawberry powder and mix in well.
The berry powder will sweeten the mixture up, so additional sweetener may not be needed. If you prefer a sweeter taste, add stevia.
Spoon the mixture into heart-shaped molds. Place in the fridge for a couple of hours or until solid.
Note: I used small candy molds and made 20 candies. It was about a teaspoon of coconut mixture per candy.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a water bath. Make sure the chocolate is melted but not too warm when covering the candies. When the coconut mixture is solid, remove from the molds.
Use wooden skewers or a toothpick to dip each candy into the chocolate mixture. Turn it round until the chocolate covers the candy completely and starts to solidify.
Place on a parchment paper and repeat for the rest of the candies. Place the candies in the fridge until the chocolate is solid. If you have any chocolate left, cover the candies with another layer of chocolate and place back in the fridge. Store at room temperature or in the fridge.
Note: If the chocolate solidifies before you cover all the candies, use the water bath to melt it. Meanwhile, place the uncovered coconut candies in the fridge. Keeping the candies cold will ensure that when you cover them in chocolate, it solidifies faster. Enjoy or place in a gift box for your loved one :-)
For more recipes for Valentine's day, have a look at my:
Happy Valentine's Day!
Do you like this recipe? Share it with your friends! Pinterest Reddit
Martina Slajerova Creator of KetoDietApp.com I changed the way I ate in 2011, when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid. I had no energy, and I found it more and more difficult to maintain a healthy weight. That’s when I decided to quit sugar, grains, and processed foods, and to start following a whole-foods-based ketogenic approach to food. More posts by Martina SlajerovaBaseball news!!! Sources tell me #Bluejays are NOT one of the teams closing in on Ervin Santana. #Jays — Mike Wilner (@Wilnerness590) February 10, 2014
Mike Wilner decided to poor some cold water over Kenny Rosenthal’s article on Fox Sports Website last night after Rosenthal had said that the Jays were one of the teams that had been talking to Ervin Santana.
Whether Wilner is right or not seems secondary at this point as the Jays are still looking into Ubaldo Jimenez and could very well have him higher on their list than Santana at this point. But like I’ve also written, the Jays could still be playing the waiting game and waiting for the market to come to them and with the Jays having both of their draft picks protected puts them in a much better position to land one or both if the bottom falls out of the market.
Buster Olney summed up my claim in this tweet he sent out this morning.
Worth repeating:The Jays are in a great position to sit back and wait for Ervin Santana or Ubaldo Jimenez to agree to a deal on team's terms — Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 10, 2014
I don’t see a lot of teams willing to give up their pick to sign a mid rotation starter unless they have an injury that happens during Spring Training and even then they still might not want to budge. As I’ve said the last little while that with AA not being active most of the winter he has saved most of his chips for now when this game of poker might just work as AA waits out the market.
As for disenfranchised Blue Jays fans that have watched the team go thru a dismal winter when it comes to moves, Wilner’s tweet last night seemed to disappoint a lot of fans who are expecting the Jays to pick up a pitcher and in their minds the free will the team and Anthopoulos won with them last season is nearing the end if he doesn’t land a pitcher to improve the ball club.
Having said all that, Once Santana signs doesn’t mean that the rest of the market will move quickly, the Tanaka signing proved that when we all thought that the signings would come fast and furious. It could be like last season when the Brewers waited till the end of Spring Training to sign Kyle Loshe.
I would expect that the Jays land one of Santana or Jimenez because of their position when it comes to their protected picks. And if it they don’t sign them it won’t be for a lack of trying either.
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Vice President Joe Biden fired up a Massachusetts crowd on Saturday for Democrat Ed Markey, who’s running in the state’s Senate special election to replace former Sen. John Kerry. Markey is facing off against Republican Gabriel Gomez, who has tried to sell himself as a “new kind of Republican”. But Joe ain’t buying.
Biden pointed out that if Gomez looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, he is a typical Tea Party Republican duck. Speaking at the Ironworkers Local 7 union hall in South Boston, the Vice President scoffed, “This guy looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. That is a new Republican. That’s a new Paul Ryan Republican. That’s a new Ted Cruz Republican.”
Not about to have a repeat of 2010, when faux, packaged “moderate Republicans” sneaked into governor’s mansions across the country only to enact extremist right wing agendas, Biden took Gomez’s rhetoric apart — going for the policy jugular. Biden called out Gomez’s opposition to ObamaCare, which is just another way of pointing out that he’s another Republican who would have voted no on a Republican idea only because a Democratic president supported it.
Since Gomez is against ObamaCare, it suggests he is another Republican puppet running so he can deploy Heritage Foundation missiles and ALEC legislation. In other words, Gomez backs the same policies as Republicans in Washington.
Biden thundered, “Why does Mitch McConnell want him so badly? Why does Newt Gingrich talk about him like he’s the second coming? Why does Marco Rubio want him so much? Look at how they vote. Look, I know Mitch McConnell pretty well, and if he wants Gabriel Gomez in his caucus, it’s not because he thinks he may ever disagree with him, it’s because he wants a Republican majority and because he knows he can count on the guy to vote on everything that he needs.”
Markey is polling above Gomez, but Democrats aren’t leaving this race to chance. The Senate is the last vestige of sanity, holding the tea crazed House in check from their extremist Republican agenda of limiting rights for women, minorities, and gays while obstructing jobs bills and handing out corporate welfare with no oversight or regulation.
Biden highlighted what Markey will bring to the Senate, noting his 36 years of legislative experience on climate change and health care, “This is going to be the most informed senator in the history of U.S. government. Ed has always been ahead of the curve his entire career.”
This race is important. Every seat in the Senate is precious if this country is to have a fighting chance. The party knows it’s a BFD. They’ve sent President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and top Democratic leaders to Massachusetts to fire up the base and get out the vote. It isn’t hyperbole to suggest that this race represents a firewall against legislative hell.
A “new kind of Republican”? Nope. Just another attempt to repackage the same kind of crazy.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Preface
If you want a less-ranty version, check out ActuallyUsingIronAgain which is more a proper tutorial. It also has a few minor updates that I haven’t bothered backporting here.
If you want something like Flask, use the pencil crate. It’s probably what you want unless you actually want a big professional full-power web application stack.
Actually using Iron: A grumpy introduction to web development in Rust
So I started playing around with the Iron web framework because writing Rust is awesome, and I wanted to write a wiki. This comes from the perspective of someone who’s done a bit of of backend web development in Django and Flask but really isn’t part of the Crazy Web Ecosystem. This chronicles my experiences as of November 2016. Note that this is a tutorial on web dev written by someone who doesn’t like web dev very much, so the tone will reflect that.
To start with, why Iron, instead of Nickel or Conduit or anything else on http://www.arewewebyet.org/? Because Iron actually has documentation. That’s literally it.
First up, you will notice that Iron has a modest amount of documentation which doesn’t actually tell you how to do anything useful, with poorly-explained terms and obvious things that obviously work until you try to do anything more complicated with them. It also tends to assume you already know what the hell is going on, since you’re obviously a web guru who lives and breathes this stuff and has spent years using the four different Javascript web frameworks that inspired this sort of architecture, instead of some random person who’s good at programming but doesn’t feel like keeping up the vast, ever-shifting and mostly-dysfunctional ecosystem of internet software. This is typical of web framework junk. Here’s how things actually work:
All you’re really doing is defining a pipeline. HTTP requests go in one side, responses come out the other. “Middleware” is a stupid and amazingly vague term for all the various stages in this pipeline. A “middleware” is a step in this pipeline. It’s actually explained moderately well in the iron::middleware module docs, so go check that out. I’ll wait for you to come back.
Back? Good. Each step in this pipeline is implemented as a trait on an object; this trait just defines a function that is called to actually execute the stage in the pipeline. There are four types: BeforeMiddleware, which takes a Request and modifies it, AfterMiddleware which takes a Response and modifies it, AroundMiddleware which takes a request and modifies it on the way in, then takes the response it produces and modifies it on the way out… and finally Handler which actually does the real work of taking a Request and turning it into a Response. Nevermind that you could easily call them RequestProcessor, ResponseProcessor, and HandlerWrapper, given that that’s what they actually do, but I digress…
Now you run your server by doing Iron::new(something).http(address).unwrap(), as per Iron’s trivial docs. What in the world is something? something is a Handler, of course, it takes a single request and spits out a single response. That’s all you need! Let’s do this:
extern crate iron; use iron::prelude::*; fn hello_world(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Hello World" ))) } fn main() { Iron::new(hello_world).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
(Don’t ask me about Response::with. We’ll get to that rant in a bit.)
Great! That was easy. Does it work? Test it:
$ curl localhost:3000 Hello World
Great.
Well this is a little weird, you might say. I was expecting something like Django or Flask, where you define routes that match a particular URL pattern, and then functions that are called when a request hits those routes. Flask gives me that instantly. How the flying fuck do you do that in Iron? Ah, but this is GREAT WEB STUFF, so obviously you can’t have anything that simple. You need more layers of indirection in the mix, young padawan!
The functionality you actually want is provided by the router crate. It’s just called router, not iron_router or anything useful like that. What if someone wants to actually make a router, as in, a device that routes packets, and is searching crates.io? Well screw those guys. What if someone’s searching crates.io for all packages related to iron? Screw those guys too, they won’t find router in the top couple dozen hits. Sure, crates.io has a tag system, but who the hell uses that? Nevermind that router a core part of the iron software that essentially anyone will want to use, even if only in the early stages of their project.
Ahem. ANYWAY! The router crate provides an object named, naturally, Router, which is a Handler. You will be forgiven for not immediately realizing this as the term Handler is mentioned nowhere in its documentation until you dig down through the trait sludge of the Router object itself. So the Router object will take a path and another Handler, suck in requests, match them based on their path, and shunt them to the appropriate Handler.
extern crate iron; extern crate router; use iron::prelude::*; use router::Router; fn get_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Got page" ))) } fn post_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Posted page" ))) } fn main() { let mut router = Router::new(); router.get( "/:page", get_page, "page" ); router.post( "/:page", post_page, "page" ); Iron::new(router).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
router.get() and router.post() match HTTP GET and POST requests, naturally; there’s also methods for PUT, DELETE, etc. There’s even a nice router!() macro that lets you build this up with… well, a macro, but since the information you put into it is exactly the same as with the function calls and it’s not actually any less verbose, you might as well just use the function calls and save yourself the trouble when you make a typo and the macro spews an incomprehensible match error. The “page” part in the route definition is just a label that lets you refer to that particular route later, if you need to. Now, does it work?
$ curl http://localhost:3000/test Got page $ curl -d dummy=data http://localhost:3000/test Posted page $ curl -i http://localhost:3000/path/that/produces/no/match HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:56:41 GMT Content-Length: 0
Great, so there’s your dispatch of requests to various functions to do stuff with them. Oh, you want to know what the matching syntax is? UNDOCUMENTED, THAT’S WHAT IT IS! Get over it punk! Anyway, you can take the source apart and figure that out, it’s not too tricky, so… problem solved, right? But wait, you want to actually use some fiddleware? Like, perhaps, the inscrutable and infathomable handlebars_iron crate to do templating, or even (gasp) the logger crate which will forever pollute the namespace for everyone who’s ever looking for logging functionality that doesn’t involve Iron? You poor bastard!
Okay, this is what the Chain struct is for. A Chain is a Handler that takes another Handler and actually does the piddleware song-and-dance, letting you define pipeline stages for your request to shuffle through until it hits the Handler you give it, and shunting the Response through the same process. So you create a Chain with the Handler that does your actual work, then use the link_before(), link_after(), etc. methods to slot diddleware objects together to build your pipeline.
Oooooh, suddenly this all makes sense. The magical implicit web crap that everyone loves because it hides the complexity and makes complicated things look simple until you try to do anything with them has been made explicit and sensible. Well, apart from the fact that a Handler or a Middleware can be either a function or an object implementing the appropriate trait. That’s honestly kind of nice, but nobody tells you that anywhere so you’re just confused by what the hell type everything actually is until you say “Oh, I bet the right skittleware trait is implemented for a function of the appropriate type” and check the docs to figure out what the type signature should be.
Let’s make a simple logger that prints our responses out on the server console.
extern crate iron; extern crate router; use iron::prelude::*; use router::Router; fn get_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Got page" ))) } fn post_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Posted page" ))) } fn response_printer(_req: & mut Request, res: Response) -> IronResult<Response> { println! ( "Response produced: {}", res); Ok (res) } fn main() { let mut router = Router::new(); router.get( "/:page", get_page, "page" ); router.post( "/:page", post_page, "page" ); let mut chain = Chain::new(router); chain.link_after(response_printer); Iron::new(chain).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
Okay, that works, great. Enough jibber-jabber. Let’s do something real. Say you want to serve some static files. WOAH HOLD THE PHONE, YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT! YOU NEED SOME MORE CRATES! staticfile specifically, which at least doesn’t conflict too egregiously with anything anyone else would want to name a crate. But the sole example the staticfile crate gives uses another crate, mount, which lets you compose handlers together much like router does. The main difference is that while router will do some sort of matching and pass the full path on to its Handler, mount will only pass a portion of the path, letting you build up your paths out of multiple relative paths. I’d really rather not use mount and KISS, but it honestly does seem the best way to use staticfile, ’cause otherwise it’s rather hard to tell router that “file foo.png should come from images/foo.png.”
extern crate iron; extern crate staticfile; extern crate mount; use iron::prelude::*; use staticfile::Static; use mount::Mount; fn main() { let mut mount = Mount::new(); mount.mount( "/", Static::new( "static/" )); Iron::new(mount).http( "127.0.0.1:3000" ).unwrap(); }
Notice that mount is a Handler, not a BeforeMiddleware, even though you could consider it to be rewriting a request and passing it on to a Handler. In fact, it’s not even an AroundMiddleware. What IS an AroundMiddleware, anyway? Let’s look at the trait’s signature:
pub trait AroundMiddleware { fn around( self, handler: Box <Handler>) -> Box <Handler>; }
So… it takes a Handler, presumably does whatever you want to wrap it in other code, and returns another Handler. But, between router and mount we’ve seen two instances where you create a Handler by passing them another Handler anyway. Am… am I misunderstanding this? Because it seems like an AroundMiddleware is literally just a Handler. It’s a Handler that gets called with another Handler when a request hits it, but that Handler is going to always be the same thing because you have no real way to swap them out at runtime, and we see tons of instances where a Handler is constructed from another Handler anyway, so, so… augh, I need to go lie down for a while.
Anyway Back on topic! Make a static/index.html file and give it a spin:
$ curl http://localhost:3000/index.html Static index page!
Well that was easy. Now let’s try integrating it into our previous router -based thingy, so we serve static files from one subdirectory and generate responses for others. Let’s see, we want something like this, right?
fn main() { let staticfiles = Static::new( "static/" ); let mut router = Router::new(); router.get( "/:page", get_page, "page" ); router.post( "/:page", post_page, "page" ); router.get( "/ourdata/*", staticfiles, "static" ); let mut chain = Chain::new(router); chain.link_after(response_printer); Iron::new(chain).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
$ curl -i http://localhost:3000/ourdata/index.html HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 19:55:02 GMT Content-Length: 0 $ curl -i http://localhost:3000/index.html HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 8 Content-Type: text/plain Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 19:54:48 GMT Got page
No? Uh… let’s try the simplest case, like this…
fn main() { let s = Static::new( "static/" ); let mut router = Router::new(); // router.get("/:page", get_page, "page"); // router.post("/:page", post_page, "page"); router.get( "/*", s, "mount" ); let mut chain = Chain::new(router); chain.link_after(response_printer); Iron::new(chain).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
$ curl -i http://localhost:3000/ HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Content-Length: 0 $ curl -i http://localhost:3000/index.html HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Length: 7 Content-Type: text/html Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 19:53:02 GMT Static index page! $ curl -i http://localhost:3000/ourdata/index.html HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 19:54:53 GMT Content-Length: 0
Okay, that lets us get our static pages, but not our generated responses. In fact, our response_printer() function isn’t getting called on the 404 errors either. What the hell is going on? This seems like a good time to talk about error handling!
Part 2: Erronous Errors
Summary of error handling: Oh gods. Handlers and shittleware return a Result, as is only sane and just in the world. But BeforeMiddleware and AfterMiddleware defines an extra method called catch(). When something returns an Err() value, instead of the pipeline aborting as try!() would do, or the next tiddleware’s normal handler method getting called with an error Response, a Response with some sort of error type is generated and passed to the next giggleware’s catch() method instead. So you have two parallel paths a Request and Response can travel down, the normal-ass one or the there-was-an-error-path. If you don’t define a catch() method, for instance if you’re using a single function as a handler/biddleware as we’ve been doing, the default catch() method does nothing but pass the error on to the next middleware’s catch() method. But you can return an Ok(()) from the catch() method which puts your train back on its normal tracks, calling the normal-ass handler methods in the subsequent hiddleware. Except, I suppose, with a Response that has an error value in it, which seems like a potentially perilous thing to do, unless you’ve changed it.
Also note that Handler doesn’t get a catch() method, so I guess it’s not allowed to recover from upstream errors… The docs justify this as saying that the Handler’s job is to create a Response, and when you return an IronError in a Result it already has an (error) response in it. Fair enough. Also AroundMiddleware doesn’t have catch() either, because it’s really just a fucking Handler.
I’m of mixed feelings about this two-track error handling system. On the one hand, this separates error handling code out into its own little special case, which it generally is. On the other hand, this is very effective at making errors magically disappear, which is pretty un-Rust-y. But it lets you completely ignore error handling in the ten lines of shiny example code on your framework’s web page that you use to show how easy it is, and that’s what web dev is all about, isn’t it? It also makes the data flow potentailly completely batshit because it turns a very simple pure-functional “take a value and return a new value” type flow into something weird and different, that might potentially involve a Request and Response getting shuffled back and forth between main-track and error-track control flow multiple times. But Iron already doesn’t use a “take a value and return a new value” type flow, we’ll get to that…
Also, if this two-parallel-error-paths type of programming sounds at all familiar, it should. Now if only Rust had something designed to do exactly that without any kind of funny business…
Okay, so. Let’s modify our response_printer() function to be a jiggleware object that implements a catch() method…
extern crate iron; extern crate router; extern crate staticfile; extern crate mount; use iron::prelude::*; use iron::middleware::AfterMiddleware; use router::Router; use staticfile::Static; use mount::Mount; fn get_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Got page" ))) } fn post_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Posted page" ))) } struct ResponsePrinter; impl AfterMiddleware for ResponsePrinter { fn after(& self, _req: & mut Request, res: Response) -> IronResult<Response> { println! ( "Response produced: {}", res); Ok (res) } fn catch(& self, request: & mut Request, err: IronError) -> IronResult<Response> { println! ( "Error happened: {}", err); println! ( "Request was: {:?}", request); Err (err) } } fn main() { let s = Static::new( "static/" ); let mut router = Router::new(); // router.get("/:page", get_page, "page"); // router.post("/:page", post_page, "page"); router.get( "/*", s, "static" ); let mut chain = Chain::new(router); let printer = ResponsePrinter; chain.link_after(printer); Iron::new(chain).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
Run it and see what gets printed out when we ask for something that produces an error:
Error happened: No such file or directory (os error 2) Request was: Request { url: Url { generic_url: "http://localhost:3000/static/index.html" } method: Get remote_addr: V6([::1]:58348) local_addr: V6([::1]:3000) }
Well that was less informative than I had hoped, honestly. Still, it proves that our understanding of error handling is correct! Though I can’t figure out any way of making Static or Router print out what it expected to get versus what it actually got, just that an error happened. You’d think that router::url_for() might be useful for that purpose, but in reality it just panics when I ask it for the “static” route in the error handler. So it’s back to trial and error.
So it looks like the mount crate is really what we want after all. Check this out:
extern crate iron; extern crate router; extern crate staticfile; extern crate mount; use iron::prelude::*; use router::Router; use staticfile::Static; use mount::Mount; fn get_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Got page" ))) } fn post_page(_: & mut Request) -> IronResult<Response> { Ok (Response::with((iron::status:: Ok, "Posted page" ))) } fn response_printer(_req: & mut Request, res: Response) -> IronResult<Response> { println! ( "Response produced: {}", res); Ok (res) } fn main() { let mut router = Router::new(); router.get( "/:page", get_page, "page" ); router.post( "/:page", post_page, "page" ); let mut mount = Mount::new(); mount.mount( "/ourdata", Static::new( "static/" )); mount.mount( "/", router); let mut chain = Chain::new(mount); chain.link_after(response_printer); Iron::new(chain).http( "localhost:3000" ).unwrap(); }
Try it out:
$ curl -i http://localhost:3000/index.html HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/plain Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:46:15 GMT Content-Length: 8 Got page $ curl -i http://localhost:3000/ourdata/index.html HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:46:19 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 7 Static index!
This does exactly what we want. Remember, mount basically matches a path, and then snips off the part it matches and hands the rest to the Handler. So if we request /ourdata/index.html then it hits mount, matches /ourdata, and the Static gets passed /index.html. It looks that up in the static/ directory and finds it. Meanwhile, if |
– this is my preferred ending. Or b) someone gets seriously injured in real life.
Also, what do you say to the people who remark that the harassers aren’t representative of their perspective and then in the next breath they say “but they do have a point…”
Elsa: What do I say to them? I tell them that until they can play nicely with others, they need to get out of my sandbox. What I mean by that is just this – If you’re going to give credence to the harassers, then just don’t. Don’t say anything. Also, everyone needs to stop playing devils advocate. I literally got threatened with having my head blown off with a gun. I won’t play the devils advocate game.
There’s a lot of rape culture going on here, the idea that if a woman speaks up about anything she’s fair game to receive death and rape threats. This really goes deeper than gaming culture. I’m not sure a lot of people are paying attention to what this all says about the broader perspective of how women are viewed in society. What do you hope will come out of GamerGate, not just for the gaming industry, but for culture in general?
Elsa: So, 1) I think culturally speaking we have to remember that women’s bodies don’t seem to be given the same amount of ownership that men have. Cultural commentary surrounds our bodies all the time, whether it’s how to handle rape, whether it’s questioning that an assault happened, whether it’s asking why a woman didn’t leave an abusive husband, or honestly not asking if a pregnant woman is ok with being touched. So, the idea of threatening a woman’s body isn’t actually that far fetched when we look at it from that perspective. I hope that people will be horrified enough by the public nature of what is happening that they start questioning their own actions.
That wraps my questions. Thanks for chatting with me and I look forward to more #blindladyvs tweets.
If you’d like to discuss Blind Lady Versus with Elsa, you can email her at elsa(at)storium(dot)com. You can support her awareness campaign on Patreon and follow it on Twitter with #blindladyvs.
Want to keep up with Her Story Arc? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter.The breakdown of the Brexit talks yesterday was the latest, but most serious, setback so far. It further eroded the prime minister’s already limited authority. It raised the stakes in Northern Ireland even higher. And it increased the risk of negotiations not progressing to the crucial next phase and a long overdue agreement on transitional arrangements.
Brexit talks: bad-tempered breakdown in sight as deadline looms | Dan Roberts Read more
Failure to make sufficient progress by next week’s European council meeting would have wide-ranging consequences for jobs, investment and the economy. It’s why I’ve said repeatedly that this is a deadline that can’t be missed. But whatever happens in the coming days, Yesterday’s failure in negotiations brought into sharp focus two underlying flaws in the government’s Brexit approach.
The first is its reliance on the DUP to sustain the government in office. I recognise that for any deal on the Irish border to last, it has to have the support of all communities in Northern Ireland. But it sets a very worrying precedent for the tough decisions to come when the prime minister is called out of a meeting at the 11th hour and told by the DUP that the deal is off. That is a terrible signal to send to the EU about the prime minister’s ability to deliver Brexit. It shows that the DUP now has a veto on any proposal she makes.
The second major flaw in Theresa May’s approach concerns the ideological red lines she set out in her 2016 Tory conference speech, and underlined in a speech at Lancaster House. Those red lines swept the customs union and single market off the table, along with any future role for the European court of justice. This was always an extreme interpretation of the referendum, and was always going to pose significant problems on any number of issues – including the future of the Northern Ireland border. The government’s contortions in recent days ought to be a warning that it is on the wrong track.
Similarly, progress would have been far easier if the prime minister had matched Labour’s clear commitment to seek transitional arrangements on the same basic terms as now – including remaining within a UK-EU customs union and the single market during this period.
This would – as I emphasised when announcing this policy in the summer –have allowed “more time to resolve the complex question of the Northern Ireland border” and to reach a “considered agreement that prevents a hard border and has support from all communities”. Instead, Theresa May has stuck to the same red lines, whatever complications this has inevitably caused.
As I made clear in the Commons today, there needs to be a UK-wide solution to Brexit. So if there is to be regulatory alignment with the EU after Brexit – and I hope there will – it has to be across the whole of the UK, not one part of it. And if the price of the prime minister’s approach is the break-up of the union and the reopening of bitter divides in Northern Ireland, then the price is too high.
Labour would start negotiations with the EU in a fundamentally different place. We have said that remaining in a UK-wide customs union with the EU is a viable option, subject to negotiations. We accept that any lasting and close partnership with the EU will require a court. We are open as to whether the benefits of the single market are best retained by negotiating a new single market relationship or by working up from a bespoke trade deal.
Theresa May must call the DUP’s bluff – this EU deal has to happen | Simon Jenkins Read more
We have a manifesto commitment to ensure there is no hard border in Northern Ireland. This would not make it easy to reach a Brexit deal that works for all nations and regions of the UK. But it would make it easier. And it would provide a basis for the strong future partnership we need with the EU.
There is still time for agreement to be reached before the EU council next week. As someone who passionately believes we need to build a strong future partnership with the EU, and to urgently secure strong transitional arrangements, I hope that is achieved. But the stakes could not be higher. There can be no more failures.
The most effective way forward would be for Theresa May to rethink her reckless red lines and to put options such as a UK customs union with the EU back on the table. If she does not, yesterday’s farcical scenes will merely be a precursor to the rest of the negotiations.
• Keir Starmer is a Labour MP and shadow secretary of state for exiting the EUIN THE Parable of the Lamp, Luke tells us, “for whosoever hath, to him shall be given,” or, in Billie Holiday's exquisite rendering, "Them that's got shall have/ Them that's not shall lose/ So the Bible says, and it still is news.” And it was news again on December 14th, when the rich got richer: the National Football League (NFL) renewed its broadcast deals with its three major broadcsat networks (NBC, CBS and Fox) through 2022. Those networks will pay an average of $3.1 billion per year, up from a current average of $1.9 billion. This comes just a couple of months after the NFL renewed its deal with ESPN at a similar rate of increase, from $1.1 billion to $1.9 billion. Add to that the $1 billion the NFL receives from DirecTV for allowing football fans access to watch any game they want each week, and the league rakes in around $6 billion a year in television revenue alone. Roger Goodell, the NFL's savvy commissioner, called the deal “great for fans”, because it keeps most games on free channels, though it does not entirely stop migration to paid cable. ESPN, usually available on basic cable, currently broadcasts one game a week, and may soon show a playoff game; the NFL Network, usually available only as part of a higher-tier cable package, shows eight games a year and may soon show more.
Of course, fans should be glad that football is not (yet) going the way of boxing, with big matches available only on pay-per-view and paid cable. But the networks have to find that money somewhere. Advertising rates will probably increase. But so will cable bills, thanks to increases in fees that networks charge cable companies and local affiliates to carry their products. This means that even households that for whatever strange reason do not watch much professional football will have to pay for those that do.
There has been some hand-wringing over rising network fees, notably from Art Modell, the former owner of the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens (I will leave any Cleveland residents among our commentariat to fill in the joke about Mr Modell expressing qualms over gouging fans). And perhaps a time will come when networks or fans will balk. But there are no signs of such resistance yet. With television audiences declining and fragmenting, football has held steady: the average network game this year has attracted 20m fans, far more than the average scripted show or news broadcast. Four of the top ten programmes during the last week of November were either NFL games or pre- or post-game shows. Advertisers will pay to reach that many viewers. It looks like fans will pay to be reached by those advertisers, even if they don't know it yet.Republic Wire, which started in 1982 in Fairfield and moved to West Chester Twp. in 1994, is a family-owned and operated manufacturer of copper building wire, according to Heather Yelton, the company’s human resources director.
“We make 11 different product groups that vary in size and color for the commercial, residential and industrial markets,” Yelton said. “We sell to electrical wholesale distributors for schools, stadiums, Walt Disney World, malls, office complexes and so much more.”
MORE: Construction company expanding its workforce in Butler County
Republic Wire is hiring 10 to 15 full time positions during an expansion that is adding 30,000-square-feet to its facility at 5525 Union Center Drive, bringing its total square footage to 400,000 square feet.
“The expansion should be complete by mid to late January,” Yelton said. “This is our fourth expansion since we relocated to West Chester. When we moved here 23 years ago, we started with 40,000 square feet. We had 17 employees at the time and we currently have 125.”
MORE: Hamilton company’s move to new corporate campus means new jobs
We asked Yelton about advancement opportunities, roadblocks to hiring and the biggest challenge it faces. Here’s what she had to say:
Q: Some job seekers are concerned about the limits of advancement within a company. To what degree can your employees advance from entry-level roles to become department managers and team leaders?
A: “Our corporate culture encourages internal moves and we post most jobs before hiring from outside of the company. Several of our department managers began as machine operators or in our shipping/receiving departments and have worked their way up to shift supervisors, department managers and even managers on our executive team. We do not look for people to fulfill our job needs but rather we look for people who want a career. We want the person who is hired to move up within the company and stay throughout their career.”
MORE: Schneider Electric hiring for new Butler County location
Q: What’s the most prevalent roadblock you encounter when it comes to hiring and what can jobseekers do to remedy that situation?
A: “The current roadblocks we are dealing with is the lack of desire to obtain a career. Many out there do not want to grow with a company, they want to come in as managers or make top dollar without working for it. At our company, we believe in hiring someone who has the desire to learn and grow with the company. Someone who has the patience to work their way up and who values what we can offer as much as what they bring to the table. We offer so much more than a job. An individual has to be willing to look at the entire package offered, not just the paycheck. My advice to jobseekers is to have an open mind when interviewing to see what all our company has to offer beyond the paycheck. Look for jobs that match your skill set and dress appropriately for an interview. Don’t forget that you are selling the skillset you can bring to help us grow.”
Q. What’s the biggest challenge facing Republic Wire and others in the industry?
A: “Skilled labor has been a problem since our nearest competitor is 300 miles away. Therefore, our training period lasts three to six months. We feel our product groups and our quality and service is better than most of our competition.”
MORE: Butler County cabinet manufacturer adding 35 full-time jobsJohn Oliver has a deep, dark secret—he may be to blame for Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, he says.
During the months leading up to the election, Oliver has made it clear that he is not a fan of the Republican presidential nominee. Oliver has devoted a great deal of screen time to Trump (or as Oliver calls him, Drumpf) targeting his brand of sarcasm and encouraging him to drop out of the race. This entire time, though, Oliver has been hiding a secret buried deep in his past.
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On Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight, Oliver finally came clean and admitted his role in Trump’s current run for the U.S. presidency. Turns out that back in 2013, Oliver filled in as a guest host on The Daily Show and rather explicitly called on Trump to run for president. “Do it,” Oliver told Trump back in 2013, adding: “I will personally write you a campaign check now.”
That’s right, Oliver encouraged the man he now calls “the human equivalent of a clear plastic bag filled with cheeseburgers and Confederate flag belt buckles” to run for president. As Oliver said, “In my defense, I have no defense for that.”
Watch the full clip below.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Nigel Farage has outlined plans to regenerate Ramsgate if elected in May, in an exclusive interview with KentOnline's sister paper, the Thanet Extra.
The Ukip leader said: “Margate has had a shot in the arm and it is good to see efforts have been made to get it back on the map.
“But Ramsgate is not - it has so much history and potential and has been ignored.
Nigel Farage
“I want to bring more interest to the area - the forgotten part of east Kent.”
The latest potential development of a construction base at the Port of Ramsgate has already been strongly opposed at a public meeting and has more than 500 signatures from dissatisfied residents since a petition was launched on Friday.
He added: “To that idea I simply say - yuck.
“An eyesore would not bring interest back to the area, I think we need to get our fishing fleet back up and running and free from the EU restrictions imposed upon them.”
"In this constituency it is a straight choice between myself and (Conservative) Craig Mackinlay. Labour are out of the running and I think I’m the real deal..." - Nigel Farage
Mr Farage has been an MEP for the South East for the past 16 years and first stood in Thanet South in 2005.
He said: “My connections here are strong and I am aware of the local issues.
He said he felt that he was “the real deal” for Thanet, adding: “In this constituency it is a straight choice between myself and (Conservative) Craig Mackinlay.
“Labour are out of the running and I think I’m the real deal.
“I can be a strong national voice for Manston Airport and if elected recovering that as an airport would be the first thing on my list.”
But of course Mr Farage’s concerns and ideas extend further afield.
The brunt of Ukip policy is to leave the European Union and adopt more stringent immigration checks.
The 50-year-old said: “We have become a province of a European state and need to govern ourselves.
“We are all different countries but the EU is forcing us all into one and as we have seen in Greece - it isn’t working is it?”
Mr Farage said that the other parties are “a little bit scared”.
Nigel Farage believes Ramsgate has potential
He said: “Mr Cameron does not want to have debates - he threw in a red herring of wanting the Green Party there.
“He lowered the bar and has succeeded in turning this debate process into a farce.
“I think he may be a little bit scared of one or two of my politely-aimed questions.
“We have received abusive comments such as ‘closet racists’ and ‘fruitcakes’ - combinations of mockery and abuse.
“We have received abusive comments such as ‘closet racists’ and ‘fruitcakes’ - combinations of mockery and abuse. But we will not fight a negative campaign with insults being thrown back and forth...” - Nigel Farage
“But we will not fight a negative campaign with insults being thrown back and forth.”
But Mr Farage did have one attack of his own to aim at the Prime Minister.
He said: “David Cameron is proud of introducing gay marriage and putting wind turbines everywhere but he has also reduced our defences to a low level with massive cuts to the army.
“It is also an absolute disgrace that there are no properly run services to injured veterans.”
Mr Farage intends to use a points system for immigration.
He said: “We have an open door to criminal gangs and we need to be positive on our immigration stance.
“Mass immigration has made people poorer because there are less jobs for British people and there is nothing we can do about the strain on our roads if we stay in the EU.
“The national wage is 14% less than ten years ago because we have a massive oversupply of labour entering.”
Talking about international relations he said that our multiculturalism had led us to welcoming a fifth column.
Mr Farage added: “I think we should be proud of our English heritage but we must admit that we have been very gutless and weak.
South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay has been hosting a Westminster Hall debate about the human cost of drug addiction. Picture: Steve Crispe
“We have pursued immigration policies from all over the world when frankly we haven’t even done security checks on the people who are coming to our countries.
“We have had 40 years of state sponsored multiculturalism where we have deliberately divided communities rather than encouraging them to integrate and get on together and the results are really very worrying.
“Everyone from Cameron to Clegg to Harriet Harman has condemned me for daring to say this - but we do have I’m sorry to say and it’s mercifully small, a fifth column living within our country that is opposed to our way of life.
“We are bound to be targeted in the media because we are threatening the establishment. There are people who say silly things and have chequered histories in other parties but you don’t hear about that as often...” - Nigel Farage
“They wish to convert us to a completely different religion and have different attitudes towards women and homosexuals and many other groups.
“We have got to stand up as we have done in the past and fight for who we are and be a little bit prouder of who we are and to recognise that we come from a Judeo-Christian culture and we should be more muscular about that.”
Many Ukip councillors have come under criticism and attracted negative publicity.
In response Mr Farage said: “We are bound to be targeted in the media because we are threatening the establishment.
“There are people who say silly things and have chequered histories in other parties but you don’t hear about that as often.”
He finished by noting the progression of his party and why he is confident of gaining the Thanet South seat.
“In 1994 I became the first Ukip candidate in a by-election where I beat the late great Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.
“But we have come a long way since then winning the European elections last year.
“We have come from nothing to Ofcom announcing the other day that Ukip is now a major political party.
“I think we have been right all along and this has connected with a lack of trust from the public towards the career politician who stands in the major parties and has never struggled through the rigours of life.
“There are different types of people in our party - we are diverse and strong-minded and the people of Thanet realise that.
“We have had a very positive reaction since our campaign began.”The Trump administration is taking heat for striking a Syrian air base with Tomahawk missiles and hitting ISIS terrorists in Afghanistan with a MOAB, a conventional bomb so big that it has been dubbed the “Mother of All Bombs.” No doubt there are useful debates to be had about the pros and cons, both tactical and juridical. But one sure upside of these strikes is that they are a step toward restoring abroad the credibility of America as a power to be reckoned with.
That’s big, in ways that go way beyond the immediate battlefields. In a world grown dramatically more dangerous during President Obama’s eight years of appeasement and retreat, America badly and urgently needs to restore its lost credibility.
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It would be great if diplomats could protect America, its allies and its interests with words alone. But in matters involving aggressive tyrannies, words don’t mean much unless they are backed up by military muscle and the credible willingness to use force. When that threat goes missing, predators take notice.
It’s also clear that when America backs down, the threats tend to compound. Predatory regimes tend to do business together, observe each other and learn from each other. When Russia snatches turf from a neighbor and gets away with it, that sends a message to China.
Beijing, with its interest in building artificial islands topped with military bases in the South China Sea, can see that it’s open season in Asia for accelerating such territorial grabs. When
North Korea conducts an illicit nuclear test and gets away with it, we can reasonably assume that Iran takes note.
NEW: Why the US dropped the "mother of all bombs" on Afghanistan https://t.co/kFGANqjOIY pic.twitter.com/1n0SDQXKqM — The Hill (@thehill) April 13, 2017
For the world’s most dangerously ambitious and threatening tyrannies — from Russia to China, from North Korea to Iran — Obama’s neutering of American power over the past eight years created a host of opportunities that they eagerly seized. The sorry truth, given the character of these regimes, is that they would have been fools not to.
By the time Obama left office this January, America’s official words meant almost nothing. Take, for instance, Obama’s declaration in 2013 of a “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria. That gave way to former Secretary of State John Kerry John Forbes KerryOvernight Defense: White House eyes budget maneuver to boost defense spending | Trump heads to Hanoi for second summit with Kim | Former national security officials rebuke Trump on emergency declaration 58 ex-national security officials rebuke Trump over emergency declaration Ex-national security officials to issue statement slamming Trump's emergency declaration: WaPo MORE’s Lilliputian assurance that an American strike on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities would be “unbelievably small.” That turned into no strike at all, as Obama entrusted Russia with the supervision of its client despot in Damascus, President Bashar Assad — whose resignation Obama had called for, to no effect, two years earlier.
Small surprise that today Assad is still in power, still using chemical weapons, supported by the military muscle of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia — which after a post-Soviet hiatus and thanks in substantial part to Obama’s concessions has reemerged as a major player in the Middle East.
The rolling debacle in Syria has been just part of a ruinous global trajectory that began with Obama’s 2009 Russia “reset.” This included, in deference to Putin, America welshing on its promise of missile defense for Eastern Europe. When that became an issue in America’s 2012 presidential election campaign, Obama was caught on an open microphone promising Putin that after his reelection he’d have “more flexibility.”
Trump: I told Chinese president about Syria strikes while we ate "beautiful chocolate cake" https://t.co/CIlftp8SAs pic.twitter.com/pgmhOpqC9e — The Hill (@thehill) April 13, 2017
Putin tested that flexibility in 2014 with appalling success, snatching Crimea from Ukraine. Obama protested, via words and sanctions, but did nothing persuasive enough to reverse Russia’s turf grab.
China, despite Obama’s vaunted “pivot” to Asia, has in recent years been jockeying with Japan, accelerating its island-building turf grabs in the South China Sea and conducting joint military maneuvers, on land and at sea, with Russia. In Beijing, Obama’s extended but feeble hand earned him an ignominious descent last September from the rear door of his presidential plane.
Iran endured heavy U.S. sanctions during Obama’s first term, but emerged from nuclear negotiations during his second term with a U.S.-blessed international deal, enshrined under auspices of the United Nations, that effectively re-opened Iran’s financial spigots while paving Iran’s path to the bomb. Obama accompanied that giveaway with a payout to the Tehran regime of $1.7 billion, wangled by way of a “settlement” of decades-old claims and shipped secretly to Iran in cash.
Predictably, Iran pocketed its gains, and carried on sponsoring terrorism, expanding its reach in the Middle East and testing ballistic missiles.
Which brings us to Iran’s longtime partner in missile development, North Korea. Pyongyang, with its totalitarian, dynastic Kim regime, has bedeviled American presidents, both Democratic and Republican, for decades. But after years of Obama’s passive policy of “strategic patience,” the threat posed by North Korea has soared.
Kim’s regime clearly feels free to brag up its prowess in developing deliverable nuclear weapons, threatening strikes on America and advertising its program to develop submarine-launched ballistic missiles — prototypes of which North Korea this Saturday paraded through the streets of Pyongyang. Pyongyang is now on the verge of a sixth nuclear test — four of its five tests to date having been conducted on Obama’s watch (in 2009, 2013 and two tests in 2016).
It can be tempting to diagnose Kim’s behavior as crazy. But whatever Kim’s personal pathologies, his calculus about America’s response — or lack thereof — has so far served him pretty well. While most of the 24 million people of North Korea bear the costs and suffer the miseries inflicted by Pyongyang’s totalitarian regime, Kim himself has accomplished the transition of power from his late father, Kim Jong Il, who died in 2012, and is building an arsenal his forebears could only dream of.
All this is part of the Obama legacy: the rising global agglomerate of emboldened tyrannies, with which Trump must now deal. Call it the Axis of Opportunism. To this scene, we must also factor in the jihadi non-state outfits which over the past eight years have made the most of the vacuums created by Obama’s various retreats. These include al Qaeda and the Taliban, both still going concerns; ISIS, which thrived when Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq and for too long dismissed the dangers; and the terrorist-infested misery of today’s Libya, where Obama led from behind.
Obama’s policies invited the world’s most dangerous actors to conclude that America would no longer act in defense of the Free World, or of the rules and understandings that promote a modicum of peace. This is a path to conflict and carnage on a scale not seen since World War II. It is imperative that Trump find ways to change this calculus.
One need not love the use of ordnance to appreciate that with the unprecedented moves of hitting a Syrian air base with cruise missiles and dropping a MOAB to obliterate an ISIS nest in Afghanistan, he has sent an important message, in terms that predatory tyrants, from Moscow to Beijing to Tehran to Pyongyang, will understand.
Claudia Rosett is foreign-policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and blogs at PJMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @CRosett.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.‘Crack Marketing Team’ — Live From WWDC 2017 With Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi
Recorded in front of a live audience at The California Theatre in San Jose, John Gruber is joined by Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi to discuss the news from WWDC: new Mac hardware, the new iPad Pro, Mac OS 10.13 “High Sierra”, iOS 11, the upcoming HomePod, and more.
Audio:
Download MP3.
Full-text transcript, by Serenity Caldwell.
Sponsored by:
Jamf: Great mobile device management for Apple products.
MacStadium: Get your Mac build infrastructure out of the office closet and into the hands of the experts.
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This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.Keith Creagh announced a few minutes ago at the DNR Natural Resources Commission meeting in Roscommon that he would approve the land purchase proposal offered by Graymont. The Canadian mining company now has the green light to turn over 10,000 acres of state-owned forest land into open pit and underground limestone quarries.
The DNR Natural Resources Commission rejected the January proposal in that it was too vague and there was no business plan. Graymont raised the price per ton it will pay the state to 30 cents, and offered the town of Rexton half a million dollars over 5 years to go into a fund to be used by the community and local schools. The new proposal provided more detail including:
The direct sale of 1,781 acres of state-owned land and 7,026 acres of mineral rights to Graymont.
Land exchange whereby Graymont will acquire 830 acres of state-owned land.
A ten year option to acquire an easement of 55 acres of state-owned land with an identified area of 535 acres.
Graymont received mineral rights and ownership of land that totals $4.5 million. The DNR will use money received from this land deal to purchase other public land. The largest portion of land that will be an underground mine will still be managed by the state and the public will still have access to large portion of it.
The questions that are not addressed in this deal is the impact such a large mining operation will have on air and water quality in the area. The total land now being turned into open pit and underground mines spans three counties. More people living in the UP will be affected than just the people of Rexton. There’s promises from Graymont that they will protect important wetlands in the area, and public easements will be moved at company expense.
Michigan land and precious natural resources continue to be sold off to low bidders, and the landscape of Michigan will be changed forever – and not for the better.Celtic have accepted an invitation to face English shock troops Leicester City in the lucrative International Champions Cup in July.
Organisers Relevent are set to confirm dates and details of this year's line up in a New York press conference at 3pm UK time today.
Sportsmail understands, however, that the Parkhead club plan to squeeze in a game against Claudio Ranieri's Premiership leaders on Sunday July 17 - between likely home and away Champions League second round qualifiers.
Celtic have accepted an invitation to face Leicester City in the lucrative International Champions Cup
Riyad Mahrez of Leicester celebrates after scoring the winner against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park
The Scottish champions are also expected to face Lionel Messi's Barcelona in Dublin with a third game against Italians Inter Milan at a venue to be confirmed.
Real Madrid, PSG and Bayern Munich are also lining up in the North American leg of the glamour event – with tournaments also being hosted in Australia and China.
Celtic have been forced to turn down invitations to the event in recent seasons due to Champions League qualifying commitments.
This year's invitation represents an olive branch to the prospective champions of Scotland and England after Relevent officials were recently accused of holding clandestine talks with England's big five of Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal in a London hotel to discuss a potential European Super League.
SPFL Chief Executive Neil Doncaster branded the plans'sinister' amidst concerns a panicked UEFA will react by closing off the Champions League to champions of smaller nations.
Ronny Deila's team could play between potential home and away Champions League second-round qualifiers
Barcelona, PSG and Bayern Munich are also lining up in the North American leg of the glamour evenShare. "...we have absolutely no plans to do raid matchmaking at this time." "...we have absolutely no plans to do raid matchmaking at this time."
Bungie has confirmed that they have no current plans to implement raid matchmaking in Destiny.
Speaking to Game Informer, lead designer Luke Smith explained Bungie's reasoning for not adding matchmaking to the sci-fi multiplayer shooter.
"We're certainly noticing that there is voracity in the fanbase for content that makes them think-content that challenges them in some different ways," he said.
Exit Theatre Mode
"I think rather than say 'Yeah, we're going to make matchmaking for raids,' the way I'm thinking about this problem is how we're going to create that kind of content and create those kinds of emotions in matchmade activities. I think that's the challenge. It's not how do we change the raid-design philosophy to allow for matchmaking."
Smith continued, mentioning the development team's enthusiasm toward community-driven sites helping individual players link up with one another.
"I think looking at the LFG [looking for game] - style mechanics is something we absolutely want to do," he said. "We would love to get to a place someday where you can advertise your intent to people. Where you can say 'I want to do this. Are you looking to do this with me?' But we have absolutely no plans to do raid matchmaking at this time."
You can read the full story in Game Informer's current issue.
Exit Theatre Mode
A number of changes are coming soon to Destiny in the upcoming Crota's End raid, including a new raid-specific upgrade system, trading for energy shards, refined raid loot drops, and primary weapons exclusive to the raid's hard mode.
The Dark Below launches on December 9. To learn more about all the new content in the expansion, visit IGN's official Destiny wiki.
Cassidee is a freelance writer for various outlets around the web. You can chat with her about all things geeky on Twitter.Ian McCaskill, who has died aged 78, was one of the best recognised faces on the BBC for 20 years in his role as a weather forecaster. His diffident delivery and gentle Scottish accent were much admired. He always tried to lighten up his presentation. Seeing that there was little entertainment value in the reports themselves, he tried to deliver them with descriptive one-liners.
“I think I was good,” he said later. “I cheered up people – and I irritated a lot of Englishmen who didn’t like an ethnic Scot delivering the weather.” When he started, in 1978, it was still unusual for BBC presenters to have regional accents. In 1994 McCaskill was voted Britain’s sexiest weather presenter and often received affectionate fan mail.
By the time he retired in 1998, though, he was thoroughly relieved to have done with his work pattern – the routine was shifts from either 9pm to 9am or 5am to 3pm. “I’d paid my debt to society,” he said. “The conditions of service for weather forecasters at the BBC are universally crap.” He pointed out that as a Met Office employee he was paid civil service rates and not those of a TV personality. But he had nonetheless become a celebrity and was among those impersonated by Rory Bremner. He was also lampooned with his own Spitting Image puppet – considered the ultimate flattery in the 1980s.
The forecasts did not always get it right, or even nearly right. In 1987, his colleague Michael Fish was ridiculed for saying a hurricane was not going to happen, just a few hours before it did. Later – much later, 18 years in fact – McCaskill confessed to being the guilty party who had given Fish the forecast that day.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ian McCaskill, right, with fellow forecaster Michael Fish in 1991. Photograph: David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock
Though McCaskill took his leave of the BBC without tears, he continued to pop up on TV. In 1999 he appeared in a BBC2 series called The Essential Guide to Weather, saying that he was being paid tuppence ha’penny, but it should give people a laugh. But he did not do too badly: he made commercials, personal appearances and after-dinner speeches. He also appeared in pantomimes, though the audience was apt to laugh delightedly at him rather than to boo as required.
He was born John Robertson McCaskill, the son of an insurance agent, in Glasgow, and attended Queen’s Park school and Glasgow University, where he studied geology and chemistry. He was then small enough to cox for the university rowing club. He also joined the dramatic society. His first ambition was to be a doctor but his parents could not afford to keep him at university for six years, so he decided to opt for a teaching career.
But when he was called up into the RAF, his scientific background led to him being put through meteorological college and after two years he found that it seemed to have better career prospects than teaching. He worked for the RAF from 1959 as a meteorologist, including a spell in Malta, where he met his first wife, Lesley Charlesworth, a teacher, with whom he had two daughters, Vicky and Kirsty.
As a civilian, he became one of the 2,000 civil servants working in the Met Office. When volunteers were sought to present TV weather forecasts, he was selected. It meant that he and Lesley had to move from Manchester, where they were very comfortable, to London and a more uncertain future.
McCaskill always tried to retain the light touch but latterly felt that technology had expelled humour from forecasting and that there was no place for Met people in what he called “youth-orientated TV”. Long before retirement from the Met Office, he was already casting his thoughts in a new direction by taking a degree at the Open University, studying science in the form of geology but also computing, electronics, sociology, statistics and mathematics.
In 2002 he joined ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club. Though slight tubbiness – at 5ft 9in he weighed more than 15 stone – had been part of his television persona, he managed to lose two stone to raise money for charity, later proclaiming that he no longer felt 64 but about 30.
In 2006, |
said that dirty word: sacrifice.
Sacrifice of time, talent, and treasure.
One of the major impediments to doing this in the past has been our quest for comfort and financial security. Those we have placed above fighting for God and for country.
That must change if we believe there’s something still worth fighting for.
Are you ready?A Hong Kong woman who says she bought a house in Richmond, B.C. and put it in her boyfriend’s name to dodge B.C.’s 15 per cent foreign buyers’ tax, is suing the now ex-boyfriend to get the house back.
The woman says she’s living a relationship nightmare trying to move her ex-boyfriend out of the home she claims she paid for, documents filed in B.C. Supreme Court claim.
The only problem: his name is on the land title and the mortgage.
WATCH: Coverage of foreign buyers taxes on Globalnews.ca
Jennie Wu and Johnny Chu began dating in the fall of 2016. Chu, a flight attendant, met Wu in the business section of a flight between Hong Kong and Vancouver.
Wu, a Hong Kong businesswoman, claimed she frequently travels to Vancouver for work and wanted to own a home in the region so that she had a place to live while in town.
READ MORE: Class-action lawsuit launched against B.C. foreign home buyers’ tax
But Wu, who lives in Hong Kong, didn’t want to pay B.C.’s 15 per cent foreign buyers tax, court documents said.
Chu is from Richmond, and Wu claims he helped her buy a home in the city by putting the land title and mortgage under his name.
Online real estate listings described a property at the same address as a two-storey home with a triple garage, five bathrooms and four bedrooms.
READ MORE: Some foreign buyers get break from Vancouver tax
But Wu claimed that, despite never being named in the paperwork, she paid for the home and all associated costs — including this year’s property taxes — with her own cash.
According to Wu’s suit, Chu has lived in the home since she allegedly bought it.
The hitch? The couple broke up in August, and Wu claimed Chu is still living in the home and refuses to leave or transfer the property back to her, court documents said.
Despite the dispute, Wu claims she still stays in the house while visiting Canada, though the pair does not sleep together, but in separate beds.
Wu is suing Chu in BC Supreme Court and wants exclusive possession of the home and compensation for unlawful occupation of the property.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.A frenzy of rabbitfish feeding on kelp transplanted by a University of New South Wales-led team of researchers off the coast of New South Wales in eastern Australia. (Image: Adriana Vergés)
We’ve heard a lot lately about the destruction of tropical coral reefs brought on by a warming climate. And that’s a big deal — corals are the lynchpin of entire undersea ecosystems. When they go, the damage reverberates widely and ultimately, even people pay the price.
But something similar has been happening to corals’ more temperate cousins in many locations: Forests of kelp. These swaying seaweeds, too, anchor communities of diverse types of fish and other living organisms and, in turn, provide great value to humans through their contribution to fisheries. And recently, there has been some very troubling news for kelp. One forest was wiped out off the southwestern coast of Australia by extremely warm temperatures in 2011, an event that scientists called a “rapid climate-driven regime shift.” More recently, there has been massive death of giant kelp around Tasmania as well.
And now, new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates another way that a changing climate can devastate kelp. Adriana Vergés of the University of New South Wales in Sydney and her colleagues at institutions in Australia, Spain, and Singapore used underwater cameras to study kelp forests around the Solitary Islands, along the eastern Australian coast between Sydney and Brisbane.
This region is what Vergés calls “a famous place for being a tropical-temperate transition zone. We went there because that’s where we thought, if there’s something that is happening to the kelp, that is climate mediated, this is where it is going to be happening,” she said.
And it was. Between 2002 and 2011, all of the kelp in the 25 kilometer study area died. And the cameras showed why: They were being devoured by several species of fish, including tropical rabbitfish, that had been thriving as the temperate waters warmed up just slightly, by 0.6 degrees Celsius, during the time period. That wasn’t much, but it was apparently enough to support herbivorous fish from tropical climes that could wipe out the kelp.
“I think what’s interesting is this realization that the greatest impacts of climate change may not be the direct effects of warming on one species, but it’s more the effects of warming on the way species interact with each other,” said Vergés. “The effect of warming on how fish eat the kelp. And it’s kind of the same with coral reef systems. Warming doesn’t kill the coral itself, it actually breaks the relationship between the coral and the symbiotic algae. It’s a case of warming impacting the way species interact.”
It’s not just the fish invading from tropical latitudes (which in the case of Australia, would be from the north). It’s also the temperature itself, which increases fish metabolism and may make them consume more, Vergés said.
What’s particularly striking about this study is that, unlike in other cases involving coral reefs or kelp forests, there was no sudden surge of warm water, sometimes called an “underwater heat wave,” that proved deadly. Instead the warm-up was slow, steady, and not even all that large in magnitude. Yet nevertheless, it seems to have shifted the conditions in which tropical fish who are herbivores and kelp forests interact, and the consequence was a total loss of kelp, at least in this particular region.
That’s a big deal, because the study reports kelp are worth $ 10 billion to the Australian economy annually (in Australian dollars), due to their contributions to tourism and fisheries. And of course, it’s not just Australia — Japan has also seen kelp forests decimated by herbivorous fish, says Vergés, and the kelp forests off the coast of California saw major declines in abundance during the Pacific warm “blob.”
Granted, there is also some better news for kelp out there. Another new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a mere 1.8 percent decline overall per year in kelp abundance over the decade. That’s because while the researchers observed major declines in some areas, they also saw expansion in others. The study suggested one thing kelp have in their favor — they can bounce back fast.
So the picture isn’t entirely grim — yet — but the individual stories of dramatic kelp wipeouts that have been dribbling in recently amid warming ocean temperatures certainly suggest reason for concern.
“They’re like the trees of the underwater world in cool water places,” said Vergés of kelp. “They provide a habitat and food for literally hundreds of species. They support an entire ecological community.”
“So when we lose the kelp, we’re losing all of that,” she continued. “They’re also one of the most productive plants on the planet, taking carbon out of the atmosphere. We lose a biological engine that controls or dominates temperate reefs.”One of the first things Buck Showalter did when he took over as manager of the Baltimore Orioles four years ago was to reach out to the past. At the time, the Orioles were putting the finishing touches on their 13th consecutive losing season, and plenty of people in baseball wondered if the franchise could ever again be what it once was.
Showalter wanted his players to understand that it hadn't always been this way. So he lined with the hallway leading to the home clubhouse at Camden Yards with photos of Frank Robinson and Cal Ripken, with Jim Palmer and Brooks Robinson. He wanted his guys to understand that the Orioles had a rich history of winning, that their community had once cared deeply and that they had a chance to rekindle that fire.
"We take a backseat to no one in terms of our history," he told them.
And as the Orioles celebrate their first division title since 1997 -- which they clinched with an 8-2 win against the Blue Jays -- it's clear the Showalter's tactics have worked.
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To get his players to embrace the O's past, he brought back Earl Weaver, the Hall of Fame manager, for a couple of pre-game chats. He paid tribute to Cal Ripken, Eddie Murray and the others whenever he was given a stage.
Brooks Robinson comes around to say hello to the boys. Palmer is a constant in the clubhouse and the television booth. Rick Dempsey, Boog Powell and others are as revered in Baltimore now as they were in another era.
When statues of the six Orioles Hall of Famers were unveiled at Camden Yards in 2012, he urged his players to take a half-hour out of the day and go attend the ceremonies and hear the speeches, to see and to be seen.
In that way, he was creating a larger family, one that stretched from Boog Powell to Adam Jones, from Asylum on 33rd Street (Memorial Stadium) to Camden Yards.
The Orioles of another era were smart and efficient. They had scouts who unearthed talent here, there and everywhere. And they had instructors, most notably Cal Ripken Sr., who got hold of the kids early and drilled into them that there was The Oriole Way.
The Orioles couldn't do things the way the Yankees did them, but they did just fine with their smarts and their stability and their resolve. They were a team perfect for a city stuck there on I-95 between Washington and New York, the city that was proud of its small-town feel.
That intimacy extends from the fans to the players. There's an intimacy, a sense that these guys are our guys in some larger sense. As the late great Baltimore Associated Press reporter Gordon Beard once said, "In New York, they name candy bars for Reggie Jackson. In Baltimore, we name our kids for Brooks Robinson."
Back to Showalter. He connected past Orioles with current Orioles because he thought it might help. He's meticulous in that way, looking for every competitive advantage, leaving no stone unturned. And then Showalter did the things he'd always done. He spoke to his players about pride and work and performance. He told them he believed in them.
He also demanded that things be done a certain way. He showered them with information, with scouting reports and tendencies. He held meetings, too, dozens of them. Sometimes, he'd simply discuss baserunning, everything from its finer points to its importance.
Every single day around Showalter became a sort of graduate school of baseball's finer points. Pretty soon, his best players -- Adam Jones and Matt Wieters and others -- began to believe.
Before Adam Jones signed his contract extension in 2012, he wanted assurances from Showalter that he intended to stay. He seemed to understand that if Showalter hung around Baltiimore the Orioles would again be great.
Showalter would be the first to want you to know that he stepped into a situation with plenty of potential. Even though the Orioles had been losing, their top executive, Andy MacPhail, had methodically upgraded the talent.
In Jones, Wieters, Nick Markakis and others, Showalter had a nice nucleus. He found guys who were consummate professionals. He found that they were burning to win.
"They'd had their nose bloodied together," he said. "They were ready to fight."
Fast forward four years, and the Orioles just ran away with the AL East title. This will be their second postseason appearance in three years, and Showalter is pushing all the right buttons.
Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette's "glass half-full" philosophy has worked well in Baltimore. (Getty Images)
Their organizational depth has been tested, and the O's passed with flying colors. When Wieters underwent Tommy John surgery, Caleb Joseph was summoned from the minors and has filled in nicely.
Likewise, Kevin Gausman, a first-round pick out of LSU three years ago, has given the rotation a tremendous second-half boost. In Nelson Cruz, Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette made one of the smarter free-agent signings of the last offseason.
While these Orioles are a tribute to Showalter's genius and to those original core players, they're also arguably Duquette's finest hour.
Orioles owner Peter Angelos hired him after the 2011 season. He was not his first choice. He hadn't worked in baseball in 10 years.
What Angelos -- and others -- were reminded of is that no general manager in the game is more creative, more thorough and, yes, more quirky. He urges his personnel people to look everywhere for talent and to see players, not as complete players or star players, but simply as possessing a skill that could help the Orioles win.
There's a brilliance to the way Duquette does business. For instance, Miguel Gonzalez was pitching in the Mexican League when Duquette gave him a shot two years ago.
He was 27 years old and had washed out with the Angels and Red Sox. He'd also undergone Tommy John surgery. He was as unwanted as a player could be. Duquette was intriguied.
"Really, Miguel just hadn't quite had the opportunity," he said.
No kidding. Gonzalez has been a godsend for the Orioles. He pitched his first career complete game earlier this month, and in 65 starts in three seasons, he's 29-20 with a very respectable 3.47 ERA. He's also one of the lowest-paid starting pitchers in baseball at $529,000.
Duquette gave Gonzalez a chance because one of his scouts, a legendary baseball man named Fred Ferreira, believed in him. Duquette trusted Ferreira's opinion.
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Chris Sale's Season for the Ages Sure, you know Sale is awesome, but have you taken a moment to realize how great he's been this year? Here are a… More» "It's about opportunity with scouts, too," Duquette said. "If you like to sign players and make a contribution to the team, this is a good place for you as a scout. If you just like to turn in reports and check off the boxes, this is not the place for you. We're looking for players." He has been reminded of these simple lessons many times. But it all began with Tim Wakefield.
Wakefield made his big league debut in 1992 and went 8-1 down the stretch to help the Pirates pass Duquette's Montreal Expos to win the National League East. Wakefield's career stalled, and the Bucs released him.
Duquette never forgot the name, and when Wakefield became a free agent, Duquette's new team, the Red Sox, signed him. Duquette then asked Hall of Fame knuckleballer Phil Niekro to offer some pointers.
"Phil helped him gain a better understanding of what he would have to do to be consistent with the knuckleball," Duquette said. "For example, being able to change speeds with it, having another pitch he could throw for a strike when he was behind in the count. Those are the skills that Tim worked on."
Wakefield won 186 games in 17 seasons with the Red Sox and was part of two championship clubs. When Duquette watched Gonzalez shut out the Reds this week, he surely may have thought back to Wakefield.
This story tells you almost everything you need to know about Duquette's philosophy. The AL East champs have a bunch of Duquette finds. Steve Pearce was a waiver claim. David Lough and Brad Brach came over trades almost no one thought much about at the time.
In three seasons, there have been others. Nate McLouth's career was jump-started in Baltimore in 2012 after he'd been released by the Pirates. In return, he helped the O's make the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. There was Lew Ford and Randy Wolf and others. The 2012 Orioles used 52 players in all, including 12 starting pitchers. Showalter buys in. On display in the Orioles spring clubhouse in a board in which every player's innings played and at-bats are posted.
"I'm sure a lot of guys are surprised by the playing time they get here," he said.
Word gets around that the Orioles are a good place for unheralded free agents because they'll get a real opportunity.
"You know the old expression about finding an orchid while searching for a rose? That's us," Showalter said. "It's helped us acquire players in the offseason. There's nothing like word of mouth with the players. The one thing we can compete with anybody on is opportunity."
At the core of this philosophy is a relentless sense of optimism. Rather than focus on what a player can't do -- and this is the mantra among many baseball people -- the Orioles see the glass as half-full.
"We don't really spend a lot of time on what players can't do," Duquette said. "We look for a significant strength or a significant skill. We tell our scouts that we want to know the players that they like. Then we'd like for them to tell us how they think they can help the team. Maybe the player had a skill, but didn't quite know how to get their game together. Sometimes, they get it together."
Some might say there's a magic to what these Orioles have done, but Duquette doesn't see it that way.
"It's really just having an open mind," Duquette said.
Maybe that's the new Oriole Way.
*****
Richard Justice is a Sports on Earth contributor who joined MLB.com as an executive correspondent in 2011. He has covered Major League Baseball for more than three decades and offers his insight on MLB.com and MLB.com/live.Last week, James Hodgkinson, a far-left extremist who volunteered for Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during the 2016 election, attempted to assassinate a group of Republican congressmen playing baseball in a park. Although Hodgkinson was killed in a matter of minutes, five people, including Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House Majority Whip, were injured in the attack.
Horrified by the politically-motivated violence, many came together to pray that similar attacks don’t happen in the future. Others, like Lucas Botkin, the CEO of T.Rex Arms, a Kydex holster company out of Tennessee, decided to take more direct action.
Shortly after the attack, Botkin announced on Facebook that his company will provide free holsters and firearm training to any and all congressmen who are interested. Specifically, he stated, “as a company, and as your countrymen, we want to do more than offer condolences, thoughts, or even prayers. We would like to offer free holsters and firearms training to any of you who desire to start carrying more effectively,” noting, “most elected representatives do not have the advantage of a personal security detail; in this regard, you are like the majority of Americans. Your safety is your own responsibility.“
According to Botkin, the best way to defend oneself is by using a gun. “The only way to slow and stop a determined attacker is through the immediate application of accurate rounds on target,” he explained. “The police arrived as fast as they could, but there were still several minutes where guns in the hands of the security detail were the only thing preventing Hodkinson from having a monopoly on violence, and therefore complete freedom of action,” continued Botkin, referring to the congressional shooting.
Botkin warned that, given the left’s reaction following the shooting, more attacks will likely follow. “Wednesday’s attack on Republican lawmakers…should not be surprising. With the media celebrating depictions of the assassination of the President, it shouldn’t be surprising to see this twisted enthusiasm turn into attempted murder,” reasoned Botkin, adding, “and we should expect that this will not be the last such attack, seeing that yesterday’s attack has been celebrated by many.”
He concluded by calling on lawmakers to pass expand gun rights. “We plead with you: work to pass National Reciprocity by whatever means possible, and reduce or eliminate the deadly gun-free zones that plague the liberty and lives of our citizens,” urged Botkin, noting, “the District of Columbia makes it almost impossible to be armed legally. And it’s far from the only gun-free zone in the nation. Millions of law-abiding, armed Americans, men and women who not only have a Constitutional right to bear arms, but who are also our best hope in the first minutes of an attack, are forced to disarm every day due to these gun-free zone.”
Earlier this year, the “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017,” a piece of legislation that would do what Botkin suggested, was introduced in the House. The bill, otherwise known as H.R. 38, “amends the federal criminal code to allow a qualified individual to carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun in another state that allows individuals to carry concealed firearms.”
Upon introducing the bill, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), the sponsor of the legislation, stated, “our Second Amendment right doesn’t disappear when we cross state lines, and this legislation guarantees that.” He added, “the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 is a common sense solution to a problem too many Americans face,” noting, “it will provide law-abiding citizens the right to conceal carry and travel freely between states without worrying about conflicting state codes or onerous civil suits.”
Since political violence will likely continue, lawmakers should seriously consider taking Botkin up on his offer. Doing so will make it much more likely that they survive an attack in the future. But lawmakers aren’t the only people in danger. Conservatives need to also urge their representatives in the House to pass legislation expanding gun rights for everyone else.14/07/2016 - KTOS sunhwapark Jul 14th, 2016 ( edited ) 14,252 Never 14,252Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 7.38 KB 14/07/2016 - KTOS Live Maintenance The following errors have been corrected. [General Errors] 1. Fixed problem with certain Guild Hideout settings causing users to instantly move to the Character-Selection Screen. 2. Lord Hamondale's Bracelet's SP bonus was not applying. 3. Fixed an error where the players hair would fall out causing them to go bald when they wear the Braid Ponytail using the Light Salmon Hair dye. [Quest Errors] 1. Farewell, My Friend (1): Fixed the error where it was possible to get the Boss Card from this Quest. - Quest bosses no longer drop cards and should not be obtained via quest scenarios. [Skill Errors] 1. The damage on some skills were dealing twice the normal amount unintentionally. Cataphract: - Rush: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. Pyromancer: - Hellbreath: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. Psychokino: - Psychic Pressure: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. Featherfoot: - Blood Sucking: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. The game has been updated with the following. 1. Vakarine, Laima, Zemyna, Gabija Servers will be merged into one server. - (TN: The server will be named Vaivora from now on.) ※ Please check the information below! It's very important. [Name Changes] - You can't use existing names when registering a new Team Name. - Players with Duplicate team names as a result of the merge have been given a [ Team Name Change Voucher]. - Duplicate Guild Names have been given a [Guild Name Change Voucher] to each of their guild's leaders. - The items given out are one-time uses and will expire afterwards, please use these items with care. - For further information regarding the Server Merge Please read the Pinned announcement. ( TN: To explain the result of the merge, Duplicate names have been given a suffix of the server they originated from. i.e the 2nd 라그나로크 became; 라그나로크_라이마, 라그나로크_제미나 etc. ) [Character & Team Level Caps] - The maximum amount of character slots is scheduled to be increased to 30. (4 Regular Free Slots still.) - 07/28(Thu) The Team Level cap will be increased. - 08/11(Thu) Until this scheduled date, players will be able to freely play all their characters on the Vaivora server. - ※ 08/11(Thu) Connecting before this scheduled date, If you have more characters than the current slot capacity allows for,you may have been asked to delete some characters in order to access the game. [Cross-Server Guild Battle Ranking] - Fixed Guilds with name changes not being reflected in the Guild Battle UI. - Guild Battle rewards will remain unaffected by the server merge and the rewards will still be payed out as intended. 2. The tool-tips on some skills have changed. Chronomancer: - Reincarnate: (Old) By manipulating time, you can let a monster appear at the same location where it was defeated. (New) By manipulating time, you can let a monster appear at the same location where it was defeated. This must be used in a close range with a monster in order for the skill to take effect. Fletcher: - Divine Machine Arrow: (Old) - Duration of 10s. (New) - Duration of 1.5s Bokor: - Effigy: (Old) - Deals bonus damage on the 3rd attack. (New) - Continuous use deals bonus damage that applies on every 3rd cast. 3. For 2 weeks, The [Cola Event] will take place. (14/07/2016 ~ 27/07/2016) 1) On the 14/07 patch, all Saviors will get a free Skill Reset Potion! - All Saviors will be paid 1 Skill Reset Potion. (Please collect them ASAP! they expire on 27/07/2016) 2) Attendance check for 30 mins of playing, earn up to 10 mil of Silver & Items~! - When your team has stayed connected to the game for at least 30 minutes consecutively, you will become eligible for monthly rewards. - There's a daily silver jackpot item that's given, there's also a chance at getting a Stat Reset Potion! 3) For the duration of the event, enjoy an experience buff~! - During peak hours, characters will be able to earn additional experience 4) For the duration of the event [Character Name Changes] have been discounted~! - Character name changes will cost 1TP (Originally 9TP). (Discount is available until 28th July) 4. New Experience items have been added to the game. - You'll be able to create new & more powerful EXP Tomes by combining existing ones together. - Klaipeda / Orsha Item dealers will sell the crafting recipes to create these new items. - x4 EXP Tome: [ Requires 4 'EXP Tome'], and is created with the item [Recipe- x4 EXP Tome]. - x8 EXP Tome: [ Requires 2 'x4 EXP Tome'], and is created with the item [Recipe-x8 EXP Tome]. 5.‘Golden Hand Talent’ Title has been added. - The Saviors Fan Arts that received the most votes will receive rewards. - 07/07 - Rewards have been given out for fan art images. Right-Click to use them from your inventory to also obtain the Achievement Title. 6. You now have a delay when trying to Change Channel/ Character Select / Log Out when in Combat Mode. - When attempting to do so otherwise, a window will open with a 10 second counter. The counter resets back to 10 seconds if you attack anything. ※ ( TN: I have tested that buffs and casting spells on the floor are fine, however the timer will reset if your persistent ground spells come into contact with an enemy unit and deal damage. CC that deals no damage will not reset the timer ~ i.e Telekinesis without moving target or Sleep works too. ) The following skills have been rebalanced. Swordsman: - Concentrate: - On top of the Regular bonus, Further damage given is now added to the calculation with the formula: ※ (STR * 0.04 + DEX * 0.02) * (Skill Lv - 1) - Restrain: - Stun Chance effect: The chance for a stun to occur has been changed to 6% per Level. ( Previously 4% ) Highlander: - Skyliner: - Now has 3 Overheat charges. ( Previously 0 Overheat) - Cooldown is now 15 seconds. ( Previously 0s ) - Moulinet: - Hitbox Width is increased to 20. ( Previously 15) - Hitbox length increased to 45. ( Previously 40 ) Barbarian: - Stomping Kick: - Fixed an error where AOE Attack Ratio was not being applied to the skill. Corsair: - Pistol Shot: - This skill now has 2 Overheat charges. Doppelsoeldner: - Cyclone: - The duration of the skill is now ((2.5 + Skill Lv) * 0.3)s, Previously ((2 + Skill Lv) * 0.5)s Linker: - Physical Link: - Cooldown is now 22 Seconds. ( Previously 20s ) - Joint Penalty: - Cooldown is now 22 Seconds. ( Previously 15s ) - Hit Count limit is now (Skill Lv * 10) - Hangman's Knot: - Cooldown is now 15 Seconds. ( Previously 10s ) - Debuff duration is now ((1 + Skill Lv) * 0.2 )Seconds. Elementalist: - Frost Cloud: - This skill now only affects up to (10 + Skill Lv)Targets. Ranger: - Steady Aim: - Damage increase is now (5 + Skill Lv)%, (Previously (3 * Skill Lv)%) - Now lasts 10 Seconds. ( Previously 15s ) Sadhu: - Astral Body Explosion: - Fixed an error where AOE Attack Ratio was not being applied to the skill. - Out of Body: - Hitbox Width Increased to 15. ( Previously 10 ) - Hitbox Range Increased to 50. ( Previously 30 ) Source Post: http://tos.nexon.com/community/tosnotice/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=414 Translation by Gwenyth @ToS Forums.
RAW Paste Data
14/07/2016 - KTOS Live Maintenance The following errors have been corrected. [General Errors] 1. Fixed problem with certain Guild Hideout settings causing users to instantly move to the Character-Selection Screen. 2. Lord Hamondale's Bracelet's SP bonus was not applying. 3. Fixed an error where the players hair would fall out causing them to go bald when they wear the Braid Ponytail using the Light Salmon Hair dye. [Quest Errors] 1. Farewell, My Friend (1): Fixed the error where it was possible to get the Boss Card from this Quest. - Quest bosses no longer drop cards and should not be obtained via quest scenarios. [Skill Errors] 1. The damage on some skills were dealing twice the normal amount unintentionally. Cataphract: - Rush: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. Pyromancer: - Hellbreath: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. Psychokino: - Psychic Pressure: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. Featherfoot: - Blood Sucking: - Fixed error where the skill damage was doubling itself. The game has been updated with the following. 1. Vakarine, Laima, Zemyna, Gabija Servers will be merged into one server. - (TN: The server will be named Vaivora from now on.) ※ Please check the information below! It's very important. [Name Changes] - You can't use existing names when registering a new Team Name. - Players with Duplicate team names as a result of the merge have been given a [ Team Name Change Voucher]. - Duplicate Guild Names have been given a [Guild Name Change Voucher] to each of their guild's leaders. - The items given out are one-time uses and will expire afterwards, please use these items with care. - For further information regarding the Server Merge Please read the Pinned announcement. ( TN: To explain the result of the merge, Duplicate names have been given a suffix of the server they originated from. i.e the 2nd 라그나로크 became; 라그나로크_라이마, 라그나로크_제미나 etc. ) [Character & Team Level Caps] - The maximum amount of character slots is scheduled to be increased to 30. (4 Regular Free Slots still.) - 07/28(Thu) The Team Level cap will be increased. - 08/11(Thu) Until this scheduled date, players will be able to freely play all their characters on the Vaivora server. - ※ 08/11(Thu) Connecting before this scheduled date, If you have more characters than the current slot capacity allows for,you may have been asked to delete some characters in order to access the game. [Cross-Server Guild Battle Ranking] - Fixed Guilds with name changes not being reflected in the Guild Battle UI. - Guild Battle rewards will remain unaffected by the server merge and the rewards will still be payed out as intended. 2. The tool-tips on some skills have changed. Chronomancer: - Reincarnate: (Old) By manipulating time, you can let a monster appear at the same location where it was defeated. (New) By manipulating time, you can let a monster appear at the same location where it was defeated. This must be used in a close range with a monster in order for the skill to take effect. Fletcher: - Divine Machine Arrow: (Old) - Duration of 10s. (New) - Duration of 1.5s Bokor: - Effigy: (Old) - Deals bonus damage on the 3rd attack. (New) - Continuous use deals bonus damage that applies on every 3rd cast. 3. For 2 weeks, The [Cola Event] will take place. (14/07/2016 ~ 27/07/2016) 1) On the 14/07 patch, all Saviors will get a free Skill Reset Potion! - All Saviors will be paid 1 Skill Reset Potion. (Please collect them ASAP! they expire on 27/07/2016) 2) Attendance check for 30 mins of playing, earn up to 10 mil of Silver & Items~! - When your team has stayed connected to the game for at least 30 minutes consecutively, you will become eligible for monthly rewards. - There's a daily silver jackpot item that's given, there's also a chance at getting a Stat Reset Potion! 3) For the duration of the event, enjoy an experience buff~! - During peak hours, characters will be able to earn additional experience 4) For the duration of the event [Character Name Changes] have been discounted~! - Character name changes will cost 1TP (Originally 9TP). (Discount is available until 28th July) 4. New Experience items have been added to the game. - You'll be able to create new & more powerful EXP Tomes by combining existing ones together. - Klaipeda / Orsha Item dealers will sell the crafting recipes to create these new items. - x4 EXP Tome: [ Requires 4 'EXP Tome'], and is created with the item [Recipe- x4 EXP Tome]. - x8 EXP Tome: [ Requires 2 'x4 EXP Tome'], and is created with the item [Recipe-x8 EXP Tome]. 5.‘Golden Hand Talent’ Title has been added. - The Saviors Fan Arts that received the most votes will receive rewards. - 07/07 - Rewards have been given out for fan art images. Right-Click to use them from your inventory to also obtain the Achievement Title. 6. You now have a delay when trying to Change Channel/ Character Select / Log Out when in Combat Mode. - When attempting to do so otherwise, a window will open with a 10 second counter. The counter resets back to 10 seconds if you attack anything. ※ ( TN: I have tested that buffs and casting spells on the floor are fine, however the timer will reset if your persistent ground spells come into contact with an enemy unit and deal damage. CC that deals no damage will not reset the timer ~ i.e Telekinesis without moving target or Sleep works too. ) The following skills have been rebalanced. Swordsman: - Concentrate: - On top of the Regular bonus, Further damage given is now added to the calculation with the formula: ※ (STR * 0.04 + DEX * 0.02) * (Skill Lv - 1) - Restrain: - Stun Chance effect: The chance for a stun to occur has been changed to 6% per Level. ( Previously 4% ) Highlander: - Skyliner: - Now has 3 Overheat charges. ( Previously 0 Overheat) - Cooldown is now 15 seconds. ( Previously 0s ) - Moulinet: - Hitbox Width is increased to 20. ( Previously 15) - Hitbox length increased to 45. ( Previously 40 ) Barbarian: - Stomping Kick: - Fixed an error where AOE Attack Ratio was not being applied to the skill. Corsair: - Pistol Shot: - This skill now has 2 Overheat charges. Doppelsoeldner: - Cyclone: - The duration of the skill is now ((2.5 + Skill Lv) * 0.3)s, Previously ((2 + Skill Lv) * 0.5)s Linker: - Physical Link: - Cooldown is now 22 Seconds. |
versus eudicots.
Comparison of monocots and "dicots"
A number of these differences are not unique to the monocots, and while still useful no one single feature, will infallibly identify a plant as a monocot. For example, trimerous flowers and monosulcate pollen are also found in magnoliids, of which exclusively adventitious roots are found in some of the Piperaceae. Similarly, at least one of these traits, parallel leaf veins, is far from universal among the monocots. Monocots with broad leaves and reticulate leaf veins, typical of dicots, are found in a wide variety of monocot families: for example, Trillium, Smilax (greenbriar), and Pogonia (an orchid), and the Dioscoreales (yams). Potamogeton are one of several monocots with tetramerous flowers. Other plants exhibit a mixture of characteristics. Nymphaeaceae (water lilies) have reticulate veins, a single cotyledon, adventitious roots and a monocot like vascular bundle. These examples reflect their shared ancestry. Nevertheless, this list of traits is a generally valid set of contrasts, especially when contrasting monocots with eudicots rather than non-monocot flowering plants in general.
Apomorphies [ edit ]
Monocot apomorphies (characteristics that are derived during radiation rather than inherited from an ancestral form) include herbaceous habit, leaves with parallel venation and sheathed base, embryo with a single cotyledon, atactostele stele, numerous adventitious roots, sympodial growth, and trimerous (3 parts per whorl) flowers that are pentacyclic (5 whorled) with 3 sepals, 3 petals, 2 whorls of 3 stamens each and 3 carpels. In contrast monosculate pollen is considered an ancestral trait, probably plesiomorphic.
Synapomorphies [ edit ]
The distinctive features of the monocots have contributed to the relative taxonomic stability of the group. Douglas E. Soltis and others identify thirteen synapomorphies (shared characteristics that unite monophyletic groups of taxa);
Calcium oxalate raphides Absence of vessels in leaves Monocotyledonous anther wall formation* Successive microsporogenesis Syncarpous gynoecium Parietal placentation Monocotyledonous seedling Persistent radicle Haustorial cotyledon tip Open cotyledon sheath Steroidal saponins* Fly pollination* Diffuse vascular bundles and absence of secondary growth[f]
Vascular system [ edit ]
Roystonea regia palm ( palm ( Arecales ) stems showing anomalous secondary growth in monocots, with characteristic fibrous roots
Monocots have a distinctive arrangement of vascular tissue known as an atactostele in which the vascular tissue is scattered rather than arranged in concentric rings. Collenchyma is absent in monocot stems, roots and leaves. Many monocots are herbaceous and do not have the ability to increase the width of a stem (secondary growth) via the same kind of vascular cambium found in non-monocot woody plants. However, some monocots do have secondary growth, and because it does not arise from a single vascular cambium producing xylem inwards and phloem outwards, it is termed "anomalous secondary growth". Examples of large monocots which either exhibit secondary growth, or can reach large sizes without it, are palms (Arecaceae), screwpines (Pandanaceae), bananas (Musaceae), Yucca, Aloe, Dracaena, and Cordyline.
Taxonomy [ edit ]
The monocots form one of five major lineages of mesangiosperms (core angiosperms), which in themselves form 99.95% of all angiosperms. The monocots and the eudicots, are the largest and most diversified angiosperm radiations accounting for 22.8% and 74.2% of all angiosperm species respectively.
Of these, the grass family (Poaceae) is the most economically important, which together with the orchids Orchidaceae account for half of the species diversity, accounting for 34% and 17% of all monocots respectively and are among the largest families of angiosperms. They are also among the dominant members of many plant communities.
Early history [ edit ]
Pre Linnean [ edit ]
The monocots are one of the major divisions of the flowering plants or angiosperms. They have been recognized as a natural group since the sixteenth century when Lobelius (1571), searching for a characteristic to group plants by, decided on leaf form and their venation. He observed that the majority had broad leaves with net-like venation, but a smaller group were grass-like plants with long straight parallel veins.[44] In doing so he distinguished between the dicotyledons, and the latter (grass-like) monocotyledon group, although he had no formal names for the two groups.[47]
Formal description dates from John Ray's studies of seed structure in the 17th century. Ray, who is often considered the first botanical systematist, observed the dichotomy of cotyledon structure in his examination of seeds. He reported his findings in a paper read to the Royal Society on 17 December 1674, entitled "A Discourse on the Seeds of Plants".
A Discourse on the Seeds of Plants The greatest number of plants that come of seed spring at first out of the earth with two leaves which being for the most part of a different figure from the succeeding leaves are by our gardeners not improperly called the seed leaves...
In the first kind the seed leaves are nothing but the two lobes of the seed having their plain sides clapt together like the two halfs of a walnut and therefore are of the just figure of the seed slit in sunder flat wise...
Of seeds that spring out of the earth with leaves like the succeeding and no seed leaves I have observed two sorts. 1. Such as are congenerous to the first kind precedent that is whose pulp is divided into two lobes and a radicle...
2. Such which neither spring out of the ground with seed leaves nor have their pulp divided into lobes John Ray (1674), pp. 164, 166
Since this paper appeared a year before the publication of Malpighi's Anatome Plantarum (1675–1679), Ray has the priority. At the time, Ray did not fully realise the importance of his discovery but progressively developed this over successive publications. And since these were in Latin, "seed leaves" became folia seminalia and then cotyledon, following Malpighi. Malpighi and Ray were familiar with each other's work, and Malpighi in describing the same structures had introduced the term cotyledon, which Ray adopted in his subsequent writing.
De seminum vegetatione Mense quoque Maii, alias seminales plantulas Fabarum, & Phaseolorum, ablatis pariter binis seminalibus foliis, seu cotyledonibus, incubandas posui
In the month of May, also, I incubated two seed plants, Faba and Phaseolus, after removing the two seed leaves, or cotyledons Marcello Malpighi (1679), p. 18
In this experiment, Malpighi also showed that the cotyledons were critical to the development of the plant, proof that Ray required for his theory. In his Methodus plantarum nova Ray also developed and justified the "natural" or pre-evolutionary approach to classification, based on characteristics selected a posteriori in order to group together taxa that have the greatest number of shared characteristics. This approach, also referred to as polythetic would last till evolutionary theory enabled Eichler to develop the phyletic system that superseded it in the late nineteenth century, based on an understanding of the acquisition of characteristics. He also made the crucial observation Ex hac seminum divisione sumum potest generalis plantarum distinctio, eaque meo judicio omnium prima et longe optima, in eas sci. quae plantula seminali sunt bifolia aut διλόβω, et quae plantula sem. adulta analoga. (From this division of the seeds derives a general distinction amongst plants, that in my judgement is first and by far the best, into those seed plants which are bifoliate, or bilobed, and those that are analogous to the adult), that is between monocots and dicots. He illustrated this with by quoting from Malpighi and including reproductions of Malpighi's drawings of cotyledons (see figure). Initially Ray did not develop a classification of flowering plants (florifera) based on a division by the number of cotyledons, but developed his ideas over successive publications, coining the terms Monocotyledones and Dicotyledones in 1703, in the revised version of his Methodus (Methodus plantarum emendata), as a primary method for dividing them, Herbae floriferae, dividi possunt, ut diximus, in Monocotyledones & Dicotyledones (Flowering plants, can be divided, as we have said, into Monocotyledons & Dicotyledons).
Post Linnean [ edit ]
Although Linnaeus (1707–1778) did not utilise Ray's discovery, basing his own classification solely on floral reproductive morphology, the term was used shortly after his classification appeared (1753) by Scopoli and who is credited for its introduction.[g] Every taxonomist since then, starting with De Jussieu and De Candolle, has used Ray's distinction as a major classification characteristic.[h][33] In De Jussieu's system (1789), he followed Ray, arranging his Monocotyledones into three classes based on stamen position and placing them between Acotyledones and Dicotyledones. De Candolle's system (1813) which was to predominate thinking through much of the 19th century used a similar general arrangement, with two subgroups of his Monocotylédonés (Monocotyledoneae). Lindley (1830) followed De Candolle in using the terms Monocotyledon and Endogenae[i] interchangeably. They considered the monocotyledons to be a group of vascular plants (Vasculares) whose vascular bundles were thought to arise from within (Endogènes or endogenous).
Monocotyledons remained in a similar position as a major division of the flowering plants throughout the nineteenth century, with minor variations. George Bentham and Hooker (1862–1883) used Monocotyledones, as would Wettstein, while August Eichler used Mononocotyleae and Engler, following de Candolle, Monocotyledoneae. In the twentieth century, some authors used alternative names such as Bessey's (1915) Alternifoliae and Cronquist's (1966) Liliatae. Later (1981) Cronquist changed Liliatae to Liliopsida, usages also adopted by Takhtajan simultaneously.[32] Thorne (1992) and Dahlgren (1985) also used Liliidae as a synonym.
Taxonomists had considerable latitude in naming this group, as the Monocotyledons were a group above the rank of family. Article 16 of the ICBN allows either a descriptive name or a name formed from the name of an included family.
In summary they have been variously named, as follows:
Modern era [ edit ]
Over the 1980s, a more general review of the classification of angiosperms was undertaken. The 1990s saw considerable progress in plant phylogenetics and cladistic theory, initially based on rbcL gene sequencing and cladistic analysis, enabling a phylogenetic tree to be constructed for the flowering plants. The establishment of major new clades necessitated a departure from the older but widely used classifications such as Cronquist and Thorne, based largely on morphology rather than genetic data. These developments complicated discussions on plant evolution and necessitated a major taxonomic restructuring.
This DNA based molecular phylogenetic research confirmed on the one hand that the monocots remained as a well defined monophyletic group or clade, in contrast to the other historical divisions of the flowering plants, which had to be substantially reorganized. No longer could the angiosperms be simply divided into monocotyledons, and dicotyledons but it was apparent that the monocotyledons were but one of a relatively large number of defined groups within the angiosperms. Correlation with morphological criteria showed that the defining feature was not cotyledon number but the separation of angiosperms into two major pollen types, uniaperturate (monosulcate and monosulcate-derived) and triaperturate (tricolpate and tricolpate-derived), with the monocots situated within the uniaperturate groups. The formal taxonomic ranking of Monoctyledons thus became replaced with monocots as an informal clade. This is the name that has been most commonly used since the publication of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) system in 1998 and regularly updated since.
Within the angiosperms, there are two major grades, a small early branching basal grade, the basal angiosperms (ANA grade) with three lineages and a larger late branching grade, the core angiosperms (mesangiosperms) with five lineages, as shown in the cladogram.
Cladogram I: Phylogenetic position of the monocots within the angiosperms in APG IV (2016) angiosperms Amborellales Nymphaeales Austrobaileyales magnoliids Chloranthales monocots Ceratophyllales eudicots basal angiosperms core angiosperms
Subdivision [ edit ]
While the monocotyledons have remained extremely stable in their outer borders as a well-defined and coherent monophylectic group, the deeper internal relationships have undergone considerable flux, with many competing classification systems over time.[33]
Historically, Bentham (1877), considered the monocots to consist of four alliances, Epigynae, Coronariae, Nudiflorae and Glumales, based on floral characteristics. He describes the attempts to subdivide the group since the days of Lindley as largely unsuccessful. Like most subsequent classification systems it failed to distinguish between two major orders, Liliales and Asparagales, now recognised as quite separate. A major advance in this respect was the work of Rolf Dahlgren (1980), which would form the basis of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group's (APG) subsequent modern classification of monocot families. Dahlgren who used the alternate name Lilliidae considered the monocots as a subclass of angiosperms characterised by a single cotyledon and the presence of triangular protein bodies in the sieve tube plastids. He divided the monocots into seven superorders, Alismatiflorae, Ariflorae, Triuridiflorae, Liliiflorae, Zingiberiflorae, Commeliniflorae and Areciflorae. With respect to the specific issue regarding Liliales and Asparagales, Dahlgren followed Huber (1969) in adopting a splitter approach, in contrast to the longstanding tendency to view Liliaceae as a very broad sensu lato family. Following Dahlgren's untimely death in 1987, his work was continued by his widow, Gertrud Dahlgren, who published a revised version of the classification in 1989. In this scheme the suffix -florae was replaced with -anae (e.g. Alismatanae) and the number of superorders expanded to ten with the addition of Bromelianae, Cyclanthanae and Pandananae.
Molecular studies have both confirmed the monophyly of the monocots and helped elucidate relationships within this group. The APG system does not assign the monocots to a taxonomic rank, instead recognizing a monocots clade. However, there has remained some uncertainty regarding the exact relationships between the major lineages, with a number of competing models (including APG).
The APG system establishes eleven orders of monocots. These form three grades, the alismatid monocots, lilioid monocots and the commelinid monocots by order of branching, from early to late. In the following cladogram numbers indicate crown group (most recent common ancestor of the sampled species of the clade of interest) divergence times in mya (million years ago).
Of some 70,000 species,[94] by far the largest number (65%) are found in two families, the orchids and grasses. The orchids (Orchidaceae, Asparagales) contain about 25,000 species and the grasses (Poaceae, Poales) about 11,000. Other well known groups within the Poales order include the Cyperaceae (sedges) and Juncaceae (rushes), and the monocots also include familiar families such as the palms (Arecaceae, Arecales) and lilies (Liliaceae, Liliales).
Evolution [ edit ]
In prephyletic classification systems monocots were generally positioned between plants other than angiosperms and dicots, implying that monocots were more primitive. With the introduction of phyletic thinking in taxonomy (from the system of Eichler 1875–1878 onwards) the predominant theory of monocot origins was the ranalean (ranalian) theory, particularly in the work of Bessey (1915), which traced the origin of all flowering plants to a Ranalean type, and reversed the sequence making dicots the more primitive group.[33]
The monocots form a monophyletic group arising early in the history of the flowering plants, but the fossil record is meagre. The earliest fossils presumed to be monocot remains date from the early Cretaceous period. For a very long time, fossils of palm trees were believed to be the oldest monocots, first appearing 90 million years ago (mya), but this estimate may not be entirely true. At least some putative monocot fossils have been found in strata as old as the eudicots. The oldest fossils that are unequivocally monocots are pollen from the Late Barremian–Aptian – Early Cretaceous period, about 120-110 million years ago, and are assignable to clade-Pothoideae-Monstereae Araceae; being Araceae, sister to other Alismatales. They have also found flower fossils of Triuridaceae (Pandanales) in Upper Cretaceous rocks in New Jersey, becoming the oldest known sighting of saprophytic/mycotrophic habits in angiosperm plants and among the oldest known fossils of monocotyledons.
Topology of the angiosperm phylogenetic tree could infer that the monocots would be among the oldest lineages of angiosperms, which would support the theory that they are just as old as the eudicots. The pollen of the eudicots dates back 125 million years, so the lineage of monocots should be that old too.
Molecular clock estimates [ edit ]
Kåre Bremer, using rbcL sequences and the mean path length method for estimating divergence times, estimated the age of the monocot crown group (i.e. the time at which the ancestor of today's Acorus diverged from the rest of the group) as 134 million years. Similarly, Wikström et al., using Sanderson's non-parametric rate smoothing approach, obtained ages of 127–141 million years for the crown group of monocots. All these estimates have large error ranges (usually 15-20%), and Wikström et al. used only a single calibration point, namely the split between Fagales and Cucurbitales, which was set to 84 Ma, in the late Santonian period. Early molecular clock studies using strict clock models had estimated the monocot crown age to 200 ± 20 million years ago or 160 ± 16 million years, while studies using relaxed clocks have obtained 135-131 million years or 133.8 to 124 million years. Bremer's estimate of 134 million years has been used as a secondary calibration point in other analyses. Some estimates place the emergence of the monocots as far back as 150 mya in the Jurassic period.
Core group [ edit ]
The age of the core group of so-called 'nuclear monocots' or 'core monocots', which correspond to all orders except Acorales and Alismatales, is about 131 million years to present, and crown group age is about 126 million years to the present. The subsequent branching in this part of the tree (i.e. Petrosaviaceae, Dioscoreales + Pandanales and Liliales clades appeared), including the crown Petrosaviaceae group may be in the period around 125–120 million years BC (about 111 million years so far ), and stem groups of all other orders, including Commelinidae would have diverged about or shortly after 115 million years. These and many clades within these orders may have originated in southern Gondwana, i.e. Antarctica, Australasia, and southern South America.
Aquatic monocots [ edit ]
The aquatic monocots of Alismatales have commonly been regarded as "primitive". They have also been considered to have the most primitive foliage, which were cross-linked as Dioscoreales and Melanthiales. Keep in mind that the "most primitive" monocot is not necessarily "the sister of everyone else". This is because the ancestral or primitive characters are inferred by means of the reconstruction of character states, with the help of the phylogenetic tree. So primitive characters of monocots may be present in some derived groups. On the other hand, the basal taxa may exhibit many morphological autapomorphies. So although Acoraceae is the sister group to the remaining monocotyledons, the result does not imply that Acoraceae is "the most primitive monocot" in terms of its character states. In fact, Acoraceae is highly derived in many morphological characters, and that is precisely why Acoraceae and Alismatales occupied relatively derived positions in the trees produced by Chase et al. and others.
Some authors support the idea of an aquatic phase as the origin of monocots. The phylogenetic position of Alismatales (many water), which occupy a relationship with the rest except the Acoraceae, do not rule out the idea, because it could be 'the most primitive monocots' but not 'the most basal'. The Atactostele stem, the long and linear leaves, the absence of secondary growth (see the biomechanics of living in the water), roots in groups instead of a single root branching (related to the nature of the substrate), including sympodial use, are consistent with a water source. However, while monocots were sisters of the aquatic Ceratophyllales, or their origin is related to the adoption of some form of aquatic habit, it would not help much to the understanding of how it evolved to develop their distinctive anatomical features: the monocots seem so different from the rest of angiosperms and it's difficult to relate their morphology, anatomy and development and those of broad-leaved angiosperms.
Other taxa [ edit ]
In the past, taxa which had petiolate leaves with reticulate venation were considered "primitive" within the monocots, because of the superficial resemblance to the leaves of dicotyledons. Recent work suggests that these taxa are sparse in the phylogenetic tree of monocots, such as fleshy fruited taxa (excluding taxa with aril seeds dispersed by ants), the two features would be adapted to conditions that evolved together regardless. Among the taxa involved were Smilax, Trillium (Liliales), Dioscorea (Dioscoreales), etc. A number of these plants are vines that tend to live in shaded habitats for at least part of their lives, and may also have a relationship with their shapeless stomata. Reticulate venation seems to have appeared at least 26 times in monocots, in fleshy fruits 21 times (sometimes lost later), and the two characteristics, though different, showed strong signs of a tendency to be good or bad in tandem, a phenomenon described as "concerted convergence" ("coordinated convergence").
Etymology [ edit ]
The name monocotyledons is derived from the traditional botanical name "Monocotyledones" or Monocotyledoneae in Latin, which refers to the fact that most members of this group have one cotyledon, or embryonic leaf, in their seeds.
Ecology [ edit ]
Emergence [ edit ]
Some monocots, such as grasses, have hypogeal emergence, where the mesocotyl elongates and pushes the coleoptile (which encloses and protects the shoot tip) toward the soil surface. Since elongation occurs above the cotyledon, it is left in place in the soil where it was planted. Many dicots have epigeal emergence, in which the hypocotyl elongates and becomes arched in the soil. As the hypocotyl continues to elongate, it pulls the cotyledons upward, above the soil surface.
Conservation [ edit ]
The IUCN Red List describes four species as extinct, four as extinct in the wild, 626 as possibly extinct, 423 as critically endangered, 632 endangered, 621 vulnerable, and 269 near threatened of 4,492 whose status is known.[133]
Uses [ edit ]
Monocots are among the most important plants economically and culturally, and account for most of the staple foods of the world, such as cereal grains and starchy root crops, and palms, orchids and lilies, building materials, and many medicines. Of the monocots, the grasses are of enormous economic importance as a source of animal and human food, and form the largest component of agricultural species in terms of biomass produced.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ -atae, so that the principle of In 1964, Takhtajan proposed that classes including Monocotyledons, be formally named with the suffix, so that the principle of typification resulted in Liliatae for monocotyledons. The proposal was formally described in 1966 by Cronquist, Takhtajan and Zimmermann, from which is derived the descriptor "liliates". ^ [7] Tropicos gives an earlier authority J.H. Schaffn. 1911 ^ Cronquist attributes this term to De Candolle as DC. 1818 Syst. 1: 122 ^ OED: "Monocotyledon" An Anglo-Latin pronunciation."Monocotyledon" ^ Monocots show hypogeal development in which the cotyledon remains invisible within the seed, underground. The visible part is the first true leaf produced from the meristem ^ Acorus, so that if this genus is * Lacking in, so that if this genus is sister to the rest of the monocots, the synapomorphies do not apply to monocots as a whole. ^ Hexandria polygynia on the fact that Alisma is a member of the Gens monocotyledon[65] Scopoli, in his treatment of Linnaeus' scheme comments in theon the fact thatis a member of the ^ See also Lindley's review of classification systems up to 1853, and Dahlgren's from 1853–1982 ^ Endogènes (ενδον within + γεναω I create)
References [ edit ]Most laptops are boring.
One laptop gets slightly better battery life. The one next to it has a slightly faster GPU. That one over there is.00075 nanometers thinner. Minor differences. It's rare that a laptop actually stands out as being really and truly different. Unique. Ballsy.
And the Serval Workstation "laptop," without any doubt, qualifies as unabashedly ballsy. And, as luck would have it, the folks over at System76 sent me one to play with for a few weeks. You know. To properly evaluate its ballsiness.
This is, in all reality, a portable desktop computer for someone who needs extreme power and is not willing to make compromises.
Let's start with the fact that this isn't really a "laptop." The guts of the Serval Workstation make it more desktop than laptop. Desktop-class 4-GHz i7 processor. 16GB of DDR3 RAM. 128GB SSD. And, for the GPU, a 6GB nVidia GeForce GTX 970M.
And that's just the unit they sent me. You can cram up to 32GB of RAM and 5TB of storage in this rig. In. A. Freaking. Laptop.
The display is 15.6 inches with a 1080p resolution. It's a great screen. It may not be 4K, but let's be honest, for most of us 1080p is just plain dandy. The reason I mention this independently from the other specs is that the 1080p screen, while great, is the only part of this machine that is merely "quite good."
Every other part qualifies squarely as freaking insane.
All of that high-end, desktop-class insanity does come at a bit of a price, however. In size. Sure, the Serval Workstation is, technically, a laptop…but it's really about as thick as two of the bigger, high-end laptops from other vendors stacked right on top of each other.
This bad-mamma-jamma has some serious ventilation, too. It would have to with that desktop-class CPU. Oh, and the power brick is the size of a Ford Focus. Give or take.
But, and that's really the thing, this isn't a "laptop" in the traditional sense of the word. Yes, it's shaped like a laptop. Yes, it's portable. And, yes, I suppose you technically could put this computer on your lap – all 7 ½ pounds of it – but that's not what it's built for. Especially if you're wearing shorts. I'm pretty sure it would burn the hair on your legs clean off.
The rest of the specs are pretty hardcore as well. 4 USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, SD card reader, 1080p webcam, Gigabit Ethernet. and some of the best speakers I've ever heard on a laptop. And the keyboard, oh the keyboard! Great feeling, nice layout, and complete with a full 10-key number pad.
This is, in all reality, a portable desktop computer for someone who needs extreme power and is not willing to make compromises.
Video editing. Code compiling. Scientific computing. Those are the things the Serval Workstation is built for. Not for namby-pamby web browsing and spreadsheet editing (though it would do those just dandy as well). No. This machine is for the people who need intense speed and raw power.
In other words: This isn't a laptop that I would recommend for most people.
It's not terribly portable; I couldn't even fit the damned thing in my laptop backpack. I'd need to buy a new bag to accommodate its massive size. And that's without taking into consideration what lugging around an eight-pound laptop would do to my shoulders.
And most people simply do not need a high-end, desktop-class i7 CPU coupled with a 6GB GPU. Hell. The Serval comes with almost as much RAM dedicated just to graphics as the "high-end" Macbook Pro comes with… in total (GPU and System RAM put together).
But for people who need massive power? There is, quite simply, nothing that I have ever seen to rival the Serval. Massive, crazy, blistering power.
See what I mean? Ballsy. System76 isn't selling a mass-market laptop here. This is for a specific kind of user with specific needs and wants. And, hot damn, they nailed it.
All of that speed and power isn't terrible expensive for what you get, either. The rig they provided for my testing specs out at $2,089 (it starts at around $1,800). I was unable to configure a laptop that came close to touching the Serval's specs from any other manufacturer; and many (including Apple) sell more expensive gear with far lower specs. So, as nutty as it may sound for a rig like this, it's actually a pretty good deal.
The Serval ships with Ubuntu right out of the box. I also loaded up openSUSE. Both Linux distributions ran fantastically well. (Would it run Windows well? I have no idea. I couldn't think of any good reason to check.) When I spoke to an engineer at System76 he regaled me with the story of making sure the firmware on the Serval supported Linux as perfectly as possible right out of the gate. That earned significant brownie points with me.
One side note: While this machine is, clearly, aimed towards professionals with demanding horsepower requirements, the Serval Workstation makes an absolutely ridonculous gaming machine. Just look at those specs. This is a LAN party dream machine.
Now, with all that out of the way, there's the real question: Would I plop down $2,000 for the luxury of having this machine? For the time it would save in rendering video projects – along with the gaming speed it provides – you know… I'm seriously considering it.For long-term relationships, like often seeks like. Pretty Woman fantasies aside, husbands and wives tend to have similar socioeconomic status, education level and intelligence, and religious background.
It turns out they also tend to look alike — or at least choose mates who resemble their opposite-sex parent. As described in BLONDES, studies have found that women go for men who resemble their fathers ( unless they don’t like their dads) and men go for women with certain features of their moms. Freud called this sexual imprinting. Evolutionary psychologists call it assortative mating, meaning that people look for long-term mates with the ideal balance of genes that are like and unlike their own.
And the evidence is mounting. Another study has confirmed that people do pick partners that look significantly like their opposite-sex parent (but not the same-sex parent) when compared to the general population. Psychologist Tamas Bereczkei and his colleagues at the University of Pecs in Hungary measured fourteen facial proportions — the width, height, and length of eyes, noses, jaws, and other features — of more hundreds of couples, their partners, and parents. [*]
And here’s the interesting part: men and women home in on particular parent-resembling features. It’s not necessarily the whole face that counts.
Men pay attention to the lower half of a woman’s face. That is, a guy’s partner is likely to have his mom’s proportions of lip fullness/width, mouth width/face width, jaw length/face length, and jaw width/face width. They also go for an overall facial shape that is similar to their mother’s.
Women, meanwhile, zero in on the center of men’s faces. A gal’s partner is likely to have her dad’s proportions of mouth-brow distance/face height, distance between pupils/face width, eye width/face width, eye width/face width, distance between the inner eye corners/face width, nose length/face height, and nose width/face width.
Why is it that men go for Mom’s jaw and mouth while women go for Dad’s nose, eyes, and cheekbones? The researchers speculate that it has to do with how men and women process visual information differently. Women pay attention to center of men’s faces because those features are distinctive and stable over time. Facial hair may come and go, but eyes, noses, and cheeks stay the same. Men by default pay most attention to the lower half of the face because that region is most sensitive to sex hormones. Lip fullness, jaw size, and overall facial shape are cues of estrogen and testosterone levels.
Of course, Dad’s nose and Mom’s lips might not be considered optimally attractive. But for long-term relationships, lust is just one part of the equation. Everything in proportion…
* A kind reader brought to my attention an article reporting that Bereckzei’s study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was recently retracted. Another scientist noticed discrepancies in the data that, for instance, found a correlation of 92.8 percent between the jaw width of a man’s mother and his mate. Bereckzei admitted that an error was made, but that the results are still very strong (a 70 percent correlation in jaw width) after he fixed the errors. It will be interesting to see if the paper is republished after the data are re-crunched.
AdvertisementsThe panic set in immediately after Adrian Peterson was carted off the field on December 24th, 2011. It was compounded when everyone's fears were proven true and he was put on injured reserve two days later.
He can't come back. Nobody can come back even close to fully from that. Even if he comes back he will never be the same. Above all else, no way does he play in Week 1.
Adrian Peterson might have quoted some Han Solo in response.
Never tell me the odds.
You can tell Peterson the odds, but like everyone's favorite rogue smuggler, that's just likely to make him go out of his way to prove you wrong.
We'll take a look at a pair of plays which show why the Vikings are confident with Peterson going forward.
He's not quite 100 percent—he'll concede that. However, he is certainly close to it, or seemed to be on Sunday.
On this first play, early on in the game, they don't pussy-foot with Peterson—the play they call will have him test that knee pretty quick.
Peterson is solo in the backfield with two receivers out wide, though the one at the top of the screen motions in to help block.
On the next cap, the receiver is firing out to try and give Peterson some early help downfield. However if you look at the offensive line, you can see they are getting little forward motion. The red wedge is the defensive line pushing the offensive line back—and making Peterson rethink his direction.
Without hesitation, Peterson bounces outside—though not all the way—then cuts upfield.
Whether he just wanted to cut upfield to gain yards on a clearly disintegrating play or didn't think he could make it outside with enough speed to turn the corner, he took the ensuing contact well and bounced right back up after trying to fight through the tackle.
I liked what I saw on the run—defensive penetration aside. Peterson may seem a |
to the Associated Press. “Obviously, anything that doesn’t do that is not helpful.”
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the latest announcement, saying, “Such activity is not only illegal but also an obstacle to peace,” the Associated Press reported.
It was widely expected that Israel would announce, as it had twice before, new settlement construction immediately after the release of the third round of Palestinian prisoners two weeks ago. Israeli officials said they held off because Kerry and his team asked them to wait until he was gone.
Before Friday’s announcement, some European diplomats warned that they were growing frustrated with Israel’s new settlement construction.
Last year, the European Commission issued new guidelines that prohibit giving funds, grants, scholarships or prizes to Israeli entities in the settlements.
Earlier this week, a large Dutch pension fund said it will divest from five Israeli banks because of their ties to Jewish settlements.
Netanyahu also faced criticism at home. Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid called the plans for more building “void of content” and “a bad idea.”
Isaac Herzog, leader of the Labor Party and the voice of the opposition in the Israeli parliament, said Netanyahu should have frozen settlement building instead of releasing Palestinian prisoners, according to the Times of Israel.
But a leader of a pro-settlement council, Dani Dayan, said most of the new construction falls within East Jerusalem and the large settlements that Israel will probably never surrender. He tweeted, “It is hard to understand then why the government waited so long and why it causes any furor.”John Oliver returned on Sunday after a brief hiatus with a detailed story about America’s most counter-productive and antiquated marijuana laws.
In addition to detailing how the U.S. tax code screws marijuana businesses that operate legally within their states, Oliver showed how federal regulations put individuals who were complying with state laws at risk.
“If you have marijuana right now, even if you are acting completely legally according to your state, you may still be in serious jeopardy,” Oliver said. The “Last Week Tonight” host then went through numerous examples of how federal law interfered with people who had medical marijuana prescriptions to treat everything from epileptic seizures to PTSD.
“I know that some people will say, well hold on, the medical efficacy of marijuana needs a lot more study, and that is true,” Oliver said. “The problem is, it’s very difficult to do that because federal laws are standing in the way.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump’s administration have hinted that the federal government may crack down on states that have legalized recreational marijuana use.
“I don’t think America is going to be a better place when people of all ages, and particularly young people, are smoking pot,” Sessions told reporters in February. “I believe it’s an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we’re seeing real violence around that.”Health Reform: No good deed will go unpunished under ObamaCare. If a charitable hospital treats a homeless person who staggers into the emergency room without insurance, it may be punished with taxes and fines.
One of the "unintended" consequences of the misnamed Affordable Care Act was to place charitable tax-exempt hospitals in a medical Catch-22: To maintain their tax-exempt status they're required to treat a minimum number of patients who can't pay, yet ObamaCare requires everyone to have health coverage.
Right now, about 60% of the 6,000 or so hospitals in the U.S. are tax-exempt nonprofits, while 25% are government-owned. The rest — fewer than 1,000 — are for-profit. But this may change under provisions of ObamaCare to be enforced by the IRS.
A provision in Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code that takes effect under ObamaCare sets new standards of review and installs potential financial penalties if hospitals don't conform to IRS standards of when and how much charitable work can be performed.
Religious groups, especially Catholic orders, opened many of these facilities as charitable institutions. The IRS originally granted tax-exempt status to institutions that provided a "community benefit," defined as spending 3% of operating revenue to take care of patients who couldn't pay.
This benefitted the hospitals as well as the community, for if you counted all the sales, property and income taxes that nonprofit hospitals currently avoid paying, it would total $20 billion.
The quality of mercy may not be strained, but it must now be carefully defined and audited with stringent new reporting requirements. "It (the IRS) requires tax-exempt hospitals to do a community needs survey and file additional paperwork with the IRS every three years," says John Kartch of Americans for Tax Reform. "This is to prove that the charitable hospital is still needed in their geographical area — 'needed' as defined by ObamaCare and overseen by IRS bureaucrats."
"Failure to comply, or to prove this continuing need, could result in the loss of the hospital's tax-exempt status," Kartch adds. "The hospital would then become a for-profit venture, paying income tax."
Failure to complete a community health needs assessment in any applicable three-year period results in a penalty on the organization of up to $50,000, according to a report by Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.
It is our belief that community need is best determined by those who reside in the community, not by faceless Washington bureaucrats with a vested interest in growing government and imposing leftist ideology.
We also believe the record shows faith-based and charitable institutions are most efficient at delivering needed services to the poor, hungry and sick. They should be encouraged, not punished, for their work.
Yet the government is rigging the game against them, in this case against nonprofit charitable hospitals. All blessings must flow from that government, which will determine who can help the needy and when, lest they be punished, either with loss of tax-exempt status or fines for not having the proper paperwork.
Faith-based institutions such as Catholic hospitals are already under attack because of ObamaCare's mandate that free contraceptives be provided in any health plan even if that violates your free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.
One in six patients in the U.S. is in a Catholic hospital. Catholic charities provide needed services to the hungry, homeless and poor. Many would be forced to close, and many would do so rather than render unto Caesar that which is not his. ObamaCare may spell the doom of nonprofit hospitals.
So, if you're that Good Samaritan who sees someone in need along the road, make sure the government approves and have your forms in order.@gamingonlinux if all goes to plan -> yes! — Triumph Studios (@TriumphStudios) March 11, 2015
We have it confirmed that Age Of Wonders III should release on Linux this April, and it brings with it a massive new DLC too.The exact date is the 14th of April, but there might be an open beta beforehand.Straight from the developers twitter to us:Here's a brand spanky new trailer for the new DLC of this highly requested Linux game: https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=6KfC8b2vxow(Official)Age of Wonders III is the long anticipated sequel to the award-winning strategy series. Delivering a unique mix of Empire Building, Role Playing and Warfare, Age of Wonders III offers the ultimate in turn-based fantasy strategy for veterans of the series and new players alike!Be sure to check out the Steam page of Age of Wonders III. Whatever you do, don't buy it until the Linux version is released, please.Exciting!The Thunder offense has been tough to watch since Russell Westbrook’s injury, mostly because it’s less an “offense” than a series of predictable, slow-moving sets designed to maximize the talent of two individual superstars. Take one of those superstars away, and those same predictable, slow-moving sets aren’t as powerful.
This isn’t Miami or San Antonio, where there is a system of constant movement, screening, and side-to-side action that functions in the same general way, creating the same efficient shot types, regardless of which parts you plug into it. And so the Oklahoma City offense without Westbrook has become drudgery for Kevin Durant. He’s isolating much more, which means the team is isolating much more — on nearly 22 percent of its offensive possessions in three games without Westbrook, up from about 14.5 percent in the regular season, per Synergy Sports. They’re getting fewer shots out of the pick-and-roll or via transition, two Westbrook specialties, and Durant is not exaggerating by much when he suggests Houston is quadruple-teaming him.
And guess what? The offense is still working fine. The Thunder have scored 106 points per 100 possessions in three games without Westbrook, a number that would have ranked seventh overall in the regular season. That’s a step down from Oklahoma City’s regular-season mark, no. 2 overall, but any team adjusting to a dramatically different reality on the fly has to be happy maintaining a top-10 scoring rate at the very start of that adjustment process. That’s not to suggest everything is happy on that side of the ball. The Thunder will wear Durant down playing this way, and Oklahoma City will face much better defenses if it survives this round — defenses more accustomed to throwing the kitchen sink at a star player without opening up fatal holes elsewhere on the floor.
But the Thunder aren’t in trouble against the Rockets because their offense is sputtering. They’re in trouble because their defense, much improved during the regular season, has fallen apart against Houston’s small-ball, spread-the-floor attack. Since its blowout win in Game 1, Oklahoma City has allowed 105.9 points per 100 possessions, and that number has shot up to just more than 107 in three games without Westbrook, per NBA.com. That’s Bobcats/Kings territory, and though Houston ranked among the league’s half-dozen best offenses all season, it’s concerning that an allegedly championship-level defense playing with postseason focus hasn’t managed to drag that offense down a level or two.
It’s unclear whether Westbrook’s absence has had much to do with this slippage, but Houston has goaded the Thunder into an alarming number of basic defensive breakdowns. There’s no real pattern to it, either; the Rockets are shredding small lineups and big ones, including the Thunder’s new starting lineup, with Reggie Jackson in Westbrook’s place. It’s tempting to blame the defensive struggles of the new OKC starters on Kendrick Perkins and/or the Perkins–Serge Ibaka big-man combination, because Miami small-ball lineups decimated that plodding Perkins-centric group so badly in last season’s Finals.
And the big-versus-small dynamic has hurt at times, and in very glaring ways, which is why Scott Brooks has gone to his own small-ball lineups more as the series has gone on — a decision that punts a clear edge the bigger groups might have on the offensive glass, where Ibaka has taken advantage of the Rockets’ decision to hide James Harden on him. But, again, offense hasn’t been the issue here.
Ibaka has generally defended either Chandler Parsons or Francisco Garcia on defense when the Thunder go big, but he has had trouble at times locating the right player in the transition from offense to defense. That confusion has a bunch of ripple effects. The Thunder have flat-out lost one of those wing shooters, yielding a few wide-open 3-pointers in semi-transition. Ibaka has at times gotten stuck defending Harden, a mismatch the Rockets have coyly produced by having Harden “defend” Ibaka so that the two will be next to each other during those chaotic transition moments. And while Ibaka can do fine in that assignment — he can certainly outdo Derek Fisher or Kevin Martin — Harden’s quick jab steps have spooked him into surrendering some precious air space on a few Harden 3-pointers.
There have also been some Finals Flashbacks, plays on which Ibaka will needlessly stray far into the paint, making himself vulnerable to kickout passes the Rockets are seeking. Yes, big-versus-small can be treacherous, with trade-offs on either end and a certain risk-reward calculus every team must perform before diving into this offbeat matchup clash.
But I’m not sure any of those trade-offs explain elementary failures of communication like the one here, from Game 5, between Durant and Perkins on a simple Parsons/Omer Asik pick-and-roll:
The breakdown is obvious: Durant assumes the two defenders in the play will switch, and so he abandons Parsons to guard Asik rolling into the paint. The problem: Perkins doesn’t seem to be in on the strategy. He pauses at the elbow area, as if he’s going to try to contain Parsons off the dribble while still keeping Asik within arm’s reach — standard big man pick-and-roll stuff, built on the assumption that Durant will stick with Parsons. That leaves Parsons wide open, and as a giddy Parsons rises for an open 3, Perkins realizes a crisis is afoot, and springs into a panicky lunge toward Parsons. (Side note: Parsons needs a nickname. We suggest “The Chanimal.” Or “3Chan.org.”) That sudden burst in speed is enough to stop the immediate threat, but it leaves Perkins leaning the wrong way, and Parsons takes advantage with an artful little give-and-go score. Again, very basic stuff.
Ditto for what happens here on the right wing, where Harden takes a very casual Garcia screen and suddenly finds himself open for a 3-pointer. As you might guess, leaving a team’s best scorer unguarded from long range is generally a bad strategy:
The breakdown is blatant: Thabo Sefolosha, guarding Harden as usual, doesn’t try to get over the screen, suggesting he’s under the impression Garcia’s defender (Martin, just an atrocious defender) will jump out on Harden. And Martin, for his part, appears prepared for the switch in assignments, only he drops way down toward the paint, as if Harden is a sure bet to dribble in that direction instead of jacking a droolworthy triple.
You want more? OK! It’d be hard for any team, let alone a would-be title contender, to botch this dribble handoff between Carlos Delfino and Garcia any worse than Martin and Durant do here:
An explanation: Durant starts off guarding Garcia, the eventual shooter, but he comes to a split-second standstill upon the handoff — suggesting, again, that he expects Martin to switch onto Garcia and prevent the open shot. Durant realizes right away no such switch is occurring, and that he better move his ass into range to contest the shot. But he’s too late, and you can see in the clip that he gestures angrily at Martin once the shot hits bottom.
And this this is unspeakable:
Tom Thibodeau wouldn’t be able to sleep for a month if the Bulls committed a breakdown like this. This is a pick-and-roll on which no member of the Thunder helps on Asik rolling into the lane — until Jackson does so, much too late, and with a dumb foul as the cherry on top of this shit defense sundae. In Oklahoma City’s defense, the helper here would normally be the defender in the weak-side corner. And since Garcia finally dribbles left around the Asik screen, the help defender in this case would be Ibaka — parked on the very dangerous Parsons in the right corner, with his back to the proceedings.
The common theme running through all of these breakdowns — and there have been many more — is not big-versus-small, or poor ol’ Perkins; rather, it’s a lack of clarity and a preponderance of confusion. Offenses in the NBA are so good that a moment of hesitation — just a split-second of misunderstanding — is fatal to an NBA defense. The very best defenses — Chicago, Memphis, Boston, Indiana — are built upon a series of hard-and-fast rules designed to eliminate all confusion. There are general principles, and sub-rules specific to particular opposing players and pet plays. But they are clear, and they are constant, and if you break them, you generally don’t play much. The Thunder have not looked like that sort of team, and that is disturbing at this stage of the season; it’s not as if Westbrook’s minutes are going to guys who haven’t been in Oklahoma City for large portions of this season and last.
Westbrook’s injury does have a trickle-down effect. Westbrook is only an average defender, prone to some of the positional issues highlighted here, but teams fear his crazy athleticism, and that almost unique combination of size, speed, and strength allows him to disrupt plays even after falling a half-step out of position. The Thunder have very little choice but to give at least some of his minutes to players who do not bring that combination of attributes — Fisher, Martin, DeAndre Liggins, etc.
And taking away the Thunder’s second-best wing/guard obviously removes a potent ingredient from Oklahoma City’s small lineups — the five-man units that are going to have to carry the Thunder tonight and (if necessary, gulp) in Game 7. But Westbrook is gone, and some of these mistakes have nothing to do with his absence, anyway.
So what’s the solution? The bulk of it is probably just to be better — reinforce the rules, or institute new ones, make sure everyone’s on the same page, cut out the stupidity, etc. Brooks may want to think about a quicker hook on the new starting lineup, surrendering points at an embarrassing rate, but he already went in that direction in Game 5, when he went small less than two minutes into the third quarter. And as is always the case with tiny playoff sample sizes, this trend — the sieve-like play of the starting lineup — is only a couple missed jumpers away from reversing itself.
Brooks might also consider going big more often instead of using a black-and-white, either-or approach. Nick Collison played just seven minutes in Game 5, and the Ibaka-Collison pairing has logged just four minutes in the entire series after logging nearly 500 in the regular season. Why not give this pair a shot, especially during those few minutes when Durant rests? I’m not sure what the point is of going small without Durant at power forward, anyway.
The Thunder have also been switching very readily on totally nonthreatening and slow-moving guard-guard screens, even if doing so means someone like Fisher or Martin shifts onto Harden. They got lucky that Harden didn’t burn them too badly in Game 5, but some of the open looks the Rockets got by exploiting those switches are going to fall if Harden sees them again:
The Thunder have actually done quite well on defense with the Fisher-Martin pairing on the floor as part of smaller lineups, but that seems unsustainable, and Brooks worked in Game 5 to have one of Liggins and Sefolosha on the floor at all times. Still, the Fisher-Martin duo is vulnerable by nature against a Houston team that gives all its wings freedom to attack off the bounce, and we’ve yet to see Brooks experiment with a lineup that includes neither Fisher nor Jackson. He almost certainly won’t do so now, but if Durant is running 90 percent of the offense anyway, a lineup like Durant-Sefolosha-Martin-Ibaka-Collison might provide an interesting combination of offense and defense.
But these are just rotation tweaks. Those can have an impact game-to-game, but in the bigger picture, the Thunder just have to be more sound on defense. They might survive Houston, but they’re not going further than that with a porous defense and the most predictable offense of any playoff team.CNN fired conservative commentator Jeffrey Lord on Thursday after he tweeted a Nazi salute at a critic.
A network spokesperson confirmed that Lord was no longer with the network and said "Nazi salutes are indefensible." The statement came hours after Lord tweeted the Nazi slogan "Sieg Heil!" at the head of a liberal advocacy group, Media Matters for America.
Lord said in a telephone interview Thursday night that he respected CNN and its journalists, but fundamentally disagreed with the network's decision to fire him. He said his "Sieg Heil!" tweet was not an endorsement of Nazism or fascist tactics, but was meant to mock Media Matters and its use of boycotts of advertisers of conservative voices such as Sean Hannity, which Lord equated with fascism.
"I want to make something very clear. I have nothing but respect, affection and love for CNN. I think the world of CNN," Lord told The Associated Press. "I think they're terrific people and serious people."
He called himself a "First Amendment fundamentalist" and called CNN's decision disappointing. "From my perspective CNN caved on the First Amendment of all things. I disagree. I respectfully disagree."
He declined to get into specifics of how he was fired, saying he wanted to keep that a private conversation.
'Mocking Nazis and fascists'
Retained by CNN in August 2015, Lord was an indefatigable on-air supporter of Donald Trump throughout his candidacy and since his election. A contributor to the conservative magazine The American Spectator, Lord is a former aide to Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan.
He had repeatedly clashed with Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, whose group condemned CNN for employing him as a commentator.
Following a harsh exchange of tweets with Carusone earlier this week, Lord posted an article for The American Spectator on Thursday morning, calling Carusone's group the "Media Matters Fascists" and casting them as "anti-free speech bigots who, in typical fascist style, make it their mission to shut down speech they don't like."
During the day, the Twitter sparring resumed, with Lord finally responding to Carusone with the tweet: "Sieg Heil!"
In subsequent tweets, he insisted he meant to be "mocking Nazis and Fascists."
"I believe in a writer's toolbox there are several ways you deal with people," Lord said. "One of them is to mock them."
Unwavering Trump praise
During his presence on CNN's airwaves Lord had frequently riled CNN hosts including Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, fellow commentators, and viewers with many of his statements. During Super Tuesday election night coverage in March 2016, he argued that the KKK was a left-wing organization because of Democrats' support of it many decades before. In April, he called U.S. President Donald Trump the "Martin Luther King" of health care.
Lord said he did not know what his next steps would be, but said he didn't intend to stop speaking out about the First Amendment and other issues.
Asked about how he felt about having a tweet end his CNN career, Lord said he wasn't necessarily surprised given the vitriol Twitter can provoke. Ironically, he said, tweeting more was a New Year's resolution.
He said he had received "a tidal wave of support" from conservatives after his firing.I wanted a nice shoot for my Moxxi cosplay to make sure all the details are pereceived well, and I was suuuper lucky to have the artist Jorge Zamacona's hand!!!!
www.facebook.com/pages/Jorge-Z… ; So the result couldn't be more satisfying * __ *
I do not recognize myself in the pictures used to wearing a different style of cosplays! > /// < But the result is coo l, isn' it?
Jorge thank you very much for making this possible!!
Hope you like it!
you can follow me on my fb page if you want!
www.facebook.com/Usagitxo?fref=ts
The rest of pics will come soon! )) )) Hope you like it!
Queria una sesion decente de mi cosplay de Moxxi para que se apreciasen todos los detalles bien, y tuve la suuuper suerte de tener la mano artista de Jorge Zamacona!!!! www.facebook.com/pages/Jorge-Z… Asi que el resultado no ha podido ser mas satisfactorio *__*No me reconozco en las fotos acostumbrada a llevar un estilo diferente de cosplays!! >///< pero el resultado queda chulo no?Muchas gracias Jorge por hacer esto posible!!Espero que os guste!podeis seguirme en mi pagina de fb si quereis!El resto de fotitos llegaran pronto!))------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Black women are joining traditionally white sororities at the University of Alabama amid efforts to end racial segregation within Greek-letter social groups, the head of the school said Friday.
University President Judy Bonner said 11 black students and three students from other minority groups received bids, or invitations, to join a historically white sorority. Of that group, four black students and two students from other minority backgrounds have accepted those invitations, Bonner said. She expected the numbers to rise as the academic year continues.
"I am confident that we will achieve our objective of a Greek system that is inclusive, accessible and welcoming to students of all races and ethnicities," Bonner said in a video statement. "We will not tolerate anything less."
The university's Greek organizations have been segregated by race since the first black students enrolled and created social organizations. One oversight organization has been composed of white sororities and the other composed of minority sororities. Only a handful of blacks attempted to join the historically white Greek groups at Alabama, where there are also historically black fraternities and sororities.
But that system came under scrutiny when the campus newspaper, The Crimson White, reported allegations this month that two prospective black members were passed over by all-white sororities because of pressure from alumnae, and in one case, an adviser. The coverage caused a wide-ranging debate, even prompting Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, an alumnus, to say that fraternal organizations should choose members based on their qualifications, not their race.
The debate came at an embarrassing time for Bonner's university, which is marking the 50th anniversary of its racial integration. Alabama admitted its first black students in 1963 after then-Gov. George C. Wallace infamously stood in a schoolhouse door to protest their enrollment. Wallace relented under pressure from President John F. Kennedy's administration.
Several hundred people marched Wednesday at the university to oppose racial segregation, and professors at a Faculty Senate meeting denounced long-standing racial segregation in fraternities and sororities.
Bonner made changes meant to weaken racial barriers. She required that the historically white sororities use a recruitment process in which new members can be added at any time. She also expanded the maximum allowable size of the groups to 360 people to increase the chances for prospective members.
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"While some sororities are farther along than others, I am encouraged that chapter members are proactively reaching out to a diverse group of young women," she said.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.When I first heard about Mr. Obama, upstart Senator from Illinois I liked the story. An American tale indeed, immigrant father meets American mother. Even the bloodline connection to Dick Cheney was a part of the improbable saga. Way before the presidential primary campaign I decided to subscribe to his podcast, but after listening something just wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I unsubscribed immediately.
Then his campaign, a perceived ‘movement of the people’ as it was portrayed by the corporate media. Ironic, as corporate money was flowing to the Obama camp in amounts that were undoubtedly carrying their efforts. There was talk in the press about Barack as an ‘anti-war candidate’ and people bought it, despite the lack of any real policy put forth from him that would suggest it to be so.
Then there was the victory speech on election night. African Americans everywhere felt a sense of liberation at the fact that even someone half black really could be elected president. My instincts told me that he was a genuine person and so despite all of the evidence I wanted to give him a chance.
I only needed a few weeks to see the real story. Banksters, corporate shills, GMO food industry reps and even the SAME Secretary of Defense from the ‘evil Bush administration’ swarmed the White House and I knew what was up immediately. Once again the people had been duped by the establishment media. I knew that no change would be coming, or at least the sort of change that average folks would benefit from.
Now this- a Nobel Peace Prize for a man who approves wiping out entire families with soulless robotic killing machines? There is no real president in Washington DC, just a fabricated image of a man with a touching story. Once again, Big Brother has instructed the TV addicted masses what to think and they have obeyed.In Depth › Analysis and Opinion
New drugs need old logic
The bonanza of innovative drug discoveries that was meant to follow the sequencing of the human-genome hasn't arrived, argues Dr David C. Swinney.
Investment in drug research and development has substantially increased since the beginning of this century. But the number of truly innovative new medicines resulting from human-genome sequencing has not increased.
Many drugs don't make it past the initial research stage.
This means that a broad variety of diseases are not being treated effectively, in the developed or the developing worlds.
So why is the production of new medicines so frustratingly low?
Advances in molecular sciences, corresponding to the sequencing of the human genome in the 1980s, allowed scientists to identify all the human proteins — large, complex molecules necessary for many of the body's functions.
Understanding the proteins' roles then led to greater knowledge of the underlying causes of diseases. For example, mutations, or defects, at specific molecular locations in human DNA were found to be responsible for some cancers, raising the hope of developing successful therapies tailored to individual patients.
Identifying the defective molecular parts, known as the drug targets, should have made addressing the causes of disease easier, and would revolutionise the pharmaceutical sciences.
Scientists believed that the ability to visualise and understand human biology at a more detailed level would lead to many new medicines.
Prior to this molecular revolution, scientists discovered medicines by randomly evaluating different chemicals against phenotypes — an organism's observable physiological and biochemical traits — in authentic biological systems, such as animals or cells. But, unfortunately, this strategy is neither efficient, nor intellectually satisfying.
The molecular revolution heralded an era in which drug discovery and development would be rational, not random. Contrary to expectations, however, the increased efficiency implied by identifying target molecules has not produced a bounty of new drugs.
Efforts to address the problem have focused on how the target was selected, the candidate drugs' efficacy in humans, the risk of undesirable side effects, and the efficiency of the discovery process — all to little or no avail.
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Older and wiser
In fact, it appears that the lion's share of first-in-class medicines — those drugs that successfully establish a new class of medicines — have been discovered using the older method of phenotype screening.
In research published in a recent issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, my colleague Jason Anthony and I analysed how first-in-class medicines were approved by the Federal Drugs Administration in the decade between 1999 and 2008.
We found that 75 drugs approved in this time were small-molecule first-in-class drugs. Phenotypic screening produced 28 of these new drugs, while target-based approaches produced 17 new drugs.
Considering how strongly biased the industry has been toward target-based drug discovery, that imbalance is highly significant.
This lower productivity partly reflects target-based discovery's lack of consideration of the molecular complexities of how the drugs work. Knowing the parts of an efficient machine — a watch, an automobile, or a computer — is not enough to describe how it works. The parts must collaborate in precise ways to provide accurate time, reliable transportation, or processed information.
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Complex biology
Biology is infinitely more complex. The phrase "molecular mechanism of action" describes the way that biological parts collaborate as a whole to provide an effective and safe medicine.
Addressing the molecular mechanism of action would help improve the success of target-based discoveries, because merely knowing the identity of a part involved in a defect may not be sufficient to repair a malfunctioning machine.
The target-based approach is analogous to looking for your keys in the dark: if they are under a streetlight, they're easier to find. Many hoped the molecular revolution would amount to more streetlights for drug discovery. Unfortunately, it appears that this new light, in most cases, is too dim to illuminate the molecular details of the dynamic human biological machine with sufficient specificity to rationalise the design of new medicines.
The random phenotypic process, though less efficient, will ultimately identify medicines that are effective and work to repair disease. The target-based approach, on the other hand, creates only the illusion of greater efficiency.
The way forward is to find a method that combines the efficiency of target-based approaches with the authenticity of phenotypic research.
About the author David C. Swinney is at the Institute for Rare and Neglected Diseases Drug Discovery and previously was Director of Virology Biochemical Pharmacology at Roche, Palo Alto.
© Project Syndicate, 2011.
^ to topTaken as a whole, a cooked cadaver would yield about 81,500 calories’ worth of food, says James Cole, a lecturer on human origins at the University of Brighton in England. But that’s only if you wolfed down every part that could be consumed. To create his “nutritional template” for cannibalism, Cole used body-composition data published in the 1940s and ’50s, drawn from four dead males between the ages of 35 and 65. From these he built something like a beef chart for human beings, with caloric content listed for every cut of person-meat.
A human arm would supply about 1,800 calories, for example, while each leg would yield 7,150 calories.
Cole determined that a human arm would supply about 1,800 calories, for example, while each leg would yield 7,150 calories. The lungs, liver, and alimentary canal each provide roughly 1,500 calories, while the brain, spinal cord, and nerve trunks together account for 2,700. And what lurks in the hearts of men? Seven hundred twenty-two calories, Cole says.
Archaeologists might use the nutritional template to help settle some tricky research questions. We know that some groups of early hominins engaged in cannibalistic behavior, but it’s hard to know whether they did so for ritual and social reasons (so-called cultural cannibalism) or as an occasional source of nutrients (gastronomic cannibalism). In a cave site east of Burgos, Spain, where Homo antecessor lived one million years ago, researchers have found cut-marks on hominin bones that suggest the latter. The marks look identical to those found on the bones of animals consumed as food. Cole hopes that his work could further help distinguish these behaviors. For example, researchers might check to see if H. antecessor’s cut-marks deliberately targeted the most nutritious body parts.
The 81,500 calories in a human body may sound like a lot, but it’s paltry next to what’s found in bigger animals. A horse contains more than 200,000 calories, and a bear three times that much. And that’s just from their most appetizing parts. It’s also worth considering that about half the calories in human meat come from adipose tissue. Consuming so much fat might pose problems of its own. “I’m not a nutritionist,” says Cole, “but I would imagine that it would not be very healthy.”
This article originally appeared in the July 2014 issue of Popular Science_._Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States, has not been in office for very long, but already the contours and characteristics of his rule have become clear. Rather than govern conventionally, through officers of state appointed for their competence and experience and with the agreement, however reluctant, of Congress, he has chosen to gather round him an informal coterie of friends, advisors, and relatives — many of them, like himself, without any experience of government at all — while railing against the restrictions imposed on him by constitutional arrangements such as the independence of the press and the judiciary.
Trump’s entourage resembles nothing more closely than the court of a hereditary monarch, with informal structures of rule elbowing aside more formal ones. Trump did, after all, win widespread support in the electorate by promising precisely this: shaking up, bypassing or overthrowing the Washington establishment and trying something new.
The result, however, has been chaos and confusion, contradiction and paralysis. It has become clear that the president of the United States is someone who does not read his briefs; who does not take the advice of experts in the intelligence field or indeed in any other; who fires off brief statements without thinking whether they are consistent with his administration’s declared policies; who is seemingly incapable of putting together a coherent sentence with a subject, a verb, and an object; who is apt to give away state secrets to a foreign power; and who seems to have no respect either for the truth or for the Constitution (not least in respect of freedom of religion and freedom of speech). He may not be mad, but a growing number of commentators allege that Trump is suffering from dementia, or is mentally subnormal, or is suffering from a personality disorder of some kind.
In a situation where a head of state is incapable of carrying out his duties properly, what guidance can history offer us? The relevant history isn’t so much the history of the presidency of the United States, where no incumbent has ever been successfully removed from office by Congress, but rather the history of incompetent — or allegedly incompetent — rulers at other times and in other parts of the world.
What happens when a political elite concludes that the real or titular head of state has to be deposed in the interests of the country as a whole? Of course, given Trump’s leadership style, the pertinent question might be narrowed down further: What happens when a monarch is judged as mentally unfit to rule?
An 1840 portrait of Ferdinand I of Austria by Francesco Hayez.
In modern times, just as further back in history, madness is a slippery concept, hard to pin down unless there are obvious signs of delusion, derangement, paranoia, or actual physical aggression.
But madness of that sort was far from uncommon in Europe’s royal families, not least because of the inbreeding favored by their convention that members of a royal family could not marry beneath their station. As Erik Midelfort explains in his entertaining 1996 monograph Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany, in 16th-century Germany nearly 30 dukes, landgraves, and counts were regarded by their courts and ministers as mad enough to require medical attention or removal from office. But what exactly was meant by “mad”? Midelfort explains that advisors and family members spoke of “weakness, folly, debility, and the condition of not being right,” or sometimes “furor, or melancholy, or sickness” when they encountered princes who seemed to be mentally unsuited to rule. The notion of clinical insanity or certifiable madness is one that only became current in the 19th century.
In the early modern period, a few princes were clearly completely deranged, like Don Julius Caesar d’ |
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- OffspringMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption London mother: "I allowed my son to come back [from fighting in Syria] and accepted him with love"
A mother whose son joined a militant group linked to IS in Syria has described how she travelled to Turkey and managed to persuade him to return home.
The woman, who does not wish to be named, travelled to the Turkish-Syrian border after her son disappeared earlier this year.
"I was constantly trying to find ways of getting him to come back," said the 45-year-old from north London.
"I realised saying 'I need you to come home' and that kind of anger was just completely futile, so I stopped doing that."
Her son converted to Islam three years ago at the age of 18 after attending talks at his local mosque and researching the religion online.
"My son came to Islam through his own decision, he wasn't forced or anything like that," she said.
However after seeing reports of the conflict in Syria, he secretly travelled to the country to join a militant group linked to IS.
Once there, he phoned his mother to tell her where he was.
"My son never told me he was going to go to Syria. He knew I would have stopped him," she said.
"I think the reason he went was because he felt quite upset about the oppression that's going on there and in his naive mind he thought he could go out there and help."
Image copyright AFP Image caption Her son travelled to Syria after being concerned by reports of the conflict
She was shocked, but she managed to maintain contact with her son and during their conversations she tried to convince him to return to the UK.
"When he'd phone me I would feel relieved, then I would think right well at least he's all right," she said.
"And then after a few days of not hearing from him the anxiety would start again."
So she tried a new tactic.
"I don't know if I did it consciously, but I kind of said, you know you've made a decision and I can't cope living in this flat without you because it is too upsetting so I'm going to work abroad," she said.
"I think that took the power out of his rebellion. He kind of started to think again and that was the catalyst to him coming back."
Her son had been in Syria for four months when he decided to try and make his way home. However, he suffered a back injury in crossfire between two rival factions and is still receiving treatment for his wounds.
"He was traumatised and in quite a fragile state," she said.
"At that point I knew I was going to have to go to Turkey because it gave him something to aim for, he knew his mum was waiting for him."
She got on the next flight and made her way to Adana, a town near the Turkish-Syrian border. On arrival she used the internet in an attempt to trace a "safe" route for her son to reach her.
After texting him the address of a hotel she thought he could get to, she waited.
"I completely lost contact with him. I didn't know what was going on," she said.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Home Office estimates about 500 Britons have travelled to Syria
Two weeks after she arrived in Turkey he turned up at the hotel.
"I was so relieved and felt really good about how it worked out," she added.
After returning to the UK her son was questioned by the Metropolitan Police.
The son was also approached by officials from MI5 but she said the contact had made it hard for her son to adjust to life back in London.
"My son felt pressurised and quite fragile," she said. "It made him quite mistrusting, a bit paranoid."
Despite this she does not regret her decision to bring her son home.
"How it actually worked out, the result was amazing," she said.
"I did actually manage to get my son back."
BBC Inside Out London is on BBC One in the London region on Monday, 20 October at 19:30 BST and nationwide on the iPlayer for 28 days thereafter.Two million civilians in Idlib are sitting ducks.
On October 12, Turkey deployed troops inside Idlib province, Anadolu Agency reported. The Syrian government responded with a statement calling on Turkey to immediately withdraw, per news reports.
Russia and Syria should comply with the laws of war in its military operations and take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties, including taking adequate steps to determine that the sites targeted served a military objective and distinguishing between civilians and combatants. Russia and Syria should allow independent investigations into these strikes and make information about them available. All parties to the conflict should ensure that civilians can flee the fighting in safety, including to seek refuge in Turkey, and respect the laws of war in their military operations in Syria.
“The intense fighting in Idlib and the uncertainty surrounding the area’s future exposes the myth that Idlib is a safe area for Syrians to return to,” Houry said.
This investigation is based on 16 remote interviews by Human Rights Watch researchers with first responders, local residents, hospital staff, and relatives of victims involved in the three attacks. Human Rights Watch also reviewed images and videos available as open source information, and provided to Human Rights Watch directly by local witnesses and first responders.
Human Rights Watch has chosen to publish only the names of sources who gave permission and if Human Rights Watch determined that it would not put them at additional risk. For some sources, Human Rights Watch has used pseudonyms, or left them unidentified, either because the sources requested confidentiality, or because Human Rights Watch determined that publishing their names could pose a risk to them.
Armanaz, September 29
On September 29, aircraft attacked Armanaz, a town 20 kilometers northwest of the city of Idlib and 10 kilometers from the Turkish border, killing at least 35 people, including at least three children, according to five witnesses and photos and video footage analyzed by Human Rights Watch.
Local residents told Human Rights Watch that an aircraft dropped several munitions on a residential neighborhood close to al-Zahra Mosque in Armanaz around 8:30 p.m. People interviewed said that armed groups fighting the Syrian government had no presence inside the town and that the attack killed and injured only civilians. One witness said that although HTS was in general control of the area, all the victims were civilians.
Yasser Yahya, a local resident, went to the area immediately after the attack:
We went to rescue people and we found people all over the ground and under the rubble. Everyone was trying to rescue them. We pulled out whoever was close, most were children and women. Those who were stuck deeper, they weren’t pulled out except days later. Most people who died are women and children, there are also men, and also elderly people, some in wheelchairs – they couldn’t go out of their homes.
Approximately an hour and a half after the initial attack, local residents said, an aircraft attacked the same location again. Ahmad Jabas, a first responder from Syria Civil Defense, said that his group tried to evacuate the area when they heard a warning on the radio that an aircraft was flying toward them. He said the second attack killed at least four people trapped under the rubble. “They could have survived [if it were not for the second attack],” he said.
The attacks destroyed at least 30 residential buildings, Syria Civil Defense and first responders said. Video footage and photos Human Rights Watch reviewed show a significant amount of destruction to what appear to be residential buildings.
Local residents, including relatives of victims, provided the names of 42 victims of the two attacks, saying they were civilians. More than one source included the same 35 names. The list includes at least three children. Abdelkader Khashan, a Syria Civil Defense first responder, described finding a small child under the rubble: “I thought I could save him so we took him to the nearest medical point, but he was dead. He was around 8 months.” Khashan shared with Human Rights Watch a video of himself with an infant covered in dust who appeared lifeless.
Human Rights Watch interviewed two people whose relatives were killed in the attack. Samir (not his real name) said that he was on his way to visit his relatives when the attack struck their houses:
The houses were all razed to the ground. You wouldn’t recognize the area. As we removed the rubble, we could hear people screaming, we could hear my aunt, her husband, we could hear their voices. We first saw the body of my cousin, he was already dead. Then we saw the body of his sister-in-law and her son. We kept digging for an hour and a half and we saw her son’s hand. I think he’s three or four years old. We assumed he was dead, he wasn’t moving, he wasn’t crying. But when we pulled him, he suddenly took a deep breath, and started crying.
A second witness provided the names of five relatives killed in the attack, including two children.
Some of the witnesses said they believed, based on the extent of the destruction, that the aircraft dropped fuel-air explosive bombs on the area. These enhanced blast weapons are more powerful than conventional high-explosive munitions of comparable size and inflict extensive damage over a wide area. Because of these wide area effects, Human Rights Watch believes that belligerents should refrain from using enhanced blast weapons like fuel-air explosives in populated areas. The destruction seen in photos and videos is consistent with the use of an enhanced blast weapons, but Human Rights Watch has not been able to otherwise independently confirm the type of weapon used in the attack.
A network of observers monitoring aircraft movement in Syria, known as “Sentry Syria,” reported that an Su-24 aircraft – used by both the Syrian and Russian air forces – took off from the Tiyas, or T4, airbase, west of Palmyra in Homs province, at 8:13 p.m. on September 29 and was spotted heading north. At 8:26 p.m., the network reported that an Su-24 was flying north over Kafr Nabl, and at 8:27 p.m., that an Su-24 was flying northwest over Saraqib. Armanaz is 35 kilometers northwest of Saraqib. The timing could correspond to the aircraft that carried the strike in Armanaz.
Jisr Al-Shughur, September 25
On September 25, aircraft attacked a shopping area on the main road in Jisr Al-Shughur, killing at least 19 people, including at least two children, according to two activists and Syria Civil Defense.
Ibrahim Haj Ali, a local resident, said he saw aircraft “constantly” in the air above Jisr Al-Shughur the day before the attack. He said he was in the area on the afternoon of September 25:
I was having coffee with one of my friends. Suddenly, everything went black, fire erupted in our face, and we were in thrown in the air. We didn’t feel anything, we didn’t understand what had happened. Cars and people were thrown into the air. Buildings were razed to the ground, cars were on fire, it was like the apocalypse.
Haj Ali said that the attack killed and injured several of his friends. He said that the market consisted of multi-story buildings with stores and shops on the ground floor and civilians living on the other floors. The people interviewed said there were no military bases or vehicles in the area. Human Rights Watch could not independently confirm that.
Mustafa Abu Akef, a local media activist from Jisr Al-Shughur, said he could provide some of the names of those killed but not all as some of the others were unidentifiable due to the extent of their burns. He shared photos of bodies that appeared to be heavily burned, as well as a photo of a 7-year-old girl he said he had saved but who had lost her leg as a result of the attack.
Video footage circulated by local activists on social media and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed extensive damage to what appear to be the center of Jisr Al-Shughur.
Most residents of the city had fled the airstrikes for displacement camps in the northern part of the governorate. “The situation in the city is tragic,” Abu Akef said. “Only very few of the city people are left, and they need help – food, bread, basic things. No one is left in the city. They all fled.”
On September 27, the Jisr Al-Shughur City Council announced that the city was a “devastated area,” a designation reserved for areas where disaster has struck leaving primary facilities destroyed and the majority of the population has been displaced.
Qalaat Al-Madiq, September 20
On September 20, aircraft attacked Qalaat Al-Madiq, a town 45 kilometers northeast of the city of Hama, killing at least 10 people immediately, including four children, according to four local residents.
Expand Image of unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunitions in Qalaat Al-Madiq, Syria. © 2017 Private
The aircraft attacked the town at 4:15 p.m., witnesses said. Hussein Kanaj, a local resident who was about 500 meters away when the attack happened, said the airstrikes hit the market in the center of the city, as well as a residential neighborhood. Two other residents and a Syria Civil Defense first responder confirmed this.
Ahmad Nairouzi, a Syria Civil Defense first responder, said:
We could feel the impact of the explosion from across the town. We knew where it landed from the smoke and flames, and ran to the location. There was a lot of destruction. We immediately started to evacuate the wounded and collect the remains of the dead.
When Human Rights Watch spoke to Nairouzi on October 7, he said that they were still finding human remains in areas far from the initial explosion: “That’s how powerful the explosion was.”
The consecutive strikes on Qalaat Al-Madiq killed a total of 18 people, among them seven children, with more at risk from severe injuries, the witnesses said. Residents said that people displaced from other areas in Syria were among the dead, including at least one child.
The attacks forced many people to flee. Noor Nabhan, a town resident, said that after the first attack, about 90 percent of the population of the city fled to nearby areas, including displacement camps near the border.
Cluster Munitions
Local residents, monitoring groups, local journalists, activists, and first responders have reported at least 12 occasions when aircraft used cluster munitions during attacks between September 19 and 30. In four of those attacks, photos or video footage posted online show unexploded submunitions or other cluster munition remnants. Human Rights Watch documented in detail one of these attacks, in Qalaat Al-Madiq on September 21.
Cluster munitions are delivered from the ground by artillery and rockets, or dropped from aircraft, and contain multiple smaller submunitions. A total of 119 countries have banned cluster munitions due to the harm caused at the time of attack and because their submunitions often fail to explode and threaten civilians and military alike, until cleared and destroyed. Syria and Russia should join the Convention on Cluster Munitions, Human Rights Watch said.
Since mid-2012, Syrian government forces have used both air-dropped and ground-launched cluster munitions. Cluster munition attacks in Syria increased significantly after Russia began its military operation on September 30, 2015.
Qalaat Al-Madiq, September 21
On September 21, an aircraft attacked Qalaat al-Madiq with cluster munitions, according to three local residents, Syria Civil Defense, and photos and video footage analyzed by Human Rights Watch. The attack killed at least two civilians and injured at least 10, according to the witnesses.
Residents said that an aircraft attacked the town with four cluster munitions shortly after 6:00 p.m. Three witnesses said that the submunitions landed in various locations in town: two payloads struck the Hay Al-Zahra’ neighborhood in the middle of the town, one struck the Haret Makhfar neighborhood, and one struck the main town’s street and market.
Hussein Kanaj, a local resident who was close to the impact site of one of the cluster munition attacks, said that the attack had a greater effect on him than other attacks he had witnessed: “After the cluster munition attack I was so terrified, so scared that I could barely feel my legs under me. I said whoever wants to stay can stay, I won’t. So I moved.”
Noor Nabhan, who was nearby when the cluster munition attack struck, said that unexploded submunitions were a real problem and that a child had found one, which she brought to Syria Civil Defense. “It is terrifying,” he said. “People are afraid of what they could find, even in their own houses.”
Both Nabhan and Ahmad Nairouzi, a Syria Civil Defense member, said that the September 21 cluster munition attacks killed two civilians, a man and a woman. Abu Muhannad Al-Ghaby, also a local resident, said that the cluster munition attack on the market injured six shop owners while the attack in the northern neighborhood injured nine civilians, he said. He provided the names.
Al-Ghaby shared a photo of remnants he said Syria Civil Defense collected after the cluster munition attacks. The photo shows more than 30 unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunitions. The ShOAB-0.5 fragmentation submunition, a tennis-ball-shaped submunition produced by the Soviet Union, is only known to be delivered by a specific type of air-dropped RBK-500 cluster bomb. Human Rights Watch documented the use of this type of cluster munition by the Syrian air force starting in March 2013.
Al-Ghaby also provided Human Rights Watch with a video he said he filmed in the northern neighborhood, which shows a flash in the sky of the bursting charge opening the weapon in mid-air followed by dozens of small explosions within seconds on a hillside. A large number of small explosions within a short period in a defined area are signature features of a cluster munition attack. The video also shows the medieval fortress in Qalaat Al-Madiq, confirming that the attack took place in the town.
A different video, which Qalaat Al-Madiq News posted on its Facebook page in the evening of September 21, shows a similar attack, but this time among a group of houses, corroborating the reports that more than one cluster munition hit the town.
All of the witnesses interviewed said the targeted areas were full of civilians. One witness said that some of the strikes hit headquarters of the Free Syrian Army-affiliated groups, but that HTS was not present in these areas. Human Rights Watch has no independent confirmation of this.
Other Cluster Munition Attacks
For the following attacks, Human Rights Watch has not conducted detailed investigations, but photos and video footage said to be from the attacks show remnants of cluster munitions.
Shortly after midnight on September 25, the Edlib Media Center reported that a cluster munition attack in the town of Maarat Harma, had wounded two civilians. The center posted photos of one unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunition.
The Edlib Media Center reported in the morning of September 29 that a cluster munition attack in al-Tamanah shortly after midnight that day had killed three women and a child and injured several people. Syria Civil Defense posted photos on its Facebook page showing unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunitions and the tail section of an RBK-500 cluster munition, saying that they were found after the September 29 attack on al-Tamanah. The Syrian Network for Human Rights also posted a photo of an unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunition, saying it was from the same incident.
Syria Civil Defense posted photos of its staff members locating unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunitions in Tel’adeh.
Syria Civil Defense posted on its Facebook page photos of the tail section of an RBK-500 cluster munition, saying that it was found after a cluster munition attack on September 29. In another post, it included photos of unexploded ShOAB-0.5 submunitions that were found in Jisr Al-Shughur on September 29.Dez Bryant and Josh Norman carried their feud from the field to the postgame handshakes to the locker room after the Cowboys’ 31-26 win. It was great! And it’s not over, at least not for Norman who had more to say about Bryant in a conversation with Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.
Norman pointed to the stats. Bryant had just three catches out of five targets for 32 yards when Norman was lined up against him on Thanksgiving.
“He's just another one of the guys that I face,” Norman said. "If you have a big impact, go off. But you didn't.
"I don't know if there really is anything to say. What am I going to go back and forth for? It's not a battle. It's not a competition when the other person don't show up.”
That was no doubt a reaction to Bryant’s promise on Twitter to expose Norman’s work in coverage.
All through the week I will post film how Norman got exposed... https://t.co/WKWE9IdQYr — Dez Bryant (@DezBryant) November 25, 2016
He never did, and Norman beat him to the punch to get a leg up in the PR battle.
The best part of Norman’s latest comments, however, was when he compared Bryant to Odell Beckham Jr.
"It's not like with the guy from up in N.Y."
And he didn’t stop there. Norman went on to downplay Bryant’s role with the Cowboys this season.
"But it's not like he carries them," he said. "They carry themselves. That stuff he does, it's just extra antics."
He went on for a while during the interview, making the point to say that he didn’t understand why the feud with Bryant was a thing. In Norman’s mind, it’s not a thing because Bryant really didn’t do much on the field, at least not when he was lined up against him.
A closer look from Pro Football Focus shows that luck might have given Norman a boost in that matchup. Bryant had Norman beat on a deep route, but the ball didn’t get there.
Norman added that he hopes to see Bryant again this season. We do, too.
Odell Beckham Jr. does LeBron celebration in ClevelandPITTSBURGH -- One of baseball's longest streaks comes to an
end in January when next season's schedule for all 30 major league
teams is released.
A small company outside Pittsburgh, the Sports Scheduling Group,
has been selected by Major League Baseball to draw up the 2005
schedule, unseating the husband-and-wife team of Henry and Holly
Stephenson, who have been doing it for 24 years.
Each year, Major League Baseball accepts competing scheduling
proposals from outside groups. The Sports Scheduling Group won the
contract in part because it did a better job of avoiding
"semi-repeaters," in which the same teams play in back-to-back
series at home and then away, said Katy Feeney, MLB senior vice
president of scheduling.
Baseball has been outsourcing the job for decades.
Harry Simmons, who at one time worked in the commissioner's
office, used to make the schedules each year, mostly by hand. It
became such an extensive task that Simmons eventually left the
office and devoted himself almost entirely to scheduling.
"As the number of games and the number teams changed, it just
became more and more complicated," Feeney said.
After Simmons quit, the Stephensons were hired in 1981. They use
computers, which have made the job easier but have not entirely
eliminated the human element.
"I think each team looks at the schedule from its own
perspective and there is without exception a lot of points of
view," Stephenson said. "There will never be a day when everyone
sits down and says, 'This is great.'"
Each team plays 162 games, half of them at home, half away.
League officials would not discuss the criteria of a winning
proposal but said the process has become increasingly complex, with
new divisions, interleague play, extended playoffs and more demands
from cities with scheduling conflicts.
As a result, scheduling has become much more of a science and
academics now play a larger role, Feeney said.
In fact, Doug Bureman, co-founder of the Sports Scheduling
Group, teamed up with a business professor from Carnegie Mellon
University and a professor of industrial and systems engineering at
Georgia Tech to put together the winning proposal.
Bureman would not talk specifically about what kind of
technology his group used. Nor would he say how much his group is
being paid.
As for the Stephensons, they are already working hard to get
their job back.
"I'm a little surprised myself that we've been doing it this
long," Stephenson said. "We're working on a schedule for 2006.
We'll see whether it takes."MIMI ASHER, a single mother living on the Myatt’s Fields housing estate in south London, was horrified when she learned that her son had joined a gang. She asked a local council officer for advice on what to do. The response, she remembers, was a curt: “leave it to the professionals”.
That retort now seems not just daft but a relic of a more complacent, richer era. Lambeth council’s budget has been sharply cut since the financial crisis, forcing the local authority to question its monolithic role. Inspired in part by Ms Asher, who ignored its advice and set up a successful programme to get people out of gangs, the council is now giving locals the resources they need to solve their own problems. A youth co-operative, for example, will soon take on responsibility for social clubs and playgrounds, as well as a slice of the council’s budget.
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Local government is stirring. In 2010 the coalition government cut overall funding by 28% over five years, with further reductions now likely. Councils first complained. Then many buckled down and concocted innovative ways of meeting residents’ needs. Some, like Lambeth, are rethinking the role of government. They are influencing other councils and, increasingly, Westminster politicians too.
Conservative-run Barnet Council is one such laboratory. It pioneered a no-frills approach to services, earning the label “easyCouncil”—a reference to easyJet, a proudly miserly airline. Barnet has gone on to graft this stinginess onto a drive for more volunteering, following David Cameron’s call for a Big Society (the resulting hybrid has been called “The Big Easy”). “If you want your road gritting, we’ll give you the grit”, explains an official. The council now takes volunteering into account when allocating scarce public housing. It has launched a website enabling residents to gather squads of helpers for neighbourhood-improving projects.
As Barnet does things its own way, three Tory-led councils in west London have set out to share £300m ($486m) of services. In its first year the “Tri-borough” managed to cut the total number of senior and middle managers by half. Two of the councils now share a single chief executive. But with trial comes the risk of error. Suffolk County Council proclaimed that it would outsource almost all its services and become a “virtual” authority. It had to retreat following a public outcry. The council failed to make a proper political case for such radical change, argues Localis, a local government think-tank.
Islington, a Labour-run council in London, has done plenty of that. It set up a cross-party “fairness commission”, which held a series of public discussions on how to foster greater equality when money is tight. The council has duly axed a snazzy Green Living Centre, which dispensed environmental advice. It has protected free school meals and cut the ratio between its highest and lowest paid staff. Andy Hull, the commission’s co-chair, says a clear definition of fairness has helped explain and justify such measures.
It is no coincidence that Barnet, Islington, Lambeth and the Tri-borough councils are all in London. The capital contains several catalysts for big thinking. Crime, poverty, education and health problems are more extreme. There is a greater churn of residents and much more ethnic diversity. The demands on local government are thus more complex than in, say, Hampshire. Sir Merrick Cockell, head of Kensington and Chelsea council and of the Local Government Association, thinks the presence of a charismatic city mayor helps, too. Councils have to develop bold ideas if they are to grab attention from the quotable Boris Johnson.
London calling
And the capital exerts a magnetic pull on ambitious career-makers from across the country, points out Tony Travers of the London School of Economics. A 2010 census found that only 18.5% of England’s local councillors were under 50. In London, though, the proportion was 32.8%. London councillors are more likely to hold a degree and are more motivated by political beliefs than their counterparts elsewhere. Their proximity to the city’s public-relations firms, national newspapers and think-tanks makes it easier to create and spread complex ideas. Terms such as “easyCouncil” and “John Lewis Council” (like Lambeth, the popular department store runs on co-operative principles) are increasingly common parlance.
Local authorities elsewhere often look to the capital. On September 14th Mr Hull from Islington fielded questions from a group of other Labour-run councils keen to learn from his borough’s experience. In the wood-panelled chamber in Sheffield’s Victorian town hall, the talk was of developing a “national fairness agenda”. Barnet has become an important case study for Conservative councils: Shropshire and Blackpool both recently dispatched fact-finding delegations. Lambeth is the hub of a Co-operative Councils Network. As Steve Reed, the council’s leader, explains, this resembles a “think-tank that actually does things”.
National politicians are increasingly curious, too. Barnet’s plans for volunteer-run services have won its Conservative councillors invitations to Whitehall. The west London Tri-borough is piloting the government’s new cross-departmental “community budgets”. Islington and Lambeth, both home to many figures in or close to Labour, have caught the eye of senior figures in the party. The Fairness Commission—and in particular its focus on low pay—is a concrete example of the “pre-distributive” policies now championed by Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader.
Councils have played this role before. In the early 1980s Wandsworth pioneered privatisation policies that subsequently transformed the British economy. In a 1988 pamphlet, the Thatcherite environment secretary, Nicholas Ridley, called on all Conservative councils to follow its example. But two decades of comfortable economic growth and increasing political centralisation tended to temper wide-eyed innovation.
The revival of experimentation is welcome. Councils are close to the people they serve; they know where money is well spent and where it is not. They are, in short, well-placed to think up new ways of doing things. Too often, says Alex Thomson, head of Localis, these voices of experience are drowned out by the babble of national politics. Bubbling with intellectual flair and PR savvy, the laboratory councils are changing that.WORK. COMMUNITY. POLITICS. WAR
“Everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them from having one about the totality.”
--Raoul Vaneigem
We look around us and see a world beyond our control.
Our daily struggle to survive takes place against an immense and constantly shifting backdrop…
…moving from natural disaster to terrorist attack… from new diet to new famine… from celebrity sex scandal to political corruption scandal… from religious war to economic miracle… from tantalizing new advertisement to clichés on tv complaining about the government… from suggestions on how to be the ideal lover to suggestions on how to keep sports fans from rioting… from new police shootings to new health problems…
The same processes are at work everywhere…
...in democratic and in totalitarian governments… in corporations and in mom n’ pop businesses... in cheeseburgers and in tofu… in opera, in country music and in hip hop… in every country and in every language… in prisons, in schools, in hospitals, in factories, in office towers, in war zones and in grocery stores...
Something is feeding off our lives and spitting back images of them in our faces.
That something is the product of our own activity… our everyday working lives sold hour after hour, week after week, generation after generation.
We don’t have property or a business we can make money from, so we are forced to sell our time and energy to someone else. We are the modern day working class—the proles.
WORK
"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour,and lives the more, the more labour it sucks."
–Karl Marx
We don’t work because we want to. We work because we have no other way to make money. We sell our time and energy to a boss in order to buy the things we need to survive.
We are brought together with other workers and assigned different tasks. We specialize in different aspects of the work and repeat these tasks over and over again. Our time at work is not really part of our lives. It is dead time controlled by our bosses and managers. During our time at work we make things that our bosses can sell. These things are objects like cotton shirts, computers and skyscrapers or qualities like clean floors and healthy patients or services like having a bus take you where you want to go, having a waiter take your order or having someone call you at home to try to get you to buy things you don’t need. The work is not done because of what it produces. We do it to get paid, and the boss pays us for it to make a profit.
At the end of the day the bosses re-invest the money we make them, and enlarge their businesses. Our work is stored up in the things our bosses own and sell—capital. They are always looking for new ways to store up our activity in things, new markets to sell them to, and new people with nothing to sell but their time and energy to work for them. What we get from work is enough money to pay for rent, food, clothes and beer—enough to keep us coming back to work.
When we’re not at work, we spend time traveling to or from work, preparing for work, resting up because we’re exhausted from work or getting drunk to forget about work. The only thing worse than work, is not having it. Then we waste our weeks away looking for work, without getting paid for it. If welfare is available, it is a pain-in-the-ass to get and is never as much as working. The constant threat of unemployment is what keeps us going to work everyday. And our work is the basis of this society. The power our bosses get from it expands every time we work. It is the dominant force in every country in the world.
At work we are under the control of our bosses, and of the markets they sell to. But an invisible hand imposes a work-like discipline and pointlessness on the rest of our lives as well. Life seems like a kind of show we watch from the outside, but have no control over. All sort of other activities tend to become as alienating, boring and stressful as work: housework, schoolwork, leisure. That’s capitalism.
ANTI-WORK
“Of course, the capitalists are very much satisfied with the capitalist system. Why shouldn't they be? They get rich by it.”
--Alexander Berkman
Work is experienced very differently depending on which side of it you’re on. For our bosses, work is the way that they get their money to make more money. For us, work is a miserable way to survive. The less they pay us, the less we make. The faster they can get us to work, the harder we have to work. Our interests are opposed, and there is a constant struggle between bosses and workers at work—and in the rest of the society based on work. The more we pay in rent or bus fare, the more we have to work to pay our rent or bus fare.
The current state of wages, benefits, hours and working conditions as well as politics, art and technology is a result of the current state of this class struggle. Simply standing up for our own interests in this struggle, is the starting point of undermining capitalism.
COMMUNITY
“Well, it is about time that every rebel wakes up to the fact that "the people" and the working class have nothing in common.”
--Joe Hill
Civilization is deeply divided. Most of us spend most of our time working and are mostly poor, while the owners, who are mostly rich, manage and profit |
the U.S. Super Bowl and carried through the Olympics and the World Cup. They’ve hit a combined 18 million views plus on YouTube, including one about how it was all done.
The 36-year-old actor told the Los Angeles Times in February that his smouldering, smug persona wasn’t planned. He did an over-the-top version of his script into an answering machine for a friend, former Arizona Cardinals/Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer, and decided to keep it.
Mustafa comes by his athletic physique honestly: He was a receiver for the Seattle Seahawks and played in the NFL Europe league. With his shirt on.Police are urging anyone seeing inappropriate behaviour in the mosh pit to speak up.
Plain-clothed and uniformed police will be in the mosh pit at Tasmania's Falls Festival this year in a bid to stop a repeat of the sexual assaults which marred last year's event.
Festival-goers last year reported two sexual assaults in the mosh pit and one rape in the camping area.
The head of the Sexual Assault Support Service (SASS), Jill Maxwell, said going into the tightly packed mosh pit was not consenting to be sexually assaulted.
"The message really is for people to keep their hands to themselves — it would be really lovely to have a Falls Festival without any sexual abuse or any sexual harassment," she said.
"Infants, five-year-olds are taught to keep their hands to themselves, and it just seems really difficult for some adults to understand that concept and I think it's really important that we don't accept that behaviour and report it."
Senior Sergeant Troy Hodge agreed.
"The mosh pit, yes it is designed for close contact, people crowding in," he said.
"What we saw last year was deliberate acts of assaults and that's the behaviour we don't want to tolerate."
He urged any witnesses to speak up.
"We'd encourage anyone who sees that sort of behaviour to report it because the potential victims, or people involved at the time, may not be aware, may not know who did [it]," he said.
"So anyone who sees any behaviour like that is encouraged to come forward at the first opportunity and report it to Tasmania Police.
"Police will be there [in the mosh pit] supervising — they might have a slight jig or two — but they'll be just there supervising the mosh pit.
"Inappropriate behaviour or behaviour that makes someone feel uncomfortable won't be tolerated."
SASS has launched a new education campaign about consent as a result of last year's festival.
The series of posters that each deliver a key message about sexual harassment, abuse and consent and will be displayed in pubs, clubs and other entertainment venues across the state.
Among the messages is: "Groping without consent is assault."
"We were quite surprised by how many women were saying it's expected that you're groped when you go out at night," Ms Maxwell said.
"They don't actually have to accept that behaviour and that any form of touching without their consent is not OK."
'Buddy up' with a friend
Paramedics at this year's festival will be handing the support service's cards.
Police recommend buddying up with a friend.
"We want people to be safe, [and] if you're aware of a friend or anyone who's been involved in some incident where they have been subjected to any sort of inappropriate behaviour or an assault to come and report it," Senior Sergeant Hodge said.
"If we're aware of it we can take some steps to either prove or disprove something that's occurred, but the main idea is to support anyone involved who ahs been subject to something that they are not comfortable with."
Police urge victims and witnesses to make detail observations of the perpetrators, or even take a photo, and report it to police as quickly as possible.When news broke that Lance Armstrong's cycling trophies were being stripped from him because of his use of performance enhancing drugs, the Internet-o-highway erupted in a chorus of finger wagging and tongue clucking. "How dare he cheat at a method of transportation?" it collectively shrieked. "Riding bikes is supposed to be hard!"
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"What's that gaping asshole trying to prove, riding his bike up hills?"
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But a subset of the Internet, a cooler, more rational, probably more handsome subset, had a different reaction. "Performance-Enhancing Drugs, you say?" we asked, looking up from our morning newspapers and gazing into the middle distance. "As a proven performer, I find that very interesting. I wonder if there are drugs that could improve useful activities instead?"
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"I shall become the Lance Armstrong of Haberdashing!"
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Seeking, as always, to provide dangerously underresearched advice to our readers, Cracked set to work dangerously underresearching this. And indeed, it turns out that there are several other types of drugs available that can boost a user's performance in any number of ways. Furthermore, many of these drugs are already used, by real professionals in real jobs, probably the same ones who keep beating you in job interviews. So, for the doping-curious among you, here are five of the biggest performance-enhancing drugs you should be injecting into your eyeballs right now.I hope supporters enjoyed this victory over France. The reaction afterwards seemed to focus on why Ireland only came away with a solitary try, but a record Six Nations winning margin in the fixture deserves a little more appreciation.
This game was primarily about keeping championship aspirations alive.
The coach delivered. Joe Schmidt identified where gaps would appear in the French defence. A few more tries were denied by a combination of inaccuracy and the conditions conspiring to stop Ireland delivering, in full, the intended plan.
To get a bonus point against this French defence - who did the opposite to Italy at Twickenham by committing extra numbers to the breakdown - would have required a flawless attacking display on a dry track.
Drizzly days are the worst to find any rhythm. And who’s to say France would not have cut loose on a few occasions as well? If not for Conor Murray’s tackle on Scott Spedding, this could have been a very different result.
Murray’s phenomenal game management is what this performance will be remembered for, but his essential covering behind the defensive line and crucial tackles arguably had more impact on the outcome.
On 65 minutes Ireland were leading 16-6 but the game had opened up as France, throwing offloads at every opportunity, went for the jugular.
CJ Stander and Garry Ringrose - who both made sustained impacts over the 80 minutes - pressurised Camille Lopez into a fumble. Johnny Sexton dived on it. Iain Henderson played scrumhalf, feeding Simon Zebo who grubbered the ball into French territory.
Spedding immediately countered, drawing two defenders, before passing to Noa Nakaitaci, who offloaded out of a double tackle by Zebo and Sexton.
This was the moment we all feared. Spedding took the return pass and was sprinting clear until Murray arrived to chop him down. At the very least an offload to Henry Chavancy had France back in the fight at 16-13, which would have been a huge momentum shift, but Murray’s tackle snuffed out the danger.
If France scored at that moment, after being comprehensively out played, it would have felt like a knife through the heart of Ireland’s title aspirations. We have seen this happen before against them.
In the end Ireland secured an impressive victory but, looking down from our commentary nest, I felt there could have been more joy to be had by going through a few more phases. Even though the kicking accuracy of Murray and Sexton kept the big French pack turning back into their 22 (that drains the mind as much as the legs), I saw a clear shape to Ireland’s attack.
The interplay between two Irish forwards standing off the ruck - in the below instance it is Tadhg Furlong to Seanie O’Brien - before quick distribution had Sexton running into an area Schmidt had clearly signalled as a chink in France’s defensive line.
Attacking in rugby nowadays is all about deception. That flat transfer from one forward to the other drew the eye line of French defenders and their shoulders naturally turned inwards, so the quick pass out the back to Johnny meant they were wrong footed.
The intention was to hurt France out wide but inaccuracy, and the absence of another outside back, let Ireland down. Still, they kept using the ploy, trusting it would give Johnny the space needed to create the scoring opportunity.
On 35 minutes Louis Picamoles - as he did against Scotland - snuffed out the same attack with a man and ball hit on Dev Toner after a quick pass by Jack McGrath.
In that instance France were there for the taking, with 13 players inside the post where Ireland attacked from, while Ringrose and Zebo were in the wide channel against an isolated Nakaitaci. It was a brilliant read by Picamoles.
Plan A was to deceive the French then fire quick ball to the edges. It didn’t work but Plan B still yielded points as Nigel Owens went back for a penalty advantage as Sebastien Vahaamahina had stooped to tackle Ringrose around the neck.
That was the story of the game really; Ireland almost created try scoring opportunities but a greasy pill meant scores were best sourced from constant pressure, which resulted in penalties, allowing Johnny and eventually Paddy to close out the game.
Bloodless, maybe, yet highly attritional. This fortnight of recovery is essential.
Ireland also sought to isolate French forwards by holding ball for long periods, 64 per cent possession, but more importantly playing deep in their territory for an astonishing 68 per cent of time the ball was in play (stats: Accenture).
Vahaamahina was the primary target, looking shattered in midfield well before half-time alongside the front rowers, and Ireland also attacked the pillars either side of the ruck.
Neither ploy yielded a second or third try but the intent was encouraging to see.
That’s enough to ensure confidence builds with plenty of room for improvement before Friday week in Cardiff.
That the end game lacked the excitement of other encounters with France shows how well Ireland - minus those moments in Murrayfield - are currently functioning as a collective unit.
The players can prepare in a good head space in Carton over the next week. Same cannot be said about Wales in the Vale of Glamorgan.
Scotland - well, Finn Russell and Stuart Hogg as Ireland also learned to their cost - showed how to open them up.
Also, how do you deal with Sam Warburton and Justin Tipuric? Make them tackle so they can’t slow down our possession. If both flankers are on their feet, Wales are dangerous and the speed to rucks becomes incredibly important.
So, while much of Saturday’s credit went to Sexton and Murray - and his form is nearing Chicago standards - any talented halfback should look this good when the team delivers quick ball. The low body, torpedo entries into rucks were textbook and also allowed Robbie Henshaw make the hard yards at first receiver (Robbie’s presentation of the ball is fantastic).
Or for Murray to attack himself, like when the maul stalled on 21 minutes. This was created by Rory Best’s pack forcing extra French bodies into the drive.
Sexton and Murray deserve enormous credit for creating and finishing the solitary try but it was only possible due to Ringrose’s brilliant hands in midfield - complimented by Gael Fickou’s naivety - and Seanie O’Brien’s unseen work at the resulting scrum.
Yes, there was a variation of the Sexton wrap around to get Ireland into the scoring position but this required three perfectly timed decoy runners. All the pieces matter now.
Then, at the scrum, Seanie did just enough to distract Bernard Le Roux from his primary duties: getting over the ball that Henshaw carried and being in the precise position to deny Murray diving over.
Le Roux broke his bind first, clearly focussed on Murray, but had he showed more discipline and scrummed, or at least bound properly, then if Seanie did anything it was a French penalty.
That’s experience. O’Brien is so well marked around the pitch so while not making the same impact as Stander - a freakish 69 carries for 161 metres in three matches - he’s still ploughing through a huge amount of largely unseen work. Seanie holds Le Roux long enough for the French flanker to be a step off the pace yet not long enough to endanger a reverse penalty. Ringrose and Seanie brilliantly clear out Baptiste Serin and Le Roux to allow Murray power over (Heaslip’s ball control at the scrum and subtle obstructions also deserve a mention).
Of course, Sexton and Murray brought Ireland’s standard up to a level that has them believing they can beat any team. But everyone is contributing now.
The attritional nature of this game could not be avoided. By any of them.
Johnny does worry some people with the way he throws himself into rucks. Not me. That is why his teammates want to play for him. The question I would ask is, was he the correct person to be hitting those rucks?
But everyone has to ruck at some stage. That’s what this Ireland team is all about.
It’s what any decent team lives and dies by. Could Johnny have avoided one or two entries into rucks? Possibly, simply on the basis that no defensive pattern is designed to have your 10 underneath a pile of bodies.
But the closest pair to any breakdown must clear the debris. That is as fundamental a part of rugby as catching and passing. Is Johnny the right person to hit a particular ruck? If the answers is no then it needs to be asked why another player wasn’t there?
Because Johnny does seek contact. He’s a rugby player. If you want of throw your shoulder into an opponent, go for it. That’s one of the benefits of playing contact sport!
It only gets tougher for Sexton and everyone else in these last two rounds. But the control, the calmness to do the right thing, when needed most, is what makes Ireland such a difficult beast to tame.
Wales are not like that at all at the moment. But winning in Cardiff has never been just about a cohesive performance. So much more is needed. England showed that.
Reacting to what transpires over the course of 80 minutes is how the next victory comes. Ireland have shown they can do that.On my quest for seamlessly integrating MDT + WDS I also wanted to save bandwidth on Windows updates. Normally we would just setup a WSUS server for the domain and that would be it. However I wanted these machines to get updates from the WSUS server BEFORE they join any domain, since I will be working with multiple domains that have no relation to each other. I found a nice windows script file from http://deploymentbunny.com/2015/03/26/nice-to-know-reset-wsus-settings-after-osd-in-mdt/ the script in the article allows for removing any WSUS settings after deployment! I’ve attached the script on the bottom of this webpage in case the site ever goes down.
Now to set your MDT deployment to take WSUS updates put the WSUSServer line inside of your rules tab. You can get here by right clicking mdt deployment share, and clicking properties.
Now make sure in your task sequence that windows updates pre and post application are both enabled…
Now we need to actually add the script as an application that runs.
Right click applications in the MDT MMC and add a application with source files
Call it something
Browse to the path that has the vbscript file.
Set cscript to execute the script, then keep clicking next till it’s done.
After you’ve added your application, right click it’s properties, it should look like this…
Now add the vbscript application we imported from MDT into the custom tasks category.
Now we’ve made sure that our MDT task sequence uses the WSUS server, then resets it’s settings once it’s done getting updates.
The script… save it as.wsf
<script src="..\..\scripts\ZTIUtility.vbs">// <![CDATA[ <script language="VBScript"> '//---------------------------------------------------------------------------- '// Purpose: Used to reset the WSUS settings back to default. '// Usage: cscript Action-WSUSDefault.wsf [/debug:true] '// Version: 1.0 - 24 Mars 2015 - Mikael Nystrom '// '// This script is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, confers no rights and '// is not supported by the author. '//---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Option Explicit Dim iRetVal 'On Error Resume Next iRetVal = ZTIProcess ProcessResults iRetVal On Error Goto 0 '//--------------------------------------------------------------------------- '// Function: ZTIProcess() '//--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Function ZTIProcess() 'on error resume next Dim sRegKey Dim oReg Dim objRegistry Dim strKeyPath Dim strValueName Dim strValue Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002 oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Starting ", LogTypeInfo Set objRegistry = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:StdRegProv") 'Check if UseWUServer exists oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Looking for UseWUServer in the registry... ", LogTypeInfo strKeyPath = "SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU\" strValueName = "UseWUServer" objRegistry.GetDWORDValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue if IsNull(strValue) Then oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Did not found UseWUServer... ", LogTypeInfo Else oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Found UseWUServer... ", LogTypeInfo sRegKey = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU" oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Removing " & sRegKey, LogTypeInfo oShell.RegDelete sRegKey & "\" End If 'Check if WUServer exists oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Looking for WUServer in the registry... ", LogTypeInfo strKeyPath = "SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\" strValueName = "WUServer" objRegistry.GetStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue if IsNull(strValue) Then oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Did not found WUServer... ", LogTypeInfo Else oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Found WUServer... ", LogTypeInfo sRegKey = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate" oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Removing " & sRegKey, LogTypeInfo oShell.RegDelete sRegKey & "\" End If 'Restart WUASERV Dim sCommand oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Stopping WUAUSERV", LogTypeInfo sCommand = "net.exe stop WUAUSERV" oUtility.RunWithHeartbeat(sCommand) oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Starting WUAUSERV", LogTypeInfo sCommand = "net.exe start WUAUSERV" oUtility.RunWithHeartbeat(sCommand) oLogging.CreateEntry oUtility.ScriptName & " Done ", LogTypeInfo End Function // ]]></script>Frank Groneberg
Frankfurt (Oder) (MOZ) Er ist ausgebildeter Koch und Gastronom, hat lange in Dubai gearbeitet, kam als Kriegsflüchtling nach Deutschland und baut in Frankfurt ein eigenes Unternehmen auf: Mahmoud Al Eshat, aufgewachsen in der syrischen Stadt Daraa, wird Anfang Dezember im Oderturm ein Schnellrestaurant eröffnen. "Al Jasmin" wird es heißen, wie die in seiner Heimat verbreitete Pflanze. Anbieten will er Spezialitäten aus Arabien und dem mittleren Osten, aber auch Speisen der französischen und italienischen Küche.
Bis vor zwei Jahren hat Mahmoud Al Eshat in einem Fünf-Sterne-Hotel in Dubai gekocht. Dann lief sein Visum ab, nach siebeneinhalb Jahren, und er hätte nach Syrien zurückkehren müssen. "Dort wäre ich sofort zum Kriegsdienst in Assads Armee eingezogen worden", erzählt der 31-Jährige im MOZ-Gespräch, "aber das wollte ich auf keinen Fall." Also machte er sich auf den Weg in die Türkei und dann weiter nach Deutschland, wo er in Frankfurt landete.
Ewig von fremder Hilfe leben wollte er hier jedoch nicht. Er lernte bei der Nestor Bildungsinstitut GmbH am Carthausplatz intensiv Deutsch und beschloss irgendwann, sich selbstständig zu machen. Als Asylbewerber ist er längst anerkannt, seit gut einem Jahr lebt er in einer eigenen Wohnung. "Ich will hier das machen, was ich gelernt habe und worin ich viel Erfahrung habe: kochen", sagt er selbstbewusst. Im Oderturm, direkt neben dem leerstehenden Eiscafé, fand er geeignete Räume. Vor zwei Wochen sei der Mietvertrag unterschrieben worden, erklärt er. Jetzt liefen die Umbauarbeiten. Etwa 24 000 Euro werde er investieren, eigenes Kapital und Geld von der Familie. Die Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg unterstütze sein Projekt mit 15 000 Euro Fördermitteln, sagt er. Das Frankfurter Büro Bollmann & Partner begleitet ihn bei der Existenzgründung.
Zunächst drei Arbeitsplätze schafft Mahmoud Al Eshat in seinem "Al Jasmin". Worauf er großen Wert legt: "Ich koche alles selbst und alles frisch, denn die Qualität muss stimmen." Schon ab 7.30 Uhr werden die Gäste bei ihm frühstücken können - arabisch, englisch und kontinental. Ab 11 Uhr gibt es Mittagessen vom Buffet. Angeboten werden dort Manaisch, Usi, Falafel und andere arabische Spezialitäten, Suppen und Kebap, aber auch Lasagne, Pasta und Quiche. Bis 22 Uhr kann gegessen werden.
In England hat sich der junge Syrer die "Teatime" abgeguckt - den Nachmittagstee mit Herzhaftem und Süßem von der Etagere. Und immer sonntags will er von 11 Uhr bis 16 Uhr zum Familienbrunch einladen.
"Ich freue mich auf die neue Aufgabe und auf viele zufriedene Gäste", sagt Mahmoud Al Eshat.Ain’t eBay grand? For $10 you can buy a sack of 50 assorted Obama ’08 buttons, and that’s what I’ve been doing. If you look closely, you might see them this weekend on the lapels of some of the global warming protesters holding a sit-in outside the White House.
Already, more than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11. (Among the first 500 to sign up, the biggest cohort was born in the Truman administration, followed closely by FDR babies and Eisenhower kids. These seniors contradict the stereotype of greedy geezers who care only about their own future.)
The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations. In scientific terms, it’s as close to a no-brainer as you can get.
But in political terms it may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years.
That’s because, for once, the president will get to make an important call all by himself. He has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built. Under the relevant statutes, Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House.
But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision. Since the State Department plays a role in recommending a decision, the main pipeline company helpfully hired the former national deputy director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as its lead lobbyist. WikiLeaks documents emerged recently showing U.S. envoys conspiring with the oil industry to win favorable media coverage for tar sands oil. If you were a cynic, you’d say the fix was in.
Still, the final call rests with Barack Obama, who said the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination in June 2008 that his ascension would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Now he gets a chance to prove that he meant it. In basketball terms, he’s alone at the top of the key — will he take the 20-foot jumper or pass the ball? It’s a rare, character-defining moment. Obama can’t escape it simply by saying that someone else will burn the oil if we don’t. Alberta is remote, and its only other possible pipeline route — to the Pacific and hence Asia — is tangled in litigation. That’s why the province’s energy minister told Canada’s Globe and Mail last month that without the Keystone pipeline Alberta would be “landlocked in bitumen,” the technical name for the heavy, gooey tar that is its chief export. Critics may argue otherwise, but Obama’s call is key; without it, that oil will stay in the ground for at least a while longer. Long enough, perhaps, that the planet will come fully to its senses about climate change.
It’s hard to predict what will happen. Earlier this summer Al Gore tossed up his hands in despair: “President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis,” Gore said. “He has not defended the science against the ongoing withering and dishonest attacks.” Yet it’s hard to give up on the image of the skinny senator from Illinois and the young people who were his most fervent supporters — young people who, according to pollsters, wanted a climate bill by a 5-to-1 margin. That didn’t happen, of course; for now, the Keystone pipeline is the best proxy we have for real presidential commitment to the global warming fight.
Hence the buttons. Many of us will be wearing them while we sit outside his house, in an effort to show that we’re not, exactly, protesting. We’re trying to rekindle some of that passion from his groundbreaking campaign. We’re trying to remind ourselves and the president how good it felt to be full of hope.
The writer is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont and has helped organize Tarsandsaction.org.If the Indiana Pacers didn’t draft Dale Davis in 1991, then there is a chance Roy Hibbert wouldn’t be with the Indiana Pacers today.
Confused? That’s understandable, so let me explain: Davis was drafted in 1991, then traded in 2000 for Jermaine O’Neal. O’Neal, along with Nathan Jawai, were then traded to the Toronto Raptors for a draft pick in 2008.
That pick became Roy Hibbert. It isn’t to say the Pacers couldn’t have come up with other trade packages to arrive at getting Roy Hibbert in 2008, but they still had to have those particular assets in hand to make the trade when they did. That is the series of transactions, or “transaction tree”, that took the Pacers from Davis to Hibbert.
As you can see, a number of roster moves in the past had a butterfly effect on the Pacers for years to come.
Welcome to NBA Chaos Theory.
Inspired by Grantland’s look at some of the oldest transaction trees in MLB, let’s see what led to the current Indiana Pacers roster. A big thank you to Basketball Reference and Real GM for making this task much easier.
While the Davis-O’Neal-Hibbert tree may be the oldest transaction tree on the Pacers, it is far from the most complicated. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, for a player to be considered a direct part of a transaction tree he can be a product of the same linked sequence of trades.
When you are looking at these transaction trees, feel free to click on the trees to expand them for easier viewing. We’ll start off with the simple ones then dive into the twisted web of the older and more complicated trees.MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A picture of a high school trap shooting team may not make it into the yearbook because the team posed with their most important tools; their guns.
Head Coach Rhonda Eckerdt said she learned Wednesday that the school won’t put the picture yearbook. In an email to the Eckerdt, the athletic director said it’s against school policy to have firearms in a picture.
It was a big night for the Big Lake High School trap shooting team Wednesday. They were hosting a fundraiser at the Pizza Ranch in Monticello, but the talk around the table wasn’t only about collecting donations.
“I thought it was ridiculous, absolutely. I couldn’t believe it,” parent Rick Anderson said of the school’s decision.
School policy aside, parents, coaches and players say the gun shouldn’t be considered a weapon. It should be viewed as a piece of equipment, just like a baseball player holding a bat in the team picture.
“I think politically (sic) correctness has gone way overboard. I don’t know how else to put it,” Anderson said.
Senior Wyatt Stone has been part of the team for a few years and looked forward to the idea of finally being included in the yearbook.
“This is my final year, I’m a senior this year. I’ll be graduating the high school,” he said. “So it’ll be frustrating to not see this picture in my final yearbook.”
In an email to Eckerdt, the athletic director offered to have a picture taken of the team without the guns, or asked that they write a proposal on why the original should be allowed. He also offered to meet with coaches Thursday afternoon to discuss options. Anderson just hopes administrator simply change their minds.
“Just because there’s a gun involved doesn’t make it a dangerous sport and they’re not criminals,” he said.
WCCO reached out Wednesday afternoon to administrators by phone and through emails but didn’t hear back.
The deadline to add a new photo is Monday. Some parents said they might attend Thursday’s school board meeting to state their case.Is it impertinent to say this? Not constructive enough? Or necessary to make the change the country needs? I've heard all three asserted lately.
[A] large majority of battleground state voters respond favorably to [this] statement of the premise and direction that define the Better Deal Economic Agenda...:
"Too many families in America today feel that the rules of the economy are rigged against them. Special interests have a strangle-hold on Washington — from the super-rich spending unlimited amounts of secret money to influence our elections, to the huge loopholes in our tax code that help corporations avoid paying taxes...."
As Senate and House Democrats begin to roll out their new Better Deal Economic Agenda, a review of recent public opinion polling shows that the central themes and frames that are at the heart of this agenda match closely with the experiences, values, and priorities of American voters today.
In 2008 Wall Street banks created a financial crisis that incinerated the economy. It was only a few years after the Justice Department had aggressively prosecuted Enron and Arthur Anderson, and so many folks expected similar prosecutions of financial executives, especially because Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to “bring a new era of responsibility and accountability to Wall Street.” But as recounted in a new podcast with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jesse Eisinger, it never happened.
Eisinger has just released a new book called “The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.” It tracks how a furious pressure campaign by corporate America fundamentally changed the culture of the Justice Department. Instead of going after executives who commit white collar crime, the agency now often offers settlements with corporations, forcing shareholders to pick up the tab for fines while leaving executives untouched.
The result, says Eisinger, is a criminal justice system that no longer seriously deters corporate crime, but instead makes it just a mundane cost of doing business. Shareholders may pay some fines, but executives often get a nice get-out-of-jail-free card, avoiding prison or any kind of punishment.
Sirota: So a successful prosecution of Arthur Andersen becomes the justification for, "We shouldn't prosecute Arthur Andersens in the future because the prosecutors in theory were too strong, were too harsh, went after them too vigorously." Meanwhile, your book tracks the concurrent rise of the so-called “too big to jail” idea. How did that evolve?
Eisinger: What happens is, there's a 1909 Supreme Court ruling [that says] if there is an employee who in the course of his or her job commits a crime, the entire company can be prosecuted. That is the power that the government has. It's essentially neglected. They don't really prosecute companies for a very long time.
In the 1990s, starting out, they're unsatisfied with this. They don't really want to prosecute companies all the time. They used to be focused on individuals, but they started shifting the focus on trying to root out the rotten cultures at companies. They hit on this haphazardly. Mary Jo White, as the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District, comes up with this settlement. Then, she sends her lieutenant and writes a memo that Eric Holder signs saying, "Here are the principles for how we're going to prosecute a company." One of the principles is, "We'll take into account collateral consequences." Eric Holder gets a lot of blame for this in retrospect, but he didn't really write it…
Then, [the] Arthur Anderson [investigation] happens, and they ignored these principles, quite rightly in my view, and prosecute the company. Larry Thompson updates them, and that becomes the locus for the lobbying, where they hit on one aspect of these principles to try to tear them all down. The aspect of the principles is that they attack the fact that the government can ask for companies to waive attorney-client privilege when they're doing investigations, so that the government can get access to all that's going on in their own internal investigation. If companies want to cooperate and they want to get leniency from the government, they have to waive attorney-client privilege.
Companies scream bloody murder, and so does the white-collar bar. Over the course of the next decade, those powers are completely rolled back, which really strip the ability for prosecutors to get inside companies to investigate. That has a whole cascading series of effects.
Sirota: Okay. Now let's move up to the Obama era. What could the Obama administration have done based on all of the trends you've just charted, and what did it do instead?
Eisinger: The first thing they could have done is created a task force, a big, giant task force to address a variety of financial crisis-era cases. People should remember, the financial crisis hits in the end of the Bush administration. The height is September. The election is in November. All the firms that collapse, the criminal investigations are going on, and the late Bush administration folks who are on their way out don't take a series of serious decisions and let the investigations start to percolate. That's the first mistake.
The Obama administration inherits that mistake, but they compound it by not doing anything about it. One thing they needed to do was create a task force where you figuratively lock 50 prosecutors in a room together to look at — five needed to look at Lehman Brothers, and 10 needed to look at the CDO business, and five needed to look at Citi, and six needed to look at JP Morgan, etc., etc. If you had, they would have found crimes.
In fact, what happens is they don't really look in a serious way. Whenever you hear Eric Holder or Preet Bharara or Lanny Breuer saying, "We looked seriously and nobody ever presented us a criminal case without a doubt prosecuting a high-level individual," the secret is that they didn't look. That was mistake number one.
Sirota: What are the continuing effects of the Justice Department culture that the Obama administration basically helped cement?
Eisinger: The day-to-day legacy now is that the Department of Justice has lost the will and ability to prosecute top corporate executives. This is the flip side. [We] know about mass incarceration and the scandal of that, and that we disproportionately punish mostly poor, mostly people of color, in this country. This is the flip side of that, which is that we allow the rich and powerful to commit crimes with impunity if they are in executive positions at major corporations. That is a scandal, and it undermines the fairness and justice of our system and the rule of law.
The Obama administration has contributed to it. What they do now is they settle with corporations rather than focusing on prosecuting individuals. They have lost the skill set to do with it, because settling with corporations is so easy and because of the way settlements come about, which is that we have outsourced and privatized investigations to the corporations themselves. It's basically like allowing Pablo Escobar to hire the major law firm of Medellin to investigate whether Escobar is dealing drugs or not. That surprisingly is an investigation that might yield a few street-level drug users but is not going to actually implicate Pablo himself.
[Eisinger:] We have corporations who have a scandal. They hire a law firm. The law firm does the investigation. The investigation is studiously incurious about going to the top levels, and worse than that, they negotiate, then they hand the results to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice looks over it, and then comes up with some kind of fine that the shareholders pay. The executives don't pay it. The company, the piece of paper has to pay it, but that comes out of shareholder pockets. Then those prosecutors, many of them, go to work for those law firms themselves after a few years. That is a deeply corrupt process.
I'd like to put three thoughts together for consideration as a |
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The Sunday Telegraph has been told Cleary has already begun discussing the finer details of a Warriors return in a move that would see the club punt current coach Andrew McFadden.
Cleary quit the Warriors in 2011 after being poached by the Panthers — but is now without a job after a fallout with Phil Gould saw him dumped with a year left to run on his Penrith deal.
Read more at Foxsports.com.auThe GNU C Library version 2.25 is now available
From: Siddhesh Poyarekar Subject: The GNU C Library version 2.25 is now available Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2017 22:10:13 +0530 User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.5.1
The GNU C Library ================= The GNU C Library version 2.25 is now available. The GNU C Library is used as *the* C library in the GNU system and in GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux as the kernel. The GNU C Library is primarily designed to be a portable and high performance C library. It follows all relevant standards including ISO C11 and POSIX.1-2008. It is also internationalized and has one of the most complete internationalization interfaces known. The GNU C Library webpage is at http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/ Packages for the 2.25 release may be downloaded from: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/libc/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libc/ The mirror list is at http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html NEWS for version 2.25 ===================== * The feature test macro __STDC_WANT_LIB_EXT2__, from ISO/IEC TR 24731-2:2010, is supported to enable declarations of functions from that TR. Note that not all functions from that TR are supported by the GNU C Library. * The feature test macro __STDC_WANT_IEC_60559_BFP_EXT__, from ISO/IEC TS 18661-1:2014, is supported to enable declarations of functions and macros from that TS. Note that not all features from that TS are supported by the GNU C Library. * The feature test macro __STDC_WANT_IEC_60559_FUNCS_EXT__, from ISO/IEC TS 18661-4:2015, is supported to enable declarations of functions and macros from that TS. Note that most features from that TS are not supported by the GNU C Library. * The nonstandard feature selection macros _REENTRANT and _THREAD_SAFE are now treated as compatibility synonyms for _POSIX_C_SOURCE=199506L. Since the GNU C Library defaults to a much newer revision of POSIX, this will only affect programs that specifically request an old conformance mode. For instance, a program compiled with -std=c89 -D_REENTRANT will see a change in the visible declarations, but a program compiled with just -D_REENTRANT, or -std=c99 -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=200809L -D_REENTRANT, will not. Some C libraries once required _REENTRANT and/or _THREAD_SAFE to be defined by all multithreaded code, but glibc has not required this for many years. * The inclusion of <sys/sysmacros.h> by <sys/types.h> is deprecated. This means that in a future release, the macros “major”, “minor”, and “makedev” will only be available from <sys/sysmacros.h>. These macros are not part of POSIX nor XSI, and their names frequently collide with user code; see for instance glibc bug 19239 and Red Hat bug 130601. <stdlib.h> includes <sys/types.h> under _GNU_SOURCE, and C++ code presently cannot avoid being compiled under _GNU_SOURCE, exacerbating the problem. * New <fenv.h> features from TS 18661-1:2014 are added to libm: the fesetexcept, fetestexceptflag, fegetmode and fesetmode functions, the femode_t type and the FE_DFL_MODE and FE_SNANS_ALWAYS_SIGNAL macros. * Integer width macros from TS 18661-1:2014 are added to <limits.h>: CHAR_WIDTH, SCHAR_WIDTH, UCHAR_WIDTH, SHRT_WIDTH, USHRT_WIDTH, INT_WIDTH, UINT_WIDTH, LONG_WIDTH, ULONG_WIDTH, LLONG_WIDTH, ULLONG_WIDTH; and to <stdint.h>: INT8_WIDTH, UINT8_WIDTH, INT16_WIDTH, UINT16_WIDTH, INT32_WIDTH, UINT32_WIDTH, INT64_WIDTH, UINT64_WIDTH, INT_LEAST8_WIDTH, UINT_LEAST8_WIDTH, INT_LEAST16_WIDTH, UINT_LEAST16_WIDTH, INT_LEAST32_WIDTH, UINT_LEAST32_WIDTH, INT_LEAST64_WIDTH, UINT_LEAST64_WIDTH, INT_FAST8_WIDTH, UINT_FAST8_WIDTH, INT_FAST16_WIDTH, UINT_FAST16_WIDTH, INT_FAST32_WIDTH, UINT_FAST32_WIDTH, INT_FAST64_WIDTH, UINT_FAST64_WIDTH, INTPTR_WIDTH, UINTPTR_WIDTH, INTMAX_WIDTH, UINTMAX_WIDTH, PTRDIFF_WIDTH, SIG_ATOMIC_WIDTH, SIZE_WIDTH, WCHAR_WIDTH, WINT_WIDTH. * New <math.h> features are added from TS 18661-1:2014: - Signaling NaN macros: SNANF, SNAN, SNANL. - Nearest integer functions: roundeven, roundevenf, roundevenl, fromfp, fromfpf, fromfpl, ufromfp, ufromfpf, ufromfpl, fromfpx, fromfpxf, fromfpxl, ufromfpx, ufromfpxf, ufromfpxl. - llogb functions: the llogb, llogbf and llogbl functions, and the FP_LLOGB0 and FP_LLOGBNAN macros. - Max-min magnitude functions: fmaxmag, fmaxmagf, fmaxmagl, fminmag, fminmagf, fminmagl. - Comparison macros: iseqsig. - Classification macros: iscanonical, issubnormal, iszero. - Total order functions: totalorder, totalorderf, totalorderl, totalordermag, totalordermagf, totalordermagl. - Canonicalize functions: canonicalize, canonicalizef, canonicalizel. - NaN functions: getpayload, getpayloadf, getpayloadl, setpayload, setpayloadf, setpayloadl, setpayloadsig, setpayloadsigf, setpayloadsigl. * The functions strfromd, strfromf, and strfroml, from ISO/IEC TS 18661-1:2014, are added to libc. They convert a floating-point number into string. * Most of glibc can now be built with the stack smashing protector enabled. It is recommended to build glibc with --enable-stack- protector=strong. Implemented by Nick Alcock (Oracle). * The function explicit_bzero, from OpenBSD, has been added to libc. It is intended to be used instead of memset() to erase sensitive data after use; the compiler will not optimize out calls to explicit_bzero even if they are "unnecessary" (in the sense that no _correct_ program can observe the effects of the memory clear). * On ColdFire, MicroBlaze, Nios II and SH3, the float_t type is now defined to float instead of double. This does not affect the ABI of any libraries that are part of the GNU C Library, but may affect the ABI of other libraries that use this type in their interfaces. * On x86_64, when compiling with -mfpmath=387 or -mfpmath=sse+387, the float_t and double_t types are now defined to long double instead of float and double. These options are not the default, and this does not affect the ABI of any libraries that are part of the GNU C Library, but it may affect the ABI of other libraries that use this type in their interfaces, if they are compiled or used with those options. * The getentropy and getrandom functions, and the <sys/random.h> header file have been added. * The buffer size for byte-oriented stdio streams is now limited to 8192 bytes by default. Previously, on Linux, the default buffer size on most file systems was 4096 bytes (and thus remains unchanged), except on network file systems, where the buffer size was unpredictable and could be as large as several megabytes. * The <sys/quota.h> header now includes the <linux/quota.h> header. Support for the Linux quota interface which predates kernel version 2.4.22 has been removed. * The malloc_get_state and malloc_set_state functions have been removed. Already-existing binaries that dynamically link to these functions will get a hidden implementation in which malloc_get_state is a stub. As far as we know, these functions are used only by GNU Emacs and this change will not adversely affect already-built Emacs executables. Any undumped Emacs executables, which normally exist only during an Emacs build, should be rebuilt by re-running “./configure; make” in the Emacs build tree. * The “ip6-dotint” and “no-ip6-dotint” resolver options, and the corresponding RES_NOIP6DOTINT flag from <resolv.h> have been removed. “no-ip6-dotint” had already been the default, and support for the “ip6-dotint” option was removed from the Internet in 2006. * The "ip6-bytestring" resolver option and the corresponding RES_USEBSTRING flag from <resolv.h> have been removed. The option relied on a backwards-incompatible DNS extension which was never deployed on the Internet. * The flags RES_AAONLY, RES_PRIMARY, RES_NOCHECKNAME, RES_KEEPTSIG, RES_BLAST defined in the <resolv.h> header file have been deprecated. They were already unimplemented. * The "inet6" option in /etc/resolv.conf and the RES_USE_INET6 flag for _res.flags are deprecated. The flag was standardized in RFC 2133, but removed again from the IETF name lookup interface specification in RFC 2553. Applications should use getaddrinfo instead. * DNSSEC-related declarations and definitions have been removed from the <arpa/nameser.h> header file, and libresolv will no longer attempt to decode the data part of DNSSEC record types. Previous versions of glibc only implemented minimal support for the previous version of DNSSEC, which is incompatible with the currently deployed version. * The resource record type classification macros ns_t_qt_p, ns_t_mrr_p, ns_t_rr_p, ns_t_udp_p, ns_t_xfr_p have been removed from the <arpa/nameser.h> header file because the distinction between RR types and meta-RR types is not officially standardized, subject to revision, and thus not suitable for encoding in a macro. * The types res_sendhookact, res_send_qhook, re_send_rhook, and the qhook and rhook members of the res_state type in <resolv.h> have been removed. The glibc stub resolver did not support these hooks, but the header file did not reflect that. * For multi-arch support it is recommended to use a GCC which has been built with support for GNU indirect functions. This ensures that correct debugging information is generated for functions selected by IFUNC resolvers. This support can either be enabled by configuring GCC with '--enable-gnu-indirect-function', or by enabling it by default by setting 'default_gnu_indirect_function' variable for a particular architecture in the GCC source file 'gcc/config.gcc'. * GDB pretty printers have been added for mutex and condition variable structures in POSIX Threads. When installed and loaded in gdb these pretty printers show various pthread variables in human-readable form when read using the 'print' or 'display' commands in gdb. * Tunables feature added to allow tweaking of the runtime for an application program. This feature can be enabled with the '--enable-tunables' configure flag. The GNU C Library manual has details on usage and README.tunables has instructions on adding new tunables to the library. * A new version of condition variables functions have been implemented in the NPTL implementation of POSIX Threads to provide stronger ordering guarantees. * A new version of pthread_rwlock functions have been implemented to use a more scalable algorithm primarily through not using a critical section anymore to make state changes. Security related changes: * On ARM EABI (32-bit), generating a backtrace for execution contexts which have been created with makecontext could fail to terminate due to a missing.cantunwind annotation. This has been observed to lead to a hang (denial of service) in some Go applications compiled with gccgo. Reported by Andreas Schwab. (CVE-2016-6323) * The DNS stub resolver functions would crash due to a NULL pointer dereference when processing a query with a valid DNS question type which was used internally in the implementation. The stub resolver now uses a question type which is outside the range of valid question type values. (CVE-2015-5180) Contributors ============ This release was made possible by the contributions of many people. The maintainers are grateful to everyone who has contributed changes or bug reports. These include: Adhemerval Zanella Alan Modra Alexandre Oliva Andreas Schwab Andrew Senkevich Aurelien Jarno Brent W. Baccala Carlos O'Donell Chris Metcalf Chung-Lin Tang DJ Delorie David S. Miller Denis Kaganovich Dmitry V. Levin Ernestas Kulik Florian Weimer Gabriel F T Gomes Gabriel F. T. Gomes H.J. Lu Jakub Jelinek James Clarke James Greenhalgh Jim Meyering John David Anglin Joseph Myers Maciej W. Rozycki Mark Wielaard Martin Galvan Martin Pitt Mike Frysinger Märt Põder Nick Alcock Paul E. Murphy Paul Murphy Rajalakshmi Srinivasaraghavan Rasmus Villemoes Rical Jasan Richard Henderson Roland McGrath Samuel Thibault Siddhesh Poyarekar Stefan Liebler Steve Ellcey Svante Signell Szabolcs Nagy Tom Tromey Torvald Riegel Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho Wilco Dijkstra Yury Norov Zack Weinberg
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[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread](SYDNEY) — The Watergate scandal pales in comparison to events in Washington surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump and alleged links between his campaign and Russia, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Wednesday.
Clapper questioned Trump’s continued pro-Russian stance, saying his sharing of intelligence with Russia “reflect either ignorance or disrespect, and either is very problematic”.
“I think if you compare the two that Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now,” Clapper told reporters in Canberra, Australia’s capital.
The break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington in 1972, and subsequent cover-up, brought down former Republican U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1974.
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Clapper’s appearance in Canberra comes before highly anticipated testimony by sacked FBI director James Comey before the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday.
The committee is examining whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
Trump in May removed Comey as director of FBI, despite a U.S. Justice Department probe into contacts between presidential aides and Russia, raising the specter of political interference in the investigation.
Trump has called the probe a “witch hunt” and said there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.
Clapper said it was “inexplicable” that Trump continued his pro-Russia stance despite evidence Moscow sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“His subsequent actions, sharing sensitive intelligence with the Russians and compromising its source, reflect either ignorance or disrespect and either is very problematic,” said Clapper.
Trump disclosed highly classified information about a planned Islamic State operation to Russia’s foreign minister in an Oval Office meeting in May, two U.S. officials have said.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Published on 17 March 2015 12:57, Adelina Marini, Brussels, Twitter: @euinside
Last change on: 17 March 2015 16:21
After long years of a standstill, at first sight, it seems that the process of European integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina is starting to come off from the deadlock. This became possible after Croatia launched an initiative last year for a stronger commitment by the EU for the European integration of BiH in response to the social unrest there in the beginning of last year. The Croatian initiative was accepted coldly in the beginning because, at the time, a much more immediate issue was Ukraine, but later it realised the seriousness of the possibility an old conflict to be reinfected in the Balkans. In the end of last year, Britain and Germany came up with an initiative of their own which was quickly approved by the Council of EU minsters and by the European Council. The condition was the political leaders in BiH to sign a written commitment that the European integration of their country will be their major priority. In exchange, the EU promised to unfreeze the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA).
The written commitment was signed by the political leaders on 29 January and was approved by the parliament of BiH on 23 February during the visit of EU's High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Federica Mogherini in Sarajevo. With this commitment the institutions at all government levels in the, may be, most complicated state in the world commit themselves to implement all the necessary reforms for BiH's progress toward full fledged EU accession. They also commit to establish an efficient mechanism for coordination between the institutions on EU affairs - something the EU has insisted for many years on. However, in the written commitment there is no specific deadline. It is written: "as soon as possible".
Among the reforms are economic and social measures in the framework of the Compact for Growth and Jobs adopted for BiH last year; creating a functioning market economy; introducing rule of law, fight against corruption and organised crime; acceleration of the reconciliation process; strengthening the administration.
And the EU was not late with the answer by adopting during the foreign ministers meeting on 16 March in Brussels the unfreezing of the SAA. It was signed on 16 June 2008 and its ratification by all EU member states was finished in February 2011. The agreement, though, never entered into force because BiH was expected to apply the ruling of the European Court for Human Rights on the Sejdic-Finci case. It is this case that has held the EU door closed for BiH. It demanded from the country to amend its Constitution to allow people from ethnic groups other than those listed in the Constitution (Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks) to participate in the governing of the country. In its written commitment BiH puts the application of the ruling on the back seat.
"The institutions of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina will, at a later stage (consequent to
the initial reform measures), make progress regarding implementation of additional reforms in order to improve the functionality and efficiency of all levels of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and direct special attention to the implementation of the ruling of the European Court for Human Rights in the case of Sejdic and Finci vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina", says the commitment.
More than a year after the EU committed seriously to unfreezing the European integration process of BiH it is clear that its actions are belated. The reason is that while the process of conclusion of the written agreement was taking place, in neighbouring Croatia the presidential elections were won by Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, the candidate of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which has a sister party in BiH led by Dragan Covic. In her election campaign and after taking office Ms Grabar-Kitarovic many times urged for a new international conference on the establishment of a third entity in BiH. Currently, they are only two: Republika Srpska and the Bosnia and Herzegovina federation. HDZ, however, insists on the separation of the Croats from the federation into a third entity.
The leader of the Croatian HDZ Tomislav Karamarko recently provoked severe reactions in BiH by sending a letter to the Bosnian Croatian parliament in the country supporting their demand for a renegotiation of the Dayton peace agreement. On 1 March, the Croatian people's parliament in Mostar voted a detailed declaration [in Croatian] in which it is pointed out that the construction of BiH after Dayton has not satisfied the demands of the Croatian people. According to the Bosnian Croats, the Dayton construction has "legalised the injustice caused by the military annexations and banishing of people". They also believe that the territorial organisation and the construction of the state is irrational, nonfunctional and ungovernable.
The declaration insists on a radical constitutional change to include new territorial organisation and equalisation of the rights of the three peoples in the country. The Bosnian Croatian MPs are aware that this would be really hard to achieve which is why they call, if no consensus is reached for such a deep constitutional change inside the country, to seek a solution through an international conference. "Given that we received the current Constitution at an international conference as part of the peace agreement and with the guarantee of the UN Security Council, we believe that if there is no internal consensus the most logical thing is BiH to receive a new constitution at a new international conference on BiH. A Constitution that will establish a symmetric for the three constitutional peoples federal state", the declaration reads.
And although it was voted only two weeks ago, the issue was not discussed during the EU foreign ministers meeting whose focus was Africa, a new migration strategy, Ukraine. Federica Mogherini hoped that the activation of the SAA will "keep the energy and the momentum that I found in Sarajevo last time on the reform process to get closer to the European Union". According to the Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic, the path ahead of BiH is clear - fulfilling the SAA conditions which are a preparation for the real accession negotiations. Progress will depend on how the country is implementing them. This could take 3, 6 or even 10 years. And may be more, she said, emphasising that from the very beginning no one insisted on different criteria and preferences for any country aspiring for EU membership.
Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Daniel Mitov told this website that at the moment many ideas are circulating but first all of them need to be reviewed and only then it will be decided which is the best approach in this case. The EU's actions so far reveal the Union's striving to try and avoid a renegotiation of Dayton. There is a real danger, however, the process of European integration to again freeze because of the lack of consensus within BiH.Global Odyssi has added a new supply to The Nomad Surfers First Aid Kit that is going to make it even more extreme than it was before. The product being added to our best selling surfer’s first aid kit is the QUIKCLOT ADVANCED CLOTTING GAUZE 3”X24” (2). QUIKCLOT is a leader in the innovation in hemostasis and is widely used by the military, law enforcement, emergency medical responders and healthcare professionals. An excerpt from QUIKCLOT.COM on the effectiveness of their products:
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The QUIKCLOT ADVANCED CLOTTING GAUZE is a safe and effective gauze that accelerates the body’s natural clotting process and works within minutes of application. This new supply comes in 2 – 3” x 24” long strips that are easy to apply in any situation.
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Comments will be approved before showing up.news A Good Pac-Man Is Hard To Find: Spadina Bust
We should have known! The culprits responsible for the Pac-Man recreation on a streetcar shelter outside Kensington Market have stepped forward, and they’re neither advertisers nor immoralists: they’re Teeth (responsible for this charming bear-woman) and our very own Posterchild (who is something of a fan of video games).
The two collaborated to put up three nearly identical installations along Spadina: one at Spadina and Harbord (pictured above, at top); one at Spadina and Queen (above, bottom); and the one we spotted on Sunday, at Spadina south of Nassau (above, middle). The three ghosts, three cherries, and three Pac-Men were made out of scrap adhesive vinyl, took a grand total of five hours to build and install, and, says Posterchild, were totally Teeth’s idea. Says Posterchild: “When Teeth told me about it, I said ‘That’s brilliant! Let’s do it!'” And they did, and it was good.
All photos courtesy of Posterchild.Users of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; ‘ecstasy’) report prosocial effects such as sociability and empathy. Supporting these apparently unique social effects, data from controlled laboratory studies indicate that MDMA alters social feelings, information processing, and behavior in humans, and social behavior in rodents. Here, we review this growing body of evidence. In rodents, MDMA increases passive prosocial behavior (adjacent lying) and social reward while decreasing aggression, effects that may involve serotonin 1A receptor mediated oxytocin release interacting with vasopressin receptor 1A. In humans, MDMA increases plasma oxytocin and produces feelings of social affiliation. It decreases identification of negative facial expressions (cognitive empathy) and blunts responses to social rejection, while enhancing responses to others’ positive emotions (emotional empathy) and increasing social approach. Thus, consistent with drug folklore, laboratory administration of MDMA robustly alters social processing in humans and increases social approach in humans and animals. Effects are consistent with increased sociability, with mixed evidence about enhanced empathy. These neurobiologically-complex prosocial effects likely motivate recreational ecstasy use.C HÖGYAM T RUNGPA, BORN IN 1939, is the first of the crazy wisdom masters whose effect on North American spirituality we will be considering.
As the eleventh incarnation of the Trungpa Tulku, the milk-fed sage was raised from his childhood to be the supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries in eastern Tibet.
In Trungpas tradition, a tulku is someone who reincarnates with the memories and values of previous lives intact (Butterfield, 1994). Of an earlier, fourth incarnation of that same Trungpa Tulku (Trungpa Künga-gyaltzen) in the late fourteenth century, it has been asserted:
Having been enthroned in Tibet as heir to the lineages of Milarepa and Padmasambhava, Trungpa left the country for India in 1959, fleeing the Chinese Communist takeover. There, by appointment of the Dalai Lama, he served as the spiritual advisor for the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie, until 1963 (Shambhala, 2003).
From India Chögyam went to England, studying comparative religion and psychology at Oxford University. (A later student of Trungpas, Al Santoli, suggests that the CIA may have had a hand in getting the eleventh Trungpa into Oxford [Clark, 1980].) He further caused quite a stir in clashing with another tulku adversary (Akong) of his who, like Trungpa himself, had designs on leading their lineage in the West.
In any case, Trungpa and Akong went on to found the first Western-hemisphere Tibetan Buddhist meditation center, in Scotland, which community was visited by the American poet Robert Bly in 1971.
That same center later became of interest to the police as they investigated allegations of drug abuse there. Trungpa, not himself prone to missing the point, avoided that bust by hiding in a stable.
The Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo (in Mackenzie, 1999) related her own experiences with the young Chögyam in England, upon their first meeting in 1962. There, in finding his attentive hands working their way up her skirt in the middle of afternoon tea and cucumber sandwiches, Trungpa received a stiletto heel to his sandaled holy feet. His later smooth line to her, in repeated attempts at seduction beyond that initial meeting/groping, included the claim that Palmo had swept him off his monastic feet. That, in spite of the fact that he had women since [he] was thirteen, and already had a son.
In 1969 Chögyam experienced a tragic automobile accident which left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. The car had careened into a joke shop (seriously); Trungpa had been driving drunk at the time (Das, 1997), to the point of blacking out at the wheel (Trungpa, 1977).
Note, now, that Trungpa did not depart from Tibet for India until age twenty, and did not leave India for his schooling in England until four years later. Thus, eleven years of his having had women were enacted within surrounding traditional Tibetan and northern Indian attitudes toward acceptable behavior (on the part of monks, etc.). Indeed, according to the son referenced above, both his mother and Trungpa were under vows of celibacy, in Tibet, at the time of their union (Dykema, 2003). Of the three hundred monks entrusted to him when he was enthroned as supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, Trungpa himself (1977) remarked that
one hundred and seventy were bhikshus (fully ordained monks), the remainder being shramaneras (novices) and young upsaka students who had already taken the vow of celibacy.
Obviously, then, Trungpas (Sarvastivadin) tradition was not a monastic one without celibacy vows, as is the case with Zen.
Further, Trungpa himself did not formally give up his monastic vows to work as a lay teacher until sometime after his car accident in England. This, then, is another clear instance of demonstration that traditional agrarian society places no more iron-clad constraints on the behavior of any divine sage than does its postmodern, Western counterpart.
Trungpa may have partied harder in Europe and the States, but he was already breaking plenty of rules, without censure, back in Tibet and India. Indeed, one could probably reasonably argue that, proportionately, he broke as many social and cultural rules, with as little censure, in Tibet and India as he later did in America. (For blatant examples of what insignificant discipline is visited upon even violent rule-breakers in Tibetan Buddhist society even today, consult Lehnerts [1998] Rogues in Robes.) Further, Trungpa (1977) did not begin to act as anyones guru until age fourteen, but had women since he was thirteen. He was thus obviously breaking that vow of celibacy with impunity both before and after assuming God-like guru status, again in agrarian 1950s Tibet.
In 1970, the recently married Trungpa and his sixteen-year-old, dressage-fancying English wife, Diana, established their permanent residence in the United States. He was soon teaching at the University of Colorado, and in time accumulated around 1500 disciples. Included among those was folksinger Joni Mitchell, who visited the tulku three times, and whose song Refuge of the Roads (from the 1976 album Hejira) contains an opening verse about the guru. Contemporary transpersonal psychologist and author John Welwood, member of the Board of Editors of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, is also a long-time follower of Trungpa.
In 1974, Chögyam founded the accredited Naropa Institute in Boulder, Coloradothe first tantric university in America. Instructors and guests at Naropa have included psychiatrist R. D. Laing, Gregory Bateson, Ram Dass and Allen Ginsbergafter whom the university library was later named. (Ginsberg had earlier spent time with Swami Muktananda [Miles, 1989].) Also, Marianne Faithfull, avant-garde composer John Cage, and William Naked Lunch Burroughs, who had earlier become enchanted (1974, 1995) and then disenchanted with L. Ron Hubbards Scientology. Plus, the infinitely tedious Tibetan scholar and translator Herbert V. Guenther, whose writings, even by dry academic standards, could function well as a natural sedative.
Bhagavan Das (1997) related his own, more lively experiences, while teaching Indian music for three months at Naropa in the 70s:
The party energy around [Trungpa] was compelling. In fact, thats basically what Naropa was: a huge blowout party, twenty-four hours a day....
I was in a very crazed space and very lost. One day, after having sex with three different women, I couldnt get out of bed. I was traumatized. It was all too much.
Jack Kornfield offered a less traumatic recounting of his own days lecturing there, being invited to teach after he and Trungpa had met at a (where else) cocktail party in 1973:
We all had this romantic, idealistic feeling that we were at the beginning of a consciousness movement that was really going to transform the world (in Schwartz, 1996).
Befitting the leader of such a world-changing effort, in 1974 Trungpa was confirmed as a Vajracarya, or a spiritual master of the highest level, by His Holiness the Karmapa Lama, during the latters first visit to the West (Trungpa, 1977).
* * *
The practice of crazy wisdom itself rests upon the following theory:
[I]f a bodhisattva is completely selfless, a completely open person, then he will act according to openness, will not have to follow rules; he will simply fall into patterns. It is impossible for the bodhisattva to destroy or harm other people, because he embodies transcendental generosity. He has opened himself completely and so does not discriminate between this and that. He just acts in accordance with what is.... [H]is mind is so precise, so accurate that he never makes mistakes [italics added]. He never runs into unexpected problems, never creates chaos in a destructive way (Trungpa, 1973).
[O]nce you receive transmission and form the [guru-disciple] bond of samaya, you have committed yourself to the teacher as guru, and from then on, the guru can do no wrong, no matter what. It follows that if you obey the guru in all things, you can do no wrong either. This is the basis of Osel Tendzins [Trungpas eventual successor] teaching that if you keep your samaya, you cannot make a mistake. He was not deviating into his own megalomania when he said this, but repeating the most essential idea of mainstream Vajrayana [i.e., Tantric Buddhism] (Butterfield, 1994).
Q [student]: What if you feel the necessity for a violent act in order ultimately to do good for a person? A [Trungpa]: You just do it (Trungpa, 1973).
A perfect example of going with energy, of the positive wild yogi quality, was the actual transmission of enlightenment from Tilopa to [his disciple] Naropa. Tilopa removed his sandal and slapped Naropa in the face (Trungpa, 1973).
We could, of course, have learned as much from the Three Stooges.
Q [student]: Must we have a spiritual friend [e.g., a guru] before we can expose ourselves, or can we just open ourselves to the situations of life? A [Trungpa]: I think you need someone to watch you do it, because then it will seem more real to you. It is easy to undress in a room with no one else around, but we find it difficult to undress ourselves in a room full of people (Trungpa, 1973).
Yes, there was plenty of undressing. At the Halloween costume party during an annual seminar in the autumn of 1975, for example:
A woman is stripped naked, apparently at Trungpas joking command, and hoisted into the air by [his] guards, and passed aroundpresumably in fun, although the woman does not think so (Marin, 1995).
The pacifist poet William Merwin and his wife, Dana, were attending the same three-month retreat, but made the mistake of keeping to themselves within a crowd mentality where that was viewed as offensive egotism on their part. Consequently, their perceived aloofness had been resented all summer by the other community members... and later categorized as resistance by Trungpa himself.
Thus, Merwin and his companion showed up briefly for the aforementioned Halloween party, danced only with each other, and then went back to their room.
Trungpa, however, insisted through a messenger that they return and rejoin the party. In response, William and his wife locked themselves in their room, turned off the lights... and soon found themselves on the receiving end of a group of angry, drunken spiritual seekers, who proceeded to cut their telephone line, kick in the door (at Trungpas command) and break a window (Miles, 1989).
Panicked, but discerning that broken glass is mightier than the pen, the poet defended himself |
(54.3%), followed by Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.06% (46.3%), Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.69% (40.05%) and Amazon (39.6%).
What about the future of learning and decision-making algorithms? Here’s what respondents said:
• Almost 49% of consumers believe AI will lead to medical advancements.
• 46.7% of consumers believe AI will take over dangerous jobs.
• 41.7% of consumers believe AI will automate mundane tasks in their personal life.
• Almost 40% of consumers believe AI will lead to advancements in transportation and travel.
• 35.1 % of consumers believe AI will automate mundane tasks in their work life.
Although Americans may be cautious about AI now, many expect it to keep evolving until it’s capable of performing tasks that are currently beyond its capabilities. This conclusion correlates pretty well with the reality of AI and what it can currently do. It also means that the market in general has great, yet realistic, expectations of AI.
Finally, let’s address the cyber elephant in the room: Will AI take your job? When asked that same question (click here to read what I think about the topic), 35.4% of respondents acknowledged being concerned about their job safety. Millennials and members of Generation Z are generally more worried than older generations, with almost 41% of them saying AI could be coming after their jobs in the future.
A further examination of the survey data leads to more interesting correlations: The more respondents believe AI is useful, the more they fear being replaced by it:
• 42% of Generation Z has a positive view of AI in the workplace; 36% believe AI will decrease the number of jobs available.
• 35% of millennials have a positive view of AI in the workplace; 37% believe AI will decrease the number of jobs available.
• 24% of Generation X have a positive view of AI in the workplace; 37% believe AI will decrease the number of jobs available.
• 21% of baby boomers have a positive view of AI in the workplace; 26% believe AI will decrease the number of jobs available.
When it comes to income levels of those interviewed:
• More than 42% of consumers making under $25,000 a year believe AI will decrease the number of job opportunities.
• Fewer than 26% of consumers making over $175,000 a year believe AI will decrease the number of job opportunities.
So, the more someone earns per year, the less he or she feels threatened by artificial intelligence.
AI is not a passing trend. It’s been with us for decades and is here to stay. As technology and science improve, so will the algorithms behind AI and the hardware that’s running it. However, I still believe it must improve before it can become an inseparable and integral part of our lives.
If you were asked the same questions as in the survey, what would you say about AI? Let me know in the comment section below.
Get the top tech stories of the day delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Tech Daily newsletter. Sign up here.Thanks to the tea party, the IRS could be locked down from taking any action on political nonprofit groups.
Mother Jones reports on language inserted into the appropriations bill saying that the IRS "cannot be used to 'target citizens of the United States for exercising any right guaranteed under the first Amendment" or to target 'groups for regulatory scrutiny based on their ideological beliefs.'"
Taken at face value, it clearly reflects billionaires' fondest dreams -- to let their tax-exempt network buy and sell politicians and policy to the highest bidder. But it's a little more complicated than that.
Take, for example, the term "target". Mother Jones contacted tax experts who were puzzled by the term, which is not a term of art and is quite ambiguous. The term "targeting" might play in news reports, but it's not quite so clear in statutory terms.
Except the mild critique is poorly written. All of the tax experts reached by Mother Jones were mystified by the use of the word "target," an unusual term to be applied to the IRS. "I'm not even sure what targeting means,” says Owens. “Each taxpayer has its own set of circumstances—simply because they're not all cookie cutter—and the IRS has to analyze the tax law as it applies to particular facts and circumstances. It can't literally treat everybody the same. It has to make distinctions."
Commentators seem to think this means there won't be any action whatsoever on political nonprofits, but I have a different spin. The language is applicable to appropriations, which means the IRS can't use any of its budget to 'target' (whatever that means) political groups. However, they still have to approve their applications for nonprofit status. They still have a duty to make sure those groups are in compliance with current laws and regulations.
If they can't interpret the group's activities inside of that review, then approval will be a simple process of defaulting to existing law, which says 501(c)(4) groups can't spend more than 50 percent on political campaign activity. I believe none of the Kochtopus organizations would qualify for exemption on that bright-line test, nor would they withstand scrutiny under audit.
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If the IRS is precluded from evaluating the facts and circumstances of a case, they could simply fall back on existing law and apply it to any funds spent during campaign season. In that case, conservatives should have been more careful about what they wished for.
This is stupid language put in a sloppy and hastily-assembled law, but it will have repercussions.
But Journy worries these new provisions could have their largest impact outside the courtroom. "The way this will be used most effectively is to bully the IRS into closing an examination on more favorable terms," he says. Petitioners to the IRS—an agency still stinging from PR damage of last year's drummed up scandal—will be able to cite these new provisions to claim that they have been unjustly targeted for their beliefs if the IRS delays approving their application.
When you elect idiots to Congress and those idiots hold a majority in the House, you get weird, ideological, idiotic language like this which is impossible to enforce and leaves the door wide open for more lawyers to make more money challenging the IRS on every petty slight they feel.Juba, South Sudan - A cargo plane has crashed shortly after takeoff in Juba, South Sudan, killing dozens of people and raising questions about security at the country's main international airport.
On Wednesday morning, the Soviet-era Antonov-12 pummeled into a grove of fruit trees on the sparsely populated east side of the Nile river, according to witnesses at the scene of the crash.
It was unclear exactly how many people were on board.
Minister of Transportation Kuong Danhier Gatluak told Al Jazeera that 36 people were killed, and more may be unaccounted for. Authorities are still investigating the cause.
Al Jazeera counted 25 bodies, including several children.
Presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny told Al Jazeera the plane was heading for the Paloich oil fields in the country's north.
Ateny said there were 18 people on board the aircraft when it crashed, including 12 South Sudanese, and six members of an Armenian and Russian crew.
He said three South Sudanese survived, including an infant, and 10 more people were killed on the ground.
Ateny said the company was illegally carrying passengers on a cargo flight.
"It is the problem for the company now to address," he said.
The spokesman said a local businessman chartered the flight, but had no more information.
Bodies were found on the muddy riverside along with the craft's cargo, rubber flip flops, medicine, tires, and cans of beer and energy drinks.
Barefoot responders gathered the sandals and wore them to be able to access the uninhabited, swampy crash site.
The front of the fuselage was destroyed and the wings were torn off, with propellers mangled in the mud.
Only the tail, marked with the logo of Allied Services Limited, a Tajikstan charter company operating in South Sudan, was intact.
Witnesses who live near the crash site said no one was on the ground where the plane hit, contradicting the presidential spokesman.
"Nowehere to run"
Ismail Ibrahim Mohamed, a farmer whose house is closest to the crash site, told Al Jazeera he heard a loud noise and came running to the scene after the crash.
"We saw the plane as if it was landing, and there was nowhere to run," he said.
Mohamed said a tree stopped a tire from hitting his children who were sleeping.
Kenyi Galla, an operations manager for charter company Combined Air Services, which had a staff member on board, said the plane was overloaded.
Security officials at Juba International Airport force cargo crews to take passengers on board, he said.
"I see it every day. I work in the airport," he told Al Jazeera while searching for his colleague's body. "They use military force to put their wives and kids on."
Al Jazeera's Hiba Morgan, reporting from Juba, said bad weather was hampering the rescue effort.
"It is raining hard here in Juba, making it difficult to look for more victims," she said. "The cargo plane was carrying passengers and it is believed that many of them were not wearing seat belts."
Juba's airport is the busiest in the war-torn country.
The airport hosts regular commercial flights, as well as military aircraft and cargo planes delivering aid to remote regions cut off by road.
Civil war broke out in December 2013, when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy, Riek Machar, of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that has split the landlocked country along ethnic lines.
Fighting continues despite an August peace deal, but battles today are far from the capital.How Pundits Get Everything Wrong And Still Keep Their Jobs
Understandably, the elite media class is eager to move swiftly onward, as if nothing just happened. They might have been directly complicit in one of the most cataclysmic mass analytical failures in modern US history, but no matter: there are ever-more predictions to be made, more rash surmises to blithely proffer. Self-criticism and introspection—who needs it? After all, the natural state of the pundit could be described as “impulsive predictivity,” the unceasing drive to be constantly telling audiences what will happen in the indeterminate future, as if you possess some amazing insight that renders your predictions uniquely clairvoyant.
But as the 2016 presidential campaign should have conclusively demonstrated, this pretense of expertise is a fabrication. Far from being especially prescient about matters of public affairs, members of the Pundit-Commentariat Industrial Complex are actually incredibly ill-suited to the task of accurately gauging the political sentiments of their own nation. By virtue of the various self-destructive pathologies that perpetually dull and distort their analytical acuity, it turns out that “pundits” are among the least qualified to accurately predict how far-off events will unfold. Surveying a random selection of Twitter trolls would probably yield one better information than scanning the output of the most revered professional prognosticators.
We still have not yet fully taken stock of how systematic and massive was the scope of the failure which gave rise to Donald Trump; it permeated virtually every sector of elite society, from the culture-producing entertainment industry, to high finance, to the “political operative/consultant” cabal—right on down to the journalism/commentary racket. But it may be most fruitful to begin by thrashing the 2016 pundits, whose mixture of arrogance and ignorance is almost unmatched in the history of letters.
The notion of a “pundit” is nebulous and fluid. Its definitional boundaries are always shifting. Indeed, “pundit” can be taken to mean anyone who opines on TV about politics, or it can refer to the distinguished group of people employed by well-regarded national magazines to espouse political opinions, often with a sheen of intellectual gravity. Though there’s plenty of blame to go around, it’s worth lingering on the failings of a certain kind of pundit—the “writes regularly for prestigious online opinion journals” kind. The paradigmatic pundit of this character is firmly ensconced in the peculiarities of the contemporary social media-driven click-economy—it’s all he’s ever known.
One liability of having a geographically-clustered, incestuous pundit class is that they almost all know each other. They all reside in the same one or two cities and are members of overlapping friendship circles. This social proximity will inevitably cause a certain kind of in-group solidarity and excusing of failure; that’s human nature, and it’s understandable. We’re more willing to give our friends a pass. Though the nature of the internet enables pundits to write banally on politics from virtually anywhere, they nevertheless all flock to New York City and Washington D.C., whereupon they forge strong social bonds with colleagues and “after work” drinking buddies—and then wonder why they are all hopelessly consumed by groupthink and confirmation bias.
Jamelle Bouie of Slate and Brian Beutler of The New Republic are examplary members of this rising pundit cohort: young-ish prognosticators with an avowedly liberal bent, who came up through the fledgling “new media” ecosystem, and who originally endeavored to upend the existing pundit order. Bouie and Beutler merit special attention as case studies because they epitomize the “digital native” pundit—namely a coterie of 20 and 30-somethings concentrated in the “Acela Corridor” who regularly receive outsized praise for their allegedly bold commentary. They also happened to spend the 2016 presidential cycle advancing theories that proved utterly, flagrantly wrong.
Throughout the campaign, Bouie churned out a series of wildly inconsistent opinion pieces about Trump, alternating between warning the country that it was about to be swallowed up by fascism and reassuring liberals that Hillary Clinton had the election in the bag.
To give a flavor for Slate’s politics coverage, witness two Bouie headlines from only a week apart: “Donald Trump is a Moderate Republican” (November 19, 2015) and “Donald Trump Is A Fascist” (November 25, 2015). Now, the word “fascist” has meaning (or is at least supposed to). Anyone who actually believed Trump to be a fascist should now be out proclaiming far and wide that a fascist has just won the presidency—indeed, Bouie would be justified in attempting to foment violent insurrection and perhaps even a full-on coup d’état to ensure that Trump, the purported fascist, is prevented from taking the reins of state. As a preeminent pundit with sought-after insight, Bouie would in fact be obliged to vigorously sound the alarm, and maybe even take up arms himself. Instead, he recently joined the host of Slate’s “Culture GabFest” for a discussion entitled “Will Late-Night Shows Help Us Laugh Through a Trump Presidency?”
It is not unreasonable, then, to surmise that proclamation that Trump is a “fascist” was more a provocation for clicks than any sincere attempt at political categorization. Whether Bouie ever perceived any disjunction between those competing November 2015 theses of “Trump as unprecedented fascist threat” and “Trump as slightly more vulgar run-of-the-mill Republican” remains unclear. (Bouie did not reply to a set of written questions.) One suspects, however, that these ideas were far more a product of Slate’s daily demand for edgy but ultimately hollow hot takes than of considered and honest analysis.
Not only was Bouie’s political philosophy both inconsistent and insincere, but his predictions were laughably disastrous. On August 24, Bouie averred in his Slate column:
“There is no horse race here. Clinton is far enough ahead, at a late enough stage in the election, that what we have is a horse running by itself, unperturbed but for a faint possibility of a comet hitting the track. Place your bets accordingly.”
So to be clear, Bouie likened the odds of a Trump victory to the odds of an extra-terrestrial mass extinction event. He even began performing postmortems before the election had been held:
“Donald Trump is a dud of [sic] politician who squandered his advantages in a winnable election. More than just a bad candidate, he has been a catastrophe for the GOP itself… On Nov. 8, nearly 18 months after he announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, the saga of Trump will come to a close.”
Perhaps Bouie reckoned that if he wrote enough columns conveying absolute certitude, he could will Hillary Clinton to victory. Whatever Bouie’s motive, he clearly failed spectacularly. Bouie had “one job,” and that was to accurately inform his readers about what was going on in the electorate. In this narrow task Bouie failed. What will be the consequences? (Hint: there will be no consequences.)
Brian Beutler was christened an avatar of the Washington, D.C. “power elite” by the New York Times at the ripe old age of 28, which in 2011 profiled him and other members of the so-called “Juicebox Mafia,” a cluster of hyper-wonkish young men who supposedly constituted the future of political commentary. (Notably, the profile appeared in the Fashion section.)
A hallmark of induction into said elite is becoming bizarrely out of touch with the rest of the country. By this standard, Beutler proved himself a highly qualified member. But unlike pundits of old, Beutler has evidently shunned the practice of on-the-ground reporting, which was once critical to the pundit’s self-conception. Even people like the late David Broder of The Washington Post, once the purest embodiment of the establishment commentator, frequently traveled the country and talked to voters; it’s unclear if Beutler ever left Washington, D.C. during the entire election cycle. (Beutler also did not reply to a submitted set of written questions.) Instead, he sat at his desk, like Bouie, and declared Clinton victorious without deigning to converse with voters. On October 19th, he wrote: “This race is over. It has been for some time.”
But worse than the bad predictions, Beutler made a point to heap regular contempt on ordinary voters whose views diverged from his own. He spearheaded a meme, popular among D.C. liberals, which essentially held that Trump supporters couldn’t possibly be motivated by anything resembling “economic anxiety.” Beutler and friends would find a Trump supporter saying something eccentric or racist, and tweet it with the sarcastic caption “economic anxiety.” The meme implied that the Trump phenomenon very obviously had no basis in the genuine anxieties of an immiserated, dislocated white working class depredated for decades by a hubristic economic elite. To the commentators scoffing at “economic” issues, Trump’s support was little more than pure, old-fashioned racism. Beutler hammered home the point unceasingly, winning bountiful likes and retweets from his fellow “new media” compadres, who naturally found the routine absolutely hilarious.
Of course, post-election analyses, including by the pundits’ own beloved FiveThirtyEight, have demonstrated that Beutler’s smug dismissals were entirely misplaced: economic anxiety was in fact a predictor of Trump support. “It is clear that the places that voted for Trump are under greater economic stress, and the places that swung most toward Trump are those where jobs are most under threat,” wrote FiveThirtyEight’s Jed Kolco. Additional studies have verified this correlation.
If you are a professional pundit, and your sole job is to accurately discern trends in the American electoral landscape, why on earth wouldn’t you feel compelled to venture out and do some actual reporting? Either it’s out of sheer laziness (certainly a distinct possibility) or an inherent skepticism that reportage has any analytical value. To the new generation of pundit, sitting around refreshing FiveThirtyEight nineteen times a day is a sufficient substitute for going and actually speaking to the people whose political opinions you purport to be an expert on.
The central assumptions on which The New Republic’s senior political editor and Slate’s chief political correspondent based a huge portion of their election analysis proved utterly, humiliatingly wrong. Of course, this will not redound to their discredit. That’s because the pundits inhabit an environment whereby the normal incentives for success and failure are precisely inverted compared to those under which most Americans labor. For normal people, even the tiniest mistakes often result in drastic consequences. They don’t just get to ignore those failures and barrel forward as if nothing happened. And yet that’s how we permit the pundit class to operate. In the case of Bouie and Beutler, it wasn’t merely that they made erroneous predictions; anyone can mistakenly guess that something might pan out, when it does not. Rather, their entire analytical framework was drastically, catastrophically faulty. If any other American worker had performed his or her job so poorly, they could expect to receive severe sanction—docked pay, unfavorable scheduling, or termination. But in the world of punditry, there is no price to pay for failure. Instead, the American pundit class simply carries on as before, rattling off self-assured predictions about future events.
It thus should not be mysterious why Americans are increasingly disdainful of the media class; they see them failing over and over again, but no punishments meted out. They know intrinsically that the pundits are shielded from anything that they’d recognize as professional accountability. And for what? The pundits provide no useful service; they opine from the comfort of their Washington domiciles. Maybe it’s the pundits’ jobs that should be outsourced, rather than the jobs of the “economically anxious” who they so delightedly mock.
The third and final part of our “How the Press Failed You” series. Part I was on Nate Silver. Part II was on New York Times commentators.In probably what is one of the most disturbing things you’ll ever read at Salon, and there are plenty, their latest is written by a self-proclaimed pedophile who wants your sympathy.
Yes you heard that correctly. A pedophile writing for Salon wants your understanding and support in his demented psychological illness.
The man tries to claim pedophilia is a sexual orientation. SERIOUSLY.
No, pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, it is a psychological illness of the degenerate kind. He thinks because he hasn’t acted on his urges to have sex with children that he’s somehow to be praised for this.
It doesn’t seem that he has actually tried to get the help he needs to address what seem to be multiple psychological issues. He believes this is just who he is and there is nothing that can be done about it other than hang out with other pedophiles who don’t actually act upon their ‘desires.’
Here are some snippets from the pedophiles article on Salon [emphasis added]:
I recall an event from when I was 11, sitting in the family jeep with my dad and his friend Andy when a news piece on the radio reported the sexual abuse of a girl, to which my dad said to his friend something like, “They should take people like that and place weights on top of their genitals until they smash.” Pretty horrific imagery for an 11-year-old to process, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with the abuser. After all, I could recall my own molestation perfectly, and I hardly felt it warranted that kind of response. I wanted desperately to be friends with people who shared my sexual orientation, even if they held crazy beliefs, but I could never quite reconcile with their viewpoint. For better or worse—mostly worse—we have this sexuality, and unlike with most sexualities, there is no ethical way we can fully actualize our sexual longings. Our desires and feelings, if we are to remain upright, are doomed from the outset. Indeed, whereas the majority of crimes can be bounced back from, society doesn’t extend a mulligan to molesters. I understand why, but that doesn’t make the burden any lighter to bear, particularly for those of us who have minimal or no attraction to adults. So, please, be understanding and supportive. It’s really all we ask of you. Treat us like people with a massive handicap we must overcome, not as a monster.
The only reason this guy hasn’t already molested a child is because he knows he’ll end up in prison and probably dead. His self-preservation is clear. He doesn’t actually care about protecting children, he cares about protecting himself.
The fact that Salon is trying to normalize this behavior as just another ‘sexual orientation’ is disturbing.
At one point in the article the guy tries to blame his ‘Conservative Southern’ state of Tennessee for not allowing him to get full disability benefits. He isn’t a productive member of society because he has chosen to put his pedophilia as a sexual orientation first, above his ability to provide for himself.
The psychotic lunatics on the left have been sympathizing with pedophiles for years. Not only do they push sympathy for these people but clearly from this article they ignore the true victims – THE CHILDREN.
This man was a victim of sexual abuse by an adult yet he sympathizes with his abuser. He heard a story and his father’s reaction and sympathized with the abuser, NOT THE VICTIM.
There are far more deep-seated psychological issues with this man than just pedophilia. He is absolutely a disturbed individual on many levels. That Salon tries to ‘normalize’ this shows just how disturbed they are as well.
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.Researchers fear cuts will create brain drain
Updated
Leading medical researchers are concerned that rumoured plans to slash funding to the sector in the next federal budget will send researchers offshore.
Professor Doug Hilton, director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, says it is impossible to say for sure how big the cuts to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) will be.
But information leaked to a number of senior researchers suggests the cuts could be as high as $400 million during the next three years.
"I think there's a sentiment in government that somehow medical research has been dining out for 10 years, has been doing exceptionally well, and that it's time we felt some pain," Professor Hilton said.
"The cost of doing research is going up and up. It's taken us 10 years to get to the point where we are somewhat competitive internationally.
"Anything other than maintaining the budget in real terms would be disastrous."
Professor Hilton says the cuts probably will not target any particular research field, but will make things difficult across the board.
"We hope they're not floating the $400 million [figure] so they can it then cut by $200 million and tell us how lucky we are," he said.
He says many senior investigators with a long research track record have long-term funding in place, and will be immune to the cuts.
"The people that are going to feel the pain are the young investigators getting into the industry, the smart young kids at university," he said.
Professor Hilton says there are a number of programs that would be difficult to fund without the current NHMRC budget.
"For example, testing new pharmaceuticals that we know to be effective against one type of cancer and trying to work out the combinations that will make them effective for treating lung cancer or ovarian cancer," he said.
Professor Julie Campbell, president of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes, told the ABC's Health Report that the cuts would amount to about 19 per cent of the budget.
"It'd be absolutely disastrous to the health and medical research community," she said.
"Already with the NHMRC there is only a 23 per cent success rate, so 77 per cent of grant applications do not get funded - even though about 70 per cent are deemed that they should be funded."
Professor Hilton says the rumoured cuts would be a huge step backwards.
"We have a vibrant sector, we're attractive to people overseas, there's a brain gain," he said.
"We've worked so hard as a sector, with the support of government, to create centres of medical research in Australia that are a magnet for people overseas.
"To think that can be turned on and off like a tap without consequences is just naive. If the money dries up they'll go overseas."
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, refused to confirm whether there would be cuts to the NHMRC budget.
"Funding for the NHMRC will be considered in the context of the 2011 budget," she said.
Topics: medical-research, diseases-and-disorders, melbourne-3000, canberra-2600, australia
First postedPoland has seen much worse days. I can remember such days, when Pope John Paul I was assassinated, giving way to John Paul II, the first non-Italian to represent Christ on this earth for centuries. I can remember the days before President Ronald Reagan ignored the objections of his speechwriters and demanded that Mr. Gorbachev “tear down that wall.” Poland survived and thrived because of the freedom loving and God fearing Polish people.
There were darker days for Poland, when the Sjem legislature was filled to the brim with communist sycophants, cynically bringing an agenda of oppression to their own people and for their own personal power and wealth. Today it seems like “Morning in Poland,” where the last elections returned, not a single socialist to the legislative assembly. We should congratulate Poland on being the soundest country in Europe, if not the world. It lives between Russia and Germany and has attained a high material standard of living in post-communism and it does so because of its spiritual heritage.
Still Poland finds itself at a crossroads– a changing world with a penchant for relativistic morality encroaches upon the country. And yet, the country has always known the difference between good and evil, between right and wrong, between moral stances and wavering negotiation.
Ahead of their time, the Poles rejected Nazism and Communism, both. Ahead of their time the Poles managed to bring the power of the market to the fore in their nation. Ahead of their time, Poland has seen that the 21st century will be dominated by the nation-state and not glorified by some regional integration mechanisms or process of globalization. Poland understands what sovereignty means.
There is a tendency towards rewriting history on the European continent, which must be addressed. What has evolved into the EU has taken to claiming credit for the postwar peace. A peace, which was and is cornerstoned by NATO, the American bases peppered throughout Germany, and the nuclear weapons we parked in Turkey and Holland.
The Pax Americana didn’t come from the European Coal and Steel Community; it was not birthed or paid for by Brussels. Those institutions were part of the peace taking — not their cause. It was the American burden and our contribution in blood and might that secured European freedom.
Of course, Poland, being victimized under communism so shortly after Nazism might rightly ask what peace we speak of? Decades of oppression gave rise to the heroes of the anti-communist Solidarity Movement and Saint John Paul II the Great, who smiles down on us. They who saw the better life their people could have and had the courage to take it—to transform history. Shall the European Union take credit for their courage too?
Enough about the past. The future is what we care and think most about. Poland has flourished, having freed its people and freed its economy. Under the capitalist, free-market system that won the Cold War, the Poles are today more prosperous than ever before. Poland has become an integral security partner and a dear friend of the United States, one of the few, which spends a serious amount on its own defence and is concerned with the nationhood and culture of its people. It remains rooted in Catholic faith.
Poland is a truly reliable actor in what could be called an unstable neighborhood. Poland has also become an emerging leader within the EU itself, flanked by its allies in the Visegrad and the Intermarium nations. Poland may even go to space.
America should be encouraged by these developments, but most of all, it should be proud that Poland has stepped up to the challenge of leadership, and that pride is shared by the millions of Polish-Americans back home in the USA. Those proud and good people of some ten million are distinguished Americans and a bulwark to our Republic.
Kazimierz Pulaski, having led the losing side of a civil war, escaped a death sentence by leaving for America. There, he served as brigadier-general in the Continental Army and commanded its cavalry. He saved General George Washington‘s army at the Battle of Brandywine and died leading a cavalry charge at the Siege of Savannah, aged 31. Pulaski later became known as the “father of American cavalry. Poles in America and in the US share a common bond, a common faith and a commitment to liberty. They are patriots.
The challenges ahead for Poland and the United States are many, but we should be confident that Poland will continue to be ahead of the curve, seeing from afar which forks in the road are best to take and which to avoid. For better or worse, other European nations remain mired in the battles of the past, some as old as their nations or tribes themselves.
The great question of the day in Europe is whether or not to form a federal entity, suborning the nation-state to a larger and undemocratic union. There may be many reasons, on paper, for the idea to be appealing. Unfortunately, some ideas are better left on the paper.
Some of the greatest nations on the planet make up that territory. The identities that make up those places have been forged through the fire and the flames of thousands of years of history and civilization. To try and subsume them into one larger and homogenous European identity is pure fantasy. To force them through a homogenizing meat grinder is a serious crime.
Even America, with a history much shorter than almost any European country, made up entirely of the outcasts and pioneers who opted into the American idea, had trouble forming a cohesive whole. When brother turned against brother in the Civil War in 1865, General Lee, who would command the rebel forces of the southern secessionists, gave a justification for his defection from the unionist cause saying: “I cannot draw my sword against my fellow Virginians”. His state loyalty superseded his loyalty to the Union, and as Virginia proclaimed secession from the union, so did he. Now ask yourselves, could any Pole draw a sword against fellow Poles, in the name of Brussels?
Europe can never have a union as tightly knit as America’s. Different circumstances demand different means and different ends. Herding together 27 (or less cultures now that the United Kingdom is leaving), nation states, histories, every one of which is thousands of years old is an impossible affair, no matter how ideal it may be in theory. There is a reason no one speaks Esparanza today, an earlier bad European idea. We children of the West have much in common and always will: Christianity, Roman law, the Latin language and respect for the freedom of the individual to act as their conscience directs. That is all we need to agree on, everything else naturally follows.
We should remember that sovereignty and globalism refer to different reference points for understanding the primary locus of political activity. Sovereignty points to the nation-state as the primary player in geopolitical action, while the globalist vision prefers to place this primary locus at the supranational level, either in groups such as the European Union or the United Nations, or to more nebulous realities such as the so-called “global community” or “international society.”
These two perspectives are necessarily competing worldviews; because one must necessarily take primacy over the other when they directly clash—and they do.
This debate harkens to an important principle of social philosophy that permits a more nuanced approach. This principle has been in the background of recent discussions, even though its name has not been specifically invoked. This is the notion of subsidiarity, a concept with which people in Poland are very familiar.
Poles understand their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign it to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. As papal legacy teaches, “For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.”
By its own charter, the European Union recognizes a relationship of subsidiarity with the individual states. In theory at least, it imposes upon itself the obligation to limit its intervention into lower forms of social organization, and to perform only such tasks that the lesser group cannot accomplish for itself without assistance.
The principle of subsidiarity is defined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union:
“Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level. “
According to the EU glossary, subsidiarity aims to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and that constant checks are made to verify that action at the EU level is justified in light of the possibilities available at national, regional or local level.
Adherence to the principle of subsidiarity results in a genuinely pluralistic society, which is a union of lesser societies, each of which maintains its own identity, function, and sovereignty. If the lesser associations are reduced to mere agencies of the higher, the result is the monolithic state, which expresses the essence of social totalitarianism, the reduction of all societies to one omnicompetent society.
In Europe, this genuine pluralism is manifested in the distinctive individuality of the States it comprises, resulting in an authentic collection of cultures. Italian culture cannot be reduced to a generic “European” culture, and nor can French, German or Polish culture. Attempts to so homogenize European norms and regulations so that all member states look and act exactly alike do violence to the rich history and individuality of each people and culture—and deprive Europe and the world of the creativity that lies within these dynamic traditions.
It seems evident that the recent growth of populist movements throughout Europe is a direct result of an instinctive understanding that the fundamental principle of subsidiarity is no longer duly respected or appreciated. A top-down approach to governance, where the smaller is subsumed into or supplanted by the greater, is in fact oppressive and ultimately unsustainable. Poland knows this and support for a ‘Polexit’ from European Union oppression is on the rise.
The new US president vowed to make America great again. |
will build a 17,000 square-foot museum to honor Confederate soldiers and the Confederate cause in Elm Springs, Tennessee, which is also the home of its national headquarters. Their decision to call it a museum, however, needs serious qualification.
Paul Gramling, Lt. Commander-in-Chief of the SCV described their motivation this way:
Time and time again, we have seen where our monuments and museums throughout the South have been dictated by the state and federal governments on what they can and cannot do. That is coming to an end. At the completion of this museum, it will be out of the reach of the long arm of political correctness. This will be ours, as SCV members, [United Daughters of the Confederacy] members, Southerners to tell the truth between 1861-1865.
Senator Joey Hensley, who is also an SCV member had this to say:
It’s an honor to be a part of this ceremony today, to build this museum so that we can remember the heritage of our ancestors that fought so bravely and valiantly for their homelands, for what they believed in. History has been skewed and many times in society today many people try to make those soldiers out to be something they are not. Most of the Confederate soldiers never owned slaves and didn’t fight the battle because of slavery. They fought the battle defending their homelands against an invading army.
Let’s be clear that the epistemological foundation of this endeavor has much more in common with the or even the Museum of the Confederacy in its earliest incarnation than anything that we normally designate as a history museum.
Their core value is reactionary and has little, if anything, to do with public outreach or even education. Gramling sums it up best: “This will be ours.”
Ultimately, what we are seeing here is the further acknowledgment that the Lost Cause continues to lose credibility as a legitimate interpretation of the past and as something worthy of honoring or celebrating. We can see this in the ongoing debates about the battle flag and Confederate monuments. This museum will serve primarily as a retreat for a dwindling SCV membership, where they can complain about a public that has left them behind.
It is another acknowledgment (at a cost of $5 million) that the Lost Cause has surely lost.Jimmy Nowells was told he had Parkinson’s disease and received treatment. Later that year, he was told he had Alzheimer’s and was given medicine to control that. It turns out Nowells didn’t have either disease.
Poof, Alzheimer's gone.
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Man misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's making remarkable full recovery
Their daughter is a nurse in Waco, Texas, and never took Nowells’ diagnoses as fact.
“No, it’s a miracle.”
________________________________________
What is the Difference Between Alzheimer’s and Dementia
Coping with Alzheimer's
By Bob DeMarcoAlzheimer's Reading RoomI don't mind admitting there were times when I was hoping for a miracle with Dotty. By this I mean hoping something extraordinary would happen and she would wake up.Hypothyroidism for example. After I read about it I asked Doc C if he would take a good hard look at Dotty's thyroid. He did and concluded it looked in his words "suspicious".He decided to prescribe the lowest dose of a thyroid medication and to monitor her blood closely.Turns out we received half a miracle.Dotty had not smiled or laughed for over two years. She took the medication and the next day she started laughing and smiling. We were on our way after that happened.No, it did not cure her Alzheimer's.One time I was thinking about buying one of those machines were you hang upside down. The idea to hang Dotty upside down and see if the logjam in her brain would break (open up). I never tried it. Maybe someone will read this and give it a try.I had quite a few whacky ideas as I traveled the long and winding road of Alzheimer's caregiving. I do mean for all eight and a half years. I think it is true to say, I never gave up hope.Yes, I believe in miracles.In the story below Jimmy Nowells' was diagnosed with Parkinson's and then Alzheimer's. He didn't have either disease as it turns out.Jimmy Nowells' had a daughter. His daughter never believed he had Alzheimer's. Jimmy Nowells daughter is a nurse.This story is about Jimmy and his family. And, his daughter, the nurse.By Joi LouviereTimes Record NewsIn 2006, Jimmy Nowells was told he had Parkinson’s disease and received treatment. Later that year, he was told he had Alzheimer’s and was given medicine to control that.A retired auto parts salesman, Nowells, 67, is one of many patients. While Nowells was being pumped with medicines to regulate the diseases doctors thought he had,About 10 years ago, Nowells started developing the symptoms.. His problems walking led to frequent falls.“He started doing things that just weren’t normal for him,” said his daughter, Tammy Wallace. “He just started going away.With Nowells unable to drive, do yard work, clean up around the house, and barely able to walk, his wife, Ann, took on all of the responsibilities. She said it was like her husband reverted back to being a 2-year-old and she was playing mother all over again.With Wallace’s persistence, the day came when they found out the truth.. A normal brain has a perfect balance of the fluid coming in with the fluid going out. As Nowells got older, his brain stopped reabsorbing the fluid, leaving pressure to build up.Nowells was one of the lucky ones.. The shunt was designed to reroute the fluid to another part of his body that would better absorb the fluid.The family’s doctor referred Nowells to a neurologist who would perform the surgery that would give him a second chance at life.Dr. Patrick Gleason, Nowells’ neurologist, hoped that Nowells would have a complete turnaround but was prepared for different. Every case is different and many don’t experience a full recovery.Gleason said he thinks too many elderly expect their health to diminish. He urged them not to accept ailments as a normal thing that comes along with age and said these things can be treated.Nowells is glad his daughter didn’t just accept his failing health.Ann Nowells couldn’t be happier with the results of her husband’s surgery. “I walk around with a grin on my face all the time. I truly could not believe I got my husband back,” She said., walking without a cane, cracking jokes, and playing 42 with his buddies. “It’s just wonderful. The results are fantastic,” he said. “It’s kind of remarkable.”Ann Nowells disagreed.To learn more about Alzheimer's and Dementia visit the Alzheimer's Reading RoomAdvertisement
Are clocks passé? Just because everyone has a smartphone doesn’t mean a dedicated time piece is unnecessary. On the contrary, now that clocks and watches are not really needed to tell the time, you can use them for other means as well.
While watches are getting smarter Should You Buy A Smartwatch Now, Or Wait? Should You Buy A Smartwatch Now, Or Wait? Everyone is talking about smartwatches and other wearables as "the next big thing." So, should you buy a smartwatch today, or wait for the smartwatches to come? Read More and smarter, wall clocks generally remain their old stupid self. But they no longer have to be circles with plain numbers. Whether you’re actually a geek or not, you won’t be able to withstand these unique clocks.
Who said geeky clocks need to be expensive? icentre9 is an Etsy shop that offers hundreds of clocks to choose from, ranging from my favorite Super Mario clock you see above, to beer clocks, Star Trek clocks, sports clock, and pretty much anything else you can come with. You can even order a customized clock with the picture of your choosing.
For $9.99, I don’t expect these to be of exceptional quality, but hey, it’s not like you need the clock to actually tell the time, right?
I have no idea what this clock says, but Math geeks are bound to enjoy a clock only they can read. Other than its unusual numbers, this clock offers a simple design that will appeal to almost anyone. There is a key to all those weird symbols on the website, so you may enjoy this one even if you’re not a Math geek. Just to spite everyone else who can’t read it.
If you’re more into black, you can check out this clock’s sibling which comes with different equations, and costs $30. There’s also another version of this clock over at ThinkGeek for $25.
I already mentioned this clock when discussing geeky toys for students Spruce Up Your College Dorm Room With These 8 Geeky Gadgets Spruce Up Your College Dorm Room With These 8 Geeky Gadgets Ready for yet another boring school year? Okay, school doesn't have to be boring, what with new friends, old friends, being away from home and learning loads of new things. But after the novelty wears... Read More, but no geeky clock collection is complete without it: the LED binary clock. Joining the group of clocks most people can’t read, this is another way to decorate your room while confusing the enemy. In fact, many people might not even realize it’s a clock, wondering what this weird contraption on your desk might be.
If you’re into this stuff, you’d be happy to know the clock can display the time in true binary as well as in powers of two binary mode. Yay!
A Tetris game that also tells the time? It’s all coming together in this Tetris-themed animated alarm clock. While you can’t actually play with it, watching those numbers change brick by Tetris brick is pretty mesmerizing. To top it all off, it can even wake you up to the sounds of the Tetris theme. What more could you want?
If you have something specific in mind for your clock, and can’t find it online or in any store, Zazzle lets you create your own clock design in one of three different shapes and sizes (small round, large round and square). If creating a design from scratch is too much, Zazzle also offers quite a collection of geeky designs, such as the 404 clock you see above.
The cool thing about these ready-made designs is that they are customizable too. For some designs, you can actually go in and move elements around. Others are not as customizable. Just click the “Customize it!” button on your favorite design to find out what you can do.
There is such a thing as bike geeks, and for them, this is the perfect clock. Made of an actual bike chain, the clock can serve as a constant reminder of your favorite vehicle, even when you’re stationary in your room or office. Other than the bike chain, the clock is made from carbon fiber, and can be either hung on a wall or placed on a desk using the included stand.
If you look around the LedonGifts Etsy shop, you’ll find this clock in several more colors, as well as other interesting bike and car themed clocks you might like.
Can a recycled motherboard, a hard drive or a circuit board become a clock? Apparently they can, with a little help from an Etsy store called ReComputing. What you see above is only an example — the store offers dozens of different clocks to choose from, all made from recycled computer parts.
If you’re interested, the store also offers other items made from recycled computers, such as jewelry, belt buckles, keychains, and more.
This gorgeous Star Trek clock, as well as the Star Wars version you see below, are sold on Etsy by YOUgNeek. According to the descriptions, these clocks are handmade and unique, so the order of ships you get is different for every clock. You can also mention some of your favorite ships if you want to make sure they’re included. The Star Wars version can include all sorts of elements from the famous movie series — not just ships.
While these clocks are much more expensive than other options, they’re made of brushed aluminum and glass, as opposed to plastic, so you definitely get some better quality for you money. At least on paper.
Are you convinced that you need a clock? I can see where you’re coming from. If you came all this way to find a geeky gift but you’re not convinced, here are some more geeky gift options Holiday Shopping List: For The Geeks Who Never Grew Up Holiday Shopping List: For The Geeks Who Never Grew Up It's with pleasure I present you with this list of super gifts for the geek who never grew up. Mum, I hope you're reading this. Read More that are not clocks.
Do you own a geeky clock? Dreaming of getting a specific one? Tell us about it in the comments.
Image credit: magro_krTsukuru's colourful friends have mysteriously gone, leaving him feeling detached and unresolved. John Crace journeys to the bottom of his existential funk in only 700 words
From the July of his sophomore year in college, Tsukuru Tazaki spent six months trying to die. Disappointed at his failure, he then spent the next 15 years trying not to live. This he did exceedingly well. Especially on the page.
The reason for his extreme existential ennui was that his four closest friends Aka, Ao, Shiro and Kuro, from whom he had been inseparable for 10 years, had announced they didn't want to speak to him ever again.
Rather than ask them why, he had decided the fault lay in his name. Aka meant Red, Ao meant Blue, Shiro meant Black and Kuro meant White. His name had no colour; it just meant Making a Mountain out of a Molehill. "I am colorless," he thought. "So colorless I don't even have a 'U' in the word."
By the time he had reached his late 30s, Tsukuru had visited nearly every railway station in Japan and had designed a notice board on a suburban platform outside Tokyo. More impressively, he had finally met a woman who didn't think it was about time he grew up a bit and stopped taking Camus so personally.
"I think I quite like you," he told Sara, as he entered her vagina that was unnecessarily described in terms of excessive moistness.
"I quite like you, too," she replied. "Though I can't help feeling you are rather detached and have unresolved personal issues."
"As the great teacher Donald Rumsfeld once said, 'There are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.'"
"Truly that is very deep, grasshopper."
"Did I tell you about another friend I had called Haida?"
"It's not going to involve a dream, is it?"
"I'm afraid so. I had this friend called Haida whom I met while swimming. He was exceedingly deep as well. We often listened to a Liszt piano piece that Shiro used to play, while discussing the mysteries of the world. I once dreamed that I was having sex with Shiro and Kuro and that I awoke to find Haida sucking me off."
"Was that last bit also a dream?"
"Who knows? He disappeared without saying a word and I never saw him again, either."
"Did it never occur to you to get in touch with all these people who left you?
"No. In any case how could I do so?"
"It just so happens I've Googled the lot of them. Here are their addresses. You'll struggle to meet Shiro as she was strangled three years ago."
Tsukuru took the bullet train to Nagoya, reflecting on the perfection of the coffee he was drinking. Ao was working in a Lexus showroom. "How come you never told me why you stopped talking to me?" Tsukuru enquired. "Because you never asked," Ao replied. "It was because Shiro said you raped her."
"I didn't."
"I know."
Tsukuru travelled across the city to meet Aka. "I didn't rape Shiro," he said. "I know that," Aka said. "Water under the bridge. No one likes me either, now I'm a successful corporate trainer."
It was a while before Tsukuru could travel to Finland to see Kuro and in the meantime he saw Sara holding hands with another man. He wondered if he should say something but decided against it.
"I didn't rape her," Tsukuru told Kuro.
"I never thought you did. I only sided with Shiro because I thought she was a bit unstable."
"Perhaps, though, in a way, I did rape her. In the same way, maybe I did even murder her."
"Perhaps we all did."
"That's staggeringly insightful. I am now feeling completely resolved and on a new spiritual level."
On his return to Japan, Tsukuru felt he had a bit more color about him. He phoned Sara.
"I am ready to commit to a long-term loving relationship with you. Can you tell me if you are seeing another man?"
Sara paused. "I will call you in three days and let you know."
Digested read, digested: The red and the unread.I was gazing at you from behind
For a long, long time, I relied on your back
The place I’m at is always a temporary one
And I run, and I run, away to a dream world, holding tightly onto your voice
Friendship and love and purity that had a dark side
has quickly rebuked my naive perception of myself
Ah, what do I do now?
There’s no way you would ever like someone like me
You’re so kind, always so truly kind
You’ve looked at me for a long, long time, haven’t you? I remember the warmth of your body
TV, sex, and rock and roll
are tangled inside my head
Ah, my heavy, gooey heart has been dragged around
but my body is tough, so I’ll laugh today, too
Without taking in the good or the bad,
I desperately searched for things that were never there at all
Ah, what do I do now?
There’s no way you would ever like someone like me
Ah, my heavy, gooey heart has been dragged around
but my body is tough, so I’ll laugh today, too
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Like this: Like Loading...New London — The city does not have enough cash on hand to pay its $1.7 million payroll at the end of this week and has asked the state to expedite payment of educational cost sharing funds to cover the shortfall.
Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio, the city’s finance director and the lawyer who oversees the city’s bonding made the announcement to the City Council in a special meeting Monday and urged the council to approve a proposed fund balance replacement plan to prevent the city from going broke before the end of this fiscal year.
“This is really it. I’m not here tonight to warn you that the sky is falling,” Finizio told the council. “I’m here tonight to tell you that it fell. It fell last week.”
Finizio said he received a call from Finance Director Jeff Smith last week informing him that the city had run out of cash. Finizio called Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and asked that the state expedite payment of $11 million in education cost sharing funds the city is due from the state. The governor, Finizio said, agreed to help speed that process up so the city can get at least some of that money this week.
“We should receive that in time to meet the city’s payroll,” he said. “If not, the city would go broke this week.”
At the heart of the city’s fiscal dilemma is its withering fund balance, the account that can act almost as overdraft protection for the city’s general fund, which currently has a balance of $400,000, according to Smith. The fund balance should be equal to two months of operating expenses, or $13 million, according to Mark Chapman, an independent consultant who works with the city.
Earlier this month, in his State of the City address, Finizio called the city’s fiscal problems “a very real, and a very grave, financial peril” and declared the city was out of money and out of time.
Earlier this month, the City Council sanctioned the bonding of $4.4 million to account for state grant funding the city has never collected, and to pay for vehicle purchases made last year that were originally going to be paid from the general fund.
The fund balance replacement plan the mayor and the finance director have proposed consists of three additional steps, two of which were approved by the council Monday.
First, the city would bond about $1.1 million to replace money the city took from the fund balance when projects ran over budget.
That motion passed 4-3 with councilors Michael Passero, Martin T. Olsen and Michael J. Tranchida in opposition. Because the motion received only four votes, it was passed only in its first reading and will require final council approval.
Passero supported the bonding of $4.4 the council approved two weeks ago but said Monday he did so under the assumption that that would be the extent of bonding to replenish the fund balance.
He sought to have the council reconsider their actions from two weeks ago so he could change his vote to one in opposition of the plan, but his motion to do so failed.
Second, the council adopted a resolution that requires it to budget at least $250,000 in each upcoming fiscal year for fund balance replacement until the fund balance is at least 8 percent of the city’s budgeted expenditure, as mandated by a city ordinance.
Third, the council passed a resolution mandating that proceeds from the sale of city-owned real estate must go into the fund balance until it is restored to the 8 percent level and barring the city from counting projected real estate sales as expected revenue in any budget.
Both motions passed 6-1 with Olsen casting the dissenting votes.
“The good news is that if we do [approve the full plan], we are around the corner,” Finizio said. “We can solve this. If we’re choosing not to, we’re choosing to put ourselves in an unthinkable position.”
c.young@theday.comEver since BlackBerry announced their plans to end all internal hardware development and outsource that function to partners, there has been a lot of focus on the rumored last 'in-house' BlackBerry due to some mixed messages surrounding the possibility of its release. A new interview from Bloomberg with John Chen clears the air on the matter while also discussing something else that has been on the minds of many, the implications of Donald Trump's election on the tech sector.
Much of the interview does focus on the Trump discussions, so if you're not really feeling all that today, go ahead and skip right to 8:04. Once there, you will hear John Chen clearly state he has 'one more keyboard phone he promised people' and while he wouldn't give up any timeline, the current status of the phone is 'it's coming' and 'it will not be that long'.
As for the rest of the interview, Emily Chang did a great job pressing Chen for comment on future licensing deals and Chen noted he was working with a Chinese company and a company in India as well as a whole host of other companies around the world, stating 'people like to build phones and I think we could offer a lot for people who like to build their own hardware'.
Source: BloombergKotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Open your wallets. Wide. That is, if you plan on buying this Attack on Titan statue.
Produced by GoodSmile Company and designed by famed figure sculptor Takayuki Takeya, this 19-inch statue of the Colossal Titan will be released in March 2015 and is limited to 500 numbered pieces.
It's not cheap! GoodSmile is listing the price as 64,815 yen plus tax, which translates to $624 plus tax—about $675. But if you look at this limited edition statue's detail, maybe you can see why.
Maybe.
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超大型巨人 TAKAYUKI TAKEYA Ver. [GoodSmile]
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.When a Mass Killer Is a White Christian, He's a Lone Lunatic, but When He's Muslim, He Represents All Muslims The Logic of Prejudice and How It Works
I use the term “prejudice” rather than sexism, racism, or homophobia because one can be preinclined favorably or negatively toward various identities. The Stranger
In the past few weeks, Colorado Springs and San Bernardino have joined the contemporary American lexicon as shorthand terms for mass shootings. These locales will live in infamy alongside Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech.
You can see the deep rifts that define American culture in the diametrically opposed ways various media outfits and grandstanding politicians represent the perpetrators of these horrific crimes. This divide goes beyond the argument between the NRA, with its thoughts-and-prayers-but-no-laws brigade of bought-and-paid-for pols, and people who want to enforce that pesky "well-regulated" part of the Second Amendment.
Differences in how criminals from different backgrounds are depicted by the media and by politicians should be front and center in this conversation.
Robert Lewis Dear, in Colorado Springs, is an individual madman, we are led to believe, and his motives might not have anything to do with vituperative political discourse that demonizes Planned Parenthood. We are told that we must wait for the trial, for the facts to come out before making any judgments. On the other hand, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the killers in San Bernardino, were depicted and understood as radicalized Muslim terrorists almost immediately.
However their motives are eventually explicated (and it will be tougher with Farook and Malik, given their deaths), I guarantee one thing: Robert Lewis Dear will continue to be considered an aberrant individual, while many will insist that Farook and his wife represent all Muslims.
Why? It's a pattern of thought I've recognized over two decades of teaching representations of racism and classism in my American literature courses, an idea I call the Logic of Prejudice.
It works like this: If you are a member of a dominant group, you are always an individual. If you are a member of a marginal group, your identity is always the group identity as understood by the people who feel prejudice toward that group.
I use the term "prejudice" rather than sexism, racism, or homophobia because one can be preinclined favorably or negatively toward various identities. But in either case, when prejudice plays out, the individual's identity is subsumed in the group identity.
When I talk about this with my students, I use three examples—three individuals whose stories exemplify this dynamic in action.
The first example is the prodigy Sho Yano, who illustrates the Logic of Prejudice from a putatively positive angle. Yano began college at the age of 9, and in 2013, at the age of 21, became the youngest person ever to get a medical degree from the University of Chicago. He did his undergraduate work at Loyola University Chicago, near where I live, and he perfectly fits one positive prejudice: the idea of Asian Americans as the "model minority," all hardworking high achievers. Yano's life story was in the local papers and was the talk of the neighborhood. I heard more than one local barstool commentator utter the key phrase that shows prejudice in action: "Well, what would you expect from one of them?" If anyone is going to go to college that young, it will be an Asian American, not one of us Irish or German American Chicago kids. You know, them Asians are all good at math!
Yano's individual identity, his unique personality, his inner motivations, his likes or dislikes—none of that mattered. All that mattered was his Asian American ethnicity.
(Note: All "positive" prejudices are the obverse of negative ones. The Asians-are-good-at-school positive image is the flip side of the Asians-aren't-individuals-like-us negative prejudice. Some Celtic examples: The Irish are a poetic people; the Irish spew blarney and cannot be trusted. The Scots are thrifty; Scotsmen are cheap. Exact same structural prejudice, expressed positively or negatively.)
The second example is Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the largest mass shooting in US history. (As of this writing. By press time, who the fuck knows?) After he massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech, and then killed himself, back in 2007, I read more than one essay by Korean Americans hoping that people would not see Cho as representative of all of them. Edward Taehan Chang wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that "the Korean American community here still vividly remembers how the mainstream media portrayed Korean immigrant merchants as gun-toting vigilantes, defending their stores as Los Angeles burned in 1992—and we are still trying to overcome that stereotype."
The only reason anyone would equate Cho with all Koreans is that Koreans are a marginal group, where any one person represents everyone in that group.
(Note: I did not see anyone write about how Cho did not represent all English majors. A college major is chosen, idiosyncratic, and ephemeral, compared to race or ethnicity, which most of our culture understands to be inborn or essential.)
The third example is Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who told police back in 1994 that her minivan had been carjacked by an African American man—while her two children were in the backseat. A mass-media frenzy went on for more than a week, with manhunts throughout the Southeast. Smith's claim that an African American man perpetrated the crime fits the racist image of black men as bestial criminals. What kind of person would steal a car with two kids in the backseat?
One of them.
But detectives doing good police work noted holes in her story, and Smith was convicted of murdering her two children and concocting the carjacking tale.
Yet no one said: "White women—what do you expect from one of them?" or "Their kind murder their children all the time!" No, Susan Smith was just an evil individual, due to her dominant racial subject position.
(Although whether someone is dominant or marginal depends on which aspect of their identity you consider most important in a given social context. I did hear people mutter about Smith being "trailer trash." On a class axis of identity, Smith might indeed be subject to prejudice and its individuality-effacing logic.)
Today, in 2015, we make judgments in real time on Twitter and Facebook while the bullets are still flying at live shooting events. Such judgments invariably play out the Logic of various Prejudices.
Including my own.
When I saw on Twitter that there was a live shooter at a Planned Parenthood, I immediately thought: straight white Christian male. The fact that my prejudice was borne out by the facts is irrelevant. I instantly prejudged: What kind of person would shoot up a women's health clinic?
One of them.
But like it or not, whatever strides racial, ethnic, and gender liberation movements have made in America since the 1950s, no matter what goes on in the heads of left-wing college professors like me, for the majority of our media (liberal and de-facto-conservative-deluding-itself-as-neutral and outright-wack-job-right-wing), straight white Christian men are the dominant group in our culture.
So, Robert Lewis Dear and Dylann Roof and James Holmes and Timothy McVeigh are always individuals, not representative of all White Christian Men. They might be evil or crazy, but their badness or madness doesn't indict the rest of their kind. No one—except cartoonists at Daily Kos and a cadre of smart-ass liberal tweeters—call on white Christian males to condemn their brethren's actions, because the shooters aren't thought to represent their entire group.
The privilege of individuality is part and parcel of white privilege, male privilege, class privilege, and other forms of social inequality.
As our timelines and news feeds fill with the next terrorist attack—domestic or foreign, Islamist or Christianist—watch how many conservatives will insist that all Muslim killers represent 1.6 billion of their co-religionists, while straight white Christian men act only from their own inscrutable individual motives.
And keep the Logic of Prejudice in mind.1 de_mirage Mirage is your favorite bagel, toasted evenly. Mirage is a warm, unembarrassing hug from your grandmother. Mirage surfaces the best things about CS:GO.
Every entry point in Mirage presents interesting, complementary risks and rewards. Pushing cat to B as a Terrorist is a great example of this: you have to smoke the A connector to do it safely, but that action in and of itself expresses your intention to bring the bomb to B.
Adjacent map areas, like apartments and underpass, or ladder room and sniper window, have strong relationships to one another. Map timings at mid window, A ramp, the van at B are all deliberately tuned. The bombsites are tough to take and relatively tough to defend, and the CTs have sneaky options to turn defense into offense in apartments, underpass, and palace. Play Mirage.
2 de_season FMPONE took an average-looking, underappreciated CS map and gave it a gorgeous, high-contrast makeover for Operation Vanguard. The revamp not only gives Season a coherent, original theme for the first time (Japanese laboratory), it also improves how it plays. Patches of bright mustard yellow (on bombsite B) and leaf green (on A) punctuate the sterile white, improving map orientation and making it easier to spot enemies.
3 de_inferno CTs have a positional edge on Inferno, but I love that the Terrorists have plenty of options for outsmarting, out-aiming, or overwhelming them. And I love the way Inferno challenges you to throw smart grenades. When and whether to smoke mid, or how you flash into B takes intuition and practice.
A series of T-shaped intersections facilitate this: mid, arch, at the banana exit to bombsite B. And unlike hilariously one-sided maps like Aztec, the CTs must make hard decisions about which areas of the map they feel comfortable giving up, like boiler or the busted car inside banana.
4 de_dust2 The Toyota Camry of Counter-Strike. Dust2 is reliably fun but a victim of its own popularity. It has the “easy to learn, hard to master” quality we value in games, with the sniping lane down mid being a great example of the latter. Re-taking bombsite B, despite three entry points, is satisfyingly tough for the CTs. Both teams have to hurry to occupy the junction at long A, a perfectly-timed early-round flashpoint. It’s wonderful. Can everyone stop playing it, please?
5 de_cache Cache is delicious oatmeal: a bit bland, but healthy. No corner of Cache is superfluous—its uncomplicated three-lane structure is gimmick-free. The tiny vent entrance to B is about as unconventional as Cache gets. That leaves us with a pure competitive map—it couldn't be more obvious that Cache was co-designed by a pro player.
6 cs_office Office is simpler than a one-color Rubik’s cube, but I have a lot of affection for this comforting camper’s paradise. Blowing holes in the mundane, corporate setting remains a big part of the appeal. Shoulder-peeking and entry grenades are the name of the game for the CTs: Office is about small-scale execution of these maneuvers rather than larger map-level tactics, and I like its focus for that reason, but it’s also a map that’ll earn you bad habits if you overplay it.
7 de_facade I’m still getting the hang of Facade. I like its raised ledge at mid, which overlooks a pair of dust2-like double doors, forming a treacherous no-man’s land. I like the complex configuration of bombsite B, and that it’s countered a bit by open windows that beg to have flash grenades thrown through. On the other hand, rotation from one bombsite to another is cumbersome and slow, especially from A to B.
8 de_nuke I guess it’s possible for Nuke to be more CT-sided than it already is. For instance, the Terrorists could spawn inside a room filled with hungry cobras, or inside an Olive Garden that’s just run out of breadsticks. Nuke’s mid-less configuration and the rafters above A put the Terrorists at a major disadvantage. There’s also some lingering sound problems on the map, especially with Z-axis audio behavior. Despite these issues, it remains a mainstay: the same asymmetry that makes it tough for the Ts gives it a unique feel: no other map stacks its bombsites atop one another, for example.
9 cs_workout Do you even yoga, bro? This is actually a really nice gym. But it kind of looks like a school? Anyway, Workout is a colorful three-lane map with some interesting stuff happening around T spawn (an awkward middle stairway; a pool area with plentiful hiding spots). I’ve had enjoyable rounds on Workout, but mid, the long lane to T spawn, and the middle fountain area are a bit too spacious for 5-on-5 play. It can suck the fun out of the map if the hostages spawn closely together, too. I also don’t like how viable the autosniper can be for Ts on this map, but Workout gets points for style and color from me.
10 de_overpass Overpass' unusual layout is both its appeal and a tiny shortcoming, I think. B is one of the most unique bombsites in the game, an exposed concrete perch that the CTs have an elevated line of sight on. The map prompts plenty of tough decisions: A is tougher for the Ts to take but easier to hold. CTs can set themselves up to flank if they scout the tunnel connector aggressively, which can be countered if one or two Ts lurk silently there.
11 de_train No classic CS map is more argued over than Train. For many matchmakers it’s a mainstay, but some displeased players have gone so far to revise the map themselves. One thing’s certain: the Terrorists face rough odds on bombsite A—even rushing at full speed, |
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The email sparked another response from CBS, with the network producing a statement over the weekend letting Walker–and Queerty–know that Hod was simply delivering a freelance assignment on a totally unrelated topic (unless the Congressman participated in the AIDS Lifecyle, which we doubt). The larger chilling effect, of course, was to put both Hod and the network on notice that their actions are being watched.
And why is CBS so eager to please this apparently anonymous source by issuing a statement distancing itself from Hod on a Saturday morning, when most journalists are sleeping in?
Now you may well ask yourself, who would be this interested in trying to put Hod on the spot? Queerty emailed Walker, who does not sign his emails, to ask who he (or she) is and why he is dogging Hod like a modern-day Inspector Javert. Walker never responded. Apparently, he prefers to cause problems anonymously instead of being forthright about his motives.
Walker has made the story one about Hod’s career, knowing full well how a skittish network will respond to his questions. The accusation took center stage. The much more interesting story is the accuser. Who is Walker that he’s so keen on tracking (and trashing) Hod?
There are really only two possible explanations for the emails. One is that Walker despises outing as a violation of journalistic principles and wants Hod to be banned for life from any reputable outlet. Of course, it’s hard to imagine someone quite so driven by love of the profession to follow Hod so obsessively for the sole aim of making mischief.
The second explanation is that it’s one of Schock’s supporters, which is a phrase you can interpret however you see fit. After all, Walker does make a point of making Schock’s outing the point of his emails, and who would have the greatest stake in revisiting that complaint? Someone with ties to the Congressman might be perfectly happy to play dirty tricks as a kind of revenge for the embarrassment the outing caused Schock.
Walker’s ham-fisted efforts don’t help Schock any. He managed to put the outing behind him (in a manner of speaking) by refusing to address it and by deleting his Instagram account. (The account, and Schock’s abs, are back.)
Making trouble for Hod only brings the story back to life. It’s also a reminder that trying to put journalists on the defensive is the type of political hardball played when the stakes are high and personal.
So what are the stakes in this case? You can probably figure that out on your own.Facebook has announced that it will soon end Internet Explorer 6 support for Facebook Chat. The kill date is September 15—the same day Microsoft plans to release the first IE9 beta. Today's announcement comes just a week after Microsoft launched a beta version of Windows Live Messenger that integrates with Facebook Chat.
Facebook explains its decision by saying that many users have complained about unstable chat sessions, or ones that stop completely. In order to improve the way connections are established and messages are sent, however, the social networking giant must make changes that aren't supported by older browsers.
Microsoft plans to support IE6 along with Windows XP until April 2014; the software giant insists that "dropping support for IE6 is not an option." Instead, the company has resorted to marketing and promoting IE8 while criticizing IE6.
Meanwhile, a growing number of technology firms have taken the problem into their own hands. The IE6 hater is Google: the company has killed off support for the obsolete browser in Google Docs and Google Sites, Gmail and Google Calendar, as well as YouTube. Even Microsoft has taken some baby steps in this direction; the new Office Web Apps don't support the browser either.
Facebook's decision is reason for IE6 haters to celebrate, but unfortunately it's not going to spell doom for the ancient browser. The majority of IE6 users come from the corporate world, and as we've discussed before, one of the reasons that world keeps IE6 around is exactly because it doesn't work well with social networking sites like Facebook. Facebook's changes may mean fewer IE6 users using the chat feature, but this won't be because the change will spur people into upgrading—they can't upgrade their office machines. It will be because they won't be able to chat at all.
Last month, IE6 had a usage share of just under 17 percent; at the start of the year it had just over 20 percent. Major sites putting an end to IE6 support for popular features is not enough to kill the browser, but the rapid growth of Windows 7 should make slow but steady progress in eradicating it from the Internet.Apple's new Mac App Store, due within 90 days, will re-define how software is distributed on personal computers and begin the transition towards a fully managed, locked down next-generation Apple end-user experience that is more iOS than Mac.
I told you about it seven months ago, but it seemed far-fetched at the time -- Apple is indeed moving towards a model for its Macintosh personal computers that is closer to the iPad than what Mac users currently experience today.
Today, at Apple's Back to the Mac event, Apple announced the availability within 90 days of a Mac App Store, which brings nearly identical software distribution technology to the Mac currently enjoyed by iOS users on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad devices.
The new Mac App Store, slated for release by Q1 2011.
The Mac App Store will be a supplementary software package at first, but will ship by default with the next version of Mac OS X, 10.7 "Lion" in the summer of 2011.
This is a significant event in the evolution of the Macintosh, because it signals the paradigm shift away from ISV's and developers being able to control their own software distribution. In effect, users of the App Store will no longer need to install and download or retain media for their personal computers, just like it is handled on iOS devices today.
With the launch of the new Macbook Air, which has no slot at all for an optical drive, Apple has made it clear that they want their next generation systems to be fully dependent on managed software distribution.
Forget having archival CD or DVD copies of your software or being able to back-rev to an earlier version if you have any sort of problem -- once Apple has moved to the new model as the preferred mechanism for software distribution, end-users of Macintosh systems will have to buy all of their software from Apple, and Apple will control all of the software updates -- just as iOS users do today.
How Apple will gate-keep the Macintosh App Store in comparison to the iOS App Store that we are all familiar with today is unknown. As with the iOS App Store, it is likely that developers will need to conform to some form of terms of service and code review in order to be accepted for sale.
Whether Apple will eventually restrict the use of certain libraries and APIs on the Mac App Store such as Flash is also unknown, but it is probably inevitable that the Mac App Store will inherit at least some if not most of the developer guidelines and principles from its iOS sibling. We can at the very least expect the same restrictions on adult content and strong language that the iOS App Store has today.
[UPDATE: Apple has posted its acception/rejection criterion for developers for the Mac App Store]
So what's next after Mac App Store?
The logical conclusion is to actually marry iOS and Mac OS X, so that there is no fundamental difference from an end-user perspective between the two platforms. Steve Jobs himself pointed out today that the Mac is coming full circle, and Mac OS X is going to inherit a number of features from iOS, which includes multi-touch capability and full screen apps.
Apple could go about this in a number of ways. The first, although not the easiest way of doing this would be to create a binary execution environment within Mac OS X Lion that allowed for iPad applications to run seamlessly with Mac Apps. This would allow for a single, seamless App Store on the Mac and provide access to the 300,000 programs sold currently for the iOS environment, of which currently nearly 36,000 are optimized for the higher-resolution screen format of the iPad.
A iOS binary execution layer would not be a new approach to software compatibility for Apple. During the PowerPC to x86 transition in 2005, Apple provided the "Rosetta" binary execution layer so that PowerPC apps could run on Intel Macs.
Rosetta was written by Transitive, a company which was purchased by IBM in late 2008 and is now used in the company's PowerVM virtualization softwarefor its AIX servers to provide Sun SPARC and legacy Solaris compatibility. Transitive was also used by Hewlett-Packard to provide Intel x86 compatibility with the Itanium server CPU.
Also Read: Was Intel's x86 the Gateway Drug for Apple's ARM?
Theoretically, Apple could contract IBM or another software company familiar with the ARM instruction set used by the Apple A4 to write a "New" Rosetta binary execution layer that would do the same thing for iOS apps.
Today, when developers program iOS apps on Mac systems, they can "simulate" an iPad or an iPhone, but it doesn't actually execute ARM code natively. It actually has to be cross-compiled in the XCode environment to run on an ARM-based iOS device before it can be run natively.
Another alternative or longer term objective than using a binary execution environment like Rosetta would be to actually embed the current A4 used in the iPad as a co-processor in next-generation Mac hardware. With the use of Non-Uniform Memory Accesss and virtualization technology, the iOS environment could be "containerized" and pull memory and disk resources from Mac OS X as required, instead of having a iOS device with fixed memory.
By using the A4 as a co-processor or using a binary execution software layer in the next generation of Macs to run iOS apps, it would give Apple the time it needed to develop completely ARM-native Macs and return the Mac to its fully-proprietary, uncloneable roots.
A fully ARM-native Mac OS X/iOS hybrid system would require a much more scalable SMP, multi-core architecture than what is currently employed today. While iOS has hundreds of thousands of apps, none of them are nearly as demanding as anything currently used by the creative content professionals that depend on Macs today, such as the Adobe Creative Suite and Aperture, or even iLife, which is more of a hobbyist/home user content creation environment.
To run these types of demanding applications, the ARM-based Mac of the future will need 4, 8 or even 16 or more processor cores, the ability to access larger amounts of main memory, execute 64-bit instructions, and Mac OS X itself and the applications will need to be optimized for a massively multi-core, RISC-based architecture.
While Apple's A4 doesn't possess these capabilities today, ARM's Cortex-A15 architecture currently provides for much of what is missing to that equation.
As Apple is an ARM licensee, it is not too difficult to imagine a Mac system 2-4 years from now based on ARM's most current architecture, with even more horsepower and multimedia acceleration that we see in Intel Mac Pro systems today, but using only a fraction of the power and taking up only a fraction of the space -- such as a Mac Mini chassis with fully solid-state storage.
Is Apple's Mac App Store the indication of a paradigm shift towards a completely proprietary, closed Macintosh systems architecture? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
[poll id="23"](THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - To avid cyclist and tourer Faizal Tarihhuddin, 38, bike touring is the best way to go on an adventure.
“Two wheels under me, powered by my legs, the world goes by at my own pace – fast enough to get somewhere and slow enough to admire the flowers along the way,” says the IT professional who is based in Kuala Lumpur.
Faizal actually started with mountain biking in 2009 but when he crashed and injured himself in a downhill mountain bike race in 2011, he started bicycle touring to keep fit while recovering from his accident. It led to his biggest adventure: cycle touring from Malaysia to China!
Faizal firmly believes that cycling and bike touring can bring people from various walks of life and social and cultural backgrounds together.
“There’s nothing like a common interest in cycling and bicycle touring to bridge differences and transcend skin colour, nationality, and even language. It builds a bond among bike touring adventurers from all backgrounds and ages, taking you to new unexplored places and opening up your eyes and developing empathy for others,” he says.
What’s more, bicycle touring gives one a better appreciation of the world around you.
“Imagine this every day and all day: the feeling of pedalling along to a series of constantly changing sensations and scenery – one moment, you’re daydreaming and watching the world go by, the next moment, you’re in full concentration as you cadence furiously for a big hill climb; and later, you’re flying fast downhill with a huge grin on your face, stopping only for a well-deserved dessert.
Avid bike tourer Faizal Tarihhuddin at the Dataran Juang Tentera Darat, Markas Taktikal 749, located on the way from Gerik to Tasik Banding, Perak. PHOTO: FAIZAL TARIHHUDIN
“It can be going for a micro next town adventure, or a year away on the bicycle, high-fiving the locals through several continents. It can be taking the whole family along or going solo; packing the minimal or taking everything you need; splurging on a hotel or stealth camping in the woods; having a plan or zero plan,” he says, the enthusiasm evident in his voice.
Faizal, who met his wife Siti Hajar Bakar, 30, when cycling, says they recently completed a 500km cycle-camping trip from Kyoto to Tokyo, Japan.
They run Doowaroda.com (the name is a play on “dua roda”, Malay for “two wheels”), which promotes mountain biking through social networking, events, and development of mountain bike facilities, and provides guided tours and mountain bike rentals.
Faizal in front of George Town’s Ghee Hiang store, which is famous for its biscuits. PHOTO: KAREN PUAH
He says that when bike touring, it’s good to have a plan, itinerary, some cycling experience, and equipment, but it’s not compulsory.
Faizal’s touring bicycle in front of A Famosa in Melaka. PHOTO: FAIZAL TARIHHUDIN
“Most Malaysians lead a sedentary lifestyle and Malaysia is very motorised and vehicle-centric. Our workplaces, schools, homes and public places have been engineered to lessen movement and muscular activity. People move less and sit more.
“We also don’t spend a lot of time exploring, or going out for unexpected adventures,” he says, adding that cycling improves one’s health and broadens one’s outlook on life.
Carry the basic necessities
Professional chef Danial Marzuki, 33, started cycling with his mountain bike 17 years ago, going both on and offroad.
“I like the feeling of being free when cycling and being self-supported while travelling around on a bicycle,” he says, referring to his bicycle touring adventures. Some of the routes he has covered while bike-touring in Peninsular Malaysia include Sekinchan-Teluk Intan-Ipoh; around Port Dickson; Seremban-Melaka; and Tanjung Malim-Teluk Intan-Sekinchan.
Danial Marzuki by the padi fields during a ride to Sekinchan, Selangor. PHOTO: DANIAL MARZUKI
“The most important thing to remember when going bike touring is to have a good time and to remember why you’re doing it … especially when you are doing a solo bike tour,” he says, adding that half the battle to keep going is in one’s own mind.
Danial in front of the Leaning Tower in Teluk Intan, Perak. PHOTO: DANIAL MARZUKI
“Be visible so that vehicles can see you. And make sure you take the correct stuff along, like a small first aid kit in case of any falls or accidents, a multitool, spare tubes, bicycle tyre pump and lights,” he advises.
“Always have an emergency contact card or wristband that will let people know who to contact in case you’re in an emergency,” he adds.
“Money or an ATM card (if in Malaysia), a mobile phone and charger are also necessary,” he says.
“You can pack as heavy or as light as you wish, but just remember... if you bring unnecessary stuff along, you will have a heavier load,” he points out.
Danial, who hails from Ipoh, says he buys and sells his bicycles quite often but he usually keeps at least three on hand at a time.
“Each bike has a different characteristic, and I like to use different bikes for different occasions. For example, for a fun ride, either a touring or folding bike is best. You don’t really need a lycra cycling kit for this. For long and fast weekend rides, a road bike is ideal,” he explains.
Danial (left) with his touring friends in front of padi fields during a ride to Sekinchan, Selangor. PHOTO: DANIAL MARZUKI
“It promotes a healthy lifestyle and creates fantastic experiences. More often than not, people tend to find out a lot more about our country and traditions when cycling through rural areas and interacting with the locals,” he says.
He also believes that cycling does help to bring people together and instil a spirit of harmony and unity: “Cycling is more often than not a happy and positive activity that is shared by all races at the same time. When the objective is to cycle and have fun, you tend to leave all the other issues behind and focus on the ride.”
Enjoying the slower pace
For Joseph Tan, 59, cycling began five years ago when “a friend showed me how he always had a folding bike in his car, ever ready to ride". That inspired him to pick up the sport.
The Kuala Lumpur-based construction manager believes that cycling and bicycle touring celebrates the country’s muhibbah spirit.
“When we come together to ride, we are blind to colour and creed. We see one another as friends without questioning our differences. We learn about one another’s cultures and how interesting and unique these can be,” he says.
Joseph Tan with his folding bike by the padi fields of Kuala Kangsar, Perak. PHOTO: JOSEPH S K TAN
“When we’re on a bike tour through kampungs, we discover that Malaysians, at the grassroots, are straightforward people who are warm and friendly, ever ready to greet one another and extend a helping hand,” he adds.
Apart from its other benefits, Tan loves the freedom that cycling brings: “Besides helping to keep one healthy, cycling at a slower pace helps us to take in more of the environment, people and culture, and discover less well-known places. Often, people we meet will ask about our bicycles and destinations,” he explains.
Tan about to attempt the final steep climb leading to the tip of Borneo in Kudat, Sabah. PHOTO: JOSEPH S K TAN
Some of the interesting places and routes that Tan has toured by bicycle include Sg Gadut-Seremban-Melaka; Pahang-Taman Negara; Perak fishing villages; Taiping-Kuala Kurau-Tanjung Piandang-Penang; Seremban-Melaka for a Hari Raya celebration and beautiful sunset at Masjid Selat Melaka; Kota Kinabalu-tip of Borneo (Tanjung Simpang Mengayau)-Pulau Banggi; and through Sarawak for the Gawai Festival.
He highly recommends Sabah for its exotic culture and challenging trails, and Terengganu for its beautiful beaches and fishing villages. He has also gone on bicycle tours abroad in Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Tan, who enjoys blogging about his bike touring experiences at ahpekbiker.blogspot.my, says that a camera and charger are a must on a bike touring trip if one wants to record the best parts.
Healthy, ecofriendly activity
Jason Leong, 40, started cycling when he was quite young and growing up in Ipoh.
“As a kampung boy, I only had those classic metal bikes meant for adults. I was barely a primary school kid then, so to use the tall bike, I had to put one leg between the bicycle frame and cycle with the body leaning in the opposite direction.
“Most kids in the village cycled the same way.”
Although he hardly cycled when he went to secondary school, he picked it up again six years ago.
“I bought a Japanese reconditioned folding bicycle and kept it in my office for commuting to lunch and running errands,” Leong explains, adding that the person who sold him the bike then invited him to join the Putrajaya Urban Riders to cycle in Putrajaya.
Jason Leong (right) and his cycling buddies posing in front of a giant tree in Sekinchan, Selangor, in December 2016. PHOTO: JASON LEONG
The self-taught designer, who started designing as a hobby years ago and discovered that he could use his talent in various fields, saw a niche to fill.
“As a cyclist, I found that good designs and materials for cycling clothing were not easily available in the market, so I decided to make my own. Brompton-specific clothing and tastefully designed cycle-wear were difficult to find in Malaysia during that time. My friends saw what I wore and asked me to make it for them too,” he explains.
He goes on to add: “I like cycling because, very simply, it makes me happy, gives me freedom to go where I want to, and also gives me the opportunity to make friends – I really appreciate the friendships that I’ve made along the way,” he enthuses.
Leong with his buddies taking a photo break in front of the Istana Alam Shah in Klang. PHOTO: JASON LEONG
“My first bicycle touring experience was from Putrajaya to Port Dickson in 2012. I enjoyed it so much even though my butt hurt like hell after such a long ride!” he laughs.
Some of the places and routes that Leong has toured and highly recommends include: Kuala Selangor-Teluk Intan-Bota Kiri-Kuala Kangsar-Ipoh; Taiping-Selama-Kulim-Alor Setar; Seremban-Melaka; and Kota Kinabalu-tip of Borneo.
Leong (in red) and his cycling buddies in front of the famous Wishing Tree in Sekinchan, Selangor. PHOTO: JASON LEONG
Leong, who has four bicycles at the moment – two folding bicycles, one touring bicycle, and one classic road bike – says: “Malaysia is a beautiful country, you’ll meet lots of friendly people along the way, not to mention find lots of places for good food and drinks.
“Moreover, even though some people complain about the heat, you can still cycle all year round, unlike certain countries where the weather is not conducive for cycling during certain seasons like winter.
“It’s a healthy, ecofriendly activity."A RARE Anglo-Saxon brooch unearthed in Oxfordshire has gone on show in Banbury.
The piece of jewellery was found in West Hanney in 2009, has been loaned to the Banbury Museum until April 27 by Oxfordshire County Council’s museum service.
The brooch, which dates from the 7th century, was discovered during a metal-detecting rally in West Hanney, near Wantage, in 2009, and an excavation then revealed the skeleton of a woman aged about 25 and two small pots.
Cherwell District Council deputy leader George Reynolds said: “We’re very lucky to be able to put this artefact on display at Banbury Museum.
“It’s a beautiful object of both national and local importance and follows on from similar historic displays at the museum that have proved very popular.”
Museum Plus Club members will be able to attend a special viewing of the brooch and a talk from Oxfordshire Museum Service curator of archaeology Dr Christopher Ferguson on Thursday, February 21 at 7.30pm.
For details of membership, email simon.townsend@ cherwell-dc.gov.uk or call 01295 753781.A 34-year-old homeless veteran received the gift of a lifetime after he helped a woman by giving her his last $20 when she was stranded on a Pennsylvania highway.
Kate McClure, 27, first met Johnny Bobbitt Jr. last month when her car ran out of gas on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia, she wrote on a GoFundMe page she created for the man.
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“He saw me pull over and knew something was wrong,” she said of Bobbitt, who usually sits on the side of the road each day. “He told me to get back in the car and lock the doors. A few minutes later, he comes back with a red gas can. Using his last $20 to make sure I could get home safe.”
Since then, McClure has often visited Bobbitt, giving him money, clothes, food and supplies. Now, she’s decided to take her efforts a step further, raising more than $365,000 for the vet.
McClure told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she and her boyfriend, Mark D’Amico, 38, were determined to help Bobbitt after the incident.
“We were like, ‘Man, if we could change this guy’s life,’ ” she said. “And that’s when we came up with the idea of GoFundMe.”
The donations quickly began pouring in after McClure shared her story. In less than two weeks, thousands have given money to the fundraiser to help Bobbitt.
McClure and D’Amico plan to manage the donations and use the money to rent Bobbitt an apartment, pay for his food, clothing, transportation and more, they told the Inquirer.
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“He knows where he’s at and he knows what he has to do to dig himself out,” D’Amico said, according to the Inquirer. “It’s almost impossible to dig himself out if he has nobody and nothing. If we can raise enough money to set him up for a few months, where he doesn’t have to worry about where he’s going to sleep and what he’s going to eat, then he can get a job and go about his life.”
Bobbitt is originally from the Raleigh, North Carolina, area and was an ammunition technician in the Marines, according to the Inquirer. A friend of Bobbitt‘s in North Carolina told the publication that he was a talented paramedic with a “good heart.” The friend added that Bobbitt fell on hard times due to drug and money issues.
Now, McClure and D’Amico said Bobbitt is grateful for their help and they hope this money will help him get back on his feet.
“He is very interested in finding a job, and I believe that with a place to be able to clean up every night and get a good night’s rest, his life can get back to being normal,” McClure wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Truly believe that all Johnny needs is one little break.”
In a sit-down with Good Morning America, Bobbitt said he’s “overwhelmed” by the kindness that has come of his good deed.
“I just got her gas to help her get back on her way. I didn’t think anything about it. I wasn’t expecting anything in return,” he shared. “That’s how I got the money to start with — from other people. [I had to] return the favor. I can’t constantly take and not give back.”
McClure has also arranged meetings with a financial planner and a lawyer to help Bobbitt handle the money. And while the veteran plans to use the funds to find a home and maybe buy a used truck, but he’s mostly set on paying it forward and donating to worthy organizations.
“I just want to do the right thing,” he said. “This money was given to help me. Why not help other people in similar situations or people that are actively helping other people in different situations?”
He added, “Everybody out there is facing some kind of struggle, so if I can touch their life, the way mine was touched, [it’d be] an amazing feeling. I want to feel the feeling on the opposite end.”Micah Richards has won 13 caps for England, scoring one goal
Manchester City are willing to accept a knockdown fee for Micah Richards.
The defender, 26, made just two Premier League appearances for the club last season and has one year remaining on his contract.
The league champions are open to offers that would include significant add-ons based on appearances, given his injury history.
A source close to Richards said they were relaxed about the situation but acknowledged he was unlikely to stay.
Birmingham-born Richards has been with City since the age of 14 and made his England debut in 2006, aged 18.
He was linked with a £20m move to a host of top clubs in 2011 but a number of injuries and the emergence of Pablo Zabaleta as City's first-choice right-back limited his opportunities.
The arrival of Bacary Sagna on a free transfer from Arsenal appears to have weakened his position still further.
Newcastle United, Liverpool and Arsenal have been linked with a move for Richards in recent weeks and may now step up their interest.An activist displays a sign during a Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle, Washington, on December 6, 2014. (Photo: Scott Lum)
During a recent review of how Black families are portrayed by various corporate media outlets, media scholar Travis Dixon observed that Fox News portrayed Black families as poor or in need of welfare assistance eight times more often than white families. On hit shows like “Hannity” and “The Kelly File,” Black fathers were portrayed as unavailable to their children several times, but absentee white dads never came up.
Laura Ingraham even mentioned “the fatherless issue” during a 2015 episode of “The Kelly File” while discussing a racially charged videotape, reinforcing an old, harmful media myth that persists despite evidence showing that Black fathers are actually often more involved in parenting than white fathers.
Fox News is known for its conservative bias, but the misrepresentations span the political spectrum, according to a report Dixon authored for the online digital rights group Color of Change. The New York Times ranked second to Breitbart among print and digital news outlets that represented Black families as poor far more often than white families.
Overall, Dixon found that the media overrepresented Black families in depictions of poverty and crime compared to actual rates of poverty and crime among Blacks, while white families were underrepresented. This reinforces racist stereotypes of Black people, particularly when the structural roots of Black poverty stretching back to segregation and slavery are not examined.
Activists working for racial justice and Black liberation rely on a neutral internet to challenge media stereotypes, combat cultural racism and organize movements.
This media bias is nothing new. Scholars have spent decades documenting racial stereotypes in the media and how they shape public perceptions of social groups. Ronald Reagan’s mythical “welfare queen” and its persistence in the mainstream media is a classic example such racism at work. However, Dixon’s stark reminder comes as the Trump administration is paving the way for a new wave of media consolidation and kills regulations designed to keep the internet free and open to voices that can challenge dominant — and racist — narratives.
Over the past year, the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has methodically rolled back protections that civil and digital rights groups fought hard to establish under the Obama administration. The deregulatory bonanza climaxed last week when the FCC adopted Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to repeal popular net neutrality rules that prevented internet service providers from playing favorites with online content. Many activists working for racial justice and Black liberation rely on a neutral internet to challenge media stereotypes, combat cultural racism and organize movements like Black Lives Matter.
“The vote to repeal net neutrality is easily the most unpopular decision the FCC has ever made,” said Malkia Cyril, a civil rights activist and director of the Center for Media Justice, in an email to Truthout. “The level of corruption and outright disdain for democracy shown by the Republican members of the FCC has been atrocious.”
The FCC has also loosened broadcast ownership rules and is considering raising the cap on how many local television stations a single company can own. This move would directly benefit Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a right-leaning media conglomerate that is waiting for Republicans to clear regulations standing in the way of its proposed merger with Tribune Media. That merger would give Sinclair access to 72 percent of households nationwide.
Brandi Collins, a senior campaign director at Color of Change, said one reason Black people are so misrepresented in the media is that 90 percent of outlets are owned by only seven corporations, and Sinclair’s proposed merger would further consolidate ownership in the hands of conservative white men. Sinclair stations regularly pump out the same harmful narratives about Black people identified in Dixon’s report, but the company does not have the same conservative reputation as Fox News, so viewers may absorb racist messaging without an assumption of bias.
“This endangers our lives in a number of ways … whether its policymaking, the medical treatment we receive or whether we are more likely to be gunned down by police without any questions asked,” Collins told Truthout in an interview.
Net neutrality is popular even among Republican voters, but it remains to be seen whether GOP lawmakers are willing to buck Pai and Trump.
Just as politicians used the “welfare queen” myth to promote and justify their attack on social safety nets in the 1990s, control of media messaging translates to control of policymaking, Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson points out in a foreword to Dixon’s report. Right-wing forces across various media outlets, he writes, have exploited the “unwritten rules of media reporting and coverage” to “change the rules of written policy.” It is no accident that media outlets portray Black families as a “drain on the system” while failing to cover stories that would demonstrate their resiliency “in the face of unjust tides they are swimming against.”
“Widening the lens would show that [Black families] are floundering mostly because corporate and conservative decision makers put them in harm’s way, using them as leverage for profit and politics,” Robinson writes.
This explains why so many activists of color and civil rights organizers, along with progressives everywhere, have their sights set on the FCC. People of color, and particularly women of color, are vastly underrepresented in the media ownership class. Social media and the internet have allowed marginalized people to bypass traditional gatekeepers and get their message out despite a lack of Black and Brown broadcast station owners, but Pai’s net neutrality repeal has handed control of the internet over to big business.
“As a part of the civil rights community, I’ve worked for many years to educate our community about the importance of legally viable net neutrality rules … to equal voice and opportunity in America,” Cyril said. “As a result, organizations like BYP 100 representing Black youth, United We Dream representing migrant communities, and even the NAACP, among others, have come out strongly in support of those rules.”
Like a number of digital rights groups and several Democratic state attorneys general, the Center for Media Justice has vowed to sue the FCC over the repeal. Cyril said details of the challenge are forthcoming, but noted that net neutrality had “solid legal grounding,” and advocates challenging the repeal are likely to win in court. Members of Congress are also drafting legislation to replace the FCC’s rules, but critics say at least one proposal has been watered down to appease big telecom companies that spend millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions every year.
“I am also certain big ISPs [internet service providers] like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T will use the bully pulpit just handed to them by President Trump to try to intimidate civil rights organizations and unions into accepting a weaker legislative solution,” Cyril said. “We can’t accept anything less than full equality, online and offline.”
Democrats in Congress have already proposed reversing Pai’s sweeping net neutrality repeal under the Congressional Review Act, a tool typically used by Republicans to undo regulations. The law must be invoked within 60 days, giving Democrats a limited amount of time to find enough Republican defectors to put together a majority. Net neutrality is popular even among Republican voters, but it remains to be seen whether GOP lawmakers are willing to buck Pai and President Trump. Meanwhile, Cyril said protests would continue as legal challenges wind through the courts.
“We saw in Alabama that Black voters can make a real difference in elections,” Cyril said. “I think it’s time for the Democratic Party to stop trying to woo Black and Brown voters and start working to better represent us. The midterm election is coming. I wouldn’t underestimate how important free speech is to Black voters. Not now, not ever.”Throughout the 2016 election, even as Hillary Clinton was fully cooperating with what turned out to be a hyper-partisan investigation of her perfectly legal use of email, Donald Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that she was somehow hiding crucial emails. We learned long ago that whenever Trump falsely accuses his enemies of something, it’s because he’s secretly guilty of that same thing. Now we’re learning that Trump did indeed try to hide emails from investigators – fifty thousand of them in total – but he didn’t hide them nearly well enough.
It’s just now being revealed that all along, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has secretly had every single email sent and received by the Trump transition team. He got them from the GSA a long time ago, according to an Axios report (link). Then he tricked the Trump team into believing he didn’t have them, by asking them to turn over the emails. They only turned over a fraction, and kept the rest. This lulled Trump’s people into a false sense of security, thinking they could get away with lying about what was really in the most incriminating emails.
It’s already been established that Michael Flynn told the Trump transition team about how he was illegally conspiring with the Russian Ambassador to sabotage President Obama’s sanctions. Trump doesn’t use email himself. But his entire transition team did, meaning several of them are nailed to the wall. In addition, they surely used email to discuss what they’d told Trump (and transition team leader Mike Pence for that matter) about the conspiracy. In other words, Mueller has a ton of Trump’s people nailed who, until today, had no idea they were nailed.
It’s no coincidence that this devastating revelation is surfacing just as the media is convinced that Donald Trump is about to fire Robert Mueller. We still don’t believe that’s likely. But Mueller is clearly taking no chances. He’s just made clear to several of Trump’s people that he can arrest them the minute Trump starts the somewhat complicated process of trying to fire Mueller. Moreover, Mueller is signaling that he’s sitting on evidence against not just the transition team, but all of Trump’s people. |
borders. Today there are calls to extend NATO even to Ukraine, deep into the historic Russian “neighborhood.” But it “doesn’t involve” the Russians, because its responsibility to “uphold peace and stability” requires that American red lines are at Russia’s borders.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea was an illegal act, in violation of international law and specific treaties. It’s not easy to find anything comparable in recent years — the Iraq invasion is a vastly greater crime.
But one comparable example comes to mind: U.S. control of Guantanamo Bay in southeastern Cuba. Guantanamo was wrested from Cuba at gunpoint in 1903 and not relinquished despite Cuba’s demands ever since it attained independence in 1959.
To be sure, Russia has a far stronger case. Even apart from strong internal support for the annexation, Crimea is historically Russian; it has Russia’s only warm-water port, the home of Russia’s fleet; and has enormous strategic significance. The United States has no claim at all to Guantanamo, other than its monopoly of force.
One reason why the United States refuses to return Guantanamo to Cuba, presumably, is that this is a major harbor and American control of the region severely hampers Cuban development. That has been a major U.S. policy goal for 50 years, including large-scale terror and economic warfare.
The United States claims that it is shocked by Cuban human rights violations, overlooking the fact that the worst such violations are in Guantanamo; that valid charges against Cuba do not begin to compare with regular practices among Washington’s Latin American clients; and that Cuba has been under severe, unremitting U.S. attack since its independence.
But none of this crosses anyone’s red lines or causes a crisis. It falls into the category of the U.S. invasions of Indochina and Iraq, the regular overthrow of parliamentary regimes and installation of vicious dictatorships, and our hideous record of other exercises of “upholding peace and stability.”Note: the state of ‘Odisha’ is also known as ‘Orissa’. The MoUs referred to in the article are ‘memorandums of understanding’, or documents describing bilateral or multilateral agreements. Thanks to Banned Thought for making the statement available. Posting here does not imply endorsement.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST)
CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Press Release
January 12, 2011
Condemn the indiscriminate killings and fake encounters
by the police and paramilitary forces in Odisha!
People would surely defeat the conspiracy of Naveen Patnaik
to hand over the natural resources of Odisha to the Corporations
by decimating the Maoist revolutionary movement!
As part of the massive offensive Operation Green Hunt being conducted in coordination by the central and state governments with the avowed aim of decimating the Maoist revolutionary movement completely, the special police and paramilitary forces have resorted to indiscriminate killings in the past two months in Odisha and have taken nearly 25 lives in cold-blood in various incidents. Of these most of them were fake encounters while others were incidents where hundreds of police and paramilitary were deployed with specific information about the whereabouts of the guerillas and fired indiscriminately on the guerillas and the people with them.
Recently on January 12, 2011, in an ‘encounter’ in a forest area in Keonjhar district two Maoists had died and on January 9, 2011 in an alleged encounter in Bandhkamali mountains which fall under the Niyamgiri area of Rayagadha district, nine comrades were martyred. Ravi, one of the martyred comrades, is an important leader who has been working among the oppressed people of Odisha for the past few years. He hails from East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh. Just one week back, on January 2, 2011 in the encounter which was said to have taken place in the Rayaghati forests under Kalinganagar area in Jajpur district, five Maoists including three women comrades were martyred. One among these martyrs was an Area Committee member of the Kalinganagar area. They were in preparation for some mass activities on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the massacre of Adivasis on January 2 when this incident occurred. On 29 December, 2010, in an alleged encounter in Talpada forest area of Keonjhar district one woman comrade was martyred. Before this in the fourth week of December the police announced that three Maoists had died in an encounter at Adaba forest area in Gajapati district. In the beginning of January, in another alleged encounter in Bargarh district two persons had died but the people had declared that they were ordinary people and that the police had killed them in cold-blood. Some days before this there were news items in the media that even the encounter in Gajapati district was also a fake one and that ordinary people had died in this. Though huge scale protests were staged by people and democrats on these fake encounters, the Naveen government is not caring a damn and is resorting to murders of ordinary people and revolutionaries unscrupulously.
Odisha is a state abundantly rich in mineral, water and forest resources but it has become the abode of dire poverty and hunger deaths. Odisha is in the first place in iron reserves and it has many other valuable mineral resources. But all this wealth is filling the coffers of the wealthy while the conditions of the poor people are deteriorating. In the past 63 years of so-called independence, the oppressed people of Odisha, particularly the adivasis are getting crushed under the feudal and imperialist exploitation. The Odisha government led by the Mining Mafia Boss Naveen Patnaik has turned Odisha into the paradise of the mining corporations by signing innumerable MoUs with them. More than 49 MoUs regarding steel plants, more than 20 MoUs regarding thermal power plants, some MoUs for alumina refinery projects and a harbor were signed. The MoU worth 55,000 crores of rupees signed with the MNC Posco belonging to South Korea is the biggest foreign direct investment in India. The Odisha government had shamelessly violated its own laws while granting permissions to Tata in Kalinganagar and Vedanta in Niyamgiri apart from Posco. All these MoUs lead to untold miseries for the Odisha people. These would lead to destruction of the forests, lands, water, ecology and all aspects of their lives. This could be one of the biggest man-made disasters in the world. That is why the people of Odisha are fighting against this atrocity and exploitation.
In the recent past, Odisha people agitated and are still agitating against the exploitation and atrocities of the MNCs and big comprador bourgeoisie companies like Tata, Vedanta, Posco etc. and also against the feudal exploitation in the Narayanapatna area of Koraput district. Government used brutal force against these struggles and killed many people. On January 2, 2006, the police fired on the adivasis who refused to hand over their cultivable lands to the Tata Steel company in Kalinganagar and killed at least fourteen of them. In many other instances, people had become injured or have lost their lives in police firings. People launched agitations against bauxite mines of Vedanta company in Niyamgiri area and against Vedanta Alumina refinery in Lanjigarh. Caving in before the people’s agitations, the Central government had cancelled permission to Vedanta with the reason that it had violated rules and regulations. But the people are still continuing their agitation as they feel that as long as the Vedanta refinery exists in Lanjigarh it is detrimental to their very existence and that it would adversely affect their lands and ecology. People of Odisha are fighting against such issues in many places. The Maoist party is leading these agitations in many places and supporting them in others. More important is the fact that people are welcoming the leadership of Maoists and are aspiring for it. The Odisha people have realized that there is no political party other than the Maoist party which could put an end to feudal and imperialist exploitation. The Maoist movement is expanding to many new areas. The Naveen Patnaik government with the full support of the UPA government at the centre is resorting to these massacres precisely because the Maoists constitute the main hurdle to their blanket loot of resources. Particularly, it is obvious to one and all that the callous murder of nine revolutionaries in Niyamgiri area has happened with the aim of facilitating the wholesale loot of Vedanta and under its aegis. Similarly it is also very clear that the fascist massacres resorted to by the government in the Kalinganagar area (in Jajpur and Keonjhar districts) is to facilitate the exploitation of corporations like that of Tata and others waiting in the wings to occupy this whole area. Naveen Patnaik who is gobbling billions of rupees as the stooge of the corporations and his administrative machinery are being threatened seriously by the existence of the Maoist movement. That is why they are resorting to fascist onslaught on the people and the guerilla squads spending billions of rupees on increasing police, commando forces (SOG), SPO and informer network on a huge scale.
History has proven many a times that it is impossible to suppress the people’s movements with murders, offensives and suppression campaigns. The comprador Naveen Patnaik, Vedanta ex-director and the CEO of the present Operation Green Hunt Chidambaram, other ruling class oligarchs and their imperialist masters are dreaming that they would be able to put aside all the hurdles in the path of exploitation of the feudal classes and the corporations by crushing the Maoist revolutionary movement. The people are bound to come to the fore more militantly to intensify their struggles. Though the spate of encounters in the past few days indicate the intensity of the offensive on the Maoists this should be seen as part of the overall offensive on all the people’s movements fighting against their loot. We can stop these massacres only by taking up arms and fighting in a united manner against the anti-people, pro-imperialist policies followed by the blood-thirsty Naveen government and against corporate exploitation.
The Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist) is appealing to all the people of our country and democrats to condemn in severe terms these atrocious massacres and fake encounters. We are appealing to the people to demand independent judicial inquiry into all these incidents of firings and to demand punishment for all the police officials involved in them. We are appealing to all that they should realize that these offensives are not carried on exclusively on the Maoist movement and that they are aimed at all those who are raising their voice or fighting against this corporate loot. Our Central Committee is calling upon all the democratic, progressive and patriotic forces to unite and fight against the corporate exploitation and against the massacres perpetrated by the central and state governments and against the Operation Green Hunt carried on for the incessant loot of our resources.
(Abhay)
Spokesperson,
Central Committee,
CPI (Maoist)
AdvertisementsUPDATE 10:50 p.m. EDT: Xinhua reported Sunday the death toll had climbed to 112 with 95 still missing.
Death toll rises to 112 from Tianjin blasts, and 95 missing — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) August 16, 2015
Original post:
The Chinese city rocked by explosions at a chemical warehouse earlier this week was struggling in its slow recovery Saturday. Tianjin looked “like a ghost town” this weekend, local mechanical engineer Roy Keld told BBC. Keld, a resident who safely escaped the Wednesday blasts that killed more than 100 people, said seeing the area was “surreal” because it appeared so different than usual.
“Normally it’s a very busy place … full of hustle and bustle, cars, car horns all the time,” Keld said. But when he returned today to pick up clothes from his apartment, the only people around were authorities in safety masks investigating while attempting to keep the situation under control.
Tianjin -- the fourth largest city in China and home to more than 13 million people -- was devastated Wednesday by the explosions. About 700 people were treated in hospitals, with 71 still in critical condition, CNN reported.
The damage wasn’t over. Authorities ordered everyone within 3 kilometers, or about 2 miles, of the warehouse to evacuate after the area experienced an additional eight blasts and several fires Saturday. Officials warned residents that dangerous chemicals, such as sodium cyanide, could be in the air, International Business Times previously reported.
Keld said he’d also been told avoid any rain in the area should it bring down more toxic substances. The cause and effects of the explosions remained unclear. “We don’t know what’s already been released into the air,” he told BBC.
Dozens of people, most of them firefighters, were also missing Saturday. A group of their relatives interrupted a news conference to demand information about their loved ones. "I have no idea where my son is," father Liu Huan said, according to Shanghaiist. "If he is alive, I want to see him. If he is dead, I need to see his body."To help First Nations convert more of their land into urban reserves — First Nation-owned land that Ottawa has designated as reserves, complete with tax-exempt status — the federal government has decided to make changes to its Additions to Reserve (ATR) policy.
In 2014, economists with the Fiscal Realities group studied six First Nations located near urban areas. It found that urban ATRs offer significant economic and fiscal benefits to First Nations, regional economies and local governments. Economic growth, it seems, is good for everybody.
The Membertou First Nation, an indigenous group in Cape Breton, N.S., has discovered the benefits of keeping land outside the reserve system. The community owns land outright in fee simple estate, the highest form of property ownership in Canada.
Fee simple, or what we simply understand as the free market, exists everywhere in Canada, except on reserves. These land holdings can be sold or transferred to anyone and pledged as collateral for loans. The upside to fee-simple ownership is that land can be used productively: unlike tax-free urban reserves, they don’t have the weaknesses of being held like a socialist collective.
In 2012, Manny Jules, chief commissioner of the First Nations Tax Commission, told the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples that: “The problem with ATRs is that they make formerly productive lands unproductive by converting valuable fee-simple land into Indian reserves. Reserve lands are generally about one-tenth as productive as other lands in Canada. They are subject to systems of governance and land tenure that make it very difficult to do business or attract investment.”
Membertou has opted to maintain some of its valuable lands as fee simple and has no plan to convert its commercial developments to reserve status. Like some other indigenous communities, its realized that conducting business in Canada’s market economy is provides more benefits than being left out of it, even after paying taxes on economic activity.
Dan Christmas, Membertou’s senior adviser, stated in an interview that, “One of the big reasons is if you leave it as Membertou Development Corporation lands, you could use that land as collateral for any financing or loans. If we converted it to reserve lands, we couldn’t use it as collateral, and that severely limits your ability to borrow.”
Mike McIntyre, Membertou’s financial officer, said that keeping the land as non-reserve status will help attract outside investment. That means more growth, jobs and opportunities for indigenous and non-indigenous communities alike.
Christmas also identified the loss of value inherent in converting productive lands to reserve lands. He said that the community generates so much revenue by leaving the land in fee simple. Paying taxes, he said, is a cost of doing business. What matters is the success of turning fee simple land holdings into growth-producing economic activity.
Membertou is an example of a successful indigenous community, advantaged by its urban location and operating in the market economy. What is to say other indigenous communities cannot emulate this success story?
This indigenous community demonstrates why First Nations should have the choice in holding their own lands as tax-free urban reserves or as fee simple to maximize value. Indigenous communities need as many ways to develop economically as possible.
As the economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman rightly concluded, free markets solve many problems that confound bureaucracies. Greater wealth and opportunity is created in societies that embrace markets instead of central planning. Empowering aboriginal communities with more economic tools means that First Nations can take control of their own futures. Like their non-First Nations counterparts, they would be “free to choose” how best to improve their daily lives.
National Post
Joseph Quesnel is a research fellow at the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS.ca).The mother who came back from the dead - ten minutes after her life support machine was turned OFF
A mother of two has stunned doctors by apparently coming back from the dead.
Velma Thomas's heart stopped beating three times and she was clinically brain dead for 17 hours. Her son had left the hospital to make funeral arrangements, having been told she would not survive.
But ten minutes after her life support system was shut down and doctors were preparing to take her organs for donation, the 59-year-old woke up.
Miracle: Velma Thomas was clinically brain dead, yet woke up ten minutes after her life support was shut down. Picture posed by model.
Heart specialist Kevin Eggleston said: 'There are things that as physicians and nurses we can't always explain. I think this is one of those cases.'
He said Mrs Thomas had no pulse, no heartbeat or brain activity after her admission to hospital. She had been found unconscious after suffering a heart attack at her home in West Virginia.
While at the Charleston Area Medical Centre she suffered two further heart attacks and was placed on a life support system.
About 25 family members and friends gathered inside the hospital waiting room. 'We just prayed and prayed and prayed,' said her son Tim, 36. 'And I came to the conclusion she wasn't going to make it.
'I was given confirmation from God to take her off the ventilator and my pastor said the same thing. I felt a sense of peace that I made the right decision. Her skin had already started hardening, her hands and toes were curling up. There was no life there.'
He said after he left the hospital he was called and told she had shown signs of life.
By the time he got to her hospital room, Mrs Thomas was alert and talking. 'She had already asked, "Where's my son?",' he said.
Dr Eggleston added: 'It's a miracle.'have a one night stand that turns into something more
It was a warm, golden afternoon in Ponyville, and Chakra Blossom walked slowly, enjoying the peace and stillness. He didn't like to visit his home town too often, but times were changing.Carefully, he adjusted his wing to better support Primrose. He'd taken her out for a walk through town, but the filly, exhausted from a day of baking with her new "Nana" Fluttershy and "Grandpa" Bulk, had fallen asleep on his back, curled up like a kitten. Chakra wanted to feel annoyed about it, but at least the kid wasn't talking his ear off anymore. Primrose was cute, sure, and she adored him (for reasons he hadn't managed to discern), but she was still a tiny, bothersome little chatterbox, always demanding him to help her choose the best glitter stickers, or begging him to play pretend with her-her favorite was designating herself a pirate captain and bravely going to battle with Chakra's mane of dreads, which she'd pretend were the monstrous, boat-smashing tentacles of a sea kraken.Chakra sighed. He spared a quick look around, before giving the little brat a soft, very discreet nuzzle. Prim and her father, Nocturnus (the sly, one-eyed batChakra thought), were rapidly becoming the center of Chakra's life. The thought filled with him with crushing anxiety, but underneath that was a sort of hope, a happiness to a be part of aChakra jumped and bit back afortunately, Prim didn't wake up. Chakra turned to find a very familiar face beaming at him....a pony he thought he'd never see again. He froze in disbelief, and a thousand turbulent feelings welled up in his mind-anxiety, dread, self-loathing...and in the moment, he stood as helpless as a foal."...Dad.""If it isn't that colt of mine! You look like you've seen a ghost, kid!" Zephyr Breeze gave a merry laugh and attempted to lean in for a hug, but his son's blank stare kept him at bay. He settled for awkwardly punching Chakra's shoulder. "Geez,at you! The last time I saw you you were just a skinny lil' beanpole with a mane like a mop!" His eyes settled on Primrose. "Is thatrugrat?""Huh?" Chakra seemed to come back to his senses. "Oh, uh...no..." Chakra bit his lip, glancing back at the sleeping filly. "...Of course not.""Nah, I figured you were too smart to have a kid with aThey're just not-all creepy big bat wings and fangs, like some kinda vampires! Wouldn't want you getting bitten and put under one of their freaky vamp spells.""...Uh." Chakra's face heated a little at that, and very casually, he turned his head, so that his dreadlocks slipped to hide the fresh bite marks on his neck. "Right. Freaky vamp spells."Zephyr grinned. "It's been a while, huh, kid?"Chakra frowned. "It's been eight years."Zephyr stiffened, giving a nervous little laugh. "Ah...W-well...Ito write, but y'know how time gets away from us! " He cleared his throat. "My point is, achanged, little dude. I opened my own mane therapy boutique! And would you believe your old man gotZephyr boasted, winking. "Hard to believe, I know!old breeze finally got bottled! Here I thought I'd be like a feather on the wind forever, but I tell ya, kid, there's something to this whole 'domestic' thing. I don't mind it.""Good for you." Chakra deadpanned. He was remembering himself now, and his temper was beginning to flare. "I suppose family life is easier if you've already had aat it."Zephyr went quiet, and his ears slicked back with guilt. "I...C'mon, kid, there's no need to get mean." He said. "You and your mom...you two weren't a trial run."Chakra offered nothing but a cold glare, and Zephyr buckled a little under it. "I...Iit, kid. Youa trial run. It was just different back then, y'know?" Zephyr began fidgeting with his hooves, avoiding Chakra's eyes. "Parenting, responsibility, holding down a job-that'sson. And I was young then.too young to be anypony's...Heck, I didn't even know your mom had been pregnant, not til the day Treehugger showed up on my doorstep with this big dopey smile on her face, holding a little fluffy green foal."You could only imaginesurprise. I mean...I liked your mom, she's okay...but I didn't want...I didn't expectto happen." He gestured to Chakra with his hooves. "I didn'thow to be a dad, nopony was there to teach me!I did was entirely self-taught. So if youa trial run like you said, I didn't do half bad, did I? I mean, you turned out fine." Zephyr finally looked up, and he had the nerve to"...I'd give myself a C+. Not perfect, y'know, but passing. What do you think?""What do IThe question echoed in Chakra's mind, and his thoughts began to race. Memories burst into his mind, vivid, choking."...Dad." Chakra said finally, "When I was a kid, I got a coin bank from Aunt Shy. It was shaped like a bunny-she made it herself in her pottery class. Remember?" He smiled at the memory, but it was sad. "You broke it and took the money inside.""Huh? What?" Zephyr blinked at him, confused. "I didn't-""YouChakra said firmly. "I'd been saving up my bits. I came home one day and found the bank on the ground, in pieces. There'd only been three silver bits inside...you took them and bought yourself an oatburger and hay fries.""Uh." Zephyr laughed, uncomfortable. "I think you might be exaggerating a teeny bit, hon. I wouldn't, uh..." His eyes widened, and he seemed to remember something. "I wouldn't...I-I wouldn't takeof your...""It's true." Chakra spat. "Youit is. And it's not even thething you did. You failed to be a responsible parent-even just a responsible-atpossible turn. I don't have a single pleasant memory of you, because everything you've ever done has been in your own self-interest. Even now-you don't care about what I'm saying. Not really. You're just trying to soothe your ownZephyr looked at his son for a long while, looking sad and vulnerable andHe bit his lip, thinking. "O-okay. So maybe...maybe I haven't been the most perfect, present dad. Maybe...maybe I can start now. There's still time to fix this." Zephyr tried for a hopeful, reassuring smile. "If you want to be a family again."Chakraand volume flooded his voice. "IHeadvancing on his father. "Don't youit? I don't want you anymore, I don'tyou anymore-I ama little colt waiting for Dad to teach me to fly anymore! I grewYou're free! Go back to playing domestic with your stupidfamily, you rotten, deadbeat,"Chakra?" A tiny voice yawned. Primrose stirred upon his back, sleepily rubbing a hoof across her eyes.. Chakra's rage was extinguished in an instant. "...Go back to sleep, baby doll.""Nah." Prim stuck her tongue out at him, before turning to stare at Zephyr. "Who's"He's-""I'm Chakra's father, sweetheart." Zephyr said kindly. "What'sname, little princess?"Primrose smiled and leapt to answer, but Chakra swiftly flared his wing up like a fan, shielding her. "Don't talk to my kid." He warned Zephyr, his voice low and dangerous."Your kid, huh?" Zephyr repeated numbly. "....I was right. A lotchanged." He glanced at Primrose, who was currently doing her best to peep at him through Chakra's wing feathers. She bit and tugged at one of Chakra's dreads to get him to relent, but the pegasus remained unaffected. "...Maybe the changes are good. Maybethings should change.""Zephyr-"Zephyr reached a hoof into his sweater pocket, and when he withdrew it, there were three silver bits held in the flat of his hoof. He inspected them, watching his own reflection on their surfaces."You're right, Chakra." Zephyr began. "I wasn't a good dad. I was young and inexperienced...by the time I realized just how bad I was screwing you up, well...you already hated me by then. How could I turn myself around and suddenly start being a parent, when you'd already lost all respect for me? I didn't even know where tofixing everything...and if I'm being honest, it was a lot easier to just pretend that nothing was wrong at all." Zephyr sighed. "In the end, your mom didn't know why you decided to run away, but I did. You run away from your problems...just like me."When Chakra said nothing, Zephyr held out his hoof, offering the coins to his son. "I still don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to undo everything I did wrong, or even convince you to let me-but I can give you back your bits."Chakra didn't know why, but he held out his hoof. Zephyr slipped him the silver coins-then gripped Chakra's hoof with his own."You're my only kid, Chakra, and I love you. II never wanted anything less than the best for you. If your life is better off with me not in it, then....so...so be it. I shouldn't have broken your little coin bank. I shouldn't have taken your money. I'm sorry." His grip on Chakra's hoof tightened. "ForI'm so very, very sorry."A familiar ache began in Chakra's chest. He pulled his hoof away and looked down. "....It's okay, Dad.""It's not." Zephyr's brows knit, examining his son, but Chakra wouldn't look at him. Zephyr cleared his throat. "My point is, if you want to give this another shot...I'm here in Ponyville, whenever you're ready. You're welcome to join me and Trenderhoof for dinner some night. We can just talk. I'm sure we have a lot to catch up on." He shot a knowing look at Primrose, before taking a step backward and unfurling his wings. He smiled one last time, genuine and hopeful."Whenever you're ready, son."Zephyr took off into the sky, in a whirl of sea-green feathers. Chakra didn't watch him go, instead choosing to gaze down at the three coins in his hoof. His wings slumped down, and he felt something wet beginning to trickle down his face."Are you sad, Chakra?" Prim's little voice was in his ear, bringing him back to the present. He wiped at his face."I'm fine.""Do you miss your dad?""...Yes." Chakra's voice sounded oddly hoarse to his own ears."Oh." Prim nodded sagely. "It's okay. I miss my daddy when he goes away too." She wrapped her tiny hooves around his neck in a hug, and patted his head comfortingly-and Chakra reached and took her into his arms and held her close, because Primrose was good and innocent and better than a trainwreck like him deserved.Prim booped his muzzle with her hoof. "You know, ice cream always makesfeel better whensad."Chakra laughed, despite himself. "That just sounds like an excuse to get me to buyice cream."Prim looked indignant. "It isYou're sad, and that's an ice cream emergency! You have three whole bits-that's enough for an ice cream cone for yourself-" She suddenly became sheepish. "And, um, a Mr. Fudgie Bar for me...'cause I'm sad that you're sad, of course."Chakra smiled at her. He glanced up at the sky just once, and remembered his father's words."Hm." Chakra jangled the coins in his hoof, before he playfully ruffled the brat's mane, earning a squeal of outrage. Prim glared up at him, hair tousled and sticking up, and she bit his ear in swift vengeance. Chakra chuckled against her tiny attack."Yeah...you know, ice cream does sound pretty good about now, baby doll."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~An older Zephyr Breeze approaches his adult son, Chakra Blossom, hoping to mend the damaged bond between them...buckle up kids cuz the context on this one is complicatedremember Nocturnus? This guy?Well he and Chakra meet:andfall into a complicated relationship-type thing that Chakra pretends he doesn't care about as much as he does. Nocturnus can see straight through Chakra's hippie bullshit and doesn't take his crap, and Chakra is weirdly drawn to authoritative little batpony soldier, and the two eventually end up quite....fond of one another.Nocturnus is a single father with a tiny pink daughter, Primrose:The love and light of Noct's life. When Chakra first met excitable, sweet Primrose, he was polite yet distantbut you know kids…they worm and annoy themselves into your affections.
As Chakra hung around the house more, he found himself getting roped into coloring with Prim, smiling frowning as she excitedly examined his cool pegasus wings (so soft and fluffy!) and dreads (gummi worm hair!) and tried on his shades, helping her choose the best glitter stickers for her wheel harness…he finds himself getting attached, even anticipating seeing her when he visits Nocturnus. So he’s getting attached to both father and daughter, pulled into this tiny bat family….
Chakra's attitudes toward family and responsibility are growing healthier, and he is growing happier, whether he knows it or not. He's growing to love his new family...but what will happen when a piece of old family shows his face?
character shown:
bonus headcanons on Chakra and Prim:
-I imagine it takes Chakra a long time to get truly comfortable being loving with Primrose, but even then it’s not a usual out pour like most “parents”. I can see him ruffling her mane and teasing her in a playful way. But not really being very huggy or saying that he cares about her out loud. Its usually a gruff “you too” when she says she loves him, or letting her hug him while he stands there and awkwardly pets her hair. She knows he loves her though, he shows it in his own special Chakra way. Fyi, I can see her calling him “flower butt”
-Chakra’s special talent is therapy, even if he doesn’t use it much. Being born paraplegic, Primrose spends a fair amount of time in hospitals getting examined, and that environment can be scary for a child. Sometimes enough to make her cry. Chakra finds himself doing things like bringing her flowers and, crayons, or making up special little songs with her, or telling dumb jokes to make her laugh…he can soothe her fears like none of the hospital staff can.
-Chakra is a sad bastard and just wants his parents to care about him
-Way in the future, sometimes Chakra slips and refers to Prim as “my kid”, when he means “Noct’s kid”. Neither Nocturnus or Prim mind this, even if Chakra’s embarrassed by the slip-up-Chakra ran away from home in his late teens-Although Zephyr had a foal with Treehugger, they were never a serious couple and shared custody of Chakra (though Chakra mostly lived with his mom). Way later, Zephyr ends up happily married to Trenderhoof. They're not interested in having foals, but Zeph desperately wants to reconnect with his son-Primrose is about five years old here, but really precocious(CNN) Attacks on bloggers critical of Islam have taken on a disturbing regularity in Bangladesh, with yet another writer hacked to death Tuesday.
Ananta Bijoy Das, 32, was killed Tuesday morning as he left his home on his way to work at a bank, police in the northeastern Bangladeshi city of Sylhet said.
Four masked men attacked him, hacking him to death with cleavers and machetes, said Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan.
The men then ran away. Because of the time of the morning when the attack happened, there were few witnesses. But police say they are following up on interviewing the few people who saw the incident.
"It's one after another after another," said Imran Sarker, who heads the Blogger and Online Activists Network in Bangladesh. "It's the same scenario again and again. It's very troubling."
Public killings
Das' death was at least the third this year of someone who'd posted pieces online critical of Islam. In each case, the attacks were carried out publicly on city streets.
In March, Washiqur Rahman, 27, was hacked to death by two men with knives and meat cleavers just outside his house as he headed to work at a travel agency in the capital, Dhaka.
Photos: Bangladesh blogger murder: The prime suspect Photos: Bangladesh blogger murder: The prime suspect Social media photos show the prime suspected arrested in the murder of American-Bangladeshi blogger Avijit Roy, who was hacked to death in Dhaka last week. Hide Caption 1 of 5 Photos: Bangladesh blogger murder: The prime suspect The suspect, Farabi Shaifur Rahman, had called for Roy's death in numerous Facebook posts. Hide Caption 2 of 5 Photos: Bangladesh blogger murder: The prime suspect In a Facebook comment last year, Rahman allegedly wrote, "Avijit Roy lives in America. So it's not possible to kill him now. But when he returns home, he will be killed then." Hide Caption 3 of 5 Photos: Bangladesh blogger murder: The prime suspect Rahman was arrested on Monday, March 2, 2015. Hide Caption 4 of 5 Photos: Bangladesh blogger murder: The prime suspect Within minutes after the Thursday attack, Rahman posted photos of the crime scene, said Col. Ziaul Ahsan of Bangladesh's elite anti-crime unit, the Rapid Action Battalion. Hide Caption 5 of 5
In February, a Bangladesh-born American blogger, Avijit Roy, was similarly killed with machetes and knives as he walked back from a book fair in Dhaka.
The three victims are hardly the only ones who have paid a steep price for their views.
In the last two years, several bloggers have died, either murdered or under mysterious circumstances.
In 2014, Reporters Without Borders reported that a group calling itself Defenders of Islam in Bangladesh had published a "hit list" of writers it saw as opposing Islam.
"They listed 84 bloggers, mostly secularists. They listed 84 of them," said blogger Asif Mohiuddin, whose name was on the list. "Nine of them are already killed and many of the were attacked."
Championing science
Das was an atheist who contributed to Mukto Mona ("Free Thinkers"), the blog that Roy founded.
Mukto Mona contains sections titled "Science" and "Rationalism," and most of the articles hold science up to religion as a litmus test, which it invariably fails.
While Das was critical of fundamentalism, in Islam and other religions, and of the attacks on secular thinkers, he was mostly concerned with champion |
), Nihāyat’l-Muḥtāj (8/10) and I‘ānat’l-Ṭālibīn (4/156)
[13] Abu Dāwūd (4/87), the version of Jābir was considered to be Ḥasan by al-Tirmidhi, and Ṣaḥīḥ with all its chains taken into account by al-Albāni (see al-Irwā’, 8/42)
[14] Ḥāshiya Ibn ‘Ābidīn (4/42-43) and (6/457-458)
[15] http://ilmsource.com/2016/02/08/the-islamic-ruling-on-e-cigarettes-vaping-and-synthetic-marijuana/
[16] Aḥkām al-Adawiyyah fī al-Sharī‘ah al-Islāmīyyah, p.276
[17] Ḥāshiya al-Dasūqī, (1/50) and Tabṣirat’l-Ḥukkām, (2/169-170)
[18] Rawḍat’l-Ṭālibīn, (8/438) and Jāmi‘ al-‘Ulūm wal-Ḥikam (2/464)
[19] Al-Inṣāf, (8/438)
[20] Ḥāshiya Ibn ‘Ābidīn, (2/102 and 4/42), as well as Fatḥ’l-Qadīr, (3/491)
[21] I remind readers that an intoxicated state is very problematic, not only in one’s duties to Allah but in one’s responsibilities to oneself and others. One becomes a threat and a danger to all because one does not know what one is doing! Thus, taking a drug which knocks one out and doesn’t allow one to do evil, is far more safer and preferable to an intoxicant which leads one to actually commit evil.
[22] Al-Majmū‘ al-Madh-hab, (1/34)
[23] Al-Majmū‘ by al-Nawawi, (2/286)
[24] Al-Ashbāh wal-Naẓā’ir by al-Suyūṭī, p.84
[25] Sharḥ al-Sunnah by al-Baghawi (12/147)David Sable is CEO of Young & Rubicam. Will Johnson is president of BAV Consulting. Owned by Young & Rubicam Group, BAV studies brand equity. The opinions expressed in this commentary are theirs.
(CNN) Reeling from allegations of sexual assault and falling poll numbers, Donald Trump insists that his " movement powered by millions of people " remains strong. Diehards will stick with the GOP presidential candidate to the end, but his campaign is no juggernaut.
It is instead a sputtering machine burdened with a leader who is becoming the one thing Trump never was before -- boring.
Our company, Young & Rubicam, has studied Trump's consumer brand for many years through surveys and other market research, and our most recent results are eye-opening. In our surveys ending September 30, Trump experiences sharp declines, compared with just three months earlier, in the scores relating to whether people are excited by a celebrity, leader or consumer brand.
Because he has sought to appeal to voters mainly as an unconventional choice, Trump has depended far more on personality than gravitas to sell himself. But it is becoming clear that the public is no longer intrigued by him. Consider the following scores:
-- Consumers who say Trump is distinctive -- down 10%
-- Fun -- down 13%
-- Trendy -- down 17%
-- Stylish -- down 21%
These numbers reflect responses from more than 1,000 people who were selected to represent the United States in microcosm. Included are people from all age groups, income levels, political affiliations, races, religions and regions.
Swing voter problem
Trump is becoming boring even to Republicans, but his worst performance is among those who identify as political independents or members of smaller political parties. Among these folks, who could be considered swing voters, Trump is 17% less fun, a whopping 37% less "dynamic" and 30.6% less distinctive that he was just 90 days ago. This same cohort found Trump to be 31% less "unique."
The implications for Donald Trump the politician are dire. Although he keeps talking about himself as a political "outsider," he is rapidly losing the credibility to make such a claim. Among independents and political "others," Trump suffered a 10.7% decline in his score for independence. This means that he is losing his renegade's appeal. Instead he has become the object of ridicule on "Saturday Night Live," where he is regularly portrayed as an incoherent, self-defeating boor.
As reputation experts we advise many of the world's top corporations and leaders in business and politics. Our main tool is a continuously updated database, established in the 1990s and built on more than millions of interviews. It is called the Brand Asset Valuator.
We have gathered BAV data on Trump for more than a decade and in the past noted he consistently scored well on measures of prestige and luxury that could be gathered together under the term "glamour." This status meant that Trump and his businesses appealed to moneyed individuals who could afford to stay at his high-end hotels and play at his expensive golf courses. The name "Trump" was similarly attractive to people who might not be able to afford his upscale offerings but dreamed of the day when they could.
Trump's birtherism
Trump's glamour scores began to decline after 2010 when he became the face of the so-called "birther" movement, which sought to delegitimize Barack Obama's presidency by raising doubts about whether he was born in his native Hawaii. (The constitution permits only American-born citizens to serve as president.)
We cannot make a direct connection between Trump's declining glamour scores and birtherism, but the coincidence is notable. And the trend has continued. In the last three months his "glamour" score has dropped 17.6% among all adults and a remarkable 51% among swing voters.
Win or lose, Trump and his family will want to continue his business operations after the election. Although speculation abounds that the candidate might start an alt-right media company if he loses, his family empire will still hold many businesses branded with the Trump name.
In the past he has bragged about a premium that attaches to Trump real estate projects, and he pegged the value of his image in the billions of dollars. But if you take this claim at face value, then the data on Trump's faltering image suggest he is inflicting real damage on the Trump Organization's single most important asset.
Even before the third-quarter numbers came in, Trump stood on shaky ground with consumers. They have felt less loyal to his brand since he began his campaign last year with a tirade that drove Macy's, Univision and others to abandon him as a business partner.
Follow CNN Opinion Join us on Twitter and Facebook
Anecdotal evidence of Trump's brand erosion can be found at his newest hotel, in a former post office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. New York Magazine reports bookings have been so poor that room rates are being reduced.
If the tracking polls are accurate and Trump goes down to defeat, his brand could suffer. Ridiculed on "SNL," he may be fast becoming so uncool that many -- apart from his base of staunch supporters -- don't want to be associated with anything he sells.
Of course his hotels, buildings and golf courses -- in which he holds varying equity stakes -- are hard assets that will retain intrinsic value. But if Trump wants them to perform as money-makers, they might have to be rebranded.In the past era of TV commercials, print ads and large-scale media buys, advertisements took a “one size fits all” approach by necessity, as the cost of disseminating a single message made it imperative that the ad reach as many people as possible.
Today, though, we live in a “Big Data” world. And since we know more than ever about who are customers are, what they’re thinking and how they’re behaving, it’s possible to target advertisements on a much more granular level.
Take, for example, the case of Skytap – a self-service provider of cloud automation solutions. After launching a more tailored content marketing strategy, the company lifted sales leads by 124%, online leads by 97%, organic search traffic by 55% and North American site traffic by 210%.
One of the most important tools a marketer has for creating the types of targeted ads that result in increased sales and conversions – like the kind seen in the case of Skytap – is the buyer persona.
To learn more about what buyer personas are and how they can improve your marketing campaign results, check out Single Grain’s newest infographic – “Target Acquired: The Science of Building Buyer Personas.”
Share this Image On Your SiteEye on the ball
Cricket fans love their stats. Even the most casual follower can rattle off the batting averages of their favourite players or tell you how many wickets such-and-such a bowler took in the last test. The most passionate followers can recite each scorecard from this year's Wisden.
The recent news of the great Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar surpassing West Indian Brian Lara's record number of test runs has given maths-loving cricket geeks another opportunity to pull out their calculators and Excel spreadsheets. I'm openly one of these nuts and did just that.
At the time of writing, Tendulkar had scored 12,027 runs across 247 innings, to overtake Lara's 11,953 from 232 innings. After a little investigation, I found that despite his outstanding average of over 54 runs per innings, Tendulkar's most common score in test cricket is... zero!
This was quite a shock — the most prolific run-scorer in test cricket has been out for nought (a duck in cricket parlance) 14 times, well ahead of his second most common score — which incidentally is the next lowest you can get: one!
Donald Bradman was well known for his high backlift and lengthy forward stride.
This is completely counter-intuitive, so I took this investigation further. Australian cricketer Sir Donald Bradman is universally regarded as the best batsman ever to have played the game. His average, an astounding 99.94, is so far above every other batsman in the history of the game that he is often acclaimed as not only the best cricketer ever, but the best player ever of any sport. His average is so iconic in Australia that the postcode of the ABC (the Australian version of the BBC) is 9994 in every capital city. If it wasn't for the fact that much more test cricket is played nowadays than in the early 1900s, and for World War II interrupting his career for six years, Bradman would have scored many more than the 6996 runs he did score.
So, guess what Bradman's most common score was?
That's right, zero!
Indeed, looking at every innings by the most prolific batsmen in test history from Tendulkar at number 1 to Bradman at number 34, the most common score is zero — and by quite a long way too. The following figures show the distribution of scores from these top batsmen — on the horizontal axis you see the number of runs and the vertical axis measures the frequency of dismissals at a particular number of runs. The first chart shows every score between 0 and 100, and the second uses five-run wide bins to show scores up to 250. The data only include scores where the batsman was dismissed and so does not include not-out scores.
Scores plotted against dismissal frequency.
Scores in bins of five plotted against dismissal frequency.
Model cricket
A closer look at these distributions shows that they very closely fit what is known as an exponential distribution. An exponential distribution has the form
A straight line fitted to the data. The blue dots represent observed data and the black line represents the model.
A straight line fitted to the data from the second chart above. The blue dots represent observed data and the black line represents the model.
In this caseis the probability of being dismissed at scorewithbeing a constant. A common trick when looking at distributions involving exponentials is to take logarithms of both sides to getThe graph of this function, plottingagainst, is now a straight line with slope. If the statistical data fits the exponential distribution, then the plot of the logarithm of the frequency of dismissals against the score at which dismissal happened should look roughly like a straight line.
There is a very strong straight line fit in both charts. Using a standard technique called least-squares regression, we can find the straight line that best fits the data.We can determine from the coefficient of in the equation of this line, and in our case this gives equal to 0.023.
The mean of an exponential distribution, a sort of average, is. In our case this gives a mean of around 43 - the same as we observe in the raw data. One can make the interesting observation that there is no such thing as the "nervous nineties": players do not "choke" and get out in the 90s, nervous before scoring a glorious test century, any more than they get out at any other score. Indeed, you could argue the opposite given the probability troughs at 94, 98 and in the 190s. You can also see that the probability of being dismissed for a duck is higher than you might expect for an exponential distribution.
So what?
Now, so far you might be thinking that all of this is only of passing statistical interest. So what if cricket scores follow an exponential distribution? Well, I'm glad you asked!
Let's turn for a second to a different distribution, the geometric distribution. You will be familiar with this distribution from a simple 50/50 coin toss. The geometric distribution describes the number of coin tosses you need before a head (or tail) first turns up. The probability of your first head turning up on your toss is described as
Sachin Tendulkar against Australia in the 2nd test at the SCG in 2008. Image by Privatemusings.
whereis the probability of a head turning up on each toss, that is, 0.5. The distribution is memory-less, which is one of its key descriptors. No matter what has gone before, even if you have fluked 100 tails in a row, the probability of a head turning up on the 101st throw is still. The geometric distribution only works for integer values of, that is, you can only throw a coin 2, 3, 100 etc times and not 2.5 times. The exponential distribution is the continuous equivalent of this distribution, extending it to work for all numbers, not just integers. Given that cricket batting scores seem to fit a exponential distribution, this means that we can picture cricket batting scores on a geometric distribution with the probability of you being dismissed at scoreas
Can you spot the profound result here? Remembering that the geometric distribution is memory-less, you can interpret this as saying that no matter what score you are currently on, you have the same chance of getting out on that score as you do on any other score! Like a coin toss, the probability of you being dismissed on each score does not depend on what has gone before. A model which assumes that there is no memory is known as a constant hazard model. This seems to go against every cricketing manual I have ever read. Accepted cricketing wisdom says that a batsman is more dangerous when (s)he "has the eye in" and has scored 10 or 20 runs. Our result seems to suggest that, apart from when a batsman is on 0, you have just as much chance of dismissing him or her on the current score as on any other score. The next question to ask is, what is the probability of dismissing a batsman on the current score (that is, what is in the above equation)? The mean of a geometric distribution is
Scores near zero
Knowing that the mean of the exponential distribution is, and transferring this to the geometric distribution, we getForthis gives. Therefore, if you were to turn the television on now and find the cricket coverage, the chance that the batsman you are watching gets out on the current score is 2.2%.
The biggest deviation from the geometric distribution is for scores near zero. According to our data, the chance of being dismissed for a duck is 6.9% — around 3 times more than expected for a geometric (or exponential) distribution. But by the time the batsman has scored two or three runs, the geometric distribution starts to fit well. There is a small peak at four runs, perhaps because you can relatively easily get to four before you become comfortable — it only takes one streaky shot to the boundary. Whilst you can get to three with one shot, you are more likely to have played a few shots and so may be comparatively more "set".
The data and the geometric distribution. The blue dots represent observed data and the black line represents the model.
An analysis of scores near zero has been completed by Brendon J. Brewer from the University of New South Wales in Getting your eye in: A Bayesian analysis of early dismissals in cricket. Brewer indeed found that batsmen are more vulnerable at the beginning of their innings.
By assuming a constant hazard model, Brewer determined the effective average of a batsman before they have scored — that is, assuming a constant hazard model with probability of dismissal equal to that of their chance of being dismissed for a duck, Brewer determined the mean of this new distribution.
In our data from the best batsmen of all time, dismissal for a duck occurred with a 6.9% chance. The mean of a geometric distribution built around this probability is
Conclusions
This means that even though our batsmen have a mean of about 43, before they've scored they bat like cricketers with a mean of 13.5. Even the best batsmen bat like tail-enders before they get off the mark!
What should we take away from this analysis?
Beware of the duck.
The conclusion seems to be that there is a very small window in the beginning of a batsman's innings in which there is a greater chance of dismissal than there ordinarily is. This makes sense — batsmen take some time to acclimatise to the game conditions. But this is a small window — once the batsman has scored about three runs, you have the same chance of dismissal whatever the current score. Interestingly, tiredness does not seem to play a part — the exponential distribution holds well out to 250 runs (quite a few hours of batting).
It should be remembered that this analysis was completed on the top 34 run scorers of all time (5953 innings) and so represents the best ever batsmen. Lesser batsmen are likely to get low scores, so perhaps this window is slightly wider for them. But if we turn to the greatest of the great, Bradman, the window is essentially one run. His effective average before he had scored was a very mediocre nine runs. After he had scored two runs, this effective average had risen to 69. You had to get Bradman out very early!
More information
The data was retrieved from cricinfo during the second test between Australia and India on the 19th of October 2008;
Not-out scores were removed from the analysis;
The exponential distribution does break down a little for scores above 250 as there simply isn't enough data;
Yes, Marc has scored a duck in his cricket career.
Further reading
Previously on the Plus sports page
Marc West is a freelance science writer and former Assistant Editor of Plus who currently works in operations analysis in Sydney.
As a wannabe Australian cricket player, the stars aligned when Marc somehow scored 114 against Mount Colah in a Sydney shires cricket game. He loves to write about science and sport and has been published in a variety of magazines and newspapers. You can read more of his writing on his personal blog.Dogs are the girlfriends of the pet world who interrupt you while youÔÇÖre watching the football game and want to talk about ÔÇ£the relationship."
Cats are much better suited for the job of being a guy’s best buddy ÔÇô especially guys who want animal companionship without intense emotional commitment.
While I love dogs, the fact of the matter is they’re needy and high-maintenance and constantly demand long walks on the beach. If you’re a guy reading this, imagine those were words you’d use to describe someone you’re dating. Your buddies would tell you to break up with her as soon as possible.
Yes, gents: Dogs are the girlfriends of the pet world who interrupt you while you’re watching the football game and want to talk about “the relationship.” Face it, dog owners — you’re puppy-whipped.
Now let’s consider a cat’s profile. She’s independent, laid-back, and likes to sleep a lot. In dating terms, your cat is the cool girlfriend who doesn’t complain when you sleep in until noon with a hangover and then spend the rest of the day in your pajamas playing online poker.
What makes cats so awesome is that they’re great at just kicking back and hanging out. There’s no kicking back with a dog when you’re at home. At least, there’s no hanging out of the guilt-free variety. You play Angry Birds on your iPad and the dog sits and looks at you with sad eyes that say, “Why don’t you love me? You used to take me for long walks at the park.”
In contrast, here’s a typical interaction between me and my 5-year-old Siamese mix, Kitten:
Will stumbles out of bed from his afternoon nap and finds Kitten already napping on the couch. Will plops down and Kitten’s eyes crack open. He yawns and gives a ‘sup? look. Then he pulls himself up and makes the one-foot journey to Will’s lap. Will clicks on the TV and watches the Giants game. That state of affairs lasts for about an hour until Kitten jumps down from the couch and stands by the door and meows. Will lets Kitten out and returns to the couch.
And that’s it. Kitten is off doing his own thing and I’m doing nothing — without feeling guilty for not playing with my pet.
The weird thing is the traits I believe make cats temperamentally better matches for guys than dogs ÔÇô- their independence and emotional detachment — make them less appealing to men. When it comes to pets, guys want unquestioning devotion and loyalty. You’re just not going to get those things from a cat; no one is a cat’s master.
This reminds me of a funny scene from Meet the Parents where Robert DeNiro’s character Jack Byrnes, a cat aficionado, scoffs at Greg Focker’s preference for dogs because they’re happy to see you when you come home.
“You need that assurance, do you?” Byrnes asks. “You prefer an emotionally shallow animal? ÔǪ You see, Greg, when you yell at a dog, his tail will go between his legs and cover his genitals, his ears will go down. A dog is very easy to break, but cats make you work for their affection. They don’t sell out the way dogs do.”
This is an over-the-top take on the difference between dogs and cats, but there’s a kernel of truth in it. Cats are often aloof and they do make you work for their affection. I think a lot of men are threatened by cats’ independent natures. But I’m here to tell you, fellas: Don’t be intimidated. An independent pet — like an independent woman — is to be appreciated and respected.
So you guys out there who prefer dogs, think about that — think about your aversion to cats next time you’re picking up Fido’s still-warm poop with a plastic baggie while walking him in the park.
Photo credits: Kitten and Will by Annika Dukes; cat and dog via Shutterstock.comIf a code base is well tested and very stable, it’s pretty easy to write more tests for it. But, how do you get started writing automated tests if your legacy application has none? It’s very difficult to get started because the code wasn’t written with tests in mind. Normally, the endeavor will have you pulling your hair out. This is unfortunate because a lot of untested code desperately needs tests, yet it takes an inordinate amount of effort to write them. In this article, I’m going to tell you about a tool that you probably haven’t heard of that can help you get that legacy code base tested. It’s called Approval Tests, and here’s how it works:
Imagine you have this extremely complex machine in front of you and you don’t really know how it works. For all intents and purposes, you can think of it as a black box. You have no idea what is going on inside of it, but you see that it has a coin slot as input. You notice that every time you put 25 cents in, a rubber duck pops out of the machine. You make note of that. Then you notice that every time you put a penny in, a rubber eraser pops out. You make note of that, too. You try every permutation of input you can think of and you record the output. Now, you still have no idea how this machine works internally, but if you opened it up and tinkered with it, you can feel pretty confident that you’d notice if you broke something. All you’d need to do is try all the inputs again. If an output changes, you must have changed some functionality. For example, if you tinker with the insides and now putting 25 cents in pops out a mustache comb, you know you broke something because 25 cents used to make a rubber duck pop out. But, if each input leads to the same exact output as before, you probably didn’t break any functionality. As humans, it would be a painstaking process to try every input and record every output.
Approval Tests was created to make this task easier. You decide what inputs to pass in and you tell it what to record. From that point on, you can attempt to refactor the black box and it’ll tell you if the output changed in some way. And it comes with a bunch of tools for recording and diffing output. For example, it can check the contents of a database table, an XML file, a String, and so on. As far as tests go, I wouldn’t say that these are high quality tests that you would want to keep around for the lifetime of a project. But they’re exactly what you need to be able to refactor some opaque code into something maintainable. Once you get it to that state, it will be easier to write some high quality tests around the code, and you can begin to remove the scaffolding that Approval Tests initially provided.
As a bonus, here’s a neat trick that the author of Approval Tests came up with: Lets say you’re working on some terrible code and it uses a logger. You can mock out the logger and record every string the logger gets. For example, if you pass in “baz” as input the logger might say:
Starting the foo method Starting the bar method Ending the bar method Ending the foo method 1 2 3 4 Starting the foo method Starting the bar method Ending the bar method Ending the foo method
Approval Tests can record that the logger said this and then you can refactor. If you try again by passing in “baz” and the logger now says:
Starting the foo method Starting the bar method Ending the bar method Starting the bar method Ending the bar method Ending the foo method 1 2 3 4 5 6 Starting the foo method Starting the bar method Ending the bar method Starting the bar method Ending the bar method Ending the foo method
Oops… somewhere in your refactoring you changed some functionality. The
bar method is now being called multiple times when it used to be called only once (Approval Tests will highlight these changes so you don’t have to notice them on your own). You can either spend time to figure out why or simply revert your refactoring and try again. If you’ve been putting off testing your code because it’s too difficult to get started, then you should consider using Approval Tests. It lowers the barrier to entry and is a easy way to gain confidence in your automated tests.The inhabitants of Diriyah, Ferdos and Ramila neighborhoods in Raqqa clashed with Daesh militants and managed to clear the areas from the foreign-backed terrorists, local media reported on Saturday night.
The people of Raqqa also hoisted the Syrian flag on al-Jadid Bridge in the city, according to the report.
Back on March 7, 2013, militants from the al-Nusra Front and Daesh terrorist groups had occupied Raqqa.
In the latest developments in Syria, Daesh is losing ground to the army units backed by volunteer forces as they continue targeting its positions and hideouts.
An army unit destroyed a mortar launcher for Daesh terrorists near the Agriculture College in al-Mrei’iyeh village and a car transporting terrorists and their weapons in the surroundings of al-Tharda Mountain in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted a military source as saying on Saturday.
In Hama, clashes between Syrian army units and Daesh militants ended with a number of terrorists killed and five of their vehicles in addition to an armored vehicle and a cannon destroyed.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh, currently controlling parts of it.
According to a new report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.Surf Like a Pro (or a Beginner)
Stats
Average Nov.Mar. temp.: 85°
Whale season: December to mid-April
Height of swells in Nov.: Between 4.5 and 6 feet
For the past 21 years, surf instructor Ramse Morales has been riding Rincón’s legendary barrel waves and the occasional 25-foot swells. Here are his favorites, from tyro to kamikaze.
EASY: Sandy’s Beach, on the north side, has a sandy bottomhence the nameand mild waves, which make it perfect for a beginner.
INTERMEDIATE: Don’t be put off by the nuclear reactor at Domes. This spot, just north of the lighthouse on the westernmost tip, sits in the shadow of a decommissioned nuclear-reactor facility we call the Dome. The waves are hollow, fun, and ledgy. There’s a point break, though, so be aware of the undercurrents.
ADVANCED: The powerful waves at Indicador, the locals-only beach just south of the Dome, are hard and close.
WAY ADVANCED: Tres Palmas, on the southern edge of Rincón, has the biggest breakers in the Caribbean, with a legendary right-hand reef break. Don’t paddle out here unless you’re a pro or kamikaze.
Rum, and Then Some
More than 70 percent of the rum consumed in the United States comes from Puerto Ricobut that’s not to say that’s all there is to swill, especially in Rincón. Lifestyle blogger (and marine scientist) Chelsea Harms gives a tour through the local drinkscape.
RUM
If you’re going to get one rum drink, go with the Coco Pirata at Villa Cofresi (12 Carretera 115; 823-2450), made with Bacardi White, Bacardi Gold, Bacardi 151, crème de cacao, and evaporated milk. Drink it out of its coconut shell while snacking on pinchos (meat skewers) and watching the sun set over the Caribbean Sea.
FIZZY WINE
Sip a surprisingly refreshing Tinto Verano (red wine and lemon soda) at La Copa Llena at the Black Eagle (Black Eagle Marina; 823-0896), which happens to have the best food in town. Their menu changes frequently; the fish curry is always super-fresh.
BEER
The craft-beer scene is really blooming on the west coast. The Rincón Beer Company (15 Calle Muñoz Rivera; 407-0121) just opened downtown, serving local beers like the Barlovento Ale from Manati, P.R. It’s a local hangout, especially on Thursday nights when it stays open late to accommodate our art walk through town.
JUICE
The best juices in Rincónpassion-fruit-mint iced tea and fresh orange juiceare at a small inn called La Rosa Inglesa (413 Carretera Bo. Ensenada; 823-4032), which also has the best breakfast: Get the eggs Benedict topped with salmon.
Where the Locals Would Stay
One of my favorite cheap places is the Dos Angeles del Mar Guesthouse (from $97; dosangelesdelmar.com), run by my friend John Barski. Located near Sandy Beach, it’s where surfers on a budgetbut with good tastestay. Clay Burnsed, co-owner of Ode to the Elephants restaurant
Casa Isleña is a nine-room inn (from $145; casaislena.com) in a renovated home right on the water on the north side of the lighthouse. Most of the action is by the pool and at the bustling bar-restaurant, the Island House. Bryan Carson, charter sea captain, author of Bula: Sailing Across the Pacific
At the Horned Dorset Primavera (above; from $470; horneddorset.com), each of the 16 suites, which are done up in a Mozarabic style, has its own patio overlooking the Straits of Moña. It’s more relaxed than when it opened in 1987when no children under 12 were allowedbut still elegant. Casey Moul, co-owner, the Mango Beach ShopProsecutors have charged three former Barclays bankers in connection with the rigging of global interest rates.
The U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office, which prosecutes complex cases of fraud, said Monday that it's started criminal proceedings against Peter Charles Johnson, Jonathan James Mathew and Stylianos Contogoulas in connection with manipulating the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.
All three have been charged with conspiring to defraud between June 2005 and August 2007.
The scandal began in the middle of 2012, when Barclays (BCS) admitted to manipulating Libor, which together with related rates is used as a benchmark for trillions of dollars of financial products around the world.
The U.K.-based bank declined to comment.
Related: EU fines banks record $2.3 billion over Libor
Barclays paid more than $450 million in 2012, as part of a settlement with U.S. and U.K. regulators. Other big banks have also paid hefty penalties for their role in the scandal, which so far has cost the industry about $6 billion.
The SFO had previously brought Libor-related charges against former UBS (UBS) and Citigroup (C) banker Tom Hayes, along with Terry Farr and James Gilmour, who both worked for brokerage RP Martin. All three have pleaded not guilty.
The U.K. probe is running parallel to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which last year charged three former employees of U.K.-based brokerage ICAP (IAPLY) with actions related to Libor rigging. The U.S. has also indicted Roger Darin, another former UBS employee.
Related: Bigger than Libor? Forex probe hangs over banks
U.S. government-backed Fannie Mae (FNMA) sued nine banks in October, arguing it lost money on mortgages and interest rate swaps when Libor rates were set artificially low. U.S. law firms are also leading civil actions on behalf of investors who claim they lost out due to the market manipulation.
Regulators and legal authorities continue to pursue other individuals and banks.
The European Commission said in December that it was still going after HSBC (HBCYF), Credit Agricole (CRARF), JP Morgan (JPMPRD) and ICAP.***Edit***: This post went up with words clipped and shortened. I’m not sure why, but the intended draft is below. Sorry for the weirdness.
…
Yesterday, President Obama rightly disciplined two I.R.S. employees for unfairly targeting conservative groups and the IRS’ acting director Steven Miller resigned. Wonderful. I’m glad someone’s taking the fall. (***Edit***: Looking back, it’s unclear what role Miller had in any of this, so while it’s good to see action, this is really more symbolic than anything else.)
However, there’s another scandal that’s been taking place at the IRS and it’s gone completely under the radar.
Last October (and years before that, too), on “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” more than 1,500 pastors endorsed a candidate for President during church in complete violation of the law. They did it openly and proudly, people documented them doing it, the material was sent to the I.R.S. … and nothing happened.
Past of the reason is bureaucracy. A “high-level” employee had to authorize the audits and there was no one around who fit that description. There appeared to be no rush to fill that position, either.
These activities are not permitted. No tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization — religious or non-religious — can engage in behaviors designed to intervene in an election by endorsing or opposing a candidate. This is so because one of the conditions of tax exemption (which is very lucrative benefit) is that the groups holding it must refrain from this type of overt partisan politicking. But some houses of worship do it anyway. They openly violate the law and even brag about it… … If the IRS wants to be more aggressive and crack down on law-breakers, it need not spend time subjecting Tea Party groups to extra scrutiny because someone decides their names raise red flags or an official frets that they might possibly step over some political lines. That’s all theoretical. Meanwhile, there are houses of worship breaking the law right now by endorsing or opposing candidates. That’s not theoretical. They are doing it. And they’re doing it openly.
of Americans United for Separation of Church and State explains why this is such a big deal
We’re talking about |
die for “the cause.” It’s not clear how many of Trump’s supporters would fit that description. But Trump himself may have characterized his most fervid followers when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Eric Hoffer might well have called those voters Trump’s “true believers.”Being able to access digital content in the coming decades could be less of an issue than one of the ‘fathers of the internet’ has implied.
What is 'bit rot' and is Vint Cerf right to be worried?
Vint Cerf, Google’s vice-president and one of the fathers of the internet, has warned that “bit rot” could lead to a “forgotten century” as our masses of digital files are lost to progress and become unreadable as technology evolves.
Cerf said that the applications to read files are being lost because they will no longer run on newer computers, rendering some files unintelligible and the data, memories and important happenings they contain lost to future generations.
But is this really a problem, and if so, what is the solution?
An age-old problem
Loss of important memories and content is not a new problem. Since the inception of video, recorded memories have been lost because the equipment to play them has either broken or been lost.
Can you recommend a device to make copies of old VHS tapes? Read more
The VHS tape is a good example. Many people may still have family movies recorded on tape. While they are still likely to works if kept away from magnets, when was the last time you saw a VHS tape player, or even a TV with a scart socket to take the video input?
This loss of machines capable of playing back our recorded memories is essentially what Cerf is talking about in a digital, file-driven age. But what his comments fail to take into account is that once safely archived, files are a lot easier to play back decades later than something physical that needs a specific machine.
What is ‘bit rot’?
What Cerf coined as “bit rot” is a process by which the mechanisms for accessing a digital file are lost, rending that file useless junk. A big part of the problem is the use of closed file formats that require specific software to read those files.
If, for instance, you have memoirs written over the last decade stored in a Microsoft Office.doc file from Word or a similar program, that file is easily readable today with a multitude of programs - not all of them made by Microsoft. But the.doc file is a proprietary file format made and licensed by Microsoft.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest In 1985, not even Bill Gates knew that computers would not feature 5.25 inch floppy disk drives forever. Photograph: Deborah Feingold/Corbis
Should Microsoft choose to stop supporting it and prevented other software from using the format, all those documents would be unreadable once the last version of the old software that could read them no longer runs on newer computers.
That is the danger of closed, proprietary formats and something consumers should be aware of. However, it is much less of an issue for most people because the majority of the content they collect as they move through life will be documented in widely supported, more open formats.
Photos, videos, emails and text documents
Photos, for instance, are invariably stored as jpeg files. Any image application worth using today supports jpeg files and that is highly unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.
Even if new, improved image formats are adopted, hundreds of applications will still be able to access jpegs.
How can I organise all my digital photos? Read more
A similar situation exists for video files. The current video standards, although relying on patented technology, are open and available to use in any program should developers see fit. Licensing fees may apply for some programs, but because the video format is standardised and not tied to one company, applications will be able to play those video files for decades.
Email, text documents and other simpler file formats consumers use beyond the Microsoft office files are also less likely to suffer from bit rot. One issue they may face is that the majority of documents and media stored online are locked on company servers. Some like Facebook and Google allow users to export those files, but there may come a time when those companies fold and with them go a user’s digital memories.
The bigger issues with digital files stored locally are faced by institutions rather than individuals.
Many organisations, from government and council services to small business and multinational conglomerates, all use proprietary software to create and their documents. It is these files, when archived for posterity, that could become an issue as the software that created them is no longer supported and the computer systems that ran them need to be replaced.
What can be done?
The solution to most of these issues is to adopt open standards for files. Almost all the important ways of storing information have open formats that anyone can use and build software to use freely.
The difficulty is that commercial software developers, such as Microsoft and its Office suite, have no incentive to use open formats because they allow companies, users and its customers to switch systems wholesale and still be able to operate.
The same solution that will allow generations to open files for posterity is the same solution that is most difficult to convince software vendors to adopt.
Beyond the file formats, ageing software and bit rot, there is a bigger problem that historians of the future will face: what is actually important?
Apart from the issues of physical preservation, translation and interpretation, looking back at letters and manuscripts from the time of Archimedes is made simpler by the fact that the volume of those letters is several orders of magnitude smaller than the electronic conveyances we fire off without thought today.
Sifting through the millions of emails, photos and videos that are easy and essentially free to create today will be the biggest challenge, and not one with an obvious solution. Our lives have benefitted greatly from the freedom of communication, but historians are going to have a hard job making sense of it all.Given our focus as a blog, I didn’t want to let another week go by without acknowledging the passing of Hans Rosling.
When I first heard the news, via BBC’s More of Less podcast, I was so sad to think that we’ve lost such a great communicator of statistics. Listening to this memorial podcast, which is well worth a listen, my mind went back to memories of TED talks by Hans and the passion with which he educated on public health.
Beyond the legacy that Hans has left in the field of public health, however, he has also left a legacy for Customer Insight Leaders.
If you have not previously seen Hans present data visualisations, or bring his analysis to life with props as diverse as toilet rolls or sword swallowing, you really must. Do yourself a favour and check out some of his best TED talks.
The magic of Hans Rosling presenting statistics
So, before sharing a couple of obituaries that do justice to a life well lived. Let me start this blog post by sharing a couple of Hans’ TED talks.
Hopefully these will give you a good idea of his genius & inspire you & your team to be both more creative and more passionate when presenting your analysis. It could well be argued that Hans brought the use of animated data visualisations into the mainstream, he certainly did in his field of public health data.
Here are two of his best:
It is hard not to weep at the loss of such a brilliant talent & man passionate about overcoming ignorance about topics that really matter.
But, we can be thankful that his commitment to education and digital media, which mean we continue to have so many examples to watch and learn from.
Hans Rosling, a life well lived
Hans was much more than just being a relevant example, for customer insight leaders, and to inspire analysts seeking to use data visualisation. It has been heart warming to learn more about his back story and the difference he made to so many public health challenges through his courage & commitment to tackling ignorance with data.
Here is that More or Less podcast, in which Tim Harford and his team do a great job of reflecting on all Hans achieved & his charming personality:
Hans Rosling – the Extraordinary Life of a Statistical Guru, More or Less – BBC World Service A huge hole was left in the world this week with the death of the Swedish statistician Han Rosling. He was a master communicator whose captivating presentations on global development were watched by millions.
For those with more time to read, this obituary in the Guardian does justice to the richness of Hans’ life experience and the legacy he leaves:
Hans Rosling, statistician and development champion, dies aged 68 It was his first Ted talk that thrust renowned Swedish academic Hans Rosling into the international spotlight in 2006, billed as the man in whose hands data sings. Since then, the statistician more likely to illustrate an idea with a few multi-coloured lego bricks than a PowerPoint has been described as everything from a data guru to a Jedi master of data visualisation.
How can we learn from Hans Rosling?
My initial response to the question is two-fold. First, to share his passionate commitment to tackling misconceptions & prejudice through showing people the real data. Second, by keeping people engaged when you show them the data by ‘making it sing‘ (through your use of creative data visualisation & enthusiasm for the subject). Let’s continue his commitment to making statistics & analysis fun.
But, I would be remiss if I ended this post without also mentioning the foundation that Hans founded to continue his vital public health education work. GapMinder:
Gapminder Imagine the world as a street. All houses are lined up by income, the poor living to the left and the rich to the right. Everybody else somewhere in between. Where would you live? Would your life look different than your neighbours’ from other parts of the world, who share the same income level?
There are so many engaging & surprising videos, presentations & data visualisations are available at the GapMinder site. “Dollar Street” it well worth walking down & you can even download the software Hans uses for his animated data visualisations. Plus, in the same spirit of openness & generosity, all the data used in Hans’ presentations is available for download.
Engaging videos, surprising data visualisations & publicly available data. Plus, a cause that continues to change minds & public policies. A fitting tribute to a man who actually deserves the title ‘legend‘.
Farewell, Hans & thanks for all you have taught us, through your skills & your character.
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Like this: Like Loading...NEW DELHI — Hundreds of Maoist guerrillas ambushed a convoy of top state political leaders in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh on Saturday and killed at least 27 people, including three leaders of the nationally dominant Indian National Congress Party.
The attackers blocked the road by felling trees, forcing the convoy of vehicles to a halt, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. The guerrillas set off a land mine that blew up one of the stopped vehicles, and then they opened fire on those remaining. Officials estimated that 200 to 300 guerrillas were involved.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the attack “as a dastardly and anti-democratic act,” and the Congress Party president, Sonia Gandhi, said the ambush was “an attack on democratic values.”
“We are shocked, astounded and pained by the attack on our colleagues in Chhattisgarh,” Mrs. Gandhi said.Written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections.
One hundred-fifty years ago, in the late spring of 1863, the news was troubling for Federal forces as they awaited an invasion of the northern states by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The hope was that Major General Ulysses S. Grant, operating with some independence in the West, could accomplish his goal of gaining full control of the Mississippi River. Standing in the way was the Confederate outpost at Vicksburg. Grant’s determined pursuit of this goal included attempting to build a canal to bypass the stronghold, a frontal assault on the city, the laying of mines under Confederate barricades, and bombardment from gunboats. He finally settled into a relentless siege of the city.
As the siege of Vicksburg began in the third week of May 1863, General Grant’s troops dug themselves into over 60,000 feet of trenches around the works protecting the city. Stationed in nearby dugouts and forced to conserve ammunition, the Confederate defenders could only trade nightly gibes and barter for coffee and newspapers with their besiegers. Civilians shoveled themselves into more commodious hillside caves, an arrangement the Union soldiers dubbed “Prairie Dog Village.” The non-combatants usually managed to escape the exploding shells but suffered most from the food and water shortages.
Confederate survivors of the siege of Vicksburg contended that most civilians were as generous as they could be but that, as the wealthy had been able to flee, the danger of starvation fell to the indigent and to abandoned Confederate army horses. Survivors would also recall the multiple terrors of incendiary shells, Federal sharpshooters firing on anyone who approached the river for water, and newly-designed Parrott missiles so rapid that they arrived even before the report of the gun could be heard.
Also fired was a bit of psychological warfare in the form of a printed circular beginning, “Cave in boys and save your lives, which are considered of no value by your officers.”
A Union officer claimed that 300 leaflets were fired in bombshells into Confederate lines with the hope that a few would arrive intact and help break the resolve of the besieged. It may be more likely that the small papers were floated in balloons. In any case, the Confederates apparently saw none of them, but this one—likely never fired or floated—survives in the New-York Historical Society collections.
In a city where the besieged citizens and soldiers lacked for food and water, the shortage of paper would have been of relatively small concern, but the editor of the Vicksburg Daily Citizen also had to be resourceful.
Like newspaper publishers elsewhere in the Confederacy, he issued his newspaper on the blank side of bolts of wallpaper. The paper’s tone is one of defiance as it reports on the success of Robert E. Lee marching toward Gettysburg (“To-day Maryland is ours, tomorrow Pennsylvania will be, and the next day Ohio”).
Editor J. M. Swords ridicules the “Yankee Generalissimo” Grant’s ambition to dine in Vicksburg on the Fourth of July by reminding the general that he would have to “catch the rabbit” first. He assures the citizens that “there is plenty within our lines” and that “Confederate beef,” i.e., mule meat, is “sweet, savory and tender.” This rare surviving newspaper, dated July 2, 1863, was found set in type in the printing office when, on July 4, the city capitulated and Federal forces entered after 47 days of siege. Not losing an opportunity to put out the news, the Union troops reissued the paper with this addendum in the lower right corner:
Note. Two days bring about great changes. The banner of the Union floats over Vicksburg. Gen. Grant has “caught the rabbit;” he has dined in Vicksburg, and he did bring his dinner with him. The “Citizen” lives to see it. For the last time it appears on “Wall-paper.” No more will it eulogize the luxury of mule-meat and fricasseed kitten—urge Southern warriors to such diet never more. This is the last wall-paper edition, and is, excepting this note, from the types as we found them. It will be valuable here-after as a curiosity.
As for the citizens of Vicksburg, Mississippi, tradition states that they did not celebrate the Fourth of July for decades.Caution: If you haven't played it yet, this post contains spoilers for Dragon Quest V.
The mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s were a tough time to be a Dragon Quest fan living in America. The venerable Japanese RPG series was (and still is) popular to the point of ubiquity in its home country, but lackluster sales for the first four games (all released for the NES under the Dragon Warrior moniker) combined with the shuttering of publisher Enix's North American branch in 1995 meant that American gamers never got English-language localizations of the series' Super Nintendo games.
That's a real shame, too, because Dragon Quest V and VI are two of the strongest entries in a franchise that hits more often than it misses—it's the fifth entry that I want to draw your attention to. Before it was finally released by Square Enix on the Nintendo DS in early 2009, the only way to play Dragon Quest V was to learn to read Japanese, or to play one of the fan translations of the game that cropped up on the Internet in the early 2000s—this is how I was introduced to what remains one of my favorite games, and an excellent example of what an old-school role-playing game can be.
This time, it's personal
Japanese RPGs don't do things by halves. Video games in general have a tendency toward save-the-world boilerplate storylines, but other genres don't have a patch on the JRPG. You're always a ragtag band of misfits, and the fate of the world always hangs in the balance—that's also true in Dragon Quest V, but the game's story is much more personal than that.
Previous Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games began with a young hero (or heroes) setting out on a dangerous quest, often infused with forced epic-ness from the outset—normally a king would tell you that the world needed saving and that you were the one to do it and sent you on your merry way. Dragon Quest V begins with your father pacing the room impatiently, eagerly awaiting your birth.
Flash forward a few years, but not all the way to adulthood. You spend the first few hours of the game as a young child, following your dad around while he has adventures that are neither explained to you at the time nor shown onscreen. Rather than working toward the world's salvation, you spend your childhood having kid-sized adventures: exploring a local cave, sneaking out with friends at night, and generally whooping monsters while your well-meaning but oft-distracted father is looking the other way.
The first sign of world-saving comes when your father, on his deathbed, tells you that he's been searching for a legendary hero, but even against this new heightened backdrop the game's story stays squarely focused on the hero: over the course of the game, you gr ow into adulthood, get married, and have your own children. By the time the game is done, your kids are just a bit older than you were in the early hours of the game, and your wife and kids don't just stay at home. They're all valuable members of your party, and in a small but neatly genre-bending twist, your character isn't actually the legendary hero your dad was looking for—it's actually your son.
The genius of Dragon Quest V's story is that even though you're saving the world, you're given unusually personal reasons for doing so. You need to find the Legendary Hero, but along the way you also need to avenge your father, save your wife, protect your kids, and find out just what happened to your mom. A story that easily could have been as generic as they come becomes a neatly circular tale about growing up and coming into your own, and it was all the more impressive for taking place against a dated-even-for-the-time 16-bit backdrop.
Ahead of its time, despite being a bit behind the times
Dragon Quest is known for its vigorous adherence to traditions and conventions, and the fifth entry in the series looks much like the first. You've got a top-down view, sprites with personality but limited animations, and a simple first-person perspective to the battle sequences. The DS remake (and gorgeous Japan-only PS2 remake) at least added monster animations, but in the SNES version you were still battling static sprites that didn't look all that different from their 8-bit predecessors. The nested, text-based menu system is also an archaic mess, and the DS's touchscreen is sadly under-utilized in the remake. Whether you find these anachronisms charming or lazy will depend on your sensitivity to nostalgia.
For a game that's so aggressively old school in many of its trappings, Dragon Quest V pioneered a surprising number of conventions we now take for granted. When you get married, you're asked to choose between a rich man's daughter and a childhood friend—a branching path that subtly effects how the rest of the story plays out. Games like Mass Effect and Skyrim offer infinitely more sophisticated paths your character can take, but Dragon Quest V plants some of those seeds. Your digital wife also gets pregnant and gives birth years before sim games like Natsume's Harvest Moon would make this a lynchpin of their gameplay (not that the conception is shown onscreen or anything).
The more far-reaching innovation involves monster catching. For the first time, the player could tame a large section of Dragon Quest's colorful Akira Toriyama-designed bestiary, and those monsters could participate in battle, level up, and be equipped with new weapons and armor just as would any member of your party. The original SNES game offered only about 65 monsters to capture, but this one gameplay mechanic—which is introduced quite a few hours into the game and isn't even integral to finishing it, since you're given plenty of human characters to use in your party—launched many successful franchises that took the idea and ran with it.
Pokemon, released four years after Dragon Quest in 1996, is the biggest and most obvious example, but any of the monster catching games that followed in its wake have their roots in Dragon Quest V. Indeed, in the wake of Pokemon's success Enix (and, later, Square Enix) began the Dragon Quest Monsters series, its own dedicated monster-catching spin-off games that incorporate some of Pokemon's ideas but also add many of Dragon Quest's unique herbs and spices for a much different feel.
It's possible that a new player approaching Dragon Quest V today would be turned off by how old some of it feels—even the DS remake retains the terrible menus of the original, and the graphics are a blend of 2D sprites and 3D backgrounds that don't always gel. For all of that, it remains one of my favorite games (and one of the best in the franchise) because the more intimate story and blend of genres that made it feel unique next to its contemporaries also help to keep it fresh and varied compared to the overblown, overly linear latter-day Final Fantasy games of recent years. Its relative simplicity also makes it more approachable than other games with an old-school bent, specifically those from Japanese developer Atlus. It's an old game, but it has aged gracefully, an it's just as worthy of your attention now as it was back in 1992.Crazy Shaysie earned himself the wrath of sports fans for weighing in on the Clemens/McNamee controversy in advance of the actual hearings in the New York Post:
“I hope and pray Roger is telling the truth,” said Shays, who met with Clemens privately last week. “He’s a sports icon. He’s a remarkable player. Brian McNamee is, frankly, kind of sleazy. I hope he’s the one that is lying. I hope someone who a lot of Americans look up to is telling the truth.”
Now Shays is taking a public flogging at the hands of WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog, who not only endorsed Jim Himes today but gave him so much free media today it’s sort of embarassing:
Mad Dog: "Here’s the thing about Shays. I’m gonna go out of my way in November. We’re gonna get him the hell out of Connecticut. We’re gonna get Himes in there."
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO
Shays has a fabulous history with sports testimony:
Shays, R-Conn., was ridiculed in the media for getting facts about baseball and sports history wrong and incorrectly pronouncing the name of former slugger Rafael Palmeiro. "I was simply rushing through," Shays says. "Obviously, it is embarrassing, but that’s not the issue. I have been in this business a long time, and I have learned not to sweat the small stuff." Shays, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, referred to the 1919 Chicago White Sox team that threw the World Series as the "Blackhawks" — the National Hockey League team — instead of the Black Sox. He pronounced Palmeiro as "Palmeree," and talked about Palmeiro’s 300th career hit instead of his 3,000th career hit. Palmeiro appeared before the committee in 2005.
They offered to hold a picnic and encouraged people to max out to Jim, who is greeting their listeners on his website now.
Talk about your golden endorsements.The Metal Slug Super Vehicle tank was made from an Imaginext Robot Police Tank by Fisher Price. It had lights and blue robot arms but those were removed, filled in with Apoxie Sculpt, and smoothed over. It's easy to unscrew and open up to part out for painting. I created a domed top, scratch-built the side machine guns from abs tubing and Glyos parts, used a Hero Factory chest for the back chassis system. On that system are the exhaust made from Sigma 6 Duke wind-up gun barrels and ML Heroes Reborn Iron Man pipes and random parts for the twin tubes and antenna.
The workin light on top is a Neo Shifters light-up head with a custom case built around it, fodder parts for the roof vent, sculpted 3-hole side vents from Apoxie sculpt, added Spawn Interlink feet jets for the 4 side pegs, and various fodder parts or Modeling Support Goods hobby parts for detail.
Marco and Tarma were made from GI Joes, who I'm not sure because I put them together from loose parts. Unfortunately I've long since forgotten what lower leg goes to who or what arm is what. Their vests were created simply from RoC Cobra Commander jackets and their heads were custom sculpts from Trigate where I resculpted their hair and facial features. A Xevoz boxing glove helped make Tarma's backpack puncher and an Iron Man flame blast/Sigma 6 rocket used for Marco's RAWKIT LAWNCHAIR.
The tank's main cannon blast was a mix of an Avatar Fire nation accessory and ML Centurion Iron Man missile tip. The side cannon blasts are ML War Machine feet blasts.
Basecoat on the tank is Tamiya spray lacquer Lin Grey (it'll take a whole can, about $6) and then hand-detailed with various Testors Model Master Acrylic and Formula p3 paints. The tank makes sounds when you press the button on the main cannon and rolls on hidden wheels.
You can find the Imaginext Robot Police tank most places like Target/Walmart or if you're lucky on sale at Marshalls/TJ Maxx for just $9! It's such a perfect take off of the Metal Slug vehicle I'm absolutely sure the designers at Fisher Price are fans of the series.(CNN) Hillary Clinton can't afford to ignore Bernie Sanders any longer. She has a serious problem on her hands. Sanders is showing that his campaign poses a genuine threat. He is drawing massive crowds months before the caucuses and primaries begin and without much of a staff to speak of.
The media has been drawn to his message and last week he even won the endorsement of the largest nurses union, National Nurses United. Given that candidates in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary tend to benefit heavily from enthusiastic grassroots organizing, it is possible to imagine Sen. Sanders scoring two shocking victories that would send HRC into a tailspin.
Although a CNN poll in Iowa shows Clinton significantly ahead of her Democratic opponents at this early stage, a New Hampshire poll created concern with Sanders doing better than Clinton in that early primary state.
The ongoing story about her emails has also fueled serious concerns among supporters about whether scandals will consume the Clinton campaign. Now Vice President Joe Biden is considering entering the race, a move which would potentially cut directly into Clinton's natural base of support.
What should Hillary Clinton do about the Sanders candidacy? Without question, she will be prodded to attack more ferociously. She will be told that the only way to defeat opponents is to destroy them. Remembering what happened to Clinton in 2008 when she underestimated Barack Obama, her staff will certainly push her to strike soon and to effectively bring Sanders' run for the presidency to a quick end.
Though the temptation to savage an opponent is always strong, Hillary Clinton might also want to draw lessons from the fervor that is propelling the Sanders campaign and incorporate some of his strategies into her own playbook.
Rather than only seeing Sanders as an adversary, she should view the Sanders campaign as one that can offer her the competitive push that she needs to electrify her campaign with new ideas.
At the heart of the Bernie Sanders campaign is an unabashed call for Democrats to adhere to their ideological traditions. For much of the 20th century, the Democratic party was about using the federal government to solve major social problems and to build the infrastructure of the nation. At some level, the promise was that simple.
Since the New Deal, Democrats have turned to government to assist the poor, to boost and protect wage earners, and to grow the middle class. The federal government regulated banks so that average Americans could have confidence in the financial system, and provided a social safety net on which everyone could count in hard times.
The federal government was also the solution to ending racial segregation and protecting voting rights. When the elderly needed health care, Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats provided that protection through federal programs called Medicare and Medicaid. Sanders has spent much of his time on the campaign trail talking about what government does well. His supporters have been responding.
Hillary Clinton has been listening. In recent weeks, she has offered some more assertive and specific proposals on issues such as inequality, unaffordable education and dealing with climate change. But she will need to do much more, to embrace a full-throated belief in the value of government.
Clinton needs to make this a central campaign theme -- highlighting the Democratic confidence in government as a fundamental difference between her and whoever the Republican nominee might be.
One of the most inspired moments in her campaign thus far came at the National Urban League conference in Miami when she surprised Jeb Bush at an event, questioning his determination to achieve racial justice by talking about the ways in which Republicans have not shown any commitment to the programs that can achieve that goal.
Mocking his "Right to Rise" super PAC, Clinton said: "People can't rise if they can't afford health care. They can't rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can't rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education."
Hillary Clinton must also use the Sanders campaign as an opportunity to be reminded that, like in 2008, the grassroots remains at the heart of political campaigns. This is not simply about having a shrewd campaign strategy or instructing advisers in Brooklyn to set up the correct networks in Iowa.
JUST WATCHED Sanders' campaign manager: He speaks to what people feel Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Sanders' campaign manager: He speaks to what people feel 02:13
Rather, nurturing the grassroots is about hitting the campaign trail with the kind of fervor that most candidates reserve for fundraising. Like Sanders, she needs to literally immerse herself into the crowds and deliver passionate speeches that resonate with voters. Her campaign team needs to make her appearances real political events where like-minded voters and activists can come together to fight for a cause.
She needs to open up and to be direct -- unafraid of the media spin -- in the same manner that Sanders has employed when he takes on the power of big business or blasts a broken political process.
Clinton must also be sure to emphasize the historic and distinct nature of her campaign. One of the most remarkable aspects of Sanders is that he is proud to be running far left of center in an era when liberalism has been under constant attack. He sees his campaign as a major effort to defend the legacy of these ideals in a more conservative era of politics.
Besides championing a clear set of values, Hillary Clinton should not downplay the fact that the election of a female president, and of someone who has always been a strong champion of government policies to help women in the workforce and in the family, would be a historic breakthrough in this country just like the election of the first African-American.
The GOP has made a series of mistakes, ranging from Donald Trump's nasty comments about Megyn Kelly to Jeb Bush's remark about government funding for women's issues revealing the tensions within the party about dealing with policy issues that matter to female voters.
If Clinton embraces this part of her campaign -- which her critics such as Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed as the "gender card" -- she could energize millions of voters who might otherwise be lukewarm about her campaign.
In a country that took over a century to give women the right to vote and in a political system where sexism remains a huge problem, the election of Hillary Clinton would be a historic milestone.
Clinton should clearly be scared. Yet seen from the right perspective, Sanders offers her a great opportunity to become stronger just as the nation heads into the formal phase of the campaign.UPDATE 21/11/15 11:38am: Just how much faster is the PS2 emulator compared to original hardware? We've just posted this extensive analysis using the three games we have available.
UPDATE 20/11/15 8:41am: Overnight, Sony has confirmed PlayStation 2 emulation for PS4, but is remaining tight-lipped on its plans for the project. "We are working on utilising PS2 emulation technology to bring PS2 games forward to the current generation," Sony told Wired. "We have nothing further to comment at this point in time."
Original story: It's been a long time since we first reported that classic PS1 and PS2 titles were heading to PlayStation 4, running under emulation. It's been so long in fact, that we began to wonder whether Sony had shelved the project. The company originally informed developers of the existence of the emulator at the same time it briefed them on the planned rollout for the PlayStation Now cloud service, way back in January 2014. Since then, the only hints at its existence came in the form of some telling PEGI game ratings, along with some sightings of PS2 classics appearing in shared media lists during the PS4 firmware 3.0 beta phase.
As it happens, the PlayStation 4's PS2 emulator is now available, released with no fanfare whatsoever. A new PS4 Star Wars bundle has been released, including a package of four 'classic' franchise titles: Super Star Wars, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, Star Wars: Racer Revenge and Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. All four titles are supplied via a single PSN code, as opposed to a physical disc included with the hardware. You'll note that three of those titles hail from the PlayStation 2 era, and after we downloaded them, it became clear that all of them are running under emulation.
How can we tell? First of all, a system prompt appears telling you that select and start buttons are mapped to the left and right sides of the Dual Shock 4's trackpad. Third party game developers cannot access the system OS in this manner. Secondly, just like the PS2 emulator on PlayStation 3, there's an emulation system in place for handling PS2 memory cards. Thirdly, the classic PlayStation 2 logo appears in all of its poorly upscaled glory when you boot each title. And finally, all in-game button prompts relate to the PS2's controller - nothing has been changed at all, effectively ruling out a remaster.
Upscaling? Probably not what you wanted to hear bearing in mind that older titles haven't aged well visually, and a disappointing result bearing in mind that our initial information said that Sony would be emulating these titles in high definition. Well, there's both good and bad news here. All 2D artwork in every title gets the upscaling treatment - there's nothing that can be done about that, and it can look pretty ropey. However, the 3D elements are substantially improved and do get a resolution increase.
A video walkthrough of the PlayStation 2 emulator running on PS4. It's looking really impressive - it's just a shame we have such mediocre titles to test it with.
Original PlayStation 2 titles ran at a range of pixel counts, but 512x448 and 640x448 were commonplace (God of War 2 even let you choose between the two). It's still early days in our analysis, but first impressions suggest that the emulator resolves a native resolution of 1292x896. Two black lines are added top and bottom to the image, before receiving a final upscale up to full 1080p. In effect, we're looking at around 4x the pixel count - possibly higher, depending on the title. Texture filtering also looks improved, but on close inspection we think that the increased quality is probably down to the extra resolution alone.
Overall impressions are positive - there's little that can be done to improve the quality of 2D assets, but the improvements to the 3D side of things are welcome. It looks like some kind of post-process effect is in place mimicking anti-aliasing - edges are surprisingly smooth, and there's little in the way of shimmer. Oh, and there's one more addition worthy of note: trophy support is added to the emulator - something we can confirm having unlocked one while playing Racer Revenge. On the face of it, this may seem to rule out emulation (trophies were never in the original games) - but this patent explains how it is done. Essentially, it seems the emulator tracks certain 'trigger' conditions required for specific trophies to activate - we expect that it is tracking the game state as you play.
Moving on, the outstanding question is one of performance. We've got some substantial improvements to image quality, but do the games run as they should - or dare we hope, better? It's early days right now. In truth it's been a while since we analysed PS2 titles, and getting a clean 480p feed isn't easy - even with backward compatible PS3s in the house. However, it's certainly looking promising. The emulator is clearly running these games more smoothly, with Jedi Starfighter hitting 60fps while the game running on PS2 hardware has nothing like that level of output.
Here's Star Wars: Racer Revenge running on PS4 under emulation, and on original hardware - well, the original PS2 chipset incorporated into a hardware backward compatible PlayStation 3. Note the increased resolution. It's particularly evident on the cables in the centre of the image. We thought that enhanced texture filtering might be in play on the emulator, but this Racer Revenge image shows fairly clearly that it's the same - PS4 just looks much better owing to the improved pixel-count. |
.[3] She continued to perform and make appearances well into her 90s, singing songs from her repertoire and sharing stories with fans, cabaret style. She released an autobiography, Just Lucky I Guess, in 2002, and Larger Than Life, a documentary film about her career, was released in 2012.[4]
Early life [ edit ]
Channing was born in Seattle, Washington, on January 31, 1921,[5] the only child of Adelaide (née Glaser; 1886–1984) and George Channing (1888–1957). Her father, who was born George Christian Stucker, was multiracial (African-American and Caucasian) and changed his surname[why?] before Carol's birth. He became a Christian Science practitioner, editor and teacher.[6][7] George Channing's mother, Clara, was African-American, and his father, George Stucker, was the son of German immigrants. Carol's maternal grandparents, Otto Glaser and Paulina Ottmann, were both of German origin.[8]:50 A city editor at The Seattle Star, he took a job in San Francisco and the family moved to California when Channing was two years old.[6][7]
Channing attended Aptos Junior High School and Lowell High School in San Francisco, graduating in 1938. She won the Crusaders' Oratorical Contest and a free trip to Hawaii with her mother in June 1937.[9] When she was 16, she left home to attend Bennington College in Vermont and her mother told her for the first time that her father's mother was African American and his father was German American.[8][10]:8 Her mother felt that the time was right to tell her since now that she was going off to college and would be on her own, she didn't want her to be surprised if she ever had a black baby.[8]:8[11][12][13][a] Channing wrote:
I know it's true the moment I sing and dance. I'm proud as can be of [my black ancestry]. It's one of the great strains in show business. I'm so grateful. My father was a very dignified man and as white as I am. My [paternal] grandparents were Nordic German, so apparently I [too] took after them [in appearance].[13]
Channing publicly revealed her African-American ancestry in 2002.[16]
Channing majored in drama at Bennington and during an interview in 1994 admitted that she first wanted to perform on stage as a singer when she was in the fourth grade. She recalled being emotionally drawn to the stage after seeing Ethel Waters perform.[17]
Channing stated that in the fourth grade she ran for and was elected class secretary: "I stood up in class and campaigned by kidding the teachers. The other kids laughed. I loved the feeling — it was a very good feeling; it still is." She read the class minutes every Friday, often impersonating the children who were discussed.[18] She also considers the fact that she was able to see plays while very young to have been an important inspiration:
I was lucky enough to grow up in San Francisco and it was the best theater town that Sol Hurok knew and he brought everybody from all over the world and we schoolchildren got to see them with just 50-cent tickets.[19]
Her election to class secretary continued through grammar and high school: "It was very good training—like stock"[18] Those weekly sessions in front of students became a habit which she carried to Bennington College, where she would entertain every Friday night. During her junior year she began trying out for acting parts on Broadway. After playing a small part in revue, The New Yorker magazine noted her performance: "You'll be hearing more from a comedienne named Carol Channing."[18] The inspiration she received from that brief notice made her decide to quit school. However, it was four years before she found another acting job. During that period she performed at small functions or benefits, including some in the Catskill resorts. She also worked in Macy's bakery.[18]
Career [ edit ]
Channing was introduced to the stage while helping her mother deliver newspapers to the backstage of theatres.[b]
Her first job on stage in New York City was in Marc Blitzstein's No for an Answer, starting January 1941, at the Mecca Temple (later New York City Center). She was 19 years old. Channing moved to Broadway for Let's Face It!, in which she was an understudy for Eve Arden, who was 13 years older than Channing. Decades later, Arden would play the title role in Hello Dolly! in a road company after Channing finally relinquished her signature role.[citation needed]
Finding roles that suit the strange and wonderful charms of Carol Channing has always been a problem to Broadway showmen. She looks like an overgrown kewpie. She sings like a moon-mad hillbilly. Her dancing is crazily comic. And behind her saucer eyes is a kind of gentle sweetness that pleads for affection. Life magazine cover story, 1955[21]
Five years later, Channing had a featured role in Lend an Ear (1948), for which she received her Theatre World Award and launched her as a star performer. Channing credited illustrator Al Hirschfeld for helping make her a star when he put her image in his widely published illustrations.[22] She said that his drawing of her as a flapper was what helped her get the lead in her next play, the Jule Styne and Anita Loos musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. From that role, as Lorelei Lee, she gained recognition, with her signature song from the production, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," among the most widely known.[23][24]
In January 1950, Time magazine ran a cover story about her becoming a new star on Broadway, followed by cover stories in Life magazine in 1955 and 1964.[25][26][c][d][e][f]
In 1956, Channing married her manager and publicist Charles Lowe. During the 1950s, he produced the Burns and Allen comedy show, which starred George Burns and Gracie Allen.[27] When Allen was forced to discontinue performing due to her heart ailments, she saw that Burns was in need of a partner to play off of on stage since he was best as a straight man. She remembered that Channing, like her, had one of the most distinctive and recognizable voices in show business, and Lowe asked Channing if she would perform with Burns during his shows. She accepted immediately, and Channing worked on and off with Burns through the late 1950s. Burns also appeared in her TV special, An Evening with Carol Channing, in 1966.[28]
In 1961, Channing became one of the few performers nominated for a Tony Award for work in a revue (rather than a traditional book musical); she was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for the short-lived revue Show Girl.[29]
Channing came to national prominence as the star of Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! (1964). Her performance as Dolly Levi won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She recalled that playwright Thornton Wilder so loved the musical, which was based on his play, The Matchmaker, that he came once a week.[27] He also planned to rewrite his 1942 play The Skin of Our Teeth, with Channing playing the parts of both Mrs. Antrobus and Sabina, but died before he could finish it.[27]
Approval of her performance in the 1960s meant she was often invited to major events, including those at the White House, where she might sing. Channing was a registered Democrat and was invited to the Democratic convention in 1964 in Atlantic City, New Jersey where she sang a parodic song, "Hello, Lyndon", for Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign.[30] She was a favorite of Lady Bird Johnson, who once gave her a huge bouquet after a show.[31]
The old-fashioned plot of Hello, Dolly, when first described, might seem uninspired, says columnist Dick Kleiner:
But then you sit in the audience and Carol Channing comes out, turns on her huge eyes and monumental smile—and you sit there with a silly grin on your face for 2 1/2 hours, bathed in the benevolent spell of a great comedienne...It is hard to imagine her doing anything else but making people smile. She is that human curio, the born female comic.[18]
The show had first opened on Broadway on January 16, 1964, and by the time the show closed in late December 1970, it had become the longest-running musical in Broadway history, with nearly 3,000 performances. Besides Channing, six other stars played the title role during those seven years: Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller and Ethel Merman.[32]
Lorelei (1973) Peter Palmer and Channing in(1973)
Al Hirschfeld's illustration of her was printed on the front page of the "Sunday Theatre" section of The New York Times. She felt that this image captured the essence of her character, having posited in writing, "How did the great Hirschfeld know precisely what I was thinking?... To be Hirschfelded is an eerie experience. You better not have anything to hide, because he'll expose it like a neon sign"...[8]:68[g] The illustration was also printed on the cover of magazines, including Horizon.[33] She later appeared in the movie biography about his life, The Line King, in 2004.[34]
Channing reprised her role of Lorelei Lee when the musical Lorelei, directed by Robert Moore and choreographed by Ernest O. Flatt, premiered in 1973 at the Oklahoma City (6000 seat) Civic Center Music Hall and broke all box office records after six days' worth of performances sold out within 24 hours.[35]
To commemorate this record event, the street running in front of the Music Hall was renamed Channing Square Drive in her honor. Also in the cast were Peter Palmer, Brandon Maggart, Dody Goodman, and Lee Roy Reams. For nearly a year, the stage musical then toured 11 cities across the country. Lorelei had already earned a hefty profit by the time it opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on January 27, 1974, and ran for a total of 320 performances. Channing also appeared in two New York City revivals of Hello, Dolly!, and toured with it extensively throughout the United States.[36]
She performed songs from Hello, Dolly during a special television show in London in 1979.[37]
Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) [ edit ]
Channing also appeared in a number of films, including The First Traveling Sales Lady (1956; with Ginger Rogers and Clint Eastwood), the cult film Skidoo, and Thoroughly Modern Millie (starring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, John Gavin, and Beatrice Lillie). For Millie she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.[38][39][40] Channing said she was especially grateful to Andrews for helping her develop her character: "She will forever be my angel," she says.[41]
Due to her success on Broadway in Hello Dolly! and her co-starring role in Thoroughly Modern Millie, Channing attracted the attentions of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who were interested in starring her in a sitcom. Directed and produced by Arnaz and written by Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Davis (who co-wrote I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show), The Carol Channing Show starred Channing as Carol Hunnicut, a small-town girl trying and failing to make it in New York City show business. Character actors Richard Deacon and Jane Dulo were in the supporting cast. The pilot was filmed in front of a live audience (with a laugh track added) at Desilu in 1966, but did not sell as a series.[42][better source needed]
In 1966, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.[citation needed] During her film career, Channing also made some guest appearances on television sitcoms and talk shows, including What's My Line? where she appeared in 11 episodes from 1962 to 1966.[44] Channing did voice-over work in cartoons, most notably as Grandmama in an animated version of The Addams Family from 1992 to 1995.[citation needed]
Television appearances [ edit ]
During most of her career, Channing was asked to perform in various skits or appear as a guest on regular shows. In the 1960s, she was on The Andy Williams Show.[45] In 1985, she played the role of the White Queen in the television special Alice in Wonderland.[46] In 1986, Channing appeared on Sesame Street and sang a parody of the song "Hello, Dolly!" called "Hello, Sammy!", a love song being sung by Carol to a character known as Sammy the Snake (as voiced by Muppets creator Jim Henson). Carol, in this parody segment, serenades Sammy telling him just how much she loves and adores him while Sammy coils himself around Carol's arms. Carol's song includes lyrics such as: "So..turn on your charm, Sammy/Coil yourself around my arm, Sammy/Sammy the Snake, I'll stake a claim on you".[47] Songwriter Jule Styne, who wrote the score for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, invited her on his television special in 1987 where she performed another one of her signature songs, "Little Girl from Little Rock".[48]
In 1993, she poked a little fun at herself in an episode of The Nanny. The episode "Smoke Gets in Your Lies" shows the producer auditioning for a new musical and Channing, playing herself, is trying out. Just after the producer announces he wants a stage presence that is instantly recognizable to the entire country, Channing begins with her signature "Hello, Dolly!", but he stops her with a resounding "Next!".[citation needed]
In January 2003, Channing recorded the audiobook of her best-selling autobiography Just Lucky, I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts, directed and produced by Steve Garrin at VideoActive Productions in New York City. It was during the recording sessions that she received a phone call from her childhood sweetheart Harry Kullijian that rekindled their romance and led to their marriage a few months later. In January 2011, the documentary Carol Channing: Larger Than Life (which chronicles Channing's life and career) was released.[49]
Personal life [ edit ]
Channing in 2009
Channing was married four times. Her first husband was Theodore Naidish, whom she married when she was 20 in 1941. He was a writer, who in 1944 wrote Watch Out for Willie Carter,[50][8]:52 but during the nearly five years of their marriage, earned little income: "There was no money for food, clothing or housing."[8]:52 Still, Channing adored his émigré Jewish family, stating, in her memoir, "There is nothing so safe and secure as an immigrant, foreign-language-speaking family all around you. It was a dream come true for me. They look after you, you look after them. They make chick'n in the pot if you're sick. You learn marvelous new-sounding words every minute."[8]:48 Channing and Naidish lived near his grandparents in Brighton Beach in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. She remembered his grandfather Sam Cohen introducing her to some of his neighborhood friends, who were amazed that she enjoyed hearing their funny stories. "They were delighted that I almost ate them up alive," she wrote, "because they were so funny, especially since such appreciation was coming from what we all thought then was a shiksa (me)." She learned to speak fluent Yiddish from "Grandpa Cohen", a skill which helped her understand the boardwalk conversations that went on around her in town.[8]:51
Her second husband Alexander F. Carson, known as Axe,[51] or "The Murderous Ax"[8]:109, played center for the Ottawa Rough Riders Canadian football team and was also a private detective.[51] They married in 1950 and divorced in September 1956.[52] They had one son named Channing Carson.[53]
In September 1956, "Immediately following the entry of the divorce decree" from Carson,[52] Channing married her manager and publicist Charles Lowe. In 1960, Carson's parental rights were severed due to his abandonment,[52] and his and Channing's son took his stepfather's surname. As the judge stated, "The differences in environment and miles would result in a gross injustice in itself to the child, who at this very tender stage does not even know what his real father looks like. He probably doesn't even realize that the present husband of Mrs. Channing is not his father."[52] Channing Lowe publishes his cartoons as Chan Lowe and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his work.[54] Channing filed for divorce from Lowe in 1998, but her estranged husband died before the divorce was finalized.[55]
After Lowe's death and until shortly before her fourth marriage, the actress's companion was Roger Denny, an interior decorator.[56]
In 2003, while recording the audiobook of her autobiography Just Lucky, I Guess, at VideoActive Productions, NYC, produced and directed by Steve Garrin, she rekindled her romance with her junior high school sweetheart, Harry Kullijian, and they married on May 10, 2003.[citation needed] They later performed at their old junior high school in a benefit for the school. They also promoted arts education in California schools through their Dr. Carol Channing and Harry Kullijian Foundation. The couple resided in both Modesto, California and Rancho Mirage, California. Harry Kullijian died on December 26, 2011, the eve of his 92nd birthday.[57] The recording of Carol's autobiography has never been publicly released.[citation needed]
Channing had unique dietary habits. In 1978, she said she had not eaten restaurant food in 15 years, and preferred only organic food. When invited to restaurants, she would bring several sealed containers with her own food, such as zucchini or chopped celery, and simply ask for an empty plate and glass.[citation needed] For dessert, she would eat seeds.[citation needed] By 1995, Channing had resumed eating food served by restaurants.[58] However, she would not drink alcoholic beverages of any sort.[27] Channing was an ovarian cancer survivor.[59]
Death [ edit ]
Channing died on January 15, 2019, of natural causes at her home in Rancho Mirage, California at the age of 97.[60][61]
Legacy and honors [ edit ]
Theater credits [ edit ]
Filmography [ edit ]
Discography [ edit ]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Now look at you, been walking in here looking all pretty and angry and mean and good. Haha. Now I know you didn't get your hair done so you could just sit down and just sit still Aye, we tryna have a good time tonight, let's go over here! Gm It's my birthday No it's not Gm But I still look good though High comb hot Gm I bet you want an autograph For you and your friends Gm D7 Gotta do it in the penthouse That's where I keep my pen Cm Eb What you can't dance? Ain't got rhythm? Gm What you got a man? I don't see you with him Cm Eb Put your phone down, let's get it Gm Forget your Instagram and your Twitter Cm Eb Got me like woah, wait a minute Gm You need to take a minute Cm Eb D7 Loosen them shoulders up Pour it up, let's work Gm Throw some perm on your attitude Gm Girl you gotta relax, ooh Gm Let me show you what you got to do Gm You gotta lay it back D7 C Matter of fact? Band, show her how to lay it back! C Show her how to lay it back C Show her how to lay it back C D7 Show her how to lay it back Alright! Gm Come on baby I love you No you don't Gm You never know, I might though Can't say I won't, ah Gm There's that smile I'm looking for Was that so hard? Gm D7 If you ever need to smile again girl, take my card Cm Eb Razzle-dazzle, never gon' stop Gm What you want is what I got Cm Eb You wanna get down? You gotta get up Gm Don't be stingy with your big ol' butt Cm Eb You got a booty like Woah, wait a minute Gm I'm just playing with you Cm Eb D7 Loosen them shoulders up Pour it up, let's work Gm Throw some perm on your attitude Gm Girl you gotta relax, ooh Gm Let me show you what you got to do Gm You gotta lay it back D7 C Matter of fact? Band, show her how to lay it back! C Show her how to lay it back C Show her how to lay it back C D7 Show her how to lay it back Alright! [Interlude] Aye, now you got it baby. You tryna have some fun tonight, you just try to follow these simple instructions, you ready? Gm You need activate your sexy (activate your sexy) Gm Silky, smooth and snap (silky, smooth and snap) Gm Now lean with it (lean), throw a lil sheen in it (sheen) Gm D7 Then pat, pat, pat 'til it's flat Gm One more time, you need activate your sexy (activate your sexy) Gm Silky, smooth and snap (silky, smooth and snap) Gm Now lean with it (lean), throw a lil sheen in it (sheen) Gm D7 Then pat, pat, pat 'til it's flat Gm Throw some perm on your attitude Gm Girl you gotta relax, ooh Gm Let me show you what you got to do Gm You gotta lay it back D7 C Matter of fact? Band, show her how to lay it back! C Show her how to lay it back C Show her how to lay it back C D7 Show her how to lay it back Alright!Salt Lake City is currently home to two musical theater productions based on the Book of Mormon — one a Tony Award-winning Broadway hit, and one a humble offering from a self-taught composer seeking "to represent the Book of Mormon accurately and in an inspired way.”
While "The Book of Mormon" began a two-week run at Capitol Theatre on July 28, “Nephi and the Sword of Laban” opened July 27 at Salt Lake Community College’s Grand Theatre. It will be performed through Aug. 8.
Sherry Allred, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Centerville, is the composer and writer, and the musical has “been brewing within (her) heart for a long time.”
“My original purpose was to share the Book of Mormon and encourage people to read it,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t want to pick a fight with (‘The Book of Mormon’ musical).”
"The Book of Mormon" is a critically acclaimed production that won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2011. The musical, written by "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is also irreverent and uses profane language.
Once Allred realized that the Broadway musical told a tale of missionaries proselytizing in Africa rather than the stories contained within the pages of LDS scripture, she hoped her musical could “defend the Book of Mormon in a big way.”
“Nephi and the Sword of Laban” re-enacts 1 Nephi Chapter 1 through 2 Nephi Chapter 6. Originally, Allred thought of covering the entire Book of Mormon in one musical, but she wanted people to understand each character.
For instance, in “Nephi and the Sword of Laban,” audience members are given time to understand Laman and Lemuel’s choices and to gain compassion for them, but also to acknowledge that they sinned against God, she said. The best way to flesh out each character, she said, was telling the story through installments.
“My vision is to do a series of musicals and have the second one about Jacob,” she said. “Toward the end of this musical, there are some really tender moments between Nephi and Jacob as he kind of passes the mantle of leadership to Jacob.”
When Allred saw Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film "The Ten Commandments" as a child, she longed to make “an epic Book of Mormon movie” because of how much she loved the book of scripture. But her dream wasn’t reimagined as a musical until years later.
It began with a seven-song "reader's theater" draft of “Nephi and the Sword of Laban” that was part of a fireside at her church building in September 2003.
“I wanted to see if it moved people the way it moved me,” she said.
Family and talented ward members read the parts to a small group of church members. The play was one of the first she had written, so the dialogue was “tragically boring,” Allred admitted. But she felt the music was powerful.
In October 2011, she rushed to produce “Nephi and the Sword of Laban” in Ogden before her lead, Chase Petersen as Nephi, left to serve an LDS mission. The dialogue was stronger this time because she had gotten more experience by entering short play competitions.
Allred was surprised to learn that “The Book of Mormon” was coming to Salt Lake City and decided to produce “Nephi and the Sword of Laban” again. The prospect was scary, she said, because she was just “an ordinary woman with a burning passion and a dream.”
According to Allred, the 2015 version of “Nephi and the Sword of Laban” has nine new songs and is a richer production.
“I feel excited about having a greater, stronger dialogue,” she said.
Allred, a mother of six and a grandmother of two, said her family “put everything on the line” because they are the only backers for the project.
“‘The Book of Mormon’ is coming with a golden wallet, but I have Heavenly Father on my side,” she said. “I know I could get ridiculed for saying that, but I’m not ashamed that God is someone I believe in.”
Allred gave some examples of lives that have been touched from past productions of the musical, such as a young man who decided to go on a full-time church mission after seeing a performance and a theater manager who asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon after hearing rehearsals for a week.
“I was so delighted,” Allred said. “I want to intrigue people with the story.”
Tickets for "Nephi and the Sword of Laban" are $25 for ages 16 and up, and $15 for seniors, students, military, youths and groups of 10 or more. The Grand Theatre is located at 1575 S. State Street. Call 801-957-3322. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. each day (except Sunday) with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays.Where the showdown over a government shutdown is concerned, the blame game runs both ways.
Congress and the White House are at loggerheads over what to do with President Barack Obama’s health care law. Major aspects of the law are set to go live on Oct. 1, the same day as funding for the federal government runs out. But efforts to keep the funding flowing have floundered on the demand of some Republicans to defund or delay the law, while the president has refused to eliminate or pare back his signature legislative achievement.
We noticed two similar, but opposite, claims about how the parties broke on key votes in the conflict. Here, we will look at a claim by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. In a separate fact-check, we will look at a claim by Obama.
After passage of a measure on Sept. 20, 2013, to fund the government without funding Obamacare, Cruz -- a leader of the pro-defunding side -- released a statement that said in part, "Today, the House of Representatives did what Washington pundits only a few weeks ago said was impossible: a strong bipartisan majority voted to defund Obamacare. This is a victory for House conservatives, and it is a victory for Speaker (John) Boehner and Republican leadership."
Was it accurate for Cruz to say that "a strong bipartisan majority" in the House of Representatives "voted to defund Obamacare"? We didn’t hear back from Cruz’s office, but we looked at the vote tallies ourselves.
On the final vote, the measure -- which paired continued funding for the government with a defunding of Obamacare -- passed by a 230-189 margin. But those 230 votes in favor broke down to 228 Republicans and just two Democrats, Reps. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Jim Matheson of Utah. (One Republican, Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia, broke ranks and joined the Democrats.)
We have addressed claims of "bipartisanship" in the past and have generally been skeptical of a claim where a tiny fraction of a caucus serves as justification for the "bipartisan" label.
Norm Ornstein, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told us in 2011 that his definition would be "healthy numbers, not necessarily majorities, and not necessarily equally drawn, from both parties" -- a threshold hardly met in this case.
Several other experts we checked with for this fact-check agreed.
"I think a reasonable person would expect the threshold to be higher, particularly if the modifier ‘strong’ is applied," as Cruz included in his statement, said Roy T. Meyers, a political scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
Donald Wolfensberger, director of the Congress Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former Republican staff director of the House Rules Committee, felt similarly.
"Two Democrats, like two swallows, do not a bipartisan summer make," Wolfensberger said. "It's more like a false spring. Beauty and political truth are in the eye of the beholder. We all tend to see what we want to see."
Our ruling
Cruz said that "a strong bipartisan majority" in the House of Representatives "voted to defund Obamacare."
Even if you consider the overall 230-189 margin to be a "strong" victory for backers of the measure, it doesn’t qualify as "bipartisan" except in the most hyper-technical sense. Two Democrats out of the 190 who voted -- barely more than 1 percent of the party’s caucus -- joined Republicans in voting for the bill. In our book, that doesn’t qualify as much of a bipartisan action. We rate the claim False.Tesla has just bestowed its Q3 2016 numbers upon us and, unlike last quarter, the numbers are good. The company has $22 million in GAAP income on $2.3 billion in revenue. That's up significantly over both the quarter before, and this same quarter a year ago. The profit of $0.14 per share compares very favorably to the $0.58 loss per share this time last year on $1.24 billion in revenue.
In the previous quarter, Tesla posted a $150 million loss on $1.56 billion in non-GAAP earnings, or about $1.06 per share. That was significantly worse than analysts had expected, but more problematic was the disappointing delivery numbers. Tesla shipped fewer than 15,000 cars in the first quarter, putting the company well short of its goal of 80,000 in production for the year.
For this quarter, Tesla had planned on producing 2,200 car per week, accelerating to make up the gap, and the company appears to have very nearly met that goal, delivering a solid 24,821 cars.
However, average prices for those cars were down, the Model S on average 6.5 percent lower than before, the Model X 1.2 percent. For the former, that decline was thanks to the lower-cost 60, while the latter was thanks to sales of fewer Signature editions (and, perhaps, the short-lived Model X 60D).
Despite Consumer Reports latest findings, Tesla indicates that it is seeing fewer warranty claims for both the S and the X, with reports on the latter decreasing by a whopping 92 percent. That is a nice improvement, but it's also an unfortunate indication of just how problematic those early cars were.One of the great parts of React.js is the ease of integration into existing web projects. Many full-fledged JavaScript MVC frameworks like Angular.js impose the architecture of your application code, thus making an integration into existing projects hard to impossible without rewriting entire parts of the frontend code.
In contrast React is barely more than the V in MVC. That makes it very simple to integrate into existing projects without revamping lots of code. You can easily try React for a particular feature, leaving the rest of your application code alone.
I'm working with React for a few month now in a traditional single-page-application. The application relies on server-side markup rendering and jQuery. Let me describe to you a few techniques I'm using to integrate React in a non-invasive way.
Let's assume we're working on an existing single-page-application with a static HTML5 layout consisting of some general elements like a header, footer, sidebar and a content container, holding the actual HTML of each individual page:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>My Existing Webapp</title> </head> <body> <header></header> <aside></aside> <main id="content"></div> <footer></footer> <script src="jquery.js"></script> <script src="react.js"></script> <script src="app.js"></script> </body> </html>
For every internal application link we call an appriopriate controller on the server which renders the page. We could use a simple routing function to handle the ajax calls to the server and then replace the html of the main content container with the server-rendered markup. Before the actual html will be replaced, we trigger a custom jQuery event content-will-change, who's purpose will be revealed later in this article.
function loadContent(url) { $.ajax({ url: url }).done(function(html)) { $('#content').trigger({type: 'content-will-change'}).html(html); } }
Instead of rendering the full HTML page on the server with an arbitrary template engine, we now want to utilize React.js to render the html in the browser for a particular page. The tricky part is how to integrate client-side react rendering without changing too much existing code like the routing function described above.
Normally you would implement a REST controller on the server and let the client handle all the rendering and routing between views. But since most parts of our existing application still rely on server-side rendering we would need to completely rewrite the routing function.
Instead we just retain server-side rendering for the React view, but instead of rendering the whole html on the server we just render an empty container and the json data into a minimal html skeleton, so the client can do the rest of the work. Putting all the json data directly into the skeleton view saves us from performing additional ajax calls later on when rendering the react components on the client.
In a Java webapp we could utilize ObjectMapper from the Jackson library to transform arbitrary Java objects into json strings. For example if we want to render a react component showing a list of books, we use the method writeValueAsString() to transform the list of books into valid json:
List<Book> books =...; ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper(); String jsonBooks = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(books);
The server controller now returns the html skeleton consisting of an empty books container and a script block to render the react component into this container passing the dehydrated json data as a parameter to the render function:
<div id="books"></div> <script> var books = ${jsonBooks}; renderBooks(books); </script>
When the routing function replaces the html on the site via $('#content').html(html) this script block gets evaluated, forcing React to render the component into the books container:
class BookList extends React.Component { render() { return ( <div className="books"> Found {this.props.books.length} books </div> ); } } function renderBooks(books) { ReactContentRenderer.render(<BookList books={books}/>, $('#books')); }
The above code is written in EcmaScript 6 (aka ES2015) + JSX syntax. Although not all browsers support ES6 as of today, you can safely use ES6 in production by transpiling the code into valid ES5 with Babel.js. Babel also compiles Reacts JSX syntax which makes it the perfect tool for React development.
As you might already have noticed in the above code I don't use React.render to render the <BookList/> component. Instead I'm using a utility wrapper called ReactContentRenderer. The purpose of this module is to automatically unmount all react components rendered into the content container before loading a new page. This is critical in traditional single-page-applications to prevent memory leaks since React keeps references to all mounted components until they get unmounted from the DOM.
let nodes = []; const ReactContentRenderer = { unmountAll() { if (nodes.length === 0) { return; } nodes.forEach(node => React.unmountComponentAtNode(node)); nodes = []; }, render(element, container, callback) { if (container instanceof jQuery) { container = container.get(0); } React.render(element, container, callback); nodes.push(container); } }; $(function () { $('#content').on('content-will-change', ReactContentRenderer.unmountAll); });
ReactContentRenderer keeps a reference to all component nodes and listens on content-will-change events to unmount those components before the html of the content container gets replaced via $('#content').html(html).
If you don't unmount those components, React would never know that the underlying HTML does no longer exist. You can inspect all mounted components by using the React Dev Tools (browser extension) to manually assure that obsolete components are already un |
died by the hundreds. People were tortured and raped. Heroes would run for their lives out of fear, even as they allowed innocents to die. Despair caused even the bravest men and women to commit unspeakable acts to save themselves. The evil creatures committed atrocity after atrocity. Death himself chooses sides in this war. And the Morigu loomed over it all, unimpressed by anything he saw, ready and willing to sink his blade into the heart of a god if that was what was necessary to protect Mother Earth.
Yes, Morigu: The Desecration was truly a memorable experience in my fantasy reading. It not only shocked me and entertained me; it also showed me that even though I believed nothing in the genre could surprise me any more I was wrong. Sure, reading all the “It” writers of the time was great, but other – perhaps lesser known – works were also out there, filled with inventive and maybe even groundbreaking ideas. So while I try to follow the crowd to the next “It” fantasy novel or author, I also keep scrounging around those shadowy bookstore aisles, scanning that long e-book list on Amazon, because I never know when I just might find another Morigu novel that will spin my head around. And that is what reading is all about, right?State tax revenue growth slowed in the first several months of the new fiscal year, forcing legislators and budget officials in states across the country to slash projections and spending plans while raising concerns that the next economic recession is just around the corner.
A new report from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) found that half the states have experienced revenue shortfalls in the early months of fiscal year 2017, which began in August. The shortfalls come as sales and personal income tax growth slows and corporate income tax declines.
Those shortfalls forced 19 states to enact mid-year budget cuts in fiscal year 2016 — more than any year outside of a recession since 1990. Some budget analysts fear slowing sales and income tax growth can be a leading indicator that an economic downturn is right around the corner.
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“A recession is coming sometime soon, but I think economists in all of the state offices would tell you that there’s a really hard economic forecasting angle of predicting when that’s going to happen,” said Michael Cohen, director of California’s Department of Finance.
Cohen said his state, like others, has seen sales taxes consistently miss revenue targets in recent months, spurred by lower consumption.
Lower-than-expected tax revenues are likely to force governors and state legislators of both parties to dramatically alter their plans for legislative sessions set to begin next year.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) last week laid out plans to cover a $1.7 billion budget hole. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) has ordered nearly $100 million in spending cuts to address a shortfall. An independent agency pegged Pennsylvania’s structural deficit at a whopping $2 billion. Virginia legislators will grapple with a $1.5 billion budget hole.
All told, state general fund spending increased 4.3 percent between fiscal years 2016 and 2017. That rate is below the recent average, though well above 2009 and 2010, the last time the U.S. economy dug out of a recession, when spending fell by 4 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
“Many states have not yet achieved full recovery from the Great Recession, on an inflation-adjusted basis,” said John Hicks, NASBO’s executive director.
States expect to bring in a total of $808 billion in revenue, up 3.6 percent over the year before. But 12 states — Alaska, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming — experienced revenue declines in 2016, and eight more expect revenues to drop this year.
“We’re approaching probably the latter stages of a recovery cycle,” said Jim McIntire (D), Washington State’s treasurer and president of the National Association of State Treasurers. “You get people slowing down their spending a little bit if they’re not feeling a wealth effect. You’re going to see some slowdown in retail sales and tax growth.”
States were forced to cut a total of $2.8 billion out of their budgets in the last fiscal year, and more states are likely to face cash flow crunches in upcoming legislative sessions. Seventeen states implemented cuts to their K-12 education programs, and eleven states cut public assistance programs.
Energy-producing states like Alaska, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wyoming were particularly hard-hit, as falling global commodity prices caused extraction tax revenues to tumble. Among the 12 states that saw revenues decline in 2016, nine are major energy producers.
Wyoming’s spending declined more than 20 percent between 2016 and 2017 as oil and coal prices fell. Spending in Alaska — which relies on taxes generated by its oil industry for a huge percentage of its overall revenue — dropped almost 10 percent, while the state hiked fees and laid off employees. Louisiana cut almost $350 million from its budget.
Few states have moved to increase taxes on a broad swath of the population, largely out of political considerations. Instead, states have passed hikes on cigarettes, which generates less revenue as the smoking rate declines.
“States are extremely reluctant to raise broad-based taxes, the income tax and the sales tax. That’s where the money is,” said Don Boyd, director of fiscal studies at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
Some state budget officers are concerned that full Republican control of Congress and the White House, beginning in 2017, will mean further budget reductions in future years. Congressional leaders and President-elect 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 have promised tax cuts, and those cuts could spur wealthy individuals and corporations to take advantage of write-offs now, when they are more valuable, than in the future.
States are watching GOP proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which steers billions of dollars in Medicaid spending to state coffers. Any replacement would likely reduce those contributions, placing further strain on state budgets that are required to fund the federal program.
“Legislators need to be cognizant of ongoing responsibilities and avoid over-committing so they don’t end up having to cut back dramatically should we run into a downturn,” McIntire said. “This is a time to be cautious.”
After the Great Recession decimated state budgets across the country, states have increasingly turned to rainy day funds to sock away cash in advance of the next downturn. Rainy day fund balances grew in 29 states over the last fiscal year, the NASBO report found, and 25 states anticipate increasing their rainy day funds this year as well.
Still, if a recession is around the corner, even those states that planned ahead are likely to feel the pinch.
“States recognize that a reserve fund is only one piece of a set of actions that take place during revenue shortfalls,” Hicks said. Boyd said rainy day funds “can never be large enough to get you through even a moderate recession.”Not content with topping their group and qualifying for a first tournament in 30 years, Northern Ireland have set a record en route to Euro 2016. Conor Washington’s fine solo goal against Slovenia made it 10 matches unbeaten for Michael O’Neill’s side – the longest run in Northern Ireland’s history – and arguably secured his ticket to France in the process.
Another impressive feat from the team that O’Neill built was delivered by a player who epitomises their rise. Washington was playing part-time for St Ives Town in the Southern Football League four years ago. On Monday Queens Park Rangers’ £2.8m January recruit from Peterborough United scored his first international goal to settle a hard-fought affair and ensure Northern Ireland eclipsed the two nine‑game unbeaten runs established in the 1980s, when qualifying for World Cups appeared almost routine for Billy Bingham teams.
“It’s been a good night, a good week and, if you take it into context, a really good year,” said O’Neill, who admitted the pursuit of the record had been “a distraction” before Slovenia’s visit. “It’s a significant milestone for this squad. There are players who have gone 10 games without a win in the past, they’ve seen the opposite side and played in bad times. Now we have this moment we want it to last as long as we can keep it there.
“It’s nice for me because Billy Bingham was the manager who gave me my debut at 18 years of age, he believed in me at a young age. I’ve tried to take that into management in terms of giving players opportunities. At times we have to give players an opportunity at international level without really having huge evidence at their club to support that argument. You have to base that on your feeling on the player.”
Washington repaid his manager’s belief by beating three Slovenia defenders to score the winning goal and show Northern Ireland potentially have more to their armoury than Kyle Lafferty. Yet O’Neill was thankful for a veteran’s experience as well as a young striker’s late bid for inclusion at the European Championships as the 38-year-old Roy Carroll denied Milovoje Novakovic from the penalty spot to keep the visitors at bay.
There was a confidence about the hosts in possession and, in keeping with the foundations of their qualifying campaign for the Euros, a relentless work ethic and disciplined shape. That said, Slovenia were sharp, inventive opponents and had produced the finer moments before Washington’s power, pace and precision made its mark.
The 23-year-old, who qualified to play for Northern Ireland through a grandmother, conjured the first opening when he comfortably beat the central defender Miral Samardzic and forced Jan Oblak to save with his legs from a tight angle. His next contribution was more emphatic.
Chasing a long clearance from Carroll, the forward barged both Samardzic and Bostjan Cesar out of the way to win possession before advancing into the area where he cut inside Nejc Skubic. Three defenders down, Washington kept his composure to finish emphatically inside Oblak’s right-hand corner. O’Neill punched the air in delight. Given Lafferty’s inactivity this season, he requires all the options and quality available in attack and Washington’s goal was important beyond the context of this friendly.
O’Neill said: “You saw what Conor is about – that rawness, power and pace. Sometimes you don’t get that from players who are in a development system from a very young age. He has those attributes, which are refreshing to see as a coach. He’s so hungry to learn and keen to do well. For a player who’s just come into the squad, the reaction from the other members in the team to see him scoring shows how well he’s fitting in.”
The fired-up Washington and Oblak were booked after an altercation early in the second half and Windsor Park’s ire was reserved for the referee, Kristo Tohver, when he awarded the visitors a penalty. He was correct to do so, having spotted a push by Jonny Evans on Samardzic as the defenders jostled at a corner. Novakovic, a half-time substitute, drove his penalty low to Carroll’s right but the Notts County keeper saved well. The veteran made a better stop in the final moments from Valter Birsa.
A procession of substitutes from both teams left the contest disjointed but Poland, Ukraine and Germany – Northern Ireland’s opponents in France this summer – know they have an awkward obstacle to overcome.
Andriy Yarmolenko punishes Wales as Ukraine gamble backfires Read moreWashington: Transgender people will be allowed for the first time to enlist in the US military starting on Monday as ordered by federal courts, the Pentagon said on Friday, after President Donald Trump's administration decided not to appeal rulings that blocked his transgender ban.
Two federal appeals courts, one in Washington and one in Virginia, last week rejected the administration's request to put on hold orders by lower court judges requiring the military to begin accepting transgender recruits on January 1.
A Justice Department official said the administration will not challenge those rulings.
Nick Rondoletto, left, and Doug Thorogood, a couple from San Francisco, wave a rainbow flag and hold a sign against a proposed ban of transgender people in the military at a protest in July 2017. Credit:AP
"The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issues in the coming weeks. So rather than litigate this interim appeal before that occurs, the administration has decided to wait for DOD's study and will continue to defend the president's lawful authority in district court in the meantime," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.For two weeks, thousands of Bulgarians have been chanting "Step down" and "Mafia" in front of government buildings in the capital Sofia.
The governing coalition of Socialists and the Turkish minority party DPS has been in office less than a month, and people are calling for it to step down. When people took to the streets in February, which prompted the government of Boyko Borissov to step down, it was over utility prices.
This time, it is not about social problems in the EU's poorest country, it is about highlighting what the mainly middle class, university-educated protesters see as a corrupt political elite in Bulgaria.
The protests flared up when the government announced it would appoint Delyan Peevski as head of the secret service. Many Bulgarians see 32-year-old Peevski as highly dubious and well-connected in Bulgaria's underworld.
Peevski is seen as a shady figure by many Bulgarians
Peevski and his mother, Irena Krasteva, who is the former head of the national lottery, own a television channel, several newspapers and the biggest newspaper printing press. Just where the money for these investments came from, is not clear.
In 2007, Peevski's career seemed to come to a halt. When he was the head of Ministry of Emergency Situations, he was being investigated for embezzlement and corruption, but was never formally charged.
The way the current government fast-tracked his appointment as head of the secret service sparked angry protests, as the government even amended certain laws to match Peevski's profile with the job.
No end in sight
Daniel Smilov, program director at the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, expects the political crisis to get worse, with snap elections the only way to end it. "They should take place within the next six months," he said.
Peevski's appointment was by no means the government's only questionable decision. Ivan Ivanov was deputy minister for the interior for all but three hours, before he had to resign again. It had been revealed that he was connected to a criminal group.
Other appointments by the government also led people to believe that oligarchs were being favored. Voters felt betrayed by what they see as a corrupt political elite. The conservative politician said there was now no longer a dividing line between left and right, but between citizens and the mafia.
A new charter
"The politicians thought they could only hold on to power by enforcing strict discipline within their party and hide behind shady power mechanisms," Parvan Simeonov from the polling institute Gallup told DW.
"Now, they've realized that it was a big mistake and that every mistake hurts their image," he added.
Around 60 scientists, politicians, journalists and legal experts have founded a new initiative known as the "Charter 2013," which aims to fight plutocracy and put pressure on the government.
Peevski is seen as a shady figure by many Bulgarians
"The charter's content has everything you could possibly want," according to the former deputy German ambassador to Bulgaria, Klaus Schrameyer. But he thinks the document is a bit too worthy, vague and all-encompassing to be truly revolutionary.
"Rather than list every single shortcoming in Bulgarian society, they should have listed clear priorities, like calling for new legislation on elections, setting up a national assembly to revamp the constitution, strengthening the rights of the president, making the judiciary less political and curbing the powers of the general national prosecutor," the former diplomat told DW.
It is hard to say whether the current government can hang on to power. In an interview with Austrian daily Die Presse, the head of the Socialists, Sergey Stanishev, called the situation in Bulgaria "as explosive as a pressure cooker" and called for calm.
He insisted the new government was prepared to discuss Bulgaria's problems, including high energy prices, poverty and the state of the economy.Safak Pavey is the first disabled woman to be elected to Turkey's parliament. But the opposition MP finds the country's obsession with women's bodies frustrating
Safak Pavey is not a conventional parliamentarian. When she visits towns all over Turkey, she arrives in the battered family car. Instead of bodyguards and a driver, she is often accompanied by her mother, one of Turkey's most famous and courageous investigative journalists, Ayse Önal.
Before entering parliament, she worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), campaigning for refugees and human rights all over the world. After living abroad for 15 years, Pavey accepted an offer to stand in the 2011 elections because she was concerned about the direction her country was taking. Freedom of expression, women's rights and minority rights were all in decline. According to official statistics, reported violence against women had risen 14-fold compared to 2002.
"There was a big gap between what was happening on the street in Turkey and the image of the country portrayed to the outside world."
Pavey, who lost her left arm and left leg in a train accident when she was 19, became the first disabled woman ever to be elected to the Turkish parliament. She now represents Istanbul Province for the main opposition Republican People's party (CHP).
Almost three years on, she is more concerned than ever. "I cannot believe the things that are discussed in the public debates," she says. "Should pregnant women be walking on the street or not? Should girls and boys be in the same classroom or not? These are the debates that we are currently having."
Her entering parliament, where the dress code for women was a suit with a skirt, triggered a months-long discussion about, as she says "only my name and my prosthetic leg. I was absent from a debate I had not initiated and that I didn't want."
Safak Pavey: 'Many female politicians get intimidated by the aggressive behaviour of men. I don't.' Photograph: Guy Martin/Panos for the Observer
It ended with the right for female MPs to wear trousers. Citing recent plans for abortion curbs, a ban on caesarean sections and fights over the headscarf, Pavey underlines how much of Turkish politics deals with women's bodies and women's behaviour, without actually involving women themselves.
When an MP of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) attacked her from the parliamentary rostrum for "smiling too much", Pavey suggested he should read Umberto Eco's In the Name of the Rose.
"His complaint was very medieval," she says. "But it is a very good indicator of how the government looks at women in Turkey today."
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan once famously said that he did not think that men and women were equal. Turkey has recently been shaken by a massive corruption scandal that involves high government officials; freedom of expression, government accountability and even the separation of powers are increasingly under threat. Pavey believes the country should be less obsessed by any topic concerning sexuality.
"Priority is placed on the chastity of women. You can be corrupt, or a murderer and still hold your head up high on the street without problems, whereas if there are any suspicions of your chastity and moral behaviour as a woman, you get lynched. And if you question this as a female MP, you get lynched all the same."
In 2012, Pavey made a parliamentary inquiry about the gender separation of university dorms. Pro-government newspapers immediately started a vicious smear campaign against her, calling her an "immoral woman" who promoted "boys and girls sleeping in the same rooms". She started to receive insulting, sometimes hateful, messages; radical religious groups threatened her.
Melik Birgin, a leading member of a local AKP youth branch, sent her a tweet from his official Twitter account, saying: "Allah took one of your legs and you haven't woken from the sleep of blasphemy. What is it with your stubbornness?" Pavey wrote an open letter to the prime minister, urging him to remove Birgin from his post. Erdogan complied.
She is a tireless campaigner for the rights of disabled people in Turkey – according to latest estimates, their number stands at around 12 million, from a total population of 74 million – who still face enormous obstacles in all aspects of daily life. Families still hide members with disabilities as a source of shame. There are almost no facilities for disabled people at all, and government promises to supply them advance at a snail's pace.
"[Birgin's removal] sent a signal that such words of hate are not acceptable. But these examples should increase. It's a start, but of course by far not enough compared to the levels of discrimination faced by millions of people every day in this country."
She adds that many other minority groups, such as LGBTs or religious and ethnic minorities, suffer similar attacks at all levels of Turkish society. A new law against hate crime that in its current form includes the protection of a person's religion, ethnicity and gender, but still excludes sexual orientation, was announced by Erdogan as part of a democratic reforms package last year, but it has still not been implemented. Pavey says she wants to keep fighting for what she thinks is crucial. "Many female politicians get intimidated by the aggressive behaviour of men. I don't. Not because I am a courageous person or anything, but because I see international standards and I see that they are worth fighting for."Border checkpoint relies on honor system We all know that security has been tightened at U.S. border crossings since 9/11. And that's why we were quite surprised when we found out the tale of one particular crossing on the border with Canada.
This official U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting station is on the border between Manitoba, a Canadian province, and Minnesota, and relies on the honor system. Yes, the U.S. government is counting on all people who cross into Angle Inlet, Minnesota, to report themselves via telephone. There are no permanent customs or immigration officials who work at the checkpoint.
Angle Inlet is the northernmost city in the contiguous United States. To get there over land, you have to drive 40 miles within Canada to the other end of the Lake of the Woods, so the Minnesota town is in essence an enclave that sits within Canada. Because of that geographical quirk, and because very few people live up there, the checkpoint has always been laidback.
But in this day and age, law enforcement officials in Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota, are very concerned. The sheriff there says he has intelligence that drug smugglers and potential terrorists take advantage of the "honor system" to cross into Angle Inlet illegally and then take a boat across the Lake of the Woods to go into "mainland" Minnesota.
The checkpoint looks like a shack. You are supposed to stop your car when you get there, get out, and pick up a videophone that often doesn't work.
When we got there, we picked up the phone and pushed a button that has the American flag on it. Nothing happened the first six or seven times I pushed the button. Finally, I heard a Customs employee's voice. She said her name was Officer Johnson, and she cordially told me she was in the Customs office in Warroad, Minnesota, about 50 miles away.
She told me to stand in front of the camera so she could see me. Then video of her popped on the screen so I could see her. She asked for my name and my purpose for coming to the United States, and asked me to hold my passport in front of the camera so she could see it. I was then approved for entry into the United States.
While we were at the border "shack," other cars just zoomed by; not necessarily because the motorists were up to no good, but because many perceive the shack with the faulty phone to be a cumbersome waste of time.
Residents are given special permits to avoid going into the shack, but it's estimated by the local sheriff that 70 percent of the people who are supposed to stop don't bother doing so. So is this border checkpoint going to stay this way? That's what we asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.
They told us that this is not considered the "highest risk" area. But officials did tell us some changes are in store.
Customs officers do make patrols to the checkpoint. They said those patrols will be increased. In addition, they said there will be technological changes, including the installation of cameras providing surveillance over the area, not just inside the shack.
Before we left Angle Inlet, we met one motorist from Manitoba who did his law-abiding duty and picked-up the videophone to report his arrival into the United States. But it would not work for him, so he picked-up an old-fashioned payphone and called the office. They couldn't see him or his passport, but customs officials thanked him for trying, and then let him into the United States. We all know that security has been tightened at U.S. border crossings since 9/11. And that's why we were quite surprised when we found out the tale of one particular crossing on the border with Canada.This official U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting station is on the border between Manitoba, a Canadian province, and Minnesota, and relies on the honor system. Yes, the U.S. government is counting on all people who cross into Angle Inlet, Minnesota, to report themselves via telephone. There are no permanent customs or immigration officials who work at the checkpoint.Angle Inlet is the northernmost city in the contiguous United States. To get there over land, you have to drive 40 miles within Canada to the other end of the Lake of the Woods, so the Minnesota town is in essence an enclave that sits within Canada. Because of that geographical quirk, and because very few people live up there, the checkpoint has always been laidback.But in this day and age, law enforcement officials in Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota, are very concerned. The sheriff there says he has intelligence that drug smugglers and potential terrorists take advantage of the "honor system" to cross into Angle Inlet illegally and then take a boat across the Lake of the Woods to go into "mainland" Minnesota.The checkpoint looks like a shack. You are supposed to stop your car when you get there, get out, and pick up a videophone that often doesn't work.When we got there, we picked up the phone and pushed a button that has the American flag on it. Nothing happened the first six or seven times I pushed the button. Finally, I heard a Customs employee's voice. She said her name was Officer Johnson, and she cordially told me she was in the Customs office in Warroad, Minnesota, about 50 miles away.She told me to stand in front of the camera so she could see me. Then video of her popped on the screen so I could see her. She asked for my name and my purpose for coming to the United States, and asked me to hold my passport in front of the camera so she could see it. I was then approved for entry into the United States.While we were at the border "shack," other cars just zoomed by; not necessarily because the motorists were up to no good, but because many perceive the shack with the faulty phone to be a cumbersome waste of time.Residents are given special permits to avoid going into the shack, but it's estimated by the local sheriff that 70 percent of the people who are supposed to stop don't bother doing so. So is this border checkpoint going to stay this way? That's what we asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.They told us that this is not considered the "highest risk" area. But officials did tell us some changes are in store.Customs officers do make patrols to the checkpoint. They said those patrols will be increased. In addition, they said there will be technological changes, including the installation of cameras providing surveillance over the area, not just inside the shack.Before we left Angle Inlet, we met one motorist from Manitoba who did his law-abiding duty and picked-up the videophone to report his arrival into the United States. But it would not work for him, so he picked-up an old-fashioned payphone and called the office. They couldn't see him or his passport, but customs officials thanked him for trying, and then let him into the United States.Branding Terror, a design book by former UN counter-terrorism analyst Artur Beifuss and creative director Francesco Trivini Bellini, catalogs the logos of 65 terrorist organizations across the globe. Jez Owen is a fan:
To be able to study the real thing … is an unusual opportunity for designers and historians. What we discover is that it is a rhetoric of idealism combined with a heavy dose of pageantry that drives these logos, and in turn the organizations that they represent. … Whilst some of the marks are theatrically elaborate, others are incredibly simple; where some are expertly created, others are crudely drawn; many employ cliché upon cliché: however, all apparently have the capacity to convey powerful messages. A world emerges where aesthetic and graphic design skills take second place to connotation. The goal, first and foremost, is to persuade.
Owen’s objection:
Branding Terror is a tour de force of visual research with one fundamental flaw: its categorization as a design book. As one reads, one can’t help feeling that to talk about terrorism in pure graphic terms is to ignore the violence that has been and will be committed in its name, that a discussion of color references and font choices trivializes the subject.
In a July review, Dawn Perlmutter scorned the book: “The authors should stick to producing art books, as they have no training in the significant subtleties of the subliminal and covert imagery contained in terrorist propaganda”:
The book “Branding Terror” essentially sugarcoats the jihadist threat by applying a biased interpretation of the emblems, minimizing the iconography of martyrdom and sanitizing obvious violent indicators, such as the black flags of jihad and swords that are depicted in many of the Islamist logos. The sword is described throughout the book as a premodern weapon that represents the historical struggle in early Islam. Two crossed swords in the emblem of the Indonesian group Jemmah Anshorut Tauhid are described as indicating “JAT’s commitment to jihad. As a pre-modern weapon, the sword is linked to early Islamic jihad campaigns; it is also associated with the purity and nobility of early Islamic heroes. By using swords as a design element JAT confers legitimacy on its jihadi activities, and portrays them as a modern extension of historical jihadi campaigns” (p. 187). There is no reference at all to the swords’ significance in representing “the sword verses” in the Quran, which jihadists use to justify their violence or that they represents Jihad by the sword (jihad bis saif), which refers to armed fighting in holy war. … Merrell, the book’s publisher, claims on its website that “Branding Terror does not seek to make any political statements; rather, it offers insight into an understudied area of counter-intelligence, and provides an original and provocative source of inspiration for graphic designers.” The statement that this book’s aim is to be a source of inspiration for graphic designers is truly obscene and makes it clear that the authors have no concept of what these symbols represent. These groups are not selling cereal; they are selling fear and their “brand” is backed up by murder, suicide attacks, beheadings and bombings. They are not misunderstood freedom fighters, or peaceful protestors — they are mass murderers. Sugarcoating the violence minimizes the threat, and referring to their emblems as “brands” also diminishes the seriousness of their violent ideologies.
(Image of Jemmah Anshorut Tauhid emblem via TRAC)Cleveland, Ohio
As the bus came to a stop in front of a
On September 11 of 2012, 32-year old Shena Hardin had places to go and things to do. That's why when she ended up driving behind school bus that was about to stop, she was also determined that her progress from point A to point B would not be deterred.As the bus came to a stop in front of a day care center, Hardin decided that the sidewalk would make an excellent passing lane. Unfortunately for her, the police (and an enterprising, cell phone camera wielding school bus driver named Uriah Herron ) were there to watch her reckless pursuit of forward progress.
After being arrested, Hardin initially plead not guilty to charges of not stopping for a school bus and reckless operation of a motor vehicle...
...which was a bit hard to prove in court since there was video evidence, police witnesses, and the school bus driver (who claimed that she had done this many times before ) all confirming that she had, in fact, passed a stopped school bus by driving on the side walk.
To avoid a trial (and any more embarrassment), Hardin plead out to lesser charges and penalties...although that probably depends on what your definition of "lesser" means.
In addition to being fined $250 and having her license suspended for 30 days, Hardin must stand at a busy intersection next Tuesday and Wednesday with a sign that states
Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.
Shena Hardin will be required to wear the sign from 7:45 AM until 8:45 AM both mornings. Since her license is suspended, she will also need to be transported by someone else to the intersection.
...which will then lead to the greatest answer
ever given when someone asks "Why do you need a ride?"There’s a particularly knotty theme that keeps working its way into my writing lately, a cultural force that assumes so many different forms in so many different realms that it took me until just now to connect them all. The issue is women’s right to set their own boundaries, and to live with the confidence that those boundaries are inherently powerful and credible, not questionable and permeable—because women are people, not passive extensions of men.
Women’s boundaries came up a month ago in the Guardian, when I wrote about a subway lothario who claimed to have gotten “over 500 dates” by pestering women who were trapped with him in an enclosed space. It came up again last week in my column about pick-up artist Julien Blanc, who was kicked out of Australia for teaching men that sexual assault is a “seduction” tactic. It’s a foundational point of my piece here at the Daily Dot about feminist social networks, in which I assert that, no, it is not women’s responsibility to weather harassment, abuse, threats, wasted time, and bad-faith devil’s advocates for the sake of civility and “discourse.” And there it is again in last week’s essay about Artie Lange’s racist, misogynist Twitter eruption, a breach of propriety that cost him at least one TV appearance—because female comics and comedy fans are no longer just eating shit and saying thank you. The notion even features prominently in this GQ piece about California’s “Yes Means Yes” bill, which can pretty much be summarized thusly: WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS, DUMBASS.
Think about how Gamergate started—how all those months of mindless, churning misogynist idiocy grew out of one man’s presumption of ownership over a woman’s personal life. She didn’t behave the way his sex-thing was supposed to. And thousands of men (boys, really) online—angry at other disagreeable women like Anita Sarkeesian for threatening the sanctity of their virtual sex-things—concurred that this was an egregious breach of trust, of propriety, of “ethics.” They agreed that Zoe Quinn’s body belonged more to her boyfriend than to herself. And they exacted punishment not just on her, but on women at large.
Think about Jian Ghomeshi, Ray Rice, Bill Cosby, Donald Sterling, Christy Mack’s battered face, War Machine laughing in court, Steubenville, Maryville, Isla Vista, the celebrity nude photo hack, and in the midst of it all, Time “joking” that we should ban the word feminism. Think about Republicans referring to pregnant women as “hosts,” and arguing that if abortion is legal, men should be free to rape women. Think about all the things I couldn’t even list here, because this is a blog post, not a library.
Now tell me we don’t have a cultural block when it comes to women’s humanity.
But the public response to my writing lately has said just that. No, no, no, no, I’ve been told—women can’t just refuse to give their time to men who are being “nice.” It’s not fair for women to push back against objectification, or demand respect and representation, in media into which they’re pouring both money and emotional investment. A lot of men are sad, or lonely, or socially awkward, and they need women’s attention to feel better, or as a sounding board to practice their social skills.
A man named Chris emailed me to plead for “sympathy, not vitriol” when it comes to the men who rely on Julien Blanc’s “dating” classes:
In a recent article you posit that men are “lonely, desperate, socially inept” and “sad sacks,” but when we they try and correct that behaviour they become “repulsive, entitled, sexually aggressive creeps”. Such sweeping categorisation is blatant misandry.
Sam de Brito echoed those concerns in an absolutely ludicrous pro-PUA column for the Sydney Morning Herald:
No man goes out of a night worried he might be raped, sexually abused or catcalled and these are all serious instances of aberrant male behaviour that we must address, punish or discourage as a society. The flipside of this is your average man can go out every Friday and Saturday night for five years, buy himself a drink and stand at a bar and NEVER have a woman start up a conversation with him. … I am not equating the fear of rejection to the fear of being raped, merely pointing out that men—like most of the ones that attend Blanc’s seminars—do not do it to learn how to manipulate women, to sexually assault them or degrade them. They do it to get a girlfriend, to have someone to hold, to find love.
Josh Barrie moaned in the Daily Telegraph that all these modern distinctions are simply too confusing for his classic Don Draper man-brain:
In a club, a man approaching a woman is a sex pest; on a train, he’s an annoying |
album by Phish
Hoist (stylized as (Hoist)) is the fifth studio album by the American rock band Phish, released on March 29, 1994 by Elektra Records. At the time of its release, Hoist was Phish's best selling album to date, peaking at No. 34 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on August 19, 1996, and remains the band's best-selling studio release, outsold in their discography only by the platinum-certified A Live One.
The album includes "Down with Disease", the band's breakthrough single on American rock radio, reaching the top 40 of Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in June 1994.[7] The band filmed their only official music video for the song, directed by bassist Mike Gordon, which received some airplay on MTV.
Title [ edit ]
The band suggested a few ideas for the album's title before finally settling on Hoist; one of the alternative suggestions was Hung Like a Horse. The band ruled this out, but decided to keep the visual joke intact for the album's cover. The horse is also a reference to "The Horse," the only song not visually depicted on the cover of Rift, the band's previous album.[8] The horse on the cover is named Maggie and was owned by the band's friend Amy Skelton.[9]
Production [ edit ]
Hoist features guest appearances from Alison Krauss, Béla Fleck, Tower of Power, Rose Stone and a host of other musicians, as well as actor Jonathan Frakes on trombone. With its jazz, blues, soul and bluegrass influences, the album is marked by more stripped-down, straightforward songwriting and pop-friendly hooks, a somewhat new approach for Phish.
However, the album's final track, "Demand", segues into an extended eight-minute instrumental excerpt from a live performance of the song "Split Open and Melt" from the band's April 21, 1993 concert at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, Ohio. The "Split" jam is then abruptly cut off by the sound of a car crash followed by the first verse and refrain of the Hebrew song "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold)."[10]
"Riker's Mailbox" is a brief interlude track on the album, and the only "song" on the album to have never been performed live by the band. Album producer Paul Fox lived next to Jonathan Frakes, whose mailbox is apparently uniquely decorated. Frakes, who played Commander Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation, sat in for a while during the Hoist sessions, giving his name to the track.[11]
On June 26, 1994, the band performed the entire Hoist album (minus "Riker's Mailbox" but including the "Split Open and Melt" jam) verbatim as the second set of their live show in Charleston, West Virginia. The first set of the concert had featured the band performing their "Gamehendge" song suite in its entirety, and as a result, the concert is known by fans as the "GameHoist" show. This move was a subversion of Phish's usual improvisationally driven performances, and the concert later inspired the band's tradition of donning a musical costume for Halloween.[12][13]
In February 2009, this album became available as a download in FLAC and MP3 formats at LivePhish.com.
Track listing [ edit ]
Personnel [ edit ]
Phish
Additional musicians
See also [ edit ]
Tracking (documentary) - a documentary about the album's production
References [ edit ]Complaining about Western “hysteria” surrounding repeated predictions of Russian military attacks on NATO member nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to resolve two solid years of predictions to that effect with a straightforward assurance that “Russia is not going to attack anyone.”
Putin accused Western nations of having “mythical, dreamt-up problems,” and insisted the idea that Russia was going to attack the West was “simply stupid and unrealistic.” He added that he believes the idea is being played up to justify bigger military spending.
The Russian president also sought to dismiss allegations that he is plotting to rig the US elections to his own benefit, noting that the US is a great power and not some banana republic with an easily manipulated political system. Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in such plots.
NATO has played up the Russian threat to justify sending over 40,000 ground troops to the Russian border, with ever-growing numbers announced all the time. Such predictions started after the ouster of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine led to a civil war in that country’s east, with NATO military leaders repeatedly predicting Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine into NATO countries.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzThe Yellow Boats project, known as Gula Båtarna in Swedish, was launched last autumn, at the height of Europe's refugee crisis.
Part-funded by media company Schibsted and run by the non-profit Swedish Sea Rescue Society (Sjöräddningssällskapet), the initiative involves trained volunteers travelling to waters around the Greek island of Samos, a popular arrival point in Europe for people fleeing violence in Syria and other war-torn nations.
On Friday morning, Sjöräddningssällskapet revealed that one of its boats had rescued 34 people in an operation that took the total lives saved by the Swedish project to 1000.
"First we went to a small peninsula where were able to pick up 29 people. Almost immediately afterwards we got an alarm from a boat in distress. After a short search we located a very tiny inflatable boat with four men in it," Kari Oikarinen, a spokesperson for Gula Båtarna, told Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet (which is owned by Schibsted) on Friday.
"It went very well. Those rescued were very tired, they fell asleep almost immediately when they come aboard our boat," he added.
Andreas Arvidsson, COO of Sjöräddningssällskapet, told Aftonbladet that rescuers had been out "almost daily" since the project got under way, either collecting people stranded in the water "or from places where they had gone ashore and had not been able to get away again without the risk of dying".
Sweden -- which has long had a global reputation for openness and tolerance -- took in more asylum seekers per capita than any other EU nation last year, many of whom crossed Europe to seek new lives in the northern country after first making dangerous sea crossings to Greece and Italy.
However the Yellow Boats project continues as Swedes become increasingly divided over how the Nordic nation and the rest of Europe should be reacting to the ongoing refugee crisis.
One recent opinion poll showed that around 41 percent of respondents thought Sweden should grant fewer residency permits, compared to just 29 percent in September 2015.
Earlier this week the Swedish Migration Agency said that refugee arrival numbers had dropped from a weekly peak of nearly 10,000 in October to around 100 per day.A man stands guard during the reception ceremony of the first batch of locomotives for the Mombasa-Nairobi standard gauge railway in Mombasa, Kenya, on Jan. 11, 2017. Kenya has received six locomotives from China, which will run on a China-funded standard gauge railway (SGR) due to start trial operation in June. (Xinhua/Sun Ruibo)
NAIROBI, March 18 (Xinhua) -- China has created close to 30,000 jobs in Africa over the last two years, more than any other country in the world, an expert said on Friday.
"China ranks the 7th in terms of project numbers in Africa, but it created the most jobs, which is unexpected by many people," Jeremy Stevens, economist at Standard Bank Group, told Xinhua on the sidelines of an economic forum in Nairobi.
Stevens said most jobs come from China's greenfield investment by private sector. He attributed the job creation to China's investment strategy as well as its willingness to hire local people.
"On one hand, Chinese investment in Africa is mainly in labor-intensive industry; on the other hand, most African countries see employment as their top priority, which Chinese companies are willing to cooperate," he explained.
File photo shows vehicles run along the Nairobi Eastern & Northern Bypass, constructed by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Sept. 26, 2012. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)
Take Kenya for example, according to a policy research working paper released by the World Bank Group in March last year, China ranked as the fifth job creator between 2003 and 2015 through her foreign direct investment in Kenya.
"Contrary to the popular belief that Chinese companies only hire Chinese workers, 93 percent of companies report hiring Kenyan employees," according to the paper.
The paper also said that Chinese companies have a higher number of jobs per project because they have fewer projects than other countries in Kenya.
Between 2003 and 2015, FDI from China created 166.92 jobs on average per project. This was compared to 100 jobs generated per project by total FDI in Kenya, according to the paper.
It added that 60 percent of Chinese companies also offered formal training programs on skills, safety, and hygiene for local staff, compared to 64 percent on the part of all foreign firms in Kenya which offered such training.
Photo taken on Nov. 18, 2016 shows the terminal of Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe.The airport was built with support from China. (Xinhua/Chen Yaqin)
During his visit to five African nations in January this year, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said despite the sluggish global economy and trade growth, industrial cooperation between China and Africa has been gaining momentum as more Chinese companies invest in Africa.
He revealed that the total value of all types of cooperative agreements signed between China and Africa between December 2015 and July 2016 had exceeded 50 billion U.S. dollars. During the period, a multitude of cooperative infrastructure projects, economic zones and industrial parks in Africa were commenced or put into operation, he said.
During the second summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in December 2015 in Johannesburg, South Africa, China announced that it would roll out 10 major plans to boost cooperation with Africa in the coming three years, in areas including industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure and financial services, among others.
To ensure smooth implementation of the initiatives, China also announced 60 billion U.S. dollars of funding support in the forms of preferential loans, export credit on more favorable terms, interest-free loans and free aid.Paris, France - Trying to ward off the overnight cold with a blanket donated by volunteers, Muktar Ali was sleeping rough in the north of Paris when at about 4:30am, the police returned. He and several other Eritreans say they were pushed, prodded and kicked by police clearing the area.
"Police took everything I had - clothes, shoes, blanket - and threw it all away," said Ali, 33, who had fled forced conscription in Eritrea and was held captive by rebels in Libya before crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Now, he's among many refugees living on the streets of Paris, who have been subjected to displacement, detention and deportations.
Police raids, at least 30 since last June, and a cycle in which displaced people return to live in squalid camps, have angered residents and prompted them to form groups like Le Collectif La Chapelle Debout, which provide food and shelter that they say the government should be providing.
But recently, as a result of these actions, these activists have been finding themselves in criminal courts across France.
Houssam El Assimi, of Chapelle Debout, was arrested during a police raid on a Paris camp last September. Charged with "violence against persons holding public authority," he faces up to three years in prison and €45,000 (over $48,000) in fines.
Last week, his trial was adjourned until May. In the meantime, he plans to file charges against the police for using excessive force during his arrest.
He has been translating French and Arabic and helping migrants navigate the French immigration system and told Al Jazeera that he is being targeted because his group protests against the police and government policy.
El Assimi is one of several people pursued in the courts for protesting on behalf of migrants and asylum seekers or providing them with transport and shelter.
Under Article L622-1 of France's immigration law, anyone who "facilitates or attempts to facilitate the illegal entry, movement or residence of a foreigner in France shall be punished by imprisonment for five years and a fine of €30,000 (over $32,000)".
IN PICTURES: Refugee crisis 2016 - 12 countries, 12 months
Crime of solidarity
Pierre Mannoni, a 45-year-old geography professor and father of two, was arrested at a highway toll booth while driving three injured Eritrean teenage girls to Nice for medical care. He was acquitted in court, thanks to another clause stipulating that one must benefit from the transaction - a clear reference to human trafficking. But the prosecution has appealed and called for a six-month prison term.
Often referred to as the "crime of solidarity", the law has been used to prosecute people who support migrants and asylum seekers.
Rights group Gisti has documented a rise in the number of such cases going to court, and more than 100 NGOs, charities and labour unions signed a manifesto this month calling for an end to the criminalisation of humanitarian activity.
"What we're seeing is that all of the cases have one purpose," Claudia Charles, a legal expert at Gisti, told Al Jazeera. "That's to discourage any kind of support for the foreign population, be they migrants, Roma or asylum seekers."
Originally aimed at smugglers in 1945, the law was sometimes used under former President Nicolas Sarkozy's administration to prosecute those who helped immigrants.
In 2012, the new Socialist government vowed to turn the page. "Our law cannot punish those who, in good faith, want to give a helping hand," said Manuel Valls, then France's interior minister.
Human rights groups accuse the government of betraying its word and say an ever-widening range of laws are now being used to criminalise people for helping new arrivals, from the charge of assault to defamation and "insulting a public official."
"Since 2015, there's been a proliferation of cases aimed at intimidating or preventing citizens from expressing solidarity with migrants, refugees and Roma," says Marine De Hass, of the rights group, La Cimade. "It's not just article 622-1. A growing number of people are being prosecuted for helping or supporting, undocumented persons," De Hass told Al Jazeera.
Local Green councillor Jean-Luc Munro described a personal incident that took place as he was riding his bike in a Roma camp near Lille last April.
He said he was thrown off his bike after being told to stop by the police at a roadblock there, and was consequently charged with using his bicycle as a weapon to inflict "violence against a public official".
"There's been a real hardening against activists for a year and a half now," Munro told a local newspaper.
Having documented only a handful of cases against activists between 2012 and 2015, Gisti lists more than a dozen in 2016 alone, with several more going to court in the coming months.
The list is not exhaustive: both Charles and De Hass say there are probably more, unknown, cases.
Bruno Le Roux, the French interior minister, told Al Jazeera, however, that if no one profits from helping refugees and migrants, there is no "crime of solidarity". "So I can tell you that for all the cases being pursued, in court, they're cases where we believe there is a violation of the law."
The ministry has not responded to repeated requests for an explanation as to why cases are being pursued in which no personal gain is apparent. Although the Nice courts concluded as much in Mannoni's trial, the prosecution appealed his acquittal.
"It's crazy that we have reached this stage," says Mannoni. "Where I've gone to trial for helping someone who is hurt. The government is criminalising human charity."
READ MORE: Calais - Moving from the 'Jungle' to Stalingrad
Criminalising charity
The government and the city of Paris have set up new reception centres, including one in mid-January, for women and children in Ivry-sur-Seine just south of Paris.
But where shortages persist in the capital, in border towns, and Calais where the "jungle" was dismantled, volunteers are taking matters into their own hands.
No longer able to ignore the refugees and migrants lining the country roads near the Italian border, Cedric Herrou began picking them up and hosting them at his farm in La Roya Valley, near Nice.
As the tents and wooden cabins he built were not enough, he brought travellers to an old SNCF rail building that had been occupied by activists and NGOs, and where Pierre-Alain Mannoni helped three Eritrean teens.
With reinforced security at the border, following last July's massacre in Nice, asylum seekers have had difficulty getting through, and arrive in the area hungry and exhausted.
"I picked up kids who tried to cross the border 12 times," Herrou said at his trial earlier this month, where he was convicted of facilitating the entry, movement and residence of undocumented foreigners. "There were four deaths on the highway. My inaction and my silence would make me an accomplice, I do not want to be an accomplice."
Awaiting his sentence, Herrou was arrested again on January 18 on fresh charges.
His van has been confiscated and he says he'd been followed and is under surveillance. It has had little effect on the 37-year-old farmer, who smiles broadly in photos, surrounded by kids from Sudan and Eritrea.
"Whatever happens, I'll continue," he said before his second arrest.
"It's astonishing that human smugglers continue to pass through, the real smugglers who get rich on the backs of others, while humanitarians are harassed in this way," Herrou's lawyer, Me Zia Oloumi, told Al Jazeera by phone.
"The authorities can't control the borders so they're putting pressure on people in the valley to discourage them from supporting migrants, by detaining people and putting them on trial."
READ MORE: Burying refugees who die in the Calais 'Jungle'
The divisive issue
The humanitarian crisis on Europe's doorstep and resulting influx of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, have divided the country, and few places encapsulate the dilemma better than La Roya Valley - a rugged, mountainous crossroads taken by asylum seekers bent on heading north, undetected.
In December, a local rights group, Roya Citoyenne, filed a formal complaint, accusing the authorities of failing to honour their obligation to look after unaccompanied child refugees, saying on their website that "these minors are suffering intensely and risk death on the roads".
The next day, Eric Ciotti, president of Alpes-Maritimes Department, denounced "a handful of activists …blinded by a far-left ideology," for organising the "clandestine entry of foreigners across the French-Italian border".
Then, he assailed Herrou, whose rescue efforts and indifference to prosecution have made him a local hero and the bane of local police.
"Who can say with certainty that of the hundreds of migrants that Mr Herrou has proudly brought across the border," Ciotti wrote, "there isn't hidden among them, a future terrorist?"
Similar divisions are playing out in the national arena, during the run-up to the presidential elections in April and May.
Protests have erupted both in defence of migrant rights, but also, in some towns, against the opening of new shelters for asylum seekers.
While some candidates on the left say France should do more to welcome refugees and unaccompanied minors, the far right says the country is already doing too much.
Despite taking just a fraction of the numbers being welcomed by Germany, conservative frontrunner Francois Fillon says France cannot afford to take in any more asylum seekers than it already is.
Those who resist the hard line on immigration feel they are being worn down in the courts.
"They're trying to ruin us financially because it costs a lot to prepare for trial," El Assimi said at the Paris high court. He estimates he's spent more than 5,000 euros (over $5,300) in legal costs so far.
"Their strategy is to exhaust us. And it's working."
OPINION: Compassion of the many - Indifference of the few| by Andrew Johnson |
In the last month of 2016, while many people in the GTA were focused on debating the merits of tolling the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway, there was another motion presented at December's Toronto City Council that you might have missed which could have had nearly as much of an impact.
During the December 13th meeting, Councillor Josh Matlow (Ward 22, St. Paul's) put forward a motion that, had it passed, would have somewhat de-politicized the planning of rapid transit infrastructure projects in Toronto by requiring that the projects be prioritized based on actual data. In a close vote, it lost 19-22. The full motion read:
That City Council request the City Manager to determine the priority and scope of Toronto's infrastructure projects, to be funded in whole or in part with any new revenue tool(s), based on ridership/user projections, land-use patterns, most urgent need, density, future development potential, and other methods of assessment consistent with recognized urban planning principles, and report to the Executive Committee in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Council vote on Councillor Matlow's motion, courtesy of @GraphicMatt
As anyone who has watched Council knows—especially when it comes to debates surrounding the Scarborough Subway—project prioritization is not always conducted in the most data-driven manner. This motion would have forced Councillors to use the data-driven project prioritization list as a reference point when making the case to increase the priority for their politically motivated project.
"I believe we undercut our argument that we need new revenue tools when we make decisions that are not fact based, that are politically driven", Matlow said during Council debate. "That every time we spend billions of dollars on projects that are not genuinely our priorities, we're not taken as seriously by many residents and governments when we're asking for funds for the actual priorities. And I believe that we need to—in a depoliticized way—organize that list in a way that makes sense, and then we go in order as they come."
Votes by Ward, base image courtesy of the City of Toronto
While Council rehashes debates on the Scarborough Subway or rapid transit along Sheppard Ave East, projects like the East Bayfront LRT and Waterfront West LRT remain on the fringes of attention. Supported by numerous Secondary Plans and their corridors seeing rapid densification, they remain relatively low priorities for the suburban Councillor-dominated Council.
The narrow defeat of this motion means Council is able to maintain the status quo of prioritizing projects based on political motivations. Project prioritization will always be done primarily in the political arena, but at least this motion would have given evidence-based decision making a seat at the table.In Philippines, the recent depreciation of the peso against a backdrop of regional currency weakness brings back memories of the 1997 Asian crisis or the 2008 GFC. The peso fell 50% in 1997 and 15% in 2008.
Year to date in 2015, the peso is down only 5% and is expected to be relatively resilient compared to other Asian currencies. The peso's resilience is rooted in significant differences between today's conditions and those that prevailed in 1997 and 2008, in terms of the external balances, external and domestic debt levels and modest direct exposure to the key pressure point - which is currently China, states Bank of America.
The Philippines' current account turned positive beginning 2003 mainly due to growth in remittances and tourist receipts, paired with declining interest payments on foreign debt, and has been enough to overwhelm a chronic trade deficit. The sharp drop in the current account surplus seen in 2008 is unlikely to be repeated in 2015, with the key difference in 2015 being sharply lower oil prices and a further decline in debt servicing costs, says Bank of America.
Meanwhile, the Philippines' leverage ratios look far better in 2015 than they did in 1997, both in terms of total external debt and domestic dollar debt. The absolute level of external debt peaked at US$79.9bn in 2012 and has since gradually eased. Relative to GDP, the level of external debt has dropped more dramatically. Debt service costs have fallen even faster as a result of the improved credit rating achieved by the sovereign in recent years - a factor that is supportive of the current account.There is an article by Race Hochdorf going around Facebook entitled, “The Tyranny Of Fundamentalist Language.” It is provocative, insightful, and (in my opinion) spot-on. The heart of Race’s piece is the following statement:
It is impossible to debate a fundamentalist….because their very language psychologically traps them into their frames of mind.
In saying it is impossible to debate fundamentalists, Race is saying that fundamentalists — to borrow a concept from Robert Jay Lifton‘s idea of totalism — load the language. They use language in a radically different way from most society, which enables them to control dialogue. They use “thought-stopping cliches” (which is also a term Lifton uses). Race explains that,
That’s why it’s impossible to debate with a fundamentalist. By replacing “my” with “God” and melding beliefs about authority with authority itself, fundamentalist vocabulary has left no room for humility, reason, openness, doubt or change.
This is one of the most important realizations one can make about fundamentalism. The way that fundamentalists engage with people outside their communities is antithetical to dialogue. But this requires an important distinction:
Debate is not dialogue. Debate shuts down dialogue.
I agree with Race that it is difficult to dialogue with a fundamentalist. But it is absolutely essential to add that fundamentalists are chomping at the bit to debate. Ken Ham, for example, was more than willing to debate Bill Nye. Richard Dawkins was more than willing to debate Rowan Williams. Doug Wilson was more than willing to debate Andrew Sullivan. We probably all know a fundamentalist of some sort who is more than willing to debate us on our Facebook walls. As Michael Schulson wrote in The Daily Beast about Ham’s eagerness for his recent debate with Nye,
When you exist on the cultural fringe and make your living by antagonizing established authority, there’s no form of media attention you don’t love…debate is a format of impressions, not facts. Ham sounded like a reasonable human being, loosely speaking, and that’s what mattered.
I would simply add that there is no form of attention period that fundamentalists don’t love. The reason for this is that, to a fundamentalist, debates are quests for linguistic dominionism. Debate gives fundamentalists the chance to extend their loaded language into a larger context. Debates give fundamentalists the perfect opportunity to publicly defend their fundamentals.
To a fundamentalist, defending the fundamentals is the number one value.
An unwavering dedication to defending certain fundamentals is the essence of what “fundamentalism” means. There are various and somewhat differing definitions of fundamentalism, but all these definitions arise from a specific sentiment. That sentiment, of course, began in the early 1900s when “fundamentalism” referred to the so-called “Five Fundamentals” articulated in 1910 by the Presbyterian Church in the USA, codified by Lyman Stewart in The Fundamentals pamphlets. But now that sentiment applies beyond Protestantism and (whether fairly or not) to all sorts of movement, most recently atheism and (curiously enough) “ex-fundamentalism.”
At the root of these various fundamentalism is, I believe, a mindset that values ideology over people.
Fundamentalism is an obsession with getting ideology right, rather than a dedication to doing right by people.
This is why, then, defending the fundamentals is the number one value to a fundamentalist. It is more important to a fundamentalist Christian to convince people that young earth creationism is true than it is to actually go and do work Jesus commanded. It is more important to a fundamentalist atheist to convince people that Jesus never existed than it is to actually go and live a more compassionate life than a fundamentalist Christian.
So you can raise all sorts of real life consequences to believing this or that idea, and the fundamentalist will continue in the idea unwaveringly. You can list disadvatange after disadvantage, you can cite a litany of the most horrifying consequences — and it simply does not matter.
I could go up to a American Christian fundamentalist, for example, and say, “Your belief that being LGBT* is a sin quite literally leads x many young people to commit suicide every year,” and the fundamentalist would not budge one bit. The fundamentalist will come up with excuses, wax eloquent about fidelity to a narrow understanding of exegesis, will try to explain away the suicides, will deflect from responsibility, and so on and so forth. The fundamentalist will, in fact, wholeheartedly welcome you to debate the topic with him or her, just to demonstrate that he or she is not “close-minded.” “I am willing to debate this with you,” the fundamentalist will say.
Fundamentalists advertise their willingness to debate like it was a Boy Scout merit badge they earned during summer camp.
Because at the end of the day, life isn’t about people to the fundamentalist. Life is about ideology.
And honestly, there really isn’t much you can do to persuade them otherwise. You cannot debate a fundamentalist out of fundamentalism. (Fundamentalists know this. That is why they want to debate you.) The fundamentalist mindset is allergic to nuance; this allergy directly plays into debate. Insofar as debate is a game (the goal of which is to win), debate has a similar allergy. When your goal is to win, you don’t want to explore nuance. Nuance is a waste of time. When your goal is to win, you content yourself with propositions and ignore the human beings behind them. Human beings are messy, have needs, and exude complexity. Winning requires shutting that humanness down. And since shutting that humanness down is unnatural, this communicative format gives the fundamentalist mindset — of unnaturally valuing ideology over people, magically justified via loaded language — an edge. As Schulson points out,
You don’t need to be Sun Tzu to realize that, when it comes to guys like Ken Ham, you can’t really win. If you refuse to debate them, they claim to be censored. If you agree to debate them, you give them a public platform on which to argue that, yep, they’re being censored. Better not to engage at all, at least directly.
None of this is to say debate is inherently wrong. Debate has its purposes with the realms of academics, public relations, and scholastic competition. But insofar as debate eschews the human element, it strips faces from ideas. This makes it wholly other than dialogue. Dialogue by necessity involve two human beings interacting with each other’s humanity.
Breaking from fundamentalism requires reclaiming the humanity of those outside of your community. It requires a commitment to forego debate and instead embrace dialogue. It requires a dedication to valuing people over ideology.
At the end of the day, you’re better off looking a fundamentalist in the face and saying, “Sorry, I’m not interested in debating you.”
Then go love your neighbor as yourself. Make that your opening argument.
AdvertisementsTHE WORLD Hurt Syrian protesters face abuse in hospitals
Security forces have abducted the injured and even corpses, and nurses are beating patients, activists say.
With security forces largely in control of public medical care, "people prefer to die rather than go to a hospital," Khaled, a demonstrator, said Friday in the eastern city of Dair Alzour, where activists said three of the day's estimated 18 deaths occurred.
The struggle over the dead and dying underscores how hospitals, medical workers and even corpses have become weapons for the government and its supporters as they try to crush a nearly 6-month-old protest movement against Assad's rule.
Syrian troops and security officers on Friday seized at least 15 more dead and injured protesters from two hospitals in the suburbs of Damascus, the capital, firing on relatives of the victims and others, according to witnesses and activists.
BEIRUT — The protesters and family members gather outside hospitals in Syria for what has become a grim routine of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime: reaching out for the dead and wounded, trying to wrest their bodies away from security forces.
Khaled, who like many protesters asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons, described an instance this week at a hospital in his city. Activists had learned that a wounded confederate had been taken to a hospital, he said, only to be left to bleed to death by medical workers sympathetic to the regime. The body was confiscated by security forces, Khaled said, and has not been released to the man's family.
Deprivation of medical care and misuse of hospitals have become "routine, systematic," said Wissam Tarif, an activist now outside Syria. "What we have seen is security forces based in the hospitals. It is the security forces that have control of the hospitals, and in most cases the medical personnel cannot do anything about it."
Accounts from Tarif and other activists Friday detailed some of the abuses: security forces seizing the bodies of slain activists to block mourners from holding funerals, which could turn into protests against the government; and taking wounded activists who need treatment away from hospital wards.
Activists describe doctors and nurses abusing bleeding, helpless protesters, especially at state-run medical centers.
By tradition, many doctors are Alawites, members of the same minority Muslim sect as the Assad family, explained an Alawite sympathetic to the protest movement.
Taken by a doctor friend to a Damascus hospital recently to observe the abuses, the man said he saw a doctor slap a wounded patient. Hospital personnel told the man that medical ethics did not oblige them to treat traitors, he said.
In a report released in July, Amnesty International describes similar abuses by medical workers. The report cites a case in which male and female nurses in the town of Talkalakh beat an injured 21-year-old activist, stitched his wounds without administering painkiller, then beat him again on his wounds.
Medical care for injured demonstrators is increasingly being driven underground to makeshift clinics in homes or mosques. Pharmacists who sell equipment for blood transfusions or tetanus vaccine for treating bullet wounds have been arrested, Tarif said.
Early in the uprising, Tarif said, he watched in the Damascus suburb of Duma as security forces and protesters scrambled to pull wounded people out of one another's grasp. Wounded are routinely "taken, kidnapped," from hospitals, he said.
"There is clear evidence that the regime is using a specific strategy of attacking injured, attacking hospitals, kidnapping bodies, and preventing bodies from being buried with dignity," said Tarif, who is making a documentary about medical abuses in the early months of the protests.
On Friday, the Local Coordinating Committees of Syria opposition coalition reported clashes over bodies and the injured outside hospitals in the Damascus suburbs of Kafarbatna and Arbaeen, after government forces opened fire on protests that broke out nationwide after Friday prayers.After the Boom–Commodity Prices and Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean
Author/Editor:
Bertrand Gruss
Publication Date:
August 14, 2014
Electronic Access:
Free Full Text. Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file
Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate
Summary:
After skyrocketing over the past decade, commodity prices have remained stable or eased somewhat since mid-2011—and most projections suggest they are not likely to resume the upward trend observed in the last decade. This paper analyzes what this turn in the commodity price cycle may imply for output growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. The analysis suggests that growth in the years ahead for the average commodity exporter in the region could be significantly lower than during the commodity boom, even if commodity prices were to remain stable at their current still-high levels. Slower-than-expected growth in China represents a key downside risk. The results caution against trying to offset the current economic slowdown with demand-side stimulus and underscore the need for ambitious structural reforms to secure strong growth over the medium term.Who owns Freedom Industries, the company that leaked the 7,500 gallons of toxic chemicals into the Elk River and contaminated the drinking water supply of 300,000 residents of Charleston, West Virginia?
According to BusinessWeek magazine, that would be one James Clifford Forrest III of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Forrest lives in the upscale Fox Chapel suburb of Pittsburgh.
How’s the drinking water there?
Forrest is a political activist — spreading his wealth to anti-regulation politicians throughout West Virginia — including $2,250 to Senator Joe Manchin (D), $500 to Governor Earl Ray Tomblin and $500 to Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito (R).
He also donates generously to anti-regulation PACs, which in turn give to West Virginia politicians.
So, for example, Clifford Forrest donated $5,000 and his wife Tracy Forrest donated $2,000 to the Secure Energy for America PAC, which in turn in 2010 dished out $7,500 to Manchin, $2,000 to Capito, $2,400 to Congressman Nick Rahall (D).
Forrest is founder and President of Rosebud Mining Company which is the third largest underground coal producer in Pennsylvania. Rosebud employs 1,400 people in its operations in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Rosebud has a checkered regulatory history, including facing fines and enforcement actions involving two miner deaths in Pennsylvania in 2005.
And in May 2011, Rosebud settled a lawsuit brought by Mine Safety and Health Administration accusing the company of warning underground workers ahead federal inspections.
Forrest supported Obama in 2008, but turned against him in 2012, telling Bloomberg News that if Obama was re-elected, the “war on coal” will continue and “it will be a battle for survival.”
The Forrest donations are sure to be an issue in the upcoming November elections in West Virginia.
In the Second Congressional district, Manchin’s former campaign treasurer, Nick Casey, is the presumptive Democratic nominee. In addition to the corporate Republican who will emerge from a crowded primary field, Casey will |
), is dismayed when her boyfriend, Scott (Marc Blucas), a military sergeant, is deployed right before Christmas. Determined to not let it ruin the holidays for her and her children they decide to give back to the struggling military families on his base and, as their efforts go viral, they are rewarded in ways they never imagined.”
I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Premieres: Nov. 27, 9 p.m.
Starring: James Brolin (Life In Pieces), Mena Suvari (American Beauty), Giselle Eisenberg (Life in Pieces)
Official logline: “Jackie Foster (Suvari), a dynamic Assistant District Attorney and single mom, is looking forward to wrapping up her latest case and spending Christmas with Gracie (Eisenberg), her adorable and precocious, eight-year old daughter. But when Jackie’s estranged dad, Jack (Brolin), a gruff retired police officer, unexpectedly shows up at her door, they will be forced to confront old wounds. Tensions rise when Jack brings Nose, a mischievous former police dog, into Jackie’s orderly home. Though Jack had planned on quickly passing through, Gracie convinces him to stay until Christmas. Despite the baggage he brings, Jack and Jackie begin to work through their issues and she finds the possibility of an unlikely romance with a detective friend of Jack’s. As they experience the magic of Christmas together, they attempt to let go of their past and celebrate this loving holiday the way Jackie always dreamed.”
HEARTS OF CHRISTMAS
Premieres: Dec. 4, 9 p.m.
Starring: Emillie Ullerup (Sanctuary), Kristoffer Polaha (Ringer), Sharon Lawrence (NYPD Blue)
Official logline: “When Alice (Lawrence), a beloved neonatal intensive care unit supervisor, is forced to take early retirement, her young colleague Jenny (Ullerup) decides to turn the upcoming staff Christmas party into a surprise celebration for her. The plan is complicated by Matt (Polaha), the hospital’s new CFO, who’s been tasked to cut costs. Initially at loggerheads, Jenny and Matt get to know and understand each other —a sweet Christmas gift neither saw coming.”
THE SOUND OF CHRISTMAS
Premieres: Dec. 11, 9 p.m.
Starring: Lindy Booth (The Librarians), Robin Dunne (Sanctuary)
Official logline: “Lizzie (Booth) is a young piano teacher working at a music school while trying to save enough money for a Steinway piano. The school is gearing up for their major Christmas fundraiser and she has committed much of her time to plan the event. One afternoon, she meets Brad who takes an interest in her playing and asks if she will teach his uninterested teenage daughter. She begins to break through to the young girl, and sparks begin to fly with Brad (Dunne), but she is shocked to find out that his interest is not solely in her playing, but in the property that houses the music school. She sets out to save the school and the event, but can she work things out with Brad?”
A CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER
Premieres: Dec. 18, 9 p.m.
Starring: Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), Cameron Mathison (All My Children)
Official logline: “A harsh TV personality, Jennifer (Sorvino), needs a break from her own life, so she hops into a car and drives to a small town mountain retreat. On her way there a blizzard veers off the road and she crashes. When she comes to she has complete amnesia and a friendly passerby (Mathison) takes her in. As time passes she still doesn’t remember who she is and the friendly passerby, a widower himself with three kids, assimilates her into his family. But as she slowly starts remembering who she is, she prefers the new life she’s built in the small town.”
To read about four more movies that have been added to Hallmark Channel’s schedule, click here.The expedition has been completed, click here to read the dispatches or click here to see the photo gallery. Watch the documentary below:
The Bangladesh Expedition is a mission to document and record the severe weather of Bangladesh. Forecasting support is provided by meteorologist Jon Finch who spent years studying and forecasting Bengali weather from the United States. Further support is provided by Dr. Ashraf M. Dewan and the Department of Geography at the University of Dhaka as well as Tim Vasquez and the Digital Atmosphere forecasting software.
The Documentary - For decades storm chasers have learned about the legendary storms of Bangladesh. First through the work of people like Thomas Grazulis and then by the great work of Jonathan Finch and his website. Since the 1800's newspaper reports have startled the world with devastation from what can only be long and violent tornadoes. Meteorological soundings show upwards of 9000 J/KG as relatively common due to the large amounts of moisture streaming up from the Bay of Bengal. This documentary will focus on our mission, the culture of Bangladesh and will explore the uniqueness of their weather to the fullest extent.
The Science: We will be essentially operating as a mobile mesonet from Dhaka to Fairdpur and Manikganj taking measurements of temperature, dewpoint, windspeed and direction as well as photographic and videographic time located information. We are also running a radar archive from Agartala and Kolkata. The result of this data will likely result in a scientific research paper.The Lordz Games Studio aims for the sky By Dave Neumann
Highway to the Danger Zone Highway to the Danger Zone
is the dev team responsible for some of the best heavy wargames on iPad:
Not being familiar with CY6 myself, I did a little searching and it appears to be
We don't have a lot of information yet, other than it's definitely coming to both PC and tablets. As we get more info we'll make sure to pass it along.
If you want to get a feel for what Check Your 6! is all about, watch the instructional video after the break. Just be warned, it appears to have been filmed in 1987 on Betamax.
The Lordz Games Studio is the dev team responsible for some of the best heavy wargames on iPad: Panzer Corps and Warhammer 40K: Armageddon. Yesterday they announced that they'll soon be tackling a different form of warfare: aerial combat. Lordz has signed a deal to bring the popular aerial combat game, Check Your 6!, to digital platforms.Not being familiar with CY6 myself, I did a little searching and it appears to be Wings of Glory for the grognard set. Where the WoG games used cards and cardboard templates to indicate maneuvers and ranges, CY6 uses something that can only be described as an Excel spreadsheet on steroids and a hex grid. Players write down their maneuvers privately, and then play out their plane's actions in order from the least experienced pilots to the most experienced pilots. Crew will have abilities based on their experience, allowing them to alter their orders in the middle of the turn and so forth. The game is scenario based, and covers not just one product, but an entire system that can handle aircraft from 1925 to 1947. Lordz Games Studio is planning to eventually bring the entire system to digital.We don't have a lot of information yet, other than it's definitely coming to both PC and tablets. As we get more info we'll make sure to pass it along.If you want to get a feel for what Check Your 6! is all about, watch the instructional video after the break. Just be warned, it appears to have been filmed in 1987 on Betamax.A Florida man has been slapped with felony criminal hacking charges after gaining unauthorized access to poorly secured computer systems belonging to a Florida county elections supervisor.
David Michael Levin, 31, of Estero, Florida, was charged with three counts of unauthorized access to a computer, network, or electronic device and released on $15,000 bond, officials with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said. According to a court document filed last week in Florida's Lee County and a video it cited as evidence, Levin logged in to the Lee County Elections Office website using the pilfered credentials of Sharon Harrington, the county's supervisor of elections. Levin, who authorities said is the owner of a security firm called Vanguard Cybersecurity, also allegedly gained access to the website of Florida's Office of Elections.
Levin posted a YouTube video in late January that showed him entering the supervisor's username and password to gain control of a content management system used to control leeelections.com, which at the time was the official website for the elections office. At no time did anyone from the county authorize Levin to access the site, officials said.
"Based on the evidence obtained regarding the SQL injections attack Levin performed against the Lee County Office of Elections on December 19, 2015, probable cause does exist to charge Levin with unauthorized access of any computer, computer system, computer network, or electronic device, a violation of Florida Statute 815.06(2)(a), a third degree felony," prosecutors wrote.
Unsettling concerns
As ill-advised as it was for Levin to log in to the website CMS, the video raises some unsettling concerns about the security of the Lee County elections website, which is used to display voting results, verify registration status, and provide ballots for upcoming elections. In the video, Levin shows how he was able to use a SQL injection attack to obtain the user names and plain-text passwords belonging to Harrington and at least 10 other account holders. He then shows how the password for Harrington's account allowed him to enter the CMS and move through various application menus.
According to Dan Sinclair, a Lee County resident who is a candidate running against Harrington for the elections supervisor post, Levin used a separate SQL injection attack to obtain plain-text passwords for the state's Office of Elections website but never used them to log in. Sinclair told Ars that Levin discovered the vulnerabilities on his own and then notified Sinclair of the findings. Sinclair said Levin is declining to speak to reporters pending the outcome of the case filed against him. Ars was unable to reach Levin directly.
Officials at the Lee County Elections Office told Ars that, contrary to the claims of Levin and Sinclair, the security of all of the election systems—including voter registration, vote tabulations, and website—were never at risk. The server that was vulnerable to Levin's SQL injection attack, they said, had been retired in October. At the time of Levin's attack, at least two months later, it no longer stored sensitive data and had been replaced by a new server that wasn't vulnerable to the attack, they said. Similarly, the CMS Levin logged in to had also been retired and replaced with one that ran WordPress. While the older CMS was allowed to continue running during a transition period, its functionality was limited to storing only historical data, the officials said. People logging in to it didn't have the ability to post new pages to the site or to access voter data or tabulation systems, they said.
Ultimately, the picture that emerges from the hack and the resulting arrest provides cautionary tales for the entire cast of characters. An elected official charged with ensuring the security of her department's computer systems allowed servers operated by her office to remain vulnerable to hacks that are so common that even unskilled script kiddies can carry them out with aplomb. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with network security knows, hackers are often able to pivot from low-level systems to more sensitive ones. And even if the unauthorized access in this case couldn't be escalated, the hacks can give rise to the appearance of insecurity, which is never good for democracy, especially in a state like Florida, where confidence in voting systems is already lacking.
But it's equally problematic for Levin to have posted a video showing him using pilfered credentials to log in to a system he had no authorization to access. Levin's commendable deed in blowing the whistle on lax security practices in Lee County's Elections Office has been overshadowed by actions of his own doing and very well may result in him having a criminal record for the rest of his life.MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani helicopter gunships and warplanes hit Taliban positions in the militants’ Swat Valley stronghold Saturday, while a curfew prevented civilians from fleeing the fighting.
Pakistan military troops patrol on the streets of Takht Bai, about 150 km (85 miles) north west of Pakistan's capital Islamabad May 9, 2009.REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood
The struggle in the northwestern valley 130 km (80 miles) from Islamabad has become a test of Pakistan’s resolve to fight a growing insurgency that has alarmed the West.
The military said up to 55 militants were killed in the day’s clashes in Swat and four soldiers wounded, and that several militants had died in separate clashes close to the Afghan border. The figures could not be independently confirmed.
Pakistan’s army went on a full-scale offensive after the government ordered troops to flush out militants from the Islamist stronghold, once an exotic tourist destination.
Fighting had picked up earlier in the week, triggering a civilian exodus. Fears are growing for those still trapped.
“We are feeling so helpless, we want to go but can’t as there is a curfew,” said Sallahudin Khan by telephone from Mingora, Swat’s main town.
“We tried to leave yesterday after authorities relaxed the curfew for a few hours, but couldn’t as the main road leading out of Mingora was literally jammed with the flood of fleeing people,” he said as gunship fire boomed in the background.
Helicopters and warplanes targeted militant hideouts in Mingora and other areas in Swat, military officials said. Militants fired rockets at an army base in Mingora.
Swat administrator Khushal Khan told Reuters the curfew would remain in force throughout the day.
The U.N. refugee agency has said a “massive displacement” is under way. Citing provincial government estimates, it said on Friday up to 200,000 people had left their homes in recent days with a further 300,000 on the move or about to move.
They join 555,000 people displaced from other areas because of fighting since August, the agency said.
Many stay with relatives or friends or find shelter on their own, but officials fear if the crisis is protracted they will join tens of thousands in camps, further straining resources.
LOOTING
Pakistan’s private Express TV station reported looting at one camp Saturday, showing scenes of scuffles over supplies, but said the situation had been brought under control.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said the government would seek international help for the displaced and the military would do its best to avoid hurting civilians.
“This is not a normal war. This is a guerrilla war. But it is our resolve, it is the resolve of the army that there should be minimum collateral damage,” he told a news conference.
The fight against militants based near the border with Afghanistan is seen as vital to defeating the Afghan insurgency.
While Swat is not on the border, analysts say it could also become a base for Afghan insurgents as well as for efforts to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan’s government.
Up to 15,000 troops have been pitched against between 4,000-5,000 battle-hardened militants in the valley.
“In my area, there is no government, it’s all Taliban,” said Ibrahim Khan, a farmer in the militant stronghold of Matta town.
“They are in full control.”
In an incident that could hurt government efforts to rally support for the offensive, suspected pilotless U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles Saturday at targets in South Waziristan, an al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary on the Afghanistan border, intelligence officials said.
Slideshow (6 Images)
One official as well as a Taliban source said the missiles killed five militants. Another intelligence official put the death toll at as high as 20.
Hours later, Pakistani security forces killed 18 militants in the same region, the military said. The shootout erupted after militants attacked a military convoy, killing one soldier and wounding two.
U.S. attacks have been criticized for killing civilians and violating sovereignty, and have caused opposition to Islamabad cooperating with Washington in fighting militants.The popularity of Gov. Larry Hogan continues to soar.
Seventy-one percent of registered voters in the state — including 63 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans — approve of the job he is doing, according to a recent poll.
The poll was conducted by Annapolis-based OpinionWorks, which shared its findings with The Baltimore Sun in advance of their release Tuesday.
Hogan's support has grown by eight points since a Baltimore Sun/University of Baltimore survey in November, and it eclipses the ratings his predecessor, Democrat Martin O'Malley, received during his eight years in office.
"It's not a honeymoon, and it's not sympathy because of cancer," said Todd Eberly, a political scientist at St. Mary's College. "These are sustained numbers."
Hogan was elected in 2014 and battled non-Hodgkin's lymphoma last year.
Republicans are already gearing up to defend Hogan when he comes up for re-election in 2018, and several Democrats have started jockeying to challenge him. The race will have far-reaching consequences: The next governor will have a hand in redrawing congressional and legislative district boundaries in 2021.
Hogan's only potential soft spot is in the heavily Democratic Washington suburbs. Twenty-eight percent of respondents in Montgomery County and 24 percent of those in Prince George's County said they are not sure about Hogan's performance.
His approval rating in Baltimore— a bastion of Democratic politics — is 72 percent.
OpinionWorks interviewed 754 likely voters in Maryland about the presidential and Senate contests. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
OpinionWorks has surveyed voters for The Baltimore Sun in the past, but conducted this poll independently.
The poll showed support for democratic candidates for president and senate. Read more on the poll here.Caveat: I am not an expert on multi-threading programming. In fact, I wouldn't even say that I am competent at it. My whole career, I've needed to write code to spin up a secondary worker thread probably less than half a dozen times. So take everything I say on the subject with some skepticism.
A question I'm frequently asked: "is this code thread safe?" To answer the question, clearly we need to know what "thread safe" means.
But before we get into that, there's something I want to clear up first. A question I am less frequently asked is "Eric, why does Michelle Pfeiffer always look so good in photographs?" To help answer this pressing question, I consulted Wikipedia:
"A photogenic subject is a subject that usually appears physically attractive or striking in photographs."
Why does Michelle Pfeiffer always look so good in photographs? Because she's photogenic. Obviously.
Well, I'm glad we've cleared up that mystery, but I seem to have wandered somehwat from the subject at hand. Wikipedia is just as helpful in defining thread safety:
"A piece of code is thread-safe if it functions correctly during simultaneous execution by multiple threads."
As with photogenicity, this is obvious question-begging. When we ask "is this code thread safe?" all we are really asking is "is this code correct when called in a particular manner?" So how do we determine if the code is correct? We haven't actually explained anything here.
Wikipedia goes on:
"In particular, it must satisfy the need for multiple threads to access the same shared data,..."
This seems fair; this scenario is almost always what people mean when they talk about thread safety. But then:
"...and the need for a shared piece of data to be accessed by only one thread at any given time."
Now we're talking about techniques for creating thread safety, not defining what thread safety means. Locking data so that it can only be accessed by one thread at a time is just one possible technique for creating thread safety; it is not itself the definition of thread safety.
My point is not that the definition is wrong; as informal definitions of thread safety go, this one is not terrible. Rather, my point is that the definition indicates that the concept itself is completely vague and essentially means nothing more than "behaves correctly in some situations". Therefore, when I'm asked "is this code thread safe?" I always have to push back and ask "what are the exact threading scenarios you are concerned about?" and "exactly what is correct behaviour of the object in every one of those scenarios?"
Communication problems arise when people with different answers to those questions try to communicate about thread safety. For example, suppose I told you that I have a "threadsafe mutable queue" that you can use in your program. You then cheerfully write the following code that runs on one thread while another thread is busy adding and removing items from the mutable queue:
if (!queue.IsEmpty) Console.WriteLine(queue.Peek());
Your code then crashes when the Peek throws a QueueEmptyException. What is going on here? I said this thing was thread safe, and yet your code is crashing in a multi-threaded scenario.
When I said "the queue is threadsafe" I meant that the queue maintains its internal state consistently no matter what sequence of individual operations are happening on other threads. But I did not mean that you can use my queue in any scenario that requires logical consistency maintained across multiple operations in a sequence. In short, my opinion of "correct behaviour" and your opinion of the same differed because what we thought of as the relevant scenario was completely different. I care only about not crashing, but you care about being able to reason logically about the information returned from each method call.
In this example, you and I are probably talking about different kinds of thread safety. Thread safety of mutable data structures is usually all about ensuring that the operations on the shared data always operate on the most up-to-date state of the shared data as it mutates, even if that means that a particular combination of operations appears to be logically inconsistent, as in our example above. Thread safety of immutable data structures is all about ensuring that use of the data across all operations is logically consistent, at the expense of the fact that you're looking at an immutable snapshot that might be out-of-date.
The problem here is that the choice about whether to access the first element or not is based on "stale" data. Designing a truly thread-safe mutable data structure in a world where nothing is allowed to be stale can be very difficult. Consider what you'd have to do in order to make the "Peek" operation above actually threadsafe. You'd need a new method:
if (!queue.Peek(out first)) Console.WriteLine(first);
Is this "thread safe"? It certainly seems better. But what if after the Peek, a different thread dequeues the queue? Now you're not crashing, but you've changed the behaviour of the previous program considerably. In the previous program, if, after the test there was a dequeue on another thread that changed what the first element was, then you'd either crash or print out the up-to-date first element in the queue. Now you're printing out a stale first element. Is that correct? Not if we always want to operate on up-to-date data!
But wait a moment -- actually, the previous version of the code had this problem as well. What if the dequeue on the other thread happened after the call to Peek succeeded but before the Console.WriteLine call executed? Again, you could be printing out stale data.
What if you want to ensure that you are always printing out up-to-date data? What you really need to make this threadsafe is:
queue.DoSomethingToHead(first=>{Console.WriteLine(first);});
Now the queue author and the queue user agree on what the relevant scenarios are, so this is truly threadsafe. Right?
Except... there could be something super-complicated in that delegate. What if whatever is in the delegate happens to cause an event that triggers code to run on another thread, which in turn causes some queue operation to run, which in turn blocks in such a manner that we've produced a deadlock? Is a deadlock "correct behaviour"? And if not, is this method truly "safe"?
Yuck.
By now you take my point I'm sure. As I pointed out earlier, it is unhelpful to say that a building or a hunk of code is "secure" without somehow communicating which threats the utilized security mechanism are and are not proof against. Similarly, it is unhelpful to say that code is "thread safe" without somehow communicating what undesirable behaviors the utilized thread safety mechanisms do and do not prevent. "Thread safety" is nothing more nor less than a code contract, like any other code contract. You agree to talk to an object in a particular manner, and it agrees to give you correct results if you do so; working out exactly what that manner is, and what the correct responses are, is a potentially tough problem.
************
(*) Yes, I'm aware that if I think something on Wikipedia is wrong, I can change it. There are two reasons why I should not do so. First, as I've already stated I'm not an expert in this area; I leave it to the experts to sort out amongst themselves what the right thing to say here is. And second, my point is not that the Wikipedia page is wrong, but rather that it illustrates that the term itself is vague by nature.Which sneaker makes for the best blank canvas for customization? Maybe some white-on-white Air Force 1s, a pair of Chuck Taylors, or the adidas Stan Smith? Those are all safe choices, but after some of the crazy customs we've seen lately, we're leaning towards the Air Jordan 1 "Laser."
Most recently, @adamchang23 took the white-and-silver base and gave it a "fragment design" treatment. The sought after white, black, and royal blue colorway is represented in all its glory, with the only thing missing being the fragment lightning bolt branding at the heel. Nevertheless, it's pretty dope to see the etched laser treatment poking through on a colorway like this.
Chang may have been inspired by @andr3wtl, who recently whipped up a similar take on the Air Jordan 1 "Banned" colorway. Check out both customs below, and head over to eBay — or your local store where they may be sitting on the shelves — now to grab a pair of "Lasers" before they dry up.
[via Collective Kicks and @andr3wtl]SAN DIEGO and WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J., Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARNA) and Eisai Inc. announced today that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for filing and review Arena's resubmission of the New Drug Application (NDA) for lorcaserin. The FDA considers the resubmission a complete, class 2 response, and assigned a new Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) target date of June 27, 2012.
Lorcaserin is intended for weight management, including weight loss and maintenance of weight loss, in patients who are obese (Body Mass Index, or BMI, > 30) or patients who are overweight (BMI > 27) and have at least one weight-related co-morbid condition. Arena submitted the original NDA for lorcaserin in December 2009, and the FDA issued a Complete Response Letter (CRL) in October 2010. Arena submitted a response to the lorcaserin CRL in December 2011.
About Lorcaserin
Lorcaserin is an investigational new chemical entity that is believed to act as a selective serotonin 2C receptor agonist. The serotonin 2C receptor is expressed in the brain, including the hypothalamus, an area believed to be involved in the control of appetite and metabolism. Arena has patents that cover lorcaserin in the United States and other jurisdictions that in most cases are capable of continuing into 2023 without taking into account any patent term extensions or other exclusivity Arena might obtain.
Arena's wholly owned subsidiary, Arena Pharmaceuticals GmbH, has granted Eisai Inc. exclusive rights to market and distribute lorcaserin in the United States subject to FDA approval of the lorcaserin NDA.
About Arena Pharmaceuticals
Arena is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing oral drugs that target G protein-coupled receptors, an important class of validated drug targets, in four major therapeutic areas: cardiovascular, central nervous system, inflammatory and metabolic diseases.
Arena Pharmaceuticals® and Arena® are registered service marks of the company.
About Eisai Inc.
Eisai Inc. was established in 1995 and is ranked among the top-25 US pharmaceutical companies (based on retail sales). The company began marketing its first product in the United States in 1997 and has rapidly grown to become a fully integrated pharmaceutical business. Eisai's areas of commercial focus include neurology, gastrointestinal disorders and oncology/critical care. The company serves as the US pharmaceutical operation of Eisai Co., Ltd., a research-based human health care (hhc) company that discovers, develops and markets products throughout the world.
Eisai has a global product creation organization that includes US-based R&D facilities in Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania as well as manufacturing facilities in Maryland and North Carolina. The company's areas of R&D focus include neuroscience; oncology; vascular, inflammatory and immunological reaction; and antibody-based programs. For more information about Eisai, please visit www.eisai.com/us.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements include statements about the advancement, therapeutic indication and use, safety, efficacy, mechanism of action, and potential of lorcaserin; the resubmission of the lorcaserin NDA, including the FDA's review and the potential timing for the FDA to complete such review; the potential approval and commercialization of lorcaserin; the Eisai collaboration and potential activities thereunder; lorcaserin's patent coverage; and Arena's focus, goals, strategy, research and development programs, and ability to develop compounds and commercialize drugs. For such statements, Arena claims the protection of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual events or results may differ materially from Arena's expectations. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the following: the timing of regulatory review and approval is uncertain, and the FDA may not complete its review of the resubmission of the lorcaserin NDA by the PDUFA date; nonclinical and clinical data is voluminous and detailed, and regulatory agencies may interpret or weigh the importance of data differently and reach different conclusions than Arena or others, request additional information, have additional recommendations or change their guidance or requirements before or after approval; data and other information related to lorcaserin and Arena's other research and development programs may not meet safety or efficacy requirements or otherwise be sufficient for regulatory review or approval; Arena's submission of a marketing authorization application for regulatory approval of lorcaserin may not be submitted when anticipated, if at all; unexpected or unfavorable new data; risks related to commercializing new products; Arena's ability to obtain and defend its patents; the timing, success and cost of Arena's research and development programs; results of clinical trials and other studies are subject to different interpretations and may not be predictive of future results; clinical trials and other studies may not proceed at the time or in the manner expected or at all; having adequate funds; risks related to relying on collaborative agreements; the timing and receipt of payments and fees, if any, from collaborators; and satisfactory resolution of pending and any future litigation or other disagreements with others. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by Arena's forward-looking statements are disclosed in Arena's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements represent Arena's judgment as of the time of this release. Arena disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements, other than as may be required under applicable law.
Contacts: Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Investor Inquiries: Russo Partners Media Inquiries: Russo Partners Cindy McGee David Schull cindy.mcgee@russopartnersllc.com david.schull@russopartnersllc.com 619.308.6538 858.717.2310 Contacts: Eisai Inc. Investor Inquiries: Media Inquiries: Alex Scott Lynn Kenney alex_scott@eisai.com lynn_kenney@eisai.com 201.746.2177 201.746.2294
SOURCE Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc.You wouldn't know it from listening to Congress or watching cable news, but most Americans are not as ideologically divided as some might suggest.
According to a survey commissioned by NBC News and Esquire magazine released Tuesday, a majority of American voters (51 percent) fall into what the study — conducted by lead pollsters for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's campaigns — identified as the ideological center: minivan moderates, pickup populists, the MBA-earning middle and the hashtag-using #whatever man.
Roughly 6 in 10 (58 percent) of those respondents say they are pessimistic about American politics, and more than 44 percent feel their ideas are not represented by Republicans or Democrats.
And just what are those ideas?
A majority (57 percent) of centrists support ending affirmative action in hiring decisions and college admissions, are in favor (52 percent) of legalizing marijuana and mostly (59 percent) think feel religion should have no role in politics. A larger percentage (64 percent), meanwhile, support gay marriage and the right to an abortion for any reason within the first trimester (63 percent). And a vast majority (76 percent) of centrists "believe that the U.S. should no longer be the world’s policeman."
The study found 45 percent of this group support background checks for gun purchases (34 percent own a gun or have a gun in their household) and 54 percent "feel the Constitution cannot provide guidance to modern problems facing us now."
And while a strong majority (66 percent) of centrists say that America is still the greatest country in the world, none of the 2,410 respondents (0 percent) was willing to label the state of the American economy “excellent."
“People feel eroded,” Democratic pollster Daniel Franklin, who helped conduct the study, said. “They’ve seen the strength of the middle class wane, and correspondingly, the country as a whole begin to falter.”
Click here to explore the full results and here to take Esquire's interactive quiz, "Are you in the new American center?"The iPhone X: An ode to ten years of iPhone design Sebastiaan de With Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 6, 2017 Like many others, I was delighted to receive my iPhone X last week. Playing with it, I was amazed by the stunning screen, the sheer manufacturing precision and the smooth gestural interface. I was also struck by how far it has come.
Oh my, how you have grown. (via)
10 years ago, the first iPhones were in our hands and we were in awe at what a device its size could do. At the time, I also found the design of this device remarkable: it didn’t look like any other cellphone or Apple product. Its particular styling of metal and glass was a completely new thing. Apple would proceed to radically innovate in the industrial design of its iPhones for the next decade. Looking at iPhone X, you can see how Apple has taken 10 years of those innovations in industrial design and essentially summarized it. The iPhone X wraparound stainless steel band is an homage to the original, shiny-rimmed iPhone 2G:
Released in 2007, the iPhone 2G truly was quite a different device. Apple released both the iPod touch and the iPhone that year, but only the iPhone got the shiny metal band framing the screen. This original incarnation of iPhone was followed by the iPhone 3G, the first iPhone to be entirely black, with a silver Apple logo on the back. The Space Grey iPhone X echoes this early aesthetic.
After the 3GS, it was followed by the iPhone 4 in 2010. iPhone 4 did something entirely new: the front and back were completely glass, a design feat that is also mirrored in the iPhone X. The iPhone 4 will always be one of my favorite iPhone designs. It’s timeless.
iPhone 5 built on the industrial design of the iPhone 4 and 4S, and was the first to black out the metal band. While the iPhone X’s Silver version has the polished steel look of the original iPhone, the Space Grey iPhone X has a blackened steel band – a style introduced with the iPhone 5.
I love the iPhone 5. To me, iPhone has always looked best in black, and the iPhone 5 was Apple’s love letter penned to the color black. It may have chipped on the chamfered edges and wasn’t long lived—iPhone 5S did away with the black in favor of a more grey Space Grey—it’s still one of the most gorgeous colorways iPhone ever came in.
I’m happy we’re seeing a return to form with the iPhone X. Finally, the iPhone X builds on the design language first introduced with the iPhone 6 and onward. It uses the ergonomic, rounded case of the iPhone 6 and 6S, the uninterrupted, brilliant feeling of the Jet Black iPhone 7, and of course it features the glass back of the iPhone 8.
The iPhone X is a design that condenses the essence of every past iPhone and somehow transcends it to become something entirely new.What follows is the late-October through late-December Forest Ranger Activity Report for DEC Region 5, which includes most of the Adirondack region. Although not a comprehensive detailing of all backcountry incidents, these reports are issued periodically by the DEC and printed here at the Almanack in their entirety. They are organized by county, and date. You can read previous Forest Ranger Reports here.
These incident reports are a stern reminder that wilderness conditions can change suddenly and accidents happen. Hikers and campers should check up-to-date forecasts before entering the backcountry and always carry a flashlight, first aid kit, map and compass, extra food, plenty of water and clothing. Be prepared to spend an unplanned night in the woods and always inform others of your itinerary.
The Adirondack Almanack reports current outdoor recreation and trail conditions each Thursday evening. Listen for the weekly Adirondack Outdoor Conditions Report on Friday mornings on WNBZ (AM 920 & 1240, FM 105 & 102.1), WSLP (93.3) and on the stations of North Country Public Radio.
Clinton County
Town of Ellenburg, Private Land
On Thursday, November 10, 2011, at approximately 3:24 pm, DEC Dispatch in Ray Brook received a call from State Police reporting a missing hunter. Paul Stough, 74, of Lexington, NC |
the nerve overstimulation scenario.Cancer and Reproductive Harm- Cancer and Reproductive Harm- www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
With the introduction of XD(M) series of semiautomatic pistols, Springfield Armory's reputation for ergonomics, intuitive operation and handling is taken to a whole new level. Deeper, longer and more slide serrations result in a better grasp when operating the slide. The ideal grip angle of the XD® has been carried over to the XD(M), but slightly modified contours in the grip and three included backstraps tailor the fit to the hand of any shooter. Angle and depth of each contour in the grip has been calculated for maximized control vertically, horizontally and torsionally. Operation of the magazine release is easily accomplished by hands of almost any size without twisting or adjusting hold on the shooting grip. By removing the need to pull the trigger during disassembly, the process is easier and faster. The Ultra Safety Assurance Trigger System™ guards against accidental discharge from dropping or bumping by locking the trigger in place until direct, rearward pressure is applied, while a grip safety allows the gun to fire only when you have a firm grip on the pistol. The loaded-chamber indicator and striker status indicator allow you to verify visually or by touch and leave no doubt whether there is a round in the chamber and if the striker is cocked. Match-grade barrel and proven three-dot sighting system are standard. Includes black hard case.LEEDS UNITED manager Brian McDermott has reiterated his desire to keep hold of talismanic forward Ross McCormack, who underlined his importance to the club with another key contribution in Saturday’s derby draw with Sheffield Wednesday.
The 27-year-old was the subject of ‘two or three’ failed bids from Middlesbrough last week, but despite the snub, the Teessiders are being tipped to make an improved offer ahead of the closure of the transfer window on September 2.
With few genuine creative match-winners at his disposal, McDermott is desperate for McCormack to remain at the club with the Scot earning the Whites a point after netting an exquisite 58th-minute equaliser to thwart the Owls, who had been on course for their first league win of the campaign following Kamil Zayatte’s first-half opener.
McDermott said: “I want Ross to score those goals in August, September, any time. It’s that real bit of quality.
“I said at half-time, ‘let’s not wait for anything to happen. Let’s grab it, someone grab it’, and he did that.
“It was a fabulous goal.
“We’ve turned down two or three bids (for McCormack). People know my view and my view hasn’t changed. I’ve spoken to Ross and you can see the quality that he brings. You saw his (goal) celebration as well.
“He loves playing football, he loves this football club and I want him to stay. Absolutely.”
On the prospect of renewed interest from Boro, McDermott added: “That’s up to them. They can do what they like, but as far as I am concerned, I want Ross to be here.
“That’s their prerogative to do what they like.
“Let’s not talk about transfers. I don’t know is the answer. I just don’t know.
“Ross has got good ability, he’s a talent. I’d like to keep him. The ideal situation – and it hasn’t happened in the four years I’ve been a manager – is to keep all your players and add to your squad. It will happen to me one day, I’m sure.”
Owls chief Dave Jones admits that there is nothing imminent on the incoming transfer front at Hillsborough with existing players needing to be moved on to provide him with room for manoeuvre in the market ahead of the window closing in a fortnight.
Jones, who saw Lewis Buxton and Reda Johnson make their seasonal bows on Saturday following injury and Giles Coke also return after missing the previous weekend’s game with Burnley, said: “We will just keep chipping away. I have still got to move people out at this moment if I want to generate money to bring people in.
“But it was nice to get some of my senior players back and that was important for us on Saturday, as it was to come through without any injuries.”
Elsewhere in the Championship, Barnsley, like Wednesday, are still looking for their first league victory of the campaign after letting a two-goal lead slip in a 2-2 weekend draw with Charlton Athletic at Oakwell,
Huddersfield Town claimed their first three points of 2013-14 in a 1-0 victory at Millwall.In 2013, a difficult winter left many St. Paul streets riddled with potholes.
The mayor’s office moved quickly to tackle the “Terrible 20” transit corridors, the busiest and most decrepit of the bunch, and complaints have died down — with a $1 million exception.
While the streets were repaired, dozens of old curb cuts — the ramps that allow pedestrian and wheelchairs to move from the street to the sidewalk — were not brought up to modern standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, disability advocates say.
Under pressure from the disability community, St. Paul has identified about 230 ramps that need to be retrofitted. A few dozen will be redone by the end of 2017 as part of unrelated street projects. That still leaves 200 ramps that need attention — at a total cost of $1 million.
Following roughly a year of debate and the threat of lawsuit, the St. Paul City Council voted on Jan. 13 to alter city policy and bring curb ramps up to federal ADA standards at the same time future major road work progresses, including mill and overlay projects.
FEDERAL REQUIREMENT
There are specific standards that dictate what an ADA-compliant curb ramp looks like — slope, width, landing area. The standards are set by the U.S. Justice Department and the federal Access Board, and also have been adopted by the state.
Steven Schmidt, an attorney with the Minnesota Disability Law Center, said clients became concerned when they noticed that as the work progressed on the St. Paul streets, “the city was not doing any work to the curb ramps.”
Before the council vote earlier this month, St. Paul Public Works officials maintained that the curb ramps were in keeping with standards in place when the sidewalks were built. They also maintained that ADA standards require modern updates to ramps when streets are altered, but the mill and overlay work didn’t meet the definition.
“(The debate) was triggered by the question: ‘Well, what’s an alteration?’ ” Schmidt said.
Public works officials note that they don’t consider mill and overlay work to be construction projects.
“Mill and overlays are work done on the street’s surface,” said public works spokesman Joe Ellickson. “It’s a small distinction our engineers are particular about. Mill and overlays simply impact the top few inches of the street. A construction or reconstruction of the street involves curbs, gutters and other aspects of the street.”
Until this month, city policy read: “If the curb ramp is not damaged and meets the specifications in place at the time of original construction, the ramp will remain. Curb ramps that are in poor condition or noncompliant with specifications at the time of installation will be replaced.”
As part of the Jan. 13 vote, the city council agreed to add new language stating that “the city will bring all existing curb ramps on altered streets into compliance with the accessibility standards in place at the time of the alteration.”
LAWSUIT AVERTED?
The Minnesota Disability Law Center shared a draft complaint with the city in June 2015, but stopped short of filing a civil suit in Ramsey County District Court.
“Since that time, we’ve been talking back and forth, and working on the language that was part of that resolution,” Schmidt said.
Public works has begun to improve the curb cuts on streets that already have been milled and overlaid. It will continue to do so moving forward, said city officials.Achieving a milestone more than 65 years in the making, Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today announced production of its 300-millionth motorcycle. The milestone bike is a Honda Gold Wing produced at the company’s Kumamoto Factory in Japan. Honda will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the iconic Gold Wing in 2015.
Honda began mass production of motorcycles in Japan in 1949 when it built the Honda 98cc Dream Type-D. Today, Honda produces motorcycles, ATV’s and side-by-sides at 32 plants in 22 countries, including two plants in North America.
“This incredible milestone is the result of the millions of customers who have placed their trust in Honda and we would like to thank all of our customers, associates, dealers and community partners in North America for helping make it possible,” said Bob Gurga, Vice President and Manager of Motorcycle Division for American Honda. “Now, we are focused on the future and the ways that we can harness the challenging spirit of Honda associates to create new joy for Honda customers.”
In 1958, Honda introduced the Honda 50, known globally as the Super Cub, which would go on to revolutionize the industry. This iconic bike paved the way for Honda’s expansion into the U.S. in 1959 and Canada in 1969. The Super Cub, which has sold nearly 90 million units globally since its inception, was the focus of a mid-1960s advertising campaign, ‘You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda,’ that played a major role in the transformation and growth of the U.S. motorcycle market.
In the 1960s, Honda became the best-selling motorcycle brand in the U.S. and the world, leading to the establishment of Honda of America Mfg. and the company’s first U.S. production facility, the Marysville Motorcycle Plant. The plant, which opened on September 10, 1979 in Marysville, Ohio, produced both motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) until 2009. Production of ATVs has since shifted to Honda of South Carolina Mfg. (HSC) in Timmonsville, South Carolina.
Since the start of production in 1979, Honda has manufactured more than five million power sports products in North America using global and domestically sourced parts. Today, HSC manufactures FourTrax ATVs and Pioneer side-by-sides and engines, while the Honda plant in El Salto, Jalisco, Mexico, produces motorcycles.
Furthermore, the research and development of Honda ATVs and side-by-side vehicles for both local and global markets is now being led by a team of engineers at Honda R&D Americas – with Powersports R&D operations in Los Angeles, Ohio and South Carolina.
The successful startup of motorcycle production at Honda of America Mfg. in 1979 was soon followed by the auto production at the Marysville Auto Plant in 1982. Motorcycle production continued in Ohio until 2009 and planted the seeds of manufacturing expertise that has led to many Honda facilities across North America. Today, Honda operates 17 major manufacturing facilities in North America, producing a wide range of Honda and Acura automobiles, automobile engines and transmissions, Honda all-terrain vehicles and side-by-sides, power equipment products and the HondaJet light jet.Hull City played out a 1-1 draw with Burnley at the KCOM stadium on Saturday, which could prove to be detrimental in Hull’s bid to avoid the drop.
1: Robbie Brady is showing his worth
Brady was at the heart of Burnley’s equaliser yesterday, putting the corner in for Keane to smash home. Brady was also at the centre of most of the Clarets’ most dangerous attacks. With some slightly better end quality, he could very easily have scored a couple and set a few up. The winger has added some much needed flair and creativity to the Burnley attack and he has already been involved in two key goals, which have lead to Burnley picking up two points.
2: Tom Huddlestone is extremely under rated
Huddlestone was on the score sheet yesterday, converting rather luckily from the spot, to fire the Tigers into a 72nd minute lead. Anyone who wasn’t at the game probably wouldn’t know that Huddlestone was very good yesterday and his role in the Hull side is one that not many plyers could do. The former Tottenham midfielder sits in front of the centre half’s and starts a lot of the Hull attacks. His passing range is that of a top player. If you make a run forward, more often than not, Huddlestone will find you. Without the big midfielder yesterday, I don’t think Hull would have got anything out of the game.
3: Burnley’s away form is on the up
The Clarets are still winless on the road, but things are looking brighter and that first away win of the season is definitely edging closer. Yesterday was a golden chance to finally break the away day hoodoo, as the Clarets had golden chances at 0-0 but failed to take them. If Burnley had scored the first goal, they would have won the game, that was the nature of the contest yesterday. Sean Dyche got his tactics spot on yesterday, and they had the Tigers on the rack for large parts of the game, but that final bit of quality in the last third was missing.
4: Without Markovic, Hull are blunt in attack
Hull went with Ahmed Elmohamady and Kamil Grosicki on the wings yesterday in Markovic’s absence, but neither set the world alight. Grosicki was the better of the two. He looked quite dangerous at times and found himself relatively unlucky not to get on the score sheet, his bending right footed effort curling tantalisingly wide of the far post. Markovic adds some extra pace and finesse in the final third and that wasn’t in show yesterday, with Hull creating relatively little in front of goal. Without the penalty, I’m not sure they would have scored.
5: Ashley Barnes can be a bit of a loose cannon
Ashley Barnes saw red in stoppage time after a flailing arm caught Andrea Rannochia in the face. Having already been booked in the aftermath of the penalty decision, Barnes was shown his second yellow by Martin Atkinson. The main strength to Barnes’ game is his physicality and he plays on the edge, making him a nuisance for defenders, but this can often result in him being on the wrong end of some refereeing decisions. This physicality often means he catches defenders with stray elbows and yesterday, he was punished.The 20,000 Kickstarter backers who have been waiting two years for their high-tech Coolest Cooler to arrive learned they may have to wait another three after founder and CEO Ryan Grepper issued a long-awaited update on Friday.
In a lengthy message to those who helped crowdfund the 2014 project, Grepper spelled out what’s been going on with delays and a Department of Justice investigation in Oregon. And he delivered the news that coolers likely won’t be showing up anytime soon as the Portland-based company needs to make money before it can make more products.
It’s a tough pill for people who paid for and want to party with the gadget which blends drinks and plays music and charges devices. The project originally raised more than $13 million from 62,642 backers to set a Kickstarter record.
Manufacturing issues and delivery delays and the legal saga have plagued Coolest practically since the outset, but 40,000 people have received the devices. GeekWire even got to test drive one after a backer brought his by the office last summer.
Grepper said in his message that he was happy that the DOJ investigation was concluded and that he felt “vindicated” by the outcome.
“As part of the agreement with the DOJ, we have a time frame of three years to ship all remaining backers their Coolest rewards,” Grepper wrote. “If we don’t succeed, we have to provide a settlement for any remaining Backers.”
Grepper said the only way to fulfill orders for Kickstarter backers is to sell more coolers and make more money — a point that frustrates those who paid $185 in 2014 and think they should get their coolers first.
Read the entire message from Coolest Cooler here:
Kickstarter
6/23 Update
Posted by Ryan Grepper (Creator)
Hey Coolest Backers,
Sorry for such a long period of silence from us, but finally here’s an update with some answers you’ve been waiting for.
I’m pleased to announce that the DOJ investigation of Coolest has finally been resolved, and we feel vindicated by the outcome. I know it feels like we haven’t shared an update for a very long time, but we really didn’t have much we could say until this was resolved.
The backstory, in case you had not heard, some Backers felt we were promising a shipping window, and when that didn’t happen, complaints were filed against us with the Oregon DOJ. Others felt there must be financial shenanigans going on, which were just conspiracy theories, as we were clear through the entire process that the cost of the Coolest ended up more than what we asked or collected per Backers. Still, no one wants to feel taken advantaged so more complaints were filed and, unfortunately, this really hurt all remaining backers because it put us at a virtual standstill.
During the last 12 months we’ve been cooperating with the DOJ, sharing all our financial documents, answering what felt like a million questions, and submitting our best proposals to get things resolved
Here’s the outcome:
We committed to allocating a minimum defined percentage of net income from sales of Coolest Coolers to generate the money to make and ship Backers their reward. This is almost exactly what we said we would do last year in many updates, but now it’s been specified and part of the agreement with the DOJ. We will share the progress with those of you who are still waiting for your reward after the close of each financial quarter.
As part of the agreement with the DOJ, we have a time frame of three years to ship all remaining backers their Coolest rewards. If we don’t succeed, we have to provide a settlement for any remaining Backers. This was a scary part since no one can order a company to make millions in profit, but it was either this or close the doors and give up. Hopefully, with the investigation resolved, we can focus on doing this as quickly as possible.
Fortunately this loop-hole is now closed, and no one can get their reward faster by complaining to the DOJ. Some people did get to cut to the front of the line and will get their Coolest rewards shipped over the next four months. To be clear, though, that’s no longer an option and per the agreement with the DOJ, all the remaining 20,000 Backers will be fulfilled by the net income from sales of Coolest Coolers. These complaints stalled our progress and only hurt our ability to get remaining backers their coolers faster.
Yeah, but when will I get MY Coolest?!
Part of the cause of the trouble came from trying to share our best guesstimates in the past and we need to be careful not to do that moving forward. What I can tell you is that unfortunately for most of the remaining backers it won’t happen this year. Such an incredible amount of money and time resources went to cover the legal expenses that we are very limited in what we can do this summer. In fact, in Q1 we were not able to generate enough excess money to ship any additional Backer rewards.
When we are able to send your Coolest reward we will contact you in advance and confirm we have your current shipping address and all info is correct. That will be our notification to you that your reward is shipping.
The DOJ looked at our financials and despite many frustrated backers the only clear reality is that we can only ship more Backer rewards with money made by selling more coolers. We have made a huge accomplishment and made and shipped nearly 40,000 backer Coolest rewards, but we still have about 20,000 left to fulfill. As we shared in updates almost the entire journey, the Coolest cost way more to fulfill than we ever raised in the Kickstarter campaign and that’s why we’re in this situation. To fulfill the rest of the pledges, we still need to generate $3-4 million dollars in profit — obviously this isn’t going to happen overnight.
What Now?
Below is our plan to move forward. We can’t do it without you, and we especially can’t do it against you. I hope that all those who have made this process tremendously more difficult for us will come onboard and allow us to focus on the business at hand so that we can get every last backer their reward.
Before I share the plan, I wanted to remind you that I’m a person trying to do my best in this situation. Yesterday, I was recognized by a couple who backed this project nearly three years ago who still don’t have their cooler. The message I shared with them is the message I’d like to share with all of you who are still waiting…
I’m truly sorry you don’t have your Coolest Cooler yet, and every day I feel your frustration at (sic) We’ve had a long hard road with lots of challenges and a steep learning curve, but the easiest thing would have been to quit long ago and just move on. I’ve gone into debt to keep this thing going and am doing my best to make good on my commitments. I still can’t promise a time frame, but I can tell you we are doing the hard work every day and persisting because it’s the right thing to do.
You can read our plan below. As always, thanks to all who have supported us, to all those 40,000-plus people enjoying their coolers, to those waiting patiently, and to every single person who believed and still believes in us.
Thank you,
-Ryan and the Coolest Team
Our 4-Part Plan
We’ll continue to seek to sell more units at retail to generate the profit we need to be able to keep the doors open and order the inventory we need to survive and fulfill backer units. Every week, we get multiple emails from angry folks who want to know why, if we are selling coolers at retail, then why can’t we ship them theirs. I’ve explained this in previous updates, and the reality continues to be that we have limited inventory, and we need to sell (turn over) the inventory to make enough money to operate and buy more units many times throughout the year. The agreement with the DOJ specifies a minimum allocation of net income from Coolest Cooler sales. Every time we sell units at retail, we (hopefully) make more money than it cost us to operate the business, including paying expenses, taxes, insurance, salaries, and other costs. Any profit we have allows us to send extra coolers to Backers and start the process again.
If we took all the coolers in inventory and sent them to backers this month, then we’d make less than 2% of them happy, but still 98% would be unhappy forever because we’d be out of business. So, we have to take the longer view if we hope to get everyone their Coolest within the three year window. While nobody likes to wait we can all agree that later is better than never.
We’ll share progress updates with those of you still waiting for your Coolest after every quarter, and anyone else who would like them.
Here’s the big picture moving forward:
Reduce Costs. After development and tooling costs, it costs about $235 to make and ship a Coolest cooler to each Backer. With 20,000 remaining units to fulfill, this means we need to generate $4.7 million in excess cash to make this happen, and as I shared above, this can only come from retail sales profit. We have been working hard this year to identify cost reductions within our supply chain and starting this fall we should be able to reduce this by at least 25%. This saves $1.2 million right off the top, and we’re hopeful we can reduce it even more while staying committed to delivering the Coolest-level of quality you all expect and our backers have loved.
After development and tooling costs, it costs about $235 to make and ship a Coolest cooler to each Backer. With 20,000 remaining units to fulfill, this means we need to generate $4.7 million in excess cash to make this happen, and as I shared above, this can only come from retail sales profit. We have been working hard this year to identify cost reductions within our supply chain and starting this fall we should be able to reduce this by at least 25%. This saves $1.2 million right off the top, and we’re hopeful we can reduce it even more while staying committed to delivering the Coolest-level of quality you all expect and our backers have loved. More International Sales. With reduced costs there will finally be an opportunity for international distributors who want to sell the Coolest in foreign markets. This will generate more income which means more profit and more money for Backer rewards. It will also set the infrastructure for an easier path to shipping rewards to our international Backers.
With reduced costs there will finally be an opportunity for international distributors who want to sell the Coolest in foreign markets. This will generate more income which means more profit and more money for Backer rewards. It will also set the infrastructure for an easier path to shipping rewards to our international Backers. New Coolest Products. As cool as the Coolest Cooler is, we have learned that retailers are hesitant to deal with a company that only has one product. We are working within our supply chain to develop some great new products with very little upfront cost to us. More products mean more sales, and more income and profit means more Backer rewards we can ship.
As cool as the Coolest Cooler is, we have learned that retailers are hesitant to deal with a company that only has one product. We are working within our supply chain to develop some great new products with very little upfront cost to us. More products mean more sales, and more income and profit means more Backer rewards we can ship. Outside Investors. No matter how optimistic I was, it was impossible to raise capital when we were being investigated by the DOJ. With this finally resolved, and with new products and international expansion a possibility, there is a much higher opportunity for outside investment.
All this said, nothing is going to be accomplished overnight. There is a lot of hard work still to be done and we simply can’t guarantee our future success. I can tell you we are trying to make the best decisions and chart the best path with the options at hand.
Thanks again for all your patience and for your continued belief and support in us. We’ll send another update next quarter.A rare honey from the Malaysian rainforest shows benefits against inflammation, blood sugar disorders, infected wounds and respiratory problems. The harvesting of this honey is a risky business involving heights and angry giant bees.
Tualang honey, named after the trees from which it is obtained, is a highly-prized healing honey produced in Malaysia. The bee that makes this honey builds its nests in the branches of the tall tropical trees of its namesake. Giant tualang trees have been measured as high as 289 feet tall. As you drive along roadways that go through areas of rainforest, you can easily observe tualang trees, which rise high above the canopy and are a grayish-white. Honey hunters often spot tualang trees from the road, and then hike into dense forest to get to the bases of the trees.
When the Malaysian rainforest blooms in spring, Asian honey bees known as Apis dorsata— the world’s largest— make large, parabolic-shaped honey combs which hang from the high limbs of the tualang trees. During this season, a single tree may host 100 hives. As much as 992 pounds of honey can be obtained from a fully laden tualang tree. Because the honey is so difficult to obtain, it is expensive. Thus harvesting the honey, for those who dare to do so, can be more profitable than other activities.
Harvesting this honey is risky, tricky, and very photogenic. Prior to climbing the trees, honey hunters fashion smoke torches out of dried coconut husk fiber wrapped in wide, green leaves. To reach the hives, honey hunters must climb up the immense trees, using ropes and hand-holds. Usually one hunter will climb, and a ground crew of two or more others will collect buckets of honey that are sent down to the ground attached to ropes. Once up in the tree, the hunters smoke the bees, and take much of the hive. It is fascinating and dangerous work, and Tualang honey hunters typically bear numerous scars from stings.
Tualang honey and the Tualang trees containing Apis dorsata honeycombs are found mostly in Kedah State, the northern-most state of Peninsular Malaysia. This is an area with some dense rainforest—the oldest anywhere, dating back an estimated 130 million years. The wild-harvesting of Tualang honey creates market value and revenues, and helps to hedge against widespread deforestation.
Tualang honey is made from the nectars of many rainforest plants. The honey has been extensively analyzed, revealing a concentration of antioxidants, anti-inflammatory agents, anti-bacterial compounds and other phytochemicals known to fight tumor growth and support cardiovascular health.
The most common way that Malaysian people use this unique honey is as a daily health tonic. One full teaspoon of Tualang honey in a couple of ounces of water makes an ambrosial elixir that delivers the honey’s benefits along with an exotic taste experience. As a topical aid, Tualang honey is used by native people to heal wounds, and to kill bacteria in skin infections. Like the New Zealand Manuka honey, Tualang honey is excellent for relieving a sore throat and for subduing symptoms of colds. A modest amount consumed daily appears to help stabilize blood sugar, and the honey demonstrates blood-pressure reducing effects.
At present Tualang honey is best found online, though some stores specializing in Southeast Asian food products may also carry the honey.It exposes for the first time the scope of the problem in Ireland, as well as how the government and the church colluded in perpetuating an abusive system. The revelations have also had the effect of stripping the Catholic Church, which once set the agenda in Ireland, of much of its moral authority and political power.
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The report singles out Ireland’s Department of Education, meant to regulate the schools, for running “toothless” inspections that overlooked glaring problems and deferred to church authority.
The report is based in part on old church records of unreported abuse cases and in part on the anonymous testimony of 1,060 former students from a variety of 216 mostly church-run institutions, including reformatories and so-called industrial schools, set up to tend to neglected, orphaned or abandoned children.
Most of the former students are now 50 to 80 years old.
Some 30,000 children were sent to such places over six decades, the report says, often against their families’ wishes and because of pressure from powerful local priests. They were sent because their families could not afford to care for them, because their mothers had committed adultery or given birth out of wedlock, or because one or both of their parents was ill, drunken or abusive. They were also sent because of petty crime, like stealing food, or because they had missed school.
Many of the former students said that they had not learned their own identities until decades later. They also said that their parents had unsuccessfully tried to reclaim them from the state.
In a litany that sounds as if it comes from the records of a P.O.W. camp, the report chronicles some of the forms of physical abuse suffered in the boys’ schools:
“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”
Some of the schools operated essentially as workhouses. In one school, Goldenbridge, girls as young as 7 spent hours a day making rosaries by stringing beads onto lengths of wire. They were given quotas: 600 beads on weekdays and 900 on Sundays.
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Girls were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time, the report said, in “dormitories, schools, motor vehicles, bathrooms, staff bedrooms, churches, sacristies, fields, parlors, the residences of clergy, holiday locations and while with godparents and employers.”
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The Vatican had no response. But leaders of various religious orders — who often argued during the investigations that the abuse was a relic of another time, reflecting past societal standards — issued abject apologies on Wednesday, taking care to frame the problem as something that is now behind them.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic primate of All Ireland, said in a statement that he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed,” adding, “I hope the publication of today’s report will help heal the hurts of victims and address the wrongs of the past.”
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a group based in St. Louis, said that while the report had failed in its duty to bring the perpetrators to justice, it had been clear about the failings of the church.
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“While horrific, widespread reports of abuse and cover-up are sadly quite common, the significance here is that a government panel is conclusively saying that the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and excuse-making of the church hierarchy is bogus,” he said in an interview.
The commission was formed in 2000, after an explosive series of radio programs and documentaries in the 1990s began exposing a terrible secret that had been kept by an entire society: the details of what went on in the children’s homes. In 1999, Bertie Ahern, then the prime minister, issued a blanket apology to the victims of the abuse.
Since then, the accusations and the question of justice have been a preoccupation across Ireland and among Irish emigrants around the world. In 2002, the Catholic Church in Ireland agreed to pay $175 million to compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy. A separate group has paid out some $1.5 billion so far to more than 10,000 people who have claimed they were abused in state and church-run institutions.
Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, an American group that maintains an Internet archive of material related to Catholic abuse, said that the report had failed by not going far enough.
“The report is significant in that it provides a detailed anatomy of how the abuse occurred and the institutions in which it occurred,” he said in an interview. “The problem is that you spend almost 10 years and who knows how much money, and you never get to the point of saying who was responsible.”The Confederate flag waves over the South Carolina statehouse. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
James W. Loewen, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont, is the author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader."
History is the polemics of the victor, William F. Buckley once said. Not so in the United States, at least not regarding the Civil War. As soon as the Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done and why. The resulting mythology took hold of the nation a generation later and persists — which is why a presidential candidate can suggest, as Michele Bachmann did in 2011, that slavery was somehow pro-family and why the public, per the Pew Research Center, believes that the war was fought mainly over states’ rights.
The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation they spread, which has manifested in our public monuments and our history books.
Take Kentucky, where the legislature voted not to secede. Early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found “no enthusiasm, as we imagined and hoped, but hostility.” Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones.
Neo-Confederates also won parts of Maryland. In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) put a soldier on a pedestal at the Rockville courthouse. Maryland, which did not secede, sent 24,000 men to the Confederate armed forces, but it also sent 63,000 to the U.S. Army and Navy. Still, the UDC’s monument tells visitors to take the other side: “To our heroes of Montgomery Co. Maryland: That we through life may not forget to love the thin gray line.”
In fact, the thin gray line came through Montgomery and adjoining Frederick counties at least three times, en route to Antietam, Gettysburg and Washington. Robert E. Lee’s army expected to find recruits and help with food, clothing and information. It didn’t. Instead, Maryland residents greeted Union soldiers as liberators when they came through on the way to Antietam. Recognizing the residents of Frederick as hostile, Confederate cavalry leader Jubal Early ransomed $200,000 from them lest he burn their town, a sum equal to about $3 million today. But Frederick now boasts a Confederate memorial, and the manager of the town’s cemetery — filled with Union and Confederate dead — told me, “Very little is done on the Union side” around Memorial Day. “It’s mostly Confederate.”
Neo-Confederates didn’t just win the battle of public monuments. They managed to rename the war, calling it the War Between the States, a locution born after the conflict that was among the primary ways to refer to the war in the middle of the 20th century, after which it began to fade. Even “Jeopardy!” has used this language.
[Why people convince themselves that the Confederate flag represents freedom, not slavery]
Perhaps most per |
team to an undefeated season in 2017 and became one of the most inspirational stories in all of sports.
A $10,000 contribution will be made in Dixon’s name to Wisconsin’s athletic scholarship fund. The contribution will be made by Jason Witten’s SCORE Foundation, the official charity of Jason and his wife Michelle. The SCORE Foundation, founded in 2007, has positively impacted tens of thousands of children and families in Texas and Tennessee over the last 11 years. The foundation operates its nationally-recognized SCOREkeepers program, which places trained male mentors on staff to work with children at family violence shelters, at nine shelters in the two states.Washington (CNN) The Pentagon announced Friday that 16 military personnel will be disciplined for the deadly U.S. strike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October, but maintained that it was not a war crime because it resulted from unintentional human error and equipment failure.
The military said some personnel involved "failed to comply with the rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict," and that a general officer was among those facing discipline for their roles in the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital.
The punishments include suspension and removal from command, letters of reprimand, formal counseling and extensive retraining. These punishments would have adverse effects on promotion of the personnel involved, according to the U.S. military.
Twelve of the punishments were administered by U.S. Forces Afghanistan, while the remainder were carried out by U.S. Special Operations Command.
Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, made the announcement at a news conference in Washington. The investigation had identified 16 service personnel that had "warranted consideration for appropriate administrative or disciplinary action."
"The comprehensive investigation concluded that this tragic incident was caused by a combination of human errors, compounded by process and equipment failures," Votel said in explaining the decision not to regard the incident as a war crime. He also said that the aircrew were "unaware" that they were firing on a hospital.
The hospital was operated by the non-governmental organization Doctors without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which was located approximately 400 meters from the intended target, a Taliban-controlled site, according to the report.
Doctors Without Borders says that more than 100 patients were admitted to the hospital when it was struck.
Pablo Marco, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in the Middle East, told CNN Thursday that his group would continue to push for an independent external investigation into the strike.
"We just need to remember that since the beginning, MSF has asked for an independent investigation to really understand and to make clear what happened in Kunduz and that unfortunately despite the fact that the U.S. has had an internal investigation, this independent investigation hasn't happened yet and we keep asking for it," he said.
At the news conference, Votel stressed, "We extend our deepest condolences to those injured and to the families of those killed in this tragic incident," adding that the Pentagon was "fully committed to learning from this tragedy and minimizing the risk of civilian casualties during future combat operations."
"This was an extreme situation we were dealing with," Votel said, noting that the Taliban in the area were in possession of a surface-to-air missile, a rarity in the Afghanistan conflict.
He noted that the investigation was overseen by then-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, and was carried out by three U.S. generals who "were brought in from outside Afghanistan in order to provide an objective perspective." The investigators interviewed 65 witnesses, including personnel at the trauma center and members of U.S. and Afghan militaries, and reviewed thousands of documents.
According the report, "The investigation found that the tragic incident resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors and equipment failures, and that none of the personnel knew that they were striking a medical facility."
The Pentagon concluded last year that Doctors Without Borders had followed all proper procedures in notifying the U.S. of the location of the hospital. The group "did everything right," a U.S. official said in October.
Votel said that Campbell had directed a review of the targeting process, rules of engagement, condolence payments to more than 170 individuals and families affected, and $5.7 million to be allocated for the construction of new medical facilities in Kunduz.
Votel added that "senior U.S. representatives have spoken with MSF officials, including the MSF Executive Director, over two dozen times to express condolences, explain how the tragic incident occurred, and outline future steps."
Campbell's successor, Gen. John Nicholson, met with families of the victims from the attack and issued a personal apology shortly after assuming command in March.
"I grieve with you for your loss and suffering; and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness. We mourn the death of any Afghan, but the death and wounding of innocent Afghans because of our mistake is extremely painful to us," he said at the time.
"As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families, and the people of Kunduz, to deeply apologize for the events which destroyed the hospital and caused the deaths of the hospital staff, the patients and their family members."
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said in a statement, "I want to once again express my deep condolences and regret for the loss of innocent life."
"The U.S. military takes the greatest care in our operations to prevent the loss of innocent life. When we make mistakes we must own up to them and hold individuals accountable as necessary," he added, nothing that he had directed "a number of specific actions to... mitigate the potential for similar incidents in the future."
"This report provides important and painful lessons, and as I have directed senior leaders across the Department, we will now act upon them," he said.
MSF issued its own statement after the press conference, saying it "acknowledges the U.S. military's efforts to conduct an investigation into the incident," but added that the organization "has said consistently that it cannot be satisfied solely with a military investigation into the Kunduz attack. MSF's request for an independent and impartial investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission has so far gone unanswered."
"U.S. forces failed to follow the basic rules of war," MSF president, Meinie Nicolai, said in the release, adding that "armed groups cannot escape their responsibilities on the battlefield simply by ruling out the intent to attack a protected structure such as a hospital."
The statement slammed the level of discipline administered to U.S. forces involved, calling it "out of proportion to the destruction."
"The administrative punishments announced by the U.S. today are out of proportion to the destruction of a protected medical facility, the deaths of 42 people, the wounding of dozens of others, and the total loss of vital medical services to hundreds of thousands of people. The lack of meaningful accountability sends a worrying signal to warring parties, and is unlikely to act as a deterrent against future violations of the rules of war," the statement said.
It concluded by saying that "it has become clear that the victims and their families have neither the option to pursue legal action against the U.S. military, either in Afghanistan or in the U.S., nor to claim compensation for loss of life and livelihood. This has only compounded the devastation of the attack."
The investigation report comes as another Doctors Without Borders hospital in Syria was bombed this week, a strike that the NGO says killed 50 people and was carried out by Russian and Syrian warplanes. "This hospital is very well known," Marco said, adding that there were "many chances that this was deliberate."
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of U.S. service members to be disciplined.The WikiReader is a little $99 gizmo that lets you read Wikipedia. Yep, that’s all it does. No mobile phone, no movie player, no Webkit-enabled browser.
There’s something about a product that does one simple thing well. But what really sets the WikiReader apart is that it lasts a year on 2 AAA batteries with no charging. How? The low-power LCD screen, and the tiny microprocessor.
But what’s even cooler, at least for someone who learned to program by dabbling in Forth, is that the device has a built-in Forth interpreter for testing the hardware and running small programs.
I was pleasantly surprised – I know that Forth is good for embedded work on tiny micros, but since the main WikiReader app is written in C, I was curious why they chose Forth for testing and apps. So I asked Christopher Hall, one of the main firmware developers. His reply was very informative, and he’s kindly allowed me to copy it here:
I have written testing programs in several languages, but compiled programs always have the problem of the edit, cross compile, load, and try to debug. Sometimes the platform can run BSD or Linux, and then you can have the full suite of tools on the platform. This is okay if the person doing the initial testing can write programs, but often the test is how to toggle a particular I/O line on/off and see the effect on the rest of the circuit. Then having some kind of scripting on the platform seems the best way to achieve this.
For the initial testing, just start the interpreter REPL and you can start the initial tests. Initially I looked at TCL and Python which I have used before, but they would take far too long to port since they need a lot of Posix system calls which do not exist for this platform.
I also considered Hedgehog, Pico Lisp or perhaps some simple Scheme interpreter but the syntax would probably be too difficult for the hardware engineers to use. Forth is pretty simple syntax and RPN was probably not too difficult for them to learn. Also it was easy to build the Forth interpreter, incrementally adding features until it is now an almost ANSI standard Forth.
Since I added all the device registers the hardware engineers can use commands like the following (I used the same register names as the datasheet):
P0_P0D p? \ display value of port 1 P0_P0D p! \ set port to 1
While waiting for the main application development I could build tests for items like the LCD and CTP with just a serial connection on the device itself – using cut/paste from Emacs to picocom to upload Forth words. This is much quicker than cross-compiling and swapping SD cards.
The Forth is rather slow in compiling, the dictionary search is quite slow for example, and the indirect threading adds run-time overhead so in its present form it is probably not fast enough for the main reader application, but for quick applications to try things out I find it very convenient.
Also, the first version was hand translated from a version of EForth for Linux before I migrated it to the ANSI standard. (I kept copies in samo-lib/forth/EForthOriginals subdirectory.)
Very neat. If Lisp is the secret weapon for developing web apps, maybe Forth is it for embedded apps. Both are extensible at the language level and both have real macros, but Lisp is high level and Forth is low level.
Well, you know what to buy me for Christmas:
feeling-nice? if WikiReader buy then
4 December 2009 by Ben 5 commentsUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Britain and France urged the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday to set a framework to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians as council member New Zealand said it had started working on a draft resolution to kick-start the process.
Palestinians place Palestinian flags on road signs during a protest against Jewish settlements near Ma'on settlement, south of the West Bank city of Hebron March 7, 2015. REUTERS/ Mussa Qawasma
France said last month that it planned to begin talks on a draft text to lay out “parameters” for ending the Middle East conflict and that it hoped to win over the United States, which has traditionally shielded its ally Israel from any U.N. action.
The United States has said it would “reassess” its options on U.S.-Israel relations and Middle East diplomacy after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a stand against Palestinian statehood during his election campaign.
Palestinians seek a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967.
“It’s the responsibility of this council to adopt a consensual and balanced resolution that sets the parameters of a final status and a timeline for the negotiations,” French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told a council meeting.
France and New Zealand signalled that now was the time for the Security Council to act after Israel held its election last month and before the U.S. presidential campaign ramps up ahead of a November 2016 poll.
“We have been working on a text that might serve the purpose of getting negotiations started,” said New Zealand’s U.N. Ambassador Jim McLay. He added that New Zealand was prepared to see how the French-led push for a resolution played out first.
“We have not seen the latest French text, but if it has a chance of succeeding, New Zealand stands ready to engage and to be helpful,” McLay said.
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said that Britain saw merit in a council resolution “setting out the parameters for a peaceful and negotiated solution.”
“But this will require proper consultation to achieve the full backing of the council,” he told the council.
In December, the United States voted against a Palestinian-drafted resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and the establishment of a Palestinian state by late 2017.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said Washington remained committed to a two-state solution.
“It is critically important that leaders urgently reengage in efforts to achieve peace, which is the most effective way to prevent such tension from escalating, as it has too many times before,” Power told the Security Council.Police officer's son, 4, killed by father's weapon
The 4-year-old son of a police officer, wounded by his father's service weapon in Liberty Borough, has died.
Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt confirmed the death this afternoon.
Liberty Police Chief Luke Riley said a hangup 911 call for the 2800 block of F Street came in around noon. Officers responded and found Gavin Thompson with a gunshot wound to the head.
Chief Riley said that the boy's father, John Thompson, is a full-time officer in Port Vue and a part-time officer with Liberty.
He said the boy was able to retrieve his father's service weapon from a closet and it discharged. The family has five children, and the father was home at the time.
Allegheny County detectives are at the scene.
Last month, the 4-year-old son of State Trooper Nicholas Petrosky of the Belle Vernon barracks apparently wounded himself by accident with his father's personal gun at the family home in Donora.
The boy survived.
More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
First published on November 26, 2010 at 1:21 pmMOUNTAIN VIEW — After visiting Silicon Valley this summer for a tour of tech companies including Apple, Google and IBM, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health is coming back — this time to work here.
Google’s life sciences division, now its own subsidiary of parent company Alphabet, said Tuesday that it has hired Thomas Insel, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who since 2002 has run the branch of the Maryland-based National Institutes of Health that works on understanding and treating mental disorders.
“Tom is coming on board to explore how the life sciences team at Google could have an impact on the huge challenges related to understanding, diagnosing, and treating mental illness,” the company said in a statement. “We’re thrilled that he’s joining the team and look forward to sharing more once he has a chance to get up and running.”
Insel wrote a blog post in late August describing his visits to Silicon Valley tech giants and startups that are working on health ventures, noting that “technology is not the answer to all problems, but it may help those with mental illness even more than those with other chronic, serious medical conditions.” His post gave no hint that he planned on leaving to work for one of the companies he visited.
NIH Director Francis Collins congratulated Insel in a tweet and written statement Tuesday that noted that Insel would be leading a new effort at Google to better detect, prevent and manage “a wide spectrum” of mental health conditions.
With molecular biologist Andy Conrad as its CEO, Alphabet’s as-yet-unnamed life sciences company has said diabetes will be its first major focus, but the hiring of Insel and job postings looking for bioinformatics and computational biology engineers and a wide range of other talent show a much broader mission for the fledgling firm.
Insel is “known for his research into the neurobiology of social behaviors,” and was a pioneer in studying the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in social bonding, according to Collins. Insel’s experience includes directing the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta in the 1990s, and running neuroscience and autism research centers at Emory University. He worked for the nation’s mental health research institute from 1980 to 1994 before returning to lead it in 2002.
Contact Matt O’Brien at 408-920-5011. Follow him at Twitter.com/Mattoyeah.@Bundesliga_EN on Twitter
Updates from Friday, Aug. 29
Marco Reus has been called up by Germany for their forthcoming international matches with Argentina and Scotland, the latter of which is a Euro 2016 qualifier.
Reus recently started for Dortmund against Bayer Leverkusen as he made his return from the ankle injury that wrecked his World Cup dream. Now he will return to the Germany fold, as announced by the nation's official Twitter feed:
Updates from Friday, Aug. 1
Marco Reus continues to make good progress in his bid to return from an ankle injury ahead of the new season.
The Bundesliga's official Twitter provides visual evidence that Reus' recovery is on track:
Updates from Thursday, July 24
Marco Reus is tipped to complete a swift recovery from his ankle injury within the next few weeks.
Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc told kicker, via Vaishali Bhardwaj of Goal.com:
"It [his recovery] is going well. We have to see how he withstands the pressure [on his foot]."
German football writer Clark Whitney added:
Updates from Friday, June 27
Marco Reus has taken a step forward in his recovery from the ankle injury that kept him out of the World Cup.
Reus tweeted the following on Friday:
Updates from Tuesday, June 10
The Bundesliga website has the latest on Reus:
Borussia Dortmund attacker Marco Reus will be out of action for longer than expected after further tests revealed he will need three months to recover. The 25-year-old injured his left ankle during Germany's final World Cup warm-up match against Armenia last week and was subsequently forced to withdraw from the tournament.
Updates from Saturday, June 7
ESPN FC passed along an update on Marco Reus' condition after he left Friday's match with an injury:
ESPN FC later confirmed the worst news possible for Reus:
Marcus Christenson of The Guardian has more on the injury:
Original Text
Nearing a World Cup that's already deprived of some of the game's top stars, another top performer could be missing out, as Germany's brilliant attacker Marco Reus had to leave the team's friendly against Armenia with a leg injury.
From Fox Soccer Trax:
The Associated Press reporter Ciaran Fahey has more:
Fox Sports' Thomas Hautmann has the latest details:
ESPN FC provides a quote from the German side on Reus' injury:
Here's the moment he went down, via BL_Latest (DFB) on Vine:
While the nature of his injury remains unknown, Reus didn't seem particularly upbeat as he left the pitch, per Raphael Honigstein of The Guardian:
While Germany has incredible depth at the attacking positions, Reus seemed to be one of the unquestioned starters for the team after another brilliant season for Borussia Dortmund, in which he scored 16 goals and added 13 assists in 30 league appearances, per WhoScored.com.
His pace, versatility and ability to score from distance will be hard to replicate for Germany if he can't play in the World Cup.
If he's lost for the tournament, you can add him to the list of other stars unable to go, including Colombia's Radamel Falcao and France's Franck Ribery chief among them, while Cristiano Ronaldo's battle with tendinosis and witch doctors will be a storyline until the tournament begins.
And Germany have had their injury concerns, namely with starting keeper Manuel Neuer, midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger and defender Philipp Lahm, though all three are expected to be available to play in Brazil.
Hopefully, Reus will also make the trip. His loss would be huge for a German side with realistic championship aspirations.'We didn't think it was racist': Magazine apologises for saying Indigenous surfer Otis Carey has an 'apeish face'
A surfing magazine has apologised for saying Indigenous surfer Otis Carey has an 'apeish face', adding that it did not realise the comment was racist.
The surfer is upset by the article published in Surfing Life magazine's March issue and his family has asked the magazine not to contact him.
'With his apeish face and cowering hair-curtains, I expect little more than Cro-Magnon grunts from his mouth. I am caught off guard by the clarity and eloquence of his speech,' read the article titled Poetry Night With Mermaid Killer.
Upset: Indigenous surfer Otis Carey is said to be upset about a magazine profile which described him as having an 'apeish face'. He is now suing the magazine
On Wednesday the magazine released a statement saying sorry for the offensive comment.
'Upon the original edit of the magazine, we read the offending term as a jibe at the stereotypical surfer – and failed to see the racist connotations,' the statement read.
'Immediately upon being made aware of these, we offered our unreserved apologies, which they were gracious enough to receive.'
The magazine also said editor Wade Davis has African and Indigenous heritage and is 'exceptionally sensitive' to racism.
Proud: The father-of-one has previous spoken about his connection with the ocean which he received 'as a gift through my heritage'
'Davis is devastated that a thoughtless misread could have allowed an insensitive and damaging term to have slipped through to publication.'
Mr Carey’s father Chris Carey told The Daily Telegraph the family is concerned for Otis.
‘At this stage we don’t want to talk about it, our concern is Otis’s wellbeing,’ he said.
‘We just have to support him.’
In a previous feature in Focus magazine Mr Carey, who is married with one son, spoke proudly of his Aboriginal heritage.
Devastated: The surfer's father says his family is focused on his wellbeing at this time
‘My Nan is from the Gumbaynggirr people and my Pop was from the Bundjalung people,’ he said.
‘My Nan was born in the dunes up at Red Rock, so we have very strong connections to the land and ocean up around Coffs.An Alberta advocacy group is calling on the province to stop allowing adults-only apartments, condemning the practice as discriminatory.
"We don't think it's appropriate, from a human rights perspective, for people to prevent certain demographic groups from being their neighbours," said Chelsey Jersak, a founding member of the Child-Friendly Housing Coalition of Alberta.
Her coalition hosted an open house in Edmonton on Saturday to raise awareness about the issue.
A recent decision at a hearing in Edmonton Court of Queen's Bench reinvigorated Jersak's group. The judge granted an application in January to include age as a discriminating factor in the province's human rights act.
The province has one year to review certain exemptions before the change becomes law.
Age is already a discriminating factor in the rest of Canada.
'An enormous amount of hardship'
Michael Janz, an Edmonton public school board trustee, said his housing hinges on the province's decision.
Janz and his partner had their first son on Valentine's Day, but were told the baby boy couldn't live in their condo. After some debate with the property owner, Janz said he negotiated eight months to find a new home for his family.
"It's caused an enormous amount of hardship for what really doesn't seem like a valid reason," he said.
"We're not bad tenants, we're not noisy — we're very good neighbours to have. I question the rationale behind these provisions. I don't see who they benefit, or the benefit of restricting a building and who can live there."
Michael Janz and his partner are facing eviction because their newly-born son is not allowed to live in their condo building of nine years. (Zoe Todd/CBC)
Janz said his partner bought the condo nine years ago in southwest Edmonton's Hodgson neighbourhood. Their home has sound-muffling concrete walls, a spacious yard and nearby amenities such as a school and a community recreation centre.
The two have struggled to find — and afford — a similar home since being asked to leave.
"This isn't the 1950s," Janz said. "Every young family can't just afford to go out and buy a new home, and the supply of new homes available are oftentimes further and further away from our city's core and other amenities."
This isn't the 1950s — every young family can't just afford to go out and buy a new home. - Michael Janz, new parent
Janz said his family had planned to stay in their condo another five years before moving to a larger home.
"We're put in a really awkward position where we have to choose between our home and our family," he said. "Let the babies stay."
'I need somewhere to go'
Janz shared his story at Saturday's open house, hosted at a new downtown residential building called The Hendrix. The highrise offers some of the only child-friendly apartments in its neighbourhood.
"It's pretty common to hear somebody come in that's telling us, 'I'm expecting my first child and it's unexpected so I need somewhere to go,' " said Michelle Calloway, a third-party property manager.
"Which puts them in a unique dilemma, right? To have to move while pregnant."
The urgent demand for child-friendly apartments throughout Alberta means developers can tap into that need by designing buildings with families in mind, Calloway said.
Jersak, however, said her advocacy group is more focused on the apartments and condos that already exist in Alberta.
"It's always appropriate to design, build and market buildings for a particular user group," she said. "However, we don't think it's appropriate to prevent people from outside that target group from also living in the building if that's what they feel is most important for them."
'I value diversity in my neighbourhood,' said Chelsey Jersak, a founding member of the Child-Friendly Housing Coalition of Alberta. (Zoe Todd/CBC)
Jersak plans to work with local government officials to pressure the province into abolishing adults-only rules. Her advocacy group is not targeting assisted-living homes for seniors and disabled people, she added.
David Shepherd, the MLA for Edmonton-Centre, voiced his support for the coalition on Saturday. He attended the event to hear from concerned Albertans like Jersak and Janz.
"I recognize the value of having families in our community," Shepherd said. "They add to the vibrancy, they make for safer streets, they help support our local business and I'd like to see as few barriers as possible to having families living in our downtown core."
The provincial government has until January 2018 to announce how age will be included as a discriminating factor in Alberta's human rights act.Have goods, will travel. That's the mantra driving business for at least two retail boutiques in the Twin Cities that have found a way to reach customers while dodging the overhead costs of operating a brick and mortar store.
"It's such a no-brainer: Pack it up and put it on wheels!" said Teresa Grim, owner of the Fashion Mobile, a month-old business that sells women's clothing and accessories out of a Tiffany blue decked-out delivery truck.
In places like Los Angeles, New York and Boston, the popularity of all things mobile (food trucks, anyone?) has spilled into other categories, such as beauty, floral and fashion. Locally, retail shop owners also are starting to wonder: If burritos can be hawked from the side of an old truck, why can't bolero jackets and candlesticks?
The model seems to be working, thanks to the power of social media and the ability to reach customers whenever and almost wherever.
Just a month after opening its truck doors, the Fashion Mobile is already turning a profit. The biggest startup expense was the vehicle. Purchased for $2,600 on Craigslist, the old Chevy newspaper delivery truck cost as much as one month's rent and utilities at Grim's downtown Stillwater children and women's clothing boutique, which she was forced to close last year. Another $10,000 for a paint job, new tires and fashioning the inside to resemble the walk-in closet of a Hollywood celebrity, and the Fashion Mobile was up and running
No license available
Grim, who created the business with her husband, David, alerts customers to the Fashion Mobile's whereabouts via Twitter and Facebook. The truck makes regular appearances at festivals, private parties and community events such as White Bear Lake's Marketfest and Summer Tuesdays in Stillwater, but Grim isn't allowed to do business on public streets the way food trucks do. At least not yet.
"There hasn't been demand for this type of business in the past, but if there is, we'd be happy to create the license for it," said Robert Humphrey, spokesman for the St. Paul licensing department. "This is a new concept following the food truck trend."
The license required for mobile retail businesses doesn't yet exist, and creating one would take at least a couple of months, Humphrey said.
In Minneapolis, selling merchandise from trucks on public streets hasn't been permitted in the 30 years that Grant Wilson has worked for the city. The licenses and consumer services manager said a general merchandise ordinance would allow for a variety of products to be sold, from electronics and hardware to clothes and toys.
"I would have to do some hard thinking and looking at what other cities have allowed this and what their experiences have been," he said. "When we created the license for food trucks, we didn't anticipate having 40 trucks out there."
Angela White Smith is having plenty of luck reaching customers without the special permit.
White Smith has had enough luck with her school-bus-turned-mobile-upcycle-furniture-boutique, Uniquely Attainable, that she decided to open a bricks-and-mortar storefront in St. Paul's Lowertown.
Her biggest hurdle hasn't been the inability to park on city streets, however -- it's getting customers to understand that they can shop from inside of a bus. The "Repurbus" was purchased for $3,600 and repurposed for pennies using items that White Smith already had around her house.
The only added costs to get the bus in business was tuition for "bus driving school."
"I have an MBA. I never thought I'd be driving a bus," White Smith said. "But being able to sell from a store, the bus and online allows me to reach more people."
Customers like convenience
Susie Johnson heard about the Fashion Mobile through a friend before it ever opened and has been following the truck around the metro area by watching its Facebook updates. She shopped at Fashion Mobile on three occasions and says each time she finds different merchandise. The smaller inventory of truck-based businesses allows for frequent merchandise stock updates.
"It's just like a regular store," she said. "Even though it's in a truck, I never felt cramped inside." The truck even has a dressing room.
Short on time, Andrea Balow decided to bring the Fashion Mobile to her. The Edina mother of three hosted nearly 40 women recently who drank wine and socialized while picking out new handbags and summer dresses from the truck parked in her driveway.
"As a busy mom who loves to shop, if someone wants to bring clothes to me, I'm more than happy to let them do that," Balow said. "It's a great way to shop in a fun setting with no pressure that you often feel in regular stores."
How long the mobile shopping trend will thrive is anyone's guess. Like the fashions they're selling, retail formats change over time. The fact that the mobile retail trend is taking off doesn't surprise George John, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.One of the best psychill radio channel presents Winter Solstice 2013. Night lingers while the moon is full. The deep black sky stretches into infinity. Join DI.FM PsyChill to celebrate the longest night.
Featuring music from:
Kanc Cover (Soundmute Recordings)
Kick Bong (Cosmicleaf Records)
Side Liner (Cosmicleaf Records)
Kukan dUb Lagan (MikelaBella Records)
AstroPilot (Altar Records)
Zero Cult (Cosmicleaf Records)
Stefan Torto (Cosmicleaf Records)
Suduaya (Altar Records)
Tor.Ma in Dub (Catalyst, Maia, Beats and Pieces)
Sorian (MikelaBella Records)
Supercozi (Iboga Records)
Johnny Blue (Peak Records, MikelaBella Records)
Dhamika (Uxmal Records)
Maiia (Ovnimoon Records, Altar Records)
Salvinorin (Cymatic Lab)
Uth (NeoGoa)
GadgetG
SuKhush (Altar Records)
Dj Fada (Merkaba Music, Cymatic Lab)
Avery Runner (Free Spirit Records, Native Circuit)
Therapist (Altar Records)
Allix (WildBro, Cymatic Lab)
MaJah
DragRam (Nalij)
Gagarin Project (Psybient.org)
Hallucinary
Selector Cleofus (Shenanigan Society)
Lorn
Tampered DNA (Jade Buddha, Soundkraft Records)
ROX
Bloodwing (Digitally Imported)
Shoom (Digitally Imported, Suntrip Records)
Neo Noir
Listen live streams at psychill internet radio by DI.FM:
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July 19, 2016, 2:48 PM GMT / Updated July 19, 2016, 3:07 PM GMT By Alastair Jamieson
Olympic chiefs will explore “legal options” over a blanket ban on Russian athletes at next month’s Summer Games in Rio, it was announced Tuesday.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it would weigh a collective ban versus “the right to individual justice” for athletes not implicated in the scandal. It will also retest Russian competitors and coaches involved in the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, it said.
The IOC had been expected to rule Tuesday on whether Russia could compete at the Rio games, which begin in 17 days, after the World Anti-Doping Agency uncovered a state-run doping scheme that masked at least 312 positive tests. It urged a full ban of the Russian team.
However, the IOC's decision was complicated by a separate process in which the Court of Arbitration for Sport — the final authority on world sports events — is considering a parallel appeal by 68 Russian track and field competitors who were already banned from Rio by their global governing body, the IAAF. The CAS is due to rule on their fate by Thursday.
"With regard to the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympic Games Rio 2016, the IOC will carefully evaluate the [WADA] report," the statement said.
"It will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice."
The IOC has begun disciplinary action against officials mentioned in the WADA report and said that anyone implicated would not be given accreditation for Rio, the statement added.
It also indicated it would freeze any future plans for events in Russia and would not back the European Games, scheduled for the country in 2019.As seen on Forks Over Knives
October 2010 March 2013
[First off, I am in no way compensated for sharing this testimonial. I have no affiliation with Forks over Knives. I just happened to come across the movie and it changed my life]
During the summer of 2011, I became very serious about working out and staying in shape, mostly in the form of running. I spent countless hours at the gym, and even more time hitting the pavement in an attempt to burn off excess fat. From what I knew – carbs, fat, sugar, and calories were all bad – and the reason to blame for my extra padding. But, it seemed that the more I worked out, the more I ate. And, the more I ate, the more weight I gained. No matter how much I worked out, I couldn’t lose an ounce; if I did, it came right back. Running was the most difficult for me. I had no energy and my body ached from the run only a day or two before.
I loaded up on protein in the form of fish, chicken, and steak. I just “knew”the added protein would help build me back up for my next workout and repair any muscle damage.
While training for my first half marathon, I followed a very strict regimen. I held myself accountable for each training run I had planned. I wanted to be absolutely ready come race day. I decided to look into what other runners were eating. I knew that there must be a correlation between a runner’s performance and the foods that he/she was consuming. I saw that runners were on some of the healthiest diets I had ever seen. Some ingredients that were mentioned: whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta, bananas, bagels, berries, oranges, quinoa, broccoli, peanuts, almonds, sweet potatoes, leafy greens, and almond milk. Honestly, I didn’t see myself eating half of that stuff; I ate meat, like the tough guys. I drank milk, because it made my bones strong. I enjoyed the smell of flesh as it cooked on the grill, juicing up to provide me with that next dose of protein.
By the end of 2011, my joints were achy, muscles tender, and ankles weak. I was dead set on taking in as much protein as possible, whether it came from eggs, tuna, chicken, pork, or beef. It didn’t appear to help, but I had always heard that protein repairs damaged muscles. Didn’t I need the extra protein? I mean… I had to be running 20 miles a week.
A friend (and running partner) of mine told me about the movie, “Forks over Knives.” He told me that it had changed his life. I was extremely skeptical, knowing that he was vegan. I shared the view of many – that vegans were |
Hah! Liberal Reporter Tries to Buy AR15 – GETS DENIED FOR VIOLENT PAST
Guest post by Michael Strickland
Neil Steinberg, writer for the Chicago Sun Times, saw how easy it was for other journalists to waltz into a gun shop and walk out with a child slaughtering, full auto, death machine, exactly like the one that the Navy Marine Rangers use (leftist talk there), so he decided to try it Des Plaines, Illinois. Only this didn’t quite go according to plan.
In addition to a mandatory 24 hour waiting period in Illinois, it turns out Mr. Steinberg has a troubled past of alcohol abuse and domestic violence, so he was denied the sale.
But before he got that far, he was first faced with the same hurdles that other potential gun buyers are faced with; contradictory and unclear gun laws. As he wrote:
I had trouble even figuring out whether bringing an assault rifle into Chicago is legal. The Internet was contradictory. The Chicago corporation counsel’s office punted me on to that black hole of silence, Bill McCaffrey. I found that Illinois has a 24-hour waiting period between buying and taking possession of a gun. Unearthing that fact alone made the exercise seem worthwhile. I was learning something.
After chatting with one of the salesman at Maxon Shooters Supply about the different AR’s and options, Steinberg is asked to show his FOID card, which is, apparently, some kind of Star Of David for gun buyers in Illinois. He decided on a Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport, one of the lower end models that lacks a lot of the features and quality of a standard AR.
Steinberg tosses in the normal anti rhetoric with:
Driving to Maxon’s, the whole gun debate clarified in bold relief. There is the danger of the gun. itself. And there is the danger the gun protects you from. Another divide. Which danger you feel is greater decides which side of the divide you live on. Being fact-based I know, you buy a gun, the person you are most likely to shoot, statistically, is yourself. And your family. More pre-schoolers are killed by guns than are police officers. Nor do I need the sense of security, false though it may be, that guns bring. I live in Northbrook, where criminal danger is remote. My boys laugh at us for locking the doors. I don’t plan on keeping this gun a second longer than I have to for this column.
The gun shop knew who he was.
When it came time to make the purchase, Rob, the clerk with the tattoos, handed me over to Mike, who gave his name shaking my hand, I gave mine. “The writer?” he said. If I wanted to lie as part of my job, I’d have gone into public relations. “Yes,” I said, explaining that I plan to buy the gun, shoot at their range, then give it to the police. He suggested I sell it back to them instead and I heartily agreed. Economical. If they would let me photograph myself with it there, the gun need never leave the store.
Steinberg filled out the background check paperwork, which, according the most hysterical anti gunners, doesn’t exist because you can buy these M47’s with no background check (leftist impression again).
A reporter in Philadelphia bought an assault rifle in seven minutes; 40 percent of gun transactions in the U.S. have no background checks. Here, I had paperwork. A federal form asking, was I an illegal alien? No. Was I a fugitive? Again no. Had I ever been convicted on charges of domestic abuse? No. Handed over my credit card: $842.50. Another $40 for the instructor to acquaint me with the gun the next day.
Then came startling news:
At 5:13 Sarah from Maxon called. They were canceling my sale and refunding my money. No gun for you. I called back. Why? “I don’t have to tell you,” she said. I knew that, but was curious. I wasn’t rejected by the government? No. So what is it? “I’m not at liberty,” she said. Gun dealers do have the right to refuse sales to anyone, usually exercised for people who seem to be straw purchasers. I told her I assume they wouldn’t sell me a gun because I’m a reporter. She denied it. But hating the media is right behind hating the government as a pastime for many gun owners. They damn you for being ignorant then hide when you try to find out. A few hours later, Maxon sent the newspaper a lengthy statement, the key part being: “it was uncovered that Mr. Steinberg has an admitted history of alcohol abuse, and a charge for domestic battery involving his wife.”
He goes on to cry about being singled out, thinking that the same policies don’t apply to everyone else, then blaming the EVIL, SHADY GUN INDUSTRY for everything:
Well, didn’t see that coming. Were that same standard applied to the American public, there would be a whole lot fewer guns sold. Beside, they knew I planned to immediately sell it back to them. OK, Maxon has had its chance to offer their reason. Now I’ll state what I believe the real reason is: Gun manufacturers and the stores that sell them make their money in the dark. Congress, which has so much trouble passing the most basic gun laws, passed a law making it illegal for the federal government to fund research into gun violence. Except for the week or two after massacres, the public covers its eyes. Would-be terrorists can buy guns. Insane people can buy guns. But reporters... that’s a different story. Gun makers avoid publicity because the truth is this: they sell tools of death to frightened people and make a fortune doing so. They shun attention because they know, if we saw clearly what is happening in our country, we’d demand change.
H/T to This Ain’t Hell, who suspects that the rag intentionally sent their violent reporter to do this job because they could turn around and scream “LOOK HOW IT EASY IT WAS FOR A KNOWN WIFE BEATER AND ALCOHOLIC TO GET A DEATH MACHINE!”Image: guido da rozze/Flickr
When you think of the illegal ivory trade, you might picture the black market, poachers, and seedy criminal operations. In fact, a new report shows illegal ivory can be found much closer to home, including on Craigslist.
The classifieds site hosts a booming ivory market with 456 ivory items posted for sale on the US site within a one-month period, according to a report published Tuesday by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
"We, as the United States, are a major market for ivory," said John Calvelli, the WCS executive vice president for public affairs. Calvelli said though a lot of attention is paid to Asian countries where ivory has deep cultural significance, there is still a lot of work to be done at home. "It is hypocritical for us to be pointing the finger at China or any other country when we have this issue right here."
Between March 16 and 20 of this year, investigators at IFAW and WCS methodically scoured Craigslist for for ivory, suspected ivory (that may be disguised as something else), and other animal products for sale. Since Craigslist posts remain active for 30 days, the team gathered data from 34 consecutive days worth of posts across 28 cities.
They found 522 postings selling 615 items: 456 were ivory, 84 were suspected ivory, and 75 were related wildlife products—such as a $700 footstool made out of an elephant leg they found for sale in Chicago. All of the items totaled a combined list price of $1,429,151.
Of the 615 items found on Craigslist during the survey, 88 percent were ivory or suspected ivory. Source: WCS & IFAW
In 1975, the US signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora: a global agreement to regulate the trade of endangered species. This made it illegal to buy and sell imported ivory in the US, but it didn't prohibit items that were already in the country prior to 1990 (for African elephants) or 1975 (for Asian elephants), including antiques, jewelry, and musical instruments. However, these items are required to have proper documentation.
Though many of the Craigslist listings claimed the items for sale were "pre-ban" or "antique," only 21 items (3 percent) came with any documentation. Though a lack of documentation doesn't prove these aren't pre-ban items, there are plenty of studies that show the illegal trade is alive and well in the US. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, two cities that have been identified as having the largest illegal ivory markets, as much as 90 percent of ivory sold is illegal, according to a report from the National Resources Defense Council.
"You can't tell the difference between old and new, by and large, other than by some of the coloring," Calvelli said, noting poachers often artificially "age" ivory using staining, scratching, and cracking, as detailed in the NRDC report. This makes it very hard to distinguish between legal and illegal ivory, he said.
But Calvelli said there are ways that we can crack down on illegal trade in the US. IFAW and WCS reached out to Craigslist to let them know they were doing this research and earlier this month, Craigslist agreed to ban all ivory from being sold on the site.
However, it's still easy to find items advertised as ivory for sale on the site. A quick search on Tuesday garnered multiple listings in different cities: a brooch in Phoenix, a bracelet in Dallas, an elephant figurine in New York. WCS has started a petition through its 96 Elephants campaign to get users to write letters asking Craigslist to crack down harder and is working with the site to come up with a better solution, including filtering software that could flag administrators to ivory listings.
"The technology exists," Calvelli said. "And I want to believe that the good will is there as well. If they've come out with this statement that they don't want these products on their sites, then I think we can find a solution."El Houssein Barhoum is the father of one of the young men depicted on the April 18 cover of the New York Post. “Bag Men,” read the headline, with this explanation: “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”
“These two” had nothing to do with the Boston Marathon bombings, but they made the Post cover in any case. As a result, Barhoum is talking to lawyers about his options. “A lot of people, they tell me that’s your right to sue them,” says Barhoum, who says he is working toward a contract with a lawyer. “I will give him my case and he will study it.” The Erik Wemple Blog is already on record as favoring this approach.
Should the family file a civil complaint, it’ll surely address the upheaval that the New York Post has helped bring to the Barhoum household. The son in the photo, Salah Barhoum, a 16-year-old track athlete (other accounts say he’s 17), sleeps one or two hours per night these days, says El Houssein Barhoum, and sometimes “refuses to go to school.” “He says, ‘I don’t want people to ask me a lot of questions,’ ” the father reports.
Before the photo hit the New York Post, it circulated on the Internet, a scary development that prompted Salah Barhoum to meet with authorities to clear his name. That was on Wednesday, two days after the bombings. On Thursday, the Post chose to showcase Salah Barhoum and a friend.
Following all the attention, “We were just scared to go outside,” says El Houssein Barhoum, who says he works at a Cosi restaurant in Boston. On account of the sleepless nights he spends thinking about his kid, Barhoum says he’s been arriving late to work. “Recently, because usually I keep thinking about my son and about my family and in the morning, it’s hard for me to wake up early and I become lazy again,” says El Houssein Barhoum, who immigrated from Morocco with his family about eight years ago. “My future is based on my kids, so when you see your future is like really like the destruction of your kids’ future, so how can you feel? My capital is my kids. If something happens to them, it happens to me, too.”
Staffers from the New York Post, says El Houssein Barhoum, visited his home In Revere, Mass., on the same day that “Bag Men” appeared on the paper’s cover. “They come here at my home, check his real name and took some pictures,” he recalls. When asked if they’d apologized for the high-profile photograph, El Houssein Barhoum said they hadn’t. “If they won’t apologize, it’s not between me and the New York Post,” he says. “They should apologize on the newspaper. They should write something on the newspaper, not between us. If they make a bad image of your son, they should make a good image just to correct.”
The New York Post did publish a story saying that the kids had been “cleared.”Syria's opposition appears to have overcome its deep divisions to rally behind a new leader within a new coalition that its Western and Arab backers hope can topple the Syrian government and take over the country.
After days of negotiations in Qatar under the watchful eyes of Arab, US and other officials, representatives of groups including rebel fighters, veteran dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities agreed on Sunday to join a new assembly that can form a government-in-exile.
They unanimously elected reformist Damascus religious leader, Mouaz al-Khatib, as its president.
Khatib, 50, was jailed several times for criticising Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president. He finally fled into exile this year.
Khatib, a preacher who was once imam of the ancient Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, immediately called on soldiers to quit the Syrian army and on all sects to unite.
"We demand freedom for every Sunni, Alawi, Ismaili [Shia], Christian, Druze, Assyrian... and rights for all parts of the harmonious Syrian people," he said.
Deal welcomed
It remains to be seen whether the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces can overcome the mutual suspicions and infighting that have weakened the 20-month-old drive to end four decades of rule by Assad's family.
But for allies who see it emulating Libya's Transitional National Council, the deal was welcome on a day when Israel fired a missile after a Syrian mortar bomb hit the Golan Heights and Assad's air force strafed along Turkey's border.
"We will strive from now on to have this new body recognised completely by all parties... as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people," Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, Qatari prime minister, said.
Qatar, the meeting's hosts, is an important supporter of the rebels.
Ahmed Davutoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, said there was "no excuse any more" for foreign governments not to support an opposition whose internal divisions had given many pause.
The US had also strongly promoted the plan for the Doha meeting to unite the various factions and, notably, subsume the previously ineffectual Syrian National Council into a wider body that would be more inclusive of minorities from a country of great ethnic and religious diversity.
Earlier on Sunday, Al Jazeera's Mohamed Vall, reporting from the Doha meeting venue, said: "We also know that this name - the Syrian National Coalition - will also change because they do not want it to sound like Syrian National Council when reduced to its acronym of SNC.
"There is also a longer version of the name, which is: The National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary Forces and the Opposition".
He said the Kurdish National Council asked for 48 hours to consult their leaders outside of Qatar.
France, a vocal backer of the rebels and which once ruled Syria, lauded the Doha deal.
"France will work with its partners to secure international recognition of this new entity as the representative of the aspirations of the Syrian people," Laurent Fabius, French foreign minister, said in a statement in which he called the Assad government "the criminal regime in Damascus".
Twenty months after street demonstrations inspired by the Arab Spring drew a military response from Assad, his enemies hope a more cohesive opposition can break a stalemate in the civil war and win more military and diplomatic support from allies who have been wary of the influence of anti-Western fighters, some of them linked to al-Qaeda.
While there has been renewed talk in Turkey and elsewhere of providing some sort of no-fly zones or other protection for refugees and the lightly armed rebels facing Assad's air force, Western governments have shown little appetite for new military ventures in such a complex Arab state.
And Russia and China, which have blocked previous moves against Assad in the United Nations Security Council, are unlikely swiftly to alter positions which call for dialogue with Assad and view opposition groups as being in thrall to the West.
Assad's close allies
Regional power Iran, in whose Shia brand of Islam Assad's Alawite minority has its religious roots, remains firmly behind the Syrian leader in a conflict which pits him against majority Sunni Muslims supported by Iran's Sunni Arab adversaries.
After long arguments over whether and how to form the new opposition assembly, the speed with which a consensus emerged within hours to ensure that Khatib stood unopposed for the post of president was notable and may encourage its supporters.
His deputies will be Riad Seif, a veteran dissident who had proposed the US-backed initiative to set up an umbrella group uniting groups inside and outside Syria, and Suhair al-Atassi, one of the relatively few women with a leading role.
Mouaz al-Khatib The new leader of the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces was born in 1960, in Damascus. He studied and worked as an engineer, but rose to prominence as an Islamic preacher; at one point, he was the imam of the historic Umayyad mosque in Damascus. Khatib was arrested several times since the start of the Syrian revolution. He gave an interview to Al Jazeera in March 2011 demanding an end to violence against peaceful protesters; he was arrested several weeks later. He eventually fled from Damascus to Cairo after his release. In a speech last month, Khatib was critical of the role Islamists have played in the Syrian uprising, though his critique was mostly strategic: their prominence has allowed Western countries to portray the uprising as "extremist," he said.
Delegates said a third deputy may yet be named from among ethnic Kurds.
Mustafa Sabbagh, a businessman, was elected general secretary.
Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, also reporting from the Doha conference venue, said the coalition had said that as soon as they received "full recognition from the international community, they will announce a provisional government".
"Ideally they say they will ask the international community to provide them with a humanitarian corridor, a no-fly zone in the northern parts of the country, preferably in Idlib province or in Aleppo, but they say that they practically need a month or two before being able to move to that area, to set up their provisional government," he said.
"This is a serious step against the regime and a serious step towards freedom," George Sabra, the new Syrian National Council leader, said of Khatib, who has long promoted a liberal Islam tolerant of Syria's Christian, Alawite and other minorities.
Critics of the SNC had said it was too much influenced by the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and too little open to minorities, including Alawites, some 10 per cent of the population who fear a backlash if Assad is overthrown after a war that has taken on increasingly sectarian characteristics.
Regional fallout
In a sign of the wider sectarian confrontation across the Middle East, three people were killed on Sunday in the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon in fighting between Sunni Islamists and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia group.
In the Golan Heights, Israeli troops fired a guided missile into Syria on Sunday in a potent "warning shot" after mortar fire from fighting between Syrian troops and rebels hit the Israeli-occupied territory for the second time in four days.
Israel Radio said it was the first direct engagement of the Syrian military on the Golan since the war of 1973.
There was no immediate comment from the 1,000-strong UN force which patrols the area, and no reaction from Syria.
In other violence, Assad's troops bombarded the Ras al-Ain area on the border with Turkey, days after the town fell to rebels during an advance that has sent thousands of refugees fleeing for safety.
Increasingly critical of the failure of world powers to halt the war, Turkey is in discussions with its NATO allies over the possible deployment of Patriot surface-to-air missiles to defend against any spillover of violence. The move could also be a step towards enforcing a no-fly zone within Syria.
More than 37,000 people have been killed and many tens of thousands more displaced in the violence since March last year, according to Syrian activists.Lay’s has decided to break the mold and show you there’s nothing to hide: 100% real potatoes, vegetable oil and a pinch of salt. To make it simple, +Castro and BBDO Argentina decided to use real potatoes to offer a Lay’s sampling in a unique venue in the main POS in Argentina by inviting people to insert potatoes in a special machine: The Lay’s Machine.
Pablo Garcia, Marketing Director at Pepsico Alimentos., commented:
This innovation at the point of sale not only reflects the spirit of the brand but also shows to perfection, from the experience, an intrinsic truth of the product. We’ve been working during these lasts months on a campaign focused on the concept that Lay’s is 100% natural potatoes and this machine let people experience this concept live, enabling us to influence the consumer in a key place– such as the point of saleIf Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and the NDP's Jack Layton are searching for a route to power in an electorally divided nation dominated by a seat-rich rival party — one positioned on the far side of the political spectrum — they might look to a road map produced in 1996 by none other than future Conservative leader and prime minister Stephen Harper.
And what was the best solution for overcoming the "benign dictatorship" of what Harper, at the time, called the "one-party-plus" rule of the Jean Chretien-led Liberals? It was a "coalition" or working alliance of opposition parties — possibly backed by the Bloc Quebecois.
Harper's detailed and visionary plan to end the crippling effect of vote-splitting among centre-right parties — a grim reality now faced by Canada's centre-left — was published in the now-defunct Next City Magazine.
And many of the ideas being tossed around today by frustrated supporters of the Liberal, NDP and Green parties are all there under Harper's byline: party amalgamations, co-operative election strategies, parliamentary alliances and — yes — coalition governments propped up by Quebec separatists.
The essay was penned 15 years ago by Harper and his frequent collaborator on political writings at the time, University of Calgary historian and political scientist Tom Flanagan. Flanagan went on to become a key strategist in Harper's rise to power as his chief of staff and Conservative campaign manager, later writing about the experience in his 2007 book Harper's Team.
But in 1996, the national political landscape looked rather bleak to Harper and Flanagan as they surveyed a weak and fragmented conservative movement with little hope of stopping a second Liberal majority in the 1997 election.
Harper, in fact, who served as a Reform MP from 1993 to 1997, was on the verge of leaving elected politics to become head of the National Citizens' Coalition lobby group.
And when he and Flanagan contemplated conservatism's long-range prospects in their essay — titled "Our Benign Dictatorship" — they saw in recent Canadian history not the operation of the commonly understood two-party-plus system (Liberal and Conservative, with NDP as the "plus"), but a "one-party-plus" system in which Liberals almost always govern, except for brief interruptions when Conservatives manage to cobble together a fragile coalition of western populists, the traditional Tories of central and Eastern Canada and Quebec nationalists.
At the time, with Reform and the former Progressive Conservative party dividing the centre-right vote and allowing Chretien's Liberals the easy election victories of a virtual "hegemony," Harper and Flanagan predicted an ongoing "war of attrition" between conservative parties with no real hope of unification — a prediction that was proven wrong in 2004 when Harper took charge of a united right as leader of the new Conservative Party of Canada.
But back in 1996, still stuck on the outside of power looking in, the authors of "Our Benign Dictatorship" saw a reformed electoral system — perhaps proportional representation — as one possible solution, so that a relatively strong popular vote for the two main conservative parties could at least translate into a greater seat total in Parliament.I have long been of the opinion that proof-of-stake is superior to proof-of-work. Today I would like to challenge my own beliefs against the lessons I have learned from over a year of experience with proof-of-stake. In the past I have argued that proof-of-work is wasteful and that the same end result can be achieved much cheaper with proof-of-stake. Today I would like to consider if there is some value to proof-of-work.
Mandatory Disclaimer
What follows is an idea and perspective on proof-of-work and does not constitute a proposal to modify BitShares, its dilution rate, or its voting algorithms.
Work Defined
If we are going to talk about the benefits of proof-of-work, then it helps to have a useful definition of work. In terms of physics, work is defined as power X time.
W = Pt
In more general terms, I would define work as something you must pay people to do. If it doesn’t cost anything then no work was done. Bitcoin satisfies both definitions of proof-of-work. No one would spend money building specialized hardware and consuming electricity if they weren’t paid to do so. Therefore, Bitcoin’s block difficulty represents mathematical proof that about 25 BTC worth of work was performed. The corollary here is that if you pay a fixed amount of money into a competitive market then market competition will drive the work required to earn that money toward the value of the money.
We can view Bitcoin Work as Difficulty or HashPower * 10 minutes.
W = D = HP * 10m
In proof-of-stake systems we only have power, aka stake. I would like you to consider that committing to hold a token for a period of time in the future is work. No one gives up liquidity or locks funds up without expecting interest. The value of the interest paid is therefore proportional to the work required to earn it. In the same way, the value of the Bitcoin mining rewards is proportional to the work required to earn it.
Based upon this understanding of work and the value of liquidity we can construct a proof-of-work system that doesn’t require a large amount of money to be transferred to the electric company and mining hardware manufactures. This proof-of-work system does require the money to be transferred to someone though. In this case, it is transferred to those who committed to hold the token by diluting those who demanded liquidity. This has the effect boosting the value of a token in the short term by postponing sell pressure.
There are two ways to do proof-of-work with stake:
Based on how long you held a coin in the past Based on how long you promise to hold a coin into the future
I will submit for your consideration that what someone did or didn’t do in the past is a risk-free sunk cost similar to renting mining equipment on a day to day basis. On the other hand, promising to hold a coin into the future is a high-risk cost similar to buying mining equipment that takes a year to earn back the initial capital. In terms of security, the future value of a coin is the only thing that matters and this is why option #2 is superior.
Everyone Hates Politics
As blockchains become more complex, politics becomes a bigger and bigger issue. Proof-of-work has this wonderful property of appearing to be free of politics. At a consensus level it is mathematically simple, clean, and fully decentralized. In theory anyone can join the network and start producing blocks.
In practice, proof-of-work has created a pay-to-play model where those who are willing to spend the most to control the network win. The security in such a system comes from the expense and opportunity cost of mining a particular block and the fact that those doing the mining have a long-term capital commitment and therefore act in a manner to maximize their return.
Politics is Unavoidable
We have learned from the Bitcoin XT debate that politics is unavoidable. Proof-of-work doesn’t eliminate the politics it simply changes where the politics play out. Rather than a stake-weighted-vote on the blockchain it becomes a web poll or a vote at the Bitcoin Foundation. Mining pool operators end up voting on which fork to support and users vote with their CPU power.
Because politics is unavoidable, it makes the most sense to have the voting done directly on the blockchain. Bitcoin and Peercoin do this voting by signaling with each block that is produced, but this isn’t the only or most convenient way to do voting. Instead of voting by block production, voting can be done via transactions that indicate how “coindays” or “committed stake” should vote. This voting can even include voting on the set of active block producers and when they should be producing blocks like is done with delegated-proof-of-stake.
The primary challenge with Bitcoin and Peercoin style proof-of-work systems is that only technically savvy individuals who can endure the costs of running a full node on the network may participate in the voting process. The Bitcoin economy solves this problem via cloud mining operations where non-technical users “vote-by-proxy” through hiring someone else to mine on their behalf.
Voter Apathy
Under delegated proof-of-stake one of our major challenges is voter apathy. Many people vote once and then forget to change their vote or they vote for a proxy and then forget to follow up. The usual end result is that it becomes difficult to vote out incumbents or vote in new individuals. The presence of voter apathy is a sign that incentives are not properly aligned in the system.
This is where migrating from delegated-proof-of-stake to a delegated-proof-of-work system has some serious benefits. When power is in the hands of users who have a long-term capital commitment to a project they have greater incentive to vote because they cannot sell for months or years. Under the existing delegated-proof-of-stake system most users opt to passively accept the decisions made by others and then vote with their feet by selling the token if they don’t like the result.
When users have the ability to “vote without commitment” the whole community plays a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose game where winning the vote means losing the minority who disengage in the process which then undermines the value of the token.
Eliminating Exchange Risk
Stake-commitment based proof-of-work has the added benefit of reducing the risk posed by centralized exchanges having a large percentage of network stake. In BitShares 25% of the stake is held in the top several exchanges. These exchanges have opted to “not-vote” and thus do not help secure the network, but the risk remains that at any moment they could start voting and have complete control over the network.
By adding stake-commitment based proof-of-work to the mix, the exchange would be unable to both vote and guarantee withdraw on demand. In the best case, the exchange could keep their funds divided into a ladder of commitments such that they could maintain withdraw requests.
Is Proof-of-Work Wasteful
The $1 million dollar a day question is whether or not money spent on proof-of-work is wasteful. To answer this question requires making a comparison among several alternatives. For the sake of this analysis I am going to assume that there is a fixed cost for the proof-of-work and then look at the value of what is solved. Bitcoin and other similar coins use proof-of-work to solve several different problems at the same time:
Deciding when the next block should be produced Deciding who should produce the next block Making it expensive to produce an alternative chain Deciding on the best blockchain Distribution Side Benefits (such as Primecoin)
Of these six things, mining is a terribly inefficient/slow way to determine when blocks should be produced and who should produce them. A lot of work is wasted due to a failure to reach consensus on when and who in advance. This leaves only solving the last 4 problems as a means to justify the cost.
The capital commitment that bitcoin mining enforces creates a kind of self-reinforcing lock-in. People commit to the project, invest in equipment and then are forced to market and promote Bitcoin over a long-term basis in order to recover their costs and make a small profit. Distributing the new coins via mining provides an easy way to get new users on board without having to buy in. Both of these things have non-zero value.
If BitShares diluted to pay people who produce difficult hashes built off of recent blocks then this work would end up securing the network with the same kind of cost and objective proof as Bitcoin. This would give BitShares the benefits of solving problems #3, #4, #5, and #6 while still retaining the benefits BitShares enjoys in terms of consistent 3-second blocks and the elimination of the need for mining pools.
So the question of whether or not a particular kind of proof-of-work is wasteful depends only on the relative value of side benefits to the value spent. In the case of Bitcoin or Peercoin, the side benefits include the generation of specialized hardware. In the case of stake-commitment proof-of-work the side benefit is that a large percentage of a token are kept out of circulation which helps increase the value of the liquid tokens. In other words, instead of investing money outside the ecosystem in hardware and electricity, money gets invested into the ecosystem in terms of long-term investment support.
When stake-commitment proof-of-work is used, value is transferred from those who need liquidity but choose to hold anyway to those who give it up for fixed periods of time. This creates an investment vehicle that is more than just speculation.
Investor vs. Speculator
Sometimes it is helpful to consider the difference between a speculator and an investor. An investor puts money into a company in exchange for equity that may not be liquid for years. The money the put in goes directly toward funding the company and contributes to the long term value of the company. A speculator on the other hand could deal entirely in derivatives because they only care about changes in the price. In other words, speculators buy and sell frequently and have no loyalty. The most that can be said for speculators is that they provide liquidity that allows people to enter and leave the market at smaller spreads.
A startup company that has 100% of its outstanding stock on the open market has a harder time attracting new investment because newly created shares are competing with existing shares for today’s liquidity. For this reason almost all startups prefer to tie up investor funds and deny liquidity until they reach IPO or similar liquidity event.
By diluting speculators to compensate investors with a long-term outlook you can have the best of both worlds. If all investors lock up their funds for an equal period of time then there is in effect no dilution faced by investors. On the other hand, if some investors demand liquidity then the other investors profit.
Distribution
When a new company is created shares are allocated to those who contributed to the company proportional to their contribution. If two parters each put in equal work in the first year they should each own 50% of the company. If in the second year one of the partners quits, then at the end of the second year one partner should have 67% and the other 33% based upon the amount of work they contributed.
Based upon this theory, then all dilution to pay for work the company wants done is legitimate. The only question that matters is whether the work being done is worth having done. To use the partner example, if in the second year the remaining partner dug holes and filled them back in then the original partner may be upset because that work did not bring any additional value to the shares.
From this perspective, paying individuals to commit funds for longer periods of time and/or using the rate of pay as a means of regulating price volatility provides enduring value where as paying for miners might have less and less value as the amount of work increases.
Conclusion
After a year gaining experience with delegated-proof-of-stake (DPOS) I have concluded that certain kinds of proof-of-work are actually incredibly valuable and useful to an ecosystem’s development and that using dilution as high as 15% on short-term speculators to compensate long-term investors can be very helpful in both securing the network, building loyalty, and creating a profitable system.Iraq Sunday pressed a counter-offensive against militants who have seized a swathe of the country, as former UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi blamed the sweeping unrest on world neglect of the Syrian conflict.
A recruitment centre for such volunteers at the town of Khales in central Iraq came under mortar attack on Sunday, leaving six people dead, including three Iraqi soldiers, police and a doctor said.
Afkham's comments come a day after President Hassan Rouhani said he believed the Iraqis have the capacity to "repel terrorism" and that Iran had not been asked for help by its neighbour.
But in surprise comments he added that Iran may consider cooperating with its arch-foe the United States to fight the militants in Iraq.
With the situation on the ground confused, Iraq launched an air strike on a convoy of Kurdish forces, which have moved into areas including eastern Iraq, where the strike took place.
...Gay Marriage, Medical Marijuana, the Environment and more.
For many years, presidents have been assuming more and more power for themselves and for the federal government, but California has been taking the lead recently in the battle for States Rights against this growth Federal power.
Thomas Elias notes this trend in his recent Pasadena Star-News article, “California a key states’ rights battleground.”Â
Here’s an excerpt:
the states’ rights argument has been essentially turned on its head under a U.S. Supreme Court decision and a series of federal administrations that have tried to allow citizens – and some wild animals – fewer rights than California and other states want to give them.
Add in environmental issues, where this state leads the fight for tough cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation of worldwide climate change while the national government pushes the doctrine that federal laws and decisions should always take precedence over state decisions.
But resistance is alive and well – in some situations, at least – in the State of California. Medical Marijuana continues to “grow” – so to speak, |
kind of thing exists,” said one of the workers, a woman named Aziza.
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In 2009 alone, the sale of birth control pills nearly doubled to 11,000 in September from 6,000 packages in January, according to Marie Stopes figures.
One woman was so happy to have birth control pills that she hugged and kissed Aziza, ripped open a package and swallowed a pill with a gulp of water.
Photo
“She said she didn’t want to wait until evening,” Aziza said, laughing at the memory. The total number of the woman’s children: 17. Three dead, 14 living.
The most difficult families are ones headed by mullahs. Aziza and her colleagues tread carefully in those households. Mahmouda, another worker, recalled walking into one such house and finding the mullah’s wife washing clothes and trying to calm a baby. She signaled silently that Mahmouda should talk in a low voice.
“ ‘If my husband finds out, he’ll punish me,’ ” Mahmouda recalled the woman saying. “ ‘I’m pregnant now. I really need those pills.’ ”
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Taking birth control in secret is not unusual, the women said. Even Aziza’s own husband opposes her using it.
“He said, ‘We are Muslims and God gives us babies,’ ” she said.
She lies to him, but with a clear conscience. “I talked to him in a good way,” she explained. “I told him about the benefits, but he didn’t listen to me.”
Those who oppose it sometimes get violent. Aziza recalled people running her out of a neighborhood in Kabul after she introduced birth control there. They accused her of being on the payroll of the Americans, taking dollars to weaken the country.
“ ‘They want to capture Afghanistan,’ ” she recalled that they said. “ ‘If the Muslims are many, they won’t be able to.’ ”
In Mazar-i-Sharif, it is one mullah at a time.
Mr. Massoom, the mullah trainer, put it most directly. “This is an Islamic country,” he said. “If the clerics support this, no one will oppose it.”The deplorable mass sentencing of 55 people at a stadium in China’s north-western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region [XUAR] is no solution to addressing public security fears, said Amnesty International.
Fifty five people, believed to be mostly Muslim Uighurs, were sentenced for terrorism, separatism and murder. Three were sentenced to death.
“Those responsible for the recent violent attacks have shown a callous disregard for human life and must be held to account. But speedy show trials will not deliver justice for the victims. Hastily sentencing people after unfair trials will only exacerbate tensions in the region,” said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International.
The sentencing took place in front of more than 7,000 people state media reported on Wednesday.
All of those sentenced are believed to be at risk of torture in detention. The local Communist Party leader, Zhang Chunxian said recently that suspected criminals should be “severely punished” before trial.
“With such charades, the Chinese authorities appear more concerned with courting public opinion than justice. It is highly doubtful the accused received fair trials,” said William Nee.
The sentence parade followed a wave of attacks as ethnic tensions rise within the XUAR. Thirty-one people died and over 90 were injured on 22 May, when bombs were thrown from two cars driving along a busy street in the region’s capital Urumqi.
The Chinese authorities have declared a “strike hard” campaign in response to recent attacks. Last week saw the launch of an anti-terrorism campaign, with convoys of anti-terrorist forces and military equipment paraded through Urumqi.
“The Chinese authorities have a duty to ensure public security but the response so far seems only likely to inflame tensions,” said William Nee.
Ethnic Uighurs face widespread discrimination including in employment, education, and housing, and curtailed religious freedom and political marginalization.It's hosted Canberra's prime ministers, diplomats and brides but now the iconic Lobby restaurant is home to a quiet occupation.
Nioka Coe, a Ngunnawal person, joined forces on Sunday with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to "reclaim" the restaurant in an act of sovereignty.
From left, Ngunnawal representative Charlie Brown, Aboriginal elder Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, and Ngunnawal representative Nioka Coe outside the Lobby restaurant on Monday. Credit:Jamila Toderas
The group issued the National Capital Authority, which owns the historic site, with an eviction notice, citing its "failure to seek permission... or sign a treaty or lease the land from Ngunnawal traditional custodians" as the reason for the takeover.
Working alongside the Ngunnawal elders, the group says it hopes to turn the site overlooking the Rose Gardens of Old Parliament House into a cultural centre or a cafe run by the tent embassy.Bill Maher describes Republicans' 'Supply-Side Jesus' on 'Real Time' on Oct. 2, 2015. [YouTube]
Just as there are two Americas, Bill Maher argued to close Real Time on Friday, there are now two versions of Jesus on the political landscape.
While liberals were still worshiping the traditional version of Jesus, he said, Republicans had created “supply-side Jesus,” who he described as “a small businessman from Galilei whose main gripe is big government who wants to make Nazareth great again.”
“He’d love to help the less fortunate — but he’s got investors to think about,” Maher explained.
In that regard, he said, Republicans are more likely to worship someone like “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who infamously tried to raise the price of Daraprim, a drug used by both AIDS and cancer patients, to $750 a pill before finally reversing course amid massive public criticism.
But tactics like Shkreli’s, the host argued, are commonplace in the pharmaceutical industry, where cancer medication cost $10,000 a month.
“This cartel owns the US government every bit as much as Mexican drug lords own theirs,” Maher observed.
With that in mind, Maher said, Donald Trump is the perfect candidate for today’s Republican Party.
“He says — he does — that his two favorite books are the Bible and The Art Of The Deal,” Maher pointed out. “Trump says one is about a perfect God who teaches humanity the right way to live. And the other is the Bible.”
Watch Maher’s commentary, as posted online on Friday, below.More than 25 farmworker, environmental, and food safety organizations sent an open letter on Tuesday to the U.S. Department of Agriculture demanding that the agency investigate reports that its scientists are facing retaliation and suppression of their research on controversial neonicotinoid insecticides that pose a danger to pollinator and human health.
"It is imperative that the USDA maintains scientific integrity and does not allow for harassment, censorship or suppression of findings that counter the interests of industry," states the letter, whose signatories include Farmworker Justice, Food & Water Watch, and Center for Biological Diversity.
The letter follows a petition filed in March by the advocacy organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) charging that "USDA scientists whose work carries with it policy implications that negatively reflect upon USDA corporate stakeholder interest s routinely suffer retaliation and harassment."
PEER executive director Jeff Ruch told Common Dreams that the petition was drafted "based on the experiences of 10 USDA scientists" who allegedly faced retaliation and punishment for research on neonicotinoid insecticides and glyphosate, which is included in Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide, as well as related topics, including genetically modified crops.
According to the petition, consequences included suspension without pay, threats of irreparable damage to careers, and "[d]emotion from supervisory status and a reprimand after the scientist provided testimony before Congress that did not reflect agency preferences."
"Each one of these actions delivers a powerful message to all colleagues," said Ruch, who argued that retaliation against researchers stems from the coziness of the agency with the industry. "The USDA never met a biotechnology it didn't embrace," he said.
Tuesday's letter specifically sounds the alarm on the immediate implications for pollinator and human health.
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"Bees, butterflies, birds and other critical pollinators are in great peril and populations are dwindling worldwide," the letter states. "A growing body of scientific evidence has implicated neonicotinoids as a leading driver of bee declines and glyphosate as a leading driver of the destruction of milkweed, the sole food source for monarch butterflies."
"Recently, the World Health Organization’s research arm, the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC), updated its cancer determination for glyphosate, categorizing it as 'probably carcinogenic to humans' (Group 2A) after reviewing scientific research from 17 of the world’s top oncology experts from 11 countries," the letter continues.
Yet the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has not taken meaningful measures to cut the use of dangerous pesticides, the missive charges.
The letter calls for the USDA to conduct "a thorough investigation into this matter" and enter its findings into the public record. Meanwhile, PEER is pushing for the agency to adopt specific policies to protect scientists from retaliation.
Critics warn that allegations of USDA suppression of scientists have broad human rights implications.
"If we cannot trust the scientific integrity of our scientists to protect bees, how can farmworkers be assured that their health and safety are not in jeopardy from a scientific community that is beholden to the interests of corporations and not to the protection of their own health and safety?" asked Jeannie Economos of the Farmworker Association of Florida in a press statement. "The issue goes beyond only protecting bees, but to protecting the public health, especially the most vulnerable, as well."Getty Images
Curious about how a disease gets started? Researchers may soon be able to “street view” the inner workings of the human body.
An international group of researchers have successfully created the most comprehensive map of the human metabolism, called Recon 2, which details how the body’s converts food into energy, and assembles all of the hormones and proteins that contribute to a normal day’s work for cells and tissues.
Genes may form the foundation of the human condition, but it’s their activity, in the shape of the products they make — from enzymes and hormones to nutrients and signalling factors — that dictate how cells interact with each other, and how body systems, such as the way we breakdown food into energy, operate. “It’s like having the coordinates of all the cars in town, but no street map,” Bernhard Palsson, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering, and one of the authors of the paper said in a statemnt. “Without this tool, we don’t know why peopel are moving the way they are.”
By putting together how genes and their products interact across entire networks, he and his colleagues are confident that Recon 2 could help to expose some of the still mysterious causes of diseases like cancer and diabetes, as well as lead to better treatments.
(MORE: Can You Be Fat and Fit — or Thin and Unhealthy?)
“Ultimately, I envision it being used to personalize diagnosis and treatment to meet the needs of individual patients. In the future, this capability could enable doctors to develop virtual models of their patients’ individual metabolic networks and identify the most efficacious treatment for various diseases including diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases,” said Ines Thiele, a professor at the University of Iceland in a statement describing the work.
Recon 2 resembles a “Google map” since it consolidates all the details of human metabolism functions into one interactive tool and allows users to zoom in to view as much detail, at a cellular level, as they want, or to zoom out to get a broader perspective of all the different metabolic reactions that might be involved in a particular function. Such analyses can reveal patterns in function that might not otherwise be obvious to scientists working on more limited projects. In a release describing the scope of the project, University of California San Diego officials wrote:
This is not unlike how you can get a street view of a single house or zoom out to see how the house fits into the whole neighborhood, city, state, country and globe. And just as Google maps brings together a broad set of data – such as images, addresses, streets and traffic flow – into an easily navigated tool, Recon 2 pulls together a vast compendium of data from published literature and existing models of metabolic processes.
(MORE: How Exercise Can Change Your DNA)
As the name suggests, there was also a Recon 1, which mapped 3,300 metabolic transformations occurring in tissue and cells. Recon 2 more than doubles that number of metabolic activities by covering more than 7,400 different reactions. To develop Recon 2, the original group of researchers from UCSD brought together research groups from around the world to contribute their findings and develop standards for the map.
Researchers are already excited by Recon 2’s potential in a number of medical applications, including the ability to trace gene expression patterns to specific metabolic pathways, which can lead to more useful targets for drugs that can intervene in these processes and alter the reactions that can lead to disease.
“Recon 2 allows biomedical researchers to study the human metabolic network with more precision than was ever previously possible. This is essential to understanding where and how specific metabolic pathways go off track to create disease,” said Palsson in a statement.
(MORE: Diet Strategies Show Promise in Lowering Risk of Diabetes)
Although it is the most expansive map of the human metabolism available, it’s still not complete. According to the researchers, Recon 2 includes only about 1,800 genes of the estimated 20,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome, so there is plenty more to map in coming years.
The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.Ascend Amphitheater (Photo: Submitted)
Smoking cigarettes could soon be banned entirely at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater as the outdoor concert venue enters its second season of shows.
An ordinance sponsored by Metro Councilman Dave Rosenberg would prohibit smoking anywhere at the 6,000-capacity venue that is owned by Metro government and operated by live music entertainment giant Live Nation.
Currently, smokers are required to go to one of three smoking areas to light up inside Ascend Amphitheater. That was made the policy after smoking was originally permitted everywhere, including at seats and on the lawn, during the first few concerts of the inaugural season of Ascend Amphitheater.
Rosenberg said it’s now time to ban smoking entirely at the concert venue.
“It’s bad for public health and it’s unpleasant for people who are around that and have to smell that and cough through it,” Rosenberg said. “I have allergies, so it’s always an unpleasant experience for me.
“We used to have restaurants and airplanes with smoking sections, but smoke doesn’t know to stay in those sections. This will let folks avoid having to go through a toxic cloud to get to their seats.”
Poll: Should smoking be banned at Ascend Amphitheater?
The council is set to consider the ordinance on a first of three votes on Tuesday. If approved, the smoking ban would go into effect July 1, meaning it would apply to more than half of shows scheduled for 2016.
Under state law, municipalities aren’t authorized to regulate smoking at facilities owned by local governments.
But the state legislature recently approved enabling legislation sponsored by Rep. Bo Mitchell, D-Nashville, and Sen. Steve Dickerson, R-Nashville, that would permit Metro to prohibit smoking at only Ascend Amphitheater. The enabling legislation — proposed via amendment to a broader bill on tobacco use — awaits the signature of Gov. Bill Haslam.
Mitchell said he had initially sought legislation to give local governments the power to regulate smoking on any property it owns, but ended up singling out just Ascend Amphitheater as a compromise. He said he learned about complaints about smoking at the music venue from media reports last summer.
“It didn’t go as far as I wanted, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Mitchell said. “People pay a high price for a concert ticket, and they don’t want to sit there beside someone all night smoking and ruining their evening.”
Live Nation backs the council legislation, but referred The Tennessean to the Metro Parks and Recreation department, which oversees Ascend Amphitheater for Metro, for comment.
Parks Director Tommy Lynch said he would have to review the pending state legislation and the proposed smoking ban’s compliance with state law before forming a stance on the council ordinance.
In other major Metro-owned facilities such as Nissan Stadium and Bridgestone Arena, patrons have areas where they can go to smoke that are away from seating.
Staff writer Nate Rau contributed to this report. Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.
Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/1NiZ2e0A psychology instructor at Orange Coast College told her class that the election of Donald Trump was “an act of terrorism,” which she blamed on the Electoral College. She also said she felt “better” upon reflecting that liberals, like her, “are the majority.”
The video, which was recorded and posted to YouTube by one of her students, was posted to the Facebook page of the school’s Republican Club, which they followed up with a complaint.
According to the Orange County Register, the teacher was identified as Olga Perez Stable Cox, and she addressed students in her popular human sexuality class. In the video, she stated, “our nation is divided. We have been assaulted.”
It’s an act of terrorism. One of the most frightening things for me, and most people in my life, is that the people committing the assault are among us. It is not some stranger from some other country coming in and attacking our sense of what it means to be an American and the things that we stands for. And that makes it more painful.
She said, “We are way beyond Republicans and Democrats and we are really back to being in civil war. And I don’t mean it in a fighting way. But our nation is divided, clearly as it was in Civil War times.” Cox then added, “We are the majority. More of us voted to not have that kind of leadership. And we didn’t win because of the way our Electoral College is set up. But we are the majority and that’s helping me to feel better.”
One of the students can be seen turning around and asking another, “When does the marijuana pop come into effect?”
Attorney Shawn Steel filed a complaint, in the form of a letter with Orange Coast College, on behalf of the schools’ College Republicans on November 30. In his letter, Steel made three demands: that Cox take “take an anger management course that’s monitored, because sometime they lie on this stuff, that she formally apologize to all the students in this class, and to have college faculty send a letter that all faculty be respectful to students.”
In an interview with Breitbart News, Steel said, “This has gone on [at] thousands of American campuses and tens of thousands of classrooms … We finally had a smoking gun with the recording of this teacher. She’s been doing this for 30 years and has never been spotlighted like this before.”
He said that by “using her power as a teacher, and controlling the grades, she stifles dissent,” and is using her mantle of power “to basically scare and shame students.” Steel added, “She’s insulting about half the class. Either she is seeking to insult them directly, or she is so out of touch that she can’t believe reality and lives in a typical liberal cocoon.”
Steel suggested that “every student who loves freedom should arm themselves with a fully-charged smart phone and video tape crazy professors. It’s a free speech right. The administrators are threatening the student” who recorded the video.
According to the Orange County Register, the union that represents Cox defended her and said any students involved in the recording violated school and state codes and could be punished. Orange Coast College is a public community college.
Steel noted that, legally, the school could prohibit an outsider from recording, and that if a student does that without permission they could be subjected to administrative sanction. However, if the school attempted to do that to the student, Steel said he would sue.
The Register notes that Rob Schneiderman, president of the Coast Federation of Educators, AFT 1911, which represents the school’s faculty, has a different perspective on the incident.
“This faculty member is known for her open and engaging ways in class, open to all sides of the issues,” Schneiderman told the Register. “It’s unfortunate that this student chose to not engage in an open dialogue, which she encourages.”
Other recent incidents against Republicans on Orange Coast College’s campus include the Vice President of the Feminist club — who happens to be a man — ripping apart a sign supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the OCC Republicans’ booth:
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNazThe MYTH of the glass ceiling: Think women get a raw deal at work? In this ferocious blast, a pioneering woman boss - who eats sexist pigs for breakfast - says it's time we stopped whining
Dame Stephanie Shirely has spent the past 50 years fighting sexist, out-dated attitudes towards women in male-dominated industries
The 80-year-old business leader has broken the glass ceiling many times
But compared to what her generation faced, she says women today have nothing to complain about
Instead of moaning they should focus on the heights within their grasp
The only thing holding many women back is themselves
Early one afternoon on a quiet stretch of road in Oswestry in Shropshire, a 16-year-old schoolgirl walks briskly along, making the journey from a day’s lessons at the local girls’ school to the boys’ grammar a quarter of a mile away.
She’s dreading the moment she’ll take her seat to the jeers and caterwauls of her 30 male classmates.
A great success: Dame Stephanie Shirley
Maths may be her best subject, but her school thinks it unfeminine, so she has won special dispensation to study it at a boys’ school — and will withstand no end of daily abuse for the privilege.
However far removed this scene may seem from the modern world, it is one that happened within living memory — my own.
That determined girl was me, less than 65 years ago. And recalling those uncomplaining first steps on my long slog to the top of the career ladder makes me despair at the grumbles of modern women.
We’ve all heard the bleatings: sexist working environments, long hours and the tough ride to the top they say they have to endure.
The complaints seem to grow louder every year. I read last week about a furious former City personal assistant who has written her memoirs, determined to settle scores with the sexist bosses she claims wronged her — criticising her work and keeping her in the office until 6.45pm, no less.
Quite frankly, these women have nothing to complain about. They really have never had it so easy. If only she and other aggrieved women like her knew what I had to put up with just a generation before, they might moan less and, instead, focus on the giddy heights now firmly within their grasp.
As an 80-year-old business leader, I have spent the past 50 years fighting sexist, out-dated attitudes towards women in male-dominated industries.
Those first maths lessons taught me much more than just arithmetic.
They were an invaluable schooling in the inherent sexism I was to meet head-on throughout my working life — which I refused to be cowed by.
After studying advanced mathematics at London’s Sir John Cass College and computer logic at Birkbeck College, I embarked on a career in computer programming and became inured to working in male-only environments. I’ve hit the glass ceiling so many times that I joke my head is now flat.
But it was the glass ceiling that broke — not me. And, believe me, women today would baulk at some of the blatant, institutionalised sexism that not only existed, but was actively encouraged back then.
Myth of the glass ceiling: Dame Stephanie says women have never had it so easy, and should stop moaning and instead focus on the giddy heights now firmly within their grasp
Rather than allow myself to be patronised or overlooked, in 1962 I launched my own IT services company, Xansa, which, when it peaked in the Eighties, meant I was worth £150 million.
I achieved this with a £6 bank loan and a very thick skin.
My aim was to employ women, letting them work from home and manage their own workloads. To empower them, long before such corporate buzzwords were ever voiced.
This was at a time when fewer than nine million women worked (today that number is well over 13 million), and those who did manage to win themselves a role other than wife, mother or cleaner were paid far less than men, prevented from holding positions of power and even from opening a bank account without their husband’s written permission.
"W omen today would baulk at some of the blatant, institutionalised sexism that not only existed, but was actively encouraged back then"
When I think of what I could have achieved today, it makes me long to be young again, and all the more frustrated at modern women counting their grievances, rather than their blessings.
In 2002 I was listed as the 11th richest women in the country.
What holds back any other woman from trying to emulate — or outdo — me?
The law is clear: The 1970 Equal Pay Act and 2010 Equality Act enshrined our rights to any job we set our minds to — from bus driver to stock broker and now even bishop — safe in the knowledge that maternity leave and childcare benefits will help us along.
High performer: Dame Stephanie being awarded a Master of the IT Livery Company in 1992
Girls are outperforming boys from primary school to medical school, powering into top law positions and FTSE 100 companies.
Even in industries such as IT, where there is some distance to go, we are moving in the right direction. Indeed, we seem to have swung so far the other way that the European Commission is now threatening to force boards and businesses to comply with quotas for female employment or face penalties.
Determined: In 1962 Dame Stephanie launched her own IT services company, Xansa
Quotas have already been imposed in Belgium, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain — and, quite frankly, it’s a tragedy.
There should be no place for such positive discrimination in professional life.
As a firm believer in equality, and no matter how tough the climb, I want to be promoted on my performance — and that alone — and evaluated in the same way as everyone else.
It’s because of all this nonsense that reverse sexism is creeping into certain corners of industry and business where women are being hired simply because they are female.
There’s pressure to get women on the payroll and recruiters want to tick boxes.
Take the recent Cabinet reshuffle, where David Cameron appeared to be going out of his way to push up female numbers.
From three female Cabinet members, we now have six. Fine, so long as it is for the right reasons.
It’s all very well to enjoy chivalry, but if you really want to be accepted as an equal in the workplace, you need to work hard and not expect special treatment. No one became a CEO in my day for working a three-day week and leaving at 5pm.
I confess I employed reverse sexism myself when I set up Xansa. I hired only women for 13 years. It was a decision borne of desperation and frustration — it was the only way to show what working women could achieve in a culture when they were viewed as plankton.
Now the world recognises both our right and our ability to succeed, women should never be there to just make up the numbers — whether that’s in the recently reshuffled Tory Cabinet or any other corner of industry.
Strong women: Dame Stephanie Shirley meeting the Queen at the University of Buckingham in 1990's
There’s no doubt the only thing holding many women back is themselves. I remember interviewing a shortlist of candidates for a new finance director position at Xansa on a hot summer’s day, years ago.
Several women were in the running, and as each of them arrived, one after another, I almost choked: each was in a little dress revealing their legs or décolletage.
How could I have them representing me looking like that?
The office is no place for trivialising your talents by playing on your sexuality. When I saw Esther McVey turn up for her first day as the new Employment Minister wearing a grey suit displaying acres of thigh, I just thought: ‘You silly woman.’
"The office is no place for trivialising your talents by playing on your sexuality. When I saw Esther McVey turn up for her first day as the new Employment Minister wearing a grey suit displaying acres of thigh, I just thought: ‘You silly woman.’ "
How you dress sends out a strong message. People judge on appearance and dressing seriously means being taken seriously. Thigh flashing is an obvious no-no.
Nor, now maternity leave and the right to ask for flexible working hours are a given, should work be a place to bring family problems (rather than being unheard of, as they were when I gave birth to my only son, Giles, in 1963).
My upbringing undoubtedly played an enormous part in shaping my beliefs. I arrived in Britain as a five-year-old Jewish refugee on one of the last Kindertransport trains from Germany at the start of World War II, after waving goodbye to my parents.
Placed with foster parents in the West Midlands who answered a local newspaper advert asking if anyone would put up ‘two sisters, brought up in a nice family’, I quickly learned that to survive I had to deal with change.
Picked up from one family and one language and parachuted into another, there was little choice. I was determined to make mine a life worth saving, which gave me all the drive I needed to fight my way to the top.
Fighting to the top: Dame Stephanie Shirley pictured here with the Freedom of the City of London in 1987
I learned right from my first job to adapt to one rule for men and another for women.
In 1951, I started working for the scientific civil service, where we were paid by age and gender. I got £4 a week, while a man of the same age doing the same job would get £5 — 25 per cent more.
Of course, I was livid. Often I had to carry heavy computer equipment along a corridor and men would offer to help. I would bat tetchily back, ‘I believe in equal pay and I will carry my own equipment,’ before struggling off.
Sharp tongue and thick skin: 'Women are more than capable of speaking up for ourselves - I've spent a lifetime doing it'
Throughout my 20s I got used to the idea that the more I became recognised as a serious young woman who was aiming high, the more violently I was resented and more implacably I was kept in my place by men in senior positions.
Probably the sagest advice from one colleague early on was ‘never forget you are an honorary male’ — by which he meant don’t rest on your laurels because you’ll never truly be ‘one of us’.
That never rang truer than in 1963, the year after I started up Xansa. I was sending out business development letters but getting no response. It was demoralising and I knew they were just being thrown into the wastepaper bin.
DID YOU KNOW?
Women in full-time employment work on average 40 hours a week, while men work 44, according to official figures for 2014
My husband, Derek suggested it might be because of my very feminine name: Stephanie Shirley. On his suggestion I began signing my name Steve, a family nickname, to see what happened. It worked.
The replies and invitations to meet began to arrive. There was always the frisson of excitement when I arrived into a crowded meeting room full of suits and the men realised I was not one of them. But by then, I was through the door.
Considering myself one of the boys didn’t stop men in senior positions putting their arms around me and pinching my bottom. But I developed a thick skin and sharp tongue and learned to deal with it. I certainly didn’t run crying to the loos or the nearest solicitor, threatening to sue.
Getting on with it: Dame Stephanie (middle) taking part in a training exercise with employers
Young women now in the City complain they find some male environments oppressive and difficult. They are quick to fight loudly against it or throw in the towel. Sometimes, all that’s required is the backbone to cut men down to size. We are more than capable of speaking up for ourselves — I’ve spent a lifetime doing it.
"Working women today seem unwilling to pay the price of success. They don’t take work as seriously and aren’t prepared to work as hard. They are less inclined to put in the hours or push themselves forward"
Yet working women today seem unwilling to pay the price of success. Just as able as men, often more so, they don’t take work as seriously and aren’t prepared to work as hard. They are less inclined to put in the hours or push themselves forward. Conditions have never been more in our favour, yet where men dive in head first, women are hesitant.
Official data shows female membership of FTSE 100 boards is on course to hit the Government target of 25 per cent by next year.
Frankly, with the education and employment prospects of today, it’s a disgrace that women don’t achieve 51 per cent — our share of the population.
We’ve never had it so good. It’s time we stopped whinging and got on with it.
Let IT Go, The Memoirs of Dame Stephanie Shirley, is available via amazon.co.uk for £8.99. There is also a Kindle edition and an audio download, recorded by her.The federal budget deficit for March was $65.387 billion, which was sharply below (65.9%) the $191.589 budget deficit of March 2009. It was also well below the $220.909 billion in February, however the data is not seasonally adjusted, but is highly seasonal, so the month-to-month comparisons are less noteworthy.
We are now halfway through the fiscal year. Fiscal year to date, the budget deficit is showing an improvement over a year ago, totaling $716,990 billion, an 8.24% reduction from the $781,391 billion worth of red ink in the first half of fiscal 2009. That is a step in the right direction, but the deficit is still far too high for the long term. Given the depth of the recession, it is a necessary evil right now.
For the month, we saw an increase in revenues of 18.95% year over year to $158.358 billion. Most of the improvement from a year ago came from much lower outlays. At $218.745 billion, they were 31.8% lower than a year ago. Most of the reduction in outlays was due to less money being spent on the Wall Street Rescue (TARP) than a year ago. Fiscal year to date, tax collections are down 3.62% to $953.896 billion, while spending is down 5.66% to $1,670.885 billion.
The Treasury "budget" includes things that are "on-budget" and "off-budget," with the latter being mostly Social Security. For years, a surplus in Social Security has helped to hide the true size of the operating budget deficits the country is running. This is still true today, although much less so than in years gone by. The on-budget recepts are the ones that are on everyone's mind this week with tax day approaching. Those are down 3.23% so far this year to $648.716 billion.
The off-budget receipts, which are mostly the Social Security taxes that are taken out of your paycheck (and matched by your employer, so the real rate is double what shows on your pay stub) are down 4.43% to $305.179 billion. If you are unemployed, neither you nor your employer will be paying payroll taxes.
On the spending side, on budget outlays fell by 7.97% to $1,401.708 billion. Those are the expenses that one normally associates with governement spending, including the military, the salaries of federal employees from Obama on down, interest on the Federal debt, and most of the transfer payments with the exception of Social Security and Medicare.
The improvement in the year-to-date spending comes even in the face of a 19.8% increase in the interest on the national debt to $201.929 billion. Off-budget spending (Social Security benefits) rose by 8.54% to $269.10 billion. Thus, Social Security is still running a surplus so far this year, but it is much smaller -- only $36.074 billion rather than the $71.379 billion surplus in the first half of 2009.
This report is very welcome news, but it probably will not last. Much of the year-to-date improvement has come from the big banks like Bank of America (BAC) and Goldman Sachs (GS) paying back the TARP, and that is not going to last forever. However, much of the spending is fixed, most notably the interest on the debt.
Federal salaries make up a very small portion of the overall expenditures, especially if you are only looking at civilian salaries. Declining tax revenues have played a bigger role in the expansion of the deficit over the past few years than has increased spending. Some of that was deliberate -- for example, about one-third of the ARRA (the Stimulus Bill) was in the form of tax cuts.
However, most of it was simply due to lower overall economic activity. People out of work are not paying as much in income taxes, and small businesses earning less and thus having less income to tax. This would not be a great time to increase taxes or cut spending, since either would impose a drag on the economy when it is still very weak. However, we do need a plan to bring down the deficit sharply in the future, and to do so will require both tax increases and spending cuts.
Read the full analyst report on "BAC"
Read the full analyst report on "GS"
Zacks Investment ResearchThe Mumbai income tax zone, which contributes a third of the nationwide direct |
techniques and attempt to tie all the information together so that the reader can start to find the dim mak applications contained within their own style. This book is a must have for all serious students of the martial arts and anyone with an interest in the diabolical art of dim mak. The book is titled, Death Touch: The Science Behind the legend of Dim Mak and is now available.
Next Page: Ancient theories behind dim mak.“Toffs and Toughs” is a 1937 photograph of five boys: two dressed in the Harrow School uniform including waistcoat, top hat, boutonnière, and cane; and three nearby wearing the plain clothes of pre-war working class youths. The picture was taken by Jimmy Sime on 9 July 1937 outside the Grace Gates at Lord’s Cricket Ground during the Eton vs Harrow cricket match. It has been reproduced frequently as an illustration of the British class system.
The Harrovians were Peter Wagner and Thomas “Tim” Dyson, who had arranged to be at Grace Gates at 2 pm, where Wagner’s father would pick them up and drive them to Russ Hill, the Wagners’ country home in Surrey, for the weekend. The other three boys were George Salmon, Jack Catlin, and George Young, 13-year-old pupils at the local Church of England primary school. All three had been to the dentist that morning and then decided to skip school and hang around instead outside Lord’s, where the Eton-Harrow match offered money-making opportunities to any boy willing to open taxi doors and carry bags, or to return seat cushions to their hirers and claim the three penny deposit.
The News Chronicle published the picture the next day on the front page, under the headline “Every picture tells a story”. A one-line caption identified only the event and location. According to Peter Wagner’s sister, when the Wagner family first saw it, “we probably laughed because they [the boys] both looked so fed up”. But in the years that followed, her amusement faded. Later she declared that the picture was known “for all the wrong reasons”.
Tim Dyson (the rich boy staring toward the camera) has the saddest story of them. A year after Sime took his picture, his parents arranged for their son to join them for his summer holidays at their army quarters in Trimulgherry, India. Dyson began to feel very ill while traveling and was diagnose with diphtheria. Tim died in Trimulgherry on 26 August 1938, aged 16. His father was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore and died in a Korean prison camp on 22 November 1942, four years after he buried his only child.
Peter Wagner entered the family stockbroking firm, married, and had three daughters; he became mentally unstable in the 1970s and died in Hellingly Hospital in 1984, aged 60.
George Young and George Salmon were each married when interviewed for the Daily Mail in 1998. Young started a window-cleaning business and set up his four sons in the same trade. Salmon, who still lived in Marylebone, died in 2000. Jack Catlin‘s family moved to Rickmansworth soon after 1937; he was widowed, remarried and living in Weymouth in 2010.
In striking contrast to Wagner and Dyson, all three men had reached old age and a plateau of contentment. But Catlin hadn’t maintained contact with Salmon and Young. His wife said that when a newspaper (perhaps the Daily Mail) had asked the three men to get together to reconstruct the picture at Lord’s, or at least their part in it, Jack had refused. Probably to be stereotyped as a poor London boy – a tough even – may have irritated a man who had made good and probably felt no nostalgia for the pre-war streets of his childhood.
Interesting facts: Toff is a British slang meaning a wealthy, upper-class person. Its origin is perhaps a variant of tuft, a nickname for a titled student at Oxford University, wearing a cap with a gold tassel. The Eton vs Harrow cricket match is one of the longest-running annual sporting fixtures in the world. The match declined as a social occasion in the years after the war.
(Photo credit: Jimmy Sime).In a sit-down interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday evening, Rush Limbaugh weighed in on everything from the NFL kneeling controversy to why President Trump is having such a hard time with his own party.
Limbaugh argued that the Washington Establishment is determined to prevent Trump from fixing what’s been broken about government for decades.
"I'm not exaggerating here.... They don’t want [and] they can’t afford for him to succeed with his agenda. They can’t afford it," the conservative radio host said."The joke is revealed if an outsider with no prior political experience can come in and fix messes that people have been promised would be fixed for 30 years. How does that make them look? They can’t allow that to happen.”
As for the NFL, Limbaugh said that the left is attacking the sport because football represents things they hate, such as masculinity and patriotism.
“I do believe that the left wants to cause great damage to the NFL,” he told Hannity. “What does the NFL stand for? Masculinity. Strength. Toughness.”
He went on to say that on college campuses across the country there are actually classes about how to remove masculinity from men.
He continued listing the reasons the left hates the sport:
“It’s patriotic,” he explained, “you’ve got the flag, you’ve got the anthem, you got military uniformed personnel. All the things that the left wants to erase from this country. They don’t like displays of patriotism, strength, rugged individualism. And that’s why the players are being used here.”
“They think it’s about police brutality,” he added, “they think it’s about righting social wrongs and so forth. This is an attack on the NFL as an institution or shaking it down, lowering it’s profile and impact on American culture.”Following new guidance on the Religious Studies GCSE, published yesterday by the Department for Education (DfE) in the wake of a High Court judgement earlier this year, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association (BHA), Andrew Copson, has made the following statement:
‘The BHA is glad that the DfE seems to have accepted that it stood no chance of winning an appeal against the judgement that its planned new GCSE in religious studies contained “an error of law”, but we are disturbed that the Department has plainly not understood either the basis of the judgement or its implications.
‘The new guidance claims that “Curriculum balance (and, therefore, compliance with statutory requirements) can be achieved across the key stages”. Hidden in this statement is a welcome acceptance that non-religious worldviews such as Humanism must be taught as part of religious education – but Mr Justice Warby specifically rejected as inadequate a “balance” achieved across a pupil’s complete school career. He said: “GCSE is a vitally important stage in the development of a young person’s character and understanding of the world. I do not consider it could be said that a complete or almost total failure to provide information about non-religious beliefs at this stage could be made up for by instruction given at earlier stages.”
‘Far more importantly, the entire judgement was based on the finding that religious education in schools with no religious character must be “neutral, impartial and pluralistic” and so must cover non-religious beliefs. For the Department now to say “The Government considers the judgment to have no broader impact on any aspect of its policy in relation to the RE curriculum” is not only obtuse, it risks leading schools and teachers into breaches of the law. The judgement in fact requires a complete rethinking of RE so as to meet the legal need for a neutrality, an impartiality and a pluralism that embrace non-religious beliefs such as humanism and reflect the fact that half the population – and a greater proportion among young people – is non-religious.
‘The BHA is consulting its lawyers about the Department’s new guidance and will be seeking an early meeting with the DfE. The judgement should have been an opportunity for the Department to sit down and think about the curriculum and how it can be improved in the interests of all children. That it has not only wasted that opportunity but issued guidance that makes the situation worse is a slap in the face not just for the parents who brought this case and won, but also to parents nationwide who want a balanced education for their children.’
Notes
For further comment or information, please contact BHA Education Campaigner Jay Harman on jay@humanism.org.uk or on 020 7324 3078 or 07970 393 680.
Read the new guidance in full: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/488477/RS_guidance.pdf
Read the DfE’s accompanying press release: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/faith-groups-back-move-to-protect-religious-education-freedom
Read the full High Court judgement: https://humanism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/R-Fox-v-SSfE-2015-EWHC-3404-Admin-251115.pdf
Read the BHA’s analysis of the judgement: http://humanistlife.org.uk/2015/11/26/our-humanism-high-court-win-changes-everything-except-perhaps-the-gcse/
Read the BHA’s previous news item ‘Judge rules Government broke the law in excluding Humanism from school curriculum’: https://humanism.org.uk/2015/11/25/judge-rules-government-broke-the-law-in-excluding-humanism-from-school-curriculum/
Read the BHA’s briefing on why Humanism is now normally included in Religious Education syllabuses: http://humanismforschools.org.uk/guidance/why-humanism-is-included-in-religious-education-re/
Read more about the BHA’s work on RE: https://humanism.org.uk/campaigns/schools-and-education/school-curriculum/religious-education/
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. It promotes a secular state and equal treatment in law and policy of everyone, regardless of religion or belief.Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says 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 comments equating white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups with counterprotesters opposing them mark a "new low" for the president.
"I've been troubled generally, frankly, about the way that President Trump never talks about democracy, the kind of the values of our foreign policy have not been mentioned and now we have sunk to this new low in terms of giving a moral equivalency to hatred," Albright said in an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that aired Wednesday.
Albright's comments came a day after Trump criticized what he deemed the "alt-left" for inciting violence during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.
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In an off-the-rails news conference Tuesday, Trump said "both sides" deserve blame for the bloody demonstrations, and appeared to defend those who gathered in the Virginia college town to protest the removal of a Confederate statue.
The president's comments drew immediate backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, who criticized Trump for equating those protesting racism to neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups that incited violence.
Trump, a day before the press briefing, had offered a measured condemnation of racism and hate groups.
Albright denounced Trump's comments as un-American, saying that it is unprecedented for a U.S. president to compare anti-racism protesters to white supremacists.
"What he's doing — he is not normal," she said. "And what has happened is his reaction to this is not normal. It's not American."
"And I think that what he has done is obviously damaged himself but made people wonder about this moral equivalency, which I just find so stunning, given what we know about appeasing fascists and right-wingers is the way to disaster."TEL AVIV, Israel – An eerie video has surfaced in which the suspected mastermind behind the Paris massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud – aka “Abu Omar Al-Belgiki” – praises the “sweetness of martyrdom” and expresses joy at seeing the “blood of infidels.”
Abaaoud is at the center of a massive manhunt and is believed to have fled to ISIS-held territory in Syria although reports overnight suggest he could have been the target of a police operation in the Saint-Denis area of Paris designed to hunt down the perpetrators of last Friday’s terror attack.
According to European officials, Abaaoud is the link between the ISIS leadership in Syria and terrorists operating in Europe. He reportedly has close ties with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS’s self-proclaimed Caliph.
The 27-year-old terrorist grew up in Molenbeek, a suburb of Brussels known as a hotbed of radical Jihadist activity. According to the Associated Press, Abaaoud attended one of Belgium’s most prestigious high schools.
In a clip from 2014, Abaaoud is shown delivering a monologue from a trench in Syria. He asks, “What can be sweeter than martyrdom in the path of Allah?” According to a translation from MEMRI TV, Abaaoud also says, “It is nice to see … the blood of infidels” before calling upon his “brothers” to “hasten to jihad before it’s too late.”
View the MEMRI TV clip here.
In another video, Abaaoud drives a pickup truck dragging a pile of bloody corpses in Syria. Abaaoud laughs and tells the camera, “Before we towed jet skis, motorcycles, quad bikes, big trailers filled with gifts for vacation in Morocco. Now, thank God, following God’s path, we’re towing apostates, infidels who are fighting us.”
Abaaoud is also suspected of being the ringleader behind the Amsterdam-Brussels train attack in August.
In an interview with ISIS’s official English-language magazine, Dabiq, Abaaoud boasts that he is able to travel between Europe and Syria at will despite being chased by so many intelligence agencies. “My name and picture were all over the news, yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary,” said Abaaoud. “I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!”
Etienne Huver, a journalist who has met Abaaoud and obtained the video of him dragging the corpses, commented on the terrorist’s growing prominence: “You can see that he’s giving orders. You can feel a charismatic guy who’s going up in the world. … You can see a combatant who’s ready to climb the ranks.”WEBINAR:
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Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ programming language, is a computer scientist and the College of Engineering Chair Professor of Computer Science at Texas A&M University. He has always been highly involved in the standardization of C++. Since 2004, Bjarne and the standards committee have been busy hammering out the details of a new standard, temporarily titled C++0x. Bjarne was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule to speak with DevX C++ Pro, Danny Kalev, about new C++0x features and the state of the C++ language.
The C++0x standard will be finalized during 2009. Can you outline its major features and its overall importance to the C++ community?
We hope to vote out a draft standard for public review in October 2008 so that we'll be able to hand in a final draft for international vote in 2009. Because of this heavy ISO process, it's touch and go whether C++0x will be C++09, but there is still hope and the major features are now known (barring disasters). We can classify the extensions like this
Concurrency:
memory model supporting modern machine architectures
Threading ABI
atomic types
mutexes and locks
thread local storage
asynchronous message exchange
Libraries:
regex : regular expressions
: regular expressions unordered_map, etc. (hash tables)
, etc. (hash tables) smart pointers
array : fixed-sized array
: fixed-sized array improvements to containers based on new C++0x features
tuples
date and time (maybe)
various library components to held library builders
Language:
rvalue references (move semantics)
static_assert : static assertions
: static assertions variadic templates
strongly typed enumerations with scoped enumerators
constexpr : generalized constant expressions
: generalized constant expressions control of alignment
delegating and inheriting constructors
auto : deducing a type from an initializer
: deducing a type from an initializer decltype : a way of using the type of an expression in a declaration
: a way of using the type of an expression in a declaration control of defaults
nullptr : a name for the null pointer
: a name for the null pointer a range-based for loop
lambda functions
raw string literals
UTF8 literals
concepts (a type system for template arguments)
initializer lists and uniform initializations syntax and semantics
in-class member initializers
Lists are, by themselves, not very interesting, but you can read up on a description of my general philosophy for language evolution and some of the individual decisions in my HOPL-iii paper "Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006." You can also find more information than you could possibly want on the committee's web site.
Basically, the "concurrency" features will standardize the basic layers needed to do systems programming in a multi-core world. Obviously, facilities for doing that already exist in C++ implementations, but they are not standardized. I'd have liked to see library support for some high-level concurrency models, but the committee didn't have the time or consensus for that.
"I'd have liked to see library support for some high-level concurrency models, but the committee didn't have the time or consensus for that."
The library facilities provide a set of new library components and some improvements to the existing ones. I would have liked to see many more, but the committee is a volunteer effort and we just didn't have the resources for a massive extension of what was offered. Fortunately, there are many libraries available "out there," possibly already on your machine. For example, many of the C++0x libraries (e.g., regex and unordered_map) are now shipped by major vendors and boost.orgoffers many components (for instance, file system and networking) that we'll probably soon see in the standard. There is also much talk of a technical report on the libraries we most wanted but had to postpone.
The language extensions are a varied lot. Fortunately most are small and fit together with each other and with existing facilities to make a better integrated language. Consider a few examples:
// using C++0x features: vector<string> v = {"Gorm", "Harald", "Sven", "Harald", "Knud" }; for (auto p = v.begin(); p!=v.end(); ++p) cout << *p <<'
'; for (auto x : v) cout << x <<'
';
I suspect most is pretty obvious. You can provide an initializer list directly for a vector, you can deduce the type of an iterator from its initializer, and iterate through a sequence without explicitly mentioning the iterator. More examples:
enum class Season { winter, spring, summer, fall }; int summer; // doesn’t clash with Season::summer Season s = Season::spring; // note qualification summer = s; // error: no Season to int conversion Season += Season::fall; // error: can’t add Seasons for_each(v.begin(), v.end(), [](const string& s) { cout << s <<'
'; });
You can have enumeration types (class enums) that behaves more like types than glorified integers and the “lambda” notation ([], etc.) is a simplified notation for defining a function object. Each of these simple examples can without heroic effort be written today. However, in C++98 that code would be twice the size and in every case open opportunities for making errors and/or for introducing overhead.
Note that all "primitive" features are meant to be used in combination and in combination with existing features to solve problems. For example, there is no "magic" for initializing vectors in particular or even any new "magic" for constructors. Instead, the initialization of vector was achieved simply by a rule that state that an initializer_list<T> can be initialized by a list of any numbers of Ts {t1, t2, t3} for any type T. Given that rule, we simply give vector<T> a constructor that accepts an initializer_list<T>. Incidentally, this mechanism can also be used to eliminate about 80 percent of the uses of the type-unsafe stdargsmacros.By: Nasser Laham
I cannot work out an explanation for the state of "no peace, but no war" which has prevailed in Palestine in the last two years.
We Palestinians neither want to fight the Israeli occupation, nor to negotiate with them. We use the term "steadfastness" to describe this stalemate, as if doing nothing at all and remaining motionless has become steadfastness.
Palestinian intellectuals have long criticized the Arab regimes because they neither want to fight Israel, nor accept reconciliation with the occupying country.
For 40 years, we have been suffering fatally on a daily basis under occupation, while Arab TV stations have been slamming Israel in their news, and at the same time resistance fighters were being detained in Arab countries for politically-motivated security reasons.
At that point, late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was fed up and broke the silence by saying that the same Palestinians who fight and carry out military operations will make peace and sign agreements.
Over the past two years, the Palestinian leadership -- including the PLO and Hamas -- have been facing a crisis over what slogan to raise.
Therefore, neither the Palestinian public knows what its leadership is up to, nor does the leadership know what the public wants.
Palestinian leaders restricted themselves to issuing sharply-worded political statements cursing and slamming occupation, and blaming this occupation for as many offenses as they wanted. In the newsroom, we receive statements from Palestinian leaders reading as bizarre sentences as: "So and so condemns the occupation for the murder of children in Rafah."
And it goes on. So and so Palestinian leader condemns the Israeli incursion in Nablus, and another leader holds the occupation responsible for the confiscation of one third of West Bank land. Another leader denounces Israeli attempts to judaize Jerusalem and to break into the al-Aqsa Mosque or carry out excavations under the mosque.
Some leaders even condemned other leaders because they did not condemn the Israel occupation over detaining someone. What good is this? Is this the policy we need in order to free Palestinian prisoners and liberate Jerusalem?
For two years, the Palestinian leadership has refused to negotiate with Israel. They went to the UN seeking recognition of a Palestinian state, but the US fought that bid very firmly, proving that it is the number one enemy when it comes to UN resolutions on the Palestinian people’s rights.
Up until now, the Palestinian leadership still refuses to negotiate with Netanyahu or meet with Israeli leaders, but at the same time they urge the Palestinians to halt resistance activities. So how will this dilemma end?
Seemingly, Israel will eventually take control of the whole West Bank, complete its plans to judaize the Jordan Valley, segregate Gaza once and for all, and the Arab city of Jerusalem will end up a poor neighborhood within the greater Jewish Jerusalem.
Jerusalem will eventually meet the same end as Jaffa, which was once the most important Palestinian city before it became nothing more than a poor neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Despite everything, the Palestinian leadership is still adamant in rejecting both negotiations and resistance.
President Abbas, if you don't want to fight, and you don't want us to fight, go and negotiate so we can see what could happen.Syrians can look forward to a bright new future at Ny-Alesund. Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute
Norway's Green Party has proposed opening a reception centre for asylum seekers in the Svalbard archipelago deep in the Arctic ocean.
"At a meeting in August, we talked about wanting to take in refugees on Svalbard -.. both settlement and a reception centre may be relevant," Espen Klungseth Rotevatn, who leads the Green Party on the islands, told Norway's Vårt Land newsaper.
With the island's population of 2,600 people outnumbered by its 3,000 polar bears, Klungseth Rotevatn hopes that an asylum centre would lead to employment opportunities.
Last week, one of the archipelago's main employers, coal mining company Store Norske, announced that they were laying off 150 workers.
"A reception centre would of course create jobs, but that is a positive side effect of something much more important than coal mining, that's not our primary concern. Europe is on fire, and now our values and ethical standards are measured," says Rotevatn.
The only party that has previously proposed sending asylum seekers to Svalbard is the fringe anti-immigrant Norwegian People's Party (NPP).
NPP now say they weren't being serious when they proposed sending 10,000 quota refugees from Syria to Svalbard.
"In my statement, I put it rather bluntly, to show that there was no capacity to cater for so many in such a short time," Christian Eikeland of NPP in Agder told Vårt Land.
The Green Party has asked the governor of Svalbard to look into the legal aspects of the plan, as Svalbard has a special status and is not a Norwegian county.
"Among other things, Svalbard is not part of Schengen, so we must know whether it is formally and practically possible," Rotevatn said.Cancer patient kills himself day after he is told NHS Trust would not fund £25,000 drug
A cancer patient killed himself after being told he had been refused a wonder drug by his local primary care trust.
Albert Baxter, 77, was terminally ill. But he was turned down for a drug which could have prolonged his life and shrunk his tumour.
In desperation, he offered to pay for the treatment. But he was told if he did so, he would also have to foot the bill for the rest of his treatment, which he could not afford.
Albert Baxter (left), with partner Barrie Curryer. Mr Curryer found Albert dead in the kitchen of their home
The former bus driver had been diagnosed with renal cancer in January 2007.
His oncologist, Dr Fiona McKinna told him that the drug Sutent was his only hope. But although she requested the treatment, costing £25,000 a year, in March, East Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust turned it down on the grounds of cost and clinical effectiveness.
As his condition deteriorated, his clinician launched an appeal - and Mr Baxter hoped that the decision would be overturned.
But when he went to see his consultant on June 5, 2007, she was unable to give him the drug.
Mr Baxter, known by his middle name John, returned to his home in Eastbourne, East Sussex.
The next day, his partner found him dead, with a bin liner over his head. Mr Baxter had not yet found out whether the Trust would consider his appeal.
Yesterday Barrie Curryer, his partner of 30 years, said: 'What really upset him was that he worked all his life and paid into the health system and was refused treatment.
He thought it was because of his age, which I think played a part too.
'The trust people just sit in a room and read about John but don't see the patient. I blame the PCT because John's oncologist and GP wanted the drug. I think he built up his hopes of getting it.
The 70-year-old retired nurse added: 'It was the only drug that could do any good for him, there was nothing else. He was told it would not cure him but would give him a better quality of life.
'I can't say he was depressed, just very angry about it. He was so weak and just could not get up the stairs so I had to get people to help me.
'He said, "Nobody is doing anything for me, they're just letting me die".' I had prepared myself for his death but not under these circumstances.
Sutent facts and figures
'We offered to pay for the drug but if we had done we would have had to pay for all his treatment.
'We just could not afford that and John would not have accepted that anyway. I just wish he hadn't done it, we didn't even say goodbye.'
Friends of the couple, who ran a guesthouse together, organised a petition to get the drug but it failed to move health bosses.
An inquest into his death in April, heard that Mr Baxter's GP, Dr Rob Wicks, also campaigned for the patient to be prescribed the drug.
He told Eastbourne Coroner's Court: 'It would have held the progression of the disease and alleviated symptoms - improving his quality of life.'
But Lisa Compton, of the Trust, told the inquest that clinical effectiveness and cost were the two main reasons for refusing the drug. It was one of just two rejections for the treatment out of 19 requests to the Trust since January 2007.
Recording a verdict of suicide, East Sussex Coroner Alan Craze said: 'I don't think his life would have come to an end precisely when it did had he been prescribed the requested drug.'
The Trust had an 'almost impossible' job deciding on medication and there had to be a limit on resources, he added.
Sutent, is the first new treatment for advanced forms of kidney disease in 30 years. Trials have shown that it can prolong the lives of those with advanced stages of kidney cancer by up to two years and can shrink the tumour.
It is prescribed throughout Europe and licensed for use here. But it has yet to be approved by the Government's drugs rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
In the meantime, it is up to primary care trusts to decide whether to offer patients the drug, but they are not obliged to do so.
Under Health Service rules patients are not allowed to make so-called co-payments to top up their existing NHS treatment. If they want to pay for drugs not funded on the NHS, they must to pay privately for their entire treatment.Millions of Americans are disappointed by the election of President Donald Trump. He's been divisive, to say the least, making statements that many of his own supporters even acknowledge to be sexist, racist, and generally offensive, not to mention ignorant. Trump has never held elected office, has refused to release his taxes, has made questioning President Obama's birth certificate a part-time job, and seems to relish using Twitter to intimidate his so-called enemies. And none of that is even remotely a reason to cyberbully his 10-year-old son, Barron. Unfortunately, plenty of Twitter users didn't get that memo on Inauguration Day.
No child gets to choose their parents, and that includes Barron Trump. There is a longstanding public tradition of leaving children of presidents who are minors out of the press. Children are rightfully given the benefit of privacy, even children of presidents.
Yet "Barron Trump" trended on Twitter, and many users made cutting and cruel remarks about everything from his physical appearance to his supposed attitude to speculation on whether or not he's autistic.
As a mother, this breaks my heart. I cannot imagine the immaturity and meanness necessary to drag someone's child into one's dislike of a political leader. It goes a long way in explaining why so many good people don't want to enter into politics at all. With the bright lights unleashed upon one's family, a person who would otherwise rush to become a public servant is justified in thinking it would be unethical to force their kids to endure public harassment and shame.
Criticism of Ivanka, Donald Jr., Eric, and Tiffany Trump is completely fine. They are adults, and their actions as such are up for public debate. Especially considering that Donald Jr. and Eric Trump will now be running the Trump Organization; to leave them alone and out of proverbial print would be doing a disservice to the country. With Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, set to be closely entwined with the White House, they too are open for critique.
But a 10-year-old boy should be exempt from public bullying. This is probably easier for a mother to grasp, because imagining one's own child in a similar position is pretty much a reflex. And the thought, to me, is devastating.
I'd encourage everyone to leave Barron Trump out of their disdain and disgust with his father. Michelle Obama's advice is apt here: "When they go low, we go high." Don't let a political rage reduce you to someone who bullies a child. Go high, and leave Barron alone.It was a split-second decision with what proved to be fatal consequences. Now, a Northampton County jury must decide who is at fault.
Headed to an emergency alarm on busy Eighth Avenue in Bethlehem, veteran city firefighter Frank Dashner IV encountered a bottleneck at a red light as he tried to get his fire engine to the call as quickly as possible.
The opposing lane of traffic was wide open, and Dashner decided to take his ladder truck the wrong way down the divided street by cutting across an opening in the median. He moved his 35,000-pound engine at a crawl, Dashner said, as oncoming drivers yielded in the far lane to his lights and sirens.
"They all pulled over for me, every single one," Dashner recalled Wednesday at the courthouse in Easton. "Everybody stopped. Nobody was moving at that time."
Then, one car pulled out of the line of vehicles and sped up the road. "Look at that guy," Dashner's partner, John Palmer, warned him.
That day in 2008, Dashner said he began braking as the sports car proceeded. He was at a complete stop by the time the other driver lost control and crashed into the firetruck, Dashner told a jury.
"Seven years I've been dealing with this and I'm really sorry this happened," Dashner said at a trial that will determine whether he and the city of Bethlehem are liable in the death of 60-year-old William R. Samer. "But every time I think about this, I come up with the same conclusion: Why didn't he go around me? Why didn't he pull over? Why didn't he just stop?"
With that, Dashner swiveled his chair away from the jury and fought emotion, with Judge Emil Giordano calling for a break to allow him to compose himself. The testimony came on a day in which Bethlehem presented its side in a lawsuit in which the widow of Samer, Judith Samer, is seeking monetary damages, arguing negligence by Dashner, a 25-year veteran of the fire department.
Jurors began deliberating the case Wednesday evening before being sent home for the night after two hours. The panel will resume its discussions Thursday morning.
The accident occurred Oct. 24, 2008, as Dashner responded to what proved to be a false alarm at Service Electric Cable TV.
Was the wreck caused by a mistaken decision by Dashner to cross the divided road and drive against traffic? Or was Samer to blame for his own failure to yield to an emergency vehicle — as others did that day?
Those are questions the jury will have to wrestle with.
An attorney for Samer's estate, Daniel Munley, argues that Dashner should never have driven in the wrong lane, with the fire department's own rules saying it "shall be avoided when possible."
Robert Hanna Jr., a lawyer for Bethlehem, says Dashner was driving safely and cautiously when Samer, of Hanover Township, Northampton County, lost control of his car for an unknown reason.
In 2009, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin ruled that Dashner would not face criminal charges. Police said Samer drove nearly a half-mile with the fire engine in sight, and hit it as it was at a stop or going slower than 5 mph.
Bethlehem police officer Jonathan Desiderio testified Wednesday that the police investigation placed fault with Samer, finding Dashner's emergency vehicle was entitled to the right of way under state law.
Munley countered by suggesting Samer would still be alive today, but for Dashner's decision to cross into the oncoming lanes.
"That firetruck shouldn't have been there and when he was, he took everything from Judy," Munley told jurors, Samer's widow sitting feet away.
An eyewitness, Sandra Geschardt of Bethlehem, testified Wednesday that she was among the line of opposing traffic that had stopped for Dashner's truck.
"We all pulled over, what you're supposed to do," Geschardt said. "We all pulled over to make way."
Geschardt said she saw Samer's car leave the line and "fly up the street."
"I thought, 'Is this guy crazy? What is he doing?'" Geschardt recollected.
Hanna, the city's attorney, told the jury that every driver knows they are required to yield to a firetruck during an emergency. Samer, Hanna said, "obviously he didn't do that."
riley.yates@mcall.com
Twitter @riley_yates
610-253-5751In the years during and after World War II, MIT played a prominent role in developing technologies that helped the U.S. military defeat Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, and later in creating systems used to track aircraft during the Cold War. In the process, the Institute created the world’s first real-time digital computer and the first electronic navigation system — a forerunner of today’s GPS.
These pioneering developments were among those recognized Wednesday at the Boston-area dedications of three commemorative plaques from the IEEE recognizing the projects as “Milestones” in the field.
MIT’s Project Whirlwind computer, developed beginning in 1944 in a building at 211 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, was the first computer ever to use magnetic-core memory — a system that went on to dominate the computer industry for two decades. It was also the first to use a CRT display to show its output, and the first that was fast enough to provide real-time computations, allowing it to be used to control an aircraft simulator for bomber pilots.
Jay Forrester, an MIT professor emeritus of management who was in charge of the Whirlwind project, spoke at this week’s |
proceeding the same day announcement of Scott Laughton and Brandon Manning both hitting the shelf. That, though, paled in comparison to Michael Del Zotto being ruled out for possibly five weeks.
Generally, losing that many guys would really hamper a team – and it still will because clearly, the Flyers are dealing with financial headaches – but Laughton had yet to earn a spot on the roster with Hakstol, the day before his injury, explaining how his play had gone on a downward trajectory with back-to-back so-so performances. The only real concern is Del Zotto, who was already coming off wrist surgery, and serving as a top pairing defenseman.
Still, though, the Flyers have a slew of forwards so losing Laughton isn’t an issue and playing without Del Zotto and possibly Manning for a few games – although he says he’ll be ready for opening – can be weathered as the infusion of Provorov should not only help the team as a whole, but it should bring out the best of his likely partner in Mark Streit. Likewise, Hextall made it a point to strengthen Lehigh Valley, and bringing in guys like Will O’Neill and T.J. Brennan, along with Sam Morin, Travis Sanheim and Robert Hagg, only provides the Flyers with that much more depth for future call-ups.
Hakstol’s more comfortable, and in turn, so are the players.
More behind the scenes than anything else, Hakstol is definitely feeling at home in Philadelphia. He knows the first year took a little longer than expected to get everything in place as he sought to implement a new system. The players, too, admitted it took some time to fully get everything down. Once they did, they played their best hockey.
Expect to see that from the get-go this season. On multiple occasions, I asked various players how they’re feeling now in comparison to this time last year, and each one said it’s a night-and-day difference. Having that comfort of knowing what to do on the ice and what the coach expects makes things that much easier. Everything now is instinctual as opposed to thinking, something that can make a split-second difference on the ice.
It’s also beneficial for the aforementioned World Cup players who missed up to two weeks of camp. Coming into a camp where they knew exactly what was going on made the transition from tournament play to preseason seamless; just look at how strong guys like Voracek, Streit, Sean Couturier and the others played.
A few more observations:
Nick Cousins is going to be fun to watch this season. He told me he’s feeling more confident than ever this season and is eager to get the regular season started. Voracek said Cousins has a good mix of skill and agitator in him. He has a chance for a breakout season.
This is going to be a long season. No, not “long” as in “ugh, this team is bad,” but long as in game length. Last season, the Flyers went to overtime 27 times, going 10-6 in the five-minute 3-on-3 format and 3-8 in shootouts. In eight preseason games, they needed overtime three times.
Sam Morin and Taylor Leier will likely be the first call-ups this season among guys not in camp right now. On their way out, Hakstol spoke very highly of the two, agreeing that the pair will see time this season at some point as long as they maintain their level of play with the Phantoms.
Whatever the record is for average ice time by a 19-year-old defenseman, Provorov will more than likely break it or at the very least, come within seconds of it. He led the team in time on ice on multiple occasions this preseason and in Saturday’s game that saw a lineup resembling the one they’ll skate out on opening night in Los Angeles, Provorov trailed only Streit by 16 seconds.
Perhaps the biggest mover that isn’t a teenager was Jordan Weal. Admitting it took him a little bit to get back into the flow of a 60 minute game after playing one game in nine months, Weal proved to be an offensive threat and a decent power play option on the second unit. It’s unclear where he’ll fit on the roster, he could still be a healthy scratch on the regular if he makes the team, but he definitely improved his stock.
What the fans learned
@Kyle_Phillippi @BroadStHockey I've learned that not every one needs more time in the minors to grow some just have it Konecny/Provorov — Patrick Laird (@pjlx924x) October 9, 2016
@Kyle_Phillippi With injuries and possible suspensions, the start is more critical that first thought. Young players need to lead early. — Anthony DiGrazio (@PhillyisFlyer) October 9, 2016
@Kyle_Phillippi Voracek is back! — Michael Taylor (@M2theTaylor) October 9, 2016
Many fans still don't understand how good Couturier is. https://t.co/pBr263TOyE — Big Sammy (@BroadStBullshit) October 9, 2016
To see all of the fans responses, head over to Twitter.Hardware
The Playbase has an unusual shape compared with most speakers, but there's a clear reason for this odd design: It's meant to sit on a media stand with a TV on top. Sonos says the device can support most televisions up to 60 inches or up to 77 pounds. Bigger sets that have stands with legs on either side can usually be placed over the Playbase as well. Of course, it can be used with wall-mounted TVs too, but one of the speaker's main selling points is that it can bear the weight of a television on top of it without an impact on audio quality. Indeed, Sonos claims that its research shows that 70 percent of TV owners never mount their TVs to the wall; if that's true, there's a lot of people who could use a speaker like the Playbase.
Like Sonos' last speaker, the Play:5, the Playbase is a simple, sleek thing that shows great attention to detail. Yes, it's a big plastic box, but the soft-touch finish feels extremely durable, not to mention pleasant underneath your fingers. That's good, because there are a few touch-sensitive controls right near the front of the speaker. Other examples of the Playbase's refined fit and finish include the CNC-drilled holes on the front face. Sonos specifically picked that pattern to minimize visual distraction without affecting sound quality. There's only so much to say about a giant white box (it also comes in black), but it exudes polish and quality -- something you definitely want from a $700 product.
All told, it's an exceedingly simple device. There are those touch-sensitive controls on the front of the speaker. Tapping above the Sonos logo will play or pause music, while tapping to the left or right will decrease or increase volume. And you can swipe left to right to go forward in your playlist; swiping in the other direction goes back a track. These are the same controls that Sonos included on the Play:5, and they're equally welcome here. The only other button is on the left side of the Playbase; you press it during setup to get the speaker connected to your WiFi network (more on setup in a moment). Around back are ports for power, Ethernet and optical audio. That's it.
Our test TV left some ugly scrapes on the Playbase's white finish.
The Playbase did let me down in one big way. As I was setting up my review unit, I somehow managed to put a few scuffs and scrapes on the otherwise pristine white surface. I wasn't really able to get them out either. While I haven't noticed them since setting up the speaker, as they're mostly covered by my TV, I was still disheartened to discover that I was able to mark up such a lovely device so easily. If you're the type of person who moves a lot or is a bit harder on your belongings, you might be better off with the black version. In my case, though, the white speaker looks great alongside my white PS4, those marks notwithstanding.
Setup
The Playbase's simplicity extends to the setup too. Once I placed the speaker under my TV, I plugged it into the wall and hooked it up with the included optical audio cable. The Sonos iOS app then walked me through everything I needed to do. (There's an Android application as well.) Setup was a little easier, since I already had Sonos speakers in my house, which means I already have a Sonos account. Even so, starting from scratch is simple enough. The Sonos app scans and finds nearby speakers and connects them to the WiFi network your mobile device is on. All I had to do was follow the app's directions and press the button on the side of the speaker to connect it and it was basically good to go. You'll also likely need to switch your TV's setting to output audio to an external device rather than its built-in speaker.
The Playbase uses the same "Trueplay" room-tuning technology that Sonos introduced alongside the Play:5 in late 2015. If you haven't used it before, Trueplay basically adjusts the audio characteristics of Sonos' speakers to make them sound as good as possible, regardless of where they're placed in a room. The process is slightly different when tuning the Playbase, because the speaker is meant for both music and movies.
First, the app asks you to sit where you'll most often watch TV, and then you'll walk around the room to tune the speaker for music playback. It takes a bit longer, but it's still super easy and can make a noticeable difference. I didn't notice a big change with Trueplay turned on or off, but your mileage will vary based on your particular room. One downside: Trueplay still requires an iOS device. The company says that the huge variety and variability of microphones found in Android phones make it too difficult to tune speakers reliably. That's not to say the speaker sounds bad without it, though; indeed, I wouldn't call this a deal-breaker for households without an iDevice.
Movies and TV
Now we're on to the best part about testing this speaker: sitting back and watching a lot of TV. For my tests, I streamed movies and shows from Netflix, Hulu and iTunes via my Apple TV, and I also watched some movies on Blu-ray through my PS4. Regardless of the source, the Playbase was an immediate and massive upgrade over my TV's built-in speakers.
The subwoofer that Sonos managed to cram into the Playbase provided the most significant upgrade. Explosions in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Interstellar and Inception all delivered room-rumbling bass that a TV simply can't provide on its own. The impact of the subwoofer isn't limited to things blowing up, either. When Sauron was temporarily vanquished in the prologue of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, his helmet hit the ground with startling force.
While epic moments in big films are a great showcase for the Playbase, that's not the only place where it shines. When Sonos first unveiled the speaker, company execs talked about the importance of delivering super-clear dialogue. Indeed, the Playbase delivers that in spades. A speaker of this caliber simply makes everything sound more "present" -- like the characters are right in the room with you. Big bass may turn heads, but crystal-clear dialogue is something you'll appreciate every single day, regardless of what you're watching.
Even sitcoms like Parks and Recreation and The Office sounded noticeably better than when I watched with standard TV speakers. One Parks and Rec scene featured a character speaking to a crowd through a megaphone, and I could hear the scratchy, amplified characteristics of that speech in a way I wouldn't have noticed on lesser speakers. And, as silly as it sounds, the theme song for The Office has never sounded so good.
Speaking of music, film scores sound excellent as well. They generally take a backseat to dialogue and sound effects, but hearing John Williams', Hans Zimmer's and Howard Shore's epic musical landscapes blasting forth with tremendous depth was almost as much fun as the big explosions. Inception was another great test for the speaker: The trademark two-hit musical cue blared forth like a siren, and the movie's excellent closing sequence and accompanying score hit hard.
As with the Play:5, the area where the Playbase shows some weakness is in stereo separation. That's not to say you don't get any stereo effects here. Ships and laser blasts in The Force Awakens panned across the soundscape as they did on-screen -- just not with the same dramatic effect that you'd get from a multi-speaker setup. It's still a clear upgrade from the internal speakers that I'm used to, but it doesn't quite hit the theatrical level of immersion you'll get with dedicated left, right and center speakers.
While I didn't get to test this out, it's worth noting that the Playbase lets you wirelessly sync with the Sonos Sub and two Play:1 speakers to build a 5.1 surround sound setup out of four wireless speakers. And if the internal subwoofer is enough for you, you can also just use the Playbase with the two Play:1 speakers for a cheaper and less complex setup. As someone with surround sound ambitions, the idea of using the Play:1 as wireless back speakers is extremely compelling, if not super affordable; those speakers cost $200 each, while the Sub alone commands a cool $700. For me, the internal sub was more than sufficient, so I don't plan on shelling out for a dedicated unit anytime soon.
Music
If you've been using Sonos for a while, it's likely been for tunes: The company was one of the first to make it easy to stream music to high-quality speakers. (If you haven't used Sonos much before, our Play:5 review offers a great overview of how its wireless music streaming system works.) So while the Playbase was designed with home theater in mind, it has to perform when playing back music as well. Fortunately, music playback is outstanding. Unscientifically, I'll say it sounds nearly as good as a single Play:5 speaker, and it absolutely smokes the smaller Play:1 I have in my living room when it comes to clarity and volume.
Though the Playbase's stereo performance while watching movies didn't exactly blow me away, it actually sounds excellent here. I listened to a wide variety of songs I know inside and out and still managed to experience the music in a fresh way, thanks to some dramatic stereo panning. Vocals were clear and detailed, on par with dialogue in movies and TV shows.
For most people looking for a dedicated audio speaker, they'd probably do better with a Play:5; it's fantastic and $200 cheaper. But the versatility of the Playbase is a huge point in its favor. If I had to choose between a $500 Play:5 and a $700 Playbase for my living room, I'd probably get the Playbase. It gives up very little in terms of audio quality compared with the Play:5 and feels like a huge upgrade when you're watching movies and TV shows.
The competition
The Sonos Playbase, pictured here below the Sonos Playbar mounted to the wall.
Sonos has played up the Playbase's rather unique form factor, but there are other speaker bases on the market. The $300 ZVOX 570 sits under your TV and has a built-in subwoofer, just like the Playbase. The $379 Bose Solo 15 Series II doesn't have a sub, but it does include Bose's "Truespace" technology, which works with the center speaker to enhance dialogue. JBL's $230 Cinema Base also has built-in subwoofers. Of course, none of these speakers have Sonos' streaming capabilities, though you can send audio to all of them over Bluetooth. Finally, none of them offer the ability to build a wireless 5.1 setup with other Sonos speakers. On the other hand, these speakers all cost less than half what you'll pay for the Playbase.
If you don't need your speaker to double as a stand, Sonos' own Playbar offers a similar feature set (minus the subwoofer) for the same $700 price as the Playbase. And if you look beyond Sonos, there's a veritable flood of soundbars available from major home audio companies like Sony, Vizio, Yamaha, Samsung, Denon and Paradigm, among others. You can spend a lot less than you would on the Playbase, or spend much, much more, depending on your proclivities.
Wrap-up
As I noted earlier, the Playbase is an extremely compelling one-speaker option for the living room, particularly if you're a music fan. It's easy to set up and adds very little complexity to most TV rigs; not having to run lots of cords is a huge win in my eyes. And once you're set up, it simply makes watching movies a lot more fun, whether they're big-budget action flicks or quiet, hushed dramas. Either way, dialogue sounds great. And its music performance is outstanding. It's not quite as good as Sonos' own Play:5, but the versatility of having one speaker that works great for both TV and music is hard to top.
Of course, at $700, it had better hit all these marks. In a vacuum, that's a lot of money to spend on a speaker, particularly if you're someone like me who's been content enough to live with boring built-in TV speakers. And there are many less expensive soundbars you could buy to improve your TV audio. On the other hand, the Playbase's versatility between music and movies is unmatched, making for a speaker I would use nearly every single day. It's great for watching TV on weeknights, or movies on the weekends, and for playing music anytime I want.
Save
SaveSAN ANTONIO – City leaders are taking the next step in planning for more than one million people to move to the area over the next 20 years.
On Thursday, city council is expected to hire experts to examine neighborhoods that are growing the fastest.
"I've lived here over 60 years,” Mary Bustos says outside her Southtown home.
From her front porch, she has a front-row seat to the neighborhood’s renaissance.
"A lot of young people going to the restaurants or going to whatever is on the opposite side of South Alamo,” Bustos says.
The Decade of Downtown is paving the way for even more growth.
"Everyone cares about San Antonio,” says Bridgett White with the city of San Antonio.
She and her team are envisioning what the future will look like through SA Tomorrow, a comprehensive plan that tackles everything from housing and jobs to water.
"It's similar to creating your budget every month,” White says. “You want to make sure that you have enough money, that's you're planning within your means."
SA Tomorrow kicks off by improving six parts of town that will absorb the most growth: the northwest side neighborhoods anchored by UTSA; the Medical Center; the Downtown city center; Midtown including The Pearl and Broadway corridor; the Near Westside neighborhoods; and the neighborhoods anchored by Brooks City Base.
"Typically, a city won't do six master plans at the same time - much less, from the same department,” White says.
That’s why the city plans to spend more than $1 million to hire outside consultants.
"We really want to bring in that expertise to help us kind of put everything together,” White says.
The consultants will create a big-picture look at what those neighborhoods need, like public transportation, parks and sidewalks.
"It has changed very much,” Bustos reflects on Southtown’s growth.
The overarching goal: make sure in 20 years, neighborhoods like hers are ready for newcomers.
By EMILY BAUCUM
| |By Lynne Adkins
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Pennsylvania Department of Transportation road crews will be out, all over the region, for more than a year, repairing and adding reflective road markers.
The road crews will be working on the raised pavement markers (“RPMs,” in PennDOT lingo) — those reflective bumps which are installed along the edge lines, center lines, and ramps to improve visibility and keep you in your lane.
“They’re a little bit raised, so when motorists drive and make contact with these pavement markers, it alerts them that they’re a little too far over on the road,” explains PennDOT spokesman Brad Rudolph.
He says the work is being done in all five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania, on several major roads.
“(Interstates) 76, 95, 476, Route 1, Route 202, Route 422, the main arteries,” including Route 309, he tells KYW Newsradio. “It’s a slow-moving operation. It’s not going to close roads, but it will slow down a lane here and there.”
Rudolph suggests you get used to the work, because the $300,000 project is expected to last through October of next year.
KYW Regional Affairs Council special report: “Stimulating Inconvenience”The clip is taken from the episode that airs on Wednesday evening on Syfy, so consider this a warning about mild spoilers.
Here at Ars we unapologetically love science fiction. Books, movies, comics—all of it. In fact, it needn't even be very good to earn our affection—who among us doesn't have a soft spot for Robot Jox or Dark Star? Of late, there has been a wave of fiction that has taken a closer look at what life would be like once humanity starts to colonize the Solar System and beyond: Neal Stephenson's Seveneves and Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora for example, as well as the miniseries Ascension. But none of those has given us something that's quite as well fleshed out as James SA Corey's The Expanse.
While it feels lazy to compare the series to Game of Thrones, it's understandable how that has happened. This sprawling, Solar System-wide series originally started life as the idea for an MMORPG somewhere around the turn of the century, before morphing into a series of novels (and novellas), and finally, a TV series on Syfy. Adapting a book to the screen can often be a fraught experience for the fan that is invested in the story. Unusually, however, Corey—or the two humans behind that nom de plume, Dan Abraham and Ty Franck—are deeply embedded in the show's writers' room.
As a result, the translation from one medium to another has felt extremely faithful in tone, even if some of the plot isn't happening in quite the same order as happened in print. Stallone's Judge Dredd this isn't!
Season 2 of The Expanse is where things have really started to get interesting. A shadowy conspiracy led by one of the system's richest men has been revealed. A bunch of scientists—who have had their capacity for empathy surgically removed—have used the space station Eros and its 100,000 inhabitants as guinea pigs for an alien artifact that's as old as the Sun. And as we saw last week, that alien artifact, also known as the protomolecule, seems to be able to ignore what we understand as the laws of physics.
Still, as the sneak peek that Syfy shared with us shows, The Expanse is about more than technobabble and space walks. It's about people and the bonds they form:
Holden, Naomi, Alex, and Amos are becoming more than just the crew of the Rocinante, and despite their differences with Miller, they're coming to see him as part of the family, too. And like real life, none of them is perfect or even close to it. Holden is idealistic, preachy, and often out of his depth. Miller has fallen in love with someone he has never even met, the missing person he was tasked to find. Alex holds himself to impossibly high standards, then mopes about when he fails to meet them. Under that charming babyface, Amos has even less capacity for empathy than our evil scientists. And Naomi is expected to be the glue that holds the crew together.
The dynamic between the crew is reminiscent at this time of the late, great Firefly, although obviously there is a universe's difference in tone between Whedon's cowboys-in-space and The Expanse. But something both series are good at is how they humanize their characters. And it's that, rather than the accuracy of the science or the beauty of the special effects, that keeps us coming back week in, week out.
The next installment of The Expanse runs tonight on Syfy, and you can catch our next podcast devoted to the show this coming Friday.Having abused young boys for over 30 years Father Eugene Greene had become so cocky that he lodged a complaint with the police when one of his victims attempted to blackmail him.
On December 20, 1997, Greene went to the police to make a complaint about the blackmail. After two years of investigations by local detectives Greene faced 115 charges relating to the buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault of 26 boys.
Green pleaded guilty to 40 of the charges. The only evidence of the crimes was the words of his victims who came forward.
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READ MORE:
New report on Irish Catholic Church reveals further untold horrors
Irish Catholic Church failing as numbers of priests at record low levels - POLL
Catholic Irish priest still finds great joy and fulfillment in Church
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The pedophile, having abused children since the 1960s, believed that he could lodge a complaint with the police and no investigation would take place. The Donegal diocese of Raphoe holds no records of the many allegations, going back three decades, and complaints made by children’s parents.
According to reports in the Irish Independent Greene groomed his victims from the age of eight. He would offer the small boys alcohol and cigarettes. Sometimes he would take them out to cut turf on the bog and allow them to drive his car on the way back to the parochial house.
One victim told the police “It was worse than hell. I felt so alone. I had nobody to turn to. I did want to tell my own dad but I said to myself if I told them they would say 'No, the priest can never do that'."
Greene served his 12 years in prison and was released on December 8, 2008.
The victims were enraged when they discovered that former parishioners and supporters of Greene had raised $71,000 (€50,000) for the priest. The Voices of the Faithful group said the size of the donations illustrate the “most serious state of denial of the most horrific crimes in Donegal”.Noam Chomsky
Linguist, Activist, Author
Hosts: Said & Dari
Aired: Wednesday 6.17.09 - 10:00-11:00 PM Listen to the archived program...
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual. Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). As of 2009, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 54 years. In 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, The Responsibility of Intellectuals, in The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, American Power and the New Mandarins, a collection of essays which established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of US power have made him a controversial figure: largely shunned by the mainstream media in the United States, he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets worldwide. Visit Noam Chomsky's website.Post written by Leo Babauta.
I am a huge fan of reading online — I can generally do it for hours a day. But with the explosion of great blogs, online magazines and news sources, personal development sites, social media and more … how do you deal with the anxiety that comes with it?
Anxiety often results from:
Trying to keep up with all of your reading sources, online networks, etc., which have an endless stream of posts.
Trying to catch up with a reading backlog that might have items that are months or even a year old.
Being afraid that you’re missing important or key articles or posts.
Not being sure that you’re reading all the best blogs and sites, or following the most important people on Twitter or Facebook.
And so on. This is an extremely common form of anxiety. Take a reader, Eric, who recently wrote:
I have been struggling with the problem of keeping up with all the awesome self-development websites & blogs for quite a while and I thought I would ask you for your suggestion. The only self-development websites I am subscribed to as a regular reader include yours, Scott Young, Steve Aitchison’s and Lifehacker. I have plenty more that I want to add to my regular list of blogs, but even with just the blogs I regularly read, I frequently have difficulty keeping up with all the excellent articles that are posted on an ongoing basis. My current “waitlist” of articles consists of over 350 articles, among which the oldest one was written in April of last year!
How do you deal with this? It’s a matter of letting go, and realizing you can’t ever, ever possibly read 1% of the good stuff that’s out there. It’s absolutely impossible. And so you must let go, or the anxiety will never end.
Trying to keep up is not only impossible, but a great waste of your life. You could be spending some of that time creating, pursuing a dream, exercising, learning a new skill, spending time with a loved one, or taking a nap. Any of those would be better than trying to keep up with everything, or worrying about it.
How do you let go? More below.
But first, one additional point … Eric also writes:
I have considered subscribing to only the very best ones, because many blogs borrow content from other better blogs. But just the work of trying to research the best ones through trial & error by reading sample articles takes a toll on my time & energy because there are just too many websites and I don’t want to wrongly eliminate some great blogs based on a few of their less-than-average articles. My biggest fear is falling behind on some really important productivity findings, insights and so on, with the rapid rate at which information is expanding these days.
It’s also impossible to know what the best blogs are, and to be sure you’re reading all of them. It’s impossible to find the best posts on the best blogs. This is not an important goal, and should also be let go. The reason for this lies in a philosophy of life, which I call the River Flow philosophy. Let’s take a quick look.
The River Flow Philosophy
If life is a river, and all the information out there (including blogs, social media, etc.) makes up the water, as well as all the possible experiences in the world … imagine trying to consume the entire river. Consuming an entire river is obviously impossible for one person, and no one would ever try.
Trying to consume all information and get all experiences in life is like trying to consume the entire river. Impossible.
Now imagine that you wanted to taste all the best drops of water in the river. How would you go about doing that? Well, you wouldn’t know where the best drops were, and so you might have to sample huge amounts of water to find out. Or you could ask various fish and fishermen, and they might have different opinions, and so you could test out all their recommendations, but that could take a lifetime, and even then you wouldn’t be sure you didn’t miss out on the best drops of water.
This is how many people approach finding the best blogs, the best books, the best movies, the best experiences in life … they try out a huge amount, or read a lot of recommendations and spend a lot of time testing the recommendations. That takes an entire lifetime. And still they might have missed out (actually, they almost certainly did).
Notice the futility of all of this activity. Now imagine that you let go of the goal of tasting all the best drops of water, which isn’t a necessary thing at all.
What might you do instead? Try the drop of water flowing towards you at this moment, and enjoy it. It might not be the best drop of water in the river, but who is to say? Maybe it is. Maybe if you love that drop fully, it will be the best, regardless of how good other drops are.
Enjoy the post or article you do read, and don’t worry about the rest.
Enjoy the experiences you have, and forget about those you don’t experience.
Have fun with the people you’re with, and don’t worry about who you’re missing.
Life is a flowing river, and worrying about every drop is futile. The water you’re in now is the best.
The Art of Letting Go
How do you let go of all the articles you want to read but can’t? How do you let go of the worry that you’re missing great articles? How do you forget about your backlog?
Wipe the slate clean.
Every day, you’re not adding to a new list on a whiteboard — those you’ve read and those you still have to read — but instead you’re starting on a clean whiteboard. This clean board is empty of what you’ve already done, but also empty of what you still need to accomplish. It’s blank, which means the possibilities are endless, and the guilt is zero.
Wipe the slate clean every day.
You don’t need to worry about your reading lists. Mark them all as read. Don’t worry about all the social media posts you haven’t read. Don’t worry about all the blogs there are to search through, or all the news sites there are to keep up with. Each day, your slate is clean.
Then you can decide how to fill that slate each day, and enjoy whatever you choose to experience. Then let go, with a new slate each day.
You won’t get to everything either way, nor will you find the best of the best either way. So enjoy the water you’re in.Police Commissioner Bratton at yesterday's press conference (Jen Chung/Gothamist)
Murders reached a historic low in NYC for 2014; overall crime was down across the board by nearly 5%; hell, even the holiday slowdown didn't really lead to any additional crime. So clearly, now is the time when NYC really needs to implement a new anti-terrorism program which would empower a team of NYPD officers to roam around the city carrying machine guns. What could go wrong?
Police Commissioner Bratton made the announcement earlier today at an event hosted by the Police Foundation at the Mandarin Oriental. He said that the new 350 cop unit, called The Strategic Response Group, will be dedicated to "disorder control and counterterrorism protection capabilities" against attacks like the hostage situation in Sydney, which the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence John Miller said was an inevitability in NYC.
This new squad will be used to investigate and combat terrorist plots, lone wolf terrorists, and... protests. "It is designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris," Bratton said, according to CBS.
"They’ll be equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not," Bratton explained. "They’ll be equipped with all the extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns — unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances." Capital NY adds that these officers will also be used "to assist on crime scenes, and help with crowd control and other large-scale events."
The pilot program will start in two precincts in Manhattan and two in Queens, though it's unclear when they want to launch it. Bratton said Mayor de Blasio was on board, and he expected the City Council to be as well. He also said he thinks this will help improve relationships between cops and local residents. "Cops will know their sectors and the citizens will know them," Bratton said. "They’ll know the problem areas and the problem people. I truly believe when cops embrace their neighborhoods, their neighborhoods will embrace them back."
Already, local advocacy groups have spoken out against the plan; Priscilla Gonzalez, Organizing Director of Communities United for Police Reform, gave this statement.
Initial reports of Commissioner Bratton's plans suggest the opposite of progress. His demands for less oversight of the NYPD and a more militarized police force that would use counter-terrorism tactics against protestors are deeply misguided and frankly offensive. We need an NYPD that is more accountable to New Yorkers and that stops criminalizing our communities, especially when people are taking to the streets to voice legitimate concerns about discriminatory and abusive policing. Despite growing evidence that discriminatory broken windows is a failed and harmful policing strategy, Commissioner Bratton stubbornly continues to defend and expand it.
Update: A day after announcing the new unit, the NYPD walked back Bratton's comments about them policing protesters.‘Vulgar’ four-metre concrete copy of 16th century sculpture in front yard of private home in Melbourne draws complaints – and some encouragement
It’s one of the most famous artworks in the world: Michelangelo’s sublime 16th century sculpture, David. And now the western suburbs of Melbourne has its own, slightly less accomplished, tribute.
A four-metre, concrete copy of the famous artwork has been erected in the front yard of a private home in Caroline Springs, Melbourne, and over the past few weeks has drawn the ire of some neighbours.
The statue has been called “vulgar”, “tacky” and an “eyesore” and there has been a reported increase in street traffic as drivers stop to take photos.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 4m-high copy of Michelangelo’s David in the front yard of a home in Caroline Springs, Melbourne. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Neighbours “Robert and Rose” told Nine News they could see the statue from many rooms inside their home, including their back yard: “Unlike anyone else in the neighbourhood, we have to live with it 24/7, there is no escaping it.”
Another neighbour interviewed by the Herald Sun said she could barely avoid seeing the statue, including from the bedrooms of her children and entertainment areas.
“It’s conflicting. I can see the beauty |
iling, which is why he figured Moffitt would be receptive to his particular brand of comedy. In his stand-up, the performer was more of an antagonist of his audience than an ally: Many crowds had streamed into comedy clubs only to endure Kaufman napping in a sleeping bag or reading earnestly from The Great Gatsby, threatening to start all over again if they interrupted. (Once, Kaufman gave a nightclub a choice: the book or a record. They chose the record. It was the sound of Kaufman reading.)
Kaufman’s avant-garde humor was not for everyone. After multiple appearances on Saturday Night Live, NBC executive Dick Ebersol grew tired of his instigating behavior, declared him “not funny” and effectively banned him from the show. Fridays, however, was happy to welcome an established SNL personality and act as an enabler for whatever Kaufman wanted to do.
After convincing Moffitt to allow him and partner Bob Zmuda to play out a sword-swallowing scene in the intro that would go “awry”—Zmuda coughed up bloody spittle before the show cut to a commercial—Kaufman informed him he wanted to break out of character during the show’s closing sketch. Cast members Richards, Melanie Chartoff, and Maryedith Burrell were all aware of his plans; the crew was not. (There is some disagreement whether ABC had approved of it: Richards says no, while Moffitt maintains they had to go through the station's standards and practices department.)
After the Fridays episode aired, ABC was deluged with letters and calls asking if it was a put-on. To Kaufman’s conceivable displeasure, a network spokesperson told the Associated Press that it had all been staged. A week later, a contrite and tearful Kaufman appeared on the show to “apologize” for his actions in what Zmuda would later describe as his patented glazed-over hostage look.
“This has been a very hard week for me,” Kaufman said. His regular role as Latka on Taxi had been jeopardized, he confessed, and the scuffle had “led to a separation from my wife.” (Kaufman was not married.) While a certain segment of the audience was aware Kaufman was effectively trolling them, another portion probably wondered if he had lost his mind. His parents, who had once taken him in for psychological counseling as a child, might have renewed their doubts.
Fridays lasted only one more year, being forced into a later time slot by the success of ABC’s Nightline; Kaufman continued to confuse people until his death from lung cancer at the age of 35 in 1984. He never quite copped to the skirmish being faked. Talking to People in 1981, he accused ABC of a cover up and denied it was prearranged. “I like the type of humor where nobody knows what’s going on,” he said. “I just want real reactions.”
Six months after the incident, Kaufman appeared on Fridays one last time to profess he was now a born-again Christian. Kaufman was Jewish.The Clover mite (Bryobia praetiosa) is a species of mite.
Description [ edit ]
Clover mites are 0.75–0.85 mm (0.030–0.033 in) long, oval shaped arachnids with a pair of long legs pointing forward often mistaken for antennae.[2] They are reddish brown; the younger ones and the eggs are a bright red. They are extremely common in late spring.
Ecology [ edit ]
Clover mites are polyphagous, feeding on a wide range of plants, including "lawn grasses, ornamental flowers, clover, dandelion, shepherd's purse, strawberry, daffodil, Salvia, Alyssum, and primrose".[2] They are especially numerous in lawns with a heavy growth of succulent, well-fertilized grass. They do not cause any apparent harm to turf grass, but their feeding activity can turn the grass a silvery color and may stipple plants when heavy populations are present.[citation needed]
They generally enter houses close to thick vegetation and can infiltrate houses in very large numbers through cracks and small openings around windows and doors. Whether indoors or outside, clover mites are found more commonly in sunny areas than in darker areas. If squashed, they leave a characteristic red stain caused by their pigmentation.
Clover mites are not harmful to humans, pets, or furniture.[3]One of my favourite ships~ Just thought they'd look cute together, I didn't know what to put as the background so it ended up like this xD (my own head-cannon) Playful flirty Gene, Ivy has a tatoo on her right arm because she was a rebel teen and was known as the Venom Scythe among the delinquents during high school, she really regrets it and always chooses to cover it up but.....
*Ivy enters maid cafe*
Gene: "Well if it ain't Li'l Miss Ivy~ Long time no see~"
Ivy: "G...Gene?"
Gene: "Hey! Don't look that surprised, I work here, this maid cafe belongs to Aphmau, btw, it's been such a long time since I saw that tatoo of yours.."
Ivy: "Huh? Oh....Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not reverting back to my old self....I've been covering it up a lot but the cleaners are late and I couldn't get my other clothes back in time so...I had to stick with this one....and yeah...I really regret getting it...."
*looks down apologetically*
Gene: "Hey, don't look so down in the dumps, wouldn't want a girl feeling depressed under my service, do we? Just get anything, my treat~"
Ivy: "Uh....How about something sweet?"
Gene smirks*
"Well I have just the treat for you~"
Yup, I suck at writing, anyways, hope you liked it~Update 8:20 P.M.: This post was updated to include some comments Colbert made Monday evening during the Television Critics Association’s press tour.
For nine delightful years on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report we were treated to Stephen Colbert, the character. There were flashes of the man himself, but, for the most part, the blustery, pretentious, comically obtuse character was in the driver’s seat. It was a premise that worked so well that many Colbert fans mourned the news that he would be moving on from that character to play himself as host of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. But with the September 8 start date of that show looming, we’re beginning to get a better picture of what the future of late night with the real Colbert will mean. And the emerging promise outlined by CBS chairman Nina Tassler at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour is a rosy one. Colbert will bring a trustworthy, old-fashioned throwback vibe to a late-night field increasingly dominated by viral sensations. Is he shaping up to become the Walter Cronkite of late night?
Consistency: Before you go mourning the end of The Colbert Report, you should know that, according to Tassler, Stephen took almost his entire writing and digital team with him from Comedy Central to CBS. It couldn’t be clearer that the network is almost as invested as Colbert fans are in preserving what made the Report so magical. So if all the promos and gags leading up to the September premiere feel familiar, it’s not just the lanky guy in front of the camera providing that consistency.
Emotionality: In a late-night field led by ironic detachment and segments calculated to go viral, it wouldn’t hurt to have a little earnestness to balance everything out. With Jon Stewart exiting the landscape, his millennial-focused replacement, Trevor Noah, may be less likely to take up the mantle of Stewart’s occasional heartfelt outreaches. Is Colbert our best bet to fill that gap? During last week’s Daily Show finale, we all got a taste of what it looks like when Colbert speaks from the heart. Colbert has an opportunity to take on an almost parental role to the nation in his new spot behind the desk of a major network. Promising that he would stand out from the younger frat pack currently running late night, Tassler told the T.C.A. crowd, “Stephen is a real student of late night... he considers himself of Dave [Letterman]’s generation. I think you’ll see interviews that cover a broad spectrum.” I can’t think of anyone better suited to be the new dad of late night.
Political Acumen: As the presidential-election antics continue apace, Tassler points out how valuable Colbert’s contribution to late night will be. “We’re coming into an election,” she said. “Who are you going to want to hear from?” Tassler later referred to Colbert as “the smartest guy in the room.” And while Corden, Fallon, Kimmel, et. al. are fantastic at what they do, none of them have shown any inclination to shape the national political conversation. What’s even more encouraging about Colbert wading into the political fray is his uncanny knack for appealing to both sides of the aisle. Colbert may have unquestionably liberal leanings, but he also roped Mitt Romney into appearing in a promo for his new show. In this increasingly divisive political conversation, Colbert could prove a great equalizer. In fact, he can’t wait to enter the political fray.
A Little Song, a Little Dance: Those last two points may have painted too stodgy a picture. Tassler emphasized Colbert’s love of “song and dance,” and we know for a fact the comedian isn’t immune to a little music-based fun. Colbert will be aided in the music front by his new bandleader Jon Batiste. In a Rolling Stone profile labeling him a “rebel,” Batiste said, “That’s what I look forward to about going on The Late Show. The team there, we have a very similar philosophy and vision about the way they do jokes and the way we do music.... In another scenario I wouldn’t even take a day gig like that because I think it would be too restrictive.” You can get a taste of what Colbert and Batiste have in store for audiences with this 2014 performance from The Colbert Report, which spilled into the New York street. Colbert announced late in the day on Monday that Kendrick Lamar would be his first musical guest.
Nerdiness: We know that a lot more mainstream cool comes along with Colbert’s move from Comedy Central to CBS. The King of Cool himself, George Clooney, will be Colbert’s first guest. But in case you were worried that Colbert was in danger of losing his nerdy, Tolkien-loving edge, fear not: a man who devotes a promo to a fake C.G.I. dragon is a man who has not forgotten his roots.Still, if history teaches us anything about societal changes, it is that the most radical shifts in the status quo are typically viewed with skepticism when they first begin to emerge. From the automobile to computers and the internet, each new major advance in modern life has struggled against the tide of history before finally gaining the recognition and acceptance needed to fundamentally improve our lives. One of those most recent advancements – the internet – should serve as a clear example of why we have no reason to fear digital currency, and should in fact be cheering the potential benefits it offers to a world in desperate need of a shift in paradigm.
One of the most serious challenges preventing widespread acceptance of cryptocurrency by the general public is the sense of unease most people experience when confronted with new ideas. And since the existing monetary system seems, at least on the surface, to meet that public’s current needs, most people are fearful of anything that might upset the status quo. As a result of that fear, new concepts like digital currency are often viewed with distrust.
As former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau once observed, "War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men." And though that sentiment was disputed by many military men - including the fictional General Jack D. Ripper in the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, it has nevertheless remained a governing philosophy in many nations around the world. That notion - that even recognized experts in a field are not always the best qualified to govern everything that occurs within its realm - is echoed in society's approach to many areas of daily life.
Take the internet, for example. While it is by no means as decentralized as it was four decades ago – or as decentralized as many advocates are pushing for it to become, it still remains something that more closely resembles an active force of nature than anything designed by government central planners. In fact, the example provided by the internet is one of the reasons why a growing number of people are becoming more comfortable with digital currencies like Bitcoin and DNotes.
The Reasons for Distrust
Many proponents of cryptocurrency have yet to understand why so much of the public remains distrustful of the very notion of digital currency. To be sure, much of their discomfort comes from either not having heard anything about it or from the fact that they cannot imagine any other type of monetary system than the fiat money that has been at the center of their financial existence all their lives. That can cause them to view digital currencies as little more than a curiosity, and thus scarcely worthy of further investigation.
Others, however, have different reservations that prevent them from seeing the potential benefits cryptocurrency can provide. Many of these people have a distrust of anything digital, since they associate the digital universe with a lack of security and oversight - traits that are unlikely to generate trust in the minds of consumers who expect money to be secure. Many believe Bitcoin, DNotes, and other cryptocurrencies to be nothing more than software. And since software can be hacked, they view the entire concept of digital currency with skepticism.
The problem with that outlook is that it ignores the reality of what digital currency actually is. In many respects, it can be useful to think about cryptocurrency in the same way that we think about the internet. Indeed, they have much in common with one another, particularly when you consider the similarities between their architectural frameworks, and the way in which we utilize them. Understanding those similarities can help you to better understand why digital currency is safer and more relevant than most people think.
The Internet and Cryptocurrency
In many ways, the rise of the internet and cryptocurrency parallel one another to a large degree. In the early days of the internet, it was a decentralized project that was largely consigned to the fringes of society. It was not until later that large companies and other entities began to impose more centralized control over the structure and infrastructure of the internet and its services. Today, much of that initial decentralization has been submerged beneath layers of corporate control, and most people remain blissfully unaware of just how centralized everything is when it comes to the architecture that powers their internet.
Digital currency shared similar beginnings. Bitcoin’s basic protocol – the blockchain – is a decentralized ledger system that relies on multiparty consensus to power its operations. This decentralization leaves its operations outside the control of multinational corporations or government entities, in much the same way that the internet existed at its earliest stages. And, like the internet, Bitcoin and other digital currencies only interest a small portion of the population at the present time.
At their core levels, both the internet and the blockchain protocol that empowers digital currency provide us with the type of open platforms needed for all manner of disruptive creativity. The open architecture of the internet provided the creative freedom needed for the establishment of everything from the World Wide Web to social media platforms, Google, and giant internet companies. When the internet was young, few people envisioned just how disruptive it would eventually be to the established order of things, or the extent to which it would spawn innovation.
The Bitcoin blockchain is where the internet was in those early days. It remains the decentralized ledger it was designed to be, but few have yet to grasp its real potential. Sure, Bitcoin, DNotes, and other prominent cryptocurrencies make solid use of the blockchain architecture, but those currencies are really just the frontrunners to the more pervasive and society-altering changes that blockchain promises. Its potential for increased efficiencies in banking, accounting, and other important areas of societal interaction is already being acknowledged by many.
Just as the internet served as the platform for a wide range of applications that have literally transformed the way modern society functions, so too can Bitcoin’s blockchain radically alter the way that we deal with finance, record-keeping, and many other transactions. And, just as most people were completely unaware of the internet’s true potential in the earliest days of its existence, the vast majority of people today have no idea how digital currency and the blockchain that enables it may soon reshape their lives.
Similar Challenges
Of course, it is also worthy of noting that the challenges confronting Bitcoin and the blockchain also echo many of the difficulties faced by the early internet. The technology is still evolving, digital currency continues to impact only a small portion of the population, and there is a need for greater scalability if the blockchain is ever going to provide a platform for the type of disruptive innovation many people now envision.
Cryptocurrency proponents and skeptics alike, however, should take comfort from the knowledge that the internet not only faced those same challenges, but overcame them. Today, those challenges are long forgotten by a society that has seen that platform’s potential for enhanced commercial activity and ease of access to information realized to an extent that even the most farsighted dreamers never imagined possible. More importantly, those changes have occurred at a rate of speed that seems dizzying when compared to the long, slow march of history. There is good reason to believe that the future of digital money and the blockchain can be every bit as transformative.
Learn to Stop Worrying
Here’s the thing to remember about advancements like the internet, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and the blockchain: the vast majority of people always dismiss such ideas in the early years after their creation. Just a few short decades ago, the average internet user regarded the internet as little more than a tool for entertainment. As businesses migrated onto the World Wide Web in large numbers, and companies like Google figured out how to harness the power of the Net, its usefulness grew by leaps and bounds. Today, the internet is an integral part of many people’s lives, and few of them can imagine life without it.
Bitcoin and blockchain are at a similar point in their own evolutionary journey. The base of people for whom digital currency has relevance remains small, and its impact on the broader society has yet to materialize. In spite of that, entrepreneurs and existing businesses are already seeing the potential, and making the types of investments that can fuel growth. Even governments are taking notice, as they wrestle with decisions about how best to co-exist with these new currencies.
More importantly, we must recognize the broader trend in the world today. The desire for decentralization is all the rage these days, and there are groups across the world struggling to decouple humanity from the type of centralized control that has defined most of its existence. Just look at the various proposals for replacing the current internet with one that is completely decentralized, peer-to-peer lending opportunities, and crowdfunding. These and other innovative strategies are all born out of the desire to reduce centralized control over our lives.
Clemenceau’s observation about war and military leaders was poignant, and is echoed to some extent by the drive toward decentralized internet and currency. The internet provides access to information and capabilities that are so important to individual liberty that they should not be entrusted to policy makers and other elites. Most people would justifiably object to the notion that government should have the power to control access to websites – something we already see happening in many repressive regimes around the world. Those same people should be at least nominally concerned that governments have so much control over their money.
The decentralization of the internet holds forth the promise of the democratization of the internet. Decentralized money is democratized money that is no longer subject to whims and caprices of those who control the current fiat monetary system. Together, these two advancements can pave the path to a future where no one is denied access to opportunity due to the circumstances of his or her birth – a future where central planners cannot devalue your money just to improve their own political fortunes.
A future with digital currency in it is a more democratized future, and one that we should all embrace. So, learn to stop worrying, and learn to love cryptocurrency. It’s just a matter of time before it changes all our lives for the better.
Authors: Alan Yong, Ken ChaseLet’s set aside the line of thought that suggests the Terminator storyline may have been strip-mined of good ideas at this point and examine this new wrinkle in the reboot process, because it is kind of perfect for the series.
We know that Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, with her brother’s Skydance Productions, is working on a new Terminator film reboot, with Alan Taylor possibly directing and Arnold Schwarzenegger set to return in some manner. Now there is the announcement of a companion TV series, which will be directly related in an unexpected way to the new film, and the series as a whole.
Variety reports that the series hinges on “a critical moment” from the original James Cameron-directed Terminator. Which moment? We don’t know, but there are a few predictions fans could make based on the following. The trade says:
TV project is said to follow a critical moment from the first “Terminator” film — where the film’s story goes one way, the upcoming television show will take that same moment in a completely different direction.
This will intersect with the new film reboot in some way, as well, but there are a lot of unknowns. We do know that Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller are writing and exec producing the show. They previously worked on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the first Terminator TV series.
For a storyline that involves time travel and possible alternate futures, this is a great, simple way to expand the universe and play with other ideas. In this one, does Sarah Connor die? Does the T-800 not die? What other significant story points from Cameron’s original could be reversed to spawn a different storyline?The first four games of the 2014-15 NBA season have been a grind to say the least for the Los Angeles Lakers. Although the team was optimistic heading into the season, the Lakers have lost four straight and that has been difficult for some of the players to deal with.
— Have You Seen These LIMITED EDITION “Mamba Strikes Back” T-Shirts? —
Veteran forward/center Jordan Hill is one of those players. Hill has arguably been the most consistent player on the team thus far in the first four games putting up some impressive stats night in and night out.
As usual, Kobe Bryant tries to put the team on his back and lead the Lakers to victory, but his play hasn’t been enough to put them over the top. Hill believes he’s one of the players on the squad that could help shoulder the load to take the pressure off Kobe on a nightly basis.
Hill spoke to the media after the 23-point loss to the Warriors and said the following on TWCSportsNet, via Lakers Nation reporter Serena Winters:
Jordan Hill: "Kobe can't do it by himself all the time. Needs some guys to step it up. I feel like I'm one of those guys." (on TWC) — Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) November 2, 2014
In the first four games, Hill has averaged 14.8 points, 7.8 rebounds and 1.3 blocks per game while shooting a career-high 55.8 percent from the floor. Kobe leads all scorers on the team with 24.8 points a contest, but Hill is proving to be a consistent and efficient offensive threat.
Not only has Hill improved his play around the basket this season, but he’s also developed a solid mid-range jumper. Confidence has played a major role in Hill’s play thus far with the veteran never hesitating on the floor.
With the 27-year-old signing a two-year deal with a team option next season, Hill has something to prove as he attempts to convince the Lakers he’s worth the $9 million he’ll earn next year if the team decides to bring him back. So far, it’d be hard to argue Hill isn’t worth every penny of his new deal as arguably the second-best player on the squad right now behind Kobe.
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Jordan Hill Has 23 Points, Talks Byron Scott’s System
Please enable Javascript to watch this video"The most important thing the government does is protect the public," Mueller said. "That's why people have governments. So the most responsible manner of doing that is to go through this kind of analysis to see whether an additional expenditure will reduce the risk enough to justify its cost. That's sort of hard-nosed stuff, but that's the way it has to be done. It's done in medicine all the time. They give vaccinations. They know some of those vaccinations are going to kill people, a very small percentage. But they have to look at that, and they talk to patients saying there's a very small chance this could really do damage to you, but mostly it's going to do good things. And overall the people are willing to accept those kinds of risks."Below is the full text of the prepared remarks President Obama delivered during his press conference last night, along with updates from the subsequent Q&A. The full transcript can be read here. Scroll to the bottom to watch the full press conference.
President Barack Obama, who has spent weeks urging lawmakers to embrace his health care agenda at White House meetings, is focusing now on a broader and more distant audience: the American people, whose qualms about his plan seem to be growing.
In his comments Wednesday and at scheduled events Thursday in Cleveland, the president is speaking directly to families about their pocketbook and medical concerns, urging them to ignore political opportunists and naysayers in order to achieve sweeping changes, which previous administrations could not attain.
"If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket," Obama said Wednesday night, looking past the dozens of reporters assembled for his White House news conference and peering straight into the TV cameras. "If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day."
On Thursday in Ohio, the president will undertake two more events focused on health care, the issue dominating his administration even as the economy still suffers and wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. For his supporters, Obama's stepped-up pace is coming not a second too soon.
For now, Obama keeps insisting on all the major elements of his far-reaching proposal and warning of dire consequences if they are not enacted. Turning the focus away from Capitol Hill -- even as he tries to build pressure on wavering lawmakers -- Obama said Wednesday that the debate "is about every family, every business and every taxpayer who continues to shoulder the burden of a problem that Washington has failed to solve for decades."
He zeroed in on perhaps the least popular segment of the health care world: insurance companies, alluding often to "health insurance reform" instead of "health care reform."
He cited a Colorado woman with cancer that her insurance company would not cover. He referred to a "middle-class college graduate from Maryland whose health insurance expired when he changed jobs." He used the word "families" 22 times in 55 minutes.
"Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job or change their job," the president said. "It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive."
Obama praised the work of the Cleveland Clinic, which he was visiting Thursday before holding a town-hall forum on health care at the nearby Shaker Heights High School. The clinic pays doctors a salary, which does not depend on how many procedures or tests they perform.
"They've set up a system where patient care is the No. 1 concern, not bureaucracy, what forms have to be filled out, 'What do we get reimbursed for?'" Obama said. "Those are changes that I think the American people want to see."
It's a theme that lawmakers back in Washington can expect to hear repeatedly.
-- Obama on his interactions with Congress on health care. Obama's first question: Have you told House and Senate leaders which health care ideas are acceptable to you? If so, will you share them publicly? And if not, why haven't you stepped in to get a deal done because you are the one pushing a deadline?
Obama began by addressing the worsening health care crisis, with premiums and the number of uninsured rising. He emphasizes his pledge not to keep his health care plan deficit-neutral, and explains that only a third of the proposed spending still needs to a plan to be funded. He says he's open to a variety of ideas for paying for that final third, but of course will reject any plan that places the burden for that funding on the back of middle class Americans.
After several minutes discussing policy details, he addressed the skepticism about major health care legislation felt by many Americans:
Now, I understand that people are feeling uncertain about this. They feel anxious, partly because we've just become so cynical about what government can accomplish. People's attitudes are, you know, even though I don't like this devil, at least I know it. And I like that more than the devil I don't know. So folks are skeptical. And that is entirely legitimate because they haven't seen a lot of laws coming out of Washington lately that helped them. But my hope is, and I'm confident that when people look at the cost of doing nothing, they're going to say, we can make this happen. We've made big changes before that end up resulting in a better life for the American people.
-- Obama asked, why the rush? Question two: "You've been pushing Congress to pass health care reform by August. Why the rush? Are you worried that if you don't, there's a delay until the fall and that it will collapse?"
Obama said there are two reasons -- first, because of the letters he gets "every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs. And they ask me, can you help?" People are suffering and he feels it's critical to act, he said.
Obama's second reason: "If you don't set deadlines in this town, things don't happen... because doing something always creates some people who are unhappy. There's always going to be some interest out there that decides, you know what, the status quo is working for me a little bit better. And the fact that we have made so much progress, where we've got doctors, nurses, hospitals, even the pharmaceutical industry, aarp, saying that this makes sense to do, I think means that the stars are aligned, and we need to take advantage of that."
-- Health care politics. NBC's Chuck Todd asks, "The politics of it -- you mentioned two Republicans in your opening statement, but you have 60 Democratic seats [in the Senate], a healthy majority in the House. If you don't get this, isn't this a fight inside the Democratic Party? and Republicans aren't really playing a -- you can't really blame the Republicans for this one?"
Obama responded by noting that he hasn't been blaming the Republicans -- but he did admit that he's "been a little frustrated by some of the misinformation that's been coming out of the Republicans, but that has to do with, as you pointed out, politics."
He offered praise for some GOP Senators by name -- "I am very appreciative that people like Chuck Grassley on the Finance committee in the Senate, people like Mike Enzi, people like Olympia Snowe have been serious in engaging Democrats in trying to figure out how do we actually get a system that works. And even in those committees where you didn't see Republican votes, we've seen Republican ideas. So for example in the Health committee in the Senate, 160 Republican amendments were adopted into that bill, because they've got good ideas to contribute. So the politics may dictate that they don't vote for health care reform because they think, you know, it'll make Obama more vulnerable. But if they've got a good idea we'll still take it."
He also acknowledged that there have been differences among Democrats, but mostly explained those away to people having "a lot of different ideas" of how to help, and to some "regional disparities" producing divides on things like Medicare reimbursement rates.
-- Will health care reform require sacrifices? ABC's Jake Tapper asked a leading question, first stating that health care reform will require sacrifices in "tests, referrals, choice, end of life care," then asking whether Obama accepted that Americans will have to give something up to get better health care.
Obama basically rejected the question's premise. "They're going to have to give up paying for things that don't make them healthier," he said. "And I, speaking as an American, I think that's the kind of change you want." He cited unnecessary duplication of tests that would be reduced with reform.
Obama also had a long riff emphasizing his concerns about federal spending, the debt and the deficit -- and why health care was an important part of addressing those problems. Here's a portion:
The debt and the deficit are deep concerns of mine. I am very worried about federal spending. And the steps that we've taken so far have reduced federal spending over the next ten years by $2.2 trillion. It's not enough but in order for us to do more we're not only going to have to eliminate waste in the system -- and by the way we had a big victory yesterday by eliminating a weapons program, the F-22, that the Pentagon had repeatedly said we didn't need. We're going to have to eliminate waste there, no big contracts, do all kinds of reforms in our budgeting, but we're also going to have to change health care. Otherwise we can't close that $7.1 trillion gap in the way the American people want it to change. So to all -- everybody who's out there who has been on this idea the Obama administration wants to spend and spend and spend, the fact of the matter is that we inherited an enormous deficit, enormous long-term debt projections. We have not reduced it as much as we need to and as I'd like to, but health care reform is not going to add to that deficit. It's designed to lower it. That's part of the reason why it's so important to do and to do now.
-- Obama pressed on transparency. Here's the question: "You promised that health care negotiations would take place on C-span and that hasn't happened, and your administration recently turned down a request from a watchdog group seeking a list of health care executives who visited the White House to talk about health care reform. Also, the TARP inspector general recently said your White House is withholding too much information on the bank bailout. My question for you is, are you fulfilling your promise of transparency in the White House?"
Obama's answer:
Well, on the list of health care executives who visited us, most of the time you guys have been in there taking pictures. So it hasn't been a secret. My understanding is we just sent a letter out providing a full list of all the executives, but frankly these have mostly been at least photo sprays where you could see who was participating. With respect to all the negotiations not being on C-SPAN, you will recall in this very room that our kick-off event was here on C-SPAN. And at a certain point, you know, you start getting into all kinds of different meetings. The Senate Finance committee is having a meeting. The House is having a meeting. If they want those to be on C-span, then I would welcome it. I don't think there are a lot of secrets going on in there. And the last question with respect to TARP, I -- let me take a look at what exactly they say we have not provided. I think that we've provided much greater transparency than existed prior to our administration coming in. It is a big program. I don't know exactly what's been requested.
-- On the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. The Chicago Sun-Times' famously pugnacious reporter Lynn Sweet asked about the only question of the night that didn't somehow touch on health care, probing Obama for his thoughts on the controversial arrest of Harvard University's Skip Gates. After noting that Gates was a friend of his, Obama said:
Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that's just a fact. As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in this society. That doesn't lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that's been made. And yet, the fact of the matter is that, you know, this still haunts us.
* * * *
Obama's Press Conference: Full Video
Obama's prepared remarks prior to the Q&A:
Good evening. Before I take your questions, I want to talk for a few minutes about the progress we're making on health insurance reform and where it fits into our broader economic strategy.
Six months ago, I took office amid the worst recession in half a century. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month and our financial system was on the verge of collapse.
As a result of the action we took in those first weeks, we have been able to pull our economy back from the brink. We took steps to stabilize our financial institutions and our housing market. And we passed a Recovery Act that has already saved jobs and created new ones; delivered billions in tax relief to families and small businesses; and extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have been laid off.
Of course, we still have a long way to go. And the Recovery Act will continue to save and create more jobs over the next two years - just like it was designed to do. I realize this is little comfort to those Americans who are currently out of work, and I'll be honest with you - new hiring is always one of the last things to bounce back after a recession.
And the fact is, even before this crisis hit, we had an economy that was creating a good deal of wealth for folks at the very top, but not a lot of good-paying jobs for the rest of America. It's an economy that simply wasn't ready to compete in the 21st century - one where we've been slow to invest in the clean energy technologies that have created new jobs and industries in other countries; where we've watched our graduation rates lag behind too much of the world; and where we spend much more |
wonderful book,” added Beccaloni. “It is written in modern English and is not at all stilted, as so many Victorian books seem today. It reveals what an advanced thinker Wallace was.”
www.nhm.ac.uk/wallace100
© Guardian News and Media 2013
[Image by Edward Baker via Flickr Creative Commons]Remember when Valve used to make new games, instead of just making insanely popular platforms for selling games (and hats and skins )? Valve promised a partial return to those days today with the announcement of a brand-new Portal game... that just so happens to be built as an expansion to Bridge Constructor.
OK, this might not be the Portal sequel that everyone was expecting or hoping for (that would probably require putting a "3" on the game's title, which we all know Valve can't do ). Still, the teaser trailer for the Bridge Constructor Portal —being developed alongside Headup Games and Clockstone Software—shows the same kind of physics-based gameplay that has made both Portal and Bridge Constructor into hits with fans of emergent design
And GLaDOS makes an appearance, too. What more could a Portal fan reasonably want?
Valve putting its development imprint on any game—even if it's just a licensing play for a spin-off to a non-Valve game—is newsworthy these days. It has been more than four years since the Steam-maker released Dota 2, its last full-fledged PC title. And while virtual-reality experiments like The Lab and an upcoming Dota-themed digital card game are nice, they're not really what longtime fans want out of a company known for franchises like Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Team Fortress (our own Peter Bright reports that The International crowd was "stunned" with "dismay and palpable anger" when the Dota card game was announced).
Valve did promise back in February that it was working on three "full" VR games that are "not experiments," but it gave no further details on what to expect since then. In a recent interview with Glixel, HTC Vive General Manager Dan O'Brien said that those titles were still in development and that Valve is "very committed; they are still committed to delivering on that promise." That's nice to hear, but it has to be weighed against Valve's long and spotty track record of broken game development promises
Bridge Constructor Portal hits Windows, MacOS, and Linux on December 20, with console releases planned for early 2018 and mobile versions at an unannounced date.And then there was one. Chelsea and Bristol City started the day as the only unbeaten sides in the top five tiers of English football. The only sides capable of joining The Invincibles – Preston North End, in the 1888-89 season, and Arsenal, in 2003-04.
At the end of the day, only Chelsea remained. City lost to a late goal in an often feisty West Country derby with Swindon Town and their chance of immortality had gone.
Mind you, had they avoided defeat at the County Ground, they would still have had another 29 games to safely negotiate. That would have been unlikely.
As it was, City’s loss was tinged with not regret but bitterness and controversy – at the fact of having to play for 87 minutes, plus stoppage time, with only ten men.
Even the real Invincibles might not have managed to survive that.
The City captain, Wade Elliott, saw red in only the third minute when he tangled with Swindon’s midfielder Jack Stephens. After exchanging sly digs, Elliott appeared to flick his head backwards into the face of Stephens, who fell to the floor.
As Stephens received treatment, the referee, Darren Drysdale, took advice from Lee Swabey, his assistant, and dismissed Elliott.
“The sending off was an absolute disgrace,” the City manager, Steve Cotterill, said. “I didn’t see it but I’ve looked at it four times on a laptop. Stephens pulls back Wade by the shoulders. We will appeal 100%. We have to.
“But that [incident] probably only enhanced what I already knew about my players. After our first defeat, I can speak only positively about them.
“They are a real honest bunch of lads, I’m really proud of them. I know they’re hurting and they just feel that they’ve suffered a big injustice. Wade certainly feels that way.”
As natural in many a derby dust-up, the rival manager viewed it differently. “I’ve not seen the sending off yet,” Swindon’s Mark Cooper said. “But my players said it was a backwards head-butt.”
Butt or not, the Elliott-Stephens confrontation ignited the flames– and a couple of smoke bombs were thrown on to the pitch from the Stratton Bank stand, which housed the City fans.
Once the red mist and smoke had cleared, a game emerged. Not in the first half, as City adjusted to their numerical disadvantage, but certainly after the interval.
The League One leaders City were actually boasting a 22-match undefeated League One sequence – going back to last season – and were doing their damnedest to protect it.
But Swindon, with an average age of just under 22, showed youthful exuberance in abundance. Nathan Byrne thumped a 25-yarder on to the crossbar and the City keeper Frank Fielding saved superbly from a Stephens piledriver.
With 12 minutes remaining, the dam broke. Michael Smith went on a slaloming, mesmerising run deep inside the City area before poking the ball home past Fielding for his 12th goal of the season to seal a win that lifted them to second place.
And that was that. City’s aura of invincibility was over. Chelsea now have a clear run to share the glory with Preston and Arsenal.New report examines how transgender people suffer higher rates of incarceration and abuse in the criminal justice system.
Washington, D.C. — Bathroom laws targeting transgender people contribute to a pattern of criminalizing individuals solely based on their gender identity, according to a landmark report released today. The report offers a snapshot of how the U.S. criminal justice system fails transgender people, targeting them through police profiling and harassment and subjecting them to abuse and violence in prison and detention facilities.
“Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails Transgender People” examines how transgender and gender nonconforming people face high levels of discrimination in many areas of life, putting them at risk for economic insecurity, homelessness, and reliance on survival economies. Combined with policing strategies that profile and target transgender people, particularly transgender women of color, the result is high rates of criminalization of transgender people. For example, a shocking 21 percent of transgender women have spent time in prison or jail, compared with only 5 percent of all U.S. adults. And one in five transgender people (22 percent) report being mistreated by police.
Once within the criminal justice system, transgender people are often discriminated against, verbally and sexually assaulted, refused adequate medical care, and treated with utter disregard for their identity and dignity.
The report was co-authored by the Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, and the Center for American Progress, or CAP, in partnership with the Advancement Project, Forward Together, JustLeadershipUSA, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Transgender Law Center. It is available online at www.lgbtmap.org/criminal-justice-trans. The report is a companion to a broader report, “Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People,” available at http://www.lgbtmap.org/criminal-justice.
“Anti-transgender bathroom bills effectively criminalize our full participation in public life,” said Sarah McBride, Campaigns and Communications Manager for LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress. “These bills push transgender people into the shadows. If you can’t use the bathroom without fear of discrimination or violence, it becomes much harder to go to work, go to school, or access the public marketplace. Legislation such as North Carolina’s H.B. 2 exposes transgender individuals, particularly transgender women of color, to harassment—from both the public and law enforcement—merely for participating in daily activities.”
The variety of laws that disproportionately affect transgender people include:
Bathroom laws: Over the past year, cities and states have debated, and in some cases passed, laws criminalizing transgender people for using the restroom that matches the gender they live every day. In the 2015-16 legislative session, at least 20 states proposed legislation restricting restroom access for transgender people.
Over the past year, cities and states have debated, and in some cases passed, laws criminalizing transgender people for using the restroom that matches the gender they live every day. In the 2015-16 legislative session, at least 20 states proposed legislation restricting restroom access for transgender people. HIV criminalization laws: Transgender people are among the groups most affected by HIV. People living with HIV, including those who are transgender, face a patchwork of outdated and reactionary laws that penalize the behavior of people living with HIV, even if those behaviors carry no risk of transmission or unintentionally exposing others to the virus.
Transgender people are among the groups most affected by HIV. People living with HIV, including those who are transgender, face a patchwork of outdated and reactionary laws that penalize the behavior of people living with HIV, even if those behaviors carry no risk of transmission or unintentionally exposing others to the virus. Criminalization of sex work: Faced with discrimination at school and work, high rates of homelessness, and limited access to meager safety net supports, some transgender people engage in sex work to earn income. Because transgender people, particularly transgender women of color and unauthorized transgender immigrants, may be disproportionately represented among individuals engaged in sex work, they are frequent targets of laws criminalizing prostitution and related offenses. Police generally have wide discretion under these ordinances, and they often arrest individuals for vague violations such as loitering with intent to solicit.
“From a young age, transgender people, especially transgender people of color, are vulnerable to mistreatment, rejection, harassment, and discrimination. If transgender people enter the criminal justice system, they can be subject to a devastating cycle of abuse and face significant challenges to rebuilding their lives,” said Ineke Mushovic, Executive Director of MAP. “When transgender people are three times more likely to be incarcerated and fully one-quarter of those incarcerated experience sexual assault, it is time to acknowledge that serious change is needed to ensure the fair treatment, health, safety, and dignity of transgender people in the criminal justice system.”
For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, contact Tom Caiazza at gro.ssergorpnacirema@azzaiact or 202.481.7141.
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PARTNERS
The Advancement Project is a next-generation, multiracial civil rights organization. Rooted in the great human rights struggles for equality and justice, we exist to fulfill America’s promise of a caring, inclusive, and just democracy. We use innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change. www.advancementproject.org
Forward Together is a multiracial, multi-issue organization that is changing how we think, feel, act, and make policy about families. Whether chosen or biological, we work to ensure that all families have the power and resources they need to thrive. We work at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality—and find ways to shift our culture and policy in the areas of reproductive justice, economic justice, and ending mass incarceration. www.forwardtogether.org
JustLeadershipUSA is dedicated to cutting the U.S. correctional population in half by 2030, while reducing crime. JLUSA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. www.justleadershipusa.org
The National Center for Transgender Equality, or NCTE, is the nation’s leading social justice advocacy organization winning lifesaving change for transgender people. NCTE was founded in 2003 by transgender activists who recognized the urgent need for policy change to advance transgender equality. www.transequality.org
The National LGBTQ Task Force advances full freedom, justice, and equality for all LGBTQ people. We are building a future where everyone can be free to be their entire selves in every aspect of their lives. Today, despite all the progress we’ve made to end discrimination, millions of LGBTQ people face barriers in every aspect of their lives: in housing, employment, health care, retirement, and basic human rights; these barriers must go. They also face persecution, harassment, and violence for simply being themselves; this must change. That’s why the Task Force is training and mobilizing millions of activists across our nation to deliver a world where you can be you. www.thetaskforce.org
The Transgender Law Center, or TLC, changes law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression. Founded in 2002, TLC employs an integrated multidisciplinary approach—including impact litigation, policy advocacy, public education, and movement building—to protect and advance the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming people from coast to coast. www.transgenderlawcenter.org
CO-AUTHORS
Founded in 2006, the Movement Advancement Project is an independent think tank that provides rigorous research, insight, and analysis that help speed equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Learn more at www.lgbtmap.org.Elijah Wood is set as the co-lead in Dirk Gently, BBC America’s eight-episode series based on the cult Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency novels by Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy author Douglas Adams. Written by Max Landis, the series is set to debut in fall 2016.
Dirk Gently is a comedic thriller that follows the bizarre adventures of eccentric “holistic” detective Dirk Gently and his reluctant assistant Todd (Wood), as they wend their way through one big, seemingly insane mystery a season, crossing unlikely paths with a bevy of wild and sometimes dangerous characters, each episode landing them a few random steps closer to uncovering the truth.
Todd does not consider himself a sidekick. He is just flat-out better than Dirk at a lot of things. He always attempts to solve matters with the fewest steps possible; despite being a compassionate, sweet, smarter-than-average man with biting wit, Todd often finds himself at the intersection of morally gray crossroads. Thus, his bad habits of lying and stealing have dire consequences that he can’t put off forever, even though he tries. As Todd describes himself to Dirk: “I am not your Watson, a**hole. I am not available for side-kicking on something I am not involved with. I am my own messed up person with my own messed up problems.”
The series is co-produced by AMC Studios, Ideate Media and comic book publisher IDW Entertainment with Circle of Confusion producing. Exec producers are Landis, who wrote the project on spec; Ideate’s Arvind Ethan David and Zainir Aminullah; IDW’s Ted Adams and David Ozer; and David Alpert and Rick Jacobs from Circle of Confusion.
A four-episode adaptation of Dirk Gently starring Stephen Mangan aired on BBC4 in 2010 and 2012.
BBCA’s scripted slate also includes Doctor Who (considered a suitable companion for Dirk Gently), Orphan Black, Undercover, Thirteen, London Spy, The Living and The Dead, Luther and Class.
The Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit alum Wood toplined the FX series Wilfred.In an interview with Neil Mitchell’s 3AW on Friday, Prime Minister Abbott said “Don’t forget Neil that if housing prices go up, sure that makes it harder to get into the market, but it also means that everyone who is in the market has a more valuable asset.”
His comment prompted Neil Mitchell to respond prudently with, “But interest rates can’t stay at this level, people are going to get burnt!”
Abbott shunned any responsibility, lumping it on the central bank by saying, “I am sure the Reserve Bank is very conscious of the fact that there are a whole range of things that need to be managed here and I would be confident that the Reserve has got its eye on housing prices and will appropriately manage the level of interest rates.”
His ignorance is likely to have heads shaking at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who have all been sounding alarm bells in recent weeks.
Australia’s housing bubble and associated household debt is acting as a leech, sucking blood out of the economy. In the low interest rate environment, The RBA is struggling to keep the housing market under control, while supporting the faltering broader economy and attempting to cool the strong Australian dollar.
One of the causes of euphoria in the housing market is a broken taxation system, severely distorting the economy and something clearly the responsibility of the Federal Government, not the Reserve Bank. Two Howard Era tax concessions instantly spring to mind.
The 50% capital gains discount introduced in 1999 – when coupled with negative gearing introduced decades earlier, accelerated the accumulated loses of residential property investor making the playground much more geared towards speculative capital gains and not rental yield.
And the hot topic in the recent months – Allowing Self Managed Super Funds (SMSFs) the ability to borrow and leverage up into the property bubble, introduced by Liberal’s in September 2007. This not only creates a risk for the residential property market, but has severe implications for our superannuation system as well.
Abbott is hoping renewed confidence in the housing market will result in more homes being built – alleviating some of the supply side constraints. However, this could be flawed thinking as there is little evidence to date to suggest this will happen as most speculators play in the established residential housing market. If Abbott wanted to show some leadership and create a tangible outcome, he could quarantine negative gearing and make it only available for new dwellings.
Australia’s housing bubble is a significant issue that needs the concerted effort of the Federal Government, the RBA and APRA. Setting the Reserve Bank up to fail shows both poor leadership and poor form.
» Interview with Neil Mitchell, Radio 3AW, Melbourne – The Prime Minister of Australia, 27th September 2013.A fun 2017 MLS season continued last weekend as the Galaxy bested the Earthquakes in a thriller, FC Dallas and the Dynamo played the first draw in nine days and the first scoreless draw in a month, Atlanta’s quick three-goal spurt was enough to overcome New York City FC, and so much more.
We start, though, with the most dominant performance of them all:
Most Impressive
Toronto FC
When Toronto first started assembling superstars in 2014, results were hard to come by. They came a little easier in 2015 when they swapped out Jermain Defoe for Jozy Altidore and Matias Laba for Sebastian Giovinco.
The team generally went as Giovinco went, though a league-worst defense pulled them down to the 6-seed. That got rectified in 2016 with Drew Moor and Steven Beitashour. The final piece, so said Giovinco in the 2016/17 offseason, was a player like Victor Vazquez. And while Vazquez has been great, the final piece is actually this team’s new immense depth.
Oftentimes when teams go on runs like this, it’s because they find a particularly well-working lineup. That’s what happened to DC United last year, and we asked questions like, “Well, can they win without Luciano Acosta? Patrick Mullins?”
With Toronto, we know. They win without Giovinco, without Altidore, without Bradley, without Vazquez, without Giovinco and Altidore, without Drew Moor. Maybe they can’t win without all those guys (see the Ottawa game), but they shouldn’t have to.
The Red Bulls won six of their final eight games in 2016, drawing the other two. Colorado also had a 6–0–2 stretch. But New York’s stretch was over 56 days, and Colorado’s over a more-impressive 39 days.
Toronto’s current 7–0–1 run has been over 35 days, with a bunch of different lineups.
They hiccoughed in Ottawa in the first leg of the Canadian Championship semis with a lineup that was basically “Toronto FC 2 plus Raheem Edwards and Tosaint Ricketts.” If Toronto can kill Columbus 5–0 at home without Giovinco and Altidore, they can certainly overturn a 2–1 deficit at home against Ottawa with whichever lineup.
And while upsets are fun, this is the kind of depth that can beat Mexican clubs in the CONCACAF Champions League.
Most Disappointing
Sporting Kansas City
Sporting KC were on their way to joining Toronto FC and FC Dallas in the upper echelon of the league after their first nine games of 2017. Five games later, however, they look just as vulnerable on the road as any other merely decent MLS team, with losses to Minnesota, Vancouver, and now Colorado.
But this is probably just a blip. Several weeks ago — in reference to SKC’s epic 1–0 win in Portland — I talked about how soccer is often as much about how you play when you need to score as it is about actually scoring goals. Colorado scored a somewhat fluky goal in the 11th minute and then went about doing what they did best last year: securing a 1–0 game.
How did SKC respond? Pretty well, all things considered. They flooded the Colorado end with passes and shots around the box both in the first half:
Green arrows are completed passes or shots on goal, red arrows are shots not on goal, and yellow arrows are shots that led to a pass.
And the second half:
For reference, here’s Atlanta’s dominant first half against New York City:
The expected goals stat-loving crowd will wonder how on Earth SKC didn’t win this game, and they’ll be right to question. The how, and the underrated Colorado commentators mentioned this, had to do with the final touch. In Dom Dwyer’s absence, Latif Blessing twice missed wide open opportunities from the penalty spot area. Gerso Fernandes flubbed a one-timer in front of goal. Jimmy Medranda curled a great free kick just wide. Seth Sinovic hit the post late. Graham Zusi even chipped one over Tim Howard, only for Bobby Burling to send it away at the last second.
It was a hard luck game for SKC. But those are usually the most disappointing.
Result No One Wanted to See, Even DC United fans
Vancouver 0–1 DC United
As a DC fan, I was ready to concede this game (and the season). Going into BC Place and beating a resurgent, exciting, young Vancouver team didn’t feel right, and that’s without even taking into account Jose Francisco Ortiz’s penalty-winning flop.
Instead of focusing on the shenanigans of the second half, let’s look at how Vancouver, with a decisive talent and form advantage, weren’t able to put even one dagger into DC before halftime.
Around the 20th minute, Vancouver hit the crossbar twice and put Fredy Montero in prime scoring position in the span of about two minutes. Spurred on by Montero, a wave of applause started in the crowd as if a goal were imminent.
Alas, the next ten minutes were ultimately frustrating for the Whitecaps. Vancouver completed about 251 passes in DC’s half over the whole game. For a prorated chunk of 10 minutes, you would expect the Caps to complete about 29 passes. Instead, they completed just 17.
But maybe that isn’t so bad. Game state indicates that Vancouver should see a bump in offensive numbers once DC got their undeserved lead. But in the first twenty minutes of the game, those that led to the prime chances, Vancouver completed 38 attacking-half passes. That’s more in line with that 17 figure, but you would hope that the Whitecaps would really pour on the pressure after that flurry.
That didn’t happen. While DC did a good job slowing down the pace, playing very deliberately in the few instances they got the ball, Vancouver may have been a victim of their own aggressiveness. Of the five final-third fouls they committed all game, three of them were in that spell between the 21st and 31st minute. And, in true Ben Olsen fashion, DC probably got away with a few offense-killing fouls. For example, Opta counts Taylor Kemp’s dispossession of Alphonso Davies at 26:21 as a recovery after a Jared Jeffrey “interception,” but Davies was only intercepted because he got a little bit tripped up by Jeffrey.
DC held onto a scoreless first half, scored a dumb goal in the second, and somehow held off the soccer karma gods at the death. Along with the 3–1 win in Atlanta, DC now hold two of the most improbable road wins of the early MLS season, which sandwich one of the worst homestands in DC United history.
I just can’t quit you, DC.
Least Valuable to his Team
Jermaine Jones
Jermaine Jones is undeniably a good soccer player. No one will ever forget his goal against Portugal in the World Cup, or his game-winning assist to Chris Wondolowski that wasn’t.
He was a real difference-maker in New England too. He turned the Revs from a solid playoff team into an MLS Cup contender. The Revs will probably miss the playoffs for the second year running since his departure.
To hammer home that notion, here’s that 2014 New England season before and after Jermaine Jones:
Before: 9–12–3, -5 GD
After: 8–1–1, +10 GD
Three years later, here’s the Galaxy with and without Jermaine Jones:
LA with JJJ: 2–4–2*, -6 GD
Without: 3–1–1*, +6 GD
*-He left the game against Chicago in the 43rd minute, with the Galaxy down 2–0. LA came back to tie that game.
LA has now gone into three consecutive nationally-televised road games in difficult places to play and won all three.
Thousands of words have been spilled on why Jones isn’t the best fit for the Galaxy, but the consensus seems to be that he’s one freelancer too many for that midfield. That doesn’t mean he’s done being a useful soccer player. He would be an upgrade over Marcelo Sarvas in DC, for example, as Chris Durkin prepares for the show. But he probably is done being a useful Galaxy player.
Most Cathartic Moment
Heath raises his hands in victory towards the Wonderwall-singing supporters
Of course, Minnesota vs. Orlando was Adrian Heath’s revenge game. But this was also the game that cemented why this MN United team will work in the long-term.
People have been panning Minnesota’s start to their MLS life, calling the front office “unambitious” in comparison with Atlanta. And it wasn’t a crazy criticism as Minnesota fans themselves had been fretting the front office’s word-of-mouth marketing strategy. A beatdown in a snowstorm in front of 40,000 isn’t the greatest start to a “word-of-mouth” campaign.
But slowly and surely, the crowds have rebounded and the atmosphere has been intense. After hovering around 17,500 for four games, 19,000 people saw a great but disappointing game against LA. And 19,000 returned to see Christian Ramirez do his best Cam Newton impression after his 55th-minute game winner:U.S. District Judge James Robart, after listening to arguments, said he didn’t have sufficient reason, at this time, to begin “mucking around” in the dispute.
U.S. District Judge James Robart declined Wednesday to intervene in a labor dispute between the city of Seattle and the police union representing captains and lieutenants, saying the issue didn’t pose a direct challenge to police-accountabilty reforms.
Robart, after listening to arguments, said he didn’t have sufficient reason, at this time, to begin “mucking around” in the dispute.
But Robart reiterated his statement at a previous hearing in which he said he wouldn’t allow constitutional policing to be “held hostage” to collective bargaining as Seattle’s court-ordered reform effort moves forward.
The hearing was requested by the Seattle City Attorney’s Office after the Seattle Police Management Association (SPMA) filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint with a state agency.
The complaint contends the court-supervised process for moving forward on police-accountability legislation to be considered by the City Council — including key measures regarding officer discipline — violates the city’s legal obligation to first bargain with the union.
The state’s Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) has agreed to hear the complaint, which, according to the city, puts it at risk of “conflicting legal obligations” under a 2012 federal consent decree requiring the Police Department to adopt reforms addressing excessive force and biased policing.
In court papers filed Friday, Seattle City Pete Holmes asked Robart to issue an order barring any outside attack on the consent decree by the police-management association or the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, (SPOG), including the association’s “collateral attack” by filing the labor complaint.
“If PERC requires the city to first bargain with either 0SPMA or SPOG over the terms of accountability legislation before the court completes its review and the City Council begins its work, the court’s projected timeline and planned next steps will be adversely affected,” Holmes wrote.
The Seattle Police Management Association, whose 74 captains and lieutenants have been locked in contract negotiations with the city since its last contract expired in December 2011, did not file a brief under a deadline set by Robart.
The police officers’ guild, which represents about 1,275 sergeants and officers and also is tied up in contract negotiations, filed court papers in which it did not take a position on the labor compliant.
But the guild said the city has structured the legislation to comply with labor law, citing assurances from the city — codified in official language — that it will bargain in good faith over any provision of the proposed legislation mandating discussion.
The guild, stressing it is not opposed to reform, said it’s comfortable with that approach.
Federal attorneys, whose investigation led to the consent decree, said in a filing they don’t believe the labor complaint presents a “challenge” to the consent decree warranting court intervention.
They urged Robart to withhold taking action unless and until the dispute has “ripened” into a true conflict with the consent decree.
The Seattle Police Management Association “has simply objected to the city’s alleged failure to bargain for such changes, rather than objecting to the substance of such changes,” the attorneys wrote.
The Community Police Commission, a citizen body created as part of the consent decree, also urged the court to hold off.
While saying it doesn’t believe the process for drafting and enacting accountability legislation is an unfair labor practice, the commission wrote that the police-management association and the officers’ guild have the right to seek redress with the state.
The commission said it doesn’t believe the two unions are using the collective-bargaining process to violate the civil rights of community members and questions whether there’s a “factual foundation” to justify a federal court overriding state collective bargaining laws.
“Intervention would be undesirable unless it were truly and clearly necessary to move police reform forward,” the brief said, warning that could be counterproductive.
The issue has also drawn the attention of the M.L. King County Labor Council, whose executive secretary-treasurer, Nicole Grant, said Tuesday she believes the city has created a “red herring” to crimp worker rights.
Even as Robart prepared for Wednesday’s hearing, his monitor released his most recent assessment of the progress made by Seattle police in providing adequate supervision to its officers.
In the sixth assessment since 2012, Merrick Bobb found progress in officers’ supervision and that supervisors are adequately trained.
Officers now are likely to have the same sergeant day in and day out, resulting in continuity of supervision, according to documents filed with Robart on Saturday.
Moreover, those sergeants are doing a better job at counseling officers and ensuring they are acting within the law and following department policy in use-of-force incidents.
“Throughout the ranks, supervisors also reported taking appropriate action with their officers when use of force was found to be problematic, including counseling officers, initiating referrals to their chain of command,” including making note of problems in officer-performance reviews and referring cases that appear to violate policy to the Office of Professional Accountability, Bobb wrote.
The monitor said he is awaiting new data after a 2014 review found “deficiencies in supervisory review” of Type II use-of-force incidents. Those involve force that can be “reasonably sufficient to cause physical injury,” including Tasers, pepper-spray and some impact-weapon strikes.
Bobb said he also is waiting for new data on the oversight of stops of people suspected of criminal activity. The U.S. Attorney’s Office, even before the investigation leading to the consent decree, had raised concerns that Seattle officers were not following the law when it came to stopping and questioning people.David Gibbs' defenses don't traditionally have problems stopping the run. But Texas Tech's defenses do. Getting that flipped and fixed in his first season as defensive coordinator hasn't been easy.
Texas Tech ranks No. 125 in run defense nationally, ahead of just New Mexico State and Eastern Michigan, and No. 123 in yards per rush after giving up 405 rushing yards, seven rushing touchdowns and 24 first downs on rushes in the 63-27 loss to Oklahoma. When is it going to get better?
Samaje Perine was part of an Oklahoma rushing attack that ran for 405 yards and seven TDs against Texas Tech on Saturday. Mark D. Smith/USA TODAY Sports
“Obviously, it’s taking some time. We’ve played some really good teams, some teams that obviously you watch them come out on the field and you watch us, and it’s not the same,” Gibbs told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “So we’ve got to do a better job recruiting, got to do a better job coaching, and the players got to do a better job playing.”
Texas Tech is allowing nearly 300 rushing yards per game and 6.1 yards per rush in Big 12 play. It's not as if Tech isn't trying to stop the run, but players still aren't regularly getting in the right place at the right time, or making the plays when they do get there.
“If you’re going to be some rat-trap guy, go blitz every snap, that’s fine and dandy, too, but I’m trying to build something," Gibbs said.
The Oklahoma State offense they face next shouldn't pose as great a challenge as some of the teams the Red Raiders have already seen. Running backs Rennie Childs and Chris Carson have only rushed for 109 and 104 yards, respectively, in Big 12 play this year. But they'll still try to hit Tech the way everyone else has.
“Why would you pass it?" Gibbs said. "I would just hand it off every snap, but I’ve said that all year, until we show we can stop it. We’ll keep grinding."SEOUL (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that North Korea remained — for now — part of what he once branded an “axis of evil”, but hoped the list would some day be empty.
President George W. Bush arrives at a military airport in Seongnam, south of Seoul August 5, 2008. REUTERS/Lee Sang-hak/Yonhap
Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress, accused Pyongyang, Iran and Iraq of seeking weapons of mass destruction that could be used for attacks on U.S. allies or to blackmail the United States.
But recent steps by North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons, including declaring nuclear program details and blowing up a water cooling tower at its ageing Yongbyon plant, had raised questions whether it might be removed from the list.
“That’s to be determined. The human rights abuses inside the country still exist and persist,” Bush said after meeting South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
“The North Korean leader has yet to fully verify the extent to which he has had a highly enriched uranium program.”
“In order to get off the list, the ‘axis of evil’ list, then the North Korean leader is going to have to make certain decisions,” he said.
“I can’t predict the North Korean leader’s decision making.”
Bush praised the demolition of the cooling tower as a “positive step”.
He has already proposed dropping North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism as early as next week if Pyongyang agrees to a plan for verifying details about its nuclear weapons program. But most experts expect that will take longer.
Critics said the label was inaccurate and confrontational when he should have focused more on diplomacy. The White House has said Bush did pursue diplomatic means to avoid the Iraq war.
Iraq was effectively dropped from the list after the United States led a coalition of forces to oust Saddam Hussein. However, no nuclear weapons were found in Iraq despite Bush administration pronouncements Baghdad had a program to develop them.
Iran remains atop the “axis of evil” roster because of a stalemate over halting its uranium enrichment program. Washington worries Iran wants an atomic weapon but Tehran insists it is only seeking civilian nuclear energy.
“My hope is that the ‘axis of evil’ list no longer exists,” Bush said. “That’s my hope for the sake of peace. It’s my hope for the sake of our children.”New York City, N.Y. – In a testament to the “trigger-happy” nature of NYPD cops, the city Housing Authority has ordered all workers fixing elevators in NYC housing projects to wear construction orange vests.
New policies were enacted by the Housing Authority after officers pulled a gun on a maintenance crew and fatally shot an unarmed man in a stairwell in a separate incident.
According to a New York Post report:
“[The elevator workers] were basically told the reason was because of recent incidents where cops had pulled a gun on a caretaker and a supervisor on the roof of a housing project,” a source said. “No one got shot, but they also referred to the cop shooting and were told, ‘We’re doing this for your protection. Your lives are in jeopardy, and we don’t want you to get hurt,’ ” the source said
Pulling no punches, one Housing Authority supervisor allegedly told his crews that the new policy was due to NYPD cops being “trigger-happy.”
SPONSORED
In addition to wearing the bright orange vests, workers will now also be required to wear their official identification on a neck lanyard.Zoomable map from MinecraftWorldMap.com
The Download link on the right now points to a page instead of a |
drag. As air moving under the wing flows upwards at the edge of the wingtip it creates a vortex of spinning air, producing a phenomenon called induced drag.
Eliminating drag is a way to make planes more fuel efficient. When the United States was facing an oil crisis in the 1970s, NASA engineer Richard Whitcomb looked at breaking up those wingtip vortices to reduce drag and increase the airplane’s overall fuel efficiency. This research question led to NASA engineers fitting nine-foot tall winglets on its KC-135 aircraft. When the modified plane took to the skies it was immediately obvious that the design met Whitcomb’s criteria, and the Blended Winglet evolved from these initial tests.
While NASA can’t breakup the vortices of security lines and flight delays, there are travel headaches we don’t even know we’re being spared thanks to the ingenuity of the agency’s engineers. Some of the greatest aspects of living in the space age are the ones that improve our lives on Earth.
Illustrations by Clay RoderyMedia playback is not supported on this device Red card disappoints Rodgers
Referee Mark Halsey has made a complaint to Greater Manchester Police about insulting tweets directed at him.
Tweets sent after Manchester United's 2-1 win at Liverpool on Sunday referred to the 51-year-old's treatment for throat cancer in 2009.
Halsey drew criticism from Reds manager Brendan Rodgers after sending off Jonjo Shelvey for a first-half tackle.
Halsey told BBC Sport: "I can confirm that my family have made a complaint to the police."
He added: "I will be speaking to the police on Wednesday after I have returned from refereeing Southampton v Sheffield Wednesday."
Rodgers was angry after Halsey also awarded Manchester United a late penalty, which Robin van Persie converted.
"We could control our players' performance but what we can't control is decisions by the referee," Rodgers said.
Some Liverpool fans later took to Twitter to criticise Halsey's decisions, making reference to him dying of cancer.
The abuse was condemned by the match officials' organisation, Professional Game Match Officials Limited.
Dermot Gallagher, former Premier League referee "I know Mark, and certainly, he will be shaken by it. You expect stick as a referee, that is the nature of the game, but this has crossed the boundaries. It is a small minority, and hopefully they will be crushed by the people who have a lot of time for Mark. You cannot be a top level referee without making a big error, as one or two games will catch you out in your career. It only really hurt me when my children were affected by it."
PGMOL said: "[We] abhor any abuse of match officials... in stadia or outside of it."
The PGMOL said psychological support was available to referees. "Our main concern is towards Mark and his family, and like with all match officials, there is a backroom team who are there for them," it said.
"This includes a sports psychologist, who has worked extensively with the select group, including Mark, over the past few years.
"Mark has already benefited from the support of all of his colleagues and they will continue to back him this week."
Referees' union Prospect has also come out in support of the referee, calling the tweets "beneath contempt".
Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher said: "I know Mark as a friend and ex-colleague, and certainly, he will be shaken by it. Some things cross the boundaries, and this has.
"You expect stick as a referee, that is the nature of the game, but I think this has crossed the boundaries."
Halsey was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2009 but returned to refereeing in March 2010.
He will be in charge of next Saturday's Premier League match between Fulham and Manchester City.
Meanwhile, the Football Association is not expected to take any action over reports of offensive chanting by a minority of fans after the end of Sunday's game.
It noted that both clubs had been active in trying to stop offensive chants.Yoram Hazony is right: the Brexit vote in Britain is a sign that the post-World War II era has come to an end. Another sign, this time in the United States, is the failure of the conservative establishment to prevent Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination; still another sign is the unpopularity of Hillary Clinton. All in all, the right-left contest that defined the postwar decades is being eclipsed by a politics in which establishment powers coalesce to fend off anti-establishment challengers.
In this new contest, a central and divisive issue is certain to be the role and future of the nation, Hazony’s main subject. Will we enter into the bright uplands of a prosperous, globalized fusion of civilizations managed by experts and guided by the high ideals of human rights? Or will we return to the dark days of xenophobic nationalism, war, and death camps?
To put it that way is, of course, tendentious—but this is how at least one side, the side of the establishment consensus, has long expressed it. Traumatized by the civilizational failure that ran from 1914 to 1945, postwar elites in the West consolidated around an interpretation that saw the cause of the disasters in nationalist zealotry. Especially barbaric were the gods of blood, soil, and Volk, but the larger problem was said to be the injection of a sacred significance into the nation’s public affairs. Among conservatives and some on the pragmatic left, Communist totalitarianism was seen as prey to the same dark disease. But in all quarters, right, left, and center, the postwar consensus held that nationalist and ideological fervors are a perennial danger. They threaten to burst into life, leading to violence, oppression, and systematic injustice.
The natural remedy was to de-sacralize public life. This meant encouraging weaker public passions, and shifting from the hot rhetoric of potential demagogues to the cool deliberations of experts. In America, the dominant liberalism of the 1950s claimed to be pragmatic and “post-ideological.” Yes, we needed to be united against the existential threat of Communism, and to that extent the cause of the nation did retain its quasi-sacred status, but less and less so as the decades wore on. Today, our elites are scandalized by the very mention of Trump’s anti-immigration stance. His summary statement of justification, “We either have a country or we don’t,” seems to them comically retrograde and simplistic.
The European situation has been different. There, understandably, the civilizational crisis of 1914-1945 was felt more acutely, and the desacralizing imperative correspondingly affected everything. The popular influence of postwar French existentialism is a salient case in point: a valiant effort to find meaning in world where no tradition, institution, or form of life was thought to provide a trustworthy inheritance.
In May 1968, the distrust burst into flames. “It is forbidden to forbid,” went the slogan of the rioting French students and workers in a paradoxical formula that perfectly embodied the desacralizing imperative: in plain English, everything goes. No more social authority; it is forbidden either to venerate or to renew the sacred foundations on which commands could once be issued or sacrifices demanded.
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Given the desacralizing imperative of the postwar era, it can be no surprise that the moral and cultural repute of the nation has declined in the West, and with it the once vivid historical and poetic language of political leadership—what Lincoln called “the mystic chords of memory.” Their place has been usurped by a technocratic empire of expertise, baptized in the holy water of human rights: the final, thin thread still connecting the political imagination of the West to the sacred.
But even that thread is breaking. A recent essay in Foreign Affairs by Kishore Mahbubani and Lawrence Summers, “The Fusion of Civilizations: A Case for Global Optimism,” outlines the main ambitions of the technocratic empire. That empire, write the authors, will promote “pragmatic problem-solving” in a “stable and sustainable rule-based order,” undergirded by a scientific, technological, and economic consensus that encourages the “fusion of civilizations” promised in their title. Theirs is a vision of perpetual peace, shorn of the preemptive demands of the sacred and organized around the principle of beneficent material progress.
A vision alluring to some, perhaps. Yet it is as unlikely to replace war, conflict, or the systematic trampling of human rights—indeed, it is just as likely to ignite them—as similar totalizing visions of the not-so-distant past. It is also a vision decidedly unappealing to many others in the West, as Hazony points out and as the Brexit vote and other political developments demonstrate.
A rebellion is mounting, one that commentators speak of as “populist” or “anti-establishment.” Hazony calls it a struggle over the international political order.
Yes, it is that, and more. Elites in the West regard it as a moral imperative—a civilizational duty—to resist the desire for renewed national identity. We must, they cry, prevent the return of Auschwitz! In fact, however, many in Europe and elsewhere are revolting because they wish to sustain their peoplehood, not in order to protect their self-interest or for the sake of economic growth, but simply because they stubbornly honor their national heritages, which they still regard as sacred.
For this reason, the conflict is likely to become more heated. The rhetoric denouncing the supposedly racist and xenophobic motives of the “populists” will get more and more shrill. In turn, as the stakes are raised, largely by establishment rather than by anti-establishment figures, a political crisis will almost inevitably ensue.
In that crisis, America is sure to play a leading role, for our nation remains at the center of the economic system, of international order, and of the moral projects of the postwar era. Moreover, the post-national future adumbrated by Summers and Mahbubani is the implicit ambition of the American political establishment, both right and left. Its instruments include multiculturalism and economic libertarianism, each a powerful agent of desacralization.
Even football players conform to the logic of the future envisioned by our establishment, as witness those players sitting or kneeling on the sidelines as the national anthem is sung, confident that their gesture of refusal will be interpreted as a sign of a higher, more progressive virtue. The ideals of America transcend America, the president himself assured us in approving the players’ gesture; the true American is loyal to something greater than mere nation. Perfectly suited to serve as the ideology of a global, technocratic empire, this way of thinking is likely to be at once post-American and America-dominated.
In his historical recital of the rise and fall of the national idea, Hazony overplays the modern rediscovery of that idea in what he calls a “Protestant construction.” In Christian history, the impulse to honor peoplehood is of significantly earlier vintage, being present in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages the political legitimacy of rulers depended on parallels drawn not to Roman emperors but to the kings of ancient Israel. Charlemagne’s pretensions to empire were immediately subverted by the logic of feudalism, which built up from clan loyalties rather than down from imperial ideology. Altogether, the lure of national loyalty runs deep in human nature.
Hazony is right, however, that our instinctual desire to live as nations was first taken up in the covenant between God and Israel and thereafter realized in the self-governing Israelite kingdoms. In the Bible, the nation of Israel thrives within the even more fundamental loyalties owed to God and family. There is no commandment to patriotism inscribed on the stone tablets given to Moses, and yet those very tablets serve as Israel’s constitution.
The biblical lessons here are crucial for our present moment, which is a dangerous one. The refusal of elites in the West to accede to the popular demand for renewed national loyalties not only will discredit those elites but could empower populism of a kind that can do a great deal of damage. A return of the sacred to political life might indeed inflame passions, especially when our perennial desire to give of ourselves in loyalty is denied its proper religious and familial expressions and becomes redirected toward political parties and platforms. In this respect, the consensus interpretation of the West’s civilizational crisis in the first half of the 20th century was not entirely wrong.
What the West needs is a restoration of the sacred in all of its dimensions. We do not need imperial governance; we do need patriotic solidarity; but we also need devotion to family and obedience to God, both of which protect the personal from the political even as they dignify it by providing the source of our civil liberties: the rights “endowed by [our] Creator.” A proper sense of God’s transcendence has also helped the West resist the temptation to universalize patriotic pride into world-dominating empire. World governance, both Judaism and Christianity urge us to recognize, is God’s affair, not ours.
The postwar era is ending, leaving the desacralized West face-to-face with two threats that interact in powerful ways. The first is internal: a transcendent universalism that would abandon the West for, allegedly, the sake of the West. The second is external: a colonizing Islam confident in its sacred mission. In response to both, surprising numbers of people are expressing an inchoate desire to be part of national projects that are honored for their own sakes. It’s a healthy impulse, and our job is to tutor rather than resist it.From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
Pokémon Red redirects here. For the Japanese game with the same name, see Pokémon Red and Green Versions.
Pokémon Blue redirects here. For the Japanese game with the same name, see Pokémon Blue Version (Japanese).
Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version were the first Pokémon games to be released outside of Japan, becoming available in North America on September 28, 1998,[1] in Australia and New Zealand on October 23, 1998 and in Europe on October 5, 1999.[2][3] In North America, the pair closely followed the debut of the anime's English dub, which began airing on September 8, 1998,[4] and within a year, Pokémon was well known as a popular Nintendo franchise.
Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow were released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on February 27, 2016, the Pokémon 20th Anniversary. This release is compatible with Poké Transporter, which can send Pokémon from this game to Pokémon Bank, where they can be withdrawn in Pokémon Sun, Moon, Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
Unlike later generations, Red and Blue were not the same as their corresponding Japanese releases Pokémon Red and Green. Besides Pokémon distribution, the aspects of Red and Blue such as graphics, script, and sprite designs are instead based on Pokémon Blue.
Despite being released towards the end of Game Boy's lifespan, they quickly became the best-selling non-bundled games released for the Game Boy as well as being the best-selling role-playing games of all time.
Plot
Spoiler warning: this article may contain major plot or ending details.
Illustrating the original Pokémon gameplay concepts, the player begins his game in Pallet Town, a small town in the Kanto region, on the same day as his former best friend and now rival. Professor Oak calls the player to his laboratory, and allows the player to choose from the three Kanto starter Pokémon: the Grass-type Bulbasaur, the Fire-type Charmander, or the Water-type Squirtle. After the rival displays jealously, he chooses the starter that has a type advantage against the player's chosen starter and challenges the player to a preliminary battle. Afterwards, the player leaves for his journey across the region, challenging 8 Gym Leaders and other Trainers until he reaches the ultimate goal: the Pokémon League at the Indigo Plateau.
Along the way, the player will meet up with his rival several times and have multiple run-ins with the insidious Team Rocket, a criminal group that seeks to use Pokémon for their own gain. The player will ultimately find out that the boss of this evil group, Giovanni, is actually the final Gym Leader in the game.
At the end of the game, the player will have a battle against the Champion, Blue, after beating the Elite Four.
After the credits, the player will gain access to Cerulean Cave in Cerulean City and be able to battle strong Pokémon. The player will be able to battle and capture the strong legendary Pokémon Mewtwo.
Blurb
You've finally been granted your Pokémon Trainer's license. Now, it's time to head out to become the world's greatest Pokémon Trainer. It's going to take all you've got to collect 150 Pokémon in this enormous world. Catch and train monsters like the shockingly-cute Pikachu. Face off against Blastoise's torrential water cannons. Stand strong when facing Pidgeot's stormy Gust. Trade with friends and watch your Pokémon evolve. Important—no single Pokémon can win at all. Can you develop the ultimate Pokémon strategy to defeat the eight Gym Leaders and become the greatest Pokémon Master of all time?
Connectivity
Players may trade Pokémon between two cartridges or battle with another cartridge using a Game Boy Game Link Cable. To take full advantage of this feature, several Pokémon are exclusive to each game of the pair and others require trading to evolve, making trading necessary to complete the Pokédex. The games can trade and battle with Western versions of Red, Blue, and Pokémon Yellow. They can also trade with Western versions of Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal via the Time Capsule. Red and Blue are completely incompatible with games from Generation III onward.
Trades between Pokémon games in different languages are possible; however, a Japanese game cannot connect with a non-Japanese game without causing corruption. This is due to the fact that the games cannot automatically translate the Pokémon data from Japanese to a different language or vice versa, since neither game fully encodes both kana and the Latin alphabet (only encoding one fully and the other partially). If a battle between a Japanese game and a non-Japanese game is attempted, the battle simply does not work, with the save files left unharmed.
Red and Blue are compatible with Pokémon Stadium and Stadium 2. While link battles are not possible directly between Pokémon Red and Blue and the Generation II games, a player may challenge a Generation II game using Pokémon Stadium 2.
Virtual Console
The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console releases use 3DS wireless communication as a substitute for the Game Link Cable. Japanese and non-Japanese Generation I core series games do not recognize each other when attempting to link them via 3DS wireless communication.
Using Poké Transporter, the entirety of Box 1 can be sent from the Generation I core series games to Pokémon Bank (regardless of language), from where they can be withdrawn in the Generation VII core series games.
Features
Gyms
Players are introduced to the first eight Pokémon Gyms of the series, each with their own type affiliation, led by Brock (Rock), Misty (Water), Lt. Surge (Electric), Erika (Grass), Koga (Poison), Sabrina (Psychic), Blaine (Fire) and Giovanni (Ground).
Elite Four
The Elite Four of Kanto are a step above the rest, all located at Indigo Plateau and ready to take on all challengers. In order, they are Lorelei (Ice), Bruno (Fighting), Agatha (Ghost) and Lance (Dragon). The final battle is against the Pokémon Champion, the rival, who does not have a type specialization.
Pokémon
Each game contains pre-recorded data on 151 different species of Pokémon, including Mew, a Pokémon unavailable to players of either game under normal conditions. Despite this, not all Pokémon are available to the player, regardless of version; trades must occur between players in order to complete their Pokédex without the use of cheats or glitches. Mew is the only Pokémon in these games that must be acquired through attending either a Nintendo sponsored event, a glitch, or cheating.
The following Pokémon are only obtainable in one game of this pair. In order to obtain Pokémon exclusive to the other game of this pair, they must be traded either from that game or from another compatible game of Generation I or Generation II which has that Pokémon available.
Red 023 Ekans Poison 024 Arbok Poison 043 Oddish Grass Poison 044 Gloom Grass Poison 045 Vileplume Grass Poison 056 Mankey Fighting 057 Primeape Fighting 058 Growlithe Fire 059 Arcanine Fire 123 Scyther Bug Flying 125 Electabuzz Electric Blue 027 Sandshrew Ground 028 Sandslash Ground 037 Vulpix Fire 038 Ninetales Fire 052 Meowth Normal 053 Persian Normal 069 Bellsprout Grass Poison 070 Weepinbell Grass Poison 071 Victreebel Grass Poison 126 Magmar Fire 127 Pinsir Bug
Differences in the Virtual Console release
The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console releases can link with other Virtual Console Generation I and II core series games via Nintendo 3DS wireless communication, simulating the Game Link Cable. When initiating a link, the Virtual Console menu on the touch screen replaces the Cable Club attendant's dialogue.
Using Poké Transporter, Pokémon can be sent from the Generation I core series games to Pokémon Bank, from which they can be withdrawn in the Generation VII core series games.
The moves Blizzard, BubbleBeam, Confusion, Dream Eater, Explosion, Guillotine, Hyper Beam, Mega Kick, Mega Punch, Psychic, Reflect, Rock Slide, Selfdestruct, Spore, and Thunderbolt had their animations changed slightly to tone down the flashing.
Development
This section is about general development info. For development leftovers and unused content, see Pokémon Red and Green beta.
This section is incomplete.
Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it.
Reason: Wikipedia has nifty info from official sources. Post it and cite it here.
As Red, Green, and Blue
Female player character
Artwork of the female protagonist, where she apparently has a Squirtle
There were originally plans for a female protagonist as suggested by the artwork on the cover of the official guidebook for Pokémon Red and Green and Pokémon Blue. Green from Pokémon Adventures seems to be based on her. The character was redesigned and included in the remakes of the games, to continue the standard of including a female protagonist.
No Mew present
According to the interview by Satoru Iwata with Tsunekazu Ishihara and Shigeki Morimoto about the release of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, localized as Iwata Asks, they admitted that after the debugging tools were removed, they added Mew in the remaining space on the ROM. Nintendo thought that this would have been risky because altering the internal data after completing the testing period meant that any new bugs and/or glitches created by adding data without referring to debugging tools would have been much harder to fix. Standard programming practices usually discourage altering the source code and not testing it just before releasing the software to the customer.[5]
Poké Balls
Main article: Poké Ball
Some concept art depicts Poké Balls on the ground, in two pieces. This is most likely just a carryover from when Pokémon was still the concept of Capsule Monsters. Strangely, the original Poké Ball sprites from Pokémon Red and Green lack the button in the center of the Poké Ball.
Rebattling Trainers
In an interview with Shōko Nakagawa in her book Shōko Nakagawa: Pokémon Taught Me The Meaning of Life, Tsunekazu Ishihara revealed that originally, the game was programmed to trigger a battle with each Trainer any time the player walked by them, even if the player had already defeated them in battle previously. The wild Pokémon encounter rate was also significantly higher originally. The Trainer rebattling was omitted from the final release and the wild Pokémon encounter rate was significantly reduced.[6]
Concept art
During a gaming exhibition called Game On, early concept art of Pokémon Red and Green by Ken Sugimori was featured, along with pre-release material from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. The concept art depicts rough versions of various concepts that made it into the final releases of the Generation I games. They seem to include various battles, the Safari Zone, Red riding on a Lapras, a Blastoise, Celadon City, Silph Co., and a town with a fountain which could have been reworked into Celadon City. Some other Pokémon are identifiable in a raw or semi-normal form, such as Gastly, and others are prototypical of an entire class of Pokémon, such as a basic Dragon-type.
GameCenter CX
This section is incomplete.
Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it.
Reason: Expand based on the information provided by Satoshi Tajiri, if applicable.
A Japan-exclusive special Pokémon episode of GameCenter CX, known as Retro Game Master outside of Japan, included an interview with Satoshi Tajiri, where he revealed early Pokémon character profiles of Nidoking, Slowbro and Kadabra. Notably, they are given a National Pokédex number which matches their internal index number, rather than their final Kanto Pokédex number. Nidoking, for instance, is noted as being #007, rather than #034, either suggesting that there was another method of ordering the Pokémon proposed, or that they reflect their ordering in the internal data. The latter is supported by interviews with Ken Sugimori, which verify that Rhydon, which has an index number of 001, was the first Pokémon ever created, and early sketches from Capsule Monsters featuring Rhydon. Nidoking is also referred to as 「マイコー♂」 Maikō♂, indicating that there were either placeholders or alternate names for Pokémon before the development of Pokémon Red and Green had finished.
In addition to this, it was confirmed in an interview with Shigeki Morimoto that there were originally going to be 190 Pokémon in Generation I, indicating that the 39 MissingNo. found in the internal index are formatted Pokémon.[7]
Sprites
The earlier Pokémon sprites planned for the Japanese Blue
Different front sprites of Pokémon were planned for Pokémon Blue, notably the ones for Raticate, Rhydon, Ditto, Dragonair and Mewtwo. These were featured in the November 1996 issue of CoroCoro, which published general information about the game.[8]
As Red and Blue
Pokémon names
During the promotional period that preceded the English release of both the anime and Pokémon Red and Blue, a large amount of Pokémon were shown with different names from those they had in the final releases. Some of these names were similar to their final names, but some were quite close to their Japanese names, and others were completely different from any current Pokémon name.
# Final name Early name Japanese name 014 Kakuna Kokoon Cocoon 016 Pidgey Pidge Poppo 018 Pidgeot Pidgeott Pigeot 019 Rattata Rattatak Koratta 023 Ekans Arbo/ "Nagahis" Arbo 024 Arbok Nagaasp Arbok 028 Sandslash Sandstorm Sandpan 035 Clefairy Aria Pippi 036 Clefable Ariala Pixy 037 Vulpix Foxfire Rokon 038 Ninetales Ninetai Kyukon 039 Jigglypuff Pudding Purin 040 Wigglytuff Custard Pukurin 043 Oddish Ladish Nazonokusa 046 Paras Parasyte Paras 050 Diglett Digda Digda 058 Growlithe Flamie Gardie 059 Arcanine Blaze Windie 060 Poliwag Aqua Nyoromo 061 Poliwhirl "Aquanau" Nyorozo 062 Poliwrath "Aquamar" Nyorobon 063 Abra Hocus Casey 064 Kadabra Pocus Yungerer 066 Machop Kara-tee Wanriky 067 Machoke Kung-foo Goriky 068 Machamp Ju-doh Kairiky 072 Tentacool Jilly Menokurage 073 Tentacruel Man O War Dokukurage 078 Rapidash Gallop Gallop 079 Slowpoke Slowmo Yadon 081 Magnemite Coil Coil 082 Magneton Recoil Rarecoil 083 Farfetch'd Fowler Kamonegi 084 Doduo Dodo Dodo 087 Dewgong Manaty Jugon 092 Gastly Spirit Ghos 093 Haunter Spectre Ghost 094 Gengar Phantom Gangar 096 Drowzee Sleeper Sleep 099 Kingler Kingle Kingler 102 Exeggcute "Eggstre" Tamatama 103 Exeggutor "Eggscut" Nassy 104 Cubone Orphon Karakara 105 Marowak Guardia Garagara 106 Hitmonlee Lee Sawamular 107 Hitmonchan Chan Ebiwalar 108 Lickitung Tonguetyd Beroringa 109 Koffing Ny Dogars 110 Weezing La Matadogas 113 Chansey Lucky Lucky 114 Tangela Meduza/Medusa Monjara 118 Goldeen Goldy Tosakinto 119 Seaking Neptune Azumao 123 Scyther Stryke Strike 130 Gyarados Skulkraken Gyarados 131 Lapras Ness Laplace 132 Ditto Morpho Metamon 133 Eevee Eon Eievui 137 Porygon Poregon Porygon 138 Omanyte Ess Omnite 139 Omastar Kargo Omstar 140 Kabuto Att Kabuto 141 Kabutops Lantis Kabutops 142 Aerodactyl Ptera Ptera 147 Dratini Dragoon Miniryu 148 Dragonair Dragyn Hakuryu
Text
Brock wants to fight!" "Thewants to fight!"
Before the English releases of Pokémon Red and Blue, screenshots were released of a battle with the rival where the text string "The Blue wants to fight!" was used. While this text would work with a typical Trainer, such as "The Lass wants to fight!" or "The Hiker wants to fight!", as they were not given personal names until Generation II, it would cause problems with Gym Leader, Elite Four, rival, and link battles, causing them to read "The Misty wants to fight!" or "The Lance wants to fight!", as these Trainers did not at the time have titles, only their names. Because of this, the definite article The was dropped in the final releases, leading to the somewhat odd sentence style in Generations I and II of:
" {Trainer's class or name} wants to fight! " R B Y
" "{Trainer's class and name} wants to battle!" G S C
A screenshot in the instruction manual and player's guide of English Red and Blue still contains the text "The Brock wants to fight!", possibly suggesting a late removal. The instruction manual also mentions Pokémon Leaders instead of Gym Leaders.
A slightly different grammar was also going to be used for other text strings.
" {Player} sent {Pokémon} out! " instead of " {Player} sent out {Pokémon}! "
" instead of " " " A wild {Pokémon} appeared! " became just " Wild {Pokémon} appeared! " (this change would be reverted in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, where it has been kept since then) Similarly, " The enemy {Pokémon} fainted! " became simply " Enemy {Pokémon} fainted! " (also reverted in Diamond and Pearl as the definite article The was reinstated)
" became just " " (this change would be reverted in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, where it has been kept since then)
Oddish Cut down a bush!" down a bush!"
On page 31 of Nintendo Player's Guide for Pokémon Red and Blue, a different text string for using Cut on a tree in the overworld was used. It reads "Oddish Cut down a bush!", being used in a screenshot when cutting down the tree next to the Vermilion City Gym. The fact that Cut can also be used to destroy areas of tall grass may have been the reason for the change to "{Pokémon} hacked away with Cut!" in the final releases.
Pokémon Red has VRAM tileset data for Green. Pokémon Blue lacks any equivalent data for Red, however.[9]
Reception
The games received positive reviews from the press, receiving a perfect 10/10 "Masterful" rating from IGN.[10] The games received an average score of about 89% on GameRankings,[11] the second highest on the site for a core series Pokémon game, and the 3rd and 4th best score for a Game Boy title.[12]
Criticism
While bringing Pokémon to international fame and continuing the legacy of the Japanese Red and Green, Pokémon Red and Blue have been met with much criticism, especially compared to more recent releases in the series. Aside from the number of glitches present in the games, many Pokémon look very little like their appearance in the anime, which premiered nearly simultaneous with the games' North American release, or later games, which improved on several other aspects as well as the graphics.
The two games are also notorious for their several drastic glitches, among them the fabled MissingNo., Glitch City, and the Mew glitch. Despite this, the glitches are arguably minimal points of criticism due to the reward value that comes from their activation, such as the multiplication of a player's sixth item that happens when MissingNo. is encountered.
Koffing's Red and Blue sprite Koffing's Generation V sprite
Soundtrack
The soundtrack release for Pokémon Red, Green, and Blue also applies to Pokémon Red and Blue.
Staff
Main article: Staff of Pokémon Red and Blue
Trivia
In other languages
Language Title French Canada Pokémon Version bleue *
Pokémon version bleue * Europe Pokémon Version Rouge et Version Bleue German Pokémon Rote Edition und Blaue Edition Italian Pokémon Versione Rossa e Versione Blu Brazilian Portuguese Pokémon Versão Vermelha e Versão Azul Spanish Pokémon Edición Roja y Edición Azul
See also
ReferencesA North Vancouver man has been reunited with some precious heirlooms after a homeless man found and returned them recently.
When thieves broke into Glen Lancaster's home in May, ironically, the only thing they made off with was a floor safe plastered with a sign declaring there were no valuables inside and that the safe was "not worth stealing."
article continues below
"It had a big sign slapped on it but obviously they're illiterate thieves or they thought they hit the motherlode," Lancaster said.
Inside, the safe contained mainly documents, passports and an album of old family photo negatives.
After the theft, "I'd written these off. I had no expectation I'd ever see them again," he said.
Then Lancaster got a call on Aug. 29 from a stranger saying he'd found the safe in a ravine near the North Shore Emergency Shelter.
Tim Storey, 42, and living currently without a job or permanent home, was searching for bottles and cans when he happened by the safe. Its contents had been scattered about and exposed to the elements. But Storey could make
out the names on them and sought out a phone book and payphone to let Lancaster know about his find.
The two met up and Lancaster learned Storey stays at the North Shore shelter when there's room and in his truck when there's not. Storey had been working as a landscaper but work dried up just a few days earlier.
Together, they located the only irreplaceable items from the theft, miraculously protected from the rain.
"I had a bunch of negatives from when I was a child growing up in South Africa - black and white photography from my dad," Lancaster said. "I learned photography from my dad and we used to develop them in the backyard. These are of really high sentimental value. That's why they were in the fire safe. I thought they were gone."
Now, grateful for the second chance, Lancaster said he's going to have the negatives scanned and digitized so they can't be lost again - something he'd been promising himself for a long time.
"I said to Tim 'This is amazing. This weekend is my birthday and this is the best birthday gift I could ever receive.'" Lancaster said Storey never once asked for money and that he was mainly just happy to have helped. Lancaster compensated him anyway.
Beyond that, Lancaster is trying to find more consistent work for Storey who is fit enough to climb the Grouse Grind twice a week.
"Sometimes you really get a shock in life. You get all your preconceptions shattered and that was him. He was a remarkably altogether guy," Lancaster said.
"I think he's done an amazing thing and I think somewhere, somebody can find him a job. This guy deserves a break.... The result just restored all faith I have in humanity. What a guy," Lancaster said.
The North Shore News attempted to track down Storey but had no luck.
North Vancouver RCMP have concluded their investigation into the theft. No charges have been laid.A little over a week ago, Gmail made it possible to “go offline” and take the contents of your email archive wherever you like. Slate’s technology columnist, Farhad Manjoo, wrote an effusive piece declaring Gmail the victor in a battle between desktop email clients and webmail that’s been raging since the mid-1990s:
“Gmail has bested the Outlooks of the world […] If you’re still tied to a desktop app—whether Outlook, the Mac’s Mail program, or anything else that sees your local hard drive, rather than a Web server, as its brain—then you’re doing it wrong.”
Self-described “pixel-pusher” and member of the greater Twitter Mac cabal, Neven Mrgan, retorted with this gem:
“Well, I’m convinced. I guess I’ll just switch to an email client that doesn’t allow me to drag a goddamn file into the message to attach it.”
While chuckle-worthly, this isn’t strictly true: it’s possible to drag a file onto any file -type input form element in Safari, and the site-specific browser Mailplane makes more general drag-n-drop possible with Gmail on a Mac. Neven’s commment does, however, illustrate the core problem with email clients, desktop or web-based: they’re all utter failures at something.
The Problem With Desktop Email Clients
Manjoo is more than right in claiming that Gmail has bested desktop email clients on most fronts. He talks about Gmail’s speed, its efficiency, that the user doesn’t have to worry about storage, about how its search actually works. Weirdly, though, he doesn’t elaborate on one of Gmail’s best design decisions: conversations.
Gmail presents email threads as one long conversation, starting with the |
Argentina. Certain areas of glacial ice take on a bluish hue due to light refraction. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is the third largest ice field in the world. The majority of the almost 50 large glaciers in Los Glaciares National Park have been retreating during the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in ice caps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) SANTA CRUZ PROVINCE, ARGENTINA - NOVEMBER 28: An iceberg broken off from a melting glacier floats in Lake Argentino, which holds runoff water from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest ice field in the world, on November 28, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. The majority of the almost fifty large glaciers in the surrounding Los Glaciares National Park have been retreating over the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in icecaps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) SANTA CRUZ PROVINCE, ARGENTINA - NOVEMBER 29: Melting glacial ice floats in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on November 29, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Certain areas of glacial ice take on a bluish hue due to light refraction. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is the third largest ice field in the world. The majority of the almost 50 large glaciers in Los Glaciares National Park have been retreating during the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in ice caps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) SANTA CRUZ PROVINCE, ARGENTINA - NOVEMBER 28: An iceberg broken off from a melting glacier floats in Lake Argentino, which holds runoff water from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest ice field in the world, on November 28, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Certain areas of glacial ice take on a blueish hue due to light refraction. The majority of the almost fifty large glaciers in the surrounding Los Glaciares National Park have been retreating over the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in icecaps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) SANTA CRUZ PROVINCE, ARGENTINA - NOVEMBER 29: Melted glacial ice floats in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on November 29, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Certain areas of glacial ice take on a bluish hue due to light refraction. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is the third largest ice field in the world. The majority of the almost 50 large glaciers in Los Glaciares National Park have been retreating during the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in ice caps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) SANTA CRUZ PROVINCE, ARGENTINA - NOVEMBER 29: The Perito Moreno glacier stands in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on November 29, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Certain areas of glacial ice take on a bluish hue due to light refraction. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is the third largest ice field in the world. The majority of the almost 50 large glaciers in Los Glaciares National Park have been retreating during the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in ice caps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) SANTA CRUZ PROVINCE, ARGENTINA - NOVEMBER 28: Runoff cascades from the edge of Heim glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest ice field in the world, on November 28, 2015 in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. The majority of the almost fifty large glaciers in the park have been retreating over the past fifty years due to warming temperatures, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The United States Geological Survey reports that over 68 percent of the world's freshwater supplies are locked in icecaps and glaciers. The United Nations climate change conference begins November 30 in Paris. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
Trump, a New York real estate developer who has never held elected office, has described climate change as a hoax and vowed to pull the United States out of the deal negotiated in Paris in 2015 to cut global greenhouse gas emissions. But in an interview with the New York Times in November, Trump said he was keeping an open mind on whether to pull out of the accord.
"I'm not going to speculate about the policies that our President-elect and his Secretary of State will choose to pursue, but I will tell you this... some issues look a lot different when you're actually in office compared to when you're on the campaign trail," Kerry said at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
"The truth is that climate change shouldn't be a partisan issue. It's an issue that all of us should care about, regardless of political affiliation."
SEE ALSO: Here's what Obama said when asked if he likes Trump
The U.S. Senate this week is due to begin the process of confirming Trump's political appointments, including proposed Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, who has repeatedly challenged the agency's authority in the courts.
Many Republicans in Congress argue environmental regulations slow business growth and job creation, both expected to be top priorities for the Trump administration.
Kerry referenced a U.S. intelligence report published on Monday that listed climate change among the factors that could raise the risk of conflict between nations.
Obama on Monday echoed the message in an article published in Science magazine.
Kerry called on researchers and students at MIT to keep up their work on improving energy efficiency and inventing new energy sources, regardless of government policies.
"It's going to be innovators, researchers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders... who will continue to create the technological advances that forever revolutionize the way we power our world," Kerry said. "Every person in this room – indeed, every person on the planet – has an interest in making sure that transition happens as quickly as possible."
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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Trump's Cabinet picks appear to have wildly diverging views on Russia
California lawmakers hire Eric Holder for fights with Trump AdministrationTerms and Conditions
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The work is in secret now, so we don't know what sites the group might be pushing.
Cleveland is going after the Amazon headquarters bid
But we have a suggestion. Drop everything and focus on Burke Lakefront Airport.
Think about it. What other city could offer Amazon such a jewel, a downtown site fronting on one of the Great Lakes, with public transportation running nearly to the doorstep.
Because a large part of Burke sits atop a landfill and can't support buildings, an Amazon headquarters there could be surrounded by a huge, lush park, with biking and hiking trails sure to appeal to the kinds of workers drawn to Amazon.
Offering Amazon the Burke site would give Cleveland an immediate leg up on the competition. Every other site that might be considered in Cleveland would be similar to offerings elsewhere.
We've talked in Cleveland for years about closing Burke and making it part of an active lakefront. When Jane Campbell became mayor in 2002, she electrified the region with her original lakefront vision, with hundreds of people attending meetings to dream about what Burke and the rest of the lakefront might be.
Campbell eventually caved to the pedestrian interests of downtown's corporate culture, which wanted to keep the airport. She and everyone else without the will to face off with the corporate leaders have used the Federal Aviation Administration as the crutch for keeping Burke open. The FAA, they all have said, would fine the city millions if it closed Burke.
So what? The FAA needs Cleveland. The city owns the international airport here, meaning the FAA cannot afford a broken relationship. The FAA can threaten and stomp its feet during discussions about Burke, but if the city were to close it, the FAA would come to the table to negotiate solutions.
Even if the city had to pay some money back to the FAA, that money could be figured into the budget for developing Burke as an Amazon headquarters and park serving the entire region.
We know some powerful people are resistant to this idea. They should get out of the way.
Burke is Cleveland's best shot at landing the Amazon headquarters, and it's about time we stopped wasting half of the downtown lakefront on a little-used airport serving a tiny population.
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Sixty-one scientists and engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory took out a full-page advertisement in The New Mexican, Santa Fe’s daily newspaper, to make their point with a letter addressed to the state’s Public Education Department.
“We strongly disagree with the proposed ‘New Mexico STEM-Ready Science Standards,’ ” the letter says. The changes would substitute the words “temperature fluctuations” for “global warming” and remove the age of Earth and “some of the discussion of evolution” from the Next Generation Science Standards, which are used by 18 states and Washington, D.C.
See the full letter and list of scientists here.
New Mexico’s acting secretary for education said the proposed standards would allow students to form opinions, KOB-4 reported. “If we’re going to build critical thinkers, we want to make sure we’re not imposing our values on our kids, that our kids are actually getting the chance to make up their minds for themselves,” Secretary-Designate Christopher Ruszkowski told the station.
But, wrote the scientists, “Understanding the human causes of climate change, biological common ancestry and natural selection, and Earth’s slow transformations are all essential to modern scientific literacy. There is absolutely no scientific rationale for weakening the treatment of these subjects.”
The policy committee of the Albuquerque School Board, which presides over the state’s largest district, also voted to sign a letter in opposition to the standards, according to NM Political Report. One board member said the letter was needed to let teachers know they can teach “real science,” the Associated Press reported.
Other education and science-related groups, including the school boards of Los Alamos and Santa Fe, the faculty senate at New Mexico Tech, the New Mexico Science Teachers’ Association, the state branch of the National Education Association, the National Science Teachers Association, and the National Association of Biology Teachers, also oppose the proposed changes, as do several major newspapers in the state, the National Center for Science Education reported.
The New Mexico Public Education Department is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the standards Oct. 16 in Santa Fe.
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$70.00 + shipping Interior IllustrationWatercolorAvailable in a Limited Edition Lithograph19"x24"$70.00 + shippingMy old bedroom closet in my parents’ house is a tribute to the follies of youth, boasting a fraction of a self-authored Choose Your Own Adventure book, an elaborate hermit crab maze, and the result of a severely misguided attempt to make my own shoes. But among the weird projects and pointless schemes (yes, I recorded and graphed exactly how quickly my hermit crab traversed the maze, and I did this exactly twice before becoming bored with it), I recently discovered a 20-year-old file related to my college applications. And damn, was it well organized.
Every school had its own section, beginning with a chart of what was due when. How many recommendation letters and from whom? How many essay topics and with what word limits? Drafts in progress; brochures; and no fewer than seven thick, dog-eared college guides—I may not have authored a peer-reviewed paper about the hermit crab maze (“The Effects of Human Adolescent Exuberance on Unfortunate Coenobita clypeatus”), but when it came to applying to college, I was deliberate and thorough.
I remember hurriedly filling out a paper copy of one school’s application, even though most of the process had moved online, just so I could complete it during a long bus ride and mail it at a rest stop. Somehow this did not get me into Harvard.
Compare that to my graduate school applications 4 years later.
I was a senior in college, juggling the demands of course work, lab work, and—there’s no easy way to say this—marching band. I knew I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in some kind of molecular biology, or maybe bioengineering, but without the time to make a massive file box—or, let’s be honest, my mother to encourage me to make a massive file box—I did a much sloppier job. I remember hurriedly filling out a paper copy of one school’s application, even though most of the process had moved online, just so I could complete it during a long bus ride and mail it at a rest stop. Somehow this did not get me into Harvard.
Applying to college is a delicate, complicated procedure that can be mastered, but for most of us, applying to grad school is like, “Wait—shoot—uh-oh!” For the benefit of all of you applying to science graduate programs, I’m going to confess my mistakes in the hopes that you can avoid following in my footsteps—footsteps which, you’ll note, are not encased in self-made shoes.
I had no plan for choosing which departments to apply to. Was bioengineering different from biomedical engineering? Why were molecular biology and biochemistry a single department at some schools but two departments at others? What the hell was biophysics? And if a school had two identical departments at different campuses—for example, the Department of Molecular Biology at the medical school and the Department of Molecular Biology at the main campus—how were those different?
So, instead of choosing based on actual information, I chose based on website prettiness. At Washington University in St. Louis, for example, I applied to the Department of Molecular Genetics. Why? Because it had cooler animated GIFs of a rotating DNA double helix than the other schools. And I don’t even really like genetics.
I used my essay to espouse my philosophy of life. Somehow, this didn’t seem pretentious at the time. But it absolutely was. I talked about what the world’s most pressing scientific problems were, in the opinion of my 20-year-old self who was still learning what tequila did, and how I would solve them. I probably used the term “moral obligation,” and there’s a good chance I italicized it. (I can’t know for sure, because the remnants of those essays are stuck on the hard drive of a Dell Pentium desktop that last successfully turned on during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom.) In other words, I wrote like someone who knew he wanted to do Important Things but couldn’t be bothered to pin down exactly what they were.
I devoted a good 3 minutes to learning what each lab did. Many schools asked me to list professors whose labs I’d like to join and why. Again, Google to the rescue (or maybe it was AltaVista back then). I glanced at each professor’s Web page and then picked the ones with the fewest obscure abbreviations.
I listed accolades that, it should have been immediately apparent, weren’t overly impressive. I can picture the admissions committee now: “Oh, really? In the marching band, you were both the drum major and the drill master? Clearly we ought to explore options for paying you a double stipend.”
I sucked up. I said I would feel “honored” and “privileged” to work in their department, and while this may have been true, it made me sound like exactly what I was: a clueless undergrad. Of course arrogance is worse, but it never helps to declare that you occupy a lower stratum.
I listed every lab technique I had ever performed, regardless of whether I had performed it more than once. There’s a big difference between someone who does a yeast two-hybrid screen as part of Lab Exercise #8 and someone who does it regularly. I had hoped to obfuscate that difference. During the interviews, that obfuscation could have been detected pretty easily: “Uh, yeast two-hybrid screen? I don’t remember the protocol, but I can tell you it was worth 25 points.”
I sought a recommendation from a professor who barely knew me. He was nice enough to write something, though I have no idea what. Probably: “Adam is a student in my seminar class. We have only had four sessions of this class so far, and no assignments were due. It’s quite possible that he has a goatee. Therefore, I strongly recommend Adam to pursue a Ph.D. in your esteemed department.”
I took the GRE Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology subject test. That’s it. Taking the test was the whole mistake, because this test was a freaking beast. Here’s a sample question:
A protein you’ve never heard of binds most strongly to which of the following?
This ligand you’ve never heard of This other ligand you’ve never heard of Is this one even a ligand? Oh, good, you’ve heard of this ligand, but that doesn’t help Make sure you have a safety school
Despite these mistakes, and even though I was rejected from several of my top-choice programs, I still managed to land a few interviews. Hooray! It was time to truly research these departments in depth, right?
Nope. It was time to do a few more experiments with tequila (conclusion: It’s just bad all around) and enjoy some reimbursed campus visits. So let’s add one more mistake:
I assessed each campus based on “how it felt.” That seemed right at the time, but it really wasn’t. During the recruitment weekends, I appreciated the quality of the free food and the niceness of the junior faculty, but I completely neglected the most important question: Is there a lab in which I’m likely to enjoy spending more than 10,000 hours?
So how did I eventually select my graduate program? I carefully considered what each department had to offer, debated which would serve me best in my career, and then committed to a school geographically close to my girlfriend. Then we broke up.
All in all, my choice didn’t end disastrously. The biggest downside, I now know, was that I was a translational scientist who joined a basic science department, and that led to some disappointment:
ME: Hey, your research is cool. What would you say is its practical use?
THEM: Practical use? Ha ha ha ha ha! What are you, a grant application?
And while it’s always good for a translational scientist to have some grounding in basic science, I never really liked the “We’re researching this because it’s there” department seminars.
Despite the missteps, I have the Ph.D. now, and no one at my current job ever asks why I chose one graduate program or another. I may have screwed up the graduate admissions process 14 years ago, but these things have a way of mattering less as time progresses—if you thrive wherever you end up.
So if you’re applying to grad school, learn from my carelessness. Research the programs and the people who work there as thoroughly as possible. Focus on the science. Don’t write like an undergrad, but don’t write like you think you’re a Nobel laureate, either. Cultivate relationships that can inspire genuine recommendation letters.
And if you must speak of your involvement in marching band, let it work itself organically into conversation. (“So you say the professors in your department are generally sharp but pay no attention to dynamics? That reminds me of a certain trombone section ….”)
Read more Experimental Error storiesMore than three-quarters of Americans surveyed think that beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program should be allowed to stay in the United States, according to a Morning Consult/Politico poll.
Seventy-six percent of respondents said the government should allow immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to remain. 58 percent of that 76 percent believe they should be able to become citizens if they meet certain requirements, while 18 percent said they should be allowed to become legal residents.
Only 15 percent of respondents said such immigrants — commonly called "Dreamers" — should be deported, the poll found.
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE announced Tuesday that the Trump administration would end DACA, which provided temporary protection from deportation for immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children.
The Trump administration said the program would end in six months, a delay designed to give lawmakers time to act on the matter.
The Morning Consult/Politico poll found that, while support for allowing DACA recipients to remain in the U.S. was highest among Democrats at 84 percent, 69 percent of Republicans surveyed also favor such a policy.
President Trump had faced questions over the future of DACA since he took office in January. In the week before the administration's announcement on the program, several high-profile Republican lawmakers said the president should not move to end it, including House Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.).
After announcing on Tuesday he would end the program, Trump called on lawmakers to resolve DACA legislatively.
The Morning Consult/Politico poll was conducted from Aug. 31 through Sept. 3 and surveyed 1,993 registered voters nationwide. Its margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.Robert Galbraith / Reuters
Have you ever thought about riding your horse to the McDonald’s drive-thru? Last Saturday a woman didn’t just think about it – she did it. But when she and her daughter showed up around lunch time on horseback at the drive-thru in Whitefield, England, they were both turned away.
That’s when things got ugly. Denied at the drive-thru, the woman led her horse inside the restaurant, where the animal promptly defecated on the floor. The staff called the police, and the woman was fined, as the Mirror News reports. “The sight & smell of this caused obvious distress and upset to customers trying to eat, as well as staff members,” the Whitefield division of the Greater Manchester Police noted in a Facebook post.
McDonald’s said in a statement reported by the BBC, “The health and safety of our customers and staff is our top priority, and for this reason we are unable to serve pedestrians, bicycle riders or customers on horseback through the drive-thru,”
Note to self: next time, take the car.
MORE: Horse Meat Found in Irish Beef Burgers
MORE: McDonalds Adding Calorie-Count to Menus, Drive ThrusMITCHELL Johnson has confirmed today is his last as an international cricketer.
One of Australia’s greatest ever fast bowlers has decided to walk away after contemplating retirement intensely for the past couple of months.
An emotional Johnson broke down in tears after day four, and last night told teammates of his decision in the dressing rooms, where players remained for more than two hours.
Long-term manager Sam Halvorsen also entered the Australian sheds after play and Johnson’s brother was on hand to watch yesterday’s action.
DAY 5 LIVE: Can Aussies send Mitch out a winner
The strain of making the call on his future has clearly taken its toll on the 34-year-old over recent days, but he retires after 73 Tests as the country’s fourth highest Test wicket-taker with 311 scalps.
Johnson’s series-sweeping 37 wickets at an average of 13.97 in the Ashes series two summers ago will live large in Australian cricketing folklore forever.
SUPER SEVEN: The bowling spells that made Mitch a legend
TRIBUTE: He was an absolute nightmare to face - Smith
“I feel now is the best time to say goodbye,” Johnson said.
“I have been lucky enough to have had a wonderful career and enjoyed every moment of playing for my country. It’s been an incredible ride.
“But the ride has to come to an end at some point and to do so here at the WACA is very special.
“I’ve given the decision a lot of thought. Beyond this match, I’m just not sure that I can continue competing consistently at the level required to wear the Baggy Green.”
Johnson will also cease representing Australia in one-day and Twenty20 cricket, however, there is the possibility the left-armer will continue to make himself available for the IPL.
The boy from Townsville’s career has had its highs and lows.
It seemed Johnson’s Test career may have been over after he was left out of the 2013 Ashes tour of England.
But his stunning resurgence just six months later in the home series against England defined Johnson as one of the country’s finest ever bowlers.
Johnson was feared for his electrifying pace and ability to terrify batsmen — with the likes of Jonathan Trott, Graeme Swann and Matt Prior all virtually forced into retirement after the carnage that was the 2013-14 Ashes.
He sits behind only Dennis Lillee (355), Glenn McGrath (563) and Shane Warne (708) on the list of Australia’s greatest wicket-takers.
One of cricket’s genuine superstars, Johnson was part of the 2007 World Cup-winning squad before starring in Australia’s champion XI earlier this year at the MCG.
Johnson said he owed everything to his family and teammates.
“My career has certainly had its up and downs but I can honestly say I have given it my all and am proud of everything I have achieved,” he said.
“To win an Ashes series and a cricket World Cup is something I will treasure forever.
“My family have been by my side throughout and I could not have achieved all I have without their support. They have made a lot of sacrifices, especially my beautiful wife Jess who has provided me with unconditional support, and I am incredibly grateful for that.
“They say the greatest thing about playing sport is the friends you make along the way and I have been fortunate enough to play and work with some incredible people and have cemented lifelong friendships.
“I would certainly like to thank the people of Australia, and all those around the world, who have supported me. The encouragement I have received has been extremely humbling and playing in front of them is certainly something I will miss.”
Johnson debuted way back in 2007 at the Gabba and peaked back in 2013-14 when his speed and aggression saw him claim 59 wickets in eight Tests against England and South Africa at an average of 15.23.
It led to Johnson winning his first Allan Border Medal aged 32.
“Dennis Lillee was certainly right many years ago when he identified a young Mitchell Johnson as a future great of Australian cricket,” said Cricket Australia chairman David Peever.
“In many ways the sight of Mitchell as a moustached tearaway conjured memories of Lillee at his peak, not just in appearance, but for some of the most devastating fast bowling ever produced by an Australian.
“There have been countless highlights, but no one will ever forget his incredible performance in the 2013-14 Ashes when he took that series by storm, only to repeat those efforts soon after in the history-making win over South Africa in South Africa.
“I am sure there are many batsmen around the world breathing a sigh of relief right now, knowing that they no longer have to face him.
“He leaves the game as one of our all-time great bowlers and as an excellent example to young Australians about what they can achieve through hard work and dedication to their chosen craft.”
RECORD
Tests: 73
Wkts: 311
Avg: 28.10
5w/i: 12
10w/m: 3
ODIs: 153
Wkts: 239
Avg: 25.26
4w/i: 9
5w/i: 3A lively debate emerged on the proposed “Connected Continent” legislative package presented by the European Commission in September 2013. The package contains a proposed rule on the ‘open Internet’, which was heavily discussed in European Parliament hearings in early December. This commentary argues that while the proposed rule is in principle balanced and appealing, it is utterly impractical due to the enormous uncertainty that its application would entail. At the same time, the rule is very far from what neutrality proponents have argued for almost a decade: rather than the place for internet freedom, it would transform the Web into a place requiring constant micro-management and tutoring of user behaviour. Both arguments lead to the conclusion that the current proposal should be at once reformed and analysed under a more holistic lens. On the one hand, Europe should launch an ambitious project for the future, converged infrastructure by mobilising resources and reforming rules to encourage investment into ubiquitous, converged, ‘always on’ connectivity. On the other hand, enhanced legal certainty for broadband investment could justify a more neutrality-oriented approach to traffic management practices on the Internet. The author proposes a new approach to Internet regulation which, altogether, will lead to a more balanced and sustainable model for the future, without jeopardising user freedom.
Andrea Renda is Senior Research Fellow at CEPS.The Pirates of the Caribbean almost sunk Zoe Saldana's acting career.
The now-pregnant actress, 36, sat down for an extended interview with The Hollywood Reporter, which ran on Wednesday, July 23, and admitted that filming the 2003 blockbuster was traumatic. Saldana appeared in the hugely successful action-adventure flick as a female pirate named Anamaria, starring alongside Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp, and Keira Knightley.
PHOTOS: Zoe at the Met Gala
"Those weren't the right people for me — I'm not talking about the cast," she told the Hollywood Reporter. "The cast was great. I'm talking about the political stuff that went on behind closed doors. It was a lot of above-the-line versus below-the-line, extras versus actors, producers versus PAs."
"It was very elitist," Saldana continued. "I almost quit the business. I was 23 years old, and I was like, 'F—-k this!' I am never putting myself in this situation again. People disrespecting me because they look at my number on a call sheet and they think I'm not important. F–k you."
PHOTOS: Zoe's best style moments
Thankfully for Saldana and her many fans, she clearly did not follow through on her urge to throw in the towel. Next week, she hits the big screen in Guardians of the Galaxy, after high-profile roles in mega-franchises such as Avatar and Star Trek.
This isn't the first time that Saldana has spoken less-than-favorably about her time filming the big-budget pirate movie.
PHOTOS: Zoe at the Golden Globes
In August 2011, she told The Independent, "I didn't like the experience of working on Pirates and I feel that it is my job to be completely honest. To me, that's what a Hollywood movie felt like. If that's what I have to witness, and have to go through, to do a Hollywood movie, I'd rather do something else… It was just too massive. You really felt the immensity of it. Just not my taste."
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Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now!The FBI is investigating a website that appears to contain a manifesto by the white supremacist Dylann Roof, who is suspected of shooting dead nine black churchgoers in South Carolina.
Charleston shooting: Confederate flag at heart of growing political storm Read more
The provenance of the website, which contains a cache of photographs of the 21-year-old, some in which he holds firearms and others in which he stands beside the Confederate flag, has not been confirmed.
However federal agents are investigating the website, a law enforcement source has told the Guardian. The FBI is preparing a statement for public release imminently.
The website also contains what appears to be a manifesto that, if authentic, would shed light on the thoughts that led Roof to massacre black worshippers at a Bible study group at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday.
The apparent manifesto states: “I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight.
“I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet.
“Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
Dylann Roof talked of 'hurting a bunch of people' before shootings, says friend Read more
The author also writes that they were “truly awakened” by the case of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by George Zimmerman in Florida three years ago.
Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch leader, was acquitted of murdering the 17-year-old teenager but the case became a touchstone for debates over racial discrimination in the US.
“It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right,” the author of the manifesto writes on a website that Roof appears to have created, entitled Last Rhodesian. “But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words ‘black on white crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day.”
The website, which is filled with offensive racist diatribe, also contains 60 photographs, 34 of which are of Roof. In one picture, he is shown burning an American flag |
cited in the petition, include starting the longest war in U.S. history for largely unjustifiable reasons; opening the extra-legal detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, where political detainees have been imprisoned without being charged with crimes; and overseeing a program of human-rights violations that included physical and psychological torture at black sites around the world and at the Baghdad prison Abu Ghraib.
Dean Hill didn’t immediately respond to messages left by The Colorado Independent with his office at 5 p.m. last night. At 6 p.m., however, his office sent out a letter to members of the DU community about the award.
Communications Director Kim DeVigil then contacted The Colorado Independent to say it is tradition that Korbel honors speakers at its annual dinner with an award.
“Initially we chose the title ‘Improving the Human Condition’ – a phrase that has been in the Josef Korbel School lexicon for several years,” she said. “We realize that this name does not clearly communicate the purpose of this recognition,” which, she explained, is why the school is in the process of choosing a new name for the award.
DeVigil said the school is also adjusting the focus of the award, honoring Bush for his “service as the 43rd president of the United States.” Critics of the decision say they’re disillusioned that financial needs seem to have trumped the traditional values and motivation in choosing an honoree.
Hill addressed those criticisms in his email. “We live in difficult times in which fundamental institutions such as the presidency are sometimes not respected,” he wrote.
[Image of Bush via Change.org.]
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story said Dean Hill was ambassador to Iraq under Bush. He was in fact appointed to Iraq by President Obama. As the story now reports, Hill served as Bush ambassador to Poland and Korea.TL Map Contest 6 TL Open Text by Teoita Graphics by v1
TLMC6 began with over one hundred maps. After the success by the last TLMC Open, we decided we'd run another tournament, trying to fit it before the voting process this time. We are very excited about all the finalists, which we will announce soon, and are looking forward to see how they will play out!
DATE
Sunday, May 10 5:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00)
PRIZES
1st $100
2nd $50
3rd & 4th $25
REGISTRATION
REGISTER HERE
Registration opens on Monday, May 04 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) [ ]
Players may register up until one hour before the tournament begins. That is, they may register until Sunday, May 10 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00). After that, players will be required to check-in to confirm that they will be attending. Check-in occurs between Sunday, May 10 4:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00) and Sunday, May 10 4:55pm GMT (GMT+00:00). Players must both sign up before check-in time and check-in within the 55 minute period to enter the tournament.
To register, go to this page, click on the word "Register" at the top of the page and complete the online registration form. After you fully and accurately complete the registration form you will be registered to compete in the tournament.
RULES Some Key Rules can be found below:
The tournament will be held on the North America Server.
. Players will not be permitted to use a Barcode for their Battle.Net Account name.
Sign ups for this tournament are completely open, and spots are first come first served
There will be a maximum of 256 players
The rounds of 256 and 128 will be Best of One
Every round thereafter will be BO3 with the finals being a BO5.
The first map of every round will be pre-determined with following maps in a series being loser's pick from the round of 64 onwards.
Players caught cheating will be disqualified.
Semi Finals series will be played one after the other followed by the Finals
Battle.Net Chat Channel will be: TLMC6 Open
A full set of rules can be found here.
MAP ORDER BY ROUND
Round of 128 Bridgehead
Round of 64 Dash and Terminal Round of 32 Ecosphere
Round of 16 Moonlight Madness Round of 8 Mutiny
Semi Finals Noah's Ark
Finals Terraform
CASTING We are pleased to announce that once again we have officially partnered with BaseTradeTV, who will provide the primary English stream. Both semi-finals and finals matches will be thanks to their glorious casting.
For the rounds of 256 until the final four, we will allow community casters to help provide additional coverage not provided by our main casting partners. If you are interested in being a community caster please PM Teoita. to apply!
Community Casters:
So far the community casters are:
HeyImFinn - FinN#875
HybridTV - CreatorPrime #489
IESN - urkukan#359/blooddrop#621
Seeker - Seeker#350
Thank You!
The TeamLiquid Strategy Team would like to take this opportunity to thank all participants ahead of time! We would also like to thank the mapmakers for all their entries into TLMC6. Without you we wouldn't be able to put on an event such as this.
Mussolini Mod Protoss all-ins are like a wok. You can throw whatever you want in there and it will turn out alright.
Heyoka Profile Blog Joined March 2008 Temple of EE-Sama 22468 Posts Last Edited: 2015-05-07 22:28:56 #2 We'll be announcing the final winners of the map contest on the 8th (PST) so stay tuned for the actual maps you will play on!
STAY TUNED I SAY @RealHeyoka | DreamHack Head of StarCraft
The_Templar Profile Blog Joined January 2011 THE FUTURE 52439 Posts #3 I'm hyped. Moderator I'm actually a
eTcetRa Profile Joined November 2010 Australia 816 Posts #4 Super HYPE~~!
Seriously, looking forward to seeing all the potentially amazing games I can on some new maps. Retired Mapmaker™
GGzerG Profile Blog Joined January 2010 United States 9295 Posts #5 Oh my god, can we please host one on a day that TelecoM doesn't work? >_< NOooo so sad.... I want to play in these so bad T_T....oh well GO TL! AKA: TelecoM[WHITE] Protoss fighting
Meavis Profile Blog Joined September 2011 Netherlands 1283 Posts #6 On May 08 2015 02:38 Heyoka wrote:
We'll be announcing the final winners of the map contest later today so stay tuned for the actual maps you will play on!
STAY TUNED I SAY
>.> you tease >.> you tease Ex organizer of Starcraft Mapmaking Association, currently retired.
GreenMash Profile Joined August 2012 Norway 1745 Posts #7 HYPE I love hellbats
OtherWorld Profile Blog Joined October 2013 France 17328 Posts #8 Wtf why release this before the winning maps Used Sigs - New Sigs - Cheap Sigs - Buy the Best Cheap Sig near You at www.cheapsigforsale.com
Heyoka Profile Blog Joined March 2008 Temple of EE-Sama 22468 Posts #9 So you know it's happening! You can get ready! Think of it like a save the date. But for StarCraft. @RealHeyoka | DreamHack Head of StarCraft
eTcetRa Profile Joined November 2010 Australia 816 Posts Last Edited: 2015-05-07 17:45:24 #10 On May 08 2015 02:43 OtherWorld wrote:
Wtf why release this before the winning maps
To tease the mapmakers more.
To tease the mapmakers more. On May 08 2015 02:44 Heyoka wrote:
So you know it's happening! You can get ready! Think of it like a save the date. But for StarCraft.
Or that, definitely maybe that. Maybe. Or that, definitely maybe that. Maybe. Retired Mapmaker™
Uvantak Profile Blog Joined June 2011 Uruguay 1380 Posts #11 On May 08 2015 02:44 eTcetRa wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 08 2015 02:43 OtherWorld wrote:
Wtf why release this before the winning maps
To tease the mapmakers more. To tease the mapmakers more.
I find it slightly unnecessary -.-; I find it slightly unnecessary -.-; @Kantuva | Mapmaker | KTVMaps.wordpress.com | Check my profile to see my TL map threads, and you can search for KTV in the Custom Games section to play them.
Zealously Profile Blog Joined October 2011 East Gorteau 21066 Posts #12 On May 08 2015 02:50 Uvantak wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 08 2015 02:44 eTcetRa wrote:
On May 08 2015 02:43 OtherWorld wrote:
Wtf why release this before the winning maps
To tease the mapmakers more. To tease the mapmakers more.
I find it slightly unnecessary -.-; I find it slightly unnecessary -.-;
I find it more than slightly entertaining I find it more than slightly entertaining Administrator Daniel Olsson
The_Templar Profile Blog Joined January 2011 THE FUTURE 52439 Posts #13 On May 08 2015 02:50 Uvantak wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 08 2015 02:44 eTcetRa wrote:
On May 08 2015 02:43 OtherWorld wrote:
Wtf why release this before the winning maps
To tease the mapmakers more. To tease the mapmakers more.
I find it slightly unnecessary -.-; I find it slightly unnecessary -.-;
No, it's definitely necessary No, it's definitely necessary Moderator I'm actually a
SidianTheBard Profile Joined October 2010 United States 2198 Posts Last Edited: 2015-05-07 18:14:02 #14 The teasssseee! I'm at work, I shouldn't be on atm, but I saw TL Open and was just like, omg maps! Clicked on it, no maps. Oh, this is just for the TL Open signup...rats!
Raaaage! Definitely tuning into this tournament though and can't wait til later tonight to see the maps! =) Creator of Abyssal Reef, Ascension to Aiur, Battle on the Boardwalk, Habitation Station, Honorgrounds, IPL Darkness Falls, King's Cove, Korhal Carnage Knockout & Moonlight Madness.
NasusAndDraven Profile Joined April 2015 358 Posts #15 On May 08 2015 02:50 Uvantak wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 08 2015 02:44 eTcetRa wrote:
On May 08 2015 02:43 OtherWorld wrote:
Wtf why release this before the winning maps
To tease the mapmakers more. To tease the mapmakers more.
I find it slightly unnecessary -.-; I find it slightly unnecessary -.-;
i find it extreamly rustling i find it extreamly rustling
fluidrone Profile Blog Joined January 2015 France 1356 Posts #16 #In before awesome "not enough rights"
varsovie Profile Joined December 2013 Canada 323 Posts #17 Why announcing the tournament BEFORE the map contest result?
I like the idea as it gives some visibility to maps. :D
Teoita Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Italy 11453 Posts Last Edited: 2015-05-07 18:52:00 #18 On May 08 2015 02:43 OtherWorld wrote:
Wtf why release this before the winning maps
Beacase we wanted to let people know and register in advance mostly. Beacase we wanted to let people know and register in advance mostly. Mussolini Mod Protoss all-ins are like a wok. You can throw whatever you want in there and it will turn out alright.
GumBa Profile Blog Joined July 2012 United Kingdom 29334 Posts #19 Might sign up for this! What a legendary performance! Serral the god... The undeniable best player in the world, and current Blizzcon champion. All of the Koreaboos (white guys cheering for koreans and sleeping with anime pillows) are left in shambles.
Gwavajuice Profile Joined June 2014 France 1810 Posts #20 Map winners will be decided again before the tournament? can't we just have the finalist and than base the votes on what will be seen during the tournament? or is it too difficult to set up? Dear INno and all the former STX boys.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Next AllAs you might be aware of the fact that Motorola will be releasing more and more Moto Mods in the near future. The company might release few new Moto Mods
including a tablet-dock Mod, a GamePad Mod, new Style Shells, Moto-Mods Charger, and Power Pack Mod,
this week.
Earlier today
Hellomotohk gave us an early look at the upcoming P
ower Pack Mod. Now, thanks to
Louie Chan from Microblogging website Weibo,
here's our first look at the Next generation Moto Style Shells
for the Moto Z Phones.
These Next Gen Style shells do looks beautiful and comes with stunning new backgrounds. These style shells will be available globally and might launch this week,
if the sources are believed to be true.
Fow now, the Moto Style Shell are available in premium materials like real wood, leather, and patterned fabric.
Via: Louie ChanStory highlights The women gathered their veils and scarves in a pile and set it ablaze
The act is highly symbolic in the conservative Muslim nation
A protester accused Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime of killing women and children
She said women would not tolerate silence from tribal leaders
Yemeni women defiantly burned their traditional veils Wednesday in protest of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.
Thousands of women gathered in the capital, Sanaa, said witnesses. They carried banners that read: "Saleh the butcher is killing women and is proud of it" and "Women have no value in the eyes in Ali Saleh."
They collected their veils and scarves in a huge pile and set it ablaze -- an act that is highly symbolic in the conservative Islamic nation, where women use their veils to cover their faces and bodies. It's the first time in the nine months of Yemen's uprising that such an event has occurred.
Inspired by Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman's Nobel Peace Prize this month, more and more Yemeni women have taken to the streets and escalated their campaign for help from the international community.
More than 60 women were attacked in October alone by the government, said protester Ruqaiah Nasser. Government forces are raiding homes and also killing children, she said.
She said silence from tribal leaders on the matter is a "disgrace."
JUST WATCHED Yemen's youth continue calls for change Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Yemen's youth continue calls for change 02:39
JUST WATCHED Clashes in Taiz left woman dead Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Clashes in Taiz left woman dead 01:57
JUST WATCHED Clashes in Yemen turn deadly Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Clashes in Yemen turn deadly 01:53
JUST WATCHED What's behind escalating Yemen violence? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH What's behind escalating Yemen violence? 01:36
"We will not stay quiet and will defend ourselves if our men can't defend us," Nasser said. "Tribes must understand they will not be respected by Yemeni women if they stay quiet while their women are being attacked by the Saleh regime. Tribes who ignore our calls are cowards and have no dignity."
"Saleh is killing women and children and this is against tribal culture," she said. "Where are their voices when we need them? It's a disgrace if they stay quiet."
The women's protests came after the Yemeni government announced a cease-fire Tuesday. But that did not appear to be holding.
At least 10 people died and dozens were injured earlier Tuesday in clashes between Yemeni government security forces in the country's capital and the province of Taiz, medical officials reported.
Yemen's government has said that opposition-supported militants are responsible for the violence.
Saleh summoned the U.S. ambassador and reiterated a promise to sign an agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council in which he would step aside in exchange for immunity from prosecution, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
However, Saleh has repeatedly promised to sign the council-backed deal and not done so. The embattled leader has clung to power through the protracted protests.A Colorado entrepreneur is pushing to make buying marijuana nearly as easy as shopping for heirloom tomatoes.
Justin Hartfield, the CEO of a Denver-based website that maps and collects reviews on marijuana dispensaries, is currently shepherding an initiative that would allow “organic cannabis farmers markets” in the city of Boulder.
Colorado legalized recreational weed in 2012, and regulators at the state level are working out the rules that brick-and-mortar recreational pot shops will have to follow when they open their doors next year. Hartfield wants local officials in Boulder to push even further, allowing the creation of markets like the ones now used to haggle over white asparagus and organic lavender.
“I got news for you: Marijuana is legal in Colorado,” Hartfield, a longtime marijuana activist, said. “It’s no longer a drug in a sense. It’s a plant. It’s a commodity. There’s no reason not to allow trade in it openly.”
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but federal authorities have mostly allowed medical marijuana dispensaries to exist in states where the drug has been legalized for that purpose. Now that Colorado and Washington have legalized the drug for recreational use, how federal authorities will respond is unclear.
Hartfield admits his idea -- first reported on by Boulder’s Daily Camera newspaper -- is likely to be “controversial,” but says it’s nothing more than a logical extension of the movement to make pot legal. His proposal envisions plots within agricultural areas in Boulder set up as secure spaces where cannabis growers would “showcase their products, introduce their customers to the growing operation, demonstrate their practices, and host community-oriented events that provide marketing opportunities.” From 26 to 99 vendors would be allowed.
Hartfield wants weed farmers markets to be legal in zoned agricultural areas in the city, shown in light green in the map above.
“It really is very similar to any other organic market,” Hartfield said. “The only difference is this plant has certain peculiarities that, say, a tomato doesn’t. Boulder has a rich history of organic markets, and Boulder is also a city in a state where cannabis is legal. It just makes sense.”
Several county and city officials interviewed by The Huffington Post weren’t so sure the plan would make sense under local regulations, but said they would be open to set the plan in motion if that happened to be the will of Boulder’s citizens. Mike Bunuelos, a spokesman for the City of Boulder, explained current regulations don’t allow anything but produce grown at an outdoor farm to be sold on agricultural land. That would make it illegal to set up ganja stalls in farm areas, since Colorado state regulations currently only allow for weed to be grown indoors.
“What they’re proposing is to sell a product in an agricultural zone, and under our current regulations that’s not allowed,” Bunuelos said. “We would have to change the current zoning legislation, and that would have to be a political process involving the City Council.”
Dale Case, director of the Boulder County Land Use Department, was more succinct: “The elected officials are the ones that would direct us to do something like this.”
Both municipal officials also noted that state regulations regarding retail sales of marijuana, which would supersede local rules in most instances, are still being hammered out.
That fact does not necessarily dissuade Hartfield, who is using the push for marijuana farmers’ markets to drive attention to one of his business ventures, a startup website called SimpleGov.com. The site, which promises people the ability to funnel all kinds of requests directly to city officials in their town, is hosting the Boulder petition.
Following a blast email to 300,000 people across the United States earlier this week, Hartfield’s plan for an outdoor kush bazaar had garnered 66 supporters on the site early Friday.
Hartfield said he’s aiming to start by getting local officials to simply comment on his plan.
In regards to regulations for marijuana sales, local officials in Colorado are “kind of punting, passing the buck on marijuana," he said.
"The [state marijuana legalization] laws are brand new, and haven’t been fully enacted yet," he said. "They’re waiting to see what it looks like, and we realize they really want to get it right. But we're pushing them to act on it."How should the criminal law respond to those who pass on sexually transmitted infections (STIs)? The answer to this question has become more pressing in light of the conviction of David Golding, who pleaded guilty at Northampton crown court to causing grievous bodily harm by passing on genital herpes to his former partner, Cara Lee.
Sentencing Golding to 14 months in jail, the judge said:
"Because it was in a relationship, it was particularly mean and one which amounted to a betrayal – a betrayal in a relationship in which you professed love … The injury you caused by this infection is at least or more serious than an injury leaving a scar because it carries continued recurrence, extreme discomfort and consequences for relationships she will have in the future."
Until this decision, the only convictions for transmitting STIs in England and Wales in recent times (bar one, for hepatitis B), have concerned HIV. In the case of Mohammed Dica in 2003, the court of appeal held that for a person to be liable for recklessly causing serious bodily harm by passing on the virus he must have known his HIV positive status at the relevant time. The following year, in the case of Feston Konzani, the same court explained that while a partner's consent to the risk of transmission was a valid defence, that consent had to be of an informed kind (in effect requiring prior disclosure).
These and other convictions have caused consternation in the community of people living with HIV, legal academics and the national organisations (including the National Aids Trust and the Terrence Higgins Trust) which represent their interests. While there is widespread acknowledgement of the importance of practising safer sex and disclosing HIV-positive status to sexual partners, there is similarly widespread international concern (from, for example, UNAids, IPPF and the Open Society Institute) about the adverse public health impact of deploying the criminal law as a response to transmission and the potential for miscarriages of justice.
For example, it is argued that because people can only be held criminally liable if they know their infected status this may operate as a disincentive to HIV testing, that the de facto obligation to disclose for the purpose of gaining consent may cause people to interpret non-disclosure of status by a partner as meaning that the partner is free from infection, and that limitations of forensic science (which cannot determine route, timing or source of transmission) mean that people may plead guilty when they are not.
Such concerns have resulted in a high-level global commission on HIV and the law and, more locally, the publication of guidance by the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales in 2007, the aim of which was to explain the factors that prosecutors should take into account when deciding whether or not to pursue a case. Among other things it highlighted the fact that scientific evidence alone is not conclusive and that practising safer sex would make establishing recklessness difficult. In its words:
"Prosecutors will need to take into account what the suspect considered to be the adequacy and appropriateness of the safeguards adopted; only where it can be shown that the suspect knew that such safeguards were inappropriate will it be likely that the prosecution would be able to prove recklessness."
The guidance is not HIV specific and applies to all cases involving alleged STI transmission, including infection with herpes, gonorrhoea, syphilis, chlamydia, hepatitis etc. So what's the problem?
First, irrespective of whether one agrees with criminalisation as a matter of principle, we have to question whether herpes simplex is a sufficiently serious condition to warrant 14 months immediate imprisonment (a sentence which would have been longer had Golding not pleaded guilty). Herpes is unpleasant, but it is manageable. Second, given the widespread incidence of herpes infection in the general population (70% have facial herpes (cold sores) and 10% genital herpes according to the Herpes Viruses Association) and that people may pass on the virus through "asymptomatic shedding", millions of people have been rendered potential criminals, including, presumably, those who pass on cold sores through kissing (how is "sexually transmitted" to be defined?). Third, given that herpes may be dormant for a long time, people may assume that it is a current partner who has transmitted it when in fact it was a previous one (the science is insufficient to establish that this is not the case), and people may ill-advisedly plead guilty when confronted with an allegation.
More generally, it is important to recognise that although the Crown Prosecution Service guidance relates to STIs there is no essential legal difference between a herpes virus that manifests itself as genital or facial sore and one that causes chickenpox. While some may be sympathetic to punishing those who infect sexual partners with an embarrassing and socially stigmatised condition, one suspects that far fewer would think it appropriate to criminalise a child above the age of criminal responsibility who infected a classmate with a normal childhood illness.
In addition, we might pause to reflect both as to why someone would think that going to the police and reporting a partner is seen as an appropriate response to discovering that one has an STI, and also that the law is prepared to respond in such a draconian way. Between 1888 (when there was a conviction for gonorrhea transmission) and 2003 there were no convictions for passing on an STI in England and Wales. Since then the number in this jurisdiction has increased significantly.
Sexually transmitted infections are a fact of life. They are things people would rather not have. Some are incurable but most, including HIV and herpes, are treatable and manageable. Criminalising people who have taken as much care as they are able to prevent onward transmission but are still treated in law as having been reckless does nothing to reinforce the message that we should take responsibility both for our own sexual health, as well as that of others. It does precisely the converse, and that is surely a bad and unhelpful thing.Origin Edit
Erik Verlinde's theory Edit
Derivation of the law of gravitation Edit
The law of gravitation is derived from classical statistical mechanics applied to the holographic principle, that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as N {\displaystyle N} bits of binary information, encoded on a boundary to that region, a closed surface of area A {\displaystyle A}. The information is evenly distributed on the surface with each bit requiring an area equal to ℓ P 2 {\displaystyle \ell _{\text{P}}^{2}}, the so-called Planck area, from which N {\displaystyle N} can thus be computed: N = A ℓ P 2 {\displaystyle N={\frac {A}{\ell _{\text{P}}^{2}}}} where ℓ P {\displaystyle \ell _{\text{P}}} is the Planck length. The Planck length is defined as: ℓ P = ℏ G c 3 {\displaystyle \ell _{\text{P}}={\sqrt {\frac {\hbar G}{c^{3}}}}} where G {\displaystyle G} is the universal gravitational constant, c {\displaystyle c} is the speed of light, and ℏ {\displaystyle \hbar } is the reduced Planck constant. When substituted in the equation for N {\displaystyle N} we find: N = A c 3 ℏ G {\displaystyle N={\frac {Ac^{3}}{\hbar G}}} The statistical equipartition theorem defines the temperature T {\displaystyle T} of a system with N {\displaystyle N} degrees of freedom in terms of its energy E {\displaystyle E} such that: E = 1 2 N k B T {\displaystyle E={\frac {1}{2}}Nk_{\text{B}}T} where k B {\displaystyle k_{\text{B}}} is the Boltzmann constant. This is the equivalent energy for a mass M {\displaystyle M} according to: E = M c 2 {\displaystyle E=Mc^{2}} The effective temperature experienced due to a uniform acceleration in a vacuum field according to the Unruh effect is: T = ℏ a 2 π c k B {\displaystyle T={\frac {\hbar a}{2\pi ck_{\text{B}}}}} where a {\displaystyle a} is that acceleration, which for a mass m {\displaystyle m} would be attributed to a force F {\displaystyle F} according to Newton's second law of motion: F = m a {\displaystyle F=ma} Taking the holographic screen to be a sphere of radius r {\displaystyle r}, the surface area would be given by: A = 4 π r 2 {\displaystyle A=4\pi r^{2}} From algebraic substitution of these into the above relations, one derives from first principles Newton's law of universal gravitation: F = m 2 π c k B T ℏ = m 4 π c ℏ E N = m 4 π c 3 ℏ M N = m 4 π G M A = G m M r 2 {\displaystyle F=m{\frac {2\pi ck_{\text{B}}T}{\hbar }}=m{\frac {4\pi c}{\hbar }}{\frac {E}{N}}=m{\frac {4\pi c^{3}}{\hbar }}{\frac {M}{N}}=m4\pi {\frac {GM}{A}}=G{\frac {mM}{r^{2}}}}
Criticism and experimental tests Edit
See also Edit
References EditThis is an extremely condensed look at the goddess Brigantia. For a much more detailed study, see my book Brigantia: Goddess of the North.
The Brigantian federation stretched over most of northern England, and their queen, Cartimandua, is one of the few female rulers known to history. But the fame of their goddess, Brigantia, comes from a Roman statue.
This sandstone image, with an inscription naming Amandus, an engineer, as the man who ordered it, stands about 90 cm high and 45 cm wide (36″ x 18″). It is now in the National Museum of Scotland, since it was found in Birrens. It once had traces of gilding, but that has worn away long ago. The base of the statue reads:
Brigantiae s(acrum) Amandus arc(h)itectus ex imperio imp(eratum) (fecit) Sacred to Brigantia: Amandus, the engineer, by command fulfilled the order. (R.I.B. 2091)
While the statue was found in Scotland, it does not necessarily mean Brigantian territory reached that far north. When the Roman emperor Septimius Severus visited Britain, he established his court at York, and many inscriptions to Brigantia date from his visit, suggesting he was promoting the local goddess. The statue may well have been left behind when his army’s foray into Scotland abruptly ended in defeat.
The statue itself is a complex, syncretistic mix of several goddesses’ attributes, including two favoured by Severus and his circle: Dea Caelestis (or Tanit) and Minerva. The stone next to her (on her left) is a symbol of Tanit, while the spear, shield, and helmet all point to Minerva. In addition, the wings point to Nike/Victoria, the mural crown over her helmet points to the protector-goddess Tyche/Fortuna, while the globe she holds is perhaps the oddest part, as it symbolized imperial power.
Victory, Healing, Protection
Apart from the statue, there are six altars with dedications to Brigantia. Two are dedicated simply to the Goddess Brigantia (Dea Brigantia); Cingatissa and Congenniccus, both Celtic-sounding names, were responsible for one each. Two are dedicated to Victoria Brigantia, one from the Roman fort at Castleford and the other from Greetland, both in Yorkshire. These may well be the feminine equivalents of the Celtic deities paired with Mars. (Joliffe: 40)
The last two are more diverse, as one is to Brigantia the nymph, while the other is to Brigantia Caelestis. The first, from around Brampton, near Hadrian’s Wall, expresses a wish for the welfare of Caracalla, one of Severus’ two sons. Caracalla had notoriously poor health, and visited many healing shrines. He didn’t make it Brampton, but presumably someone wished him well.
The altar to Brigantia Caelestis is the only one she shares with a god: Jupiter Dolichenus. He was usually paired with Juno Regina, but presumably the dedicator preferred the local goddess, or saw them as similar. This follows the Romano-Celtic pattern of Roman god, local goddess.
This altar shows the amount of mixing and matching of deities in the Roman Empire: Jupiter Dolichenus came from Doliche in Turkey, spreading out with the army, while his wife became Juno Regina. Since Tanit, known to the Romans as Dea Caelestis, was also assimilated to Juno Regina, this would seem to be syncretism run riot.
All three goddesses were the protectors of their peoples, which may be the connecting thread. Tanit/Caelestis was the tutelary goddess of the Carthaginians, and Juno Regina was originally the protector goddess of Veii, an Italian city-state swallowed up by the Romans.
There is another, more controversial, inscription that may be a dedication to Brigantia, and chimes in with her more imperial side. R.I.B. 902, from Old Carlisle, was originally read as:
To the Land of the Batavians Ateius Cocceianus, an imperial slave, made this willingly when released from his vow.
but no one was ever really happy about the Batavian part, and it has been rejected, although another interpretation:
To Tutela Brigantia Augusta Titus Aurelius Ateco citizen of Augusta made this willingly when released from his vow.
is not really accepted either. Brigantia Augusta would fit with the globe the statue holds, if the goddess was being taken into the imperial cult as ruler of part of their territory. (The first emperor was Augustus, and the title Augusta/us always indicates the imperial cult.)
Tutela, on the other hand, is easily explained, since a tutelary deity is a protective god/dess, from the Latin tutela, “protector, guardian”. A Burgundian goddess, Boudiga, was also called Tutela on an altar. (Her name means “Victory“, just like Boudicca.)
Protector of the Tribe
Leaving aside the question of the imperial cult and Tutela, Brigantia was obviously the protector-goddess of her people, the Brigantes. Just as Nemetona looked after the Nemetes, or the god Arvenus did the Arveni.
Indeed, a Gaulish god, Teutates, gets his name from his protector-function, since it comes from the Gaulish word teuta, “tribe”. (See the Irish tuath.) The many inscriptions to Teutates in Gaul and Britain suggest it may be a title rather than the name of a specific god, but in any case the function, protector of the people, would be the same. (MacKillop: 404)
Minerva? The B-Complex
Brigantia is often compared to Brigit, but it seems to me both are part of a larger group of goddesses, all of whom have similar names:
Brigit (Co. Kildare, Ireland)
Brigindona (Auxey, Fr.)
Briginnenses (Brignon, Fr.)
Bricta/Brixta (Luxeuil, Fr.)
Brigaciea Matres (Penalba de Castro, Spain)
Many of these goddesses were associated with healing waters (Bricta, Briginnenses) while the later saint Brigit had many healing wells. There seems to be a sort of Minerva-type goddess (Julius Caesar mentions a “Minerva” among his list of Celtic deities) who presided over healing waters. Another such goddess, Sulis, fits in here, although her name doesn’t.
In fact, Brigantia on her own is sufficiently complex. She is a protector goddess, who gives victory, a healer, and possibly a celestial goddess as well. (Both her name, with its root brig, “high”, and the association with Caelestis point to this.) She was sufficiently important for the Romans to try to co-opt her.
And we may not be done with her yet. Last year archaeologists found another image that they identified as Brigantia. It is merely a head, but it wears the mural crown too, like the statue from Birrens. It seems to emphasize that Brigantia, first and last, was the goddess who protected her people, and their fortunes.
References:
Davies, R. W. 1977: “Ateco of Old Carlisle”, Brittania 8: 271-4.
Joliffe, Norah 1941: “Dea Brigantia”, Archaeological Journal 98: 34-61.
Jufer, Nicole, and Thierry Luginbühl, 2001, Les dieux gaulois : répertoire des noms de divinités celtiques connus par l’épigraphie, les textes antiques et la toponymie, Errance, Paris.
Mac |
try is scheduled to next appear in Superior Court on March 27.
Attorney Nathan R. Perry is representing him. Assistant County Prosecutor Elizabeth Vogelsong is representing the state.
Joseph P. Smith; (856) 563-5252; jsmith@gannettnj.com
Read or Share this story: http://vineland.dj/2kb75gdA 29-year-old man died after falling two stories from the mezzanine at Toyota Park in Bridgeview late Friday night during the Chicago Open Air Festival, authorities said.
The man, identified as Robert Smucz, of the 4500 block of North Campbell Avenue in Chicago, was pronounced dead at 10:50 p.m. Friday following the fall, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. He had been taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, a police spokesman said Saturday. Smucz died from multiple injuries in an accidental fall, the medical examiner's office determined following an autopsy Saturday.
An investigation is ongoing, but the fall appears to have been an accident, according to witnesses and friends of the victim, Bridgeview police spokesman Ray Hanania said. The man had been sitting on a railing at the mezzanine level and fell to the concrete below, he said.
The man fell about 10:05 p.m. Friday, the first day of the three-day festival. Open Air features bands, craft beer and "gourmet man food," according to the website for Toyota Park, which is at 70th Street and Harlem Avenue.
Toyota Park officials could not be reached for comment.
The investigation is being led by Bridgeview's new Police Chief Ricardo Mancha.Brisbane Roar are set to make history next weekend with fans invited to participate in a special photo on the pitch at Suncorp Stadium following the Roar's Hyundai A-League clash against the Mariners.
Members and fans will be permitted to enter the field to join the Roar's Hyundai A-League, Westfield W-League and Foxtel Youth League players along with children in club colours representing football clubs across Brisbane.
Brisbane Roar's Westfield W-League outfit will tackle Canberra United in the curtain raiser to the Hyundai A-League fixture on Sunday afternoon.
Hyundai A-League team of the round
Following the conclusion of the A-League match, a photograph will be taken from high in the stands to record the historic moment the entire Brisbane Roar FC "family" came together.
This is the first time members and fans have been permitted post-game access to the Suncorp Stadium playing surface.
MATCH DAY DETAILS
Sunday October 18
Gates open: 12.45pm
Westfield W-League: Brisbane Roar v Canberra United (1.15pm kick-off)
Live on Fox Sports Channel 505 and ABC TV
Hyundai A-League: Brisbane Roar v Central Coast Mariners (4pm kick-off)
Live on Fox Sports Channel 505. Broadcast on ABC Radio.
Brisbane Roar club photo: 6pm (estimated)The Canucks were extremely happy that two-way center Brendan Gaunce slipped all the way to pick 26 at the NHL Draft back in late June. Gaunce has spent the last two seasons in the OHL with the Belleville Bulls, developing into one of the best playmakers in the league.
The 18-year-old forward has been training over the past few years with Gary Roberts in the summers, learning from the likes of Steven Stamkos, Jeff Skinner, Cody Hodgson (hopefully they don’t talk about off-ice issues), and Cameron Gaunce, his older brother and a member of the Colorado Avalanche organization.
Gaunce scored 28 goals and added 40 assists in 2011-12 for the Bulls, nearly doubling the 36 points he put up as a rookie in 2010-11.
He had a standout tournament for Canada’s U-18 squad back in April, helping them win a Bronze, the first medal for Canada at the tournament in four years. Belleville GM-coach George Burnett was impressed with Gaunce’s performance in the Bronze Medal game.
He finished the tournament on a very strong note. His goal (Sunday) was a typical, hard, power-type goal, which is what a lot of people like about his game. He was dominant in the faceoff circle and defensively strong, and that’s what a lot of people are evaluating right now.
His summer training with Roberts has paid off, as Gaunce also stood out in testing at the NHL combine and at the 2012 Top Prospects Game, as well.
At the February showcase game in beautiful Kelowna, Gaunce finished first in nine categories of testing while scouts witness him rack up twelve top 10 finishes at the recent 2012 NHL Combine. His commitment to all aspects of hockey has paid off as Bulls’ Head Coach Burnett leaned heavily on his star forward using him in all situations. Additionally, the second year center was named an assistant captain adopting a leadership role that Gaunce was born to fill.
Dave Burstyn, McKeen’s Hockey Director of Scouting, is a big fan of Gaunce’s game, and likes his upside as a solid two-way forward at the NHL level.
Teams will gravitate towards Gaunce’s character, as he plays a 200-foot game and shows consistent efforts both with and without the puck. His hand skills and passing skills are above average and he has an underrated shot. Gaunce can make plays on either his strong side or weak side and provides the requisite size and smarts to play up the middle. Gaunce brings many intangibles to the table including his size, character, hockey sense and ability to do the little things well, which should make him a very effective two-way player at the NHL level.
Canucks GM Mike Gillis agrees with Burstyn’s analysis of Gaunce’s character.
Everything about him is good. Good parents, good potential, good leadership. Captain material. Lots of character and a hard worker. There’s a really good foundation, and if we can do something with it, we think we’ll have a player.
While that does sound similar to things that were written and said about Hodgson back in 2008, it isn’t fair to Gaunce to compare the two players.
To find out even more about Gaunce, I spoke with journalist John Matisz. If you aren’t familiar with John, he has spent the past year following Gaunce’s hockey career, and he recently published a book on Gaunce and his efforts on and off of the ice leading up to the 2012 Draft. The book is available for purchase on Amazon here.
CA: Brendan has been called a "safe" pick because he is a well-rounded player and he brings a lot off the ice to a team. Do you think that statement sells his offensive upside short?
I think it does, to an extent. There’s no question Brendan is first and foremost a two-way presence. He’s actually been criticized in the past for caring too much about his own end (if that’s possible) when he should be thinking about putting one by the opposing goalie. But, at the core, statistics don’t lie. Brendan averaged a point per game on a lower tier squad last year whose main problem was scoring goals. His offensive upside is underestimated, in my opinion. He can distribute the puck better than most in the CHL.
CA: How far away is he from NHL action? How do you see the next few years playing out for him?
I don’t know the inner workings of the Canucks organization, and plenty can happen in the near future, but I’d say he’ll get nine games next season (2013-14). I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up playing a regular NHL shift to start the 2014-15 season. Vancouver has little depth down the middle in their system at this point in time, which can only help Gaunce move up the ranks.
CA: What are his strengths? How about strengths people may not know about.
Lots of people ask me this and my answer is always the same: Brendan is a prototypical coaches’ player. He’ll win a face off in the final minute, kill penalties as a three or four-man unit, battle on the sideboards and in the corner night in and night out, and generally just be your dependable number one or two centreman (in the OHL). Overall, he brings the full package to a hockey team. He’s an intelligent kid, plays an honest game, and is an imposing force on the ice. He will likely get the ‘C’ in Belleville this year as an 18-year-old, which is an answer to this question in itself.
CA: Conversely, what kind of stuff does he need to work on and improve if he wants to take the next step?
Skating and finishing. Like his brother Cameron, a second round pick by the Avs in 2008, Brendan has an awkward skating stride. It tends to slow him down a bit. Over the past three summers, Gary Roberts has been working with him to correct that. He’s not slow by any means, but in today’s NHL you need to be up to be, at the very least, on par with your peers. I don’t think it’s irreversible, so Brendan is fine. The finishing touch comes in when debating if he’s worth of a top six forward spot with the big club. The Canucks need someone who can make the most of his chances if they’re going to give him 15 minutes a night. Brendan could work on finding corners and picking his spots better in certain offensive situations. Too many posts last year.
It is easy to see why the Canucks were happy to see Gaunce fall into their laps back in June. He has some work to do, but all of the pieces appear to be in place for his development into a very dependable NHL center in the near future. And Matisz makes a great point regarding the lack of depth up the middle in the Vancouver organization. If Gaunce puts together another solid OHL campaign in 2012-13, he could find himself fighting for a roster spot with the Canucks in a little over a year.
I spoke with Brock Otten last month regarding Gaunce, and he shared his thoughts on the young center. I asked Otten if Gaunce compared at all to another lanky center to come out of the OHL recently – Jordan Staal. Otten didn’t feel the comparison was apt, and offered up one of his own.
Skating wise, they’re similar. Everything else, I don’t see it.. Staal (despite what the OHL numbers would suggest), is more of a goal-scoring center. In the OHL, he was a real solid crease crasher and got a lot of his goals in close. In the NHL, his shot has developed a lot, but he still remains primarily a goal scoring center. Gaunce, on the other hand, is more of a big playmaking center. He’s got among the best vision and playmaking ability in the OHL. His play away from the puck is outstanding too and it really helps to create time and space for his linemates. He’s also way more physical than Jordan ever was. Brendan is someone who thrives on the physical aspects of the game. He throws big hits and is very active in the corners and on the forecheck. While I don’t expect him to put up the gaudy offensive numbers that he did in the OHL, or NHL, Gaunce is much more of a Keith Primeau type of center. In regards to Gaunce’s skating, his brother Cameron (Avs prospect) had the same problem when he was in the OHL. But he really improved it over the course of his OHL career. I’d expect the same out of Brendan. Once his skating improves, it’ll help his game in transition and make him a much more effective puck carrier.
Other Prospect Profiles in this Series:I'm crazy about colors.
I work with terminal emulators all the time and nothings is more deterrent to me than big wall of black & white text spitted out into my 300x100 terminal.
I want my errors red and successes green, I want numbers, URLs and paths pop out from the rest of the text, I want colored logs, compiler outputs, source code snippets... It really makes your terminal experience much more fun to use.
So let's take a look at where my obsession brought me so far.
Brief history
In the late 70s, the number of character-oriented terminals was rapidly expanding. Of course there was no "de jure" standard and each manufacturer handled their escape sequences differently. That meant that every screen-handling program had to be written for one (type of) terminal only.
To deal with these incompatibilities, Bill Joy foresightedly created the termcap library (terminal capabilities), mainly to make his legendary vi editor more portable. This also allowed others to write screen-oriented applications not dependent on one particular terminal. Brilliant idea, which was over time gradually pushed out by terminfo implementing the same principle with several improvements. Later, even more abstract libraries like curses emerged, using termcap or terminfo under the hood.
Big change was the terminal VT100 by DEC in 1978. It was the first terminal with its escape sequences based on the ANSI escape codes, which was a new standard that gradually gained popularity as more and more software started to assume its presence on terminals. This led yet another terminals and terminal emulators to implement it. Almost every terminal emulator on modern distributions emulate VT100 or its successors.
This standard enabled to control the formatting, emphasis, blinking, positioning the cursor, deleting lines and - colors. Eight of them, each in normal and bright variant. Unlike the Web colors or X Window color standards, ANSI only defines color names. Each terminal can assign color values differently, which can be configured most of the time. Nowadays, majority of terminal emulators support 8-bit palette.
Prompt
The first thing you should do is to make your prompt pop out of the wall of applications' outputs. This way you can easily navigate on screen, see what commands did what etc. I won't go into details (which differ shell to shell anyway), just look at the difference:
Colored command line
This picture demonstrates also zsh syntax highlighting syntactically coloring the command line and stderred coloring the STDERR red.
Out of the box
Some of the standard GNU coreutils have to colored output support built in, but it might not be enabled by default on all distributions.
You probably do have colors in your ls, but the --color=auto option works also on grep or cal. Naturally, colors of grep and ls can be customized. In grep there's only one color (the match) and you can change it by setting GREP_COLOR environment variable.
export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto' export GREP_COLOR='1;33'
But you're already using ag anyway, aren't you? ;)
It's a bit more complicated with ls. First off, there are currently two widespread implementations - the GNU ls on most unices and BSD ls on BSDs and Mac Os X. Each have different syntax for defining colors. And secondly, there is lot to configure.
Fortunately, there is LSCOLORS generator by Geof Greer (famous for his amazing Silver Searcher - also colored!), which turns it into fun.
Note: --color=always produces ANSI sequences also when using the program non-interactively, which may cause difficulties in scripts.
Man pages
Colored man pages can achieved in multiple ways. You can use less, most, or vim depending on what your needs are.
I chose less because I'm most used to it. Again, I won't go into details about how to set it up - there are lot of blog posts on web about it. In short, you basically have redefine some termcap sequences to display colors.
Did you ever enjoy reading those? Now you can!
The most works out of the box - just set $MANPAGER (or $PAGER ) variable and you're done. One slight problem is that the shortcuts are different from less (which can be re-binded, though).
The rest
What about the tools that don't have built-in color support? Should one search for alternatives written in ncurses, like htop to top or most to less and use them instead? That's one option, but remember that one of the fundamental principles of Unix philosophy is to write small programs that work well together.
So let's leave the job to colorizers! After wading through several colorizers for different purposes (Maven, syslog, traceroute), I started feeling that this is not the best way.
Fortunately, others had that feeling before me, so there's already few general-purpose colorizers that can be extended to other purposes easily.
I tried four most famous ones ccze, source-highlight, grc and rainbow, in chronological order.
ccze is a C port of colorize written in perl. It focuses on colorizing logs in various formats. It is probably intended mainly for system administrators as it supports syslog, procmail, httpd and the like.
GNU source-highlight focuses on colorizing programming languages, which isn't really useful for command-line work. On the other hand, this program has the most powerful language for defining the syntax. All the other tools presented here work only with regex.
Relatively young programs are grc. and rainbow. They're both written in Python, each have the same philosophy, similar library of config files, but each realizes it slightly differently.
They can be easily installed through pip and writing new extensions is really easy. The advantage of rainbow is that it can be configured "inline" without config files, but I also ran against some issues with usability (i.e. no --color=auto?). So no judging, try both!
grc in action.
Note for zsh users: if you define alias for e.g. ping as ping=grc ping, then you'll lose smart completion of arguments, because zsh completion system expands it before finding relevant completion function.
To get around this, define function instead:
ping() { grc --colour=auto /usr/bin/ping "$@" }
Conclusion
Colors make your work more fun and allow you to navigate in text more easily. Most of the widely used programs like git or gcc already have colored output support. For the rest, you can still write new module for one of the existing colorizers.This is The Magazine: every issue has four (sometimes more) original, commissioned feature articles and essays on a variety of subjects of interest to curious people with a technical bent. We publish an issue every two weeks.
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Glenn Fleishman is the editor and publisher of The Magazine, and contributes reguarly to the Economist, Boing Boing, TidBITS, and Macworld. The father of two, Glenn won two episodes of Jeopardy! in 2012, and he won't let you forget it.Exactly 27 years to the day after Bernhard Goetz — famous in New York lore as the “Subway Vigilante’’ — shot four young men he thought were threatening him on a train, one of them killed himself by swallowing prescription pills in a low-rent Bronx motel, authorities said.
James Ramseur, 45, was found dead of an apparent overdose at 11:30 a.m. at the Paradise Hotel, at 2990 Boston Road, law-enforcement sources said last night.
He was in bed and fully clothed.
Ramseur had checked in on Tuesday and paid for two nights. He was supposed to check out yesterday morning.
When he failed to show up at the front desk, hotel staff went to his room and discovered his body.
In the toilet was the bottle that had contained the pills that apparently killed him.
But Ramseur had scraped the label off so the pills could not be identified, and toxology tests will take at least a month.
Ramseur had an ID card on him, so he was identified immediately.
No suicide note was found and there were no wounds on his body.
Police believe he had spent the entire time in the hotel alone. They knew of no visitors.
Cops called Ramseur’s sister, and she confirmed his identity and his role in the storied 1984 shooting incident.
Ramseur got out of prison only 17 months ago, after serving 25 years upstate for raping a young woman on a Bronx rooftop.
The shooting happened on Dec. 22, 1984, when Ramseur and neighborhood pals Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen and Troy Canty were riding a downtown No. 2 train.
As it approached Chambers Street, they encountered Goetz, an electronics specialist, and what ensued is in dispute.
Goetz told authorities the intimidating youths demanded $5 from him. The teens insisted they were only panhandling.
Goetz fired five shots from his Smith & Wesson, hitting all of them.
Ramseur was wounded in the arm.
Many residents of the city, which was then undergoing an unprecedented era of street crime, hailed him as a hero.
But since the four youths were black, others called him a racist.
He was convicted of illegally possessing a loaded firearm, but cleared of the more serious charges — four counts of attempted murder.
Cabey, who was paralyzed when Goetz shot him at close range, won a $43 million lawsuit against Goetz, who declared bankruptcy and hasn’t paid a dime.
Cabey, by far the most seriously injured, still is confined to a wheelchair and functions with the intellect of an 8-year-old.
Allen was convicted of robbery in 1991 and released from prison four years later.
Canty racked up a string of petty offenses, and once served 18 months in a residential drug-treatment program.
Additional reporting by Larry CelonaSaudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s decision to arrest scores of the country’s most prominent officials and business elites under the banner of an anti-corruption purge last week was a remarkable power play, an unprecedented move designed to concentrate all authority in the Gulf state in one man’s hands.
But the radical shake-up was also about something else: preparing for life after oil.
MBS, as the 32-year-old heir to the throne is widely known, has not just been detaining people — he’s also been seizing billions of dollars of their money. And he’s using this crackdown to make the case to the world that Saudi Arabia is a reformed nation cleansed of graft, and worthy of a big boost of foreign investment.
In other words, the purge is more than just a way of eliminating his rivals and consolidating power. Experts say that MBS sees it as an opportunity to refill his country’s coffers while he works to modernize the stagnating Saudi economy and wean it off its near-total reliance on oil.
MBS’s anti-corruption committee, which he formed just hours before the arrests began on November 4, has pledged to take “whatever measures are deemed necessary” to confiscate the assets of corrupt officials and businessmen.
Saudi authorities have detained more than 200 people and frozen thousands of bank accounts. A US official briefed on the crackdown told the New York Times that the committee has even tried to get some of the people caught up in the sweep to sign over large amounts of money in order to secure better treatment while detained. (At least 17 people have required medical treatment due to abuse from authorities.)
Senior Saudi Arabian prince Miteb bin Abdullah became the first senior figure to be released from detainment in late November after agreeing to pay over $1 billion to settle corruption allegations against him.
The Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that if the committee attempted to retrieve all the revenue lost to corruption, it could amount to as much as $800 billion.
“A key goal of the arrest campaign seems to be about replenishing state coffers,” Lori Plotkin Boghardt, an Arab Gulf specialist and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me.
And Saudi officials haven’t been shy about trying to use the arrests to persuade skeptical foreign investors that the country’s notoriously corrupt economy was beginning to change.
“The old ways have ceased to be sustainable long ago and must be replaced,” Majid al-Qasabi, the Saudi minister of commerce and investment, wrote in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on November 12. “The new way will offer a predictable long-term approach and transparent business environment for investors.”
Anxiety over oil addiction also underlies a number of MBS’s other headline-grabbing maneuvers in the past couple of years. Analysts say his moves to legalize driving for women, relax a ban on musical concerts, and curtail the powers of religious police can be traced back, at least in part, to his concern with making Saudi’s economy more efficient, diverse, and attractive to foreign talent.
That means MBS is more than just a power-hungry upstart. He appears to have a real commitment to shepherding Saudi Arabia’s economy into the modern era in order to preempt the financial catastrophe that will accompany a continued decline in oil prices. But that also means upending many of the basic tenets that have governed Saudi life for decades. It’s a risky gamble, and the country’s future hangs in the balance.
Saudi Arabia depends nearly entirely on oil sales. That’s a bad place to be.
From a distance, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations like the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait can seem economically invincible. Their vast oil reserves have created rich societies whose elites are known for unfathomable displays of opulence. One example: Saudi Arabia’s king never leaves home without his trusty golden escalator.
But relying on one commodity has made Saudi Arabia and its neighbors very economically vulnerable. And while Saudi Arabia has always known that it should diversify its economy, the pressure created by the plunge in oil prices in recent years has forced it to finally start scrambling to do so.
The sharp drop in global oil prices began in 2014, largely driven by the boom in the world’s supply of oil stemming from the shale revolution in the US. Saudi’s oil exports have lost value quickly: Today, the price of a barrel of crude oil is around half of what it was in early 2014.
In addition, breakthroughs in renewable energy technology and the expected ubiquity of electric cars in coming years means that global demand for oil is likely to decline in the not-too-distant future. Norway, for example, plans to ban the sale of fossil fuel-burning cars by 2025, and the UK and France are starting bans in 2040.
So both from the supply side and the demand side, Saudi knows that oil has bleak prospects and it has to do something about that. Saudi’s foreign reserves have already fallen by more than a third since 2014, declining from $737 billion to $475 billion, and the country has been forced to freeze spending projects.
The government also knows that with less funds it is more susceptible to domestic unrest. Saudi Arabia has long used generous social spending and subsidies on utilities as a way to effectively buy off dissent against its autocratic style of government, such as when it announced $100 billion in spending projects to preempt Arab Spring-inspired protests in 2011.
In 2016, MBS unveiled his plan to ward off future ruin with a program called “Vision 2030.” It’s a grand proposal that involves diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil to generate revenue from sectors like tech and entertainment services. The plan includes huge projects like selling off a 5 percent share of its state-owned oil producer Aramco, turning its neglected beaches into tourist destinations, and investing in a $500 billion megacity where transportation is entirely automated.
“Within 20 years, we will be an economy or state that doesn’t depend mainly on oil,” MBS told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2016.
Changing Saudi Arabia’s economy means changing its society
The major challenge that MBS faces in his quest to change Saudi Arabia’s economy is figuring out how to navigate the obstacles of Saudi society and governance that stand in the way. So far, his approach has been to remove them aggressively.
One example is Saudi Arabia’s announcement in September that women would be able to drive legally beginning in 2018 — a major blow to the country’s conservative clerical establishment. Analysts say it was money, not a sudden awakening to the horrors of institutionalized patriarchy, that motivated the move by MBS and his father.
Hala Aldosari, a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, told the LA Times that women in Saudi Arabia have been advocating for the ban to be lifted since the 1990s. “The timing had less to do with social pressure and more to do with the government recognizing that in order to accomplish its ambitious economic vision they had to make gradual adjustments,” she said.
With the right to drive, more women can officially join the workforce — today only around 22 percent of Saudi women work. Saudi families won’t need to spend as much money on drivers — many of whom are foreign and whose earnings are sent out of the country — and will have more disposable income to spend on things like shopping, which should boost the domestic economy. Allowing women to drive also makes Saudi more attractive to high-skilled foreign workers and opens up the possibility of expansion into new industries.
The corruption crackdown could backfire
MBS’s corruption crackdown is perhaps his most brazen attempt yet at removing barriers to Saudi economic growth.
First, there are the assets MBS is seizing from scores of Saudi citizens, which could be used to invest in underdeveloped sectors. “He’s working to take economic power away from places where he can’t control the money and putting it into places where he can control the money,” John Volle, a Middle East historian at Georgetown University, told me. “It opens the door to give more resources to make the 2030 dream possible.”
Then there’s the narrative of a Saudi Arabia free from corruption that should attract the attention of foreign investors. It’s not pure optics — corruption is a serious problem in Saudi, and this could counteract it.
Economists and business analysts have pointed out all kinds of illicit and questionable economic practices in Saudi Arabia, such as the way officials routinely embezzle 10 to 25 percent of government contracts. The government also uses red tape to shield businesses owned by many members of the royal family from foreign competition.
MBS’s purge could bring an end to those kinds of practices and discourage them from happening in the future. The fact that his move was motivated by a desire to centralize power and generate money doesn’t necessarily mean that the effects on corruption won’t be real. Consider, for example, how China really has seen a reduction in corruption in the wake of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s draconian anti-corruption campaign that most analysts also see as a power grab.
MBS likely believes that foreign investors could be encouraged by his arrests, but experts say the way he’s going about encouraging them could backfire.
Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute, told me he suspects a “mere fraction” of the assets that MBS is seizing will make it into government coffers.
The legal process for transferring assets from detained individuals to the government is unclear, especially if the assets are held abroad and thus in different legal jurisdictions. (The US National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that Saudis have around $300 billion stashed abroad in foreign tax havens.)
And many assets belonging to ultrawealthy Saudis aren’t in cash. They’re in properties that are hard for the government to price and make money off immediately.
“What’s the value of a secondhand grand palace in Riyadh? If it’s available [for sale] to foreigners, what are their chances of getting the title changed?” Henderson said.
He also points out that foreign investors could be spooked by the volatile and arbitrary nature of the detainments. The fact that many of MBS’s captives have experienced injuries that require medical treatment likely won’t give investors confidence in the rule of law in Saudi.
Furthermore, since MBS used his corruption crackdown to single out rivals and opponents, it’s unclear if his allies will clean up their act or assume they can act with impunity.
In a worst-case scenario, Saudi Arabia could be moving from an era of predictable corruption to unpredictable corruption and arbitrary asset seizures. And investors hate unpredictability.
It’ll take months and years to figure out how serious the prince’s initiative is. But one thing is clear: MBS is not lacking in ambition.There’ a simple pre-flight checklist that I try my best to go through every time I lead worship. None of these things are all that complicated, but it helps each service go smoothly and minimizes distractions. Ultimately, as worship leaders, our job is to connect the congregation to the heart of God, and the more we can do to minimize ourselves and maximize our focus on Jesus, the better.
Memorize your lyrics and chords. We live in an age of prompters and confidence monitors. These should not be a crutch. You shouldn’t be reading the lyrics to the songs during the service, and you shouldn’t be lost in your chart while trying to lead the congregation. These things take time, and it’s time you’ll have to put in throughout the week before you arrive at your church. Glancing down at your chords or lyrics for reference during the music set is fine, but you should always be comfortable stepping away from those things. It’s almost impossible to engage your church body when your eyes are glued elsewhere.
Warm up your voice.
Unfortunately, worship leaders often have the disadvantage of singing first thing in the morning, which is almost never the best time to sing. Take some time before the service and before the rehearsal to warm your voice up. There are lots of great exercises out there to help you. Sometimes I use the ones from this video. Sometimes, I just sing scales. Sometimes I pick just the lower verses from a song on the setlist and just sing those. But don’t start singing cold.
Drink water. Coffee is not enough!
Your voice is controlled by muscles, and like any muscle, it needs to be properly hydrated in order to function at its best. It’s better to drink room temperature water as cold water can actually shock your vocal cords into tightening back up again. Coffee doesn’t hydrate you adequately. You might need it to wake up, but drink water to wake up your voice.
Check in with the person running lyrics. If you’re running lyrics on a screen somewhere during the service, make sure you check in with the person who is running the computer during the service. Try to have the lyrics as close to being in order as possible, including copying/pasting the choruses as many times as your going to sing them. This doesn’t mean that there can’t be spontaneity or flexibility during the service, but you should always be as prepared as possible on the front end. Not having the lyrics available or having the wrong lyrics on screen is always distracting for the congregation, and you definitely want to minimize that.
Tell your team members how much you appreciate them.
Most of your worship team are likely volunteers who freely give their time, and they should know that you’re grateful for the work they put in. A simple, “Thank you so much for serving with me today,” can go a very long way towards building your team and pointing them to Jesus. Sometimes, it’s good to do even more than that. Consider writing a Thank You card to one member of your team each week or a $5 Starbucks card. Let your team know that you love them and that their efforts are appreciated.
Pray with your entire team.
This includes the media folks, the sound engineer, lighting, camera operators, and musicians. All of them have devoted the time to be there, and you’re all a part of the same team with the same mission. Take the time to ask if anyone has any specific prayer needs. Be personal with your team. Be compassionate with them. Pray God’s richness over their lives. Give thanks to God for them.
Pray for your congregation.
We never know what kinds of needs, situations, and desperations are going to walk through the door. Pray that God will prepare the hearts of those about to attend the service, that he would begin to soften their hearts to His voice and His presence. Pray for salvation, for changed lives, for altered destinies.
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of the new carbine resulted in the omission of this feature from the Light Rifle Program. On 26 October 1944, in response to the Germans' widespread use of automatic weapons, especially the Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle, the select-fire M2 carbine was introduced, along with a new 30-round magazine. The M2 had a fully automatic rate-of-fire of about 850–900 rounds-per-minute. Although actual M2 production began late in the war (April 1945), US Ordnance issued conversion-part kits to allow field conversion of semi-auto M1 carbines to the selective-fire M2 configuration. These converted M1/M2 select-fire carbines saw limited combat service in Europe, primarily during the final Allied advance into Germany. In the Pacific, both converted and original M2 carbines saw limited use in the last days of the fighting in the Philippines.[32]
Infrared sight versions [ edit ]
The M3 carbine was an M2 carbine with the M2 infrared night sight or sniperscope.[6] The M3 did not have iron sights.[6] It was first used in combat by Army units during the invasion of Okinawa, about 150 M3 were used on Okinawa. For the first time, U.S. soldiers had a weapon that allowed them to visually detect Japanese infiltrating into American lines at night, even during complete darkness. A team of two or three soldiers was used to operate the weapon and provide support.[49] At night, the scope would be used to detect Japanese patrols and assault units moving forward. At that point, the operator would fire a burst of automatic fire at the greenish images of enemy soldiers.[49] The M3 carbine had an effective range of about 70 yards (64 meters), limited by the visual capabilities of the sight.[50] Fog and rain further reduced the weapon's effective range.[49][50] However, it is estimated that fully 30% of Japanese casualties inflicted by rifle and carbine fire during the Okinawan campaign were caused by the M3 carbine.[49]
The system was refined over time, and by the Korean War the improved M3 infrared night sight was in service. The M3 sight has a longer effective range than its predecessor, about 125 yards (114 meters). However, it still required the user to carry a heavy backpack-mounted battery pack to power the scope and infrared light. They were used primarily in static defensive positions in Korea to locate troops attempting to infiltrate in darkness. M3 operators would not only use their carbines to dispatch individual targets, but also used tracer ammo to identify troop concentrations for machine gunners to decimate.[51] In total, about 20,000 sets were made before they became obsolete, and were surplussed to the public.
Korean War [ edit ]
M1 carbine in action during Korean War. Note: 30-round magazine, stock pouch for two 15-round Magazine and grenade launcher. Note the captured Soviet DP-27 machine gun.
U.S. Marines holding captured Chinese Communists during fighting on the central Korean front. Note: M1 carbine with mounted bayonet
By the Korean War, the select fire M2 carbine had largely replaced the submachine-gun in U.S. service[52] and was the most widely used Carbine variant.[53][54] Although, the semi-auto M1 carbine was also widely used- especially by support troops. However, in Korea, all versions of the carbine soon acquired a widespread reputation for jamming in extreme cold weather,[55][56][57] this being eventually traced to weak return springs, freezing of parts due to overly viscous lubricants and inadequate cartridge recoil impulse as the result of subzero temperatures.[58][59]
There were also many complaints from individual soldiers that the carbine bullet failed to stop heavily clothed[60][61][62][63] or gear-laden[64][65][66] North Korean and Chinese (PVA) troops even at close range and after multiple hits.[56][58][67] Marines of the 1st Marine Division also reported instances of carbine bullets failing to stop enemy soldiers, and some units issued standing orders for carbine users to aim for the head.[68][69] PVA infantry forces who had been issued captured U.S. small arms disliked the carbine for the same reason.[70]
A 1951 official U.S. Army evaluation reported that..."There are practically no data bearing on the accuracy of the carbine at ranges in excess of 50 yards. The record contains a few examples of carbine-aimed fire felling an enemy soldier at this distance or perhaps a little more. But they are so few in number that no general conclusion can be drawn from them. Where carbine fire had proved killing effect, approximately 95 percent of the time the target was dropped at less than 50 yards."[71] The evaluation also reported that..."Commanders noted that it took two to three engagements at least to settle their men to the automatic feature of the carbine so that they would not greatly waste ammunition under the first impulse of engagement. By experience, they would come to handle it semiautomatically, but it took prolonged battle hardening to bring about this adjustment in the human equation."[71]
Despite its mixed reputation, the M2 carbine's firepower often made it the weapon of choice, when it came to night patrols in Korea.[71][51] And, troops would often tape two or three 30 round magazines together to speed up the process of reloading (a practice commonly called "Jungle Style").[51] The M3 carbine with its infrared sniperscope was also used against night infiltrators, especially during the static stages of the conflict.
Vietnam War [ edit ]
ARVN soldiers with M1 carbines and U.S. Special Forces with M16s
The M1 and M2 carbines were again issued to U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, particularly with United States Air Force Security Police and United States Army Special Forces. These weapons began to be replaced by the M16 in 1964, and they were generally out of service by 1970s, although they were used in limited numbers by U.S. troops and security personnel until the fall of Saigon in 1975.
At least 793,994 M1 and M2 carbines were given to the South Vietnamese and were widely used throughout the Vietnam War.[72] A number were captured during the war by Vietcong[73] with some made compact by shortening the barrel and/or stock.[74] "While the carbine's lighter weight and high rate of fire made it an excellent weapon for small-statured Asians, these guns lacked sufficient hitting power and penetration, and they were eventually outclassed by the AK-47 assault rifle."[17]
The M1/M2/M3 carbines were the most heavily produced family of U.S. military weapons for several decades. They were used by every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Foreign usage [ edit ]
Winston Churchill fires an American M1 carbine during a visit to the US 2nd Armoured Division on Salisbury Plain, 23 March 1944.
British officers: Brigadier "Mad" Mike Calvert (left) gives orders to Lieutenant-Colonel Shaw, while Major James Lumley stands with M1 carbine under his arm, after the capture of Mogaung in Burma during the second Chindit expedition, June 1944.
After World War II, the M1 and M2 carbines were widely exported to U.S. allies and client states (1,015,568 to South Korea, 793,994 to South Vietnam, 269,644 to France, etc.),[72] they were used as a frontline weapon well into the Vietnam War era, and they continue to be used by military, police, and security forces around the world to this day.
British Army [ edit ]
During World War II, the British SAS used the M1 and M1A1 carbines after 1943. The weapon was taken into use simply because a decision had been taken by Allied authorities to supply.30 caliber weapons from US stocks in the weapons containers dropped to Resistance groups sponsored by an SOE, or later also Office of Strategic Services (OSS), organizer, on the assumption the groups so supplied would be operating in areas within the operational boundaries of U.S. forces committed to Operation Overlord.[citation needed] They were found to be suited to the kind of operation the two British, two French, and one Belgian Regiment carried out. It was handy enough to parachute with, and, in addition, could be easily stowed in an operational Jeep. Other specialist intelligence collection units, such as 30 Assault Unit sponsored by the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty, which operated across the entire Allied area of operations, also made use of this weapon.[citation needed]. The Carbine continued to be utilized as late as the Malayan Emergency, by the Police Field Force[75] of the Royal Malaysian Police, along with other units of the British Army,[76][77] were issued the M2 Carbine for both jungle patrols and outpost defense. The Royal Ulster Constabulary also used the M1 carbine.[78]
German Army [ edit ]
Small numbers of captured M1 carbines were used by German forces in World War II, particularly after D-Day.[79] The German designation for captured carbines was Selbstladekarabiner 455(a). The "(a)" came from the country name in German; in this case, Amerika. It was also used by German police and border guards in Bavaria after World War II and into the 1950s. The carbines were stamped according to the branch they were in service with; for instance, those used by the border guard were stamped "Bundesgrenzschutz". Some of these weapons were modified with different sights, finishes, and sometimes new barrels.
Japanese Army [ edit ]
A variant was produced shortly after World War II by the Japanese manufacturer Howa Machinery, under U.S. supervision. These were issued to all branches of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, and large numbers of them found their way to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Howa also made replacement parts for US-made M1 carbines issued to Japanese police and military.
Israel Defense Forces [ edit ]
The M1 carbine was also used by the Israeli Palmach-based special forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. And, because of their compact size and semi-auto capabilities, they continued to be used by Israeli Defence Forces after the creation of Israel. The Israeli police still use the M1 carbine as a standard long gun for non-combat elements and Mash'az volunteers.
French Army [ edit ]
The U.S. provided France with 269,644 M1 and M2 carbines from World War II to 1963.[72] The carbines were used by the French Paratroopers and Legionnaires, as well specialists (drivers, radio operators, engineers), during the Indo-China War,[80] the Algerian War[81] and the Suez Crisis.
South Vietnamese Popular Force members on patrol with M1 carbines.
ROK troops armed with M1 carbines during the Vietnam War.
South Vietnam [ edit ]
The U.S. provided the Army of the Republic of Vietnam with 793,994 M1 and M2 carbines from 1963 to 1973.[72] Along with tens of thousands of Carbines left behind by the French after the First Indochina War, the M1 and M2 carbines were the most widely issued small arm during the early stages in the Vietnam War and remained in service in large numbers until the fall of Saigon. The South Vietnamese would also receive 220,300 M1 Garands and 520 M1C/M1D rifles,[82] and 640,000 M-16 rifles.
The Việt Minh and the Viet Cong also used large numbers of M1 and M2 Carbines, captured from the French, ARVN and local militia forces of South Vietnam, as well as receiving many thousands of Carbines from the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), China and North Korea. Over time, the SKS and eventually the AK-47 would replace the Carbine to become the dominant weapons used by the Viet Cong.
South Korea [ edit ]
The Republic of Korea Armed Forces received 1,015,568 M1 and M2 carbines from 1963 to 1972.[72] Along with hundreds of thousands of Carbines and M1 Garands provided by the United States Army before, during and shortly after the Korean war, South Korea would become the largest single recipient of American M1 and M2 carbines.
The Republic of Korea also took an active role in the Vietnam War. From 1964 to 1973, South Korea sent more than 300,000 troops to Vietnam armed primarily with M1 and M2 carbines, as well as M1 Garands.
Philippines [ edit ]
The government of the Philippines still issues M1 carbines to the infantrymen of the Philippine Army's 2nd Infantry Division[citation needed] assigned in Luzon Island (some units are issued just M14 Automatic Rifles and M1 Carbines) and the Civilian Auxiliary Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) and Civilian Volunteer Organizations (CVO)spread throughout the Philippines. Certain provincial police units of the Philippine National Police (PNP) still use government-issue M1 carbines as well as some operating units of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). In many provinces of the Philippines, M1 carbines are still highly valued as a light small arm. Elements of the New People's Army and Islamic Secessionist movement value the carbine as a lightweight weapon and preferred choice for mountain and ambush operations.
The M1 carbine has become one of the most recognized firearms in Philippine society, with the Marikina City-based company ARMSCOR Philippines still continuing to manufacture.30 caliber ammunition for the Philippine market.
Counter insurgency [ edit ]
The M1 and M2 carbines were widely used by military, police, and security forces and their opponents during the many guerrilla and civil wars throughout Latin America until the 1990s, when they were mostly replaced by more modern designs. A notable user was Che Guevara who used them during the Cuban Revolution and in Bolivia where he was executed by a Bolivian soldier armed with an M2 Carbine.[83]
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a police battalion named Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE, or "Special Police Operations Battalion") still uses the M1 carbine.
Users [ edit ]
The unit data provided below refers to original U.S. Ordnance contract carbines the United States provided these countries. Many countries sold, traded, destroyed, and/or donated these carbines to other countries and/or private gun brokers.[72]
Current users [ edit ]
South Korean soldiers training with M1919A6s. Note: ROK soldier armed with M1 carbine to the left. Photo taken August 13, 1950
Former users [ edit ]
Dutch police officer shoots teargas ammunition from the muzzle of an M1 carbine, during a blockade and demonstration against the nuclear power plant Dodewaard. September 18, 1981
Variants [ edit ]
The standard-issue versions of the carbine officially listed and supported were the M1, M1A1, M2 and M3.[106]
M1A1 Carbine. Paratrooper model with folding buttstock and late issue adjustable sight and bayonet lug.
Carbine, Cal.30, M1A1 [ edit ]
Side-folding stock, 15-round magazine
Paratrooper model
About 150,000 produced
Carbines originally issued with the M1A1 folding stock were made by Inland, a division of General Motors and originally came with the early "L" nonadjustable sight and barrel band without bayonet lug. Inland production of M1A1 carbines was interspersed with Inland production of M1 carbines with the standard stock. Stocks were often swapped out as carbines were refurbished at arsenals. An original Inland carbine with an original M1A1 stock is rare today.
Carbine, Cal.30, M1A2 [ edit ]
Proposed variant with improved sight adjustable for windage and elevation
Produced only as 'overstamped' model (an arsenal-refurbished M1 with new rear sight and other late M1 improvements)
Carbine, Cal.30, M1A3 [ edit ]
Underside-folding pantograph stock, 15-round magazine.
Type standardized to replace the M1A1 but may not have been issued.
Pantograph stock was more rigid than the M1A1's folding stock and folded flush under the fore end. A more common name for this type of stock is an underfolder.
Carbine, Cal.30, M2 [ edit ]
M2 Carbine, note: the selector lever on the left side, opposite of the bolt handle.
Exploded view of the M2 Carbine.
Early 1945
Selective fire (capable of fully automatic fire)
30-round magazine or 15 standard issue
About 600,000 produced
Initially, the M1 carbine was intended to have a selective-fire capability, but the decision was made to put the M1 into production without this feature. Fully automatic capability was incorporated into the design of the M2 (an improved, selective-fire version of the M1), introduced in 1944. The M2 featured the late M1 improvements to the rear sight, addition of a bayonet lug, and other minor changes.
Research into a conversion kit for selective fire began May 1944; the first kit was developed by Inland engineers, and known as the T4. Inland was awarded a contract for 500 T4 carbines in September 1944. Although the conversion was seen as satisfactory, the heavier 30-round magazine put greater strain on the magazine catch, necessitating the development of a sturdier catch. The slide, sear, and stock design also had to be modified. On fully automatic fire, the T4 model could fire about 750 rounds per minute, but generated a manageable recoil.[107]
Although some carbines were marked at the factory as M2, the only significant difference between an M1 and M2 carbine is in the fire control group. The military issued field conversion kits (T17 and T18) to convert an M1 to an M2. Legally a carbine marked M2 is always a machine gun for national firearms registry purposes.
These M2 parts including the heavier M2 stock were standardized for arsenal rebuild of M1 and M1A1 carbines.
A modified round bolt replaced the original flat top bolt to save machining steps in manufacture. Many sources erroneously refer to this round bolt as an 'M2 bolt' but it was developed as a standard part for new manufacture M1 and later M2 carbines and as a replacement part, with priority given to use on M1A1 and M2 carbines.[108] The slightly heavier round bolt did moderate the cyclic rate of the M2 on full automatic.[109]
Despite being in demand, very few M2 carbines saw use during World War II, and then mostly in the closing days against Japan.[110] The M2 carbine was logistically compatible with the millions of M1 carbines in U.S. service, and offered longer range, better accuracy and better penetration than (pistol caliber) submachine guns like the M1 Thompsons and M3 Grease Guns.[111] Therefore, after World War II, the M2 carbine largely replaced the submachine-guns in U.S. service, until it was itself replaced by the M16 rifle.[52]
The M2 model was the most widely used Carbine variant during the Korean War.[112] A detailed study of the effectiveness of the M2 in the war was assembled by S. L. A. Marshall. He found that many troops complained on the lack of effective range of the gun, which allowed the enemy to get close enough to throw hand grenades. A more detailed analysis showed however that most troops who complained actually tended to run low on ammo, because they fired their M2 on fully automatic too soon. Troops who fired their guns on semi-automatic at distance generally complained less about the M2's effectiveness. Generally, the more seasoned troops used the latter approach. The carbine was usually given to second line troops (administrative, support, etc.), who had little combat experience and also did not have much training in small-unit tactics, but who usually had to engage the enemy at some critical moment, like a breakthrough or ambush. Marshall noted that almost all killing shots with carbines in Korea were at ranges of 50 yards or less. It was unsurprising therefore that the M2 was a preferred weapon for night patrols.[113] The M2 was also used in the early stages of the Vietnam War by special forces, ARVN advisers, and air crews.[114]
Contemporary authors have struggled to categorize the M2 carbine. On one hand, it is more powerful than a submachine gun and is considered by some to be an assault rifle, even though it fires a projectile considerably less powerful than the StG 44's 7.92×33mm Kurz. On the other hand, the M2 can also be considered a precursor of the modern personal defense weapon (PDW) concept, even though contemporary guns in that category, like the FN P90, fire substantially different cartridges like the 5.7×28mm.[115]
Carbine, Cal. 30, M2A2 [ edit ]
Arsenal-refurbished (overstamped M2) model
Carbine, Cal.30, M3 [ edit ]
M2 with mounting (T3 mount) for an early active (infrared) night vision sight
About 3,000 produced
Three versions of night sight (M1, M2, M3)
Original Korean War era USMC M3 Night Vision Scope
The M3 carbine was an M2 carbine fitted with a mount designed to accept an infrared sight for use at night. It was initially used with the M1 sniperscope, and an active infrared sight, and saw action in 1945 with the Army during the invasion of Okinawa. Before the M3 carbine and M1 sniperscope were type-classified, they were known as the T3 and T120, respectively. The system continued to be developed, and by the time of the Korean War, the M3 carbine was used with the M3 sniperscope.
The M2 sniper scope extended the effective nighttime range of the M3 carbine to 100 yards. In the later stages of the Korean War, an improved version of the M3 carbine, with a revised mount, a forward pistol grip, and a new M3 sniperscope design was used in the latter stages of Korea and briefly in Vietnam. The M3 sniperscope had a large active infrared spotlight mounted on top of the scope body itself, allowing use in the prone position. The revised M3/M3 had an effective range of around 125 yards.[50] Eventually, the M3 carbine and its M3 sniperscope would be superseded by passive-design night vision scopes with extended visible ranges; the improved scopes in turn required the use of rifle-caliber weapons with flatter trajectories and increased hit probability.
Derivatives [ edit ]
Ingram SAM [ edit ]
The Ingram SAM rifles are M1 carbine derivatives in 5.56×45mm NATO (SAM-1), 7.62×39mm (SAM-2) and 7.62×51mm NATO (SAM-3). The 5.56×45mm versions accept M16 magazines, the 7.62×39mm accept AK magazines and the 7.62×51mm versions use FN FAL magazines. They did not catch on in competition against the Ruger Mini-14 in both the police and civilian markets. The Ingram SAM rifles are occasionally found on auction sites for collectors.
Military contractors [ edit ]
Commercial copies [ edit ]
Several companies manufactured copies of the M1 carbine after World War II, which varied in quality. Some companies used a combination of original USGI and new commercial parts, while others manufactured entire firearms from new parts, which may or may not be of the same quality as the originals. These copies were marketed to the general public and police agencies but were not made for or used by the U.S. military.
In 1963, firearms designer Melvin M. Johnson introduced a version of the M1 carbine called the "Spitfire" that fired a 5.7 mm (.22 in) wildcat cartridge known as the 5.7 mm MMJ or.22 Spitfire.[16] The Spitfire fired a 40-grain (2.6 g) bullet with a muzzle velocity of 2850 ft/s (870 m/s) for a muzzle energy of 720 foot-pounds force (980 J).[118] Johnson advertised the smaller caliber and the modified carbine as a survival rifle for use in jungles or other remote areas.[118] While the concept had some military application when used for this role in the selective-fire M2 carbine, it was not pursued, and few Spitfire carbines were made.[118]
An Auto-Ordnance AOM-130 Carbine manufactured in 2007.
More recently, the Auto-Ordnance division of Kahr Arms began production of an M1 carbine replica in 2005 based on the typical M1 carbine as issued in 1944, without the later adjustable sight or barrel band with bayonet lug. The original Auto-Ordnance had produced various parts for IBM carbine production during World War II, but did not manufacture complete carbines until the introduction of this replica. The AOM110 and AOM120 models (no longer produced) featured birch stocks and handguards, Parkerized receivers, flip-style rear sights and barrel bands without bayonet lugs. The current AOM130 and AOM140 models are identical except for American walnut stocks and handguards.[119][120]
In 2014, Inland Manufacturing, LLC in Dayton, Ohio introduced the reproduction of the "Inland M1 Carbine". Inland Manufacturing, LLC is a private entity that is producing reproductions of the M1 Carbine and M1A1 Paratrooper models that were built by the original Inland Division of General Motors from 1941 to 1945. The new Inland M1 carbines feature many of the same characteristics of the original Inland Carbines and are manufactured in the USA. The M1 carbine is modeled after the last production model that Inland manufactured in 1945 and features a type 3 bayonet lug / barrel band, adjustable rear sights, push button safety, round bolt, and "low wood" walnut stock, and a 15-round magazine. A 30-round mag catch was utilized to allow high-capacity magazines. A "1944" M1 Carbine is also available that has the same features as the 1945 only with a Type 2 barrel Band and 10-round magazine and is available for sale in most states with magazine capacity & bayonet lug restrictions. The M1A1 is modeled after a late production 1944 M1A1 Paratrooper model with a folding "low wood" walnut stock, Type two barrel band, and includes the same adjustable sights which were actually introduced in 1944.[121]
An Israeli arms company (Advanced Combat Systems) offers a modernized bullpup variant called the Hezi SM-1.[122] The company claims accuracy of 1.5 MOA at 100 yards (91 m).[123]
Commercial manufacturers [ edit ]
Alpine of Azusa, Calif. [124]
AMAC of Jacksonville, Ark. (acquired Iver Johnson Arms) [125]
AMPCO of Miami, Fla. [126]
Auto-Ordnance
Bullseye Gun Works of Miami, Fla. [127]
Crosman Air Rifle; produced an M1 Carbine lookalike [128]
ERMA's Firearms Manufacturing of Steelville, Mo. [129]
Erma Werke of Dachau, Bavaria serviced carbines used by the West German police post World War II. Manufactured replacement parts for the same carbines. Manufactured.22 replica carbines for use as training rifles for police in West Germany and Austria and for commercial export worldwide. [130] [131]
Federal Ordnance of South El Monte, Calif. [132]
Fulton Armory of Savage, MD [133]
Global Arms [134]
H&S of Plainfield, NJ (Haas & Storck, predecessor of Plainfield Machine) [135]
Howa of Nagoya, Japan, made carbines and parts for the post-World War II Japanese and Thai militaries, and limited numbers of a hunting rifle version [136]
Inland Manufacturing of Dayton, Ohio [137]
Israel Arms International (IAI) of Houston, Texas assembled carbines from parts from other sources [138]
The Iver Johnson Arms of Plainfield, NJ and later Jacksonville, Ark., (acquired M1 Carbine operations of Plainfield Machine) and followed the lead of Universal in producing a pistol version called the "Enforcer". [139]
Johnston-Tucker of St. Louis, Mo. [140]
Millvile Ordnance (MOCO) of Union, N.J. (predecessor of H&S) [141]
National Ordnance of Azusa, Calif. and later South El Monte, Calif. [142]
NATO of Atlanta, GA [143]
Plainfield Machine Company of Plainfield, N.J. and later Middlesex, N.J. (P.O. Box in Dunellen, N.J.), M1 Carbine manufacture later purchased and operated by Iver Johnson [144]
Rock Island Armory of Geneseo, Ill. [145]
Rowen, Becker Company of Waterville, Ohio [146]
Springfield Armory of Geneseo, Ill. [147]
Texas Armament Co. of Brownwood, Tex. [148]
Tiroler Sportwaffenfabrik und Apparatenbau GmbH of Kugstein, Austria manufactured an air rifle that looked and operated like the M1 Carbine for use in training by Austria and West Germany. [149]
Universal Firearms of Hialeah, Fla. – Early Universal guns were, like other manufacturers, assembled from USGI parts. However, beginning in 1968, the company began producing the "New Carbine", which externally resembled the M1 but was in fact a completely new firearm internally, using a different receiver, bolt carrier, bolt, recoil spring assembly, etc. with almost no interchangeability with GI-issue carbines. [150] Universal was acquired by Iver Johnson in 1983 and moved to Jacksonville, Ark. in 1985.
Universal was acquired by Iver Johnson in 1983 and moved to Jacksonville, Ark. in 1985. Williams Gun Sight of Davison, Mich. produced a series of 50 sporterized M1 Carbines[151]
Hunting and civilian use [ edit ]
After World War II, the M1 carbine became a popular plinking and ranch rifle. It is still popular with civilian shooters around the world and is prized as a historically significant collector's item. The Carbine continues to be used in military marksmanship training and competitive target matches conducted by rifle clubs affiliated with the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP).
The M1 carbine can be used for big-game hunting, such as white-tailed deer and mule deer at close range (less than 100 yards), but is definitely underpowered for larger North American game such as elk, moose, and bear. A standard.30 Carbine soft-point round weighs 110 grains (7.1 g) and has a muzzle velocity of about 1,990 ft/s (610 m/s) giving it about 967 ft⋅lbf (1,311 joules) of energy.[152] By comparison, a 110gr.357 Magnum bullet fired from an 18" rifle barrel, has a muzzle velocity of 1718 ft/s (523 m/s) and 720 ft/lb (976 joules) of muzzle energy.[153] 30 Carbine sporting ammunition is factory recommended for hunting and control of large varmints like coyote, fox or bobcat.[152]
Some U.S. states prohibit use of the.30 Carbine cartridge for hunting deer and larger animals due to a lessened chance of killing an animal in a single shot, even with expanding bullets. The M1 Carbine is also prohibited for hunting in several states such as Pennsylvania[154] because of the semi-automatic function, and Illinois[155] which prohibits all non-muzzleloading rifles for big game hunting. Five-round magazines are commercially made for use in states that limit the capacity of semi-automatic hunting rifles.
Some indoor pistol ranges may permit the firing of an M1 carbine, as its bullet is comparable to magnum handgun rounds, whereas an AR-15, AK-47 or other high-velocity rifle might penetrate the backstop.
New Jersey lists the "M1 Carbine Type" as a banned assault firearm although most examples of the M1 Carbine technically meet the restrictions on semi-automatic rifles identified by the state. Although not banned by name, make or model, M1 Carbines may in some cases be classified as contraband assault weapon under the 2013 NY SAFE act if they feature bayonet lugs, pistol grips, folding stocks and flash suppressors. 10-round magazines are available in states that restrict magazine capacity for civilian firearms.
The M1 carbine was also used by various law enforcement agencies and prison guards, and was prominently carried by riot police during the civil unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s; until it was replaced in those roles by more modern.223 caliber semi-automatic rifles such as the Ruger Mini-14 and the Colt AR-15 type rifles in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The ease of use and great adaptability of the weapon led to it being used by Malcolm X and Patty Hearst. Both were featured in famous news photographs carrying the carbine.
Related equipment and accessories [ edit ]
Ammunition types [ edit ]
The ammunition used by the military with the carbine include:[156]
Cartridge, Caliber.30, Carbine, Ball, M1
Cartridge, Grenade, Caliber.30, M6 (also authorized for other blank firing uses, due to a lack of a dedicated blank cartridge)
Cartridge, Caliber.30, Carbine, Dummy, M13
Cartridge, Caliber.30, Carbine, Ball, Test, High Pressure, M18
Cartridge, Caliber.30, Carbine, Tracer, M16 (also rated as having an incendiary effect)
Cartridge, Caliber.30, Carbine, Tracer, M27 (dimmer illumination and no incendiary effect)
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]The government's first social bond has collapsed, with negotiations breaking down and the provider walking away.
The largely untested social bond model uses private investors' money to pay a provider for a social service. If the service is successful, the government pays out.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
Work started in 2013 on the bonds, which the government promoted as a way to bring innovation to social services without risking public money.
Last year nearly $29 million was put aside for the rollout of four bonds.
The first was to be a programme to help people with mental health problems get into the workforce, and the plan was to put employment consultants in GP practices.
But the provider, Wise Group, confirmed yesterday that it had withdrawn from the scheme.
It would not make any further comment saying it had been directed to refer inquiries to the Ministry of Health.
Wise Group is a member of Platform Trust, a national network of community organisations that help people with their addiction and mental health problems.
Platform Trust chief executive Marion Blake said the outcome was disappointing for people living with mental health issues who wanted employment.
"I think it's absolutely indicative of the cost to the community sector of doing business with government. We're seeing this over and over again.
"The government is inviting innovation, inviting propositions that will change the way that we do things, but yet we go through what appears to us, from the community sector, as tedious bureaucratic slow processes that kill things before they're even born."
The mental health employment bond was expected to have been under way by now.
According to official documents, $1.62m has been spent getting the bonds to this stage.
The documents show in the 12 months to the end of April 2016, $799,000 was spent on the social bonds pilot. The development of the first social bond accounts formed approximately $550,000 of this.
In the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 financial years to 1 May 2015, approximately $819,000 was spent on the bonds programme, including consultants.
The government said when it announced the funding last year that it would not face any liability for the scheme and would only pay if the programme delivered a result.
In April, RNZ reported the programme was at a standstill because investors were apparently reluctant due to uncertainty over whether the government would guarantee the security of the private funding.
RNZ understands the government has now offered money to investors to get them over the line and put money in the bonds.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
Finance Minister Bill English has not denied this, but said money was set aside while negotiations about the first programme have been ongoing.
"In the first one there was a lot of discussion about what it would take to get the parties across the line."
When pushed further on whether the government would provide money as an incentive for investors, Mr English said they were matters around negotiation.
"I understand [with] the first one negotiations have stopped and it looks like the parties have pulled back, so clearly it wasn't a successful conclusion to that, and we've learnt a lot and we'll now get on with the next one."
Labour's health spokesperson Annette King said the whole programme had been a waste of money and was doomed to fail.
"It was never going to fly because there was no need for them to put in another funder. All the government needs to do is to fund a group like the Wise Group direct and cut out the middle man."
The whole thing was nonsensical as social bonds had failed in other countries, she said.
Ms King could not understand why the government had pursued it.
But the government plans to continue with its social bond programme.
Mr English said the government had learned how to make the next bond work.
His office was undertaking a review of the process on the first bond and the minister was expecting the findings next month.
Social service funds too precious to waste - Northland MP
Meanwhile, Northland MP Winston Peters said the money spent on what he called the government's failed social bonds scheme could have kept Lifeline afloat.
The telephone counselling charity closed its Whangarei branch last year, and |
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